I'd like to share with you a story about being a game engine creator for 20+ years and my experiences with Epic Games company.

I've divided this article into 4 parts:

1) My background

2) Epic MegaGrants

3) Unreal Marketplace

4) Final Thoughts

-

1) My background

I've started programming ever since I was a few years old, maybe 7, making first steps in ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 in Basic programming language drawing circles and writing text based games with Smurfs thanks to the help of my dad teaching me from a computer manual.

Later moved on to PC DOS, with Turbo Pascal and C++, started making simple games with 2D graphics and made first attempts at building some library of common functions, next was Windows and DirectX, 2D at first, with 3D following.

I loved playing computer games, and inspired by many of them, wanted to make my own, I knew that first I had to make a game engine to support all of the game functionality. So I've started making one, I was going to make some fantasy game about fighting, monsters and magic, came up with the name "Esenthel" for the game as I wanted it to have some unique fantasy sounding name with a bit of magic.

So I've proceeded with development and started making the engine first. Quickly realized that I actually enjoy working on the engine, which is like solving so many puzzles every day in order to make things work. Work so hard, and then see some graphics popping on the screen, that was really exciting. I've decided to focus fully on engine development, as I've seen there's so many things that can be developed for it. After a few years of making it, I came to the conclusion that I've built something cool, and maybe other people would be interested in using it.

I've made a website about it, posted in many places across the internet, and it really happened, people got interested, and bought some licenses. Thanks to the money I was able to continue working on it. It was a good time, engine development consumed all of my time, as I am a perfectionist, and want to care about all of the things such as, make it work fast, use small amount of memory, make the API clean, make it look beautiful, powerful, make it work on multiple platforms, I truly wanted to make it as best as possible in all kinds of aspects, at the same time help out customers, I was fixing all issues ASAP, adding some of the features people requested, helping out even people who didn't have money to buy a license. I worked super hard, because I was inspired, I was full of motivation, energy and wanted to build something great, I believed in myself, and I knew I could do it. Good skills at math helped. Every day I worked from morning till late night, and I was happy with it.

Things were going good, I had more and more customers, I was able to have good income, had enough money to afford renting an apartment, buy food, even buy a brand new car if I wanted to (I didn't), buy lots of computer hardware for engine development and testing - so many laptops, Macbook Pro, iPad, iPhone, Android phones, etc. I've helped with the launch of a few games, which their developers got good money.

I did my best and was able to grow. Then I noticed new customers stopped showing up, and some existing ones disappeared. I've learned that at that time Unreal Engine changed its license to allow all indie-developers to use it. I still had a lot of savings and some income, so I kept going. In the meantime I've moved to New Zealand, worked for a while in a gamedev company, and then got back to focus on the engine fully. I did my best, however income kept falling. Even though I had a comparable product, in some aspects better, in some worse, with lower prices, and fixing all issues in 99% in ~1 day, people chose to follow the hype of rich and popular billion dollar companies.

I've decided to make my game engine completely free to make games and apps, made it open source, and powered by donations. There's still a lot of users that have stayed with me. Why? Because they can see the power of my engine, they cheer for me, and I wanted to say thank you to them. New users almost don't come anymore, they don't know about my engine, they're already consumed by the marketing of rich and powerful companies.

I was contemplating the idea of converting to something like a MIT license, but my concern is that my codes would get used by already established engines and I would get nothing in return. My savings went down to zero. I've had hardship.

2) I have found out about Epic MegaGrants and that the company has supported another open source game engine.

I had hope.

I've filled out the form, told them who I am, what I have done, and showed my software on which I've worked all my life.

I was willing to share my tech and make the license even more permissive if I got some reasonable reward/grant.

I'm all for building wonderful technologies for everyone to benefit from, but I can't do that for free. I need money for life and to help my family.

6 months I've waited for a reply, only to get a generic automated email with rejection.

It was both sadenning and surprising.

No explanation, no clarification, no nothing.

Asking myself the question, why can another project get a quarter million $ and 20 years of my life and work is worth zero? How can this be so unfair?

Epic Games never responded to my follow up.

Months have passed, I've cooled down a bit, trying to think and justify them, maybe they have a lot of applicants.. maybe they didn't check my work carefully, game engines are big and complex..

So I've developed new technologies, added more high quality screens, made a clear showcase of my engine comparing to software built by hundreds of people from billion dollar companies - https://esenthel.com/?id=compare​

I've filled out one more application again, and in it, I told Epic Games that it felt really cold hearted when they just send out automated rejection emails for someone who spent their whole life working on a project, without any clarification whatsoever.

