Gimp

This is the way

It could be worse. They could have looked towards Autodesk for inspiration.

I mean I hate Adobe as much as the next guy but photoshop is like $10/month

But wootz! Don't you see! Fortnite was making inroads into the metaverse, and we all know that whoever cracks the metaverse concept is going to reap infinite profits right? Because that's certainly not a weird dystopian sci-fi pipe dream or anything! It was going to be all smooth sailing straight into forever profits!

Unironically, no. They really thought Fortnite was going to be the new Minecraft and compete with Netflix/Disney for time and attention.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/...

Not to mention the amount of money they literally burn through EGS. If I remember correctly, the plan was that it wouldn't be profitable for another 3/4 years (by 2027).

They started shilling for Shell to extend that income a little bit more as well.

Their plan for when Fortnite stopped pulling in money was for their Epic Games Store (that they propped up by paying devs lump sums just to not launch their games on Steam) to actually make Steam levels of money because surely exclusives and freebies will make people spend money on their store. Turns out there's a lot of people that will never spend a dime on EGS, either because they won't install it or only use it for the free games.

So all that Fortnite money they used to pay devs to not release their games on Steam ended up being a failed investment, and they've had to change their incentives from "we'll give you a huge lump sum that's about equal to what you'd have made with a successful Steam launch" to "well we'll give you a better revenue split if you launch exclusively on our store that guarantees you get 10% of sales volume compared to Steam". Turns out 60% of 1m sales is better than 80% of 100k sales.

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.

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.

Because like all the tech industry, they grew massively on the back of low interest rates since 2008 where investors saw better returns putting money into companies than sitting on it, now the interest rates have shot up again post Covid, they need to show their investors they can make better returns than the 5%+ they'd make just leaving the money in the bank. Hence the cost cutting by sacking staff and gouging of customers by price increases.

Same reason everyone else is pivoting to profitability. Interest rates and loan servicing.

capitalism

This is particularly for people using the engine to write film rending software which gets bought one for a lot of money but low volume, and gets used as a huge cost savings for mid-high end production that can save on lighting and comp passes or even render time.

High volume software(games) probably won’t change much at all.

Or at least that’s what SHOULD be happening.

Everyone wants to be part of the " big squeeze " that's going on.

If anything, in this case it seems like a loophole they're closing more than a price increase.

Why should Hollywood studios making billions get to use Unreal Engine for free, being subsidized by gamers?

As recession looms, you have general inflation and increased interest rates. This affects overhead and loan repayments. That and probably other factors all contribute to the need to raise prices.

It's not just the gaming sector. Almost all other sectors are raising their prices or adjusting their service plans. Eg. shrinkflation and/or lower quality on products and services.

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.

The next mainline Tomb Raider game is also going to be Unreal 5. That is if Embracer hasn't bankrupted themselves or sold Edios/Crystal Dynamics before then (although I'd be thrilled if that happened).

Cyberpunk made a million dollars?

Yeah a game engine saving a studio hundreds of thousands of dollars or more per episode on lighting, comp, rendering, and set building or travel costs to shoot on location is not representative of the license fee paid

Deadmau5 uses it for his visual effects for concerts. Guy streams his work in it all the time

cool, then it's 20% of your "games" revenue if you want to do that.

Epic generally let companies self report, when using the engine you have to agree to allowing them to audit if they think your self-reporting is incorrect but that's not a very usual situation

Unreal is being used extensively by special effects teams in Hollywood at the moment so it sounds like Epic are trying to get a piece of that action

Are you a Hollywood film studio?

Did you read the article?

No. Previously if you used unreal but didn't ship any engine code to end users you didn't have to pay anything (games obviously ship engine code, so they're already paying once they pass a certain revenue threshold or upfront if they want a support contract, and the announced pricing changes explicitly don't effect games)

Unreal has been pushing hard into film and virtual production workloads, but they weren't getting paid anything due to the existing license terms.

Now if eg. you're using a virtual set (like the Mandalorian) or doing in camera previs (basically previewing approximately what a scene will look like with CGI, either between takes or even viewing it live on a second monitor attached to the camera as you film) with unreal you'll have to actually pay.

Doesn't appear so, it seems pretty minor and doesn't retroactively fuck people over.

I wish Lemmy didn't downvote people asking genuine questions. Not everyone is in the loop of what's going on at all times, folks.