Epic drops the next bombshell, makes UE4 free, a deathblow for the BGE?

With all upfront costs lifted, UE4 is now free to everyone with a zero-budget and too much time on their hands. Does that mean the core demographic of the BGE will finally be convinced to switch to the shiny temptations of a AAAA(A) engine? Is the BF even prepared to consider to react to this announcement, or will they simply go on about their days as if nothing happened, ignoring the Elephant in the room? Is there any semblance of hope for the much-maligned BGE to even begin the first step towards catching up with next-generation technology?

Only time will tell whether the bold demands to individual liberties enshrined in the FOSS ideology will serve as consolation for the passengers of what can only be described as a sinking vessel in a sea of commercialization.

Thoughts?

(In case there are any doubts: Ace Dragon, I’m spoofing you here)

ouch, you beated me by one minute, Ace.

EDIT: Btw, i’d like to know if zapping away BGE would be beneficial for Blender, i mean for the software itself, dropping complexity, download size, startup time…

This has a lot to do with the fact that feature requests and +1s on the Blender forum are under such a viral GPL license. If someone finally got their act together and ported OGRE to Mantle graphics library, perhaps then BGE would stand a chance against paid engines. I suggest a kickstarter campaign, because no engine can be called serious these days without proper OpenCL support. Kickstarter funds should then be spent on making a survey of missing features, because the developers should work for free. I mean, I’m not getting paid for my forum posts either, right?

/sarcasm

Blender or any other opensource engine for that matter is never going to be in the same league as Epic. Epic has huge pockets a huge userbase and developers who’s sole purpose is to deliver a gaming engine at the highest level. I still believe that Blender should focus on the tools and workflow and leave the game engines to the professionals. Maybe this will actually light a fire under the devs to support a proper game toolchain with Blender and make indie game developers a priority. The indie dev market is where Blender can have the most impact as a product imo.

Yeah drop the BGE, focus on supporting professional engines with better content tools. Even without Unreal for free you have CryEngine for less than 10 bucks a month and no royalty. And there is still a free version of Unity.

But then again I am not a Blender game developer. So shoot me. But that is my opinion.

I’m in the same boat: BGE simply serves no real purpose anymore. Since the idea came to life, the game development landscape has changed dramatically. No longer are professional tools hidden up on a pay shelf that no one can access. For the price of a cup of coffee (and now for free) you can have access to the cream of the crop in dev tools. Even if you completely ignore what a nonstarter BGE has been since its inception, and even if you are a diehard FOSS enthusiast, there are STILL monumentally better options available. All that BGE has going for it is direct integration with Blender, and if you’re willing to sacrifice all of the other things that save time in developing a game just for that small time saver, then you’re not a game developer, you’re just part of that subset of Blender users who refuses to ever attempt to learn another tool.

More like this could be a deathblow to the majority of game engines (both FOSS and commercial) on the market today, the writing may very well be on the wall for Unity Tech. now for one thing.

I’ll probably stick with Godot for the meantime (has an easy to use scripting language that doesn’t require a compiling tool and is a bit less overwhelming). The hurdles I see for UE4 right now is really the overwhelming nature of obtaining an absolutely massive toolbox for game creation and the rapid development causing a rapid introduction of new bugs and various game breaking issues in every release, even though a number of them get fixed (and not to mention the somewhat fanboyish nature of a number of active people in their forums).

Also, it is to note that they are taking a calculated risk being a for-profit company who has to make money year to year. The very idea of them only succeeding when their users do with their games can very well backfire since they will be competing in a fairly saturated market. If it works, then the initial line of my post could very well come to pass, but if not, it could instead become the deathblow of the idea of seeing a full blown AAA game engine for free.

Not a risk, necessity. With freshly announced autodesk’s Stingray they have to fight for the clients even more now. When Stingray hits the market guess what will have better integration with max and maya?

Take this quote…

It’s a simple arrangement in which we succeed only when you succeed.

That means if the game developers using Unreal 4 don’t knock out high grossing products, then it will negatively impact the future of the engine in general.

For instance, the Steam platform is no longer the money-printing entity for experienced indie developers because it’s now flooded with new entries. Indies also find it very difficult nowadays to succeed on mobile (I look in the Google Play store for instance and find that even the highest quality indie titles may make just a few thousand dollars total before fading off the charts). I also look in the UE4 forums for complete and WIP game titles only to find that the majority of projects are more in line with arch-vis or virtual landscapes rather than actual games. Epic has essentially stated that they will only succeed if enough of their users manage to make a good selling title (and that assumes that they also won’t give away their project for free).

For Blender users, there’s another hurdle that users of commercial apps. don’t have, and that is the struggle to implement a closed-source format with an SDK incompatible with the GPL (which UE4 expects). For one thing, Blender users are at the mercy of Autodesk when it comes to how well they can get models into UE4, and Autodesk does not like the idea of Blender even being relevant in this area.

