Finally another developer who understands the benefits of this.
On a funny note: I once suggested this to Unity many years ago but they weren’t ready for the idea those days. They prefered earning some short sighted money instead. Oh well, in the end everyone needs to learn their own lessons.
does universities will get a copy for themselves and its students only? Or is it going to be a free downloadable version for everyone to try out?
Nope, at this point it’s not for everyone but you somehow might qualify for the Educational License…
You can find the currently available licencing offers via http://mycryengine.com .
This programme is up for over a year already.
Nothing new.
However, what’s new is that Crytek plans to make a free edition too (for everyone out there), something like Unity is now (or like Epic did with UE3, in the form of UDK)
The license details, and when this programme starts of, is unclear at current time. (this news was announced a few months ago during a conference, and the CEO of Crytek announced it)
I don’t get what you’re saying here. What lesson did they learn? And what money would they have earned if the made it free right away? Long term money?
Obviously you didn’t…
I think he means, giving out free editions towards potential licensees. (in this case students/schools, to elevate that potential more)
Student are eager to learn, especially populair things, like Unity, if you give them a free license, this will surely boost up the motivation. Secondly to that, the educators will also gain more knowlegde of next gen tools.
In the end the industry will adapt to trends made at university and courses. Since there is a certain knowlegde present (e.g. CryEngine, UE, Unity), which those companies could really use. Most companies base their middleware choice based upon knowlegde of their employees.
I don’t get it either. Many companies do just fine without giving away free products.
But Unity is free. :?
And many years ago it was barely released.
Actually, I think all apps should provide cheap/free, non commercial alternatives. I just found what taumel orginally wrote oddly worded.
Although free is nice I kind of liked the symbolic price of Unity Indie. I don’t feel you gain all that much by allowing everyone to use the software and abuse the forums instead of just those who have actually tried the trial and want to pay for the whole package, even if it’s just a tiny amount.
you two need to think more commercially. (out of the box)
sales is one thing, popularity (aka marketshare/effective adoption in the industry) is another thing. Giving out free licenses boosts the marketshare. thus adoption in use in general (target audiences/devs/potentials), which will lead to more sales.
besides this, it also impacts the resourcefulness of it’s users. The more users, the more knowlegde, which can lead to a better/improved product.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Thats, why many competitors do this.
Hard to proof cause the interest of indie developers is not exactly high for a technology you must not use commercially and where you know that you need more than one investor to ever license the commercial one
Already the 25% royality of UDK is pushing funded teams with commercial into other directions as it is a pretty hefty hit given that you already lose a share to the publishing platform etc etc (if you used such a licensing for iphone, you would lose a good 60% or 60 cent per tier level just for royality and licensing)
^ Assumptions ^
@saymoo, not sure who the two you are refering to are because only 2 people have replied to this thread in the last period of time before your post and they had completely different views. 
Actually most apps I know of that are widely used do not do this. 3ds max, Maya, Photoshop, Cinema 4d etc. The only way to get a cheap version of those is to be a student and even then some of them are pretty costly.
I think apps like Photoshop, 3ds Max, Maya etc. would benefit a lot from having a free/cheap fully featured non-commercial version because they are so widely pirated anyway so it wouldn’t make that much of a difference except let people actually use the software legally.
I for instance have no interest in using 3ds max or Unity 3d for any financial gain, yet I would have to pay out my ass for 3ds max if I wasn’t still a student, and I’m not even a student, I just pay the student fee to get these privileges. And I feel I have a firm grip of 3ds max and have given a ton back to the community as well as requested features, reported bugs etc. etc. Even if I was using a pirated or non commercial version of 3ds max there’s no way that isn’t benefical for everyone, including Autodesk.
you answered it yourself
True, however i was not refering to those type of competitors, since they are not in the same scope of products.
I’m talking about middleware vendors, as in game engines/frameworks/addons.
If you followed the trend the past 3 years, you would notice a shift in terms of licensing costs/usage. Many of these middleware offerings provide a special low cost (far lower compared to the normal pricing, to even free!) for students, educational institutions.
However, since the last year there is another shift taking place, the indie developer gained focus.
Thus there are special Indie geared licenses active within the middleware market, so they can adapt the technology too without too much financial hindrance = risk.
During the playtime with that (normally very high priced ) toolset, indies get used to working with it, thus gaining knowlegde, thus more potentials to eventually (either with or without external funding) purchage a normal license.
E.g. here are some middleware product that have made a special license for indies, or will do soon (either free, or very cheap):
Havok Physics, Havok Animation, PhysX, UnrealEngine 3 (through UDK), Unity, RakNet, FMod, Torque3d, CryEngine, IDTech series 1 to version 3 currently, Chrome Engine)
a few years back this was not available, even thinkable.
@dreamora:
The license either acceptable or not, that’s the choice of the enduser(s). But still their gearing towards another userbase spectrum.
anyway, shall we get back ontopic? 
It didn’t make sense back then cause the average university had no group wide osx only installs and with Unity being OSX only nothing else would have made sense
After all these university licensings are for institutes, you can’t license it under a student license
Quite not a valid argument as universities, at least the ones i know, always had some up-to-date Macs as well and you also don’t need a 100% Mac infrastructure. Secondly if the software comes for free quite some Profs more likely invest their budget into certain kind of hardware.
I think the smart move is to allow users to try the product for free. Why? Many reasons… (and it’s not just cuz I love that I get to use unity for free)
First I’d say… money lost due free licensing is lower than gained profit, why? because unity is ultimately for commercial purposes, that’s why it’s 1500 bux per license, right? So as expensive as it is you will totally need the license to profit from it without worrying about huge legal issues, being said that, giving away free licenses with some functionality limitations, is really a smart move, I mean, lets put you into three hypothetical groups a,b, and c:
a) You’ll have some fun, but gamedev isn’t your thing, meaning you weren’t going to buy it anyway b) You had what it takes, you’re making good money with unity, automatically making unity worth $1500 per seat… and lastly, well c) you would have paid 100 bux to have some fun with unity, but since it’s free you didn’t, and you’d be damned before paying 1500 bux for the pro version.
Now, having the unity users well divided into a) b) c), when talking about profit a) aren’t taken into account, a) are possibly the people who pirate products that doesn’t offer free alternatives. So when it comes to profit, we only count on b) which are the profit makers, and c) which is the lost profit due to free licensing. Now thanks to free licensing b) is theoretically increased substantially, increasing profit, while c) increases as well, making unity fellows lose some bucks… I’m no marketing expert, but I doubt money lost with c) will be higher than profit from b)
Another reason… learning curve, unity is not one of those software you see what its like in 30 days, well, it is, but… can you assure user will get ‘hooked’ in 30 days? I’ve been using unity for several months and I feel like a learning machine. If I only had 30 days to give it a shot, I wouldn’t have grasped all the awesomeness and I’d still be using blitz3d. It’s hard to decide what game engine to choose, and it’s a good thing to be on a relaxed non-30daytrial state…
I am so confused by this thread.
Unity Indie is free already.
Not just for schools, but schools have full access to Unity Indie. And as a benefit, if you are making a final project in Unity you can actually sell it (providing your school allows such practices).
keep focus, hehe, it’s not that hard to follow.
(the current talk is about how smart is was to make Unity free, and how other companies do this, and the possible reasons behind it. The short headsup of the thread)
anyway:
this thread has derailed the OP’s topic:
“CryEngine being licensed out to universities etc.”
Let’s keep on that path shall we?
NO! :evil:
… lol just kidding, sorry I tend to think out loud too much, while typing :-0