unregulated market place pricing bad for Epic/UE4

Distribution UE Marketplace
1

I was really shell shocked when I just saw a terrain pack on the market place
Photorealistic Landscapes for $150!!!

ONE HUNDRED FIFTY.

I am still having troubles digesting number.
UE4 market places has low quality/low quantity items which were clearly designed by a hobbyist for $150! Unbelievable.

When you look at it there is nothing. I think five terrains, a couple of textures and nothing more.
Every amateur ever using Terragen or World Machine knows how easy is, and that the ‘Landscapes’ offered there are not high quality.
is just plain fishing for beginners who do not know better. One hundred fifty! I can not believe what happens there. is just plain wild west.
I can not believe Epic does regulate the pricing on the market place.

It can not be in the interest of Epic to let stuff like slip. Everyone halfway experienced will turn away in disgust.

It is not comparing engines, when I say that things like that cost a fraction of the price in the Unity asset store. Engines have nothing to do with it. Those landscapes are generated in some Terrain tool, exported as height map, imported in the respective engine and then textured with basic methods in UE4.

It is really shocking to see the pricing in the UE4 market place. A clear contra to using UE4 over other engines.

Look here what you can get for $15 for Unity.

Unbelievable and disgusting what happens on Unreal Engine 4 market place! I really hope it makes as many users go to other engines as possible! Disgusting.

2

I agree. that’s a pretty hefty price for what is not a super useable pack.

I have the same reaction.

People would be wise to seriously consider the actual market value of their product. We bought the vector fields pack for example because it was reasonably priced
even as a learning tool.

We go to the unity market for stuff as the price is much better and we can just modify to suit.

3

If you don’t like it don’t buy buy it. I don’t understand where the outrage is coming from. Artists deserve the right to charge a fare price for their work. If it’s too high, they will need to lower their price in order to attract customers. If artists can’t make decent money on the store, there won’t be any incentive to create assets for the store. How exactly do you want Epic to regulate the store? Make everything cheap? How will that attract artists?

1 Like
4

Unity’s asset store prices aren’t regulated either, so you can’t exactly complain for that reason. The content is also not moderated like the UE4 marketplace, so it’s also full of ****.

Yes, the $180 for four landscapes is a pretty terrible deal (especially when said landscapes are not very good - you’d get way better results yourself using something like Worldmachine and textures from one of the online repositories for a fraction of the price), but nobody is forcing you to buy it. It isn’t Epic’s responsibility to set pricing - that would be like Amazon telling a book publisher that the prices for their novels are too high; it just doesn’t make sense as a business practice.

5

thread really does feel like a sour grapes thread upset with the fact that game development costs money. Every coder, artist, composer, and writer knows their own worth and it’s up to them to charge what they think is a fair value. To argue against that is disgusting and petty because you are more or less looking for something approaching a free ride.

The most insane thing about your rant is that you used a $15 mobile terrain to make your point. In comparison you crapped on my landscape offering that was LITERALLY ASKING FOR EXACTLY THE SAME PRICE - $15 per terrain. Are you kidding me?!

6

Content creators are allowed to charge whatever they want. If I don’t want to pay for it then I won’t. If they don’t make money off of it then they will create lower priced content–or they won’t. That is the simple of it.

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I am not kidding you, cheapmod. Please read careful.
The unity link offers 10 or so landscapes (of good-ish quality) for $15.
You are asking $75 for 5 landscapes. (of good-ish quality).

Do you get the difference?

8

If there’s a less…passionate way to phrase it, I too thought the marketplace posting of “Photorealistic” Landscapes for $150 was a joke. And to think it consumed one of the rare marketplace slots that something more useful could have gone into last week.

To focus more specifically on the landscape pack - landscapes are like main characters. They need to be unique to some extent. If the terrain is the same for every developer using UE4, the games get stale. For $150 you’re buying 4 landscapes that, from the pictures and description text, are basically the same mountain terrain. Then on top of that, the quality isn’t any better than if I were to run one of the free samples in WorldMachine and generate textures, then build it into the most basic landscape material possible. Even learning for the first time would take at most 2 hours from start to finish. There’s nothing photorealistic about package.

