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News Epic Games to update Unreal Engine pricing for devs outside game industry; Epic Games began running into "financial problems" about 10 weeks ago

Epic Fail.

Separating fees based on industry and end-medium is goofy. So a graphic artist who makes short films and video games in Unreal would have two price points? What if the short films are included in the game or are promotional?
 
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How could this happen? Sweeny testified in court that a 12% cut was totally sustainable for EGS + UE and argued that other platforms needed to punished for charging 30%.
 
Nintendo decision to use internal engines wins in the end

(yes I know they have been using Unreal and Unity more recently, shaddap!)
 
Honestly, why did Epic even acquire Bandcamp in the first place? Unless there was going to be some angle of incorporating Bandcamp content into the Unreal store a game developer like Epic should not have any business making an acquisition in a completely different industry. It's just bizarre.
 
Dekuman said:
And i guess Tencent money dried up.
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Not sure if Tencent, but someone's money definitely dried up.

That's basically what's happening in a number of places in tech right now. Interest rates went up, lenders got a lot stingier. Hence abrupt "financial problems" catching people off guard.

Stephen said:
Honestly, why did Epic even acquire Bandcamp in the first place? Unless there was going to be some angle of incorporating Bandcamp content into the Unreal store a game developer like Epic should not have any business making an acquisition in a completely different industry. It's just bizarre.
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I suspect there was some plan for vertical integration with using Fortnite as a promotional vehicle for music acts. So you pick up Bandcamp as a platform, Harmonix as a bridge, ???, profit.

Clearly that didn't exactly pan out. But virtual concerts has been a big dream since even the days of Second Life or older so I could easily see them making a go at it via Fortnite.
 
HockeyBird said:
As I said on Era, you probably need a a new accountant if you realized Fortnite couldn't prop up the rest of your business just 10 weeks ago.
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I think that the CEO who continues to dodge any culpability for the downsizing of the company he's responsible for managing has thrown enough people under the bus.
 
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HockeyBird said:
As I said on Era, you probably need a a new accountant if you realized Fortnite couldn't prop up the rest of your business just 10 weeks ago.
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I’m an Accountant myself. I have a BBA in Accounting and did a second major in Marketing. Also did a Masters in Digital Marketing. Plus right now, I’m a Government Auditor (regulatory compliance).

I mention all of this because it BAFFLES me the amount of times this could have been forecast:
• Accounting is automatized via software and you can immediately access data and generate financial statements. You can generate an Income Statement for today. Another one tomorrow. Another one for a week. You could have generated Statement of Cash Flow. You wouldn’t have had to wait until a semester closed, or even a quarter. You could have analyzed data on a monthly basis. What about the Internal Audit Department? No one could have audited the Accounting Department? The organization is supposed to have an Audit Committee. What about them?

There was so much internally Epic could have done to prevent this. But this definitely has been one hell of a week for the gaming market
 
ziggyrivers said:
I’m an Accountant myself. I have a BBA in Accounting and did a second major in Marketing. Also did a Masters in Digital Marketing. Plus right now, I’m a Government Auditor (regulatory compliance).

I mention all of this because it BAFFLES me the amount of times this could have been forecast:
• Accounting is automatized via software and you can immediately access data and generate financial statements. You can generate an Income Statement for today. Another one tomorrow. Another one for a week. You could have generated Statement of Cash Flow. You wouldn’t have had to wait until a semester closed, or even a quarter. You could have analyzed data on a monthly basis. What about the Internal Audit Department? No one could have audited the Accounting Department? The organization is supposed to have an Audit Committee. What about them?

There was so much internally Epic could have done to prevent this. But this definitely has been one hell of a week for the gaming market
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Sweeny is still looking to the metaverse as a viable path to financial solvency. Much like a compulsive gambler or a Trump donor, facts and logic alone is not going to convince a person who cannot admit that their debt might be correlated to their financial decisions. That stuff only works for rational actors.
 
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almost like the horseshit venture capital bubble is bursting everywhere, huh
 
HockeyBird said:
Article is from January 2021 so the decision to build a giant office space was made DURING the pandemic
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Considering how much damage the pandemic did to commercial real estate, buying up a large property like that at a time when it was probably going for historically low prices was not the worst decision.

With things recovering now, and permanent WFH still not being set in stone, they could easily put the space back on the market if they opt not to pursue using it as office space.

tl;dr: as ridiculous a move as that was, that was probably a decent long term play
 
shoptroll said:
Considering how much damage the pandemic did to commercial real estate, buying up a large property like that at a time when it was probably going for historically low prices was not the worst decision.

