Hi, I’ll just chime in by saying I don’t understand your reluctance to spend (potentially) a >one time fee< of $20 for full access to the current snapshot of the Unreal Engine 4 vs a “trial” that typically will have either watermarks when you run it, or times out after a certain number of (never enough) days and then you’re left with nothing?
Not to presume anything about your pocketbook, but for what’s typically the cost of a “Happy Meal” down at the corner fast food restaurant, you’d have the full engine and if you want, the complete source code as well (personally I prefer a “black box” for my game engine, hoping to never have to fiddle with the internal code, but I do demand excellent user documentation on the use of it.)
Epic stepped up with an absolutely unique offer to the games development community; a to tinker and dabble OR to become the next Gears of War hero all for the price of mowing someone’s grass or shoveling snow out of a neighbor’s driveway!
If you do actually sell something from your endeavors, then you’re obligated to pay 5% to Epic.
But in the mean time, you’re testing out your ideas, playing with the engine and learning the ins and outs of it, potentially making yourself valuable to the eventual hundreds of game development teams and companies that are adopting this engine (now having access to it as well), who will need talented folks that know how to produce quality work with it.
I can’t see this as being nothing but an absolute win for involved with this arrangement?
Admittedly I have questions about what about if I make a giga-million dollars off of some “Flappy Happy” game I come up with - Epic would get 5% of a giga-million which is a hella amount of money for a game engine license??
I’d sorta wonder about payments caps etc., at that point, but I’ll worry about that if I’m fortunate enough to cross that bridge!
I can however appreciate you wanting to perhaps wait until the engine is a bit more mature etc., but from my experience using and buying lots of software, (unfortunately), sometimes it’s good to get in at the beginning because for one, you actually have a to shape the software though suggestions on improvements while the software is still in its early development phase, and you also get a leg up on learning and testing features as they’re added in over time.
Personally say just go ahead and just jump in and enjoy playing around - that exactly what I’m doing, and I’m loving it!
Frankly I don’t mind giving Epic $200 or so for a year, just so show my appreciation for what they’ve done here. Typically my software upgrades are in the $600+ range, certainly not ~$200!
I applaud them for this wonderful gesture they’ve offered and if I don’t find myself using the software, or being happy with what I accomplish, I wouldn’t have broke my bank like I’ve done with all the other software in the past just to have access to using the packages.
-Will