There is a lot of blatant copyright infringement on the FAB store
There is a lot of theft in the FAB store
The result is FAB cant be trusted, that is as a buyer I cant trust its a legit purchase that I can use in a commercial project. As a seller I cant trust my content wont be stolen.
Epic needs a strong, harsh and combat effective response here and they needed it before the store went live!
So can Epic chime in and point me to the documentation on that. So I can reassure my team and my clients that FAB can be trusted?
As of right now it canāt and we are preparing to exit FAB as a result but we are trying to give Epic the benefit here and looking for a reason to stay ā¦ so lets see it Epic. How are you actively working to resolve this issue?
fab does not fight in any way with sellers who stole content, here is a person from whom all products are stolen https://www.fab.com/sellers/GhoostLines%20Studio , content is removed from him, but the seller himself remains on the site and continues to exhibit stolen content
I agree with this and would also like to see a way for non-sellers to report items that are being pirated.
On Friday, I discovered a seller who was (and still is) pirating and selling items from 5 artists who I buy from regularly. And I canāt do anything about it. I canāt file a takedown request because Iām not the rights holder. And when I try any of the other ways to report the pirate reseller, they all fail with various errors. So my only hope of getting action was to email all 5 rights holders and tell them of the pirate and wait for them to do something. (which I did do) Unfortunately, as this happened over the weekend itās likely that the rights holders didnāt even find out for 2 or 3 days, in which the pirate probably made plenty of money to make it worth his while. Even more annoying, this morning I heard from one of the rights holders that ONE of the items this guy is pirating has been taken down, but heās pirating TWO of their items. So half of this one personās problem might be over, but 4 other peopleās problems are ongoing.
I would think that this particular pirate must have at least 5 complaints against them. Why isnāt their entire store shut down while they are investigated? Is Epic/FAB so worried about offending pirates that they risk offending actual sellers?
I realize that me reporting someone as a pirate shouldnāt carry as much weight as the actual rightās holder, but I feel that there must be a way for me to report piracy directly to FAB and not having to resort to telling someone to tell someone to tell someoneā¦ I also strongly feel that if a a reseller is reported for pirating other peopleās work, ALL of their products should be taken off the FAB store until they can prove that they are the rights holder. That should reduce the āwhack-a-mole,ā take down one product at a time mess that currently seems to be the case.
And how did this pirate reseller become a āVerified Traderā? Were his products not vetted? When at least 5 of his listings out of 12 are pirated, shouldnāt someone have caught that? Shouldnāt that be enough to get his store taken down and him banned?
In the end, all I can really do is echo the sentiments from Loden-Heathen says. If I cannot trust someone Epic/FAB says is a āverified trader,ā how can I trust anything I get on the FAB store? I canāt risk my products or potentially my company on buying items that are pirated. I donāt think that āBut Epic said they were a verified traderā would hold up in court.
Please do something to fix the piracy situation and to enable buyers to report stolen items as well. Until things change, I donāt feel comfortable buying from FAB.
Epic
If its not painfully clear to you ā¦ it should be
In a professional marketplace which FAB has to be in order to be of any value at all to a game dev hobbyist, pros or otherwise ā¦
In such a marketplace you the operator Epic ā¦ MUST be proactive in hunting down copyright infringement and theft.
It is NOT enough to wait till the rights holder issues a takedown.
The issue isnāt you getting sued
The issue is us not being able to trust the content on the store. If the rights holder doesnāt notice something because it is just not that popular or they just donāt care when its small fish like a FAB entry. We use it assuming it is safe and fit for purpose because it is on FAB then turns out its stolen or otherwise a problem now our work is a problem., now we face legal action, now our hard work is down the drain because Epic chose to āah sure its grandā / ānot our problemā the issue.
Is it not very clear to you that you Epic MUST be actively working to clean up FAB and to keep it clean this is going to be an on going active time sink for you and if you do not have a team and a process in place to actively work on this problem then your frankly not fit for purpose, more over your an active risk that I would not recommend anyone use.
