Selling content that is on the marketplace - just cheaper

[FrankieV]

It's a tricky thing - I don't believe people should be deliberately undercutting other developers, but if someone has a product that's similar to an existing product, and wants to sell it cheaper, I don't see why there should be artificial barriers in place to prevent that either. For things like blueprint systems and common assets, that's where you start creating monopolies.

Well another way of thinking about it is developer A puts up a product for $60 and after a few cycles finds it's not selling well at that price and put's it up for half price.

Is this under cutting?

Or

Someone with Kung Fu skills can put together a product in a few days, assuming that is what the OP was referring to, as compared to someone who works for months on the same product idea but feels that their effort is not worth the cough cough set market price that they are not entitled to offer it at their fair market value?

The way I read the original OP is he feels he can offer an asset at what he feels is the true market value and I see nothing wrong with that considering there is already products at lower prices on the market place and a fair amout of under cutting already going on. That's just the nature of the fair market

[zeOrb]

Free market all the way!
Personally I don't see any problem in high prices - creators will lose more than you if price is not right. They spend a lot of their time to create content and if they fail to find a right price tag they won't get paid for all this work.

I don't like undercutting just for the sake of undercutting, but you're definitely right about filling the gap. I'm pretty sure that Marketplace could contain more than 1 ledge systems and I can't see anything wrong with that.

[Luftbauch]

@Crocopede I like cheap things, when i can buy three things, instead of one, but.
If you dev something for 150$ you have few customers and can support well if you have bugs in your code, or any problems.
When you have 10times more customers, when you sell it for 15$, you have the same amount of money in your pocket, but it would be harder to support well.

Yes, some things are completely overpriced for me too. If there would be a cheaper hobbyist payoption, for playing around with the content, that would be nice.
If you release the project, you have to pay full price, but i think that is impossible to handle.
It would be to easy to rip it apart and declare it as your own.
Perhaps i would pay a monthly fee to get full acess to all MP-stuff.
But i think that "overpriced" thing has to do with a personal view of the things. Look in the "got talent" section, where you could get one gun for up to 3000$, thats only an option for real devs (aaa+++)with deep pockets, or ppl who only produce a nice looking demo, to scam money out of kickstarter-backers.

UE4 is a really great tool and, from hobbyist over indie to AAAdevs.
"Stepping on someones toes" is no reason to let things be, when you do a good job.
Aside that, i heard from ppl who had bought MP-assets way cheaper from ppl, who had already bought it at full price. Thats really unfair for me.
I play around with UE4 to wake some interest for my childs, with own created stuff, but aside poor 2D/3D i am lost.
I would like to see a section in the marketplace, where you can hire coders/artists easy on a fixed base(pay for a hour work, for example).
Beginner/indie/aaa+. Perhaps something like timesharing.

[Jon Jones]

On the flip side there is this thing called price fixing which in some countries is against the law.

Just saying..

I do think though per feature, aka simple wall jump, is an excellent idea and some products sold per item instead of having to buy the entire package. Weapon packages for example how many M4's does on need?

Also I think this 5 items per package has to go to prevent padding out for quantity instead of quality.

As I said above, Epic does not and has not ever given input on pricing.

With regards to the five items per pack rule, we're always open to feedback on that. In the case of characters, we're revisiting the requirement because characters are extremely labor-intensive and it doesn't make a lot of sense to require five of them. In some cases we've made exceptions for when a single asset perfectly fulfills a vertical need, such as a weapon with first person arm animations, a scope, audio, bullets, etc.

As we've been getting more submissions and setting clearer standards of what constitutes "enough value," we're starting to move a bit more toward a rough equivalent instead of a specific number. For example, in that weapon example above, that really isn't five unique assets, but it represents a big chunk of time savings for whoever purchases it. The overall definition is still fuzzy, but we're working on it. One of the main things we're trying to prevent is having a store full of 175,000 individual textures, or doorknobs, or rocks.

Also, we totally know what padding something out looks like, and we don't play that game.

Well another way of thinking about it is developer A puts up a product for $60 and after a few cycles finds it's not selling well at that price and put's it up for half price.

