Unreal Engine going to be NOT FREE in 2024 !?! (For non Gaming Projec)

General Feedback & Requests
1

Hi ! Here is a react of the new political of Unreal Engine in 2024 !

I actualy use Unreal Engine 5 for 30s to 1 minute sequences, once a week on youtube videos of 10 minutes, that earn me 5 dollars after taxes. I also promote your Software cause I love what I do on it.
And, I work on short film in the background.
(You can say to me… change your style and go fu. yrself. or paid…)

Yes, ok but, on the other hand, I also already PAID thousand of dollars in asset on the store, where you already earn money from me… Do you realy think I will continu to grow and buy more content if a month/annual subcription paid (alos for indies ?) kill what I do ???

You make a great Job, and need money for that… We are all awares of that, but like Unity before you, be carefull of what you chose, cause there is always side effect on many choises…

If Unreal gonna be not Free anymore tomorow … (Not only for profesional but also for indies)
There has to be a choice of DEFINITIVE licence for Indies, to they know where they go.
If is there is not such a choice, with a subscription wich gonna change price with time (we all aware of that too) you maybe gonna be loose more that you think you will win on us.

Thank’s for Reading.
J-D

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I think they would make more affordable prices for indies like other softwares do (and I hope they will), but nothing is sure and the only thing to do to know more is to wait for an official announcement. I think their goal is to earn something from large film or animation studios, not to make indies go bankrupt (at most I think they will make an affordable subscription for indies like other softwares do), but again we have no certainties at the moment!

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I think this is the worse decision they have made in 10 years. I cam to unreal because it was free and now just to try and make a film I have to pay? what is this!! ok lets make a game where its one long cutscene where you press random buttons to move to next scene atleast it will cost less than per a seat. I am losing my mind over this, I have full invested in the fact I can make a movie without paying out the nose. if I wanted to sub I would go back to maya or something wtf is this. this will kill so many people thinking of getting into movie making I am in shock. they gave so little information on who is going to be effected. luckly if they do annoce it we can stay on a old version and never update.

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Here is my take, and understand that I come from TV/Film VFX, and have worked in the industry for about almost 25 years.

I started using UE with UDK in the 3.0 days, and immediately understood it’s potential for offline media. I had been pushing the use of UE for this purpose since 2010, and when UE4 came out, under the OG subscription plan, I jumped on it, as it was both exciting, and being in a professional industry, I understood that software cost was the price of doing business. Someone new to the industry, or came up using Blender will see things a bit differently, that is fine, but know, that Blender is unique, and a rare gem today.

So I do not slight Epic in the slightest for going back to a paid model, most of the people in my circle have been talking about this day for a long time, and how the free ride would not last, because these kinds of tools are expensive to make, and we want to see these tools continue to grow, and be well maintained.

However, to do this, in what will appear by many to be an about face, Epic will need to maintain the mantra that if you are not making money, there should never be a fee, and that it is their job to help facilitate that to as best of a degree as they can.

To me, that means that only productions that need expensive infrastructure, and make X amount of money on a given project should bare the lion share of this burden. Most people at home making YouTube content, or experimental indie films should not expect to pay much of anything more than what it costs for a streaming service, but have the feature in UE that take additional infrastructure, and hardware to produce content, like Vpro, Pixel streaming, and if they actually develop a means to render the Path Tracer on a render farm vs local sneaker netting renders on your home PCs. The idea being, that if you can afford to use the hardware these tools require, than you can afford a subscription license of that tier. It would not be difficult to gate those features based on the specific allowances of ones account. Other companies do this all the time, and it would help pay directly for the specific features needed for offline productions at scale.

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I hate they fact they drop this only months before 2024 this is so little time to come to terms unreal will no longer be free for people making it for film. I understand it takes money to produce new tech but to be the golden standard of hey you dont have any money this is free you can be creative with it for years and just in 3 months thats not gonna be true. yes I have a little bit on money but there are like 6 other 3d programs that all require subscriptions. just drop it on use without any real information so close to 2024 is radicicols

6

I would assume that it would be part of 5.4, and that 5.3 would remain as is, though I could be wrong.

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from I saw same as unity Eula you could just stay on the version before the changes and never update to the new one

8

right but you will be forced to update sooner or later.

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9

We will see also the policy for content makers, if they can use it for free or will be charged as well.

10

You can still go back to UE 4.0, you probably do not want to, but you can do it. It is all need based in the end. I think the development, if you look at the forward looking road map, is clear that a lot of improvements and features are on the horizon that will greatly improve how content is made, so yeah, at some point you will want to make the move, but you still have a choice.

