6 ms·

Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free

554 points by program 9y ago

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
The Paragon closure has come with a surprising number of upsides compared to the usual collapse of a game. I really wish more companies opened up their assets (or even the game code) upon the closure of a game they've written off. The other highlight note is that when Epic decided to shutdown Paragon, they opened up the refund offer for all purchases, not just really recent ones. They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project, that I believe had upwards of 100 developers working on it at one point. But given Fortnite's success, plus the general solid padding of cash Epic always gets from having one of the most popular game engines that everyone else uses, means they can afford it.
- ramy_d 9y ago
  Wow I hadn't heard about the refunds. That's really uplifting.
- mbesto 9y ago
  > They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project It's a genius financial and strategical move, predicated by having a lucky monster success elsewhere in the company that required a quick influx of resources (Fortnite). They can effectively write off a failed game over the next 5 years, and reduce their tax burden as a result. They then act as a "benevolent" actor to the gaming development community by giving away assets that have no financial incentive to them. So they get a nice influx of resources and get to advertise to a new pool in the same breadth. That's a win-win. EDIT: I should also note - I was a benefactor of shifting my payment from Paragon to Fortnite. Given that it had no variable cost to give me $20 worth of skins in Fortnite, that's a pretty solid user acquisition strategy.
  - Erlangolem 9y ago
    Deleted
    - gmueckl 9y ago
      Paragon was/is already a F2P "monster".
  - sbarre 9y ago
    I don't see why benevolent needs to be in quotes in your comment. Regardless of whatever financial or tax upside they get from doing this, the upside the game development community gets is the same. They are doing something they really didn't need to do, and as GP pointed out, most companies don't do.
    - mbesto 9y ago
      > I don't see why benevolent needs to be in quotes in your comment > most companies don't do. Because most companies are for-profit entities. Most companies don't do this because they aren't in this specific situation. Most gaming companies have really delicate economics (high up front capital costs, with less than guaranteed returns). Call me cynical all you want, but the idea that video gaming companies (of all industries) are somehow out to provide benevolently for it's software developing community is laughable at best (see EA, Ubisoft, Zynga etc). The video gaming market is rife with abusing long hours out of it's employees.
      - rootlocus 9y ago
        > see EA, Ubisoft, Zynga etc You're cherry picking a handful of awful companies for the sake of making a point about the entire industry.
        mbesto 9y ago
        I take it you haven't worked in the industry? There's literally an industry term for it ("crunch") because it's so bad. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257143/Working_time_among_video_game_developers_Trends_over_200414.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257143/Working_time_amon... http://www.gameinformer.com/themes/blogs/generic/post.aspx?WeblogApp=features&y=2018&m=01&d=16&WeblogPostName=crunch-the-video-game-industrys-notorious-labor-problem&GroupKeys=&PostPageIndex=2 http://www.gameinformer.com/themes/blogs/generic/post.aspx?W... https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577 https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such... https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/20/why-crunch-time-is-still-a-problem-in-the-video-game-industry/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/20/why-crunch-time-is-still-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/opinion/work-culture-video-games-crunch.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/opinion/work-culture-vide... https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_4_Crunch_Makes_Games_Worse.php https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/T...
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    And hopefully get more devs to use their platform (Unreal Engine) using these assets as their entry point, giving them dank licensing money if there is a good game amongst the many mediocre ones.
  - tyrust 9y ago
    >reduce their tax burden Why do people always make this argument? Loss is loss. You're financially better off if you make money, even if you have to pay taxes on it.
    - Kiro 9y ago
      Yeah, I don't understand how this reduces anything. Can someone explain?
      - simaracode 9y ago
        You basically can take a Tax deduction on capital losses, meaning paying less tax (Super simplifying the complex US Tax Code) https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062713/capital-losses-and-tax.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062713/capit...
      - tyrust 9y ago