On a more general rant, Epic’s current position behind the marketplace is that they want to maintain quality control themselves to essentially (in better words) prevent some of the **** going onto marketplace that often plagues the Unity marketplace. What I don’t understand is why Epic spends so many years and tons of resources fostering one of the best software communities in the world, then doesn’t empower it to govern it’s own submissions. Right now the marketplace should barely be considered a success - sellers have no feedback on who is buying, buyers are constantly unimpressed by the submissions and are left flabbergasted by assets that actually make the marketplace over other submissions, and are discouraged by the amount of time it takes any asset to go from submission to marketplace or to update within the marketplace.

Epic’s goals with the marketplace (as I understand them) is to only provide high quality, relevant assets for sale to the community. So far about 1/3rd of the marketplace assets are neither relevant or high quality, and submission times are so long that quality developers are moving to other sales platforms.

Epic, your marketplace system isn’t working - I hope you’re considering some changes soon.

9

You think is good-ish quality?

1281×718 73.6 KB

And you think is the same good-ish quality?

Are you blind?

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no, I am not blind.
If you take away the blurring and atmospheric in the Unity picture, you see the same amount of detail as in your landscape, which is 10x more expensive doing the amount of landscapes per price math.

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Load up their web player build. Then compare it to my work. My work has more detail and effort put into it. Here is the link: Unity Web Player | Quantum_Arid. I’m not scared to put the quality of my work up against anyone else’s.

Look I’m not trying to fight with you and I understand how you feel. You see these other cheaper competitive offerings and think you want to support community but you can’t do it in good conscience because of how much more they’re charging in comparison to stuff you see elsewhere. The big thing you’re missing from the equation is that the quality of the work matters. If you genuinely think for example the quality of my work is the same the quality of the work you linked to in thread I won’t say you’re wrong. But I humbly disagree.

kind of rant isn’t the way to make your point though. If you genuinely believe that for example you can make comparable results to the work I do where I’m getting feedback and guidance from a DICE senior artist then you’re all the more welcome to create landscapes of a comparable quality and offer your services to potential clients by beating us on quality and price. But simply complaining without actually showing anyone how to achieve a similar AAA quality that I feel my work offers is no different than yelling at the sky for being blue. Again please take an honest look between the two and if you think you see the level of detail in the two offerings is exactly the same that you’re completely free to believe that. Others will form their own opinions.

1281×722 73.2 KB

12

Well, let the market do the work.

Whatever priced assets do sell well → everything is fine

Overpriced assets won’t sell → will get cheaper (or someone else will make a better priced product)

Economics 101.

13

And here are some other comparisons to landscapes available on the Unity asset store.

120 Terrains for $5: Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making

Island Pack for $25: Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making

And so on. Here is how my terrain looks in comparison: Affordable Landscapes: An Unlimited Solution to All Your Terrain Needs - Work in Progress - Unreal Engine Forums!

http://8pic.ir/images/iua7rs053ll91kjkjz97.jpg

I do AAA work. Nothing on the Unreal or Unity forums comes close. If someone wants to have landscapes in their game rivaling DICE then all they have to do is purchase my pack or get in touch with me and I’ll make them unique landscapes and terrains for them. The difference between us is crystal clear. But the price is going to be reflective of that. Quality matters. If it doesn’t just buy the World Machine license like you say.

14

The Unity Terrain (upper picture, with the ‘meshes’, background1’,…) has even more details and variations if you look at it.
Even it were less detailed and less ‘AAA’, it would not be 10x less.

I can show others how to do it:

  1. YouTube
    (5 mins)
  2. export heightmap (1min)
  3. import in UE4 (1min)
  4. Load textures and use height lerp and material techniques used in the content examples to apply your materials
    (once set up: 5mins)

= not worth tens of dollars!

