Gnollrunner said:
I think your complaining about stuff many people deal with ever day on many different sites

Really? I never had an experience like that before. Even so, I don't think anyone should be tolerating that kind of stuff and accepting something like that as normal. If something is not right, speak about it.

Gnollrunner said:
IMHO your best bet is not to try to complete with Epic, but fill some niche that isn't currently well supported.

For now I've just decided to focus on my games.

Gnollrunner said:
As for the grant, just forget it. Nobody owes anyone money and it's not worth fretting about. Good luck.

I did forget it ? But I didn't say that they owe me something. The goal of my post was:

-trying to give feedback to Epic what can they improve

-show how their program is negatively affecting people, I was talking about my experience, but I know others are in the same boat

-like, imagine how many thousands of people spent their time to go their website to fill out the form with some form of hope, big or small, just to be greeted after few months with a copy pasted automated “no” message. They will get let-down for sure, so when you think of all of those people, it's like a giant pain-maker on a global scale. In my case I had big hope, because I worked my ass off, was idealistic, constructed something powerful, my tech could've been used/integrated to help more people/projects/software including Unreal, and heard of a success of a similar project, so I was foolish to hope that Mr Tim Sweeney would help a fellow game engine developer a bit, support and promote development of open source software. It was my thinking and my argument in my grants application, that more engine developers is a good thing, because each and everyone of them can have a unique perspective, develop new or improve existing technologies. It was my thinking that Epic cares about innovation and small developers, however I was proven wrong.

-warn other people what can they expect - absolutely nothing, except lost time and hope. Epic Grants program is like 2 things that come to my mind: losing money on buying a lottery ticket and hoping to win, or like a black box that you put some data inside, click click some buttons, but then nothing happens, you click click more, and nothing, ok the box is broken.

-the main problem that I have with a program like that, is they don't give anything in return, I'm not talking about money now, but at least about feedback. If you organize a program like that, you should give something in return, if you're not prepared to do that, you should shut it down, because like this it's just a giant pain-maker on a global scale.

Ok, moving on, and going forward!

Gnollrunner said:
Good luck.

Thanks, appreciate it, good luck to you too ?

esenthel said:

Really? I never had an experience like that before. Even so, I don't think anyone should be tolerating that kind of stuff and accepting something like that as normal. If something is not right, speak about it.

Well if you follow US news, you would know, rightly or wrongly even a US president can be censored and/or banned from social networks. Also negative reviews have been notoriously deleted from various major online seller sites. It's really rampant these days and there is not much that can be done about it.

Yes I know the president story, but that's totally different ?

As for the deletion of reviews, there are 2 things that come to mind:

-speak/share about it

-vote with your wallet, if you're unhappy with a store, use another

I'm not new around here, but lost my old login…

Esenthel, you have very, very naïve thinking, and I'm not answering directly you (people with strong belief system rarely want to learn), but people that want to have some success in this business.