        You pay taxes on capital gains. Suppose that Epic made P income from Paragon and I income from everything else. They are taxed at T. So if they return P to customers, that's a loss. So they will pay (I - P) * T in taxes and end up with (I - P) * (1 - T). Suppose they kept P, that's gain. So they will pay (I + P) * T in taxes and end up with (I + P) * (1 - T). So even though they pay less in taxes ((I - P) * T < (I + P) * T), they will end up with less money ((I - P) * (1 - T) < (I + P) * (1 - T)).
        mbesto 9y ago
        Whoa, even I couldn't follow this :) Basically, what it means is the following: Year 1 - I spent $10M on Paragon (let's pretend I've made a single dollar from it). I therefore have negative -$10M in profit, so I pay zero taxes. Year 2 - I shut Paragon down. I still have $10M in losses from Paragon. Fortnite does $30M in Revenue and it cost me $20M to build Fortnite in Year 2. Theoretically I profited $10M in year 2 and I'd have to pay ~30% (thats not the real number, so don't correct me) of that in taxes, so I really only get to keep $7M of that to reinvest. But I get to carry my loss forward from Year 1 onwards. So in theory I get to keep more of my profit due to a smaller tax burden. Generally speaking this is usually done over 5 years. So I'd take $10M and amortize it $2M ever year. Meaning Year 2, instead of paying 30% of $10M, I would pay 30% of 8M, so $2.4M versus $3M. It's obviously way more complicated than this, but this is the gist.
  - CyberDildonics 9y ago
    It still takes time and energy to package and release something to the public, even if it is assets.
  - barking 9y ago
    I come in peace. You're not a benefactor given that you are the one who benefited
- maaaats 9y ago
  > I really wish more companies opened up their assets (or even the game code) upon the closure of a game they've written off. Or just old games in general. Many rewrites of old games are hampered by the lack of assets.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Sure, but there's a big difference in how a company sees the value. If you're talking about a property the company found success with, they surely want to hang onto the copyright and exclusive control of those assets with which to make sequels and the like, or even remasters and re-releases as Nintendo often does. I particularly feel we need to clear up the copyright drama for abandoned works in particular, but there's a reasonable point that plenty of companies do continue to use and sell their game content for a very long time. A failed project has very little value for the purposes of monetizing again later, you don't make a sequel to a game that you didn't make a profit on (usually). So it's a particularly good category to give away to the community.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  I'm interested to see if Epic releases the entirety of the remaining assets, while they are no longer interested in developing the game there was a small but dedicated community that was sad to see the game shutdown. It would be interesting to see the community take over the game and continue to give it life, and it wouldn't be the first time this has happened (see Allegiance/FreeAllegiance as an example, Microsoft just re-licensed the game under the MIT license last year at that - it was already available under the MSR-SSLA for quite a while).
- banned1 9y ago
  Well, in this case Epic and whoever benefits from these assets are taking the Taxpayer for a ride. So this is a “convenient” incentive to Epic and others who use these assets (as opposed to inconvenient, as when it happens with [company not relevant to the SV echo chamber]). A) Epic closes Paragon down B) Epic opens Paragon assets C) Epic deducts Paragon losses from their earnings, saving on federal taxes D) Companies that build assets based on these assets do so while getting a nice taxpayer-enabled corporate welfare check.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    C) would happen regardless of the other items.
    - banned1 9y ago
      My understanding is that this happens when an asset is written off. I understand it would be either now [with the action], or over time [without this action]. Maybe a person with an accounting background can correct me so I can edit my comment. Thanks for bringing this potential issue up.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    pretty much all corporate expendature is tax deductable.
    - banned1 9y ago
      Software is an asset that depreciates over time. It's not an expenditure in the sense of when one spends money on, say, a trip, which would become an instant expense.
- cdkee 9y ago
  Well to Epic, their games are usually a showcase of their engine. It makes sense to open source their assets. It also helps that Fortnite is a massive success.
- Thaxll 9y ago
  "They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project, that I believe had upwards of 100 developers working on it at one point." Not really, they're doing that on purpose to put everyone on Fortnite, it's a very different story.
benbristow 9y ago
Nice. I bet this is going to encourage more asset flips though.
- maaaats 9y ago
  What do you mean by asset flip? (And how would this encourage this)
  - dgritsko 9y ago
