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Epic Games has a Monopoly but no one seem to care

ZehDon

Member
Epic have a monopoly with Unreal Engine in the same way that Valve have a monopoly with Steam: anyone can compete, but no seems to be able to.

This isn't the same as Microsoft buying out their competitors back in the day to retain their unfair position, forcing everyone to do things their way. Unreal Engine is a monopoly because game development is fucking hard and so with Unreal, Epic offer a proven, reliable, high quality way to make it way easier.

If someone makes something better than Unreal and licenses it, then people will just use that.
 

Beechos

Member
Its not like theyre using anti competive measures to stop other engines from succeeding. Its a tried and true engine and has been evolving since the unreal game.
 

Keihart

Member
I would agree with you but it isn't really.
Their egine doesn't have cornered the market in anyway, their product is just good and convinient but lots of devs choose other engines for whatever reason they see fit.
 
CDPRs redtech engine is in need of a rebuild. Its really poor with CPU efficiency. So they can either spend a heap of time and money to rebuild it, taking into account all the new graphics tricks like Mesh Shaders, SSDs etc, or they can jus jump onto UE and save some time.
UE5 doesn't do anything that other great engines can't do either. It's just one of the first engines that's ready for the next generational step up. Other developers like id will make those same changes. Turn 10 is doing that with their Forzatech 2.0 engine. It will be really cool to see what they have achieved. Car racing games are always the best to showcase nice graphics. I have a feeling they are going to blow minds with it and people might not be full 100 on UE5.
It's an exciting time whatever happens.
 
CDPRs redtech engine is in need of a rebuild. Its really poor with CPU efficiency. So they can either spend a heap of time and money to rebuild it, taking into account all the new graphics tricks like Mesh Shaders, SSDs etc, or they can jus jump onto UE and save some time.
UE5 doesn't do anything that other great engines can't do either. It's just one of the first engines that's ready for the next generational step up. Other developers like id will make those same changes. Turn 10 is doing that with their Forzatech 2.0 engine. It will be really cool to see what they have achieved. Car racing games are always the best to showcase nice graphics. I have a feeling they are going to blow minds with it and people might not be full 100 on UE5.
It's an exciting time whatever happens.
CDPR Red Engine is great graphics are top notch from Witcher 2 to Cyberpunk graphics are never the issue
they switching to UE5 means they will have to pay royalties to Epic Games now for using it Engine where in house engine they keep 100% profit
 
CDPR Red Engine is great graphics are top notch from Witcher 2 to Cyberpunk graphics are never the issue
they switching to UE5 means they will have to pay royalties to Epic Games now for using it Engine where in house engine they keep 100% profit
Hitting consistant framerates in Redengine was always an issue. While they have to pay licence fees for UE, it saves them time and money by not having to go back and redo their engine. Look how redoing the engine for Halo Infinate set back the game, and also how long extra it will be between Forza Motorsport games due to them redoing the Forzatech engine.
The other plus is that alot of devs have experience using UE and like it, so it may help them attract talent to their studio if they use UE.
I would also assume that Epic has been working on CDPR to use EU and would be giving them a discount to use it.
 
Hitting consistant framerates in Redengine was always an issue. While they have to pay licence fees for UE, it saves them time and money by not having to go back and redo their engine. Look how redoing the engine for Halo Infinate set back the game, and also how long extra it will be between Forza Motorsport games due to them redoing the Forzatech engine.
The other plus is that alot of devs have experience using UE and like it, so it may help them attract talent to their studio if they use UE.
I would also assume that Epic has been working on CDPR to use EU and would be giving them a discount to use it.
I believe Halo and Forza switching to new model of their engine was to get ready for Next Gen only games switching to a new engine will always take longer and has unforeseen with setbacks and other stuff
Switching to UE5 will also have unforeseen setbacks and will also takes long before the game is release
wile UE5 looks great it is not the perfect game engine it has it own problems
 
I believe Halo and Forza switching to new model of their engine was to get ready for Next Gen only games switching to a new engine will always take longer and has unforeseen with setbacks and other stuff
Switching to UE5 will also have unforeseen setbacks and will also takes long before the game is release
wile UE5 looks great it is not the perfect game engine it has it own problems
I don't believe that UE5 is un matchable by any means. We saw a heap of engines easily match the best of UE4. Shit, even small studios like Asobo could put out graphics as good as UE4.
However there is a cost in both time and money to maintain an in-house engine.
I guess that's what each studio has to weigh up when deciding what engine to use.
 
