Using the word "enshittification" is a great way to get a comment pinned to the top of an HN thread, but this is not that.

This is Cory Doctorow's definition of enshittification [0]:

> Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Note that he's talking about platforms, specifically middlemen. For Doctorow's enshittification to be a thing, there has to be a dichotomy between "users" and "business customers". Enshittification is the cycle of luring in users to make yourself valuable to your real customers (the "business customers"), then abusing those users to make your business customers even happier, then abusing your business customers to extract the absolute largest amount of value for yourself, then dying because you forgot who payed the bills.

Unreal Engine is not a platform in this sense. Epic doesn't have "users" that it needs to lure in in order to appease "business customers", it just has business customers. It brought a lot of business customers in by offering the product for free for non-gaming use cases in order to demonstrate to those non-gaming business customers that it was actually a viable product for their needs. Now that they don't need to make that case any more, they're doing what every business eventually needs to do and actually charging for the product.

[0] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

Here's Epic's Enshittification Journey as a platform. Let it be known that it didn't have to be this way. Epic (Mega)Games was a mild-mannered game development company that sold a popular engine used in many AAA games.

Act I; Users lured, moats built: Epic pivoted towards Games-as-a-Service. They took investment [0] and guidance from Tencent to the tune of 40% of the company. Fortnite and the F2P Unreal Tournament reboot were developed and released in this timeframe. These free titles would bring in the gamers into the Epic ecosystem.

Act II; Users exploited, business customers courted: Fortnite adds subscriptions in 2017 (Battle Pass Season 2 [1]) and makes money hand-over-fist. At the same time, the Tencent deal allowed them to relicense their engine away from the high upfront cost to "Free" until a certain point [2]. They also charged a far less cut than Steam, used hundreds of millions of dollars of their own investment to bring other developers to the ecosystem, as well as publishing a number of games that used the engine. This lured developers to the platform with their own dreams of Fortnite revenues. More investment poured in.

Relating this back to the original article here, in 2019 Epic gave a grant of $1.2 to Blender [3] to develop their tools to integrate Unreal Engine, including those for visual artists and film.

Act III; Everybody is shafted: See my original comment.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-tencent-changed-fortni...

[1]: https://fortnite.fandom.com/wiki/Season_2

[2]: https://fortune.com/2015/03/03/epic-games-unreal-tech-free/

[3]: https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-fo...

Its not obvious at all how this is enshittification.

UE5 was previously provided for free in non-video game contexts, as they clearly were trying to expand their presence in say film production. Now they've succeeded, they are charging for it, what is so unfair about it? Are they expected to provide the engine for free?

UE5 is also constantly trying intensive innovation. So the product quality is going up, not going down.

Unity was bombed because it was trying some inane pricing model (imagine UE5 charging moviemakers by number of viewers). And the fact that Unity Engine itself was being heavily neglected.

And fundraising is not relevant when their core business, Fortnite, is declining. Sorry fundraising != charity for employees.

> UE5 was previously provided for free in non-video game contexts, as they clearly were trying to expand their presence in say film production. Now they've succeeded, they are charging for it, what is so unfair about it?

The problem here is that "providing for free" to gain adoption and then suddenly charging is a bit of a rug-pull.

The same argument was made for Unity, it's not the customer's job to make your business model work.

> Are they expected to provide the engine for free?

If you choose to grow your market share in an unsustainable way (like giving your product away for free), and then later on go "oh shit we can't keep doing this!" then you should expect that some of the customers who adopted your product based on the previous terms will be unhappy with this switch.

Many might be fine with it, but the idea that everyone should just accept this switch is bullshit.

Lots of companies are clear up front that their product will be free for some time (like during a beta or early access period) but that customers should expect to be charged at some point in the future.

I'm not sure this is what Epic did. But I don't follow this space closely so maybe they did set that expectation? Some other commenters seem to be saying this was "expected"..

Providing for free is hardly going to continue forever. This will end should be a basic assumption whenever you start using a free product.

Anyway, current versions are unaffected it’s only people who want to keep adopting new versions which will face the changes.

Unity was different because the pricing was insane for F2P titles. Some successful titles only manage $0.50/install, going from 0 to 40% revenue share was insane.

Way more importantly making it retroactive was unheard of. Unity even had promised to support "pick your license" for released titles in perpetuity but then during this change said "we never said the runtime was free in perpetuity".

Charging more for your product isn't great but it always happens.

Also on that topic Unity got started as the "no revenue sharing" option and was paid for by very expensive per seat costs. So there was a bit of "you are double dipping" feeling too.

In this case Unreal is charging for a new market is the goal which makes sense.

Certainly the bait and switch of free now not is a bit sour but how sour depends on the cost.

> imagine UE5 charging moviemakers by number of viewers

Actors commonly demand a percentage of revenue. The main software package used for all the special effects demanding the same doesn't seem unreasonable.

Except UE5 is far from the main software package used for all the special effects.

They'll just have to price appropriately...

I don't really see this as "enshittification". This is completely expected and people knew for years something like this was coming.

Epic has been trying to use the money from Fortnite's success to build a more stable platform. They've dumped endless amounts of Fortnite money on paying developers for Epic exclusivity, lower cuts from developers, developing their storefront, developing Unreal Engine, etc.

This was not done out of the goodness of their hearts. They wanted to see a return. They needed to break into the market more and now they have.

Now that they've firmly planted themselves with a lot of games on EGS, and a lot of games using Unreal, they want that return on investment. Not surprising.

No. This targets large shops not personal use or small projects. It's right there in the article.....

Layoffs are often unrelated to a company's financials. They are a way to increase margins. See it as you will but they have no obligation to employ people they don't need.

Epic makes money therefore film studios should get free money?

or just profit taking?

I wouldn’t call raising prices enshittification.

It's unreal that a software product like that was available for free in the first place.