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Seriously are you still debating about $19? Even e beggar can save less than a dollar per day and get the engine end of the month…
People willing to learn will pay way more than that.
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Please stop misrepresenting what I say. I have not argued that $19 is not a good or fair price. Let me clarify. $19.95 is an amazing deal. It’s more than fair and people should be willing to pay that. I don’t disagree with you on any of that.
It’s not about the $19, or whether it’s a fair price, or whether people should be willing to pay it. It’s about the fact that people looking to learn game development have choices. Unreal is not the only game engine out there. It may be the best and the best value (I think it is on both counts by far), but a new person isn’t going to be in a position to judge that. Right now, they’ve got a choice between trying Unity for free, trying Unreal for $19.99, trying CryEngine for $9.99, etc. Realistically, most people are going to pick one engine and learn it. They’re not going to try them all.
Why did Epic make Unreal free for academic use? Seems to me that it’s because they want to increase adoption. They want more future game developers comfortable with Unreal. I guarantee you that those most of those people in college game programming classes can afford $19.99 a month. They’re certainly paying a lot more than that to take the class in the first place.
Why do most high-end programs (Maya, Photoshop, etc), have free time-limited trials. Why do most of those same programs have academic programs allowing students to get free versions?
They don’t do out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it to increase the number of people who understand and use their programs. They do it to create future license sales. They do it because when faced with a free option and a pay option, a great many people will take the free option even if they can afford the pay one unless they have some first-hand reason to think the pay option is better.
I’m suggesting simply that it isn’t a bad idea to steer new game programmers toward UE4 and away from competitors, and one way to do that would be to give people a risk-free, cost-free way to try UE4 out first hand.