We MUST be able to reasonably trust that everything on FAB is safe and fit for use in commercial projects. At the moment we are not.
Submitted a support request asking much the same would have hoped by now that there would be a public response to this issue as it has been getting raised from literally day 1 of FAB however I canāt find anything.
Will share here if I get anything back as to what Epic is actually doing about the problem ā¦ or that we are leaving FAB if they simply arenāt doing anything about it.
Thereās 2 different Epicāsā¦ Superhero Epic that justifiably fights google and evil corps.
Then thereās villain Epic. Thatās just as evil and disappears similar threads to yours here.
Scaryā¦
Basically Epic refuse to comment or say anything at all on this topic (same goes for AI).
So you, your team, your clients? Youāre not going to get any assurances from Epic here.
Em well I mean at the same time Epic was āfighting for the little guyā they where using predatory monetization practices in there core game and charging wait for it ā¦ 30% to publishers so no they arenāt the āgood guysā
No company is a āgood guyā or ābad guyā they are all engines for ā¦ supposedly whatever there company values are but in reality profit.
Epic simply hasnāt realised yet that having a untrustworthy store is putting there profits at serious risk. We are all small fish here but if some indie or AA uses something from FAB manages to be a break out but then gets that product slapped down due to Epicās FAB distributing stolen content ā¦ guess who gets a law suit ā¦ FAB is a supposedly curated shop so its reasonable to assume the content sold on it is āfit for purposeā so that cost which in the right use case could be extreme can and would be put on Epic
Soon as they realise that āminimal effortā is going to cost them more than make them they will adjust.
But ya ā¦ NEVER look at a company and think ā¦ ah there the good guy ā¦ they 100% are not no matter what the individual staff or even the CEO might want to think they are at most an ethically operated company which honestly should be the bare minimal however most companies fail there to and Epic is no better. Epic isnāt new at this, they cant really claim ignorance they knew full good and well that the stores they merged in have some shady crap in them they should have resolved that years ago but definitely before merging it all in did they?
Nope
Was it out of malice?
Nope
Some one probably brought it up in a meeting, some one else did the math and assumed it would be more profitable to address that later. āgoodā never came to thought I would put money on it.
Ya I expect that to which is why we have already made the arrangements we will be delisting from FAB on Jan 1 2025 and will no longer work with clients that use assets licensed from FAB due to that risk we will also be recommending to our couple thousand developer community to avoid using FAB until this issue is corrected.
I donāt expect Epic to give a crap, I do expect eventually they will get it sorted rather a court makes them do it or they do it on their own
But I have done my due diligence
I have raised the issue in the forums they ask us to use
I repeated that multiple times since Oct
I have escalated that to support
If they just refuse to answer then relationship is done, simple as.
An employee had popped up in an recent thread just to tell us to use that one form to report that stuff. The form that 99% of us are legally unable to file
DMCA take down can only be issued by the rights holder
and depending on DMCA takedown is simply not good enough
If FAB wants to be a resource for commercial work then its customers obviously must assume that content on it is legit and fit for use in commercial work ā¦ this means its 100% expected that Epic is proactively working to ensure that ALL content on its store is legit
FAB being curated means Epic is 100% on the hook here for ensuring the content on its store is as it says on the tin ā¦ and that is not true right now. Coke, iPhone and many other well known trademarked brands are all over the store. Its obvious they are not legit Epic should remove them. When someone reports a theft ā¦ not a DMCA Epic should be expected to investigate and act accordingly.
If we cant trust Epic to do that then we cant trust FAB at all in which case the store is not fit for purpose and might as well not exist
And as soon as some dev uses something that is trademarked or stolen and that results in a loss of money guess who gets sued ā¦ ya Epic
This isnāt a new problem, this question has been sorted by courts before. A curated platform has an obligation and its users are understablably able to assume and expect a level of assurance form the platform operator. And if Epic cant or wont extend that assurance then there is no reason for FAB to exist, its basically Wish.com for stolen content and I wouldnāt dare touch it for a commercial project.
Thanks for your thoughtful and passionate feedback both here and elsewhere.
