Economy of licensing Unity vs Unreal Engine 4 vs CryEngine

Okay, so I was just checking my email and saw Unity sent me this nice little email about this Unity 5 offer - $750 now and you get Unity 4 right away and free upgrade to Unity 5 - I will will admit I almost push the buy button right there since I am still on Unity 3.5 and originally I thought upgrading to Unity 5 would mean I have to spend $3000 (full amount of licensing Unity Pro + Unity iPhone Pro).

.....Then I check the forum (havn't been here for a while) and saw the 2 bombshells.


Unreal Engine 4 only $19 per month +5%
https://www.unrealengine.com/register

CryEngine now $10 ($9.90) a month
http://www.cryengine.com/news/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-a-service-program


Now, if you look purely at the number -

Unity will cost me $1500 ($750 per upgrade since I am upgrading from Unity 3.5 + Unity iPhone Pro, but for other newcomers it means $3000) and it will last for the 2 year cycle before Unity 6 comes around.

Unreal Engine will cost me $456 for the same 2 year period.

CryEngine will cost me $238 for the same 2 year period.

Basically, Unreal Engine is now 1/6 ~ 1/3 the price of Unity. CryEngine offers even more incredible 1/12 ~ 1/6 the price of Unity saving. There are probably some finerprints that I am nto aware of (maybe over $100,000 sales they charge a higer % of the royalty?) but for indie studios, these are incredible pricing structure that offers far better incentives to the indie as they alleviate their financial risk compare to Unity's far far bigger upfront cost.


Now, this puts in me in a difficult position for several reasons namely :

1. I have invested at least $1000 on assets from Unity Asset Store that I simply cannot use it on other engine (they are programming assets - not sound or art or 3D).

2. Learning a new engine can be a drag

3. The time and investment spent on the pipelines/workflow (plus little scripts here and there to glue it all together)


What do you guys think?
Do you think I should wait or do you guys think UT will yield to the pricing pressure of the competitor and lower their price to match?

 

I think there are several existing threads already discussing this in great detail.

 

Yep.

None of which provide graphs. A graph would really show a lot more than the text-based comparison of up-front costs which people keep rattling on about.

Also, if you're considering high-end game development it should be noted that console targets aren't (I think?) covered as a part of these deals.

I know these changes and opportunities are new and exciting, but it remains the case that there's no one stand-out winner.

 

I think you've made it clear that it's not a "difficult position". You just outlined really clearly how the "savings" you might make by switching will end up costing you far more elsewhere. Plus there's always risk when changing from known to unknown stuff. Plus there's ongoing costs from royalties if you're considering Unreal.

When you take the newness and excitement out of the decision, it's pretty clear to me that sticking with Unity is a better decision for you. (Though I don't know other details that might impact it. Like, say, what you're building.)

For a complete newcomer that could be different, because they're choosing what to start with, not whether or not the added costs of switching are worth it.

 

Okay, a few factors here are that, unless they have a major change on the horizon, while the graphical features of CryEngine are ridiculously powerful, it is also severely limited in how extensible it is. If this is important to you, keep this in mind.

Another thing to keep in mind with UDK's pricing scheme is that you actually only have to pay it every time you want to get an update or access updates/new content from their own asset store thing. Admittedly, it's pretty important to keep it updated in this early state, as right now it's pretty clearly more than a little buggy, but it actually can cut it down from $480 every two years to $160 if you just update every quarter. However, for how extensible the new Unreal Engine is, their asset store is a little bare at the moment (understandable) and their C++ workflow is... honestly pretty great, but also compiles about as quickly as a river of molasses in january.

However, Unity comes with its own issues. The Unity subscription model is, frankly, complete and utter garbage. There's no way to get out of paying the $75 a month, since you get locked into a payment plan; you can't put the money you're paying toward an owned license, which is just mind boggling; you have to pay an extra $75 a month for each additional mobile platform you want to support with feature parity to Unity Pro, which you need to even buy the Pro versions of iOS and Android deployment tools, which means you have to spend up to $225 a month if you ever want to target mobile. Of course, this isn't a good idea if you plan on using Unity for more than two years, which just drops it down to an upfront payment of between $600 (upgrade pricing) - $4500. Unity's pricing system for mobile deployment feature parity has always been one of its worst features.

It's important to realise that for all these prices, they're per seat, which means they can add up pretty quickly too.

