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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was asked by Verge why there is no support for the Steam Deck for Fortnite (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago by mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml

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[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It’s the same thing basically, you could have unlimited devs if cost wasn’t an issue

But they have 9 platforms already that all have to work together and every feature has to work on before release so it’s a lot of work.

Like the last line says, they want the user base to be big enough for them to support it

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, Sweeney isn't a complicated man, he's just a greedy one. If choice a is less profitable than choice b, he'll pick choice b. In this case, it's Linux support vs other dev efforts, and the other dev efforts are apparently more profitable than Linux support.

And that's my favorite quality about him, and it makes it really easy to avoid his products. It's why I mostly play indies and use lemmy, I'm fine with lower production value if the quality of the overall experience is better.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn’t call Epic greedy

They have one of the more indie friendly Engines

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's a side effect, not the goal. The goal is to make a ton of money on microtransactions, that's why they have a revenue sharing licensing model, not a per seat model. They don't lose much by being friendly to smaller devs, because they're banking on raking in profits from the few that go viral.

I argue that until the recent change, Unity was the best engine for indie devs. You pay per seat and that's it, you keep the rest. And you don't pay until you make more than $100k, just like Unreal (Unreal is 5% after your first $1M). So if you earn $2M, you'll pay $50k to Epic or $2k/seat for Unity (assuming pro plan). If you expect to make >$1M, Unity will probably be cheaper for smaller studios. If you want support, Unreal charges $1500/seat/year for the Enterprise option, and you still need to pay for royalties.

So here's how I'd decide which to use:

Godot - most indie games
Unity - indie games with high revenue expectation (if it takes off), and studios with infrequent releases (you only pay if you're making >$100k)
Unreal - big 3D games with latest tech, or indie studios with lots of smaller games with lower average revenue targets

Most studios don't need the features of Unreal, so it's an odd choice for your random indie studio.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

indie studios with lots of smaller games with lower average revenue targets

This is most people

Also gamemaker/construct/stencyl fit in the worse space

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

In many of those cases, they wouldn't cross the threshold for income for either, so the choice of tool wouldn't matter. So use whatever you're familiar with.

But honestly, with Unity violating dev trust, I highly recommend indie devs use Godot. It's plenty good for the scale of most indie games, and there's no royalties or costs (though donations are recommended).