BGE targets only desktop, which is fine. But when other game engines can target, desktop, mobile, xbox, playstation, wii. the choice is not hard to make.

anyways, best thing would do is to realize Epic is becoming the Unreal Foundation :stuck_out_tongue: and they actually donate money to the Blender Foundation.

Why not get together, integrate Unreal Engine as the new game Engine.

Loose the Logic Bricks, use the new Node system. And have Unreals EventGraph represented in Blender. The data transfer from Blender -> Unreal needs to be automagic, behind the users back. They shouldn’t need to Export just to Import in Unreal.

That would be powerful.

Not only to do 3DCC in Blender, but skip the I/O part and fire up Unreal Engine from within Blender just as we do today with BGE.

if licenses doesn’t match, it could be optional for the user to download the engine themself, maybe it needs to be so. But connect the two at source code level, not addon level.

No, it won’t. The 5% royalty license just ensures that Epic gets paid its share at the off-chance that some indie developers make any money to speak of. The “real” UE4 license runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and is aimed at all the AAA studios that have licensed UE3 in the previous generation. A big reason that UE3 was so successful is that it was easier to hire people already trained in it. Lowering the barrier to entry is more important than making a little money (less than expected?) from subscriptions.

Epic has essentially stated that they will only succeed if enough of their users manage to make a good selling title (and that assumes that they also won’t give away their project for free).

No, they haven’t. If their royalty users succeed, they succeed. If their users fail, they don’t automatically fail. They really only fail if they can’t get a significant AAA foothold, like they had in the previous generation.

Blender users are at the mercy of Autodesk when it comes to how well they can get models into UE4, and Autodesk does not like the idea of Blender even being relevant in this area.

No, they aren’t. For one, the FBX license problem could be worked around by separating SDK usage from the blender binary. That means using a separate executable and an intermediate fileformat for conversion. Of course that’s not something the BF developers are keen on doing. Apart from that, the UE4 source is accessible, so there’s nothing stopping anyone from creating a dedicated asset importer.

It would be interesting to hear how Epic manages to sell AAA licenses costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to AAA game studios when Indies get the exact same technology that’s not crippled whatsoever for free, how would they be able to ensure that the big studios won’t demand a massive price drop as a result?

To note, I quick read through their EULA page and I didn’t seem to see anything that forces a proof of total revenue if you want the free license, so how then?


No, they aren’t. For one, the FBX license problem could be worked around by separating SDK usage from the blender binary. That means using a separate executable and an intermediate fileformat for conversion. Of course that’s not something the BF developers are keen on doing.

Based on what I heard, the development of a good .fbx exporter has been a major headache for all of the devs. that were assigned to it and that Autodesk keeps making these small changes that they can communicate to commercial software vendors, but doesn’t benefit Blender at all.

It’s not like the Blender devs. are not trying, but this is why it’s likely that we still need a good FOSS game creation solution that is fully compatible with Blender and uses GPL-friendly formats.

I’m primarily a BGE user at the moment.

Personally speaking, I enjoy the mechanics of a game engine itself, and have lesser interest in actually finishing a game project. For this reason, this and other engines can be somewhat of a distraction; why bother working on something that someone’s already done far better and can offer for free?

Because that’s defeatist :wink:

I suspect that whatever happens with Epic, this will only be temporary, but many people would benefit from the features it provides. Whether this will lead to a greater number of good quality games is another question entirely.

As for the BGE, the initially shallow learning curve leads me to believe that it won’t suffer a great deal; the user base won’t change so much.

The BGE isn’t useless by any means, neither is it superior to many other engines. The integration component is the sole benefit, but a very large one, besides the Python API. Typically, most arguments in favour of dropping the BGE and scorning its users fail to recognise this virtue in its absolute sense.

wow these are really great news.
And yes drop the bge and make a very good io or even direct implementation of Unreal. That would be sooooo cool

epic still has limits on how much you can earn. you can earn 3k per quarter before even paying the 5%. games run $60. if you make a million seller thats 60 million dollars. 5% would be 3 million. its easy to see why you would want a license in the hundreds of thousandss range, it would be much cheaper. unreal engine was the most used game engine last gen. games are a 100 billion dollar business. 5% of that would be 5 billion. but they aren’t the only engine used. if 20% of games which i suspect is low balling the most used engine that would still be a billion a year.

its a privately owned company, no share holders to pay. it has about 200 employees. how do you go broke with only 200 people and 1 billion dollars? it wont happen.

it is going to let alot of content be produced, also why they are giving away money. they are going to start their own market place. markets need content. and thats where the real money is. if you put a game on steam or xbox market place valve or ms wants a minimum of 40%, and thats with you doing all the work. they will port a finished game for you, but then they want 60%. why do you think valve quit making games? why halflife, one of the most popular series ever was just dropped? because steam makes more than half life ever did, gabe gets paid better for doing nothing, for letting others earn even more money for him.

if the epic market place takes off and rivals steam, and if its ios, android, windows, xbox, its going to make a lot more money. the 5% is is you sell it yourself. i’m betting its 20-40% on their market place. many people will buy content rather than making their own for free. its the same idea behind the blender market place.

making it free gets them alot more customers for https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace . and if someone buys enough to make a great game…well then they get to pay epic and additional 5%. epics not going to lose money. udk 1-3 were free and epic didn’t go broke.

