Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Epic. Fail.”.
Epic games has announced that they will move to an adobe style seat-based licensing structure next year. This also means they will begin charging developers outside of the game industry. That’S the point that people are glaming on to to be very clear developers outside of the game industry. Unreal Engine has been free to download since 2015 and currently only takes a 5 % cut of Revenue after a game built on top of it surpasses 1 million in Revenue. However, the unreal the unreal is also commonly used to create detailed mockups in manufacturing and virtual sets in films and television shows um, for example, the Mandalorian and game linked D yeah.
That’S true. Epic games has been having significant financial problems and recently laid off over 800 staff with successful subsidiaries like game developer, uh medonic the creators of fall guys uh being hit particularly hard uh. It appears that epic has been overspending. Its Revenue in part due to its ongoing 2020 legal suit against Apple and Google, for removing fortnite from the digital storefronts in late 2022. Epic was likewise finded $ 520 million for unwanted in-game purchases in fortnite, beginning in 2017. Oh sorry, that’s what happened in 2022.
The 2020 legal suit against Apple and Google and then in 2022 they were finded. Half a billion for unwanted purchas began in 2017, got it discussion question: how do you have this many money problems and not twig that? Maybe you should charge Disney for using your software? That’S hilarious, um yeah, pretty much um all right! Well, good luck! Epic, um, epic’s done some stuff really right and they’ve done some stuff. Really I don’t like as much um, but at the end of the day I mean I’m Pro competition. I don’t want them going anywhere. Necessarily epic gam store might not be a big competitor for steam, but they are one of the only even somewhat valid competitors for steam.
Right now you play just might as well not exist, yeah and like Battle.net, doesn’t matter and G come on G G yeah. They do good in their little in their Niche. They do good.
In their I mean, hey, look balers. Gate 3 is on GG. If you bought balers Gate 3 on Steam, why ask yourself why? Why did you do that? You should have don’t default to buying things on Steam if they’re on Gog, I would actually strongly recommend buying on there. Instead, I really like the Gog experience.
I actually really like the launcher. It’S really good, like I, I actively heavily dislike up playay up play is bad origin is like annoying. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily bad, but it’s pretty annoying is good. Gg is also very good, in my opinion.
Yeah yeah. I don’t know um, but yeah uh, this. It makes sense. I think it’s going to suck for some people. I think they’re doing something relatively wise here. I don’t know if they would have done it.
If uh Unity didn’t just have a whole bunch of issues yeah, but they kind of announced this before announcing it like they announced. Hey we’re going to do something like this. Just so, you guys know, and I suspect they might be collecting some feedback on how the audience reacts to it, y um, but like okay.
The thing too, though, is you’ve got like I was uh working. I told you. I’Ve been working on my review of the big screen Beyond, so that’s that that NextGen VR headset with the the crazy micro OLED displays and stuff like that, and one of the things that I was trying to contextualize in the video was the cost. It’S really expensive by the time you buy a big screen Beyond, and Bas stations and controllers. You’Ve spent $ 1,500, which is a lot of money, but it’s still, I would argue, closer to a consumer class device than Enterprise VR headsets. If you want to pick out, if you want to pick up a vario VR3, for example, that’s going to cost you $ 3500, oh – and you also owe I think, it’s like $ 700 a year in licensing for it. But the reason that this is relevant to what we’re talking about right now is one of the things that vario advertises on their site.
Actually here, I should bring this up a to show you guys, uh and B, to make sure that I’m right is uh. If you scroll down blah blah blah down down down n, it should have like native support for down down down down down. Oh crap, okay, uh, so click, oh yeah, keep going keep going, keep going, keep going, uh blah blah yep keep going, keep going, bario comp! Oh my gosh, it’s somewhere uh, I think we’re bottoming yeah no hold on there’s.
There’S there there’s a there’s. Definitely there’s definitely a thing hold on um, but if I recall correctly, one of the things that they call out on their site is native support for here. Uh, I can’t see that complete software compatibility support for a Unity Unreal Engine and a broad range of industrial 3D software yeah yeah yeah okay, here hold on here here – uh yeah, so here here this is what I’m talking about compatible with the 3D applications.
You already use and they’re talking about use cases like designing flipping car s, and so I’m looking at it going yeah. How do how does this? How does this make any sense that this is an industry where people can be buying $ 3,500 headsets spending? Hundreds free software or or thousands of dollars on upkeep for headsets and are just getting free software that makes the whole thing work at all and free like incredibly difficult to make extremely powerful software. They have a whole Wing specifically for architectural visualization. That is obscenely good uh. There is a there’s, a demo that is, like a French house Villa thing I’ve been using for ages. I do think I do think something that epic has to figure out in the longer term is how to reconcile this new need to make money with um, with efforts that make the software continue to be accessible to enthusiasts and to students, because of the Apple education Program thing you were talking about earlier: being able to use it for free at a certain level, really really important, huge investment hugely important. So I I totally agree it makes sense, but they got to make money yeah, because if you don’t make money, then you don’t exist anymore and then it’s gone. We won’t have Unreal Engine um, so I I think it totally completely makes sense that they’re trying to charge professionals to use it and by and large I think we can and apparently unreal is staying free for students, great yep, fantastic y.