With things recovering now, and permanent WFH still not being set in stone, they could easily put the space back on the market if they opt not to pursue using it as office space.

tl;dr: as ridiculous a move as that was, that was probably a decent long term play
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Maybe but you certainly don't help justify building a giant campus by laying off 900 employees.
 
The Giant said:
I will not cry when fortnite shuts down. Its such a nothing game, with meh gameplay.

So much better games to play. The young kids these days don't realise that.
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while i have no feeling one way or the other on forklift but when (not if online-only games have to come to an end eventually) hundreds of people will lose their jobs
 
SpaceGodzilla said:
while i have no feeling one way or the other on forklift but when (not if online-only games have to come to an end eventually) hundreds of people will lose their jobs
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And that will absolutely suck. But Epic was daft to base so much of their operating budget specifically on Fortnite income while throwing money around to bolster EGS and fight an idiotic legal battle with Apple.
 
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The Giant said:
I will not cry when fortnite shuts down. Its such a nothing game, with meh gameplay.

So much better games to play. The young kids these days don't realise that.
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I guarantee a bunch of people say exactly the same about whatever your favourite games are. There's no point in that kind of snobbery.
 
HockeyBird said:
Maybe but you certainly don't help justify building a giant campus by laying off 900 employees.
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True, but no one also foresaw interest rates speedrunning from nearly 0% (where they've been for years if not an entire decade) to like 5-6% over the course of 18 months or something like that.

Also I imagine a large scale project like that isn’t something you can simply cancel if you need to pivot quickly because of a cash crunch.
 
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EnergyDrink said:
Perhaps the game industry realize now that betting all your horses on closed source commercial graphics engine is not a good idea.
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There is a place for graphics engines like Unreal, as they can make the lives of developers easier. But tying their use and availability to predatory costs is just going to make everyone search for alternatives, whether that's other publicly available engines or just developing code from scratch.

The fact that Unity and Epic are both taking shotguns to their own feet within a month of each other is wild either way regardless.
 
Hailinel said:
The fact that Unity and Epic are both taking shotguns to their own feet within a month of each other is wild either way regardless.
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I don’t see how this licensing change is that. If you’re using the engine and not making something that falls into the existing licensing model you’re in effect costing Epic money via customer support. There’s probably a number of non-gaming companies that are using UE in lieu of tools like AutoDesk’s suite which charge a per-seat or subscription fee since it’s a cheaper option currently.
 
shoptroll said:
I don’t see how this licensing change is that. If you’re using the engine and not making something that falls into the existing licensing model you’re in effect costing Epic money via customer support. There’s probably a number of non-gaming companies that are using UE in lieu of tools like AutoDesk’s suite which charge a per-seat or subscription fee since it’s a cheaper option currently.
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Oh, I'm not defending Epic at all here. Only saying that engines like Unreal have a place, but the cost models behind them are stupid.
 
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smoothies said:
Bandcamp has been sold to another company called Songtradr.
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tNtvrus.jpg


Unfortunately it seems like there'll be layoffs at Bandcamp once the sale goes through.
 
Oh, no. Unreal Engine going bad would mean that Square Enix returns to making internal dev engines… oh no
 
The licensing update for non-game projects is long overdue.

As it previously stood, companies could use Unreal for all sorts of rendering projects (notable example: season one of The Mandalorian) and not pay anything to Epic as their licensing terms were based around game revenue specifically.

As Unreal is developing into a more general purpose rendering tool, then it makes sense for non gaming companies to pay for it as well as gaming studios.

Nothing about this news affects how Unreal Engine works for developers, and despite what some users here seem to think, it's not going to herald a bunch of studios sinking millions into developing their own internal engines again.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
The licensing update for non-game projects is long overdue.

As it previously stood, companies could use Unreal for all sorts of rendering projects (notable example: season one of The Mandalorian) and not pay anything to Epic as their licensing terms were based around game revenue specifically.

As Unreal is developing into a more general purpose rendering tool, then it makes sense for non gaming companies to pay for it as well as gaming studios.

Nothing about this news affects how Unreal Engine works for developers, and despite what some users here seem to think, it's not going to herald a bunch of studios sinking millions into developing their own internal engines again.
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They don't need internal engines, it makes sense for big companies. Anyway there are free open source engines, if companies would support them they had a good alternative for most projects and could even fork them for their own needs.

The time of the big market dominating engines like Unity or Unreal is coming to an end.
 
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