I don't believe that UE5 is un matchable by any means. We saw a heap of engines easily match the best of UE4. Shit, even small studios like Asobo could put out graphics as good as UE4.
However there is a cost in both time and money to maintain an in-house engine.
I guess that's what each studio has to weigh up when deciding what engine to use.
I believe Asobo studio were using a modified version of Forzatech engine for their game that why it look so good
 
Some Teams aren't cut out for making their own engine. That included teams that have recently made engines. I would rather they invest their time customizing a working engine to make it feel unique than release shitty buggy games that take 6 years. They talent in this space is surely eyeing better work life options anyway.

I'd like to see more decima too.
 
I believe Asobo studio were using a modified version of Forzatech engine for their game that why it look so good
There was talk that Asobo used Forzatech for Flight Sim, but the Plagues Tale was 100% their own engine. For a smaller studio, its a pretty good engine they have.
 

EDMIX

Member
I'm surprised this thread hasn't be closed yet lol

So yea.....that isn't how a monopoly works so.....

Developers choose to use a 3rd party engine, Unreal Engine just happens to be one of the best ones, so...they choose it.

Thats it.
 
I'm surprised this thread hasn't be closed yet lol

So yea.....that isn't how a monopoly works so.....

Developers choose to use a 3rd party engine, Unreal Engine just happens to be one of the best ones, so...they choose it.

Thats it.
I give a reason why it becoming a monopoly devs are abandoning their in house engine & that not good
if anything has a total domination it is not good for anyone
 
Some Teams aren't cut out for making their own engine. That included teams that have recently made engines. I would rather they invest their time customizing a working engine to make it feel unique than release shitty buggy games that take 6 years. They talent in this space is surely eyeing better work life options anyway.

I'd like to see more decima too.
Decima will be no more once Kojima switch to UE5 lol
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Making a tool and becoming market leader because you’re good, not because you’re ripping off the competition is not what monopoly is.
 
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EDMIX

Member
I give a reason why it becoming a monopoly devs are abandoning their in house engine & that not good
if anything has a total domination it is not good for anyone

Epic didn't force them to leave their engine though. They made a better engine, developers want to use it. Thats it.

Its as fair as it comes in any industry mind you. Its like saying i just can't find a good bread to make and I suck at it, let me use this famous baker that makes soft bread for my burgers. (starts claiming they are a monopoly on the Bun industry and have a Burger Bun Industrial Complex going on) lol aka the BBIC (i warn you not to google that, its on you what you see lol)

Its a simple supply and demand. Someone wants something, Epic is making it. Unless Epic themselves have a hand at that in house engine failing or something, I just don't see how they can be at fault for someone else failing at something and choosing them.

So dominating in a market cause you are good at it is different then dominating in a market you manufactured to be the only one in.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
But let’s go with your logic. What would be the best course of action? You can’t “divide” UE in several small companies like the government wants to do with google and facebook, it’s a tool, not a conglomerate of services.
What is the course of action? This doesn’t make any sense.
 
Epic didn't force them to leave their engine though. They made a better engine, developers want to use it. Thats it.

Its as fair as it comes in any industry mind you. Its like saying i just can't find a good bread to make and I suck at it, let me use this famous baker that makes soft bread for my burgers. (starts claiming they are a monopoly on the Bun industry and have a Burger Bun Industrial Complex going on) lol aka the BBIC (i warn you not to google that, its on you what you see lol)

Its a simple supply and demand. Someone wants something, Epic is making it. Unless Epic themselves have a hand at that in house engine failing or something, I just don't see how they can be at fault for someone else failing at something and choosing them.