1. Our life on this planet is constant war and conflicts. Do not believe for a moment, that we evolved into some sort of conscious society that works together towards common goals, singing Kumbaya… There is some sort of social utopia image created for the masses and it suits its purpose to keep you working from 9 to 5 for a big company. It has a name - corporate culture, which is some sort of new religion used to shape up big groups of people that must work together towards common goal (the goal of the corporation) . Do no think however for a minute, that we have evolved the rules of the jungle, especially if you are an entrepreneur. You, as an individual, are ALONE out there, and nobody cares about you. That's just the reality. If you think differently, be prepared to test your belief system really hard…
2. The goal of any big and powerful corporation, is to become even bigger and more powerful... You really think Epic knows that you exist and have a project and opinion? You really think Epic is out there throwing money to “help” other devs and projects? Really dude? Epic do whatever will suit them to grow and make it more difficult for the competition. Yes, they picked Godot, since it's a popular project, and rivals to some extend Unity. It doesn't matter if your project is better. Doesn't matter at all. It's not popular enough, it doesn't suits their business strategy. There is also something else - ALL companies hate single devs. If you are single dev, you are joke to them, you do not have business model, you are just a worker. And even if you go to work for them, they will make you go through their standard shitty tests and HR… This is how much they hate solo devs… It's not even David vs Goliath, you are the dust underneath…
3. I'm not just a “hater”. I was in your situation, working on a project for many years, 3.5 of which - full time. It was targeting general visualization. Then Epic said - we give away UE for absolutely free to use it internally for production… So, how you even start to compete with that? They are bigger, more popular, and do not even charge ANY money. This is when I decided to cut the losses and shut down my project…
4. Even if it failed, as always, you learn something. And while I generally knew it's bad and hard, I still underestimated how bad it is. Mostly how the “users” of our software think. Most of them are very ignorant, they don't care about alternatives, they do not care about better workflow, they do not care about bloat, they do not care about bugs… What they care then? Well - marketing. Just listen how most people speak - “google”(tm) it, make a Power Point(tm) presentation, write it in Word(tm)… For most people there is just ONE software for the job - the most popular one. They do not even know what is a search engine, they know just Google. That's it. They do not know what OS is - they know either OSX of Windows. They can't use other office packages, other video providers then Youtube... And when you tell them - there are alternative solutions, by a better companies that will not spy on you, that will be cheaper, etc, etc… they do not care. People are creatures of convenience. They go with the heard, adapt to something, and stick to it. And all corporations know that. They understand that they can get away with shitty products, since the important part is not the quality of the product, it's winning the war on people's minds. Yes, most hate ads, hate to be told what to do, but doing these marketing campaigns over and over again, throwing money, “free” stuff… it really works. One must really think VERY well - how to win customers. And most of the reasons a logical person can think of - are ALL wrong. Most often, you can't win customers by providing a better product, or a cheaper on, or treating people better. Sure, you will fine few that will value that. But they do not make big difference, since the masses are half-conscious, and it requires huge business machine to change their minds. There is a saying - what you can't buy with money, you buy with a lot of money… And especially today, you can see this very well. Google is basically going full big brother, competing only with USSR. But almost nobody cares… People are not rational, they do not really “choose”, and you can never build successful business on that assumption.
5. My conclusion after all that was - you have zero chance to compete in many, many areas. You must really understand the market, and what worked 20 years ago, will not work today. Thing change, you must adapt or die. Most serious software is already written, and what is left for indies is mostly the entertainment industry. Even big corporations have issues with satisfying this market, since a game / interactive content is mostly experience. It's value is immediately perceived. While a serious application requires… well - brain activity, time investment, understanding of the topic… stuff that most of today's customers have little to spare. While creating interactive media is costly, I think those that understand human psychology can still find some success. There is still huge market out there, and big companies compete for controlling it and making content for their platform. While the difficulties 10/20 years ago were mostly technical, to run graphics on these slow computers, now it's more about how to provide new types of experience… and invest as little as possible. And some people really achieve that, there are successful stories. Doing technical work however these days - it's done IMO. Better join big company and do what you are told for a paycheck. I'm personally trying to change my way of thinking from technical to more consumer oriented and it's hard, since I'm also more technical oriented person. It's easier for me to find creativity in writing complex software. But the thing is - when only you understand it, when only you have the ability to see how it's better then the rest, nobody cares. I envy the artists since they can just show off their work, and it's easily valued by anyone. Our work as software engineers sadly is invisible.

Hi ivalylo,

Thank you very much for your long message, I really enjoyed reading it, especially since you had a similar experience, and like you say you're also a technical person, so I see we have something in common.

I do agree with most of the things you're saying, but want to add a few things.

Yes I'm idealistic at heart, but I'm also realistic person that has seen the world for a long time and I know very well about all the bad things people and big companies can do.

I like watching tv shows, so I'll mention 2 of them, to bring some analogy :) What is inspiring for me, is something like in Star Trek Discovery series, the Starfleet Academy, they fight for right things, and being fair. Just everytime I see it, I feel really inspired, and the character of Mr Spock that is super logical, seems really cool to me.

The another tv show I'd like to mention is "The Boys", story about "super-heroes" - people with supernatural abilities, that are super evil, to the point of killing innocent bystanders, and not giving a damn, yet through the power of the company that manages them, and their powerful marketing, they're beloved by masses, that don't have a clue about the real story - about what's really happening behind the scenes. If you haven't seen it, you have to, it's amazing.

