Great interview with David Helgason - UE4 has had no impact on Unity

Strangely enough I have seen a major trend of people saying they're going to UE4 from Unity in this very forum section. A lot of people also plan on leaving once their current projects are completed.

I think the community has voice its opinion already. I'm sort of disappointed to see Unity do the equivalent of plugging their fingers in their ears and say it isn't so. Whatever, I'm sure me and others with big projects with a lot of pain points coming from Unity will vote with our wallets when the time comes, then and only then do I expect Unity to care.

But then again good luck getting people to come back to an engine they already left. I don't see any reasonable person doing that any time soon, so the customers you lose now, you likely lose for good.

 

I suspect, if we did a quick survey, we'd find that many of those same people are still posting here.

The last few times (over the past couple months) I've glanced at the Currently Active Users blurb at the bottom of the forum front page, there have been around 7.5k users online.

Today it says:

There are currently 9907 users online. 1422 members and 8485 guests

Not exactly a sign of the End of Days

 

I don't think that's the case for professional developers or hobbyists tbh.

If people find they can switch now, they can switch again. What is this mythical max number of switches a developer can make? People switch from one engine to another? then they're quite likely to continue doing so. It's a myth that once you go UE4 you never go back. What kind of crazed one-way thinking is that?

It's based on a grand assumption that Unity will never ever up it's game. If that's the case, then so be it, enjoy UE4. But if it's the case where Unity does up it's game, then it's actually *easier* to switch back since people already know Unity at this point.

And for professionals, it comes down to using the right tool for the job. If that so happens to be Unity later then it's Unity.

This alarming child-like "switch and we'll never come back" doesn't make any sense to anyone really. It's propagated by kids who only play world of warcraft or whatever.

It's like an xbox fan saying "I've gone PS4, I'll never go back." Then ms comes out with Halo 5 and he's bought the xbox one a week later.

 

People are waiting to see what Unity does. The number of people online on the forum does not indicate how many people are going to pay for a Unity upgrade or a new Unity license.

 

No, it indicates how many people are using Unity right now, today, and - in the professional arena at least - nobody is going to drop one middleware for another simply because it's "only $19 a month", or it promises shinier graphics. We're already invested in Unity, we've paid our dues and we're not about to write off prior investments at upgrade time out of some headless assumption that the grass is greener on the other side. It never is - you swap one set of challenges for another, there is no right or wrong in a global sense, it is - as hippo has said time and again - about using the right tool for the right job.

That doesn't mean we won't use UE4, it just means we're not jumping off a moving train, and at worst we'll probably make games in both - and double the value of our CVs in the process.

 

Hippocoder:

I was offering to pay $19 per month for the addition of a dark themed interface along with LOD's to be offered what is, essentially, the FREE version.

How, pray tell, is this expressing a sense of personal entitlement?

Asking Mr. David Helgeson to "give a little" is really asking him to take my money for what he is mostly giving away for free.

You should read more thoroughly, next time, I think.


Greg Smith

 

I'm not sure about that. The circumstances at which customers switched initially may have effect in rendering the decision to switch back again.

 

No impact is a little bit of a simplification – we absolutely know that some people leave Unity for Unreal, and that makes us really sad. We are on fire in here to fix the stupid mistakes that we've made over the years, of not focusing enough on the most annoying bits of Unity (GUI which is coming up very very soon now; source control already improved a lot in the last years and will get even better soon; nested prefabs and networking being worked on).

But it is true that we have never sold as many licenses as in the two months since GDC and we've never had as many people use the Unity tools since then (630,000 in the last month)... so what's clear is that developers aren't leaving in droves. Many try Unreal out, and while some stay (which makes us want to work even harder), many come back pointing to lack of stability with Unreal and better workflows with Unity.

We are very much not plugging our ears. We are working harder than ever.

Unity 4.6 (with GUI) and Unity 5 are up next, and as you've noticed we've taken your cue and have decided to open more up about what we're working on.

d.

