The problem here is that epic combined two marketplaces that were very dissimilar. Sketchfab was a much freer marketplace in terms of licensing and copyright issues which made it a good choice for small artists and hobbyists to make their name. Unreal marketplace was much more moderated in terms of copyright. This forum thread shows the issues. Buyers from unreal marketplace dont like the more chaotic smaller artist friendly nature of sketchfabs content, and sketchfab users dont like the strict guidelines from the unreal marketplace. I, myself come from the sketchfab side. I create 3d models of cars and sell them as a hobby (all under non commercial licenses). I had been a part of Sketchfab since 2018 and it had been my largest selling platform. Now when Fab came along, I migrated all my models and it was fine, until epic started removing my models due to this copyright concern. They have every right to do so and moderate their marketplace how they like. The problem I have with this is they effectively just removed sketchfab and re-released an unreal marketplace calling it a combination, when it clearly is not a combination of sketchfab and unreal marketplace. Even with permission from the company to sell a model of their design, fab does not allow this (such as turbosquid who has a licensing agreement with Ford to let artists sell ford products). As a small artist, this has damaged my hobby greatly as I have been forced out of sale on sketchfab and none of my models can be sold on fab. I have now switched to gumroad store.
3 Likes