comercial licence´s price

For the last weeks I´ve been considering engines. Bottom line is that I can´t think of AVG or Wintermute as options because of the poor way in wich they handle graphics and text... and I haven´t try moai yet or investigate it´s license.
Visionaire on the other hand has everything I need in a pretty confortable way, and as of now I hardly would have any complain aside from the poor documentation (in some places incomplete and in others in deustche).
Yet the price for a comercial licence is not even close to what I´m used to (using Unity and Unreal) and considering the small market involved in the genre, I don´t fully get how developers have manage to do the maths and use the tool, or why would they choose it instead of making their own version in Unity. The Adventure Creator plug -although very flawed (specially for 2d)- may also be an option for indie developers. In any case, I´m not here to attack the eninge (I really like it) or to advertise other apps, I´m only wondering if there´s any hope that the price of the comercial use of Visionaire will put up to what´s being offer by other engines.
PS: I really mean no disrespect to the team... I appreciate the work they do.

Hi Lennon

I don't see the problem with the licenses. You can get a Indie License for 49 Euro (Single User) or 99 Euro (Multi User) which allows you to digitally distribute your game on Windows, Mac and Linux. Only thing you need to do is to put the Visionaire Logo at the start of the game. You can even sell a few copies as physical copies (don't know how many though).

Saludos,
Gordon

That's right.

Plus, there is an affordable license for the release of mobile games (490€) and a pro license for the release in regular stores (including every single platform for 1490€). We've made good experiences with this license plan and think it's a good solution for indie-developers, professional game-developers and the Visionaire Studio Team as well.

I think the current prices are also ok. Not many people will need to purchase the pro license because most will not have publishers putting their game out on the shelves of retail stores, thus the most most people will need is the mobile license which covers digital distribution for all 5 available platforms (win, mac, linux, android & ios) & if you don't want to release to android or ios then you only need the indie individual or multi-license which allows you to create & distribute (digitally) unlimited titles (games) for windows, mac & linux for one small fee of €49/€99 & gives you free updates of the Visionaire studio editor for all 4.x versions.

In regards to the documentation. That's my bad... I provide English support (forum) & documentation (wiki) for peanuts (gratis) & I only have so much free time available as I have other things to do as well. I tend to mostly focus on the Lua side of the documentation as I find it less boring than writing general summaries of what each thing is &/or does in the Visionaire Studio editor.

The thing is that: sure, I probably could spend more time writing up the documentation but the truth is that I'm currently busy with other things & am lacking the motivation to type up 1000's of words for each page needed for the manual. Also the manual will not be a step by step guide to how to do something. It was never intended to be a tutorial, just a summary of the editor, its features & the available actions & action parts.

Tutorials & step by step guides are usually provided by other users of a game engine, although I do intend to provide some tutorials myself at some point.

Sorry, looks like one of those days you feel you´ve been twilight-zoned or something. I seem to have misread the license page entirely. What you´re saying makes perfect sense.
+Question: When the mobile license says "(with this license) There are no restrictions for worldwide digital distribution of your game." the "restrictions" mentioned about other licenses (multi and single) have only to do with the android and IOs digital distribution? also, any particular reason why the word "worldwide" is used there? v.gr. is the distribution that you can do with other licenses less "worldwide" in any way?
+Another question: with indie, multi and mobile, can you distribute physical copies as crowfunding rewards? (looks like you can´t) I´ve notice that almost every crowfunding project has in almost all rewards a physical copy of the game included.

Its really difficult to do step by step tutorials for VS as there's so many required steps before you can actually do to root of the tutorial, also it depends on what controls system you want to use
I still think Glenfx covered the essentials very well and covers all the needed steps to do something

Are we talking about the license page via this forum or the page on the wiki?

All of the licenses are worldwide. Not sure why that is mentioned but probably because it's a per title (game) license & it's just enforcing that there are no restrictions for digital distribution on any of the 5 available platforms.

There's no restrictions with the indie licenses either really apart from that you are not permitted to sell android/ios games for profit but you can release them for free.

