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You can keep using UE4 after cancelling the subscription

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by arvzg, Mar 20, 2014.

  1. arvzg

    arvzg

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    (I feel like I should be posting this in UE4's forums, but I don't have an account and I am more familiar with this community. This is what the gossip section is for anyway, right?)

    I just saw this in the UE4 FAQ page (https://www.unrealengine.com/faq)
    Now if I'm not wrong, what this means is after an initial fee of $19 you can cancel your subscription immediately and continue developing your game for months to come without spending a single cent more. The only reason why you might keep the subscription going is to gain access to updates.

    Can someone confirm if this is true?
     
  2. Per

    Per

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    Yup, it's true. although I believe access to the asset store also requires an active subscription, so that's another reason to maintain.
     
  3. arvzg

    arvzg

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    This really is unbelievable and makes a huge difference. I think it would be wise for them to make this clearer as I personally assumed the software would stop functioning at the end of the month you stop the subscription.

    For hobbyists who don't necessarily work on games from start to finish on a continuous basis this is HUGE
     
  4. im

    im

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    u wont get upgrades and such

    i think people who use it will keep subscribing it cause they want the access, the updates, the store, ect...

    people who pick it up and dont find a use for it well they will most likely forget that its auto subscribe and then when they notice cancel it, but then its no big deal...

    i may pickup a subscription since i did a bit of stuff using udk and it's always good to see for yourself worse im out which is not much...
     
  5. SteveJ

    SteveJ

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    By the way, there's a huge thread discussing all this stuff here:

    Unreal Engine 4
     
  6. arvzg

    arvzg

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    Well how often do they release updates? If it's anything like Unity it's not likely to be every month, and .0.0.1 updates usually are not really very effectual.

    What I mean is even if they do release updates monthly, it's not likely to be major enough that everybody needs to have it on day 1. If it's just bug fixes, you are able to skip a version and wait for the next release before spending another $19

    Yes I know, but this is a specific discussion on a specific section of its licensing model, so I thought it warranted a new thread. I believe most people may not know about this.
     
  7. bitcrusher

    bitcrusher

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    You can pull source off Tim Sweeney's github and build it, looks like he made some updates a couple days ago to the engine's source code, so when you want to, do so. Plus they release binaries.
     
  8. elmar1028

    elmar1028

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    I am patiently waiting for Unity's response....
     
  9. Digitalfiends

    Digitalfiends

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    That's a HUGE plus in UE4's favour if you ask me. Developers are no longer tied to the engine supplier's release cycles and can patch the engine for their own games (assuming they possess the necessary skill/knowledge) and merge their changes with any official releases later on. Pretty cool if you ask me.
     
  10. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    Indeed.
    My guess is that their plan is to release small updates fairly often. If they did so, it would beneficial for users to maintain/resubscribe. Canceling your subscription would mean you wouldn't get bugfixes,etc.
     
  11. arvzg

    arvzg

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    But keep in mind that subscriptions are month-to-month and not on contract. You could even cancel your subscription for 1 month if you don't have any teething issues with UE4 and completely happy with it - you cancel it for next month - but if a new feature gets announced after you cancel you can just resubscribe. this is amazing
     
  12. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    Sure, but as long as the make it worth while to resubscribe at least every 30 days, it is the same as subscription. I am sure they have a plan for something like that. If nothing else they could just release a new cool project in the marketplace once a month, or constantly offer marketplace sales like Unity does. In fact, if they have big assets and offer a few each month that are more than $20 off, they could make it attractive to keep people coming back. At such a low price point, it's pretty smart move.

    Even if folks to do only subscribe once and not ever a gain, that is $20 more than Unity makes off a majority of its userbase. ;)
     
  13. Noisecrime

    Noisecrime

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    I can't help feeling this is an over-sight on Epic's part and that they will do there best to avoid it as much as possible, possibly through methods like ZombieGorilla suggest. The reason is simple, I don't think the 5% revenue is their main target, its icing on the cake and will work well for boosting income from big games that do well, but subs are where the real money is at.

    Why, well imagine they get 100,000 subs a month, not a large number, certainly not worldwide. I think someone mentioned that Unity has 3 million subscribers (mostly free of course), but then you also have games like WOW with what 8 million monthly subscribers and at its peak was nearer 12 million, so overall 100k subs doesn't seem out of the question.

    At 100k subs for $20 p.m thats $2 million a month, $24 million a year. In comparison to earn that much from 5% revenue on sale, UE4 games would have to sell $480,000,000 worth of value, that's almost half a billion! Now granted the overall game market value is considered around $90 billion, but that covers a massive range of games, devices etc. So one might argue half a billion would be easy to reach, but i'm not so sure.

    The problem with royalties is how are they going to track them?

    Should be easy enough for larger studio's who have to stay 'above board', but for hobby developers who might forget or deliberately avoid paying its going to take a large amount of resources to track and check accounts. Even if they are able to say embed tracking analytics in games built with UE4 it doesn't give them access to actual accounts, so determining the amount of royalties is going to need the cooperation of the developer.

