Gaming Unreal Engine 4 subscription model announced by Epic

Epic has opened up its Unreal Engine to developers on a subscription basis.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2014/03/20/unreal-engine-4-debuts-subscription-model/1

 

Likewise Crytek with CryEngine

Both seem to be gunning for Unity...

 

That's pretty cool for devs.

I like the direction these engines are going!

 

I kind of hope that cryengine, snowdrop, frostbyte etc, give this engine a bloody good thrashing. It seems as if the unreal engine has had a bit of a monopoly for the last 10 years or so, which made most games look very similar graphically.

 

This combined with the other big engines adopting the same idea is really great news. Suddenly it puts the power of these packages at the fingertips of any interested indie developer or student even. Hell I'm temped to have a play around with it just for a while, I love node based systems, they're so intuitive once you get round the initial puzzling layout.

 

I wish they would just give back mod support. These engines look very easy to pick up and I am sure a group of people could make some seriously good mods for some of the games. Then the studios could hire the best groups and sell them as expansions or standalone games.

 

So, you can use UE4 for $20/user per month , but face a 5% royalty fee on generated gross revenues. Whereas Crytek is making CryEngine available on a similar per-user subscription model for $9.90/user and royalty-free?

 

Whilst there's undoubtedly an element of 'let's undercut epic/unity' in crytek's pricing... the cynic in me thinks there's a catch... It seems [imo] too good to be true...

 

I like the potential freeloveness of it all but I hope this doesn't mean all games powered with the same engine. UE3 was great but tooooooo many games looked the same because of it

 

Why not free to use with a royalty model? It would create a huge, loyal developer and surely some absolute surprise smash hits from indie devs. Let's face it, $20 a month is obviously a lot more accessible to small devs than tens of thousands, but it's still a big outlay for casual bedroom devs. I'm sure there are kids out there with the talent and the ideas but lacking the cash to lay down $240 for a year's access to a dev kit.

 

You can just cancel your sub after a month and play around with it at your own leisure. You only need to resub to publish your game or to get engine updates.

@SimoomiZ
From what I hear CryEngine is much less user friendly, at least for beginners.

 

So if you publish a game using this model, do you then have to pay subs all the time the game is being sold ?
Not that it probably matters as i guess you would be paying more in royalty fees than subs.