I uh. I I I I am. I am of all the things epic does uh Unreal Engine man is sort of important yeah, I would say yeah, especially as we as we move into an era where I think inhouse engines are just going to ultimately cease to exist at some point like we’re. We’Re already, basically there there are a handful that do I mean CD project red rolls their own engine um, trying to think like who else I mean.
Should they, though, there’s arguments, there’s interesting arguments like uh unreal as far as like the Jen, is that the argument that Jen is part of the experience you are such a Bethesda Fanboy? How could you even possibly bring that argument to the? I don’t actually completely disagree with that argument. I knew it. I knew it. That’S not the one I was trying to make, but I don’t mind it.
Sometimes it’s funny. Okay. Okay, come on all right anyways, but my point is that uh creation, uh creation engine, is that what it’s called I know, creation kit is the modding thing, it’s extremely friendly for modding, okay, which is not as far as my understanding goes true about other popular engines. Not as true about Unity, not as true about uh unreal, as far I don’t I don’t know this, this is cdpr is apparently switching to u5 by the way um. There are examples of non major engines like that. I just absolutely love as a as a as a gamer, even if for a developer you know they’re, terrible or for development.
You know outside of the one game that was used, that you know was made in it. It makes no sense um Foundation engine, so that was shadow of the Tomb Raider apparently balers. Gate 3 is made in Divinity 4.0 engine, which is their own engine. There you go wow uh Shadow. The Tomb Raider was built using Foundation engine which was built by Crystal Dynamics and then used to build rise of the Tomb Raider as well and was enhanced by idos Montreal um and that one’s good that game, just it just scaled on everything, incredibly well more CPU. More FPS, more GPU, more FPS, add more gpus, more FPS it it the game, supported hdri.
I don’t know if Shadow did but rise of the tomator definitely supported HDR like it just it flipp and did everything and it just you know how some games you turn off vsync and it’s like okay tearing Fest it just it it it didn’t. It just always ran Great Frame. Pacing was really solid, um ID’s, another example the the engine that they built Doom, maternal in dude. Well, I don’t know I don’t know what it’s called hold on, I’m just while you looked that up.
Uh Cipher Colt in F chat, said creation. Engine can’t even render more than one camera yet no mirrors, no CCTV. Also. They have issues with like Windows, all this other kind of stuff. I know I’m not saying there isn’t major major downsides. What I’m saying is is a big argument. Is the whole creation part their big argument? Is they release these creation kits and they’re like there there’s a reason why there’s so many mods for Bethesda games, yeah inch 7 is Doom, maternal man. If just every shooter game was built on idtech 7, we wouldn’t need Hardware upgrades honestly yeah uh. What G? What games are are built with idtech improvements compared to ittech 6, they cut out a million fewer lines. They cut out a million lines of code, unified, HDR lighting shadowing you, you don’t measure uh the best programmers in in like positive amounts of lines of code. You you measure them in negative amounts of lines of code. This is uh.
This is incredible: improved image, Streaming new GPU triangle, light and occlusion coloring system to not render what isn’t on screen dramatically improved compression games using it Tech 7. Do maternal man see I I I hate that, and I know that it’s really complicated, obviously based on that unity and epic are both struggling to make money in the game engine business. Obviously, I’m not going to just go to ID and be like okay, I’m going to be your new Chief engine, um business unit officer, Visionary yeah, exactly and – and I you know every game – every game’s going to be made on on in Tech 8. And here we go obvious it’s more complicated than that, and these tools must be very, very internal grade, um if they, if they never get released outside of these companies, but man – I I just I wish they were that’d, be awesome.
I love. I love inch. 7.
Cuz that game it runs on anything. It looks so good. Oh my gosh, so good mystical said a lot of Dooms benefits come from Vulcan. I don’t think that’s! No! That’S that’s not true. It runs.
It runs great across the board. Yeah that runs freaking awesome across the board. Also there’s other stuff that you on PC. It supports Vulcan rendering only, but I don’t think that’s actually the entire reason, because it will absolutely be running some form of direct 3D on the Xbox and it runs great and looks great on the Xbox so da engine for Ubisoft games.
I don’t know what to tell you yeah, but does anyone like da yeah? That’S why I kind of said it that way. I don’t know .