 

Being approached by big companies about them wanting to acquire you is tricky business: all of them are companies we have to work with on a regular basis, so it's no good to be rude to them and tell them to F*** off. Instead we chat with them, and try to find out how we can help them without them having to acquire us. This leads to good conversations, and in the end we have really great working relationships with almost all the big companies around us.

The negative is that meanwhile rumors flourish, which is frustrating but ultimately meaningless – we've been doing this for 11 years now, and don't intend to stop anytime soon.

So to be clear: some of those rumors are true, but that doesn't mean that we were close to selling.

 

Good, AAA engine developers cared little for the small guys in the past and nobody can doubt what Impact Unity has made on us Indies which I and many others are grateful for. It seems the AAA market is an overtly expensive hard to touch portion of the market and it's little wonder why they are branching out.

From a larger game developers perspective, all I can say is it's the silly little things like bugs and core features (all the boring stuff) that taints the experience and makes us look for competitors. Unity as an engine is a marvel, it just needs a fresh lick of paint..

I've have my hands on quite a few MMO projects and big games and the base iteration times were rapid followed by frustrations and time sinking issues (even game breaking issues) or spending excessive amounts of time tool building. Having to rely on Unity to fix these bugs has been "Interesting" and core features like a 64-Bit editor should have come before the GUI or Mecanim updates as the legacy systems did fine and didn't halt progression.. I understand with the amount of platforms you have to support how difficult it must be for you, I understand it's not nice to get to hear all this feedback although it's obvious people still care about Unity, if the development community were indifferent you'd have a major problem.

The advantages of UE4 for us are very simple, we don't have to rely on the asset store. I don't have to pay staff to spend all their time building tools or correcting pre-made tools and bugs can either be resolved by us or they generally are fixed quickly by the Epic staff. Everything else is up to us, tools should not impose limitations. I still use Unity for various things, but it would be nice to bring our bigger budget title back into Unity's arms..

Thank you for the reply, eagerly looking forward to Unity 5.0.

 

All right Mr.Helgason, that is nice to know and very reassuring

 

Genuine question - as UE4 and Unity 4 are both game engines, what is the 'right job' for each engine?*

*: Judging by some comments in this thread, yes, this question is intended to help the less mature members of the audience understand what is meant when that phrase is used. I question whether they understand the concept or not.

 

Thanks for expanding on this, and for replying to this thread in general - it's always nice to see Unity representatives talking directly with the community.

I'd like to ask about the "bottom-up vs top-down" question from the interview (about not being primarily a game studio like Crytech or Epic). Whilst you started off as an indie studio, have you thought about setting up a specific game-design group within Unity as it is now, to develop games and simultaneously test and refine the toolset in a real game-design environment? Unity gets a lot of criticism for the relatively slow bug-fix schedule, and petty irritations in new tools (some would say half-baked). Perhaps having a direct game-design group, with developer access to the engine, could help speed up the refinement of features? Even if the games you end up making aren't world beaters

 

I think UE4 feature set is really a secondary threat to unity in comparison to Unity not getting close with Xamarin. Mono 2.6 will only be able to be covered in shiny new game features for so long before it just becomes stupid... I mean in 2 more years what if UE4 has generally replicated all the pluses of Unity workflow, offers C++ access, and oh what if Xamarin, or other, due to the open source nature of both UE4 and Mono, what if someone just happens to make a Mono wrapper with the latest Mono for UE4? This is very realistic I think, and at that point UE4 will be everything Unity should of been. And C# now being readily available in UE4, then UE4 to Unity migration will be even greater.

Really I think Unity should be doing whatever it takes to get Xamarin to agree to continually update Mono in Unity and to also NEVER make a UE4 Mono wrapper, or ideally a wrapper for any other engine. Ideally Unity and Mono should merge a little bit or something. Otherwise a lot of the skill set that keeps people bound to Unity, will be more easily transferrable elsewhere.