 

Unless you want constant update and access marketplace, only $19. With $19, you can download the full engine(with source). You can then cancel subscription. Then you can publish your product without ever re-subscribing. Yes I can confirm to this.
We know very few details of cryengine, hoping it would be similar to UE4 or better.
So that wraps up:
so unity pro is 1500/19=78 times more costly than unreal engine; assuming the fact unity 5 pro has same features w.r.t UE4(which is clearly not, rather opposite).

Currently I am examining UE technology. You can look for UE thread for updates/feedbacks of many guys.

Number 1 is pretty much true. You need to heavily modify unity c# scripts.

For 2 and 3, yes it will be a drag. Totally depends upon you. Some aspects are similar to unity while some are not.

 

Are you allowed to published with a non paying licence ?
Don't you need to keep paying, when your game is published ? (if you are a pro, you will want bug fix from the engine dev, you will pay anyway...)


I am da bawss , I'm pretty much in the same situtation, but I will not change:
- Changing will probably cost me a lot more than the few bucks I will get.
-> this will push every release for at least one month (but probably 3). In our market this can simply kill a game.
-> My time cost a lot more than the price of the engine. This will be get back my investement of my time in probably in 4-5 years. But I prefer giving me more chance to success now, than some few buck more in few years.
-> Unity is the first engine that look at the indie. Before that you will have to pay the 300k$ of the unreal engine... Just to be thankfull for that I will stay with them, and gave them a littlt of time to change their buisness model before jumping in the cheap train.
-> I don't take risk with if it's only for a few bucks
-> Their asset store and community are very young. Unity need 3 years before having some ok GUI system. You will probably wait as much for the other engine.
-> Most pro don't take their decision only on the price (most newbies does). First batch of user that will go to the otehr engine community will probably be in majority beginner will a lot of excitement, but not much more... You will have to wait several years to get a community as strong as Unity community is now.

 

Yes.

Nope.

 

or a fraction of that, since you can freely cancel your monthly subscription anytime, and continue to use the engine/tools as you see fit (with the EULA restrictions in mind ofcourse )

You then can only pay 19USD again, when you need an update lateron. (if you don't want every update they release, which is quite realistic)

So, on a 2 year period, you only might need say: 5 updates. 5 x 19USD = 95 USD.
So it's you the licensee that chooses how much you are willing to pay for updates etc.

 

It's Unreal Engine 4, NOT UDK, UDK is a totally different product, simply put a binary release of Unreal Engine 3. And UDK has completely different licensing terms aswel.

 

God, yeah, right. I'm still getting used to the transition to having the actual engine available.

 

Well you forget that you don't have access to their asset store if you don't pay the subscription.
So you suppose that you won't allow yourself to buy an asset every month. I'm pretty sure, that almost no one will take the trouble to subscribe/unsubscirbe. But people like the possibility to do it, and can use it has an argumentation... on the price.

 

While I think some people overstate the benefit - e.g. 'you only have to pay 19, and can simply not subscribe ever again' these terms do have their uses.

Let's say one doesn't use unity for a month - either they're working on non-unity technologies or are doing something else (medical, work, education, vacation). With UE4 you pay $19 or $0 if you remember to turn the subscription off. With Unity, it can cost you $225+ for software you're not using.

 

Why do these threads keep appearing? How does changing the price of something suddenly make it viable? Have you tried CryEngine or Unreal Engine? CryEngine isn't suitable for anything in my opinion. The only people able to make games with it are Crytek. I also feel Unreal Engine is also a lot more convoluted than Unity. This may change, but in that case I would wait half a year or more before I tried Unreal Engine again to see if releasing the source has led to people creating a more indie friendly engine.

 

+1000

 

that's what i'm saying (UE4 is cheaper in terms of subscription, and the price iamthaboss says can become even lower for UE4 as i demonstrated)

 

your question is the question of many developers, possibly Unity drop prices in some months, historicaly Unity take months to make this actions, but is sure that with the market presion that put UE4 and Cryengine they not have more option that drop the prices, the problem for Unity but a good thing for the indie developers is that the price of UE4 and CE are very competitive then if Unity not present a better price option this not affect to many game developers because now UE4 and CE are real great and accecible dev options, in my opinion (i work with unity free and UDK) this is a lesson to Unity, if you have a very limited free version that is a pain for dev and your pro version is very cost you cant have the fidelity of your users, for this reason many Unity developers are migrating to UE.

 

.


