this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Migrate to Unreal Engine, License, Royalty, Useful Info, Your Options (www.youtube.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I made a video to help Unity devs quickly navigate things before they make decisions. Watch is not necessary I copy paste my video description below with all the links I shown in video. If you like to hear my thoughts or opinion then watch I don't mind, I don't use youtube video to make a living.

-----copy paste below-----

This is not tutorial video, also not video to tell you to use UE. It is a video that tell you the information you might need to start and make a decision for yourself. There are plenty of other better tutorial content creator than me, feel free to search for those.

TL;DW: Just click through the links if you don't want to spend 30+ mins hearing me talking about it.

1:06 Migration Doc: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/unreal-engine-for-unity-developers/

2:18 License Portal: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license

Standard License: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal

EULA Change Log: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula-change-log/unreal

8:16 UE Features: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/features

9:46 Setup Visual Studios: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/setting-up-visual-studio-development-environment-for-cplusplus-projects-in-unreal-engine/

10:46 D3D Crash: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/how-to-fix-a-gpu-driver-crash-when-using-unreal-engine/

14:04 Good Sample Projects to start

17:42 Show Lyra, talk about Blueprint, C++, making your thing in plugins

20:35 Convert Blueprint Project to C++ project.

21:15 Create your own plugins

24:24 Deal with Experimental, Beta features

27:07 Market Place free content and restriction

29:00 UEFN: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/fortnite/getting-started/uefn

30:28 Show UEFN, example island UEFN Doc: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/uefn/starting-out-in-unreal-editor-for-fortnite

32:41 Verse Doc: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/uefn/learn-programming-with-verse-in-unreal-editor-for-fortnite

34:27 Creator Economy 2.0: https://create.fortnite.com/news/introducing-the-creator-economy-2-0?team=personal

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Time to skip all of this proprietary nonsense and support godot, both financially and intellectually, so people are finally free of the control.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I did support Blender Foundation from very early on and basically first batch of subs when they launched blender cloud(10 Euro per month for my current sub billing, starting 2014. I've also supported many older Blender film before the subs.) I will support Godot if it has similar foundation that drives/keeps the integrity of Godot's development. Godot is MIT and can be abandoned if the main devs are hired and can no longer contribute to this engine per their work contract agreement.

Now, let's talk about real world situation. There are patents, copyright/IP laws, DCMA, etc. Godot engine without a big backing like Epic or Blender Foundation is in a risky position. Basically, if any capital big enough file a law suit challenging that Godot contains some 3rd party code that some people stupid enough to copy paste something from other licensed contents. The repo and people use it with the "contaminated" branch can not protect themselves from lawsuits or patent trolls. It could take months of efforts to remove codes just to comply with a take down or audit process to prove that you are clean, and in the mean time anyone that used that branch is on the hook for collateral(especially if one game that use Godot goes viral and thus became target of patent trolls.)

I did not see anyone talked about this part and hope there IS a solution to this issue.

On the other hand, if you develop your own engine, it's the same issue if your game goes viral without any fund to defend yourself it's not even a joke. Studios/Manufacturers do go down from lawsuits in the past.

Using engines/tools owned by big corps though, you are on the hook for royalty subscription, etc, and maybe sneak unity move like this one. BUT, it is much easier to defend yourself in this situation(if unity devs kept their original TOS and present to court). And if patent trolls tries to sue your game for the tech you use, Epic/Blender/Adobe/Autodesk become your first line of defense since you use licensed tech and are not responsible for such infringement. They will have to win against them and settle before they can come after you. And if the provider did found something wrong, they will either pay or purge the infringed part from their tech.

Real world legal stuff is very harsh and you need trusty allies when you are fairly small and easy to pick.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Similar to Blender, Godot is backed by the Godot foundation: https://godot.foundation/

They also recently opened their own fund page if you want to drop a few dollars: https://fund.godotengine.org/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Thanks for the link and I will review the content and make decision later.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I reviewed the foundation webpages today, but did not find anything useful to explain their "actual" budget or spending plans. The foundation is really new and consist of team member and contributors. So I will wait until they have actual financial reports and then decide if I can donate to them.(that as non-profit has to do yearly to the gov.)