 

Unity is catered towards smaller games / mobile and 2D. UE4 is for larger games, it's a whole different way of thinking making large MMO's / RPG's, AA / AAA FPS games.

With Unity 5.0 this is subject to change, as for the description why it's probably best saved for another long drawn out thread..

 

What ShadowK has said above, but also you have to consider other things beyond the function of the tools - how do you staff up and manage a project from paper to publishing? Do you need really strong version control, a AAA pipeline with first class support for cutscenes? Do you need to be flexible and able to prototype and iterate quickly? Can you put together a pipeline and game plan that will fit with your budget and schedules (because time is money)...what kind of support is available?...and so on. Ultimately a lot of these questions are answered as much by where your talents and experience lie (including that of any talent you want to hire) as what a particular middleware offers in it's USP bullet points.

Take the move by CPP to shift Eve: Valkyrie from Unity to UE4. It's easy to see that as a bad sign, a vote of confidence, where there's this huge player jumping ship. But the guys at CPP Newcastle have a lot of existing experience with UE; they resolved that it made sense for them to capitalize on that. CPP aren't exactly short on pocket change - this isn't the result of a squabble over which engine has the best price point. It's playing to your own strengths first, and applying them to the stage that best suites your production.

Know yourself and what it is you want to achieve, the kind of workflow you think will work best for that, and you'll be better positioned to know which tools to use. The same goes for all the Max vs Maya vs Modo vs Blender vs Houdini vs Cinema4D vs Silo vs (you get the idea) questions, which never - ever - resolve into a single answer. There will always be alternatives; it's not about which is the best, it's about which is the best for you, at the time, for the particular application in the particular circumstances. Price and availability play a part, that's impossible to avoid in a commercial setting as much as for hobbyists, but it can cost you a lot more in the long run to choose the wrong tools based on how easily you can get your hands on them. Conversely, expensive looking premium tools can be a lot harder to work in for simple jobs. No straight answers. You'll just have to use the Force!

 

I like that and yes, it's noticable.
Information can calm many things down.
(my customer contacts Alex McC. and Christopher P. were very nice and informative, thank you)

 

A few years back, there was much fanfare when a Super-WalMart set up shop. What left everyone scratching their heads was when a super Target moved in, just one block away. In the end, both stores were a huge hit.

Competition is often a win-win-win. Your success pushed UE4, and now they are pushing back. The competition forces you to understand your customers, which helps you invest in the right innovations. Your product becomes stronger, more pure, and everyone benefits - UE4, Unity, and us, the customer.

Kudos for participating in these discussions - your voice is much needed.

Thanks,
Gigi

 

IMHO:

Unity 4

Unity 4 is currently, as of time of writing, a far better choice in which to develop smaller titles, or even mobile titles. It is better documented, it is stable and very good for small-scope titles. There's a reason AAA leverage Unity. They have had access (and so have I frankly) to UE4 for a long time. In fact even beta users were able to ship free of royalties and charge for a period with UE4. This means that given the choice of both engines, AAA has for the time being chose Unity 4 for the same reasons I mention:

- it is faster to develop in. This isn't personal preference or whatever, it's a simple fact - for small titles.
- it executes faster on mobile
- it has a lot better support with all the various analytics, integrations, solutions, partners etc - and these are well supported
- many more off the shelf plugin and go solutions
- it has much broader multi platform support
- it has many, many more online resources for solutions (at time of writing)

All of these add up to a very strong and compelling reason to favour Unity for mobile development. Choosing UE4 and pissing away 5% at this point on mobile titles for no visual or performance gain and much more work, is utter stupidity.

Unity 4 is not bug free. But it's pretty close when developing small titles. The issues aren't really present for small titles. They are for large titles, but I'm not claiming Unity 4 is for large titles at this point.