Is this under cutting?

Or

Someone with Kung Fu skills can put together a product in a few days, assuming that is what the OP was referring to, as compared to someone who works for months on the same product idea but feels that their effort is not worth the cough cough set market price that they are not entitled to offer it at their fair market value?

The way I read the original OP is he feels he can offer an asset at what he feels is the true market value and I see nothing wrong with that considering there is already products at lower prices on the market place and a fair amout of under cutting already going on. That's just the nature of the fair market

The way I read it originally was more like creating a cheap knockoff to cash in on someone else's concept and work, but OP clarified away from that in subsequent posts. Part of the reason I interpreted that is that we reject a lot of content that's literally a carbon copy of someone else's work, or unmodified results of tutorials. We have ways of being able to tell. It happens a lot more often than you'd think.

Free market all the way!
Personally I don't see any problem in high prices - creators will lose more than you if price is not right. They spend a lot of their time to create content and if they fail to find a right price tag they won't get paid for all this work.

I don't like undercutting just for the sake of undercutting, but you're definitely right about filling the gap. I'm pretty sure that Marketplace could contain more than 1 ledge systems and I can't see anything wrong with that.

I completely agree. I wouldn't turn away content that's similar if there's a public interest and need for it. Like I said above, more often than not, we toss out ideas of cool ways to build on it and differentiate from what may be similar to help people do better. When content creators are willing to take suggestions and input from us, we do everything we can to make it easier for them to get on the Marketplace and to put a spotlight on their content and why it's cool.

It all boils down to us wanting people to do the coolest things possible, helping how we can, and showing people what's cool. And knockoff\counterfeit stuff is not in the cool spectrum. OP clarified that isn't what he was suggesting, however.

I like this discussion!

But i think that "overpriced" thing has to do with a personal view of the things. Look in the "got talent" section, where you could get one gun for up to 3000$, thats only an option for real devs (aaa+++)with deep pockets, or ppl who only produce a nice looking demo, to scam money out of kickstarter-backers.

See, that's one of the things that's really interesting to me about the way people price things. My entire career before coming to Epic was commissioning art content from artists and studios around the world, so I know how much these things cost and how long they take to do. I'll see something like a vehicle pack for $100 and think "I've paid $15k for exactly that kind of thing before. Wow." The economics are totally different, and it's interesting seeing how the community is adapting and responding to it.

Aside that, i heard from ppl who had bought MP-assets way cheaper from ppl, who had already bought it at full price. Thats really unfair for me.

Can you email piracy@unrealengine.com with more information on that, please? We take that sort of thing very seriously and I'd like to know more.

[Hyperloop]

See, that's one of the things that's really interesting to me about the way people price things. My entire career before coming to Epic was commissioning art content from artists and studios around the world, so I know how much these things cost and how long they take to do. I'll see something like a vehicle pack for $100 and think "I've paid $15k for exactly that kind of thing before. Wow." The economics are totally different, and it's interesting seeing how the community is adapting and responding to it.

Could not agree more. I suspect most if not all items on the marketplace that *seem* overpriced to some would not seem that way once they try to replicate them from scratch by hand. The other thing I think people tend to forget is that most other digital marketplaces they interact with (Steam, Mobile app stores) have hundreds of thousands, or millions of customers in them which has a strong impact on driving the price point down based on volume.

[The Britain]

Can you email piracy@unrealengine.com with more information on that, please? We take that sort of thing very seriously and I'd like to know more.

Oh! That's what he meant. If people are doing that, that's really screwed up.

[Chooka]

slightly off topic i know but can epic please add the rating system to the launcher's marketplace tab instead of having to go to the web page.

[WeekendWarrior]

I don't see how it's unethical. if your willing to do things cheaper then sweet. in saying that epic also have a major reasonability in keeping the marketplace far, so people want to crate content to sell, if you undercut every one that's good for us in the short term but in the long run the marketplace would probably fail. its a big balancing act, make content cheap enough for people to buy and expansive enough so people can make some money out of. it -

- having content that is too expensive would mean a drop in sales there for a drop in revenue for epic
- having content that is dirt cheap manes that content creators will turn away making the marketplace stale, and give less sales, drop in revenue

it also depends on who is actually buying the content and how much people are buying.

