Excerpts:
… The news came from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney himself in a presentation at Unreal Fest 2023. …
… He claimed that the pricing model will not be “unusually expensive or unusually inexpensive,” and that its pricing structure will be similar to subscription services like Maya or Photoshop. …
… Are they trying to pull a Unity?
No. Previously if you used unreal but didn’t ship any engine code to end users you didn’t have to pay anything (games obviously ship engine code, so they’re already paying once they pass a certain revenue threshold or upfront if they want a support contract, and the announced pricing changes explicitly don’t effect games)
Unreal has been pushing hard into film and virtual production workloads, but they weren’t getting paid anything due to the existing license terms.
Now if eg. you’re using a virtual set (like the Mandalorian) or doing in camera previs (basically previewing approximately what a scene will look like with CGI, either between takes or even viewing it live on a second monitor attached to the camera as you film) with unreal you’ll have to actually pay.
Doesn’t appear so, it seems pretty minor and doesn’t retroactively fuck people over.
I wish Lemmy didn’t downvote people asking genuine questions. Not everyone is in the loop of what’s going on at all times, folks.