Excerpts:
… The news came from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney himself in a presentation at Unreal Fest 2023. …
… He claimed that the pricing model will not be “unusually expensive or unusually inexpensive,” and that its pricing structure will be similar to subscription services like Maya or Photoshop. …
So they’re gonna start sending me bills until I make a game? They can’t do that! I’m too young to be a developer! Nooooooooo!
Why do game engine producers feel the need to increase prices so much currently?
Probably because most devs stopped making their own proprietary engines, so the supply for solid engines is at an all time low. With less options they can crank up the price, as there aren’t really any other options for most devs.
Haha Godot go brrrrrrr
Hopefully Godot is the first of many
capitalism
Because China is increasingly looking broke, so daddy Tencent’s purse is tightening.
On top of that, the world’s banks now have interest rates to look after again, so their free money streams have ended too. Meaning that companies have to prove their profitability.
But the rich want to keep their free money train going, so we’re all paying now.
Tim Sweeney alone owns 50% of the company, he can pretty much make his own decisions independently from Tencent. Also China is slowly catching up to the US’s GDP with way less government debt, what are you talking about?
US’s debt to GDP ratio has decreased by 13% since 2019. To 77%.
China’s real debt to GDP ratio is estimated to be 335%. (Via the IIF via the SCMP)
The most current projections is China will never catch up to US GDP. Just for posterity, China GDP per capita is under $14k, while US is above $80k. There is no conceivable path to closing this gap. Not with an authoritarian in charge who shuts down entire industries on a whim and murders political rivals who disagree with him.
But… photoshop is very expensive
Unity gave them a fantastic opportunity here, they now have an excuse to raise their prices as well and still look like the good guy by doing it somewhat reasonably
The article states that Epic intends to keep the game dev pricing unchanged. Free up front, then 5% after the first million dollars in sales.
For now yeah, its a lot easier to pull this shit incrimentally
I’m pretty sure Unity showed, quite clearly, that a bait and switch is a bad idea. Plus, Unreal is going after big titles. You don’t fuck with companies that make big titles.
I suspect that Unreal 5 is going to make Epic so much money in the coming years. Taking 5% after the first million dollars doesn’t seem like a lot until you remember that the next Witcher and Cyberpunk are both Unreal 5 developments.