So dominating in a market cause you are good at it is different then dominating in a market you manufactured to be the only one in.
I can't believe that there are this many people willing to defend Epic
I have no problem with a smaller Dev using Unreal Engine cause they don;t have their own in house engine
The problem i have is the proven and big dev abandoning their proven in house engine to switch to UE5
 
But let’s go with your logic. What would be the best course of action? You can’t “divide” UE in several small companies like the government wants to do with google and facebook, it’s a tool, not a conglomerate of services.
What is the course of action? This doesn’t make any sense.
The devs that have long and standing in house game engine already don't need to switch to UE5
wile indie devs can go right ahead and use UE5 cause they don't have their own in house game engine
 
So you want to forbid developers to use a tool they like?
No i never say that but game dev with long history of using their own in house game engine should continue to use their own develop engine instead of switching

Example if Rockstar game probably the biggest game dev on the planet were to no longer used their in house engine for GTA 6
instead switch to UE5 it would be the end of all in house engine everyone will be using UE5 and paying Epic Games royalties

GTA 6 is another 100 million plus seller so do the math 100 million plus games sales in royalties goes to Epic Games for using their engine Epic would make so much from every dev using their engine that why it can be consider a monopoly
 

EDMIX

Member
I can't believe that there are this many people willing to defend Epic
I have no problem with a smaller Dev using Unreal Engine cause they don;t have their own in house engine
The problem i have is the proven and big dev abandoning their proven in house engine to switch to UE5

Don't do that Craig, just stop. Don't turn this into a picking sides, tribal, cheerleading type thing just cause I'm saying my opinion on it. Stop man, its so immature.

I'm just telling you how I feel about the situation. If its in support of Epic's situation, then so be it. My comment stands.

A business doing a good job to the point of getting many people using their product, has the right to continue to make said product.

They are not making anyone by force leave those engines or something, unless you have any evidence that they've done such a thing, in that respect, of course I'd tell you thats wrong and NEVER defend such a thing, but what I'm telling you is in defense of ANY FUCKING BUSINESS, its not solely about defending Epic as some personal stance. When I talk about business on here, I never mix those 2 concepts, as in you'll see me make many points in support of a business even if you read in another post that I never buy their games or I hate them personally or some shit, cause this is irrelevant to the topic.

So sir, if the engine was "proven", the would have not abandoned it.

Look at Sony, they are masters at using their own engines and many of their teams share that info and do amazing things. The Last Guardian, The Last Of Us, GT series, Uncharted, God Of War, Spiderman and so many more that doesn't mean Sony Bend can't use Unreal Engine. If THAT one team likes to use that, then so be it. It got the game out and it makes sense for the team to stick to what makes sense for them.

Look at EA. Fucking horror show with Mass Effect, Anthem...maybe don't force a team to use an engine they struggle with. Star Wars Fallen Order? Did amazing, used Unreal. Why should EA accept yet another flop to try to get a team to use an engine they made, that doesn't work right? They are correct to give that freedom and move the fuck on if it doesn't work for some teams.

Thus, DICE can work with Frostbite, Bioware....not so much, thus it makes sense to give them that freedom if its not working out.



So you need to be specific and let me know what perfectly fine engine was working out for a publisher, that switched to UE5 cause EPIC MADE THEM DO IT? You can't say I'm defending Epic based on theses comments and you've yet to even prove some intent or purposeful act to make anyone use UE instead of their own engine or something. With all do respect Craig, I'd say you are attacking Epic more then I'm defending them.....

"game dev with long history of using their own in house game engine should continue to use their own develop engine instead of switching"

Look...I don't disagree with that IF the engine is working out for them, but you need to prove when such a thing has occurred and how Epic forced it to happen before I co-sign to them being public enemy number 1 man.
 