Thanks everyone for contributing, save me time to read through 44+ pages on that other thread!

Actually, Unity DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO TURN OFF subscription whenever you want.
It is stated in their EULA that:

A subscription runs for a minimum of 12 months .

That means you are lock in for minimum of 12 months - that's basically $900 upfront cost - or $1800 if you want iOS PRO.

 

Have a look at the following:

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/3647/how-to-improve-compile-times-for-a-c-project.html

 

Or $2700 if you want Android Pro.

And if you have Unity Pro and your primary target is Android/iOS, you NEED them because otherwise you'll lose all of the pro features. It's ridiculous.

 

Err... hence my post?

Last week:

UDK has high revenue share, crappy custom language and limited access to the engine.
CryEngine has restrictive licensing in general - no idea whether or not you'll be allowed to publish and under what terms.

This week:

UDK has low revenue share, reworked API and complete source code access.
CryEngine has finally release easy to understand terms that are very agreeable.

Also, put into context what's been happening with Unity3d over the last year or so:

• More restrictive licensing.
• Looks like Webplayer will become outmode-ed.
• Added/Adding more paid platforms.
• Failed to deliver upon core features in a timely manner (GUI, Mono, 64 Bit)

 

Royalties are paid per-product, not per seat. Not only that, but unless your artist needs a software update, you'd only have to pay the $20 for the initial license.

 

Ehm, what?

That same counts for UE4 artist.. If he sticks to his/her own toolset (e.g. modeling software), he/she would not need UE4 tools either.
Secondly, As Murgilod said, royalty isn't per seat but per product.

Just 5%, that barely nothing for the first thousands of sold copies. (where with unity you have payed upfront at least 1500 USD, and you MUST sell x amount of copies before you have earned that investment back. UE4 investment is 19USD, and 5% royalty, JUST 5%. It's a far less risky deal for beginners/small studios in financial terms. Just do the riskmath.
Again, the thing with the artist..... it has no influence either.. in terms of additional cost (e.g. IF the artist would use unity, you have to fork out another 1500 at least, compared to another 19USD. Royalty stays the same 5%, not 10%, since it's not per seat. If the artist doesn't, than there is no extra cost in both engines.

 

...HAHAHAHA WHAT?

God, you could not be more wrong at all. Unity licenses are per seat. You need to buy EVERYONE a copy if you're working on Pro.

 

Highly uncommon - our artists spend a lot of time in Unity.

 

Uh, your artist who never uses Unreal Engine doesn't need Unreal Engine either and even then you could just buy a single license for them for a one time $20.

 

during development spread payment is better for the wallet, since it's more maintainable for small companies. (it won't bust your wallet since it just took a little chunk (19USD * x licenses), instead of one massive (1500USD * x licenses))
So the upfront financial risk is way lower with UE4.

Even after release, you can start earning immediately with UE4, since the 19USD is already returned after a few sales.
The 5% is barely nothing, e.g. 3000 copies a 10 dollar = 30K revenue - 5% = 1500 USD (hey! once PRO license) royalty per quarter to pay. that leaves you with: 28500 left.
Yes you lose some, but it's not that much afterall. So if you have 2 games, same condition you have to fork out 3000USD in royalties, but that still leaves you with: 57K left. So it's not so much a bad deal imho. 3000USD against 60K USD revenue... barely nothing if you ask me.

sidenote: Oh and it's not known if a studio will sell 3000 copies at all, especially tiny ones with no track record at all, most likely their product will get lost in the thousands of others available (it happends quite often).
in case of unity the upfront 1500USD investment is made no matter the sold copies you eventually make... that's quite a risk for small companies.

Ofcourse there are other costs involved, like publisher platform (which take a whopping 30% in most cases, per sale from the unit price). but that's out of this scope..

 

What about it? It's a deferred cost. Stop being obtuse.

 

it's only 5%. In the grand scheme of things that is a great deal. there is little to no pressure working with UE4 rather than having a lot of pressure with unity pro. (I'm using unity free right now) The only downside to unreal 4 is that I would have to learn C++ right now. but they will most likely ad C# support latter.
All and all it looks like UE 4 is a much better deal and unity is going to have to do something from keeping people jump ship.

 

So basically, this actually is a better idea for smaller devs who are far less than likely to even turn a profit in the first place and the profit difference is negligible even at $40,000, where the difference is $520. Got it. Thank you for proving literally everyone's point.

