Epic Games acquires ArtStation
Apr 30, 2021 by CGPress Staff
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Epic Games has announced the acquisition of ArtStation, the popular portfolio, jobs, training and marketplace for digital artists. According to the announcement, ArtStation will continue as an independently branded platform. Immediate changes include a reduction in the Marketplace fees and free access to ArtStation Learning for the remainder of 2021. Epic and ArtStation both emphasise that the platform will remain open to all artists whether 2D or 3D , including those that don’t use Unreal Engine. Read the announcement in full on the Epic Games website.
Sweet, now make the Pro version free!
Epic acquiring all these products and platforms and giving them for free is making me nervous. What’s the endgame?
That apple buy them 😉
Data collection
whos collecting?
communism in CG space.
That or a demonstration of monopolistic mega-corporate consumer market dominance. Hard to tell which.
today i learned:
hyper capitalistic company gobbling up smaller companies in order to achieve monopoly= communism.
would it be a reach to guess you hail from the good ol´ USA?
geez. it was just a joke.
yes I am from the US. and this is a nation-wide joke. when things are provided for free we automatically call it communism and smile at the silliness of deeming every free thing communism. get it ?
how does it feel to be the no-chill guy so jokes have to be pointed out to you ?
no see, i am super chill and awesome and wonderful and also handsome.
yeah, if you squint real hard one could maybe see it as a twist on the …”in spaaaaace” or something.
but seriously, your post did not have any hint being a joke and i see comments like these posted unironically damn near daily. the understanding of communism/socialism in the usa is so out of whack it stopped being funny around 2015.
pretty fed up with takes how socialised medicine is the last stop before the gulags…still, sorry for not getting the joke but i wonder if it is one when around 50% see it as fact.
and also my sarcasm was funnier tbh…
Hey I’m also handsome! And my understanding of socialism/communism is real deep, like ass deep because i’ve lived it see! So pretty please it sucks more balls than I can count.
Meanwhile in USA capitalism died a few decades ago when debt and banking and corporations took over and now it became a monopoly (something in check in some European countries and also was in check in USA back in the days, remember those glory days?).
But guess what? even in this fucked up Monopolistic state, the market is still a hundred times better than working under communism.
Hey at least the art/software/game you create belongs to you and not the F*ckin government lets start there.
fwiw, not defending communism or am a fan of it. just dont appreciate how easily its gets invoked next to any ol shit these days. conflating it with some beneficial/social policies is actually dangerous and muddies the understanding.
and its good we are handsome, indeed.
Sadly because the society in the west these days shove it in our faces with their twitters and woke mobs and cancelations of perfectly innocent people, Society in the west is falling apart, comic book industry gone, movie industry is going, they tried to take on games but failed because they don’t have that monopoly yet and most gamers aren’t idiots.
Socialist and far left ideology is everywhere now in this new generation, starting from their universities.
We, outside of USA laugh at the “problems” these first world countries have, for some of us their “problems” are nothing more than two 12 years olds fighting over a ball.
If we had 5% of what the average kid today has in the west back when we were growing up, we would be running on success after success.
Tell that to all the war victims of the military complex/prisoners/sweatshop workers/homeless people/sick people from environmental waste. I think they would not say its any better for them at all.
I think you are mistaken totalitarianism as the opposite of free market. There is something in between possible, where you can keep your art and prevent monopolies from destroying the world.
Its easy, vote for the right thing, if you can’t vote then protests for the right things until you cac. Remove monopolies (soo easy if you try, its right there in the consititution just needs updating to include tech companies) and vote against war.
Naaah USA is too busy hating on police and protesting to have more pronouns in their bio and safe spaces and canceling people for “hate speech” while burning down mom and pop shops and destorying others for not baking them a cake all the while calling everyone seixsts and racists. Also Russia is a boogyman. Distractions when your constitution gives you all the power, but society has become too degraded to think clearly.
naaah, communism takes everything away, won’t give You nothing.
True, European communism was “Stale-ism” – Queue for stale bread, wait over a year for a car in a random mud colour that barely works, live in a damp noisy concrete box exactly like everyone else. Slot into a dull job that pays barely enough to buy the basics. I’m not sure this still applies to modern China – Communist in party name alone?
