Package prices are too high.

Community Marketplace
1

I know it takes a lot of work to build things like animations and models and make them compatible for people to use in different projects and I appreciate that. I could be wrong here, but I feel like the general ‘customers’ for these products aren’t large or medium game studios, it’s hobbyists, hopefuls and “after work side project” individuals looking to be creative. We all know that the majority of said people will most likely never release something that makes any money and are lucky to even finish a project or hell… get truly started on one.

So I for one can’t be spending $70 - $100 USD per item that looks good. One I don’t even know if its truly what I want in my project. There are pictures and some videos sure, but maybe it’s not quite what I had in mind when I get the full thing. Maybe its far more complicated to set up if its a full blueprint system and I can never get to doing it. Whatever the reason, I find it unfair that there aren’t demos of the products before spending the money. And second, I just dont have that kinda money to spend unless I’m sure its what I need and will work for me.

If you truly feel your released package is of value, why can’t you release the package at $15 flat for hobby/personal use. That way the everyday person can afford it, will pay for it and use it however on their own. Should they ever get to the point of being able to release something commercially, then they have to purchase the full ‘license’ for whatever the set price is. Otherwise they break the terms of agreement. You’d probably end up with more sales in the end since people that normally wouldnt have bought it may be more willing to part with $15 to try it rather than 85 or to find it some other way. Plus the more people that try it, the better the odds a project by someone somewhere is completed and released and they’ll buy the full package when that time comes. Plus more people that try your items, the more feedback; publicly and direct, you get on it.

Just my opinion.

2

Because doing that is so below the industry standard rates that they wouldn’t even bother creating the packs in the first place. So either they don’t exist or you have to pay what they’re worth. It’s your call. Because you can’t afford it doesn’t mean everyone else should drop their prices to accommodate you.

3

Hey ,

As I mentioned, its an opinion. Industry companies and corporations would hire in-house people to do these tasks and would have control over their creation. I’m not asking to be accommodated, I’m simply stating that a lot of people that are the intended buyers of these packs aren’t large companies, but individuals, its a market demographic that can be accommodated. The packs are made generically and aren’t really customize-able really other than “requests for changes after the fact”. Which is fine for the price sure if it works for you. Which is why I said, hobby use… if the purchaser wants to release content with it, then they pay the full price for the product.

Again, its an opinion, its not a hostile discussion. I’m not asking for special treatment. I wanted a minimap. Items that look worth the money and work for me I will pay the full price for them if I know I’ll use them. I wasn’t willing to pay what the package was priced at for it so with some guides and some trial and error I made my own, I’m fine with that. I’m just saying honestly, there are a lot of packages I would check out for $15 a pop and most likely never use for anything in the end. But at least the creator would make something on it.

Maybe I didn’t word it all correctly, because I’m not saying what the majority of packs are priced at isn’t what they’re worth and they should sell it for full use for $15…no not at all. I thought that was clear though I said, if the user wants to use them in releases they should HAVE to pay the full release price.

4

Of course it’s an opinion. I never said it wasn’t an opinion. Quote me if I did.

But your opinion is ultimately the same kind of logic that allows sweatshops to exist. Instead of dealing with the fact that people have set their prices above what you can afford, you’re asking for everyone to drop their prices to suit you. Why? Because this is your hobby? You know what else is a hobby for people? Collecting cars. Now lets make your initial post to be about cars instead of game development.

This is the same thing. If you can’t afford to pay the artists, programmers, and animators to support your hobby then you should find another hobby just like how everyone can’t be Jay Leno and buy every car under the sun. Don’t complain that the artists, programmers, and animators aren’t racing to the bargain bin to make you happy. They deserve a fair wage for their work. If you can’t afford it then get another hobby, or hire someone to make it for you instead of shopping on the Marketplace.

6

I took this approach with Generic Shooter. Super low cost considering the time and expertise required to build it, hoping to sell in volume.

The limited sale information I have so far proves that its doing alright, however my research suggests if I started out $10 higher, I’d still have about the same number of sales, slightly less, but gross more. Sales have been good though, more than expected, less than desired. Once I get more data and more things to correlate and nonsense, I’d like to write up my first month’s experience, given that Epic would be okay with that.