Honestly I have no clue whether or not you are allowed to create physical boxed editions as pledge prizes for crowdfunding campaigns (you would have to ask Marvel). The pro license is more geared towards games being funded by publishers (by publishers I mean: a game publisher such as deep silver, or maybe a company like coca-cola, pepsi etc) & it is also geared towards people wanting to distribute their games as physical copies in a retail store such as "game", "pc world", "media markt" etc.

@Nige: you forgot about the Suro youtube tutorials which also do a good job of covering the basics.

I have no relationship with the VS developers and in fact I do have an Indie License. In my opinion it has a fair price for what you take from it, and we have many examples about that it is a very powerful tool. It all depends on your imagination, your skills and your spare time. Documentation could be improved, that's right, but is enough and you can get help whenever you want at this forum.

VS is worth it. Good luck.

Hello, I have a question about the licenses. I made a indie duet with a friend and we want to be able to work at the same time, and in the end we want to comercializate the game, but we dont have enought money to buy the LICENSE 3 MOBILE right now... Could we buy the LICENSE 2 MULTIUSER and within 6-10 months, buy the LICENSE 3 MOBILE? I imagine that this is possible, but i'd like to know if when we buy the LICENSE 3 it will descount the amount of money that we pay for the LICENSE 2 version. (always talking about the 4,0 version, of course)

Moreover, I have a couple of questions more:

1. We are from Spain and from what i can see on the LICENSE 3 MOBILE the taxes are not included
How much % do we have to pay of taxes? Do we have to pay them even if we are not from germany?

2. The LICENSE 3 MOBILE says "Crowdfunding is allowed as long as it does not violate other license terms". What does this exactly means? Our idea is working with the multiuser license untill we finish a playable demo, and then make the crowfunding and include in that budget the engine of the LICENSE 3 MOBILE: Is this possible?

3. How much time do you think the version 4.x will stay untill the 5,x version?


Thank you very much for everything.

A'llo

1. I'm not sure about the tax thing, I live in Spain also but I've never had to purchase a license - one of the perks of being part of the VS team I guess. Thomas will have to answer this question.

2. Mobile is actually license model 4. 1 = evaluation, 2 = individual, 3 = multi-user (multiple developers) 4 = mobile, 5 = pro (full commercial) & 6 = education. (according to the wiki page I wrote).

Long story short in regards to the crowdfunding is that you have no limitations in regards to the amount of profit (pledges) you can make from the crowdfunding as long as you don't intend to put out the final as a physical copy in retail stores or you acquire a publisher along the way. Both of those things require a professional license.

Also sure it is no problem for you to use the individual/multi-user licenses prior to releasing your game or starting a crowdfunding campaign. You are only required to purchase the necessary license for your game when you are ready to release it.

Quick note: individual & multi-user license is for unlimited projects but has many limitations in place. The mobile & professional licenses are per game as they do not have any or as many limitations. Both the mobile & professional license include the multi-user license so you can feel free to continue using VS after you have released your game but you may need to purchase another mobile or professional license for your next game if you intend to also release it as on mobile platforms or as a physical product.

3. At the current rate the devs have been cranking out the updates I would say at least 1 to 2 years before 5.x is released. I believe the idea is to create a new UI from scratch so I think it will take a while.

Hello, thank you very much for responding and clarifying my doubts

Only it has not been clear me one thing: the evaluation version is limited to 10 scenes, and projects can not be compiled into a working executable file; want to avoid this limitation, and we are really interested in buying the mobile license (€ 490 exl. VAT), but we have no money right now ...

If we buy indie multi user license (99 €) we could make a playable demo (with executable file) in crowfunding. In crowfunding just want to put fixed expenses (490€ for the mobile license, tax, company formation, etc.), and would like to know whether to buy indie multi user license that money would be deducted. That is:

1 "Today" (example) bought the indie multi user license: 99 €
2 Within 10 months we bought the mobile license: 490 €

Would it be possible to discount the first payment and pay "490€ - 99€ = 391€"? Or pay a deposit of € 99 and when we go to launch the game pay the rest?

You said "You are only required to purchase the license Necessary for your game when you 'are ready to release it." But when I give to acquire that license asks me to pay the 490 €, so I wonder if you could pay as advance € 99 of indie multi user license.

Again, thank you.