Of course you do. You’re a Developer and Unreal only listens to Devs 
. They love kissing ur 
.
So I bought your Game, I want to modify the characters, change the story. Will you be OK with that?
I’m OK with people modifying my products on the marketplace. If they tried to sell them I’d have an issue, but for making their games I’m happy to help them customize them however they want.
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I agree that there is loss of value when you can not get the source of a bought product as a developer. Not only is it an obstacle while developing, it would be hard to do quality checks and even security checks to make sure an asset is not infected. EPIC does not guarantee the safety of assets (legal matters, quality, viruses and so on.). It should be a big no no to buy and run code like that in a business.
@elemento
In my earlier post where I responded to the desire of disabling the export button I linked my post about sales models. This new link takes you straight to an example of a few sales methods where you can both protect the end product without loss of value for the developer. For example, you can have a plugin hosted on a private server to which unreal developers make API calls (to convert data, as a service such as text to speech or translation). It’s one way to sell where it can be a win win for both sides.
@RecourseDesign
Sadly the marketplace is still lacking in ways you can offer services and licenses to make it a real win-win. There is a “buy once, do whatever you want with it” attitude among buyers. When I put my code on github I find it much easier to deal with (and include) terms, copyright and licenses. Same goes when I personally contact people and set up an agreement. It’s much more flexible. “should it remain open source? may it be used commercially? must the license be preserved? can the license be changed? may the code be altered? do i pay for the product, a subscription, a per use rate, a %, a per hour rate? What extra service options can I get? What about terms, warranties, refunding etc.?” questions. I see loss of value for both sides in that the marketplace does not provide more options to choose from.
If that were labelled “Enterprise”, and the other license was “Indie” I’d be happy. I wouldn’t even charge that much more.
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I like that solution. Indie’s buy once while Enterprises are limited to use our products through license subscriptions.
FAB/Epic would need to enforce it. Just like Autodesk or Apple, when you register as a Company (BIN #, etc)… they’ll have benefits and different obligations than Indies. For example: Big discounts for Enterprises after purchasing a number of licenses (Autodesk) or having your company name next to your Apps in the App Store (Apple).
Epic can similarly offer Enterprises benefits while using FAB. If they do it well, it can Boom just like the App Store and become Epic’s #1 source of income. In addition, they will have a steady income like Autodesk/Apple and stop relying on indie Game sales. It’s a win / win for them, Devs and Artists.
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That’s the issue. You don’t have control of them, they often re-sell it or even print them by hundreds to sell them in Amazon/Etsy. And that “Buy once, own forever” is terrible for asset creators, because they’ll reuse that assets over and over again while we don’t earn a dime. But like @Roy_Wierer.Seda145 said, it’s impossible to track them down.
What FAB can do, is force them to use those products only inside UE5. As you know, UE5 is now a powerhouse where you can create, modify or enhance any assets just like Maya. You don’t need to export them… Devs can do it all inside UE5. That way Epic protects the Artists asset’s from being exploited.
I will have just left it here. Can somebody pay attention for this?
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UE source is available… So someone would just trawl the source and put an exporter up on Github. The issues you’re raising are really just the same as anyone whose run up against piracy of their game. What’s the solution? Most agree there is none. However, when it comes to asset creation and publishing, some creators seem to be doing better than others. Why is that? IDK, maybe they’re adding extra value to their packs, to help build up customer loyalty. 
So how about offering add-on consulting services on the side to help customize packs for example?
That would be especially useful for character models imho. But few offer it… It’d be interesting to see a POLL about how often basic marketplace packs need immediate work / tweaks before being able to be used anyway. As there’s so many low-hanging-fruit packs floating around. Half the stuff on the marketplace could probably be taken down and not missed imho, as its non-modular, non-customizable, bad-collision bloat. But hey, its got a nice photo. 
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This is true. Everything can be hacked and quite easily as well. Even if you wouldn’t have the source or the engine but play a game with the asset in it you can just grab it. I considered that this could be avoided if all files live on a private server and a buyer only streams video data to his pc over the web (think of remote development / gaming with no file access), but this currently comes with more cons than pros. I think this idea is the closest to 100% anti piracy one can get, and you’d still risk the server getting hacked for file access. For World of Warcraft entire servers got either hacked or reverse engineered just to create a free WOW with files the client didn’t even possess normally.
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Of course everything can be hacked, we mention that before. But what we should aim for is to reduce and discourage as many pirates as possible. Take Maya for example: In 2008, you could easily download a torrent and access it, fast-forward 15 years and it is incredibly difficult to use it for free. Their software security is as good as it gets.
Now, the server idea is attractive. I have an App that downloads AR content only when the Users needs it. It simply has code to access my private server and launch it as soon as possible with the advantage that they can manipulate the 3D file without downloading it.