To get back on topic, maybe Epic wants to be the ‘China’ of the Games industry. 🙂
It was true for China in the time of Mao it was that terrible… modern china isn’t a communist economic system anymore though. The communist party is obviously still in power but I think an accurate description is a totalitarian state that allows market capitalism and companies to operate is probably a more accurate description
Easy, Epic/UnReal/association with great art and artists. If you owned an Animation Studio and could advertise the best artist’s work alongside yours there is a “cross Branding” that elevates your product for cheaper than you could buy that clout for. They took a page from Adobe here to me.
IT IS EPIC
Never before in history was there such a thing like a fast growing, omnivorous, multibillion software company becoming **monopoly** and yet remaining **beloved***. Never. And I have an elephant-memory, since my first CG days, back in 1991.
We have had Microsoft, Autodesk, Adobe, hey – we even ran enthusiastically, around 2005, like the Taliban under the banner of “We are not Evil” (Google) just to help creating the largest Kraken ever seen in the history of the information-management.
I don’t think I will ever again root for any of such constructs, since the experience has teach us how fast things can change. Yet, 3D Artists have generally memory capacities of a golden fish – as soon as UE starts in next years to add subscriptions, paid content and limitations for free usage, those who cheer will be the first one to shout… 🙂
Generally you are right about things like these, but for some reason Epic is a bit different. I think that also comes greatly from the fact that its orginal founder(s) is still there and that they were themselves artists and programmers who have worked ground up to this.
My only critic of them so far is to stop the exclusivity on their stores and stop head butting with steam that way.
Steam deserves every slack it gets, its proven to be one greedy son of a b*tch.
I totally agree with you, the monster is too big and scary. At some point this will backfire
Yeah but this is the company that made Unreal tournament back in the day. They’re a game company that has been at the heart of the industry for 20 years plus, and we all know games companies can never do evil and are can only be super cool… Now of course that isn’t true. Games companies have and do behave extremely badly. Epic, generally appears to be a more egalitarian force though. But even the best behaviour can mask nefarious motives, and time has a habit of telling…
You must not forget how arrogant Epic was back in the days as they were game developer. There are this legendary stories from our publishers in the past (back in 2000), where have to pay a half million dollar for their engine and got a DVD, with handwritten “engine code” on it. No manual, no support, nothing, just a jewel case and the dvd. They were a monopoly back in the time. And behaved as such.
We have looked then for Gamebryo (which was also very bad) for $ 200.000,- and at the end created our own.
First after Crytek has released their engine, which was visually much more advanced and was delivered with editor and docs, was Epic forced to adapt. After Crytek became a real competitor, and start gaining large markets shares (and interest) in 2004 with their CryEngine, Epic was forced to do something. Finally, they have published their current solution, UE, as we know it today.
In other words, Epic was not a saint or angel, despite current, constructed, narrative. UE today is a product of escaping market marginalization and not because they were nice guys. It is business, not love.
Just to make it clear – this is not my personal opinion, this is the history. I personally love UE, and I like to work in it. But it is always good to know the background of each narrative you read in web or comments, and … doubt everything, especially when someone appears to be very nice to you. There is no such thing as a free lunch. 🙂
with all due respect, and i mean it – your arguments dont always follow for me.
what you described anecdotally does not read as arrogance for me as much as growing pains of the 3d engine licensing industry.
besides, quake engine, source engine, litetech even archaical build engine were all bumping around in that era were they not?
actually quake engine had the upper hand in those days?
that is not to say that anyone should look at the epic aquisitions with rose tinted glasses –
its all very worrying. but actually, even i this thread i am not seeing anyone really oblivious to the possible negative scenarios.
most importantly, lest we forget:
yes sweeney has majority stake but tencent owns damn near 49%. at some point they will take over and then be able to leverage the power in every which way they choose.
even if we do hope tim sweeney to be an altruist, shit will get real and soon probably.
Tencent’s investment is the reason Epic made the engine free to use, no? Though I would never want them to be in control. You are mistaken on how much they own. Tencent purchased 48.4% of the remaining shares, not total shares, in Epic at the time, which equals about 40% of Epic Games. Still a lot.
ah cheers man for the correction, good to know. not very comforting though.
yeah, i rounded the 48,4 off but 40% puts them easily in the controlling stake when sweeney is out of the picture.
all even more worrying if the incentive to go free was infact the tencent cash injection.
considering some recent events re: freedom of speech,
i suppose i can loopback to the comment above but say:
authoritarianism in CG spaaace…
Yes you are correct, what you write is actually exactly my content: around Year 2005 there was a whole bunch of other engines attacking the flanks of the game market. While Gambryo, IDTech etc were potential threat, CryEngine manifested mortal danger. Epics played endgame, a liberation blow – a move to end all those attacks: it dumped its stuff as free-to-use. From that point on, we observe the decline of most of other solutions. CryEngine never recovered and owns now a small piece of the share.