    I've generally heard the term used to refer to low-effort games that are basically just third-party assets packaged up and sold as a full experience, while having little to no "playable content". The availability of these assets could encourage this since they are freely available.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      It's especially common to throw these together as "early access" games, pretending that they're still in development and will get deeper content at a later date.
    - floatboth 9y ago
      Yeah, often it's ad-supported App Store / Google Play titles, where one developer uses the same engine with different assets to make many games and hope someone accidentally downloads them and clicks the ads. Like the (in)famous Grab That Auto https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM
  - detaro 9y ago
    An "Asset Flip" is a commercial game puzzled together from ready-made bits as cheap as possible (e.g. get some shooter template code, drop in some free/cheap character and weapon models, copy or make some really basic levels), without consideration for the quality of the resulting game.
  - jimcsharp 9y ago
    If you've ever followed a Hello World game building tutorial for UE or Unity, somebody has taken the end result of that tutorial and placed it on a game marketplace somewhere. It was/is a bit taboo, but the gaming phenomena PUBG also used UE marketplace assets, although they added value by making an enjoyable game around it.
Erlangolem 9y ago
Deleted
- eutropia 9y ago
  The game had been out for a few years, but as a MOBA-style game (like DotA, or League of Legends; thus competing with two of the largest video games in the market period) it didn't attract a critical mass of players to keep the ongoing dev effort worthwhile.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Being tilted more toward the 3D shooter style, also competing against Overwatch. Different gameplay objectives, but "class based team shooter" could describe either of them.
    - trisimix 9y ago
      to be fair moba is pretty universal/vague too.
      - wlesieutre 9y ago
        Yeah, I honestly hate that name. Just by the meaning of words, Unreal Tournament is an "online multiplayer battle arena" but somehow it came to mean specifically "top-down Warcraft 3 custom map with fighting in 3 lanes" now. But the lane fighting genre has been all downhill since Monday Night Combat anyway, so I'm happy to ignore it :P
        delecti 9y ago
        A number of genre names are only meaningful because people already know what they refer to. Probably the best example is RPG, which ostensibly applies to effectively every game where the player controls a character with a persona.
  - abiox 9y ago
Dude2023 9y ago
I wonder which engine it works best with...
- abiox 9y ago
  game assets tend to be highly engine-specific things by their very nature. it can be possible to start from some raw assets when moving to another engine, but even then you may have, say, a character rig setup that's great in one engine but a huge pain in the ass in another.
- teddyfrozevelt 9y ago
  I wonder which engine is the only one you're allowed to use it in.
openbasic 9y ago
What's the EULA on those assets? Are they UE4-only?
- detaro 9y ago
  Epic's assets on the marketplace are UE-only, yes.
- jsheard 9y ago
  https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-and-releases/1445832-12-million-worth-of-paragon-assets-released https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-... Q: How much do I have pay for the Paragon assets? A: Nothing! They’re completely free. You can use them in both commercial and non-commercial Unreal Engine 4 projects. Q: Are there any restrictions on the use of the Paragon assets? A: As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4.
ixtli 9y ago
Can someone with more knowledge comment on how strictly tied to the unreal ecosystem these assets are?
- dalore 9y ago
  > This content is now available free of charge in the Unreal Engine Marketplace, where developers may download Paragon packs to use in their own UE4 projects. So it's only for use in your UE4 project.
- extrememacaroni 9y ago
  As per their license, you cannot use them outside of UE4. This means that while you may be able to pull out the assets from your UE project and import them in Unity, it's not legal to do so.
  - AgentME 9y ago
    Maybe you could use them in another engine if you show the Unreal engine logo on startup and pay for the licensing of the Unreal engine. (Though I assume other proprietary engines like Unity have rules against portraying their engine as another with the other's logo shown first.)
    - extrememacaroni 9y ago
      If you have money to get Epic to make an exception for you, you likely don't need freebies like these assets ;)
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Per the linked post, they're only licensed for use in UE4. You might be able to shoehorn them into something else, but copyright wise you're not authorized to.
hardwaresofton 9y ago
One question before I cement Epic Games as a game company (or just tech company in general) that does things differently in an an interesting way: How easy is it to import/export models/ UnrealEngine assets to other platforms? If I want to use an asset from UnrealEngine in like godot, how easy would it be? This is pretty massive if it's really a no-strings-attached release of assets to the community but the skeptic in me says there's no way it's just that
- atkbrah 9y ago
