Game engines are a terrible business, so I don't know. I'm surprised investors were interested, TBH, as interesting a project as it is.
The fundamental problem with game engines is that the bulk of the users are tiny to small indies, who will complain endlessly about any fee whatsoever and even if it's the best tool ever would never pay more than a couple hundred per year. You'll be lucky to get even a few hundred to pay that. On the other end, BigCo game companies, if they'd ever by some miracle greenlight the use of your product rather than using their own shitty internal engines or Unity/UE, are so few in number that even if you can sign one or two you've got a tiny total addressable market.
Probably a fine business, if it works, for a solo bootstrapped engineer, but beyond that it gets very difficult. I'd love to be proven wrong because it'd be fantastic to see more competition in the space (Unity and Unreal both frankly suck balls, largely because they each essentially monopolize their niches and have no incentive to compete).
Comments
Game engines are a terrible business, so I don't know. I'm surprised investors were interested, TBH, as interesting a project as it is.
The fundamental problem with game engines is that the bulk of the users are tiny to small indies, who will complain endlessly about any fee whatsoever and even if it's the best tool ever would never pay more than a couple hundred per year. You'll be lucky to get even a few hundred to pay that. On the other end, BigCo game companies, if they'd ever by some miracle greenlight the use of your product rather than using their own shitty internal engines or Unity/UE, are so few in number that even if you can sign one or two you've got a tiny total addressable market.
Probably a fine business, if it works, for a solo bootstrapped engineer, but beyond that it gets very difficult. I'd love to be proven wrong because it'd be fantastic to see more competition in the space (Unity and Unreal both frankly suck balls, largely because they each essentially monopolize their niches and have no incentive to compete).