Unreal 4

If however, you're starting a new AAA title, or you're a hobbyist, then Unreal 4 offers a broad spectrum of compelling features: Open Source, low initial price per head, amazing workflows, constant development and amazing graphics. It is unsurprising a large studio would consider UE4

So clearly, for an AAA quality title, one would probably be best off picking Unreal 4. But Unity 5 is a direct attack on the AAA market, so we'll see how things shape up.

But none of that helps mobile dev at all, which a very specific fast turnaround environment which needs short dev times, fast execution and off the shelf solutions.

But don't fool yourselves: Unity has mobile in the bag, and the proof is what AAA pick to develop mobile titles in. It's not like they've not had access to UE4 for quite some time.

So to answer the question, that's the state of current tools for the job. I'm looking forward to Unity stepping up their game in terms of AAA though, so bring on Unity 5 for a fair fight.

 

I wouldn't say UE4 is for AAA, that implies everyone developing in it has 10 Million at least in their pockets and a couple of hundred staff. Whereas some of the MMO's I know have had a staff of 3-5 and are coming to the end and ready to deploy.. I'd say for the A / AA / AAA segment UE4 is the king and as you say Unity has the mobile sector in the bag.

Not to say that I want this, Unity would be an excellent addition to the A / AA and AAA 3D sector. There is a lot of potential for sales, so they might as well have a crack at this arena.

 

You spend a bit of time evaluating both, work out what it costs to get you team trained and productive, and make the decision that seems right to you.

Honda CRZ and Lamborghini Gallardos are both cars, which is right for you?

I think the good Professor Hippo also meant that in addition to choosing the right engine, you also need to choose the right game. If you have a roomful of FPS dudes, then deciding to make a sliding puzzle game probably isn't the right game.

 

(Actually, now I come to re-read it all, maybe Asvarduil wants a list of genres and have them mapped to Unity or UE4.)

 

First one used to be the case, but it is not that cut and dried anymore. Blueprint is a major helper, especially for smaller games, it is easier than picking up Unity scripting or Playmaker/whatever plugin from asset store. Prototyping speed is also highly improved over UE3 due to this. Blueprinting and than moving what you have to C++ is an expected workflow now, more so than it was with Kismet.

Off the shelf plug ins and go solutions, while great, is also a big con for Unity. You end up relying far too much on asset store, but that is my opinion.

I think it would be fair to mention that Epic is working on improving mobile support. If we are talking about current UE4 versus future U5, we should consider the future UE4 for comparison as well.

 

If a studio has 100 Unity users, it's probably the case that one a small handful of them actually need to make builds for a mobile device, so I think the maths is ($1500+$500)*100 + $1500 * 3 + $1500 * 3. So that's $209k, for 100 Unity Pro editors, 100 Team licenses, plus a few mobile add-ons.

Also, it's extremely rare for our support customers to get in touch and upgrade from one major version of Unity to another mid-stream.

Also, also, a 100-person team, with cost per employee of $100k (so that's salary, tax, overtime, heating, lighting, computer, medical etc etc) for two years is $20M. The software costs is then modest. If your game is unsuccessful, or cancelled, the software costs are the least of your worries.

 

We have a major internal discussion about how we can do more of this.

 

Don't forget the roadmap. Everyone wants it bar none in the community, and I think everyone's learned their lesson that it's *subject to change* and nothing is guaranteed. I think people just want to be included, which is fair if you're laying down 1.5k a pop.

 

I put this thread up in the hopes of getting some positive spin on Unity. Always with these things it's better not to bother it just gives the Trolls their chance.
I'm sure there was some spin in the article, but not much. I tend to believe David Helgason because the moment all the non-pro versions of Unity became free he showed his worth. Buying Everplay and giving it free showed his worth again. Actions always speak louder then words. Anyway, it don't signify Unity stands on it's own two feet and is unlikely to be finished off by UE4.

