The devs/support team are working through a backlog of listings that were stuck by this bug. While the bug itself has been resolved, those affected require a manual fix, as they are all slightly different in how they were affected. They are working on it, though!
4 Likes
I’ve a similar problem where my product got a confirmation that it got updated. But it’s stuck in pending publication and I cannot do anything like editing or cancel the submission since about a month. It’s the Nice interaction System Nice Interaction System | Fab
I contacted the support who forwarded it to the development team who is working on it. But since such a long time is not acceptable 
I hope that it will get fixed soon.
6 Likes
The bug is 100% not resolved since it did happen to me just days ago.
It was happening a year ago it was “fixed" back then as well
@SkyeEden Any update? 
1 Like
Bump – this is still not fixed
1 Like
Hi @SkyeEden, any rough estimate of when it will be manually fixed for everyone?
I’ve a product with 100+ ratings and would like to plan for an upcoming content update.
2 Likes
I started packaging locally and I’m distributing the binaries on Gumroad instead of FAB.
It’s definitely less convenient than a one-click update for users, but at least it’s reliable and you can offer versioning which is great so that’s a win for everyone .o/
I think the support does not care about us tbh.
I contacted them & they just keep saying “oh we will solve the issue” 20 day with no fix.
They even reject to give us a temporary fix or submiting our updates from their sides.
if this is a product that sells why not just make a new listing with the same content and then you can continue making money if this one continues to take longer and see about fab merging the two listing if it gets resolved soon? you can distribute source files on your own to users if they say they need something in the update, thats up to you though. them merging listing data and ownership will probably be easier for them than trying to have a call center or community manager worker fix a distributed database and global service delivery issue, I know from personal experience they can most certainly manually provide ownership or revoke it, the review tech was made to be scalable from what was said in June and used across epic platforms so they probably have a merge or manual add/verify feature they can use for that too.
if its been nearly 2 months and you keep getting the same responses, then it seems kinda foolish to keep trying to do the same thing over and over again. If support wont help, then that likely means they have no real means to help and are using PR language to avoid legal responsibilities in courts, in jobs where I have worked support or customer service, we were told never to assume responsibility to avoid lawsuits, whether that is right or wrong unfortunately is not relevant to fixing your problem.
I wish it was this simple, and people keep suggesting to do that; sadly it’s not that simple.
#1 FAB Support CANNOT transfer any data from a listing to another.
- Ownership cannot be transferred
- Ratings cannot be transferred
- Nothing from the broken listing can be edited in any way, shape or form. It’s bricked.
#2 SEO Fuckups + admin on existing platforms
- All backlinks on numerous sites that I have no control over cannot be magically updated, and they points to the broken listing. That’d be a huge loss for me, the plugin has existed for two years.
#3 Explicitly instructed against by FAB support
- I’ve been explicitly told NOT to do that, and that they would not accept a new listing with the same content. They are literally, actively preventing me from trying to do anything that’s not “wait until you die”
#4 Ongoing productions explosion
This may not be a problem for “assets” asset, but in my case it’s a CPP plugin and I cannot just upload the same project with a different name : it would make all the existing assets & content created using the old version simply vanish. There’s no non-breaking update path outside of updating the existing listing.
#5 Epic Staff
I did reach out to Epic staff members that weren’t related to FAB (as Skye doesn’t directly interact despite being tagged, the only message I saw from here is the one above). After a few poke I’ve basically been told to STFU and go through the official channels (here & support) and that I should stop trying to find loopholes for support.
#5 EULA
I did check the EULA thoroughly, and they already protect themselves entirely. Legally, FAB is provided AS-IS with no legal guarantee of functionality.
I don’t think you realize how sh*t of a situation this is, and being told it’s foolish to wait and hope is rather infuriating: I’ve tried reaching out in so many different ways on many different platforms.
Creating a different listing and asking for transferring data is literally the first thing I tried, two months ago. I’m already distributing source and have been providing individual advanced technical support to users that are not technical at all (requires switching from blueprint only to C++ project in order to circumvent FAB for the udpate), and it is not an easy thing to do.