List of open source or related org I donated before:

  • there was a group help making Wine changes to make games compatible on linux, I paid for the voting for about 2 years until they are only focus on supporting World of Warcraft. (I think in the beginning their changes will eventually merge to Wine so everyone can benefit, but later they turn into more for profit org. and this group is why I usually don't do subscription based donation and only donate when I use later on. )
  • EFF, I still donate to them from time to time everytime there is an issue about privacy and their name showed up in new articles.
  • Blender, my longest running donation and it makes me really happy that they turn out fine and I still keep donate to them.
  • Gimp and Krita, I only donated a couple times when I use them for work etc. There was another one that looks like photoshop and then get taken down I also donated before.
  • Gnome and KDE, I donate to them during late 2000 when most of my work with maya/other DCC is on linux. Honestly I hate them sometimes because of how tricky to work with both, but they were so underfunded so I donated to them.
  • a couple other open source libraries, usually happens when I use them for work etc and donate to thank their works.
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A lot of non profits like this do have lawyers on staff, or at least on retainer. Ao3, which hosts fanfiction, has a small army to deal with issues

Also currently in the US you cannot copywrite bits of code, so copy pasting lined off stack overflow is not a legal issue

Also you and I both know the big Corp will try and blame anyone else for the issue and try their best to make it the devs problem anyway, at least with godot you can maybe get some community support or media pressure behind you

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I am not sure if you understand the difference between sharing the code(UE allows you to share code snippet for discussion etc under 30 lines) for discussion etc, compare to paste into your code base and claim it's your creation. Epic sure was not shy away from suing in the past. And there are other examples, ie. Betheda(ZeniMax) sues Oculus that results in settlements. All from codes/tech implemented.

Community support or media pressure means very little when you are served with legal notice, as much as I despise the world's current legal/patent/copyright system works, that's currently the rules everyone follows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

3D asset guy that wanted to play on the game dev side, unreal's blueprint system made the coding a lot more digestible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It does have it's own trap but fortunately less of an issue compare to the initial investment having to compile your own code.(it took me about a week or so to put together a plugin BP function that depends on another module not by default included in the plugin wizard. And I know how to program since 80286 era.)

I personally like the BP idea a lot for prototyping, and it certain can be done if you want to release a BP only game with smaller scale. (ie. a polished up prototype game idea.) Like yes it would take longer to wiring the nodes if you have similar proficiency compare to C# based game engine(that compiles on the fly and run on VMs when you are developing), but IMO the graph node natural leads to less headaches compare to coding error. ie. infinite loops, syntax errors, bad scoping/indentation, etc. So it's more beginner friendly and honestly they are running pretty fast as well after the nationalization was implemented.

Just remember to develop good habit to make your graph more reusable into macro/function/interface/etc. It's a lot of learning but they will pay off.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The only engine with even worse licensing than Unity

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Worse? It is very consistent, consider how many games shipped with UE on different platforms. copy paste one of my comment I did on reddit.(yep, I go back to help the unity devs migrates and answer questions regarding to UE, same ID you feel free to check.) ---- copy and paste below

UE standard license quick break down(EULA up to today):

  • Per Game life time revenue < $1M you don't have to pay a dime.
  • Per Game life time revenue > $1M then you start paying 5% quarterly for the >$1M part.
  • Per Game quarterly if you make < $10k USD for that quarter then you pay nothing. If you make > $10k then you pay Epic Total = Quarterly Revenue * 5%

That's why one of the unity's UE cost break down on twitter is nonsense cause believe it or not, game sale income are very seasonal and corresponding to big title releases and promotion(steam sales, humble bundle, publisher sales, etc. ) And it's per game. Vast majority of indie developer will never need to pay Epic a cent.

On top of that, if you ever go viral etc.(say >1m revenue annually ) You can still negotiate with Epic for custom license terms. They might even buy your whole company.(ie. Rocket League, FallGuy )

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Unreal is 1M lifetime, Unity is 1M in a 12 month window, also per game. If you make that much, unless you F2P, Unity will be cheaper. My total Unity expenses are < 20K and new fees won't affect me, Unreal would have been > 100K.

Unity's new fees are unacceptable, don't get me wrong, but I would still pick Unity over Unreal regardless. I'm favoring Godot atm, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can you care to share a bit more detail and let us see what kind game would have pay Unreal > 100k to date?

Like you already made >3M revenue life time for one game and pass the quarterly threshold after that amount where any indie dev would consider "huge success, let's have cake" situation.

