unregulated market place pricing bad for Epic/UE4

Distribution UE Marketplace
41

Sure but your not amortizing your labor costs as compared to the rate of returns.

Granted with out analytic tied to your account there is no way to know how your product is treading as to daily sales and have to wait for the pay check to find out.

I would agree if it’s one off custom you could calculate your labor costs as part of a quote but you would make a hell of a lot more by leveraging you “product” as to similar priced items.

Check out.

In theory with a large enough market place you could make more than a million dollars on a .99 cent hat.

Here I’ll help you out. :wink:

42

A Marketplace curator will price their work according to how much they think it’s worth.

People can disagree with their pricing and as their the end-user, I guess it’s a fair argument but it’s an argument none-the-less. The creator may see more value in their work then the end-user thinks it’s worth in value and sometimes vice versa.

The best way to make your opinion on the matter heard is via sales figures.

If you don’t like the price of something, vote with your wallet. If nobody purchases marketplace content at it’s price, then it’ll teach the developer to be more aware when pricing future assets / content.

However, the sales could go through the roof and show the seller that they put the correct price / value on their content.

Developers can get angry at the end-user all they like and end-users can get angry at developers for the prices and whatnot but it’s an argument that won’t be won. It’s obvious that both sides feel passionate enough about their cause to make it known but you know, it’s as I said… Don’t shout / moan at each other: End-users, vote with your wallet. Developers, keep an eye on your sales and price your content accordingly :slight_smile:

I think it’s unfair to compare the Unity marketplace to the Unreal Marketplace. There’s so many different factors to take in. Yeah, they are both game engines and yeah they both have marketplaces but costs to develop are a lot different between the Engines. Also, each require a different amount of work and what not.

But again, it’s as I said, argument could go on all day / night and neither party would be none the smarter / better off afterwards.

I think it’s best to just take on board everything that’s been said in thread and both sides of the argument should laugh it off and wait for the real argument: The evidence.

The best part about evidence is that it’s not speculation. It’s not somebody saying “I don’t like the price of , It should be £1!” or whatever. It’s the cold, hard facts. It tells you straight: " is how popular your pricing choice was".

How do I know , I hear you ask? Well, as you know, I give away books for free on Unreal Engine 4 (And offer a small fee for the physical versions). When starting out with them, I could’ve turned to the end-user and been like “Hey, I’m going to charge £100,000,000” for book; But I know it would have been fruitless. Marketplace pricing is one of the only things where too much market research can be damaging as the community is so vast and diverse.

You’ll get the developer who has £10 to their name but want to make the best content possible, And want to get as many things as possible for their £10. In that same community, you’ll also get a developer who has a near unlimited budget and wants to pay top-dollar for top-dollar assets. The answer on “Is pricing working?” will change day to day when asking the community; Hence why the sales figures are the way forward. They can’t be biased.

I’m sure I’m boring you all with the rambling but I hope it helps put at least some people’s minds at ease. There’s no point arguing about price, It’s down to the developer to set the price and learn from the sales statistics.

:slight_smile:

43

Well to jump in on for a personnal reason, CheapModer i think your terrains are very low quality. Just to make clear im biased here as ive been working on affordable terrain packs for my fellow UE4 devs on here. My packs come with 25 terrains per pack, All the original source art, Flow maps, Deposition maps, Wear maps, Normal Map, Sand mask, Grass mask, Extended beach masks, 16Bit height map,AO, Coastal Height map, 3 splat maps, Color map, Extended color map, Final photoshop composite file for export of all these maps combined to create your game ready asset final maps, Blender 3d scene file for hand editing and baking out your own modified 16 bit height map, normal, AO etc after sculpting the scene to fit your needs, The Blender scene file also has proceduraly generated mapping for all materials, setup ready to then export your now modified hand sculpted version from the base, and ability to bake any other maps needed that perfectly match your modified version.

I also have a start to finish video tutorial series going through how to use the base maps in photoshop to create your own versions of textures so no one ends up with the same looking terrain by buying my work, Creating your own heightmaps from Blender, Baking shadows into textures if needed from blender for basic mobile dev that doesnt support dynamic shadowing, Sculpting your terrain, Mixing multiple maps from the map pack into a brand bew unique map ready to be baked out ( can go as far as you like, you could mix 5-6 different maps to generate a UE4 editor terrain tool tilable set of textures).

And for all that, The 25 Terrains per pack will cost $50 ish dollars per pack with packs spanning many different terrain types like Desserts, Rocky Desserts, Grassy Plains, Rock Grassy, Terrain Islands and more.