We need to step up our efforts here and will be adjusting how we handle issues around content theft and overall intellectual property (IP) infringements. Itās in motion so I donāt have all the answers, but Iām happy to address your concerns where I can as the Fab lead on these issues.
Stolen Content
Our top priority is addressing issues where someone is distributing work stolen from other creators. In the past, weāve followed the DMCA reporting process, but we recognize that it isnāt enough by itself. We still recommend following the process for rights holders, especially if a dispute is inconclusive or sits squarely in a gray area.
However, weāre sensitive to the fact that not everyone has the resources to pursue legal action against someone who is not the copyright holder. If we become aware of a potential theft, weāll investigate it, and take action on accounts found to be in violation of our rules. Our team will be actively monitoring reports of this type of theft in both forums and through direct support requests.
Content infringing on IP
The influx of content (migrated and new) is challenging , and weāre currently building better processes to catch issues during submission as well as address what may have already made it to Fab. Weāre making sure to better communicate our processes and guidelines with sellers, and are going to be expanding the public-facing resources to better educate people on IP issues. We want to make Fab sellers more aware of their limitations in this area.
We will hold our community to all our guidelines, including the Infringing Content section, found in our Content Guidelines:
The content you create, publish, or use cannot infringe or violate someone elseās rights, including their intellectual property rights. You must own or have obtained the necessary rights to share and publish the content, and any such license must be broad enough to grant Epic a license to display the content.
We want Fab to be a place where our community can acquire content with confidence and know that the content that they distribute wonāt be sold as an asset flip on Fab. Weāre going to move fast to begin cleaning things up and hopefully you will soon see our efforts making a change on Fab. We wonāt catch everything immediately every time, but with the help of our community, we aim to build Fab into the kind of marketplace that you can trust and rely upon.
Well, someone else had started an forum thread about this, if you need an starting point. But I think that it was hidden around an month ago
Speaking of which, āReport Copyright Fraudā doesnāt gives us an option to actually fill anything out. And reporting stuff directly on Fab lacks the ability to provide context about it
Communication is key and critical
We donāt expect you to be perfect, perfection on this front isnāt possible, we understand that.
But being proactive and communicating is critical for trust and for now good enough for us to stick around and as much as we can as a community member and publisher help. As long as we have evidence that you are making strides.
Its not a matter of us judging you, its a risk assessment on our part and one that we pass on to our clients. Expressing that FAB has a bit of a mess at the moment but Epic is working to clean it up is miles more acceptable than ā¦ ya cant really trust whats on FAB so either dont use it or be supper carful.
Given the critical nature of this particular issue, a non-comment sticky post where you can keep us up to date on your efforts ā¦ yes even if its just (We know and are working on it) would go far. We dont need details we just need visible effort/work in that direction ā¦ for now ā¦ of course, if the store is still flooded with problems a year from now well your word is nice but your work not ā¦ but for now we can trust that Epic can find a solution to this problem and is working on it.
From Harrods to Walmart overnight. Quantity does not mean quality and I feel for Fab workers who have to try and curate this unnecessary forest of mixed assets. What an amazing pitch it must have been for Epic to go down this path?
Ya I would not have merged in ā¦ probably any stores
I get the idea of having 1 unified store for game development purposes and thatās all good and great
So I would have either started it green field perhaps allowing a few hand-picked publishers to import there works to kick start things but I 100% would not have just shovelled the load into the hole there that was a bit of a mad decision.
I also wouldnāt have launched a store that had fewer features than its contemporaries, if it is not better than the others its not ready for the public ā¦ FAB released clearly worse/less feature-rich than the others.
I would say lessons learned, but this isnāt Epicās first time on the bull. I thought they would have learned better by now.
Still I am glad they listen that is important and they do seem to do that. It however is not everything, action is king and good planning is really important as well ā¦ listening is nice, needed even ā¦ but on its own is not enough.
I tried this, and they redirected me to this thread. I also tried reporting some of the stuff that Iāve found through the report button on Fab and theyāve declined most of them.