From that above math, your claim basically means either:

  • you made more than 3M during launch quarter, cause 2M*0.05 = 100k
  • you made more than 3M + 30k during first year of your game. ( assuming launch is a success and auto pass the quarterly threshold )
  • you made more than 3M + 10k x (quarters past threshold-1) + leftover to date

I don't know about you I'd gladly pay anyone 100k for the game engine they developed and I rely on if I made that much. It's less than the steam fee and corporate tax that would have incurred. (gov industry credit and regional legislation does offset this by a lot, I am just assuming the regular NA >15% corp income tax. )

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Option 3 is correct, unless you are doing F2P, unreal is going to be more expensive in almost all cases, I don't think you need to dig very far into the numbers to see that.

I don't see the point of your last paragraph? Yes, 100k is less than 3m, but it's still more than 20k, and every penny counts as an indie. Additionally I don't think Unreal offers anything more than Unity for a majority of Indies to justify the extra cost.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well, I guess I have to congrat for your game's success and hopefully Godot also fill your need.

In my head if any of game < 3 team members made over 3M in that option 3 case, I'd call a meeting and plan a retirement path for all team member. ( depending on area and cost of living you can totally retire with 500~750k in proper investment. ) But if it's around 10~20 people team then yep 100k vs 20k is no brainer cause 100k would have paid for around 1 person's salary, and it would be pretty tight after all the platform cost, business expenses, etc.

That's why I asked for more detail in the first place, cause the context and how the company is operated matters a lot. (like the 108% revenue calculation someone posted on reddit after the unity fee change, formula does matter. )

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You're not going to be retiring off 3m in gross revenue, I've been mostly one person and living modestly, but I'll be running out of money sooner rather than later. Running costs will eat it up before you can invest, and wars and pandemics will eat the rest.

The 108% calculation will never apply. You have to be F2P, stubbornly refuse to upgrade to pro or make a deal with Unity, and it also depends on what the shit they mean by "installs".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

hmmm, so as mostly solo dev made over 3m in one game and your cost averse nature tells me you did not hire people that are good with financial to plan what to do with extra surge of money. If that's the case and you do all your own tax, etc, I strongly suggest you seek advice from some local company that are doing well and ask if they can refer you to their accounting firm. Even in my self-employed era, hiring accountant saved me 5k+ per year by paying her ~250, so it's net positive. In your case it would've saved way more and they can help you plan the year to year thing. Incorporated would probably be different contract but it will save you money by hiring good financial people.(Because they make a living by navigating the tax laws and prevent you making stupid mistakes and helping you do all the paper works.) And I hope you do it before you sit on the pile and then actually watching it drain while trying to make another success. That's why most lottery winner didn't actually retire in peace since guess what, general population is very much financially illiterate.

Believe it or not, I study for about 3~4 months in my spare time regarding how to invest my gov retirement account(the pre-tax money one) etc and then find out I made really bad financial decisions in my early careers. If I did what I do now(starting about age 26 instead of 34, regular contribution and using left over to buy whenever there is a market panic drop), I could have probably speed up my retirement plan by 10 years.(so retire around 50~55, compare to now it's 60~65 like everyone else, maybe earlier/later depending on the market. note, everyone's retirement cost of living is very different.) I am not going to tell you what to invest, etc, or you have to do blah blah other than the please hire a good accountant above. I strongly suggest you put aside time and learn about investment and tax-saving tools you actually have. If your country does not have a good regulatory body since you mentioned war/pandemics, still talk with an reputable accountant and they are more experienced with money and can offer you good advice/plans. And there are countries that welcomes retired expat and offer quick visa/permanent resident paper work if that's something you would consider. (if you live in high cost of living area, it makes sense to move to low cost of living place for retirement given that the infrastructure is adequate. )

edit: context, I am 45 now.

Btw, the 108% case is using the pro license.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I appreciate the tips and concern, but I'm doing fine, I've been holding on for over 10 years and I have an accountant. I live in a high VAT/tax area, so that just eats up a lot. I've outsourced investments to my bank, which has done a really great job up until the recession.

I'm not trying to defend Unity on this horrible fee, but outside of F2P, the Unity deal is going to be better than Unreal, and I think the non F2P crowd are the ones most likely to switch from Unity to Unreal, so they should be properly informed about the actual costs and Unity is always going to be a better deal if they're making more than 1m on a premium game.