 

What Trolls? This thread has been beneficial, I'm failing to see where the issues are here? What background you are coming from to come to this conclusion? Also why do you think this isn't a positive Spin? David says he is listening, that's a re-assurance all of its own and highly welcome.

All engines have flaws, it's a matter of working through them.

 

You guys seem like you know UE4 a bit How powerful Blueprint VS is? What is the most advanced game that you can make without touching c++?

 

I would like to know what the numbers look like of people actually paying for UT5 already? Did UE and Cry effect those numbers? (can't just judge off of people actually running the Unity program.) I do find it VERY interesting the timing of this article, and all the talk of pricing Unity. I took what he said to mean, "We are not changing our model, and don't really care" <-- personal reflection from reading it.

^ Weren't you one of the people that was "bashing" the current pricing model before you got that tag? Seems to me like you took a 180 quickly..... ~interesting

 

1. I never bashed. I thought the price of subscription was wrong.
2. I still mention this - as recently as yesterday.
3. Moderators are watching your behaviour as you troll often ~interesting

 

How long is a piece of string? I'm not sure, with tens of thousands of assets.. More cut scenes than you could throw at a virtual wall without getting tired and dialogue / lip flapping flowing like a waterfall I've not spent much time with it. Also all our staff are coders, the only people that use it are the artists and VFX / Cinematic specialists. Also the little amount of GUI stuff I did with Blueprints.

Cool for rapid prototyping though.

 

Well, take the guy claiming how brilliant Blueprint is and that game kits in the asset store are a con. You could pick half the posts out of this thread that probably make similar claims which are nonsensical. So in effect it has largely come down to the same rubbish as was in similar threads. You've been in these forums a long while and you and a number of people are having a serious discussion, but a lot of others are just using it as another opportunity to make claims that really can't be backed up, and they're certainly not pointing to finished games made with Blueprint. So again, we have one of those threads. All this stuff you've basically posted about in the other threads as well, so it doesn't really need restating.

 

It was a question to you, not trolling, and I did RESPOND to the topic.

I can quote you many OT posts from you in this very thread if you would like.... Dn't call out my "behavior" when yours in the same.
I have never trolled any topic. please provide me with evidence of that!

 

@Ness, I have a UE4 project. I love Blueprints but atm I do find it easier to get some things done in C++. To give a quick example, there are some functions in UCanvas that is not exposed to Blueprint by default. Such as creating a Canvas icon. There are a few other things I find much easier to accomplish in C++ quickly. I think atm C++/Blueprints are very strong when used together. A talented Unity programmer should be able to put together a ue4 game in decent time. I think a non-programmer can accomplish the same feats I have but it will be a lot less efficient. For example, it is easy on C++ side to use CanvasIcons to address into a 'texture atlas'. But a BP scripter will have to currently use DrawTexture calls directly or bypass the atlas like I see the scripters doing in their HUD/Canvas tuts.

Unity currently has a much more advanced UI (Daikon Forge). I miss DF very much on ue4 side.

 

You can accomplish much. Even Kismet, the predecessor for Blueprint, was sometimes used exclusively, instead of the scripting language UnrealScript back in UDK days. There are published titles in AppStore that is built just with Kismet. That is impressive, considering Kismet wasn't even built for that. It was just a tool for map specific actions, such as opening doors, streaming triggers, cut scene triggers, elevators and so on.

Blueprints was created from ground up to be a self sufficient scripting tool to create full games in it. Most of the API is there, and where the default solutions come short, community steps up and provides free blueprint nodes. You can also write one very easily if you need something specific.

It can do A LOT. How far it can go is limited by you, and the type of game you want. You shouldn't try to build an MMO entirely on blueprints obviously. But from what I can see, you can implement pretty much any kind of small game really quickly.

 

Thanks guys for your insight I hate "writing" the code but i like "designing" it so when I`ve heard about Blueprint I always wanted to ask that question someone that used Unity and UE4.

