As a unity3d switcher I would like to know a bit about future plans of UE4 licensing. As anybody know UE has been a great engine only affordable by AAA teams/groups. To get a license was really expensive (I’m not sure about this, I just say what other gurus has stated on the forusm. But I guess it was).
Nowadays, UE4 licensing is a nice option against other engines and this is one of the reasons we switched. Is there any plan to make UE closed again without options for little teams? I know this could seema really dumb/naive question but we are going to put a lot of time learning this monster called UE4 and we would like to have some guarantee that we are not wasting our time because we will be excluded from getting next major versions (Because they will cost something we could not pay).
No, this is not going to happen. Given that this new structure was only revealed in May, don’t you think that it is a little early for such a major course change to occur?
Probably not going to change. My guess is that UE4 is going to be planned to last longer over time than UE3, and it will just generally change and get better. If they end up doing a big new version, like UE4 vs. UE3 then maybe they will change licensing for that version, don’t think that will happen unless they have to do drastic changes to the engine that requires separating it from UE4.
Well, I am asking not becasue I think this could happen next month or in 6 months but because We as a really small team can’t be changing engines too frecuently (for example, next year). It would be a really bad thing for us that Epic changed its licensing in the future. I hope everything will get better and not worse :).
I don’t think they will have to change anything to move to another licensing model in … say UE5. They will just release this major version and license it the way they like. Perhaps I did not understand what you wanted to mean here.
What I mean is, right now everything is UE4, you will never see a licensing change for like say version 4.6
But, say they want to do a really big engine change, like maybe there’s a new generation of hardware (like going from UE3 to UE4) then the new version might be completely separate from the previous version (like going from UE3 to UE4) and then in that new version (maybe UE5) they would then adjust their licensing, just like they did going from UE3 to UE4.
If that happens it will be a long time from now though
The only thing that could happen in licensing is making it even better, which they did with UDK, they never changed anything for the worse there.
If anything I can see all engine developers switching their engine marketing structure to stay competitive.
Things have changed and if anything engine developers need the Indie market more than we need them and the days of the AAA engine licenses is coming to an end.
Since Epic was the first to blink the one thing they have to do now is to get big fast before someone else catches up so I can only see things getting better that does not involve bait and switch.
I hope you are right :). I really love UE4, it is hard to learn because it is really extensive. It has bugs yeah, but tools are amazing. In unity3d we had a lot of tools that came from the asset store but this is something we did not like because of the poor quality, integration and warranty (There are exceptions of course, but it was really easy to get an asset and get hung because developer flew away ).
The one thing I like about UE4 is tools are released for free. & everyone has access to it. Guys like Rama’s have been working hard & giving out tools for free.
Obviously Unity is different as its free, or one time payment, & they need revenue from these tools.