[protegedev]

In the business world, every company is undercutting/outbidding each other. The company that does it the cheapest, fastest, best wins. Why should the market place be any different? If a creator decides to undercut a competitor that does it way below cost, he will not survive, or the competitors are really overcharging, so the economics will balance out.

[AdamF]

Not Unethical at all. Personally I find the fact that content is overpriced unethical. The value of something should always be based on the content included. if something is £100 i expect my moneys worth, not because a dev though "ill make some money out of this since there's nothing else like this out yet."
Developers overprice because yes, No competitors. So those of us with little or no income, have to wait for someone like you to come along, or as "bzinventor" said prices drop. I find that unfair, even the Unreal Engine is free now, so more "developers" have access to it and create content.
So in closing,
Crocopede, just let me know when and what you decide to release.

[Necrophob30]

Not Unethical at all. Personally I find the fact that content is overpriced unethical. The value of something should always be based on the content included. if something is £100 i expect my moneys worth, not because a dev though "ill make some money out of this since there's nothing else like this out yet."
Developers overprice because yes, No competitors. So those of us with little or no income, have to wait for someone like you to come along, or as "bzinventor" said prices drop. I find that unfair, even the Unreal Engine is free now, so more "developers" have access to it and create content.
So in closing,
Crocopede, just let me know when and what you decide to release.

Competition is good. But just because the engine is free doesn't mean the content creation tools are.

[VFe]

I've thought about this a lot recently, there's a lot of assets I look at and am like, This is nice, but in reality I only want ONE feature out of the 20 it offers, and have considered whether or not I should start writing up some blueprints to fill that niche(the over-ear wind blueprint is a good example of this, it does one highly focused thing really well), and sell them for like $3-$5 each for one very focused feature instead of trying to be some big all-purpose system.

At the same time, since this was initiated out of me buying marketplace assets I actually like, I'd frankly feel guilty about buying a system, cherry picking one feature and building a better version for sale, even if I feel like there's an actual market need for it. Even if I'm not intentionally trying to rip-off their code, you can't exactly "forget" things you've learned.

I don't think it's unethical, there's no rules stopping me from doing any of that, more immoral.

[lunyBunny]

Honesty is the best deal.

You can put your system in the price of how much you think it costs, depending on how hard it was for you. It is good always to keep a relative distance of something similar, for more or less, but always highlighting the pros and cons in your product compared to another. Don't create the prices in a vacuum, and never devalue or super-exaggerate it.

Keep your feet on the ground.


Speaking in feet, it is a climbing system? If this is, I can walk upside down with your system, like a spider?



Luny.

[Keeperofstars]

eh i see it as the same way the auto industry works. There are your luxury cars that the rich can afford, there are your mid tier cars, and there is your budget cars. All the OP is saying is we need budget cars available, and sometimes that means there is a sense of copying to be had. But once again keeping with auto industry it's back to how many 2 liter 4 door sedan's are there a few dozen, each with their own "components" that drive the cost to meet a market need. So I don't see how this is any different.

[zeOrb]

eh i see it as the same way the auto industry works. There are your luxury cars that the rich can afford, there are your mid tier cars, and there is your budget cars. All the OP is saying is we need budget cars available, and sometimes that means there is a sense of copying to be had. But once again keeping with auto industry it's back to how many 2 liter 4 door sedan's are there a few dozen, each with their own "components" that drive the cost to meet a market need. So I don't see how this is any different.

I think we have a lot "luxury" cars, because people set prices based on how much time and effort they put into their product, which is quite understandable position. For example, look at Modular Rocks & Caves, Steampunk Airship and Ledge climbing system - they are outstanding AND they took a LOT of time to produce. I've seen the process of development of the forums and I know that developers have set this price not from "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY MORTALS" standpoint, but rather "Well, I've put X amount of my skill and Y amount of my time, so price will be THIS". However, I believe they are missing some key elements - who is the customer and how much money customer willing to pay for the product.