  Looks like the assets are licensed for only to be used in UE4 based products https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker
  - hardwaresofton 9y ago
    Aaaaand there it is. The've basically converted their writeoff to a lossleading/marketing spend. Nothing wrong with shrewd business moves, and I guess they're not trying to mislead people intentionally. Well nice of them to release the assets at least, I'm sure devs who are already committed to UE4 are pretty stoked.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Im sure the people making quick asset flips won’t mind that.
bitwize 9y ago
This reminds me of the Golgotha drop from 2000: unfinished code and assets from a scrapped game, released as open source/PD. I don't know what, if anything, ever became of those...
- abiox 9y ago
  wow, thanks for reminding me of that. i remember this happening...brings back some memories. i was trying to learn to program my own games, and this event (despite the unfortunate circumstances) seemed like some gift from the gods in terms of being able to see the guts of a real game. looks like some stuff is on github: https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha https://github.com/saniv/golgotha https://github.com/saniv/golgotha
sergiotapia 9y ago
Epic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers. Fornite BR is exploding in popularity, with Ninja recently streaming with Drake, Kim Dotcom and another popular rapper. They broken the all-time record with 620k+ viewers at 2am! I'm sure their success facilitated the decision to release this for free and also give out refunds for Paragon. Win/win for them!
- Splines 9y ago
  > Epic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers. Are you talking about Fortnite in general, or the Battle Royale mode? The weird thing is that my impression is that Fortnite was talked about for awhile as this Horde-mode construction game, sort of like minecraft meets L4D. Then the BR F2P mode was added and the whole thing blew up.
  - k__ 9y ago
    Well, pivot while you can...
    - elldoubleyew 9y ago
      I always felt bad for the devs of the actual Fortnite game. Its clear lots of time and resources were poured into what was actually a pretty good horde style survival/crafting game, then the little BR offshoot came along and now whenever someone says "Fortnite" I just assume they mean BR because no one actually plays the survival game. I guess they can't complain about the success but it would have to feel at least a little bit demoralizing.
      - k__ 9y ago
        lol, serendipity. As far as I know the regular mode is not free to play. I only tried it because it was a free alternative to PUBG
        9y ago
lostgame 9y ago
>> "As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4." 'You've raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir - bravo!'
jlebrech 9y ago
Brilliant, you can make a proof of concept VR game for example and make it look good.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Making 3d models look good on the screen and making them look good in VR usually optimize for different things.
tekism 9y ago
I know nothing about game development or the likes. But I just browsed the site. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe create a torrent or huge iso file of this info instead of downloading each asset manually?
jcoffland 9y ago
> Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free > The assets, built at a cost of over $12 million... It's a common mistake to assume that something is worth what it cost to create it.
- cupofjoakim 9y ago
  Value is relative, right? It depends on who looks at it. To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M whilst to you and me it's probably not more than a couple hundred bucks (unless you're a game dev in need of assets, that is),
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    > To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M No, that's the fallacy. The assets are only worth $12 million to Epic if Epic has a viable way to reap $12 million in benefit from them. The fact that it cost Epic $12 million to create the assets has nothing to do with it. That's just sunk cost.
    - tonyhb 9y ago
      There's now a business loss of $12M on their books, so they're getting benefits on their next tax filing. That's where the real monetary value comes from.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Which is a small percentage of $12M.
      - chii 9y ago
        > loss of $12M on their books this is really hard to quantify independently, and they can use this figure to inflate their losses to claim more taxation benefit than otherwise deserved. Why can't i say that I "lost" 12million developing my indie game, and therefore, claim some taxes off my casual contract work?
otalp 9y ago
.
- scott_karana 9y ago
  Wrong discussion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917
  - otalp 9y ago
    oops
omot 9y ago
This is how you redeem yourself, when you screw over a gaming community.
arca_vorago 9y ago
I've had and have my disagreements and issues with Epic lately, but kudos where kudos are due. Nice job Epic, especially on the listening part. (now can we get more gnu/linux love please?)
reiichiroh 9y ago
Won't the people of the internet just use this for Source Factory type porn?
katastic 9y ago
"Free" = For use in Unreal Engine only.