What happened? Around 3 months later, I got an automated rejection email without any clarification at all.

Ok - That's Not Right!

If you're a billion dollar company, and have a program supposedly dedicated to helping small developers, and you can't even write any clarification for someone who has spent their whole life working on a project, then your program starts to look totally fake to me.

Before getting the response, I have even contacted Mr Tim Sweeney Epic Games CEO to share my concerns about his company grants program, and told him about another problem I had with his company, in which the company has deleted my reviews for the purchases I've made in his Unreal Marketplace. You can read about this later below.

Of course - he never replied, and didn't do anything about it. But I'm glad that I've messaged him, because I wanted to make sure that the man at the top is well aware.

3) Deleting my reviews on my purchases in Unreal Marketplace

While working on my game engine I'm also working on creating 2 games powered by it. I've bought hundreds or thousands of assets from plenty of developers from various online stores, mainly - CGTrader, Unity Asset Store, Unreal Marketplace.

Most of the developers are friendly and helpful, some are even so kind that for the feedback or help I've provided them they gave me some freebies, some don't reply, but one guy really stood out of the bunch. Not only did he not fix the problems that I've reported, he got rude, and his broken 3d models that I've purchased, he has removed from the store where I've bought them, preventing me from getting any eventual updates/fixes. Then he has released some updates on other stores, but not where I've purchased them. And I've bought a lot of assets from him, maybe a total 100-200$ don't remember now. If I want to get the fixes to the problems, I would have to buy the same models again at other stores. Losing money again. I've read more reviews about that developer and he has treated other people similarly, blocking them on Discord, or using foul language.

So I've shared my frustration and experiences with this developer and his assets on the user reviews section for other products/stores I've bought from him. To warn other people what they're getting into and hoping the developer would send me fixes that other people got but I didn't.

If you want to know exactly what I wrote, you can read here, but it's long so you can skip.

TLDR; Models look cool, after download they have problems and are unusable, developer does not provide support, instead he is rude, has deleted all products I've purchased, trying to hide my reviews which contained his words and actions towards me. Preventing me from getting product updates, and making me lose money.

I've bought around 17 packs from Mr XXXXX because they looked cool, but after download I've discovered some of them have very big problems and can't be used in a game without fixing them.
I've contacted developer, asking for help, and sending praise for his work.
I took the time to explain the problems in detail, including images, and my knowledge on how to fix the problems.
The reply that I've got was that Mr XXXXX "Unfortunately, I don’t know how to fix vertex normal".
I tried to help, sent images of the problems with vertex normals and normal maps.
The reply that I've got next was "Thank you for information, that heavy pain to re bake normal map, I will notice that to other new package."
Which means he knows about the problem but is lazy to fix it.
I've waited a few days and asked again.
The reply that I've got "You should use post process". That is so crazy! No post process is ever going to fix texture seams between parts of a model.
I've explained again that the problem is about vertex normals and textures.
The next reply I got was "I was try fix vertex normal but need re bake normal, And re import and re setup in Unity, that cost much time to do. So you can use hair of this character, it will help you hide this neck seam."
This time developer wants me to put extra meshes to hide his mistakes.
I didn't give up, and explained that due to customization some players would like to have a character without hair.
The reply I got was "I can provide you high poly base body mesh of this character, can you re bake normal map by yourself?"
This time developer wants me to fix problems by myself.
I had to ask again and again, developer constantly made me feel like he's doing me some favor by fixing problems in his work.
Finally after asking for several times, he has fixed vertex normals and normal texture. But color texture was still broken.
After asking again and including detailed information with screenshots on what's the problem and how to fix it.
The reply that I've got was "You can use Photoshop to adjust more dark color on body or you have skin shader in my other packages".
Again developer wants me to fix the problem by myself, and says I should try a different shader, which just doesn't make sense, because the problem is color texture have seams, not the shader.
I've explained that shader won't fix, and the problem is about the color texture.
Then next developer started questioning me, how did I purchase his assets, where, and was that through a discount? I felt like I'm being interrogated or something.
After providing my replies on my purchases, instead of getting the problems fixed, I've got an angry reply "If you want me to help you should show respect".
At this point, I gave up, because I really saw that the developer is not serious.
That was not the end of the story, disappointed I've posted a negative review on my purchases.
After that, instead of fixing the problems, the developer -deleted- all products from the websites that I've made purchases and where I've posted reviews about my experiences.
Because products got removed by the developer, I've been blocked from getting any further updates to the purchases I've made, which made me lose money. If I want to get an update of the product I already paid for, I would have to buy it again at another store.
This developer has complete disregard for his customers. He doesn't fix problems. He is rude. Instead of rewarding customers for making purchases, he punishes them. Deletes the products just so he can hide reviews exposing his attitude. Very, very unprofessional.
I've made so many purchases from him, and I won't get any updates/fixes for them. I feel like I've been cheated.