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PhaseJump

Banned
Convenient product. It saves time and money on redundant development and maintenance.

barack-obama-why.gif
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
I can't believe that there are this many people willing to defend Epic

Dude, this is pathetic. I LOATHE Epic. Apple used to be my most hated company, but Epic has taken that position. Check my post history for the word Epic and you'll see that. This has nothing to do with defending Epic. We're talking about semantics; the meaning of words.

The word "monopoly" has a specific meaning, and Epic does not have a monopoly on video game engines. A monopoly doesn't mean that you have the highest market share. It means that you have exclusive control over the market.

Epic doesn't have exclusive control over the video game engine market. Besides in-house/custom game engines there are also other engines like Unity and MonoGame. If Epic had a monopoly those engines wouldn't be allowed to exist/succeed. These engines are allowed to exist and succeed, but more developers and publishers prefer using Unreal Engine versus the other engine options. That doesn't make Unreal Engine (or Epic themselves) a monopoly.

Also, f*** Epic. I hope the whole company burns to the ground. I cannot overstate how much I hate that company. But you're still wrong.
 
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Dude, this is pathetic. I LOATHE Epic. Apple used to be my most hated company, but Epic has taken that position. Check my post history for the word Epic and you'll see that. This has nothing to do with defending Epic. We're talking about semantics; the meaning of words.

The word "monopoly" has a specific meaning, and Epic does not have a monopoly on video game engines. A monopoly doesn't mean that you have the highest market share. It means that you have exclusive control over the market.

Epic doesn't have exclusive control over the video game engine market. Besides in-house/custom game engines there are also other engines like Unity and MonoGame. If Epic had a monopoly those engines wouldn't be allowed to exist/succeed. These engines are allowed to exist and succeed, but more developers and publishers prefer using Unreal Engine versus the other engine options. That doesn't make Unreal Engine (or Epic themselves) a monopoly.

Also, f*** Epic. I hope the whole company burns to the ground. I cannot overstate how much I hate that company. But you're still wrong.
Ok Mr. Noctis Lucis Caelum point taken
 
If you google "Plagues Tale game engine" it says Unreal Engine 4 lol my points stand UE5 is a monopoly
This was taken from someone who worked at Asobo on their in-house game engine.

"Regarding A Plague Tale, I used to work at Asobo Studio on the Engine/Tools team. That was during the Toy Story 3 / Disney Pixar Heroes period. The in-house engine is called Zouna and is very good. However, the piece of software that was the most interesting to me is their in house level editor called PAWAP (can't remember what the acronym meant) . It's a 20+ years old C++ codebase dating back to Kalisto (where most of the founders of Asobo used to work), of course modernised over time. I changed code that was written before C++98 was standardised! The Engine team is amazing there and it shows in the games."


There is actually an interesting thread on github comparing game engines. Interesting read, and goes on about how good Asobos engine is.
 

Raonak

Banned
It is extremely expensive to build and maintain your own current gen engine these days.

Unless you're sony, or rockstar, it isn't even practical unless you want to ship a bunch of technical issues.
Let the developers use up their time and resources on making the actual game rather than creating an engine which isn't nearly as good as epic's.

A common engine also has the benefit of being able to easily transfer developers from project to project as they don't have to relearn a new engine.
 
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Sophist

Member
Give a few years to O3DE. It's the engine Amazon Lumberyard turned into an open source project by the Linux Fundation. Partners working on it are Amazon, Adobe, Huwei, Intel... It may become big.

 

DJ12

Member
I can't believe that there are this many people willing to defend Epic
I have no problem with a smaller Dev using Unreal Engine cause they don;t have their own in house engine
The problem i have is the proven and big dev abandoning their proven in house engine to switch to UE5
You must have really mixed feelings about the coalition and the initiative then.

They are surely big enough to make their own engine, yet don't.

But as already proven, unity is used far more than Unreal Engine, so put your panties back in the draw and take the L on the failed thread.

