[wrsh07]

You misunderstand the business model.

Unreal is like venture capital or a book advance (or the equivalent in music record deal)

Can you self publish? Sure, of course, have fun. But if you want the support and infrastructure of a company that understands the business of books, you take a deal and it is just like this: if a bunch of authors get book advances, that is generous to the ones who are unsuccessful, and they can only do that _because they capture the upside of those that are successful_.

Without that, you don't get advances for anyone.

So the point I'm making here: unreal provides variance reduction for all game publishers and yes that disproportionately benefits the ones who make under a million. But they're the ones who need the help!

And in exchange, if you're one of the lucky few, you pay a shockingly reasonable 5% in perpetuity.

[ShinyLeftPad]

I don't think it's a good analogy. You don't have to "self publish" (go without a game engine). You can choose a game engine, just a different one that doesn't require you to report your income etc.

[wrsh07]

Ok, then do that? The game you make will be limited by that choice. If those limitations are acceptable, then great!

My contention is that people can build more ambitious games that are more likely to make their creators rich if they use Unreal, and if the creators also think that they should use Unreal and if they don't they shouldn't.

[ShinyLeftPad]

I was replying to someone who said how fantastic it is that the guy was able to make it for free. I'm not saying it's all completely bad, again Adobe subscription model and past piracy tolerance allowed many people who couldn't afford their stuff to use it while paying less or nothing, just adding nuance about "free"

[wrsh07]

Of course! And I think it's fair to require people to be honest.

I just fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking:

> even a subscription is better than royalties

Royalties are a great business model that allows more creators to create. You can dislike it, but I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art (or other things!)

And while there were a bunch of interesting side effects of piracy (people who pirate more music were bigger fans of music and spent more later - correlation/causation questions obvs), I would strongly prefer that the easy thing to do (ie cheapest/lowest friction to get started) be legal

[ShinyLeftPad]

> I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art

I think the guy did it on enthusiasm and if he used say Godot he could probably have a pretty good result too, if less impressive visually. But you have good points, sure.