We have today Unity Engine with some 43% of the market share with 180.000 produced games /2.5Billion installs (due to AR/VR and industrial sector) and Unreal with 15% (globally) or 25% (steam). We are a software distributor and sell Unity licenses, among other, it is my job to read all those number from global market share papers. If we observe only Steam, as one reference, you can download from the GitHub the analysis tools and run it yourself – and calculate game engine market-shares in real-time. This is maybe not exact, but it is a great archive with history and present data and developments.
Far behind there are CryEngine, Valve, IDTech, etc. The market share numbers are public.
There are some correction for your text – IDSoftware did not have the upper hand in that days. Nor ever. They were very famous, but not wide spread. IDTech (1-7) was used in some 20-50 commercial games. Older versions went GPL, so there is no track from there, but it is marginal.
SourceEngine was very limited and used only in 20 games so far. This are peanuts compared to hundred thousand games done with UE. And so on. Your feeling it was more is based on our nostalgic view of the past, not the evidence.
And I am actually not writing anecdotes, I was there. If I would have time, I would go down in our basement and dig out the old stuff, just to show you how the game engine world looked like 20 years ago. I still have almost all CDs and DVDs from that time as we were producing games 🙂
About UE – the time will show if they will again become monopoly and arrogant, as they once were, or if everything has changed and they become “saints” (what I can not imagine, based on the past events). I am now happy to be only a spectator 😀
cheers igor,
thanks for the insights and the numbers, i appreciate it. didnt mean to present it as if i had any sort of first hand knowledge on the subject. was just a gamer kid.
and absolutely idtech, source et al were not really that widespread at all. i was just referring to the monopoly argument, there were options besides epic.
i honestly was under the impression unity was on the ropes and was not happy about it since it is only real competitor in that indie arena. glad to read its not the case.
i also did not mean “anecdotally” in a derogatory way. i just understood the story was coming from the publisher miffed by epic.
beginning 2000 i remember you running many super indepth cgi articles and blogs and it was all a great and rare resource back than, a true OG of CG lol.
thanks for that.
Hey, thanks Tecnomnancer, no problem 🙂 I am astonished there are still artists around remembering me back those days. I am trying myself to find all other bloggers and artists from that time, artists I have admired and learned from. I have found out that most of them have quit CG-Career and went doing something else… apparently is 3D and CG not a luxury job once you get old 🙁
ugh you´re bumming me out man:) and making me feel old. double whammy.:)
i have a broad portfolio and 3d is my favourite medium but i had to nurture a broad skillset to have a steady flow of projects. dont think doing cg only would be viable even from the get go.
what you noticed i keep seeing actually in many fields. i have an agent that represents mainly photographers and they are pretty much in unison saying that photography is on its way out. some try to transition into video but that industry is well into its race to the bottom. doing shit for exposure is becoming the norm in many cases. even caterers.
dunno man, the tech will do its thing and make even more jobs obsolete or not viable. i guess the thing is to focus on the conceptual and intellectual processes as tools become AI driven. whatever that means…its all kind of horrifying but fk it.
anyway, i hope you dont have to deal with the crap for too much or too long now.
I don’t get everyone here expecting Epic to just make all the services they own paid overnight. It looks like everyone is under an impression that Epic’s stuff is free, but that’s not really the case.
Their strategy is not that hard to understand. They are creating ecosystem around UE4 to make both CG and GameDev have nearly $0 entry barrier, when it comes to software. All the software and services they’ve made free are there to complement UE4, which is not free, but the bar where you have to start paying is relatively high.
But think about it, if you set the barrier to entry so low that pretty much everyone can afford it, even very poor kids in China and India, then you plant seeds for success in the maximum amount of people worldwide. And even if just a tiny fraction of them succeeds by Epic’s high standards of success ($1M total gross revenue per title), the income for them is massive. At that point, having a bunch of clients whom are paying you 5% of your total gross earnings is much better then them paying some flat rate for license seats.
