I submitted an update to an asset already approved and live on both Epic Marketplace & FAB Marketplace (Reference No. 16322613 - I added missing hyperlinks to the asset description; the asset files themselves were untouched). The update was rejected, the asset pulled from the marketplace, and an email was sent saying the asset had been sanctioned and I can appeal or “pursue an out-of-court dispute settlement by an appropriate out-of-court dispute settlement body” (what?!). This was done by a bot (“We received a report of a potential violation and reached this decision using automated tools.”)
I submitted the appeal explaining it was merely a metadata update adding missing hyperlinks to the description. The appeal was also automatically rejected by another bot (all of this process has been via automated bots so far).
I opened a support ticket (Reference No. 16339952) and got the same automated response pointing me to the same Guidelines linked above. On following through explaining that I have already been sent this, the ticket responder asked for some technical details (OS, Zipping Program, Zipping Method) and I have not heard back since. This was 4 days ago now and the asset is still not back on the marketplace (conversation attached). Is there anyone on the support team here that can look into this? Can you tell me precisely what I have done that is no longer accepted by FAB (but was accepted last week?)
I am not the only one having such issues (https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/1hrmces/i_got_sanctioned_by_fab/) and it is absolutely crazy that something this serious is done by automated bots. Asset creators are losing income every day this issue persists, and it encourages an attitude of never updating approved assets at the risk of them being pulled for no valid reason.
Your problem is (most likely) with the ZIP file. Not all .zip files are the same. Don’t compress the ZIP file; just use it for storage. If you’re compressing it with Windows 11, go to the options and select ‘Store’ instead of ‘Compress.’ That should solve your problem. By the way, they changed this about two months ago, but didn’t announce it. I had to upload the same asset four times before I figured out what the bot was having trouble with.
Thanks for the suggestion - I suspect that might be the issue. The unfortunate thing is I’m still on Windows 10 and don’t have the alternate option other than ‘Compress’ D:
I mean, I could use a 3rd party tool to re-.zip it, but surely that’d be worse than using the default Windows tool? What a strange change for them to make!
Popping in to say Blissful_Bishop hit the nail on the head - the issue was with the .ZIP file. The asset was approved after removing it.
Now the next issue is figuring out how to re-add the .ZIP in a way that satisfies FABs strange new requirement. I don’t suppose anyone has a link to their announcement of the .ZIP change so I can see what they accept?
(And still no response to the support ticket either!)
They recently added another restriction that doesn’t allow some characters in the file path name and they send me some PowerShell script error screenshot
They keep changing their automation tool without telling the sellers and it seem very random
I had that as well, can’t include dashes in filenames just underscores error, otherwise you get a sanction for unsupported file type. I thought it was the zip at first, which it probably is in some cases. I tried both and it worked.
The issue with characters in file path names such as underscores should have been resolved. If you’re still seeing that cause issues during review and giving you an “unsupported file” warning, I’d love to take a closer look.
We’re also looking into the issue that the compression method used by the default built-in Windows 10 compression tool is causing problems, although that seems to not always be the case in my recent tests.