UE4 market place is really unbelievable. Really like wild west gold rush stuff. Young engine and so far only a few tutorials, many inexperienced users…let’s go fishing.

15

Well I had legitimate concerns, but is obviously turning into a personal war between a developer and a troll, so I’ll step out and await the thread lock.

16

thread seems to be derailing fast,

@ i say ignore them its not worth it, they seem more of a troll then anything, also i love those landscapes <3

17

You know what man. Thank you for saying that. I really needed to hear that. gives you a hug

I worked my butt off on those landscapes and to hear they weren’t anything good really upset me. You and are both right and I’m going to listen to you both. I’m out of here.

18

Brutally honest post incoming. I can’t be bothered to read all posts above me and get depressed about it so forgive any repeated points.

In my honest artists opinion: The Unity-Linked Landscapes look better, by a very large margin. Being open to heavy criticism is something any developer should get used to so here’s mine: The one you posted looks like it’s straight out of World Machine with tiling textures and a bit of weather erosion (which let’s be honest, World Machine does all that hard work for us). Unity version looks more colourful, unique and useable, whereas I know I’d have to spend a lot of time with those other landscapes making them look good with more detail. I don’t really like slagging peoples work off, especially as I know how difficult it is to get to a good level, but unless you’re told, how do you know where to improve.

Frankly, posting these kind of assets (not just landscapes, it applies globally) that have virtually no re-use value whatsoever and nothing people can learn from is what kills the usefulness Marketplace, and what will stop you getting decent sales. Landscapes like these take less than half a day and precisely one copy of World Machine to create, and I can do whatever I want with and get something completely unique. That is, just my opinion and therefore shouldn’t be taken to heart - but for me, I wouldn’t buy anything on Marketplace that I could make myself with just a few hours work. Anybody who does is either (again, in my opinion):

  • A) Lazy & has more cash-monies[SUP]tm[/SUP] than sense
  • B) Doesn’t care about originality (acceptable for some people, cringe worthy for many others)
  • C) Prototyping, and therefore doesn’t need to worry about the above.

The main I have with Marketplace is the voting. People usually post a thread first, and everybody who is one of the above expresses interest in it without actually thinking about it, and instead just trying to give themselves more options. Items should only be up there if there’s a genuine need or real desire for people to have them, or if they have real value. Can’t really get around that because everybody’s definition of value is different, so it’s a null point. Moving on…

Back OT: Marketplace prices are based on what the developer thinks that work is worth. Epic could police them a bit, but that will then prevent developers from using it at all, and they’ll sell it through their own websites. That results in less widely-available content and more insane prices. Seen plenty of that happen already. The thing is, if something is overpriced then don’t buy it… do it yourself. The developer of the content shoots themselves in the foot and doesn’t sell anything, and in turn you get a unique asset that you have 100% control over, and you bloody learn something too.

Just guys opinion / rant.

PEACE - And good luck to all devs with your sales.

19

Just want to point out that doing what you just noted above will cost you $100 for one terrain and it will not be anywhere near the quality of the asset pack on display from . Sure you can make more later, but most people who purchase from the marketplace are not looking for a large number of terrains. You need to make 7+ high quality terrains before you would break even at $15 per terrain.

That is not worth it for some users, it is cheaper to buy a pack on the marketplace.

The marketplace is just over 6 months old, it takes time to become widely used with plentiful asset packs to choose from. Forcing a pricing guideline is not the answer, competition is.

We won’t lock or close thread so long as it remains civil, but please refrain from personal attacks and keep it professional. Let’s try and get back to the topic of thread, discussing how to improve the marketplace. Thanks! :slight_smile:

20

Something I feel that the Unity Store does exceptionally well and that I am surprised Epic hasn’t already implemented is a proper view of the models within a player such as the Unity Player. Some have purchased content that looked good in a picture, but upon closer inspection was sub par. An ability to see relevant items within a preview 3d state would make buyers more aware.