I even started generating and distribute precompiled binaries on other platforms to ensure some continuity but it takes a lot of time, and that’s a TON of time that isn’t going into the plugin itself.
I’m gonna be fairly direct here, That sounds like it does suck and I completely understand why you are frustrated, but it also sounds like you have not actually tried to do anything beyond posting here and constantly messaging the support staff.
The definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result. This is why you are frustrated. Just make a new listing, ratings really don’t matter that much unless it’s bad ones, people don’t buy assets because of star ratings or reviews they buy them because the asset(including plugins) solve a problem, only in cases where a product is hyper popular like ultra dynamic sky do rating numbers matter due to the FOMO psychology people develop in crowds, 10-50 ratings won’t cause FOMO, you would need hundreds.
You mentioned something about making a new listing causing projects to stop working because of it being c++, I make c++ plugins and I’m not sure what you meant by that unless I misunderstood. You don’t need to rename it or any modules and if you felt you needed to, just make new modules and files and keep the existing stuff and mark it deprecated with a UPROPERTY or name it “legacy”
I’m not trying to belittle you or anything bad here, it just sounds like what you have tried has not worked and continues not to work. It might be time to stop worrying about what a outsourced call center staff member says and just try submitting a new listing. I’ve done that before and they have not cared.
My guess would be is when you submitted the product, it likely tried to send data to the backend, it got corrupted in some way or another function return failed and it got lost. So they literally can’t do anything because the data simply does not exist, the website probably just changes it state when it submits and unless that state changes through processes data retrieval they may not have tools to manually override it. With it being over 30 days, I’d imagine any logging or ways to potentially retrieve the data a function processed is long gone. Fab uses template based page building, they basically build one page and then just populate its UI from JSON, even if a programmer could retrieve it(unlikely due to privacy laws as your account has tax information and other PII) it’s unclear whether the JSON even stores the state of edit, publish, in review, pending, etc.
I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know specifics on the American court system, but I do know EULAs don’t prevent lawsuits, a company can be sued by anyone for pretty much any reason, EULAs can just help build a case of defense for the company and create psychological barriers to prevent massive legal costs from angry users at scale.
Like I said earlier, if you have customers who are telling you they need this update then you can just send the files and instructions on how to build it. Customers won’t blame you for things out of your control, at least they shouldn’t. I’d say just talk with your customers in discord or whatever way you do communication and just ask them(not fab) how they would expect you to handle this situation for them and try to find a way that keeps your sanity, doesn’t rely on channels that clearly have failed you repeatedly, and gives them what they need.
Things will be okay I promise! Just try some new ways of going about this that doesn’t involve what keeps failing and frustrating you
As mentioned, my current workaround is to use Gumroad to distribute binaries – to be 100% fair I keep coming here and updating the title of this post out of pure pettiness; mostly out of principle.
I did reach out to FAB. I reached out staff. I reached out to actual devs. I reached out to the Epic producers and product owners on multiple Discords. I reached out to fellow devs so they could try and nudge their contacts & account owners see if they could at least have some visibility. I reached out to my own account manager. It’s been two month I’m trying to find someone who care enough that this doesn’t just gets abandoned and brushed off.
My real problem, more than “not being able to update my listing“ (because there are workarounds for that – technical problems have technical solutions it’s just highly inconvenient for everyone) is the sheer lack a of respect from Epic “as the owner of a product“.
There is no communication whatsoever, no attempt to reach out to try and repro and fix, nothing.
One of the key reason I make the plugin I’m working on is to provide QoL tools and abstract some of the technical complexity to empower users : having to tell them to build from source is 100% counter-intuitive to the very reason for FAB to exist which is to offer convenience and ease of use.
As for the technical aspect of it, I can’t just rename it (which is what FAB support would require so it doesn’t conflict with the existing listing, and we’re talking about the API name not just the listing display name) or flag it legacy : there’s a codebase of almost 1000 files that is being used by half of the community of users; so that would mean duplicating the codebase for the sole purpose of creating a new renamed listing on FAB that is guaranteed not to conflict with the original one. Let alone existing interops and other code that depends on the existing API.