11

I feel if they make film makers pay a month or yearly cost they should do the same to games go back to 9.99 a month. and if they dont 90% of the road map for features should be movie non game related as we are putting more in funds than indie game developers at that point

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whatever they charge indie film people should be charged to indie game developers plus the 5% if they make over million no way I am funding develop of game features if I am footing the bill for development you want game features you pay same as film people

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I invested the last 3 years in learning the basics of UE. During this process, I felt in love with cinematics. I invested a lot of my private funds in assets, private lessons, and finally online courses, but the worst is time. I spent countless hours, nights, and a huge amount of my free time learning, and as a father of three kids, I feel really uncomfortable now. I do not earn on Unreal (sold something maybe 2-3 times in final), I make it for fun ATM. Now, after all these investments, I receive the information that I need to pay a monthly plan starting in January. I do not pay for Adobe; I use Affinity, look how it’s growing. Please do not force people to use Blender.

Another thing to consider, It’s the wrong way to sort people into game and non-game developers. I understand that Unity was a great test for you, but we are all one.
Unreal is strong because of the community that pushes you to go forward, like Blender.
I am fine to pay, but I will not afford the Adobe-style plan that you suggested. There is a massive number of people who do it just for fun or make a really small profit, keep that in mind.

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14

I’m kinda confused about the statement.

So engine would move to a seat-based licensing, but at the same time no change for game development?

How would it be sold then? You claim that you want to develop games and so you can use engine for free(I guess as long as you don’t sell interactive tools or make movies etc)?

What about smaller non-game development?

What if I want to solo develop tools for small companies, so something like a car configurator would be for an automotive industry but at a much smaller scaler for smaller businesess. Tools that on their own don’t generate money directly like games or movies, but at the same time they are part of a service in a way?

Tim Sweeney mentioned (If I heard that right) “Not unusually expensive nor unusually inexpensive” and mentioned adsk maya.

So a subscription model with something around $200 monthly and maybe around $1800 yearly option?

I 100% expected this would come at some point, covid, inflation and whatnot… I also understand that large companies that do movies and big industries that implement UE in their pipeline can and will likely accept this.

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15

I feel you, I will point out that Tim Sweeny said on Twitter as Per a Question by GamesFromScratch that the fee would only for productions over certain budgets, so you will be unaffected according to the man himself.

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Gamesfromscratch posted a reply he got from Tim, it would only be for productions over a certain threshold, so most people likely would not be affected, but we will have to see what the final pricing structure looks like.

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There has been a small reply from Tim on Twitter from the YouTuber called games from scratch ask the question about any filmmakers and new prices. His response was “Won’t affect. There will be minimum revenue thresholds for commercial projecrs, and student/educator use will remain free.” So if you are a person working on an indie film that’s not making any money then you’re going to be fine we’ll have to find out what the actual price is but for me this is great.

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I hope they don’t lose their fanbase like Pixologic and Allegorithmic did. Unreal Engine is quite complicated and hardware-demanding compared to an AI solutions. Think about it: why would someone spend money on something that takes months to create when he can do it the easy way with AI? Eventually, people will get fed up and move on to AI solutions.

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As long as they hold to a minimum threshold, there should not be a problem for indies. It takes a huge amount of time and resources to learn unreal especially for those that are in for the fun of it and just wanna make some videos which basically earn nothing.

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This is good news as i am hobbyist who bury lot of my life learning graphics with Unreal and losing access would have been disaster. I learn until one day i can be a graphics pro with Unreal even if it takes most of life free time out of it. Hobbyist should always be untouched and have full access like now. Hobbyist are persons who promote Unreal to the world too.

Better see free games and monthly free assets go away than access for Unreal core itself which would be complete disaster. I even wont drain lot of bandwidth from EPIC, i get official UE or sometimes build myself(rocket build) and get some assets sometimes and other things i do offline basically.

I still try to reach my goal and in future before getting too old, make a favorite game i wanted…or at least die trying. This far i have learned so much about graphic design, how to keep optimal GPU cost and ton of other things from geometry to textures, shading etc.

BTW: i even purchased Fortnite coins for bandwidth support even i do not like Fortnite myself personally. I have promoted and installed Fortnite for quite some new generation youngsters too.

Tim Sweeney, i hope you too see this someday, thanks. My thanks to community users too for tutorials, talks etc.