It is indeed a bit curious that their pricing for non-gamedev related stuff (Creator’s license https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/download) is completely free now, so I would not be surprised if that changed in the future, but even if it does, I have hard time imagining they’d set the pricing success bar anywhere low enough given how high the bar is on the gamedev side.
Bottom line is that that there is no magic altruistic reason Epic does what they do. It’s just a new, different licensing model where they become shareholders of people’s success in exchange for providing them the tools to succeed with, rather than the currently common model of selling the tools for flat license rates, which generate revenue that does not scale with the customer’s success.
To give a practical example of it, imagine a mid sized team working on a triple A title. Let’s say they need 30 engine seats total. For the general public, the seat would, let’s say, cost $1500/year, and we can assume some volume discount since larger studios have usually at least some negotiation power. So let’s assume $1400/year. That makes $42k year revenue for Epic with the old model.
With their current model, if the triple A studio makes a triple A game, manages to sell 5M copies (average successful triple A title these days) at around $40/title, that’s suddenly $200M gross revenue that Epic gets $10M out of. That is roughly 240 times more than with the regular “buy/rent the software license” model.
“With their current model, if the triple A studio makes a triple A game, manages to sell 5M copies (average successful triple A title these days) at around $40/title, that’s suddenly $200M gross revenue that Epic gets $10M out of. That is roughly 240 times more than with the regular “buy/rent the software license” model.”
Hilarious example. 5M copies at 40$ each? Warcraft sold 14M, Cyberpunk 10M – your example is in the exceptionally high end. Most titles probably make less than 1M in revenues, which means 50K for Epic – sorry, I forgot you only pay when 1M is surpassed…ridiculous. I
m not defending Epic or saying theyre saints. We just dont know their bigger picture. Until something negative happens we can use the stuff theyre giving out cheap or free, we can figure out later, just like when Softimage got killed off by Autodesk or Adobe stopped perpetual licenses etc. Otherwise nobody could do anything.Uh, what? What are you talking about?
First of all, I mentioned “triple A” at least several times in my post. The only way I can interpret your post reasonably is if you don’t know what that term means. That term literally means large companies, not small individuals or indie studios.
Yes, my example was supposed to be high end of what a triple A game could make. What’s wrong with that example? If I have to name one, non-inhouse game engine that was actually used to produce triple A games, it’s Unreal Engine.
I was trying to illustrate how much would Epic benefit from such a scenario. That’s why I also compared it to about 30 seats. A dev team working on a triple A game would be usually around 100 people, out of which at least one third would need immediate access to the engine. The rest (sound designers, asset artists, 2D artists, concept artists, management, etc…) probably wouldn’t. And 100 people is not your average garage indie studio.
When you have 100 people with an average of $4k/month pay roll, and you expect the game to take about 12 months to finish, (probably more, but I don’t expect all 100 of them to be working full-time on it at same time, so I’ve cut it down to 12 to compensate) that’s about $4.8M investment, so a triple A studio expect to at least double that.
Second, you are saying “I’m not defending Epic or saying the’re saints”.. I am confused… I thought my post sounds to a degree like defense of Epic. I am not against them, and I don’t understand why would you get an impression that I am.
To me, it just feels like you’ve skimmed over the post and read every other line/sentence.
To further elaborate, look at this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
If you scroll down, you will find a large amount of triple A titles from big publishers in that list. Even if 50% of them had custom terms with Epic and only other 50% would pay the 5% revenue share, that’s still insanely huge. I mean Valorant alone is probably a huge cash cow, given how popular it is.
the way software and games are monetized is changing more and more rapidly.
in best case, epic is realising that in order for the industry (and their pockets) to grow, they need to democratise the 3d arena, not unlike creating their version of freeing the market.
their acquisitions make them central and vital to the 3d creation process and that has power both in branding and monetizing sense. it seems they would rather have people sell fortnite custom made skins than actually be barred from using software at all because of the entry cost.
they are positioning themselves as a platform and ecosystem holder which brings far larger rewards than merely nickel and dimeing folk as autodesk does.
then again epic can afford this long game, not many others can…
I don’t think that anyone will always give everything free for life. He must always get in return for his effort, but we hope that it takes into account the low average income in some countries .. Thank you
epic