Edit: Oh, and let's not forget that this is only if you're deploying to PC and Mac. If you want to deploy to Android and iOS (which UE4 can do) then you'll have to add another $3000 on to your Unity numbers, which... actually ends up making UE4 even more desirable until around $100,000.

 

So you guarantee that everyone will make that much money?

 

Heck to make things more complicated, the UDK people would have thousands of dollars more than the Unity3d people to invest in their game, potentially increasing their revenue/reducing costs far more than the 5% ever could

 

You can also use the UDK license with unreal engine 4, where you don't pay anything under 50k, but its 25% after that, but its also not gross profits. So the 50k is after valve/apple/google takes their cut, and other fees. This is probably a better deal for those who don't expect huge profits. I think this is for only those already using UDK though.

 

Ofcourse it's for UDK users different, since the other license is used (namely the UDK license)

Still UE4 (!= UDK) has a benefit in lower (significantly lower) upfront cost, and reasonable low cost (5% royalty) after publishing a product (thus less risk involved if the sales are not as high as hoped for, aka sort of fiasco), compared to Unity PRO license.

 

Most won't. But even people who do make that are still aren't exactly succeeding. That is just a bit above minimum wage in the US. If you are hobbyist, it works out as a good deal. But for anyone serious about it and/or running a business, that 5% starts racking up pretty quickly. It all depends on what you are willing to risk and how serious you are about it.

 

@zombiegorilla: 5% is barely nothing on the long run.. if you gain that much revenue, the game IS a success, period and paying that 5% in that case is pocket money (for real). (see the examples)
No company lives of just ONE title. They need quite a few. So 5% per product is not so much in comparison to the 30% those "publishers" take, (which is idiotic if you ask me, but that's another issue)
And per project the financial risks are lower, because of barely no upfront cost, and low royalty afterwards.
e.g. it needs 30K revenue, to have just one Unity license worth of royalty to be payed. ONE!
most indies studios need 2 or 3 unity PRO licenses to begin with, and more if they employ more people.
(with UE4, instead of purchasing the license upfront, you pay it back after you have success (spreading mostly, since it based on quarter year revenue periods). again lowering financial risk.

(and even more revenue earned before the UE4 royalty ends up to be worth one PRO lincense plus IOS/Android...)

 

Yeah, that's the reason I specifically stated smaller devs there, because that's pretty clearly who this new pricing setup is targeting.

 

I know. I was just wondering how meh11 would respond.

 

Let's be real: this is a super smart move on the part of Epic. Because they're making it so there's a super cheap option to access the license (let's face it, license sales in the indie space were never making them a mint. This enables them to make money off any sales at all instead of past a certain threshold that people were likely to never make with UDK.

 

I don't think anyone who is a hobbyist would disagree that UE4/CE has better pricing, it blows away unity pricing for features/graphical fidelity. Epic has been very flexible. I hope unity does as well.

 

Just wanted to throw in that, at least with CryEngine 3 you can also use CryMono and still develop in C#. I haven't done it, so I'm not sure about the viability and the CryEngine Editor has a high learning curve by itself. Not to mention, CryMono also has an either up-front or royalty based option of its own for commercial products.

 

I was talking about this somewhere else with a friend, why exactly does it take the time it does for feature releases and bug fixes?

The man made a good point, if you bought pro right now and got everything you could possibly need there would be no reason to upgrade, if you don't upgrade then Unity doesn't get money. OK fair enough, maybe not the best business model but Unity don't have royalties for the rare case anyone makes it big either.

So what I think Unity should do is drop the $1500.00 model completely, charge $100.00 a month for PC / MAC / Android / IOS just like UE4 and keep console as an additional negotiable cost.. Under contract (6 / 12 months?) maybe? Unity will always get the money they need to develop at the level WE expect, they will be earning money based on a whole new set of considerations and as upgrades are included as part of the subscription. They don't need to bank on that money coming in.

It may be 5 X more than UE4, but the engine has things like Enlighten and PowerVR which is more than worth the money.. Also workflow is on Unity's side IMO when getting into the pretty nitty gritty.

 

I couldn't say it better. This is exactly the reasoning for the economics of licensing an engine for small indie studio that should be considered.

For most indie studio, it could take a long time (several small games and projects) to finally get a small hit for them to recoup the upfront cost of licensing Unity - whether it is $1500 purchase per platform or $900 for the "monthly" subscription.