Asset developer instead of doing the right thing and sending me fixes, he simply reported my reviews to Epic Games, and shockingly I've got email from them, that they've removed my reviews and even compared them to Spam.

Wow, that's a first in my life to censor me, for sharing my experiences and issues with a developer and his products for which I've paid money.

I wanted to add that I remember that my reviews were at the top of the "most helpful" section, which means other users agreed/felt the same way as me.

I went and searched online, and found a lot of similar posts where Epic Games has deleted other people's reviews.

It's pretty obvious that people are more likely to buy a product if they don't see any negative reviews, so Epic is doing that for their own personal gain, to get more money.

When Blizzard was under scrutiny for banning a player for making a political statement, Mr Tim Sweeney words were - "Epic supports the rights of Fortnite players and creators to speak about politics and human rights." - it's not exactly the same thing, but it's the same story about freedom of speech, yet his own company is engaging in an unethical practice of deleting user reviews sharing their experiences in his own store.

I've learned a lot about Epic Games company.

Epic Games doesn't care what's right or wrong, if they can censor you and get more money this way, they are going to do it.
If a developer is rude, you're not allowed to share it.
If the developer is unresponsive, you're not allowed to share it.
If a developer doesn't fix problems, you're not allowed to share it.
If products have issues, you're not allowed to share them.
If a developer blocks you from getting updates/fixes, you're not allowed to share it.
What Mr Tim Sweeney is saying, and what his company is doing, are two different things.

When buying any asset on Unreal Marketplace, there's a very high chance that there were a lot more negative reviews which you're not seeing, because Epic Games deleted them for your convenience. Everyone knows that negativity is bad, so by deleting negative reviews they're doing us a favor right?

While I agree some moderation is needed (for hate speech, racism, etc.), I believe this is not moderation, but this is very high censorship and user review manipulation.

4) Final Thoughts

Recently I've found some interesting information about the war that Epic declared on Apple and Google - https://www.pcgamer.com/google-countersues-epic-using-apples-core-arguments/​

Is Apple and Google's 30% cut fair? In my opinion it's way too high. But Epic can't just sign a contract/developer agreement with Apple and Google and then intentionally break it and try to make the other party look like the bad guy. That's bad.

Finally, that led me to the conclusion that the MegaGrants program is not about helping small developers. It's about making a show about how Epic is good and get the public opinion on their side for whatever bad things they're doing, and it's marketing to get more people to use their engine with false hope of getting a grant when in reality you don't even get a human reply.

If Mr Tim Sweeney truly wanted to help small developers, he would have helped everyone with talent and potential equally and in a fair way. That would be the right thing to do. Everyone deserves a fair chance.

Instead Mr Tim Sweeney helps those to put news in headlines and make a show.

In my opinion Epic Games promotes unfairness, favoritism and inequality.

I'm a small developer that worked tirelessly for 20 years, Epic Games never helped me, they killed my business through their own popularity, rejected my grants application twice, no explanation provided, completely ignored me, censored my reviews. Thank you very much.

Mr Tim Sweeney, if you'd like to show everyone how good and trustworthy your company is, then your company has to -be- good and trustworthy.

Don't delete user reviews and shut down their voice.

If you have a program about helping small developers, then help those that need it, or at least provide some valuable feedback, reasoning or clarification for your decisions.

Don't sign and break a contract.

Please make changes to your Epic grants program.

I'm not asking for myself anymore, I know I don't qualify, because I see that hard work, passion, dedication, talent, persistence, new and improved technologies, striving for perfection, helping others, are not something that your company wants to reward.

Hope you will take my feedback and can improve your company.

If anyone wants to use my engine you're welcome to do so:

https://esenthel.com/​
https://github.com/Esenthel/EsenthelEngine/​
https://www.facebook.com/EsenthelEngine​

It's completely free to make games and apps, and it's fully capable of creating wonderful things. I will keep on working on it, but please know since it doesn't bring much income, I can't focus fully on it or help out for free like in the past. But the source is open, you're welcome to join and add new things. Now I'm focusing on development of my 2 games:

https://www.facebook.com/EsenthelDungeon​
https://www.facebook.com/EsenthelWorld​

You can follow their Facebook page if it's something of interest to you.

