Yesterday I was watching [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dORoTIEOyEg]the video on the Snowdrop engine from Ubisoft[/url], and it looks so useful and easy(ish) to use at the same time. I'm not a developer but it did get me thinking about how useful a tool set like that could be to indie devs. Why don't these big game companies make their engines more open to small developers? There are some people that already (kind of) do this like the [url=https://www.unrealengine.com/register]Unreal engine[/url] as a subscription cost and a 5% taking from any saleshttp://gamersinformant.com/pc/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-a-service-program/ce-program/]today the Cryengie was announced[/url] to be subscription only but with no cut from the sales. One way I see the industry moving forward is to encourage smaller developers to use these big brand game engines. Perhaps they release them for free. This could let developers to go into these engines with no risk and whack out a prototype of their game idea. If their prototype ends up being successful they would probably stick with the engine and create a full game. The company could then charge them a support free, were they are given access to useful documents and indies could give feedback to the engine designers on what tools they would like to see. Once the game is released they could be charge a certain percentage for every sale. It could potentially be a win-win-win situation for the engine creators as they make money for a product, the devs who don't have to invest in their own engine, and gamers how could see a higher tier of games coming from smaller teams. The closest thing to this at the moment is Unity. Though out the years we've been seeing more importance being laid upon game engines. The Frostbite engine comes to mind as it seems to feature rather heavily in the Battlefield trailers, a game which has an externally broad appeal. The more I think about this the more I'm confidante that this kind of practice would an overall positive for the industry, but I could be completely wrong. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Valve did something like this with Source 2. It could be one of the reasons why they've been iterating on the same engine for close to 10 years now, and they are the kind of game company that could afford to get the ball rolling on this. Am I completely wrong about this?