I do wonder what you motivation for this thread actually was. Stealth Unreal can have a monopoly so why can't Microsoft?
 

whyman

Member
Not really, all sonys big studios use their own proprietary engines and they have arguably the best looking games on the market
Just wait. There is a reason they are pouring so much money into epic. Creating and maintaining game engines is expensive as hell. Much better to own shares in a company that you licence an engine from that others update.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
I used facts and logic to back my points
But Unreal Engine isnt even close to being a Monopoly.
If you look at it by the numbers Unity is still the most popular engine.
If your beef is that a bunch of third party AAA devs are moving to Unreal Engine thats a different story.
One you really should take up with those third party devs.

I should mention im fully on board with the "beef" that every big game is seemingly going towards Unreal Engine, I dont particularly like the homogeny that it creates, but if these devs are talented enough to extend and clean Unreal for their purposes Ill be okay....but that is yet to be seen.
We saw how Housemarque extended Unreal with their voxel tech and even It Takes Two was extended to work as it does.
So not all bad news.

Second Epic isnt actually doing anything to discourage alternatives, they made a good product and AAA devs are flocking to it.
Theres nothing stopping a AAA dev from using Unity to make their game, visually Unitys HDRP is absolutely stunning we just havent seen any big titles actually use it.
Id go as far as to argue the best looking game to date is actually Lego Journey which was made in Unity HDRP.
Lego-Builders-Journey-Screenshot-2021.06.20-23.07.58.47.jpg

^Thats actually how good the game looks....dare I say screenshots dont capture how good the game actually looks.
Its pretty cheap if you got the hardware buy it if only to see just how good Unity HDRP is.

Heck you got the balls and talent use Unigine or CryEngine.....better yet get some talent on your team pay them well so they dont flock to Nvidia, Unity or Epic and make an engine that truly rivals Unreal and Unity.
There are alternatives....and not just random alternative legitimate alternatives.


A real problem is that the talent, on the engineering side of things are basically all flocking to Nvidia, Unity or Unreal so its hard to retain engine programmers/engineer to actually stick with your team and make your engine great.
 
CDPR Red Engine is great graphics are top notch from Witcher 2 to Cyberpunk graphics are never the issue
they switching to UE5 means they will have to pay royalties to Epic Games now for using it Engine where in house engine they keep 100% profit
They also would keep 100% of the bugs and dev hell by trying to maintain their own engine. They are willing to make this change for a reason.
 

Sygma

Member
The Monopoly in question is their Unreal Game Engine. With the latest being the Unreal Engine 5.
Now you may say why would anyone care about a Game Engine Monopoly? but the truth runs deeper than that

After big huge Game Dev like CDPR say they will switch over to UE5 for the Witcher 4 instead of using their own in house REDengine i started to get worry


Now today it announced that Crystal Dynamics will also no longer use their Foundation in-house game engine but instead also switch to UE5
for their new Tomb Raider game


Is all the big 3rd party publishers and Developers gone to all Switch to UE5?
who will be the next big Dev to switch from their in house game engine to UE5?
Rockstar Games? Capcom? FromSoftware?
If so that will be bad for game engine diversity if everyone is using the same thing it will all look the same and feel the same
lastly don't forget that Tencent owned 40% of Epic Games


Thus another reason to not want a Unreal Game Engine Monopoly in the gaming industry
as Tencent/China will have their hands on everything in the Western world and that is bad for everyone

seems like someone wasn"t around when the xbox 360 was a thing
 

Interfectum

Member
What? No.

UE5 is taking off right now because of, among other things, the massive employment shortage we are seeing across many industries. Even up to a few years ago it made sense to invest in your own internal engine but the combination of post-COVID employment, the issue with AAA games taking 5+ years to make and the fact that UE5 is really fucking good means a lot of devs will jump over. We have no idea how long this trend will last and you could easily see the pendulum swing back towards custom or another engine in 5 years or so.

Don't stress over this shit man.
 
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