554 points by program 9y ago

The Paragon closure has come with a surprising number of upsides compared to the usual collapse of a game. I really wish more companies opened up their assets (or even the game code) upon the closure of a game they've written off. The other highlight note is that when Epic decided to shutdown Paragon, they opened up the refund offer for all purchases, not just really recent ones. They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project, that I believe had upwards of 100 developers working on it at one point. But given Fortnite's success, plus the general solid padding of cash Epic always gets from having one of the most popular game engines that everyone else uses, means they can afford it.

ramy_d 9y ago
Wow I hadn't heard about the refunds. That's really uplifting.
mbesto 9y ago
> They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project It's a genius financial and strategical move, predicated by having a lucky monster success elsewhere in the company that required a quick influx of resources (Fortnite). They can effectively write off a failed game over the next 5 years, and reduce their tax burden as a result. They then act as a "benevolent" actor to the gaming development community by giving away assets that have no financial incentive to them. So they get a nice influx of resources and get to advertise to a new pool in the same breadth. That's a win-win. EDIT: I should also note - I was a benefactor of shifting my payment from Paragon to Fortnite. Given that it had no variable cost to give me $20 worth of skins in Fortnite, that's a pretty solid user acquisition strategy.
- Erlangolem 9y ago
  Deleted
  - gmueckl 9y ago
    Paragon was/is already a F2P "monster".
- sbarre 9y ago
  I don't see why benevolent needs to be in quotes in your comment. Regardless of whatever financial or tax upside they get from doing this, the upside the game development community gets is the same. They are doing something they really didn't need to do, and as GP pointed out, most companies don't do.
  - mbesto 9y ago
    > I don't see why benevolent needs to be in quotes in your comment > most companies don't do. Because most companies are for-profit entities. Most companies don't do this because they aren't in this specific situation. Most gaming companies have really delicate economics (high up front capital costs, with less than guaranteed returns). Call me cynical all you want, but the idea that video gaming companies (of all industries) are somehow out to provide benevolently for it's software developing community is laughable at best (see EA, Ubisoft, Zynga etc). The video gaming market is rife with abusing long hours out of it's employees.
    - rootlocus 9y ago
      > see EA, Ubisoft, Zynga etc You're cherry picking a handful of awful companies for the sake of making a point about the entire industry.
      - mbesto 9y ago
        I take it you haven't worked in the industry? There's literally an industry term for it ("crunch") because it's so bad. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257143/Working_time_among_video_game_developers_Trends_over_200414.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257143/Working_time_amon... http://www.gameinformer.com/themes/blogs/generic/post.aspx?WeblogApp=features&y=2018&m=01&d=16&WeblogPostName=crunch-the-video-game-industrys-notorious-labor-problem&GroupKeys=&PostPageIndex=2 http://www.gameinformer.com/themes/blogs/generic/post.aspx?W... https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577 https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such... https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/20/why-crunch-time-is-still-a-problem-in-the-video-game-industry/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/20/why-crunch-time-is-still-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/opinion/work-culture-video-games-crunch.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/opinion/work-culture-vide... https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_4_Crunch_Makes_Games_Worse.php https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/T...
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  And hopefully get more devs to use their platform (Unreal Engine) using these assets as their entry point, giving them dank licensing money if there is a good game amongst the many mediocre ones.
- tyrust 9y ago
  >reduce their tax burden Why do people always make this argument? Loss is loss. You're financially better off if you make money, even if you have to pay taxes on it.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Yeah, I don't understand how this reduces anything. Can someone explain?
    - simaracode 9y ago
      You basically can take a Tax deduction on capital losses, meaning paying less tax (Super simplifying the complex US Tax Code) https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062713/capital-losses-and-tax.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062713/capit...