So getting back to the point:

ivalylo said:
The goal of any big and powerful corporation, is to become even bigger and more powerful... You really think Epic knows that you exist and have a project and opinion? You really think Epic is out there throwing money to “help” other devs and projects? Really dude? Epic do whatever will suit them to grow and make it more difficult for the competition.

This is what I was actually trying to show, not just an opinion, but a real life story and example, as a proof, for people to read, and make their own opinion about it. Epic is not some Robin Hood helping small developers, fighting big corporations such as Apple and Google for "fairness in app store prices and for benefit of all developers". They are themself a big corporation, that doesn't give a damn about fairness, and the only thing they're doing is trying to weaken the competition and get more money for themself. They want to do some more things in their Fortnight game, and 30% cut from Apple and Google was standing in their way, so they made a plan to eliminate the obstacle, simple as that.

But I don't want to say that they're some kind of evil people like from the tv show that I've mentioned. People and companies are mixed bag of good and bad. What I'd like to say, from my experience, is that this company is unfair, unethical, and good things they're doing are just for show and their own agenda. So I will not support a company like that, I've moved away from Unreal Marketplace onto CGTrader and Unity Asset store.

Let us not be fooled by powerful marketing machines, it's important to think for yourself and make your own decisions.
When judging someone, look at the facts, look at their actions, not at their words.

ivalylo said:
4.

For your paragraph #4, after years of experience in this work, unfortunately, I have to say, that I was coming to similar conclusions as you.

ivalylo said:
Better join big company and do what you are told for a paycheck.

That's a good idea if you need big money, right now, quick. But if you're not forced to do so, I wouldn't recommend it. Big companies become too powerful, greedy and unethical. I'd rather make less money but work in a friendly and ethical place.

The problem in the world is that people and big companies in the top are too powerful, the world needs more small businesses for more fairness.

It is we, the people in the world who make them powerful, we work for them, we buy their products, use their services. If you don't agree with what one company is doing, move to another or even start your own if you have resources to do so.

In my case, I'm lucky to have the luxury of being able to keep working on my own projects, so I will keep on doing that. I've shifted my focus from the engine, onto making games. People when choosing a game engine, will choose only one, but that's not the same story with games, people will play any game that looks interesting for them. So hope to have more luck with that.

Good luck to any entrepreneurs and small business owners!

The problem is that both Unity and Epic (their store) are operating at a loss of $100 million annually. This should not be allowed to occur in a free market. It would be like a chain of grocery stores selling food at half-cost. Naturally, all other grocery stores would go out of business. It's really the government's job to shut this type of noncompetitive behavior down, but we don't have a free market system. (I studied economics and have an MBA, so please don't lecture me with crackpot libertarian nonsense that conveniently ignores monopoly power). What we have is corruption, but this does tend to cause inefficiency that can be exploited.

I really recommend the books “Crossing the Chasm” and “The Innovator's Dilemma”. These helped me to form my current strategy.

I experienced some similar problems and the only way around it was to focus on one specific niche and give people something they can't say no to. The results of my work will be made available tomorrow. I've followed your stuff in the past and if things work out with my new tech, I will happily offer you a job working on a revolutionary new game engine technology, if that is interesting to you. You will get equity in the company and a lot more creative freedom than you would have working elsewhere.

Hi Josh, it's nice to meet you. I've seen your engine as well in the past, and honestly I'm happy to see that you're still alive and kicking.

Josh Klint said:
It would be like a chain of grocery stores selling food at half-cost. Naturally, all other grocery stores would go out of business.

Actually this reminded me of a story that I read about Amazon and diapers. Amazon had a very big competitor selling only diapers, and to kill the company off, Amazon started selling diapers with major discounts, to the point that Amazon was actually losing money, $200 million in a single month. They have truckloads of money so they didn't care. The competitor went out of business, and after that, Amazon raised prices. You can read about it here - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/emails-detail-amazons-plan-to-crush-a-startup-rival-with-price-cuts/​

This is an example of what I was talking about with too powerful companies being unethical.

You can think by yourself what Epic is going to do after they killed off all competition ?

People should think twice before choosing a game engine.

Josh Klint said:
The results of my work will be made available tomorrow.