My game engine will get whatever updates/improvements I will need for those games, and of course any bug fixes you find.

And message to everyone having hard time in gamedev or life, I'm by no means an expert on becoming successful, but I'd still like to say something, in hope it can at least give you some morale boost:

Don't let the world crush you, BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!

Good Luck to everyone - including Mr Tim, Epic, Google, Apple, all Developers and non-Developers.

No, I'm completely fine if someone doesn't want to fund some project, it's their money, they can do what they want.

The “not right” part is that it would be common courtesy to at least provide the applicant some reasoning, explanation, whatever, (especially if the applicant worked on the project all their life, applied 2nd time and specifically mentioned the issue of clarification in the application), but they didn't even bother to do that. And that is what I'm calling cold-hearted. Which just shows that they really don't care about small developers.

In a situation like that, the program causes more harm than good. The program organizer helps a few but lets down many many more, so is this program good or bad? Because I don't think it's good.

In such case the few get elevated to higher level with money and news, which makes the lives of others even harder, and this is what I'm calling favoritism and inequality.

The only winner of a program like that is the organizer, because it makes a show to attract people.

I'm a person who likes to believe in fairness, I don't agree with the notion of “the winner should take it all”, it doesn't make sense at all.

Simple examples: you have a school class of children, you will teach just one and send the rest home? You have a garden with plants, you will give all the water to just one?

No, the right way is balance, and give everyone a fair chance.

GeneralJist said:

Sorry but I really really disagree with many things that you're saying.

First of all you should never call anyone a loser or “loser”, that's a very bad way to put it. We are all people with different sets of skills/abilities.

You're calling providing valuable feedback to people that came to you and invested their own time, to use your program to share their projects, on which they've worked months or years as “waste of time”. If you don't show people respect, then they will don't respect you. You should treat other people in the same way as you'd like others to treat you. It's as simple as that.

You're trying to justify censorship.. because it's in their own interest, that makes no sense at all.

This censorship is a very worrying sign, Epic is in control of one of the most popular game engines, content creation websites, such as Sketchfab, Artstation. What happens when they take it to the next level?

I wish Epic all the best but these concerns do exist.

I'm not looking for justification or validation of my self worth, I came here to share my story, share my experiences with Epic grants and store, share my opinion, thoughts and feedback, maybe they can do some improvements, that's all.

GeneralJist said:
Come to think of it, I thought Epic mega grants were exclusively for people using Unreal engine

No they're not. They're open for open source developers as well, and as I wrote in my first post, another open source game engine received a grant for the same work that I'm doing, that was the only reason that I've decided to apply.

GeneralJist said:
From their perspective your a competitor, why would they have any motivation to fund their competition?

I'm not their competitor if I'm willing to share my work so that Epic and everyone else in the world could use it. But I needed a grant to do that.

esenthel said:
but I can't do that for free. I need money for life and to help my family

esenthel said:
But I needed a grant to do that.

If you're not willing to do it for free, your chances are very high that no one will ever buy your product. As I already wrote about in your Hobby Post, you don't feel trustworthy because you write about things which even an Epic Games company couldn't provide. Fixing Bugs in less than a day and being 100% Bug free? No Way!

Look at open source projects like Godot, Urho 3D or even our hobby project, those have a unique selling point or at least something in their philosophy which lets people trust and contribute to. Those projects don't aim to make tons of money and have one of the major open source licenses added to their project so no one every has to contact a lawyer to just understand your license agreement (if I understand you right, you have a custom license?) and it is way more safe for developers to do something commercial with software which has a well known license.

If you just have to feed your people, go get a regular job or make games instead. You have a better success rate than for selling game tech, I'm talking from experience with one of my former employers who sells a game design software

esenthel said:
They're open for open source developers as well, and as I wrote in my first post, another open source game engine received a grant for the same work that I'm doing

No you haven't! You never know if the software has the same quality if you don't take a look at the code and have at least some try with it. Maybe they had some ideas which Epic found useful and/or interesting. In the end, they're looking for tech they could use to improve their business, not to do you a favor.

I'm sorry but I also took a look at your work and it feels pretty standard and not well thought in the case of usability. One can see that you spend 20 years on your work becaus the code looks like it is 20 years old. Why isn't it possible to have header and code files all in the same directory to not have to switch directory trees all the time in order to find one for the other, as an example of bad project desgin. It isn't enougth to just throw some tech together in order to make and/or improve a game engine, this needs an analysis of a goal one wants to reach and know-how about the tech but also development process.