    - tyrust 9y ago
      You pay taxes on capital gains. Suppose that Epic made P income from Paragon and I income from everything else. They are taxed at T. So if they return P to customers, that's a loss. So they will pay (I - P) * T in taxes and end up with (I - P) * (1 - T). Suppose they kept P, that's gain. So they will pay (I + P) * T in taxes and end up with (I + P) * (1 - T). So even though they pay less in taxes ((I - P) * T < (I + P) * T), they will end up with less money ((I - P) * (1 - T) < (I + P) * (1 - T)).
      - mbesto 9y ago
        Whoa, even I couldn't follow this :) Basically, what it means is the following: Year 1 - I spent $10M on Paragon (let's pretend I've made a single dollar from it). I therefore have negative -$10M in profit, so I pay zero taxes. Year 2 - I shut Paragon down. I still have $10M in losses from Paragon. Fortnite does $30M in Revenue and it cost me $20M to build Fortnite in Year 2. Theoretically I profited $10M in year 2 and I'd have to pay ~30% (thats not the real number, so don't correct me) of that in taxes, so I really only get to keep $7M of that to reinvest. But I get to carry my loss forward from Year 1 onwards. So in theory I get to keep more of my profit due to a smaller tax burden. Generally speaking this is usually done over 5 years. So I'd take $10M and amortize it $2M ever year. Meaning Year 2, instead of paying 30% of $10M, I would pay 30% of 8M, so $2.4M versus $3M. It's obviously way more complicated than this, but this is the gist.
- CyberDildonics 9y ago
  It still takes time and energy to package and release something to the public, even if it is assets.
- barking 9y ago
  I come in peace. You're not a benefactor given that you are the one who benefited
maaaats 9y ago
> I really wish more companies opened up their assets (or even the game code) upon the closure of a game they've written off. Or just old games in general. Many rewrites of old games are hampered by the lack of assets.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Sure, but there's a big difference in how a company sees the value. If you're talking about a property the company found success with, they surely want to hang onto the copyright and exclusive control of those assets with which to make sequels and the like, or even remasters and re-releases as Nintendo often does. I particularly feel we need to clear up the copyright drama for abandoned works in particular, but there's a reasonable point that plenty of companies do continue to use and sell their game content for a very long time. A failed project has very little value for the purposes of monetizing again later, you don't make a sequel to a game that you didn't make a profit on (usually). So it's a particularly good category to give away to the community.
snuxoll 9y ago
I'm interested to see if Epic releases the entirety of the remaining assets, while they are no longer interested in developing the game there was a small but dedicated community that was sad to see the game shutdown. It would be interesting to see the community take over the game and continue to give it life, and it wouldn't be the first time this has happened (see Allegiance/FreeAllegiance as an example, Microsoft just re-licensed the game under the MIT license last year at that - it was already available under the MSR-SSLA for quite a while).
banned1 9y ago
Well, in this case Epic and whoever benefits from these assets are taking the Taxpayer for a ride. So this is a “convenient” incentive to Epic and others who use these assets (as opposed to inconvenient, as when it happens with [company not relevant to the SV echo chamber]). A) Epic closes Paragon down B) Epic opens Paragon assets C) Epic deducts Paragon losses from their earnings, saving on federal taxes D) Companies that build assets based on these assets do so while getting a nice taxpayer-enabled corporate welfare check.
- pjc50 9y ago
  C) would happen regardless of the other items.
  - banned1 9y ago
    My understanding is that this happens when an asset is written off. I understand it would be either now [with the action], or over time [without this action]. Maybe a person with an accounting background can correct me so I can edit my comment. Thanks for bringing this potential issue up.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  pretty much all corporate expendature is tax deductable.
  - banned1 9y ago
    Software is an asset that depreciates over time. It's not an expenditure in the sense of when one spends money on, say, a trip, which would become an instant expense.
cdkee 9y ago
Well to Epic, their games are usually a showcase of their engine. It makes sense to open source their assets. It also helps that Fortnite is a massive success.
Thaxll 9y ago
"They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project, that I believe had upwards of 100 developers working on it at one point." Not really, they're doing that on purpose to put everyone on Fortnite, it's a very different story.