Great! I will wait with anticipation to see what did you come up with, and cheer for your hard work and effort!

And whether I'd like to join, that's hard to say. One thing is for sure, is that together we would be stronger. However other side is that sort of I already shifted my focus to finish my games, one will be completed in a couple months, another one is like half-way finished, been already few years in development, still needs few more, but could be faster if released in “Early access” version. And the main issue being, that I'd prefer to stay on my engine, rather than jump to another.

But I'm open for any discussion on the topic ?

Cheers!

I have a question: Do you contacted the customer support regarding the defective models you bought on there store? It is often better to contact the customer support to resolve problems.

Regarding the Epic MegaGrants: as far as I understand it its for something that directly or indirectly benefits there UE. The person who reads the submissions is probably not a technical person but a marketing / future company strategy specialist.

And yes, they could have added a short text in the rejection email.

"We are sorry but after reviewing your submission we came to the conclusion that your project is not what we are looking for. We know that this is always hart to heat but we thing your project is a really cool one. Keep up the great work."

If I am looking at this reel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwF2Wvrt9io​ every technical aspect really diminishes and what is left is pure fun.

Wicked engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGUnWmwKNeo​ which is also quite impressive.

----

Just my thoughts but view it through the perspective of a company that wants to make a game. Today games are multi million dollar project. It would be the last job of this person if it would select your engine because what happens when you can not continue work for what ever reason? Also to find engineers that worked with your engine would be hard?

And an indie game does not care about the game engine, because mostly these are creative persons that want to realize there ideas and get things done with the help of youtube university ;-)

Replace game engine with database. Its the same. No one with interest of making money would use a single person database.

esenthel said:
I'd rather make less money but work in a friendly and ethical place.

You could work as a social worker or a nurse? (Do not know if this would be something for you)

Or write a book about how to optimize things?

Or view it from this perspective work for epic and extract as much money from them as you can and have nice colleges.

We all should focus on family and do not get so angry about our jobs.

And: the world runs on marketing.

And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle#In_computing​​

And: any press is good press. (forgot this)

----

Your engine did its job and it has a long feature list and as far as I understand you ship a compiler(s).

But sometimes we have to accept that things changes and we have to move on.

That is the problem with our nerdy beloved projects we rely on monetarily. If one had a nine to five job and does the project in the free time then we do not get angry when our business phases out.

esenthel said:
After a few years of making it, I came to the conclusion that I've built something cool, and maybe other people would be interested in using it. I've made a website about it, posted in many places across the internet, and it really happened, people got interested, and bought some licenses.

The story could also be this way: With all this knowledge I applied for a game engine engineering job at a game company…

What I want to say is: from this time on you were a business man and had to extrapolate what happens when competition evolves and I can not keep up? This problem has every company: who do we get customers to continue to spend money or even increase spending?

----

I am sorry if anything was to offensive. I do not know how to say it in another way. I am sorry.

Hi dr_nanoel ?

dr_nanoel said:
I have a question: Do you contacted the customer support regarding the defective models you bought on there store? It is often better to contact the customer support to resolve problems.

Of course I did, I've explained it in detail, that I've contacted the developer first, offered my knowledge and assistance and fixing problems, instead of problems getting fixed, the dev sent me some rude message and blocked me from getting updates. Then Epic comes and instead of helping to resolve the issue they're just silencing my voice so they will get more sales. They don't care what's right or wrong, they just need more money. My opinion - Epic acts greedy and unethical.

dr_nanoel said:
The person who reads the submissions is probably not a technical person but a marketing / future company strategy specialist.

I'm not sure, I think something like that should be seen by technical people and person in charge too, should be a group decision. (btw. I've contacted CEO too)

dr_nanoel said:
And yes, they could have added a short text in the rejection email.

Yes, that's what an honest/decent company would do.

dr_nanoel said:
Regarding the Epic MegaGrants: as far as I understand it its for something that directly or indirectly benefits there UE.