Looking forward to see a built in VS for Unity

 

I'll be upfront, shut down the politics for a second. The reason I'm "restating" as such is I spent a lot of time / resources and money trying to make a successful game out of Unity. My senior developer finally turned around and said give up, it's not worth it.. There is a lot more to it than that, but it's not something I can speak out loud about.

I'm frustrated, I like Unity I spent a lot of time with it and when you spend years and most of every day in front of an editor. You have to at least like the product you're using and the fact I've had to switch to something I don't get along with as well as Unity adds more frustration. I don't like failure, but alas it's my own fault I did plenty of research (CryEngine, Unreal, Unigine and a self built engine route) but I let preference get in the way of logical choice and I paid for that decision.

I've said before I'm not a fan of UE4, I find it cumbersome in a lot of places. But it will get the job done to the level we need it to.. When it's business, what I prefer doesn't matter.

So here we are, I have smaller things going on in Unity why may eventually be replaced. It takes so long to get used to an engine that it would be impossible to switch back.. I'm not sure barking about it every chance I get helps my case, but what else can you do?

I'm still hoping Unity 5.0 will solve it and I hope it will, but it will probably be too late.

 

That's a totally valid question, and one we've grappled with in the past. So far we feel that engaging with many game studios works great for us, and we fear that running one studio wouldn't work as well: one of the big complaints about UE3 was always that it "felt like modding an FPS", which can very easily happen when the engine team first and foremost is trying to support a single game.

We have instead been re-working our internal development flow, and are soon going to be able to ship updates much faster than before.

 

We are working on this, and have a really exciting update to share with you just around the corner. And it just might blow your mind!

 

Right on – though in this particular case we intend to win, and we think we have the stamina to do so

 

We are very much not ignoring what's going on, but more people are buying Unity now than ever before so the world's not coming to an end. However it makes me upset that Unreal's picked a price model that's better for some people (relatively few, but still!) ... and we are thinking of ways to solve that problem.

 

I sure hope its not what techmage said, because that sounds terrible, both crippling the competition and merging with those who shall not be named.

Do you think that UE4 is making profit off of the $19 what's the deal their? If its not better for some people then doesn't it mean they are making money and Unity could match it and make more money?(Presumably better means cheaper)

 

Modarators can hold any opinion they like, the badge is not an indoctrination method but a sign of an outstanding community member. Please stay on topic.

 

It's not just the pricing model, it's the whole idea of the engine being a service and all the great things that go along with that.

 

Seems like some tough decisions ahead - but while everyone seems so focused on UE4 being "cheaper" for small projects, has anyone really considered the package as a whole? I've been playing around with UE4 and frankly, while some aspects really stand out to me (i.e. the awesome "generate a collider for mesh") - as a whole UE4 does not feel like its there yet.

One of the things I like most about Unity3D is that all aspects of the workflow are so well integrated and work very well together. Nothing truly feels bolted on or an after thought.

Don't lose sight of providing a superior product in an attempt to have a "race to the bottom" with the other vendors on price ... of course, i'm not complaining if the price point comes down either understand .

Great interview David, good luck!

PS - Not sure on "the numbers", but I've already pre-ordered Unity 5!

 

Probably not much if any money to be made. They are probably just covering the costs of the extra support that putting the engine out there has incurred. Epics model is production oriented, they want to make money when the developer does. If people can't get games out to market with UE4 Epic won't make money from this particular licensing model. Therefore Epic does everything it can to make sure it's tools facilitate production and don't stand in the way of making games. The fact that they are also making AAA games with the tech they license out helps the entire effort.

 

I'd actually vote for Superpig (Richard) for this role. He practically knows Unity inside out and it seems criminal that so few benefit from his insights. I would also like to put myself forward in terms of talking about a visual feature or aesthetic if you need volunteers in that respect.

 

I like this, we'll add it into the discussions for sure. I'm also thinking (slightly different) about community members contribute other content, I've seen some pretty good post mortems on here, things like that.