Submitted 8 months ago by InternetTubes@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
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. …
Not at all surprised.
This bit got me: Evidently, all of Epic Games’ business had been “heavily funded by Fortnite” in the last six years, and different parts of the company became “disconnected” from their revenue streams.
…Did you not see this coming? Have you really not had a plan for when Fortnite started to lose momentum? I get that having a product blow up will leaf to a period of manic spending because your cash flow suddenly feels infinite, but come on. You’re not a small player in this, Epic. You’ve been around since the 90s. You know better than to mindlessly ride the wave of a success. Of course the Fortnite money was going to run out. That’s why you invested so heavily in UE5, right?.. Right?
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!
Surelly there are infinite virtual profits to be had in virtual universes!
At least they got a touch closer than most, hosting virtual concerts etc. Just… No-one I know went to one.
Unironically, no. They really thought Fortnite was going to be the new Minecraft and compete with Netflix/Disney for time and attention.
Fucking idiots. I swear, i dont know why we place CEOs and richer folks, in general, on a pedestal so much.
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.
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
Difference is that Unity was generally favorable, until the recent blunders, while Epic has generally been disliked for quite a long time now, because of Tim acting like a complete cunt to a lot of people on the industry, including the consumers for his own products
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.
Most devs never would have made their own proprietary engines. With ready availability of engines to use, the number of developers skyrocketed as it lowered the bar of who can make a game.
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 repayments.
Or taking advantage of that happenning with the competition, to enhance profitability.
Make money is the point of pretty much all companies, and financially there are only 2 thinks stopping them from upping their prices:
Anyways, the point being that if there is a broader shift in pricing in the market, even companies that are not under the same financial pressures to up prices will still do it as the 1st of those price limitation is relaxed so they can make more money.
capitalism
Capitalism is becoming unbearable. People are getting squeezed from every side.
Everyone wants to be part of the " big squeeze " that’s going on.
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.
But the rich want to keep their free money train going, so we're all paying now.
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.
Send like a fair move to me. If Hollywood studios like Disney are able to use it for free right now to save time of money why shouldn’t Epic get a fair fee for the product that enables those savings?
how do they even figure out what the developers are building tho?
like i can make realistic indoor walking simulations and call it a game, and at the same time ship it to real estate customers right
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
Non games meaning movies and TV shows that use Unreal Engine. IIRC, The Mandalorian uses UE for a bunch of stuff.
Deadmau5 uses it for his visual effects for concerts. Guy streams his work in it all the time
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!
Are you a Hollywood film studio?
Did you read the article?
Are you incapable of understanding humor?
Did your funny bone break?
… Are they trying to pull a Unity?
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.
I misinterpreted the headline and expected a joke article about Epic charging developers who don’t use Unreal.
Altering the deal eh, at least they take smaller steps.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 8 months ago
But… photoshop is very expensive
Wooki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Gimp
This is the way
tsz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s not. It’s miserable to actually use. It’s miserable to manage in a production setting. It’s just not acceptable unless you’re working for yourself.
baatliwala@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I would rather stab myself in the eyeballs than use GIMP.
panja@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean I hate Adobe as much as the next guy but photoshop is like $10/month
Virkkunen@kbin.social 8 months ago
Affinity Photo is $60 once and you own it forever, with free updates. It's pretty much the only actually good Photoshop replacement.
mihnt@lemmy.world 8 months ago
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Americans will talk of $10 a month like it’s chump change. It’s more expensive than my water bill.
Now add every other tool that decides to take the same approach.
Chailles@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It could be worse. They could have looked towards Autodesk for inspiration.
meatand2veg@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
They did, tim epic just said in the article they looked to service like Photoshop and Maya