Getting a grant and opening my license more, would benefit UE and all of its users as well, my codes, tech, designs, algorithms, ideas, tools/utilities, optimizations/improvements, functionalities could be used by everyone. Supporting open source game engine developers allowing them to continue their work, supports technology innovation for all people to benefit from, and their own work serves as inspiration for all other developers. Every game engine developer has their own point of view, and can bring something new and unique to the table. My opinion - Epic doesn't care about technology innovation and improving the user experience for their users, they're just playing some manipulative game to maximize their profits.

dr_nanoel said:
It would be the last job of this person if it would select your engine because what happens when you can not continue work for what ever reason?

That's one point of view, however it's not reality. There were a few teams that finished their games using my engine, no they didn't die. They got good money and can keep growing.

You can ask the same question for a big company, what happens when CEO dies, moves on, retires, insert any other reason, and CEO gets replaced with another one. The new one moves the company into another direction, company goes to sh**, and their customers have to look for alternatives. Same thing can happen even if CEO stays the same but sells company and then gets controlled by the parent company.

My engine is free and open source, everyone can work with it and add/improve anything they need, I'm even placing it into public domain after I die. If I can't get any reward for it during my lifetime, I'm giving it away fully for everyone. Unlike Epic I care about the world, people and technology progress.

And another thing, my engine doesn't have any bloat/useless/dead/legacy/obsolete code. I've carefully written it to be simple and straighforward. It's very powerful yet can compile in around 20+ seconds. So when you look at its codes, it's not a mess, but it's actually carefully designed and organized, it's as simple as possible.

dr_nanoel said:
You could work as a social worker or a nurse? (Do not know if this would be something for you)

Why are you asking about something like that? ? I have full respect for all kinds of people and all kinds of jobs, but that's not something related to me. I'd rather stick to what I'm good at. I'm not looking for other jobs at this time, I'm fully motivated to work on my game projects. But yes, if games wouldn't work, I could try doing something completely different ? However most likely I'll just keep trying with games, using new ideas and approaches.

dr_nanoel said:
Or view it from this perspective work for epic and extract as much money from them as you can and have nice colleges.

I would never do that. I had positive opinion about them in the past, now I've learned more about them, and had some first-hand experiences, now my opinion is negative. When you work for a company like that, you're just making the people at the top more rich/powerful so they can continue doing more greedy/unethical things with their business. I support small businesses, big companies too but only if they're fair/ethical.

dr_nanoel said:
We all should focus on family and do not get so angry about our jobs

Yes, my family is my happiness ? Precisely the reason why I've applied for Epic Grant. Everyone has their own personal problems, so have I. I've applied and asked for money because needed to help my family.

dr_nanoel said:
Your engine did its job and it has a long feature list and as far as I understand you ship a compiler(s).

That's a Code Editor, that can improve programming, you don't have to write H headers and CPP source code files separately losing time. Instead you write the codes just once, and my Code Editor will intelligently generate the H and CPP files for you, so they can be compiled by regular C++ compilers (Visual Studio, Clang) and opened in IDEs (Visual Studio, Xcode, Linux Netbeans).

dr_nanoel said:
What I want to say is: from this time on you were a business man and had to extrapolate what happens when competition evolves and I can not keep up? This problem has every company: who do we get customers to continue to spend money or even increase spending?

I was just doing my best all the time, and when noticed income is on the decline, I started shifting towards my game projects.

Thanks for your post! Have a nice day.

What I think about the game engine arena is that it is a wotrhless effort to emerge, there is too much competition, technology progresses fast and new gpu are higly expensive these days.

I am working on my engine , but it is a corollary to another project i am trying to finishing , i am not putting all my eggs into my engine basket, I know it will fail. I have more propability to pubblish my game rather than working for 10+ years on an engine which will become obsolete hour after hour.

I admire your effort to give away your hard job for free, but people very very often do not attach value to free stuff.

Unreal 5 will blow away anything , companies adn startups will use UE5 , why use something else when we have this beast for free ? my biggest concern is that sooner or later Epic or Unity will change their policy to be more restrictive , lots of garbage is being created especially with unity. When Unity or Epic will restrict the use of theri engine to more experienced programmers a big bubble of orphaned edevelopers will be created with a knowledge base of engines, not a knowledge base of programming and/ or solving complex problems by themselves.

The difference between programmers and softwware developers is that a programmer uses a tool, a software engineer creates that tool. Engines createed a vast amount of programmers.