You can try telling your sell what your offering is AAA, Doesn’t make it true though. Ill let other people make up their minds. Here’s some old work in progress shots. Should also add my work is going to Epic UK Wednesday.

http://www.badlamagames.com/Images/OceanIslands1.jpg

PDF: OceanIslands Vol1

http://www.badlamagames.com/Images/TerrainDesertrocks1.jpg

PDF: Dessert rocks Vol1

http://www.badlamagames.com/Images/TerrainGrassyrocks1new.jpg

PDF: Grassy Terraced rock Vol1

http://www.badlamagames.com/Images/Desert%20Terrain%20pack1.jpg

PDF: Dessert Sandy Vol1

And these are old images, Wait till later week when i expose the new work :slight_smile: Lol

44

True. If I take average 10 hours for 1 finished map it means 10x12=120 but I’m charging $15 because f the reason it’s not a one time sale.

@. I’ll let people’s eyes decide. I don’t need to attack everyone or advertise in other people’s threads in order to increase any sales. I increase the sales by art. Meanwhile you can spend your time writing how many masks you have generated out of world machine.

Good night.

45

I think it does not hold to adjust pricing by the time an artist required to create the asset.
10 hours for a terrain like , if the workflow is established, is simply far too long. If everything is set and the workflow is ready to fire, is one hour max including all progress bar times.
Sure, you might have done lots of revisions here and there to adjust it to your liking and thrown it over a few times and fell in love with it, but would be individual taste stretching it to 10hours.

But I agree with the overall consens - either buy or do not buy, and no one is forced to buying.

, i would look forward to see on the marketplace for a good price. If shows up on the marketplace for the price you mention, then the argument here is instantly over.

46

[;227818]
Well to jump in on for a personnal reason, CheapModer i think your terrains are very low quality.
[/QUOTE]

Why do you keep attacking me? First you posted your work in my Affordable Landscapes thread to hijack that thread and now . I get that you’re trying to pay the rent so you don’t get evicted. I understand that you have a hard time. But taking it out on us and our work is completely unprofessional. Please stop.

47

I agree.

Kind of tacky and nothing wrong with the quality.

48

To be fair, you made thread about you by creating an argument over your assets here with the OP because you felt unhappy that his opinion of your content in a different thread was negative. Plus he (the guy you just quoted) didn’t post in your “Affordable Landscapes” thread. You really need to grow thicker skin here someone not liking your content or feeling it is a poor value proposition is not a personal attack.

49

It become a mix of many interests. @ your work is nice, but really we should respect each others. Epic have left the discussion open and let’s not make it ugly. Would be if everyone arguments themselves and extract the finest feedback possible, because in the end what everyone want is that we all have an improved, stable and sweetly working Marketplace. Isn’t that all about?

The conclusions so far for me is:

1: The author should have the right to value his product by himself.
2: The products in the marketplace should have a review system so ethically the less experienced users not being ripped off.

Be nice to each other guys! Things like quality, effort and rewarding-expectancy are completely relevant and it’s useless to have a fight over! =)

50

isn’t the OP. He did post in my thread images of all his volumes. Mods deleted it. Warned him too I believe.

51

Oh. Well that is why I didn’t see his post when he looked. My point still stands, you have been derailing thread. No one would be directly talking about your thread if you hadn’t spent a third of the posts arguing. Just leave everyone to criticize what they are have the right to criticize.

52

criticism is what leads to improvement. is continuous personal attack.

53

Hey hold on,

How have i attacked you?. In my oppinion you terrain work is where i was 6 months back, they are not good quality. Sorry but ill say it as i see it. The only reason i posted on thread (and yours the other day, which was in no way offensive. I just put up some images of my work pointing out that my work was higher quantity and lower price).

The reason i did that was because yes we are going to be competitors, and when you make a statement like on your thread " 5 Triple A quality Landscapes, one of any kind! No one has detail like ! " and other comments about your the highest quality and lowest price of any one, and half the price of the nearest seller which was a total lie and which you have edited from your thread i felt more than justified to point out that wasn’t the case. And no i didn’t get any warning, Yes the post was removed but also was sent a very nice message from the dev saying hey how you doing, King your work is great mate, we love it, we have no doubts your sell many units but unfortunately i have taken down your post as it’s on another persons market place thread an you wouldn’t like someone doing the same on your posts. Can’t wait to see your work go on market place.

Then i noticed you sticking your nose into thread, well isnt your thread and i can post what i like :slight_smile:

Clearly my packs are far better value and quality than yours and im free to make that clear to the community. Go and have a Cry if you like, It wont make your work any better. As soon as your work is equal to mine ill be the first to say well done, but don’t expect me to bite my tongue when you make claims like that on your thread.

Cheers, J

54

[;227866]
Hey hold on,

How have i attacked you?. In my oppinion you terrain work is where i was 6 months back, they are not good quality. Sorry but ill say it as i see it. The only reason i posted on thread (and yours the other day, which was in no way offensive. I just put up some images of my work pointing out that my work was higher quantity and lower price).