    I guess they could threaten developers with court action unless they open up their accounting books, but that is probably not going to go down well, as a company you really don't want to be seen taking your customers to court. In the end it might just be impractical to bother with all the little guys and just hope enough are genuine to maintain the façade, but really they focus on getting royalties from the bigger studio's or big hit games.

    Either way its win-win for Epic, if they can maintain a good number of subscriptions ( they might easily exceed 100k) then they get easy money coming in monthly, and they can profit off the royalties.
     
  14. bitcrusher

    bitcrusher

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    They seemed fine with UDK and licensing it out for free /25% of revenue after 50k. So i don't see how they can't trust customers now.
     
  15. Noisecrime

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    Then why have they moved to a subscription model + 5% now? If anything I think that gives more credence to my point, that they have evaluated it and found that subs with lower royalties will be as good as or better than their old model.
     
  16. TheCCJ

    TheCCJ

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    From their EULA:

    Basically, if they feel like you're not being up front with them, they can audit your books at any time. If your shortfall to them is to great, you bear the cost of the audit (and they aren't cheap).

    Also, elsewhere in the EULA, is a point where if you are late on your quarterlies, you also have to pay an extra 2% penalty, which compounds.
     
  17. Noisecrime

    Noisecrime

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    Thanks for taking the time to dig this info out of their EULA, but it wasn't really my point, well its half of my point.

    The issue I see is with Epic trying to attract hooby developers there is a higher chance of them by accident or deliberately misleading them, at which case it becomes a question of how do you deal with the situation? Sure legally Epic have their bases covered, but it becomes a very different matter if thay have to start badgering many developers for their books or worse threaten court action. Does the cost to chase up these missing royalty revenues outweigh the actual revenues? Is the potential for bad press when Epic are seen to 'threaten' or take developers to court to get their rightful revenue a danger?

    I'm not saying that any of this is specically a problem, just in my opinion I think that Epic are banking more on the subs for generating revenue than off the back of 1000's of casual games that wont make enough money to bother chasing. That really the way they have targeted this license is to make money of the subs in the vast majority of cases and revenue off the royalties in far fewer cases.
     
  18. zezba9000

    zezba9000

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    Also keep in mind its NOT going to be legal to publish games without paying out the 5%.
    The subscription is the least of there worries. Its people paying 5% that makes them money I would think.
     
  19. TheCCJ

    TheCCJ

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    Very much so. 5% of all gross revenues from sales, IAP, Kickstarters, DLC, ad sales, publishing deals, etc... that will add up fast, and more than makes up for people dabbling in the engine and doing nothing.

    The engine has probably already more than paid for itself from commercial licenses over the past two years. The subs give them a little cash up front, gives people a reason to use their (eventual) asset store-alike when it goes live (giving them far more income). The subs also give them a very live look at who is using the engine, and what projects to keep an eye on. They're not going to go and audit every licensee; that would be a ridiculous fishing expedition. But if you think the subs are going to be the greater share of the income compared to the 5% royalty rate, I think you're vastly mistaken.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2014
  20. Meltdown

    Meltdown

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    They don't care about the subscriptions, the 5% royalties on thousands of published games in the future is what they're after.
     
  21. Noisecrime

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    Maybe, but as I said in my post above, 100k subscribers gives them $22 million income a year, the '1000's of games' would have to be turning over half a billion dollars per year to equal that. I'm just not sure that the hobby developer segment of the market will do that. Unity have just stuck up on their home page that they have 500k monthly users, so it could be far in excess of 100k.

    However its important to see the distinction i'm making here. Existing studio's small and large will bring in a sizable chunk of royalties and those companies will be professionally run and Epic will have no problem with book-keeping and receiving their revenue. I'm just not so sure that will 'dwarf' the amount of revenue they will get from 100,000's subs, so based on that I se the subs being a very important part of the deal and not just an after-thought.
     
  22. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    I think it may be a bit of both. Either way, it really is a pretty smart move. Basically the created a several revenue streams that simply didn't exist for them before, and of an existing product. They will make tons off the hobby crowd who would have probably never been a potential customer, and the price point is probably what the average free Unity user spends in the asset store. And even though a lot of serious devs/studios probably won't go for that license, probably enough will to make some decent level of revenue on that 5%. Unity basically caps their potential profits with the 100k cut off. If a Unity free user should make it big, the max they will make is 1.5-4.5k.

    And I'll be there is little actual change to their normal pricing structure. Studios who had the resources to license the Unreal before won't benefit from the indie/hobby pricing scheme. Pretty slick move. It'll be fun to watch evolve.
     
  23. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    I doubt that the medium or large companies will adopt the new scheme. That 5% can quickly become a ridiculous amount of money for established studios. But is a great opportunity for new developers/studios who may not have the resources and are willing to gamble.
     
  24. Honest-Bob

    Honest-Bob

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    Rough guestimate

    Rust: 20 people total at Facepunch, 15 working on UNITY = 15 x unity pro licence = $25,000 ish for a game with sales upward of $25 million.

    if using Epic the 5% of gross would be somewhat higher, given that valve is taking 30%, that 5 % would seriously cut into your profit margin.

    I'm in the hobby/dreamer category, so all the recent upgrades and pricing changes place the choice squarely in the personal pref box, but if you are looking to make the jump and turn a profit then the royalties become a serious consideration.