What I found RIDICULES of Unity's subscription model is UT's insistence on forcing you to subscribe for the minimum of 12 months. Effectively, you are paying for 60% cost of Unity (without actually owning it!) and it is only for one year. With the current 2 year cycle you are paying $1800 (as oppose to $1500) for the use of Unity and as soon as your subscription runs out they terminate your Pro license and reverts back to free version.

So basically there is really very little incentive to jump on the Unity subscription model - you are paying 20% more for a license that will end as soon as you stop paying at the end of the 1 year mandatory term compare to the $1500 perpetual license which is cheaper in the actual development cycle.

I think UT needs to reconsider and revamp its subscription model, either lower the mandatory subscription period or lower the price of subscription significantly.

 

Indeed. It was a smart move for them. It was a market that they were making pretty much nothing from at all. And at that low price, even if most only pay once, they can easily make several million off that alone. Probably much more.

 

I disagree slightly. I think a license purchase mode should exist, but should come with some benefits/drawbacks. I'll explain.

0. Keep the free version with limited feature set.
1. First, keep the "major versions like 3.x/4.x/5.x update on a two year cycle thing."
2. Keep charging $1500 for a license in the 2 year cycle, but bundle it with iOS and Android Pro.
3. Keep allowing for upgrade pricing.
4. Have a $100 per month with a UE4-like "drop out at any time" thing.
5. If a person doesn't pay the $100, they lose the ability to purchase from the asset store and download new updates to the editor and their assets.

Basically, this benefits long-term purchasers of the license with a discount, which will help encourage loyalty in small-to-mid sized studios since they get a discount. The $100 UE4 like model will benefit hobbyists who are working beyond the capabilities of what Unity Free can offer them, and the $100 price tag offsets the fact that Unity updates pretty slowly and wouldn't really benefit from a $20 model.

 

I'm in a very similar boat as you, and what I have decided to do is wait. Because what I foresee happening is if I pre-order now at the current going rate, 6+ months go by UT drops price for v5 to be competitive with UE4, and I would really doubt I would be reimbursed for a full 6month pre-order (but I dont know for certain). So rather than get pissed and burned, I'll wait and see what happens before I do anything because lots of things can change quite quickly and I dont want to be locked into anything for certain yet.

 

you should be able to get full lifetime if you paid for 2 years of unity pro subscription, else it is a bit ridiculous to be forced to pay for 12 months. If they said you didn't have to pay for 12 months, and can subscribe on a month to month bases it would make more sense to not own pro lifetime, but in the case unity has it, you are basically renting a home for the cost of buying a house if you were to rent that house for 2 years.

A question i have about unity3d's business model is that they are forced to keep coming out with new features to entice users to upgrade each new version, not only do they have to keep buying new middleware, and pressured to hurry on new features, core issues are not as important. Also features are partitioned for each new version instead of being released when they are ready for customers, i think unity3d should just nix the lifetime pro and just focus on an affordable subscription. With this solution, people who signed up for unity pro a couple month ago don't feel like they got the short end of the stick when they hear about the new Unity version coming out, they can get a pro subscription and get upgrades from the next unity version as well. Also axe unity free as well, that only separates the community, i keep hearing about request for render textures and other unity pro features from unity free users.

 

Sure, like I said, for hobbyists it is a great deal. 5% of a small number is still a small number. If you have multiple titles and you are 10-20k a day on each, your engine gets really expensive. But, you are correct it is a much lower risk and for who aren't planning on doing well and willing to commit to a deal like that are the ones who will probably always be under that level, most will never ship. So for them it is great deal.

 

Promise I'm not trying to be rude here, but I feel like you missed the point of what I'm saying.

If Unity keep the $1500.00 with upgrade fee's license model, Unity will keep holding features back due to monetary gains. Because you'd have no reason to upgrade if the engine had all the tech in UE4 (with middleware) from the outset.

 

"who aren't planning on doing well and willing to commit to a deal like that are the ones who will probably always be under that level, most will never ship."
Why are you making these negative, bold statements, which is not true per se either (not proven yet)...

Yes they will pay more, but still quite reasonable (just 5 percent of 100 percent revenue.. realisticaly that is NOTHING. besides, you don't seem to mind that publishers take about 30% each sale. i repeat: 30% ... now that IS a huge chunk out of 100 percent.)

If the business fails (finacially) because of that small 5 percent royalty Epic asks, it has a serious problem to begin with.