Sure I could script something to take care of it for me, and I could do this, and that… But at the end of the day, the service should be functional. If you put something like that out there, you have a responsibility to ensure it’s running. That’s my whole point.
We shouldn’t be wasting our time arguing(ish) about what can be done or not : I’m infinitely b·u·t·t·h·u·r·t at the fact that Epic is blatantly and silently washing their hands of the problem and seemingly not dealing with it at all. And yeah I’m 100% butthurt because I actually care, and I did waste a major amounts of time already in a bunch of places trying different things – not just here.
Epic staff told me to just keep upvoting this thing so I’ll keep it alive until it’s fixed (actual message from PJ)
Ultimately I think it’s important that other devs can see that FAB doesn’t care and that it’s very unreasonable to strategize around the quality and availability of their service.
Now if you know any alternative to FAB that provides a multi-platform packaging and distribution platform I’m all ears; I’ve only been able to build and package for windows so far because that’s the only hardware I have access to (and yes, I could buy cheap old macOS hardware and install linux on another second hand pc but I also have to eat, sleep, and I have an actual day job and a family so no, that’s not a real world option.)
2 Likes
Yeah I can see why you are angry with them, you can build a distribution and updater app using unreal(or another language) and distribute through your own platform or try contacting leartes or the guy who runs hyper studios as they have both already set up alternatives to fab for unreal engine if gumroad doesn’t meet your needs.
If you were a close friend I would tell you just not to worry about this since it’s Christmas week and new year right after, taking a break from things can clear up a lot of stuff in its own. I’m pretty sure Tim Sweeney shuts the company down for a week or two anyways this time of year.
Once new year is over, I would highly advise as a seller who has done this before without any problems and just someone who empathizes with you to stop contacting epic games and just make a new listing and send it for submission, support staff are people too and oftentimes they have heavy restrictions on their capabilities so being petty and angry even if it’s valid might be making them not want to help you in a active manner. You won’t get banned or punished for submitting a new listing, at the very worst case scanrio they will just say “we see you are publishing a duplicate listing” but again fab reviewers very likely are different from the support staff you have talked with and it’s highly unlikely they cross reference things.
I do believe that you might be bordering or coming close to violating epics community rules(and potentially harassment laws) by essentially doing a form of harassment of their staff, I understand why you are angry but the painful truth is you have done everything you can with this and it’s probably time to stop before you get banned. Given you have updated this everyday and repeatedly contacted them likely angry sometimes after they had told you there was nothing they could do. if it were my company I truthfully would have banned your account a long time ago, I tend to give people 2 warnings and then if they continue I just ban them.
Additionally, I am not advising a yes or no to this but if you live in America you do have a legal right as a citizen to pursue legal actions EULA or not if you feel that is the right course of action, usually lawyers can offer a 30 minute consultation sometimes for free and they can tell you what they would recommend that isn’t just personal advice.
1 Like
I’m honestly not sure how we went from “maybe try something else“ to “you’re bordering on harassment“ : I was mostly just saying that yes, I actually did try to reach out to more than just the forum. I know you’re playing the voice of reason and honestly I’m just oozing with frustration – I would argue that I’ve been doing a lot of effort so it doesn’t become harassment : Skye is the only one I pinged directly more than once for a grand total of 3 times over two months.
Never once have made it personal because I’m well aware this is a system issue. I’ll give it to you that I’m a pain in the ■■■, but I’m not insulting anyone and compared to what I see on these same forum in other threads, I think I kept thing rather respectful (?) and have no intention to do otherwise.
Anyhow, I’ll take this as a final cue that I do indeed need to let this go somehow but boy it sucks.
1 Like
Fair enough, in workplaces even complimenting someone can be seen as harassment since intent being good isn’t usually weighed much in determining harassment or not. Definitely just take a break for the rest of December.
I just brought that up as if I was in charge of epics community/support division or you did this with my company I would see it that way and this is not worth a seller wide ban IMO.
Enjoy your Christmas and new year and look up the hyper guy on fab and try to email him about partnering on his platform, usually those startup stores are looking for people to distribute with and I’ve talked directly with him on Reddit and he seems like a chill guy who shares your interest in quality and helping other devs with tooling.
1 Like