While the fee before was pretty paltry, I now have zero excuses not to download Unreal and take a look.

This is an amazing move, but the forum will get a overrun by Newbies there still needs to be a premium option.

I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

You must have ran into the flood of "My First Unity Game" that has hit Steam and other sites.

From the perspective of a total novice, it's going to be difficult justifying using "some engine a lot of indie devs use" versus "some engine that all the AAA titles use", even if reality is more complex.

I've actually used and seen other teams use Unity on several released titles on multiple platforms, from 3DS to xbox.

Looking over titles like Hearthstone, Might and Magic X, and Wasteland 2, Unity has a growing list of major titles. It is not just a tool for hobby developers.

The mutual race between the engines is a good thing, I think. The two big differences I see for free users are the sizes of the store and community (where Unity wins), and the availability of source code (where Unreal wins). There are other differences of course, but those are the two biggest from my perspective.

The costs for hobby developers is also interesting from a business strategy viewpoint. Unity is free until you earn $100,000 per year, then $1500 per user. Unreal is 5% after $3000/quarter. Unreal's cost is a diagonal line over revenue, Unity's is a stepped line over developers.

Which one is a cheaper software license deal for you depends on your revenue and your number of developers. For a moderately successful game Unity is generally cheaper. At 3 developers the equality point is $90K (slightly below the limit where Unity requires purchase). At 10 developers the equality point is $300K. If the 3-developer product ends up radically successful, perhaps a million dollars in revenue, that's $50K for Unreal versus $4.5K on Unity.

Overall, I hope both of them are successful. It is an area of abundance and growth, and both tools are valuable to the global communities.

Damn, and I thought I could squeeze another year out of my 32-bit system before having to buy more memory and switching to win-64 :(

But I ain't complaining. I'll get to connect nodes. I love visual programming!

that's $50K for Unreal versus $4.5K on Unity.

That's the kind of troubling decision I wouldn't mind making, sitting on $1million revenue -- I think the simplest answer for now is use what you know best, or is best-suited to the task. Cost is largely inconsequential in my eyes.

There is Linux support

I don't see the download link though.

It seems you have to build it yourself:

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Building_On_Linux

Hm. Ok thanks! Although I am very excited of this news right now, installing video card drivers on Linux had been a painful experience to me. I'll have to unfortunately skip this.

that's $50K for Unreal versus $4.5K on Unity.

That's the kind of troubling decision I wouldn't mind making, sitting on $1million revenue -- I think the simplest answer for now is use what you know best, or is best-suited to the task. Cost is largely inconsequential in my eyes.

The million, after the extra costs and taxes, will fund the three people for about a year, maybe a bit more. Roughly half vanishes due to taxes (both corporate and personal) and what's left pays them for their development both past and future.


$50K is the cost difference between adding and not adding an additional person for the next short project, or about five months. That can make an enormous difference.

The million, after the extra costs and taxes, will fund the three people for about a year, maybe a bit more. Roughly half vanishes due to taxes (both corporate and personal) and what's left pays them for their development both past and future.

Either you're omitting some additional expenses, or you live in Luxembourg, because $166k even without benefits of any kind is a veritable ton of money per developer. And yes, I'm ignoring costs like PCs or visual studio/3dsmax licenses, because they make up at most 5% of that budget.

The cost to a company is different from what the individual sees. The estimate for most tech businesses is a cost of $10K per month per person. $166K provides just over a year.

The cost to a company is different from what the individual sees. The estimate for most tech businesses is a cost of $10K per month per person. $166K provides just over a year.

If we're going by that estimate (and I'd argue we shouldn't, since shops that small typically don't pay everybody $90k either), wouldn't 50k for three people only last ~2 months, not 5? Sorry to be "that guy", but something sounds fishy there.

We're totally off topic now, but reread what I wrote carefully:

The million, after the extra costs and taxes, will fund the three people for about a year, maybe a bit more. ...
$50K is the cost difference between adding and not adding an additional person for the next short project, or about five months.