benbristow 9y ago

Nice. I bet this is going to encourage more asset flips though.

maaaats 9y ago
What do you mean by asset flip? (And how would this encourage this)
- dgritsko 9y ago
  I've generally heard the term used to refer to low-effort games that are basically just third-party assets packaged up and sold as a full experience, while having little to no "playable content". The availability of these assets could encourage this since they are freely available.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    It's especially common to throw these together as "early access" games, pretending that they're still in development and will get deeper content at a later date.
  - floatboth 9y ago
    Yeah, often it's ad-supported App Store / Google Play titles, where one developer uses the same engine with different assets to make many games and hope someone accidentally downloads them and clicks the ads. Like the (in)famous Grab That Auto https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM
- detaro 9y ago
  An "Asset Flip" is a commercial game puzzled together from ready-made bits as cheap as possible (e.g. get some shooter template code, drop in some free/cheap character and weapon models, copy or make some really basic levels), without consideration for the quality of the resulting game.
- jimcsharp 9y ago
  If you've ever followed a Hello World game building tutorial for UE or Unity, somebody has taken the end result of that tutorial and placed it on a game marketplace somewhere. It was/is a bit taboo, but the gaming phenomena PUBG also used UE marketplace assets, although they added value by making an enjoyable game around it.

Erlangolem 9y ago

Deleted

eutropia 9y ago
The game had been out for a few years, but as a MOBA-style game (like DotA, or League of Legends; thus competing with two of the largest video games in the market period) it didn't attract a critical mass of players to keep the ongoing dev effort worthwhile.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Being tilted more toward the 3D shooter style, also competing against Overwatch. Different gameplay objectives, but "class based team shooter" could describe either of them.
  - trisimix 9y ago
    to be fair moba is pretty universal/vague too.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      Yeah, I honestly hate that name. Just by the meaning of words, Unreal Tournament is an "online multiplayer battle arena" but somehow it came to mean specifically "top-down Warcraft 3 custom map with fighting in 3 lanes" now. But the lane fighting genre has been all downhill since Monday Night Combat anyway, so I'm happy to ignore it :P
      - delecti 9y ago
        A number of genre names are only meaningful because people already know what they refer to. Probably the best example is RPG, which ostensibly applies to effectively every game where the player controls a character with a persona.
- abiox 9y ago

Dude2023 9y ago

I wonder which engine it works best with...

abiox 9y ago
game assets tend to be highly engine-specific things by their very nature. it can be possible to start from some raw assets when moving to another engine, but even then you may have, say, a character rig setup that's great in one engine but a huge pain in the ass in another.
teddyfrozevelt 9y ago
I wonder which engine is the only one you're allowed to use it in.

openbasic 9y ago

What's the EULA on those assets? Are they UE4-only?

detaro 9y ago
Epic's assets on the marketplace are UE-only, yes.
jsheard 9y ago
https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-and-releases/1445832-12-million-worth-of-paragon-assets-released https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-... Q: How much do I have pay for the Paragon assets? A: Nothing! They’re completely free. You can use them in both commercial and non-commercial Unreal Engine 4 projects. Q: Are there any restrictions on the use of the Paragon assets? A: As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4.

ixtli 9y ago

Can someone with more knowledge comment on how strictly tied to the unreal ecosystem these assets are?

dalore 9y ago
> This content is now available free of charge in the Unreal Engine Marketplace, where developers may download Paragon packs to use in their own UE4 projects. So it's only for use in your UE4 project.
extrememacaroni 9y ago
As per their license, you cannot use them outside of UE4. This means that while you may be able to pull out the assets from your UE project and import them in Unity, it's not legal to do so.
- AgentME 9y ago
  Maybe you could use them in another engine if you show the Unreal engine logo on startup and pay for the licensing of the Unreal engine. (Though I assume other proprietary engines like Unity have rules against portraying their engine as another with the other's logo shown first.)
  - extrememacaroni 9y ago
    If you have money to get Epic to make an exception for you, you likely don't need freebies like these assets ;)
wlesieutre 9y ago
Per the linked post, they're only licensed for use in UE4. You might be able to shoehorn them into something else, but copyright wise you're not authorized to.