What I have taken away from this so far is: Charge what you are comfortable with charging. I for one have the belief that my first sell should be a cheap but value packed asset that’ll spread word of mouth based on its value, and that future products I can start charging a bit more for. My entry costs for building marketplace demand if you will. I’m also doing this far below my day job rates as an engineer, which is okay with me for now because the marketplace is new and my first product is more of an ‘exploration of the space’. For others, they may fall under different sales approaches/beliefs/needs, and imo a marketplace has to allow every play to be played during its growth so the right approaches are found for its market. It could very well be that there is a sustainable income for higher priced assets that many aren’t aware of because the people willing to buy those assets might not be as willing to post things on forums. In other sectors, in my experience, its common for people who prefer things to be much cheaper to be much more vocal than people who are willing to pay more and still appreciate what they bought. In which case, the target market and incentive to push marketplace assets creates an environment where losing the vocal minority is worth the silent ‘bigger’ customers. My Generic Shooter is an attempt to discover the opposite, and even then, I still get the occasional comment asking for it to be cheaper.

TLDR: I have no idea what I’m saying and I wish there was more data publicly available about the marketplace economy.

7

If you don’t know whether or not you need it in your project, you haven’t gotten far enough in your project. As a hobbiest, it would be best for you to put as much together on your own as possible. If you really just want to put a game together as quickly as possible, there are other free assets or even drag and drop game engines. It’s better to learn to make do with what you can have.

There are some assets on the store that seem overpriced to me, but I’ll make every attempt I can to get around not having that specific thing. (Those things are usually a pretty big luxury too :stuck_out_tongue: )

8

: I appreciate your opinion man, but you really need to calm down and stop taking things so personally. I never once complained at ALL nor did I ever say the creators shouldn’t get what they deserve for their work. This is supposed to be a discussion and if you’re comments are going to have attitude I’m not going to bother to respond to them. Please keep calm and discuss or don’t comment. AS you keep saying, the choice is the users, and you can move onto other topics to post in instead if this is bothering you.

As for cars, your analogy is a little off. First because this isn’t purchasing and collecting final products. Epic provides the “frame”. Now the choice of parts you put on the car is up to you. There are expensive parts, cheap parts and then there are custom parts. Then there are large companies that make their own, assemble their own etc… at the end of the day, the products are completely different and the analogy doesn’t quite work. Not to mention there are expensive hobbies and cheaper hobbies. I’m not saying this hobby is for the rich, but if I want to try out 6 different animation packs to see the one I like the best, try out the three different inventory systems, rpg systems 4 of the particle systems. I don’t want to spend over $1000 and use only $300 worth. Though I do get your point. Perhaps the idea would be better represented by saying, would you not pay retail price for Microsoft Word if you’re a hobbyist writer? And you probably wouldnt. You would use a more generic writer, or get a student version, or worse yet, download it from a pirate site in which case the dev never wins and i dont support that.

**: **I have a project I’ve been on for a few months now and I’ve made a lot of my own models and stuff as place holders for the time being and bought the things I really need and want in place now. I DO know when and what I need for my project. What I’m not sure of for instance… is do I want to buy Kubolds sword and shield set. I don’t need it. His rifle set does what I need. I dont need the sword and shield setl. However, there is **one **animation in it that would work well for me I THINK for a melee combat system. But I don’t need the rest and I think those sets are fairly priced as is… Would I pay $15 for it… ya to see if it would work in my set. Thats my point. Would I pay $20 for the minimap? NOOO… I know I can do that on my own. Especially with the help online. Would I have liked it in less than 5mins to have seen how it was done quickly? Sure. But not for $20. I instead used the animgraph and blending by bone to make my melee system work without that animation. Would it look better with it though? I dont know… maybe… hard to say til I try it.

: I don’t know what the cost of the generic shooter is. I agree with the approach though. Maybe it balances out in the end. Perhaps if new people to the scene don’t know how much time and work is invovled in creating a game wouldn’t understand the value. I’ve created all mechanics in my game myself (which online help of course from the community). But everything from simple stamina system, pistol, machine gun, rifle and bows shooting system, inventory and ammo systems to complicated counter attack systems hand to hand fighting. Outside of character functions, AI, teams for MP, character selection, leveling up system etc…etc… while also learning the interface. It is a lot of work and takes dedication. If I knew how it would be before I started I would honestly probably have purchased a game like yours, or a TPS starter kit or something. While I’m a fan of doing things my own way, knowing how its setup by someone already would have saved lots of time.
TLDR: I agree with this approach regardless of the size of the content released. Though it should be priced accordingly. A cheaper version for personal use. Maybe they dont use your system in the end but they make their own with your help. Thats why you got something from them. But at the same time, if they want the entire system copy and pasted. They can pay full amount for full use of it in commercial products.

Maybe there’d be better or similar success selling individual systems that make up the game rather than the full thing. At some point when my project is done, maybe I’ll take some time and do that.

9

There is no attitude here as much as I’m just being blunt. My point is simply you don’t to get subsist your hobby off the hardworking backs of others. Either pay for it or don’t.