FAB could well do this with all their Marketplace content, so that Devs use the bought assets only for Development. When the game is finished… UE5 can download those files from the server only to archive. That for me, is a great solution.
Yes, absolutely! All the most popular games have tons of mods, and games that allow a good modding experience tend to do much better.
We have a word for someone who believes their “final and perfect product” is sufficient to solve everyones problem, and can’t be modified. However, it’s not polite, so I won’t post it here. Suffice to say, I would not buy or use assets with those kinds of restrictions.
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No, it can’t. It’s technically impossible to prevent re-use or discovery of anything that a user/developer/player/human has in their hands.
If you were to only ever “pixel stream” your game and assets, you could do this, but that model has a bunch of other problems.
Btw, I’ve spent a large part of my life in the “user generated content” community, largely on the tools/platform side. I can say with confidence that, while “stealing” assets is a little bit of a problem, that can largely be solved with existing mechanisms: detecting clones and preventing them, having a good reporting system. Investment in those systems is valuable!
The creators that are the most successful, are those who create lots of good art, that’s easy for users to use and adapt to their needs. That’s what the market pays for.
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In the old days Josh or the Forum moderator would BAN your account for life for typing that bully behavior. What ever you want to say… say it. Don’t hide behind sentences 
About you not buying my assets, lol. I’m not here to sell products but to talk about FAB. Wouldn’t give 
about your money, keep it and buy a sandwich.
It sure does and leads to more sales when big mods are released over the years. I personally made one for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - C.O.P. (2009) and my project released in 2018, still very active in 2023. Players are required to have the original game of which I think the price has gone up (curiously not down) in price since Stalker 2 was announced.
I think I get what you are saying, a developer who thinks perfection can be achieved is badly mistaken. Not being able to reuse, improve a product and having to reinvent the wheel on source code countless of times is a waste of time. But on the market we must consider you offer someone a product on your conditions and the customer is free to agree or disagree. It’s about law and license.
Example: I license one of my programs in a way that it can be sold but has to remain open source, even when a new program is based on my code it must remain open source. The license on that new program may not be modified. My program may be sold but I offer it for free.
There are plenty of ways to set up your conditions and it is relevant to battle piracy.
Frequent updates that automatically download, a trusted source (customers don’t go to torrents), proper and easy refunding methods, good ux, do what pirates don’t do. Make pirates redo their cracks every other day and make them lag behind on updates. There are ways… Fab has a real challenge ahead.
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By allowing audiences to modify your Game, I don’t mean mods, I mean sharing source code, blueprints, assets, animations, state machine logic… all that juicy stuff inside the Zip file. Care to share that too? or is that 2 precious?
I don’t think you can draw a simile between a content pack and a finished, published game.
First off, we add encryption and mechanisms to protect “your” assets just as much as “our” I.P.
A content pack is purchased specifically to add content to a game/project - it needs to be exposed to all ways of working with it. Game Devs usually don’t want to have the asset look exactly like the original - there’s enough problems with asset flipping as it is. There’s only so much you can do with the built in tools (although they are getting pretty good).
And where do you draw the line? Would you want to also lock Textures from being exported?
Anything can be ripped given time - even theoretically pixel streaming - you could capture frames and create a mesh from them - you can dump the GPU mem and harvest all content from there too, people will always find a way… Adding a lock to export won’t even slow them down (UE source code is freely available to everyone).
And at the end of the day - I think it’s something out of our control, the best we can do is account for it and try and make more legit sales through marketing and improving our products - seems like the more efficient way of spending energy.
Yes you can. It depends on the game and the asset. Some assets take months to finish and some crappy games a week & vice versa. The point is, both are IPs and our 3d files need to be protected the same way customers can’t access your source code.
I disagree. The UE5 modeling tool kit is more than you need to play around with bought assets. Wishing to do more, raises IP concerns (such as re-sculpting, re-painting, decimating for 3D printing, etc).
You can export the textures all you want but if the 3D file is locked inside UE5… then your modified textures will be Junk. All 3D painting software requires a 3D file to read or generate UVs, including vertex paiting.
One is being sold as an end product, one is being sold as a content pack for creators to use for their end products - two different ball parks.
It sounds like you have the impression that Devs cannot model and should be happy with a reduced set of tools - a lot of Devs can model very well and have a lot of experience with various modelling software.
Photoshop doesn’t need the mesh. It’s not hard to edit texture atlases - and has to be done often to change logos, signs, markings etc - absolutely essential.
Well, I can imagine the vast majority of Devs feel like me and see no value in a locked asset.
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Then you are not in the right forum. Fab is to let creators find people who want to buy their stuff. If you don’t want to buy and use the stuff, and don’t want to sell your own stuff, then you’re not at all in the target audience for Fab.
I’m referring to this Thread, not Fab. I’m not here to sell you things, just to talk about Fab. Obviously, we all want to sell.