I don't think Unreal Engine was planned to become a standalone product, Epic games started with their Unreal and Unreal Tournament games quiet early and so have A LOT of experience in making games and A LOT more of experts from different job roles in their company to have the expertise of the how game development really works. Take a look at Fledge from Deck13 Studio, they also developed their own in-house game engine to drive their games and in opposite, take a look at CryTech who more than often got into insolvency as Cry Engine was their one and only selling product.

I don't like Unreal Engine at all to speak honestly but I honor their work and also stole some of their ideas for our SDK project. Especially their tooling is quiet simple but powerful at the same time even if I dislike their code policy, nor how they structure their game engine.

In my opinion, before you blame someone or a company for not honoring your work, you should come with your own thoughts and ideas about how things should be and most important, an own philosophy

Shaarigan said:
As I already wrote about in your Hobby Post, you don't feel trustworthy because you write about things which even an Epic Games company couldn't provide. Fixing Bugs in less than a day and being 100% Bug free? No Way!

Dear Sir, you've asked the question, and I have replied - https://gamedev.net/forums/topic/710906-looking-for-pro-business-partner-creating-a-game-engine-co-have-working-product/5442945/?page=1​

Shaarigan said:
Those projects don't aim to make tons of money

I never said that this was my aim, in fact I've said something very opposite, but I see that you really haven't read what I actually wrote:

Actually that's not what I'm looking for. I'm perfectly happy to have enough money just to live a healthy and happy life.

Shaarigan said:
so no one every has to contact a lawyer to just understand your license agreement (if I understand you right, you have a custom license?)

You're making comments about my license and you haven't even seen it.

Shaarigan said:
No you haven't!

Yes I did:

esenthel said:
2) I have found out about Epic MegaGrants and that the company has supported another open source game engine.

Shaarigan said:
You never know if the software has the same quality

I never made any comments about quality, what I'm talking about is the same kind of work.

Shaarigan said:
One can see that you spend 20 years on your work becaus the code looks like it is 20 years old.

I'm sorry but your posts seem to be just full of negativity, it's difficult to read and reply.

Shaarigan said:
Why isn't it possible to have header and code files all in the same directory to not have to switch directory trees all the time in order to find one for the other, as an example of bad project desgin.

This is to separate headers from source code, so that headers can be copied by automated tool to a binary only engine release for upload to my website instead of GitHub.

Thanks for the clarification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjKcwjvbZLM
:)

I will tell you what I would do.

I'm all about fairness, progress and improvement.

As long as everyone is polite and respectful and just points out what's the problem, how can it be improved. I am happy to get that feedback.

But if someone is just plain rude and uses foul language, or talks about things that are not real (lies), then yes, I would in that case either give them a warning or temporarily disable their ability to make new posts.

When it comes to the issue of Epic store deleting my voice, I hope you can understand that I wasn't “shit talking” neither the developer nor the Epic games company, but was talking about actual facts, experiences and in a polite respectful way, I believe that something like that should have no right to get deleted. It is the Asset Developer who should be trying to address and solve the problem and the reason he was getting bad reviews from me. Epic should not get involved in this, at least not in the way they did, but rather they should motivate the Asset Developer to workout the problem they have caused the customer, and take some responsibility for their own actions. The Developer did not respond to my emails, didn't provide fixes, never compensated for lost purchases, never said sorry for any inconvenience. Instead Epic chose the wrong way, and that is what I strongly oppose. Instead of doing the right thing, they sided with the bad developer, chose to silence my voice and increase profits for themself. That paints a picture of an unfair and greedy company. Despite my few attempts at communication with them, they didn't budge. Hopy you can understand that this has only increased the frustration with the company, after they didn't even bother to write a few words for my life's worth of work grant application. If they didn't silence my voice, I wouldn't have to come here writing my story.

GeneralJist said:
we shouldn't be faulting companies to act in their own interest

This is exactly what we should be doing if we believe that something is not right, we should speak up, discuss and address problems. If there's no discussion, then there's no progress.

I think your complaining about stuff many people deal with ever day on many different sites. Reviews and posts are very often censored these days. I'm not saying it's fair, but it's the new reality. IMHO your best bet is not to try to complete with Epic, but fill some niche that isn't currently well supported.

As for the grant, just forget it. Nobody owes anyone money and it's not worth fretting about. Good luck.