The reason i did that was because yes we are going to be competitors, and when you make a statement like on your thread " 5 Triple A quality Landscapes, one of any kind! No one has detail like ! " and other comments about your the highest quality and lowest price of any one, and half the price of the nearest seller which was a total lie and which you have edited from your thread i felt more than justified to point out that wasn’t the case. And no i didn’t get any warning, Yes the post was removed but also was sent a very nice message from the dev saying hey how you doing, King your work is great mate, we love it, we have no doubts your sell many units but unfortunately i have taken down your post as it’s on another persons market place thread an you wouldn’t like someone doing the same on your posts. Can’t wait to see your work go on market place.

Then i noticed you sticking your nose into thread, well isnt your thread and i can post what i like :slight_smile:

Clearly my packs are far better value and quality than yours and im free to make that clear to the community. Go and have a Cry if you like, It wont make your work any better. As soon as your work is equal to mine ill be the first to say well done, but don’t expect me to bite my tongue when you make claims like that on your thread.

Cheers, J
[/QUOTE]

I’m not scared to put my work next to yours. It speaks for itself.

http://www.badlamagames.com/Images/Desert%20Terrain%20pack1.jpg

55

Hahahaha,

Well look at that you’ve gone from crying about being attacked to attacking for no reason haha. Im not getting into with you as your clearly delusional. My shots are from the equivalent of 6-12 km from ground level, they have far better detail than yours at close range. Why don’t you do a Ariel shot of your maps? And have to say ive never seen a rock formation look anything like that, check some satellite images before you start creating your terrains. Hopefully it will help your work in the future.

Cheers J :slight_smile:

56

None of is an attack. It’s legitimately how I feel. In the interest of professionalism I had avoided posting on your thread but because you want to kick the hornet’s nest I’m happy to publicly declare how I feel. Your work is trash. I would never use it for a project and I would very much advise everyone else to avoid it if they want the public to take their projects seriously even if they don’t buy mine.

Honestly if anyone buys your pack they’d be wasting $50. A toilet bowl has more detail in its terrain than your work and I’m free to make that clear to the community. The biggest I have with your terrain is how bland and uninteresting it looks. It’s great for the Unity community but for anyone looking to fully harness the power of UE4 your work is severely lacking. Moreover, incorporating your terrain into any gamedev project is only to going to make potential buyers think that they’re looking at a game that could have been released in 2007 next to Oblivion (great game but it’s not a lie to say that Oblivion looks pretty dated now - just like your terrains.)

Using your terrain will seriously hurt the prospects of developers’ games being taken seriously at retail. Gamers on Steam, Green Man Gaming, PS4, and Xbox One have a much higher expectation of the kind of environments they can expect in a game than what your terrain provides. By using your terrain developers will undoubtedly put the months and years they’ve put dedicated to developing their game at risk by using your featureless terrains because what will happen is that consumers will see your work, decide it’s not worth their money, and buy something a little less dated.

The bottom line is that I would never use your terrain. It’s not good enough for me and it’s not good enough for 2015. That is my honest belief and I don’t think that’s funny and I don’t think that’s an attack. It’s me being 100% honest with you and being 100% honest with community. I would never use your work just like I would never use that work I linked earlier from the Unity asset store.

I respect my projects and I like to think that plenty of developers here in the community respect their projects as well. You came into my thread because you were so incompetent that FIVE MONTHS later you’re still not able to get your terrains accepted into the Marketplace. And five months later you see my thread and now you feel scared because now you have competition and you have to jump in and kick the hornet’s nest because you’re feeling insecure about the fact that someone is doing better work than you and all your work is about to go to waste. Well that’s not my problem. That’s your problem.

57

…Annnddd is where I vote for a thread lock.

58

you also insulted him in the previous post then edited it out after he called you on it to make it seem like you weren’t attacking as soon as you did. Plus his pointing to his own work as something others should consider and that he doesn’t feel your claims are accurate (which some of them have factually been inaccurate) is not an attack.

Seriously when whole debacle started in your thread I was on your side, but you’re so unprofessional I just wish you’d shut up. Stop having a temper tantrum all over threads. Its a shame people can’t talk about actual problems that we care about because you cannot be adult about business interactions.

59

People will decide with their wallet. The only glaring issues I have is that a lot of these expensive packs, such as the 150 dollar landscape pack, have very few screenshots or documentation to help the customer see the quality and make an informed decision.

Sellers need to be honest and show proper screenshots!

60

It’s cool. I’m done.

How does everyone feel about using stuff like Gumroad as an alternative to the marketplace anyway? That’s something I’ve been thinking about more lately with how difficult the Marketplace is to work with. I’m contemplating using dual prices to give customers the best prices possible. I know that Epic takes 30% so if I listed something for $10 I would only get $7. But Gumroad takes 5% and I would get $9.50. What do you guys think about asking for less on Gumroad to make up for the fact that they also take less of a cut?

So if I charge $10 for something on the marketplace, then I could charge something on $7.50 on Gumroad. I still make $7 either way but the customers get more of a break. What do you think? Should be something you’d like to see become standard in the community?