hardwaresofton 9y ago

One question before I cement Epic Games as a game company (or just tech company in general) that does things differently in an an interesting way: How easy is it to import/export models/ UnrealEngine assets to other platforms? If I want to use an asset from UnrealEngine in like godot, how easy would it be? This is pretty massive if it's really a no-strings-attached release of assets to the community but the skeptic in me says there's no way it's just that

atkbrah 9y ago
Looks like the assets are licensed for only to be used in UE4 based products https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  Aaaaand there it is. The've basically converted their writeoff to a lossleading/marketing spend. Nothing wrong with shrewd business moves, and I guess they're not trying to mislead people intentionally. Well nice of them to release the assets at least, I'm sure devs who are already committed to UE4 are pretty stoked.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Im sure the people making quick asset flips won’t mind that.

bitwize 9y ago

This reminds me of the Golgotha drop from 2000: unfinished code and assets from a scrapped game, released as open source/PD. I don't know what, if anything, ever became of those...

abiox 9y ago
wow, thanks for reminding me of that. i remember this happening...brings back some memories. i was trying to learn to program my own games, and this event (despite the unfortunate circumstances) seemed like some gift from the gods in terms of being able to see the guts of a real game. looks like some stuff is on github: https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha https://github.com/saniv/golgotha https://github.com/saniv/golgotha

sergiotapia 9y ago

Epic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers. Fornite BR is exploding in popularity, with Ninja recently streaming with Drake, Kim Dotcom and another popular rapper. They broken the all-time record with 620k+ viewers at 2am! I'm sure their success facilitated the decision to release this for free and also give out refunds for Paragon. Win/win for them!

Splines 9y ago
> Epic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers. Are you talking about Fortnite in general, or the Battle Royale mode? The weird thing is that my impression is that Fortnite was talked about for awhile as this Horde-mode construction game, sort of like minecraft meets L4D. Then the BR F2P mode was added and the whole thing blew up.
- k__ 9y ago
  Well, pivot while you can...
  - elldoubleyew 9y ago
    I always felt bad for the devs of the actual Fortnite game. Its clear lots of time and resources were poured into what was actually a pretty good horde style survival/crafting game, then the little BR offshoot came along and now whenever someone says "Fortnite" I just assume they mean BR because no one actually plays the survival game. I guess they can't complain about the success but it would have to feel at least a little bit demoralizing.
    - k__ 9y ago
      lol, serendipity. As far as I know the regular mode is not free to play. I only tried it because it was a free alternative to PUBG
      - 9y ago

lostgame 9y ago

>> "As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4." 'You've raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir - bravo!'

jlebrech 9y ago

Brilliant, you can make a proof of concept VR game for example and make it look good.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Making 3d models look good on the screen and making them look good in VR usually optimize for different things.

tekism 9y ago

I know nothing about game development or the likes. But I just browsed the site. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe create a torrent or huge iso file of this info instead of downloading each asset manually?

jcoffland 9y ago

> Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free > The assets, built at a cost of over $12 million... It's a common mistake to assume that something is worth what it cost to create it.

cupofjoakim 9y ago
Value is relative, right? It depends on who looks at it. To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M whilst to you and me it's probably not more than a couple hundred bucks (unless you're a game dev in need of assets, that is),
- jcoffland 9y ago
  > To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M No, that's the fallacy. The assets are only worth $12 million to Epic if Epic has a viable way to reap $12 million in benefit from them. The fact that it cost Epic $12 million to create the assets has nothing to do with it. That's just sunk cost.
  - tonyhb 9y ago
    There's now a business loss of $12M on their books, so they're getting benefits on their next tax filing. That's where the real monetary value comes from.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Which is a small percentage of $12M.
    - chii 9y ago
      > loss of $12M on their books this is really hard to quantify independently, and they can use this figure to inflate their losses to claim more taxation benefit than otherwise deserved. Why can't i say that I "lost" 12million developing my indie game, and therefore, claim some taxes off my casual contract work?

otalp 9y ago

scott_karana 9y ago
Wrong discussion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917
- otalp 9y ago
  oops

omot 9y ago

This is how you redeem yourself, when you screw over a gaming community.

arca_vorago 9y ago

I've had and have my disagreements and issues with Epic lately, but kudos where kudos are due. Nice job Epic, especially on the listening part. (now can we get more gnu/linux love please?)

reiichiroh 9y ago

Won't the people of the internet just use this for Source Factory type porn?

katastic 9y ago

"Free" = For use in Unreal Engine only.