10

Maybe the prices are too high for you, if you personally can do the work without buying it. But I compare the prices to buying assets off 3d stock websites, and the unreal marketplace is much much cheaper.

For example, when I want to build a tank for my game, it usually takes the combination of 3 or more seperate models of that tank, combining elements of them all, then adding my own geometry, redoing all the UVs, and retexturing / setting up for PBR to actually get something that is an accurate depiction. If I wanted to contract someone to make that model for me, it would cost a small fortune. If I wanted to make it from the ground up myself, it would take far more time, and skills than I have. So even then it is still worth it.

I’m going to be selling a system I made for my own project soon. It’s really simple, however, if 4 months ago I saw it on the marketplace I probably would have bought it to save time.

12

All great points:

docjor : I said the same thing in my previous post. If I saw something on the market already that did what I was trying as an out of box template… I would have bought it. Except I wouldn’t have THEN simply because I wouldn’t really have known how much work it was to build on my own at the time. =/ (unless it was cheap enough to take a and say… maybe it will help maybe not)

I’m not at all saying enjoy your hobby off the hard works of others. I’m actually saying the exact opposite. The people releasing these assets should get paid for it and for every 100 people that download UE4 thinking theyre gonna make a game, 3 maybe start something, 1 maybe continues. The 100 look at it and say oh this looks cool and simple… until they realize that you need assets to do what they had in mind. But then they also realize they need to learn how to use and integrate those assets using other systems. Many just turn away there. Some look into getting assets and may be deterred by the pricing. Thats a lot of business these creators are losing because the task to the user already seems daunting without paying for anything. If there was a “personal” or “trial” price more may at least try to get into it. Thats not a refundable price thats what you pay and you get to play with the assets and try them out on your own. Its better than never getting anything as the creator. And again, you always get the full price if the buyer releases a game with the assets, obviously.

: Also a good point. The prices for most things are reasonable. I agree totally. In fact I think some packs like Kubolds should be a bit higher if used commercially, since theres a lot of cool ones in there. But for any packs sold if they were to be used in a release, they should pay those prices. However in the real world, people don’t buy cars without test driving them first, (even collector cars =P ), houses without seeing them, you can check out products at Wal-mart before you buy them. Even software has trials. In this particular case, once you have the assets, you have them, so sending free trials doesnt make sense which is understandable. But a trial fee makes sense to me. The math you lay out has merit for sure but is better applied to a freelance site where the worker is under contract for your custom assets. In this case the time is spent once and the smae product is resold x amount of times… though the math still applies it should be looked at just slightly differently.

13

Hi thankstipscom, I guess the minimap you mentioned is the one I sell on the marketplace for $20?

I agree with you that a lot of stuff on the marketplace is priced too high to get bought by someone who might never finish a game, I myself would never pay $200 for something on the marketplace if I’m not 100% sure that I will successfully sell a game with using the content.

But do you really think the $20 for my minimap are too much? I set the price, same as with his generic shooter, so that anyone can buy it, even if he does not really want to use it in a game, because $20 is really not much. It would be worth a lot more, I spent at least 80 (might be a lot more) hours working on this (and still give support to anyone who uses it), and if I could decide between working 80 hours on something or buy the same highly customizable thing for $20 on the marketplace, I would buy it. What price would you suggest for something like my minimap?

I think I will actually increase the price a bit, now that I know a lot of people are actually using it successfully and don’t have problems with it, after I fixed some bugs. Being one of the first ones to buy something is always a bit risky because there probably are some bugs in, especially in highly customizable stuff, so letting the first buyers have a small discount is good I guess.

14

Hey John,

Let me say, that I haven’t used your release so I dont know if the price point fits or not (which is kind of the point of my post in the first place). While i do agree with setting a price relevant to the amount of work involved, sometimes that work involved is not always equal to everyone.
But in reality, my post is more about structuring a second tier system. One where the creators still get something for their work even if the user never releases the product. By that idea it would hopefully help the buyers continue to progress in their game dev since they can afford the help they need to continue on when hitting walls and hopefully some point release something; at which point all assets are FULLY paid for, for commercial release. Trying to think of a win-win for indies and hobbyists(and the craetors). Meaning even if the price is fair, I’m not stating to lower the purchase price, I’m saying it may be worth thinking about a trial price that allows personal use at half or less of the commercial price.

I made a minimap for my third person shooter inside of an hour. I used a guide on the wiki and my own knowledge to make one where it follows my character from a birds eye view. One can see live version of the map they’re in, so all the structures, or just see transparent black (so radar style). Pressing a key toggles zooming in or out. also the custom location indicator is an arrow which rotates based on character rotation. (i added that portion to the guide I used, to help others). It works for each player character in MP as well. I’m not exaggerating. Inside of an hour. However I couldn’t have done it without the help of the community and the guide on the wiki that quickly obviously.

