We have a major logistic issue with the merging of sketchfab and unreal marketplace, and it’s not acceptable.
Step 1. Identify the issue: Sketchfab users arent happy, and game developers are not happy. Why?
Sketchfab was a free website that supported small artists and nonprofit organizations such as museums. Sketchfab was not purely a marketplace, it was a place to showcase models, gain a following, and curate a community of artists while being based around this unique way of viewing models through a 3d viewer. The marketplace was a feature that allowed these small artists to make a little cash on the side or offer their models for free to the benefit of the community. Sketchfab marketplace itself was also not a game developers’ marketplace. It was a marketplace for a wide array of applications from rendering generalists, archviz artists, lookdev artists, environmental artists, ect…
Unreal marketplace was a website that was specifically curated to game developers. The marketplace had high standards which game developers liked. Unreal marketplace was not a place to showcase models, it was a place to buy game ready copyright free models that worked with unreal engine. Only experienced model creators and larger studios participated in unreal marketplace.
Now, what happens when you combine both of these drastically different communities into 1 website? You get Fab. A place where game developers are forced to weed through copyrighted content, low quality assets, potentially stolen assets, and assets that are purely not game ready. Artists are forced to hide behind a seller account with no ways to gain likes or followers. Small artists are completely forced off the platform as their models dont meet Ai standards or they get copyrighted. Museums and heritage models are forced into a “objects and decor” section with no regard from Fab because they dont make profit. And anybody else who has models that dont fit the specific requirements for the game developer community has to move to other platforms.
I created my sketchfab account at the age of 12 in 2018 and I built up around 800 followers and over 250k views in the 6 years I had been on the platform (epic changed the age requirement to 18 years old when it acquired sketchfab). The supportive community of sketchfab was a huge part of me gaining motivation to keep improving and showcasing my models. Eventually I setup a marketplace and sold my models for decently cheap. I made a nice little side income that I could keep investing into my hobbies and work. I am really saddened to see sketchfab get turned into a money-making machine catered towards game devs to feed the monopoly of epic games. All my models do not fit under the game developer requirements, even my free models, and I have been fully forced off the platform.
Step 2. come up with potential solutions:
This is where it turns on us the community to suggest options to make this better. My suggestion is to turn it back the way it was. Bring back the sketchfab dev team. Bring back unreal marketplace. It was better separated. Each platform worked in its own ways, and its like comparing apples to oranges, but instead we combined apples and oranges and neither the apple enjoyers want it, or the orange enjoyers want it. Theres a petition to bring back sketchfab if anybody is interested, I wont link it for the sake of keeping this post link free, but it can be found online.
The way I see it, if we want Fab to live, one of the communities is going to have to lose out, and my guess, its the small artists and non profits that will lose out to the big money game devs. Just my thoughts on the whole Fab website.