They ensure that by charging 5% royalties on the “free” license.

To note, I quick read through their EULA page and I didn’t seem to see anything that forces a proof of total revenue if you want the free license, so how then?

They have something in there that says you agree to let them audit you. Of course they’re not totally protected from people acting in bad faith, but so is anybody conducting business of any form.

Based on what I heard, the development of a good .fbx exporter has been a major headache for all of the devs. that were assigned to it and that Autodesk keeps making these small changes that they can communicate to commercial software vendors, but doesn’t benefit Blender at all.

It’s a headache because they’re re-implementing the format by reverse engineering. The intended usage is to use the SDK, it’s not supposed to be reimplemented by hand - therefore it is flexible to small changes. All things considered, Autodesk hasn’t made it exceptionally hard to reverse engineer FBX (even though they could!), or else we wouldn’t have the FBX support in Blender that we have today.

It’s not like the Blender devs. are not trying, but this is why it’s likely that we still need a good FOSS game creation solution that is fully compatible with Blender and uses GPL-friendly formats.

They don’t want to create a program that is non-free software and that would (most likely) have to be offered as a separate download, just to interface with a proprietary format. That’s understandable, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t create such a program and in fact there have been efforts in that direction. The lack of good FBX support is more of a community failure than anything else.

I think AAA studios are paying the larger fee for the ability to actually ship on consoles. There may also be some direct support from Epic.

Also, considering the sales of certain AAA hits, the upfront payment, even if it’s quite large, could actually turn out to be less expensive for many studios.

Overall: Unreal is deeply entrenched in the AAA industry, and already so profitable in that category: this new offering is basically the next logical step for them, more so than a “risk” of any sort.

They are simply implementing a strategy to expand their presence in the extended market - Strategically, there is virtually nothing in this move that could hurt them, even if it came at a significant loss of revenue for some time (which it doesn’t).

Yeah, I mean, it’s highly unlikely.

They say that you’re expected to “keep accurate books and records related to your development, manufacture, Distribution, and sale of Products and related revenue”, which they can then audit - They expect that you will do as agreed, because their legal arm is much stronger than yours, so, if your earnings are significant, it is in your financial interest to pay Epic what they’re owed.

Anyway, my general thoughts about this:

Unreal Engine is probably going to take over as the new general standard. Their position is just too strong at this point.

However, well designed alternatives, with a very sharp focus, could still preserve their relevance:

Unreal Engine is pretty amazing, but it’s also a behemoth - All those extra features imply extra code, and more complexity in general. A much smaller/simpler engine should be able to make many smaller/simpler games much easier to make.

Not having to pay royalties to Epic is potentially a big plus, not necessarily because of the extra money (although, that can certainly be significant), but because the developer doesn’t have to think about the details involved in sending earning reports, making the quarterly payments, and dealing with a number of things that can go wrong with that.

Lastly, while Unreal can export games to run on Linux, the Unreal develpment tools (editor, and so on) don’t work there, and that’s a pretty big downside for people like me, who use Linux as their main OS (or for people who would eventually want to do the same).

The bge has it’s own features that stand out to it’s user base,

Blender has an entire library that can be leverage to make it great.

BPY and BGE need to work together in tandum,

What would this mean?

Edit a game inside a game,
texture a game in engine (want to know what your model looks like in GSL? )
Real time destruction, real time animation capture, and far more.

The problem in the past is people look at the bge and blender as separate tools,
they need to be unified, in that the bge can leverage blender features,

So 1 thread = BGE

which accepts data from the BPY thread, and sends commands in real time through a network.

and a method so each process would be non blocking with the data it is manipulating.

No engine has these powers, and it would make the bge much more, powerful,
this with the addition of a modern render, and instancing pipeline… and the bge would be better then
most commercial software.

The things people complain about in the bge are

Animation speed - Needs some work
Graphical - needs modernization.
Logic - needs EXAMPLES included in the file.
Python - again EXAMPLES included with blender.
Networking - A built in networking solution would be handy.
Portablitiy - Other target systems like android and Iphone etc.

It needs work… obviously but it needs a concerted effort.

We have 4 new active devs, and more on the way, but we need the foundation to support the bge if you want it market viable.
I can make the mechanics for popular games in moments, the issues I face are polygon limits, and instancing support and static draw
call batching.

The editor actually does run on Linux, but you have to compile it yourself. Did it a couple months ago.
That said, the engine is flipping huge and needs a strong PC. FOSS engines are absolutely still relavent.

Overall I think it was a smart move. It’s common knowledge that companies like having a workforce that knows the software.

Yeah it can run on Linux with some quirks but its highly usable, and we are making it better, more users to test are always welcome, you can come by #ue4linux on freenode to get community help!