Now I spent maybe another hour trying to figure out how to plot other items on the map and not just the playing character… like power ups, or other MP characters… I put that on hold to move onto other things though since I didnt figure it out immediately. Maybe yours has this ? Where I can show other players on the mini map. Now is it worth $20 to me to have that after I spent time learning and creating my own. Yea maybe. But I know the engine and the blueprints pretty well. I know I CAN figure it out on my own. So its not worth $20 immediately for me to buys yours. And then once I spend a coupel hours on it, at that point I made a personal investment so i might as well see it through.

If there was a personal price of liek $5-8 for it…I’d buy it in a second. See how you did that and just add it to my own rather than use your whole map. I rather like mine :slight_smile: . You still get some money for you work and I get to move on. Maybe it will only take me another hour or so to get other points plotted real-time… I won’t know til I sit down and seriously try.

Sorry for the long read. Hope that all makes sense. And good on you for continuing to provide support to others!
I’d recommend you leave the price as is. As the market grows there will be competing maps to yours. You have the advantage of being the “original” so fewer bugs, more support. Newbies would choose yours over the new ones, providing the new ones aren’t significantly cheaper.

15

Have you ever heard of ? We offer fair prices for very low-poly and game-ready models, textures, AND substances! Here you go: www…com You’ll thank me later :slight_smile:

16

Also keep in mind that marketplace items have to meet Epic’s epic quality control. I don’t have any experience putting anything on the marketplace myself, but I imagine that it means that the blueprints that you get are pretty efficient by a AAA company’s standard.

You can learn a lot taking apart these blueprints.

@, what branch of engineering do you do? :slight_smile:

17

Keep in mind that the Marketplace is still relatively early days in the grand scheme of things (still not a year old yet). I remember back in the early days of the Unity marketplace, everything was exactly the same, a lot of high priced items. The UE Marketplace hasnt gotten to a point where there is a lot of competing products so prices will be “high” (though relatively speaking, they are quite low).

Give it time and you will begin to see people that think they can release a similar package that may have more features than a competing one and they will do it for cheaper.

18

The main is that the marketplace is currently in its early stages, means that there is not as much content as in Unity Marketplace, this means that the price are high because you don’t have proper competition.

Give it time or expect the flooding of converted Unity packages into UE4 Marketplace to see the price drop.

Some of the items on the marketplace are quite amazing and the price is great ( UE4 arch scene is pretty amazing and the price is below the average cost ), while some of them ( character mostly ) are ridiculous…

I honestly would prefer to see the content used into some scene in detail, with a good understanding of what it can do and how it looks…I saw quite a lot of comments related to the poor quality of the asset, which is unfortunately something that you’ll find out after you bought it.

@DevilsD: Sorry, I kinda wrote the exact same thign as yours, I didn’t read it before or we wrote at the same moment :smiley:

19

Prices are “ok” in general in market place, just my two cents. Once in a while, there should be some sales & bundles etc…Just like a real marketplace:)
And yes, marketplace is new compared to unity’s asset store, so overtime everything will get better for both customers and artists.

20

The marketplace do have sales, though they dont seem to happen often but we can probably attribute that to the low amount of content actually on the marketplace.

With time everything will get better, the Epic Marketplace team is headed into a fantastic direction with the quality of the marketplace and im glad to see it continue in its current direction well into the future.

21

Personally i am of the opinion if selling something on the marketplace you can work out a good price for it by taking hourly rate x time it took / divided by 12.
So lets say you work for $20 / hour and it took you 20 hours to complete something its $400 / 12 so the price should roughly be $33.

Though the dividing factor should also be adjust according to how high demand a certain product is.

Charging hourly rate for something that is sold to many customers is in my opinion unethical because if that was the case you should be selling it as a once off product and only one person can buy that. Then it would make sense to calculate based on hourly rate alone.

Its this mentality that has driven me to do the free ledge climbing system. And there are a few other systems that i have in the pipeline that will also be free in the future. This was not to step on toes and i am not trying to hurt other developers.

If you see something wrong with the world don’t get angry and try to change it but rather be the change you want to see.
And its this statement which drives me to bring free stuff to the community.

22

When trying to get quotes on custom model production I’m often seeing around $300-800 depending on the quality.

If I can get a lot of mass produced models for $70 that is a huge money saver.

I understand the frustration when you’re working otu of pocket. It is what I"ve been trying to do and and I know the guy who is making Jeklynn Heights and he has been working out of pocket too till he managed to get enough going that he got some crowd funding. But you get what you can afford don’t blame the producers of content that you can’t afford it.