Since using Fab, I’ve noticed that finding specific assets can be a bit challenging. While organizing assets from sources like Quixel within profiles is a nice idea, reaching those profiles isn’t as straightforward as it could be. Having Quixel assets under the Discover tab also seems like an unusual choice.
A better approach might be to allow us to follow creators and companies, or even introduce a subscription system (with paid options, perhaps).
This way, creators gain visibility, Fab’s financial model benefits, and users like me can easily find assets in a dedicated subscription tab. It’s a solution that could really enhance the experience for everyone.
Well, it could work IF AND ONLY IF let’s say a fixed price $29.99 / month then means no assets on the shop would cost higher than $99.99
Then a subscription would make sense if the highest price to buy an asset would be $99.99
Otherwise with many products at $599.99 ; $999.99 ; $1599.99 adding a monthly subscription that might even be $59.99 or $99.99 would only mean that the currently reported 95% drop in sales by some sellers would end up becoming 99% or 99.99% … only the richest customers would keep buying.
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Are you insane? In what world is it better to pay $30/month vs buying an asset once? So with your logic, a $100 asset, with a $30/mo sub, I get to use it for 3 months? Vs paying the $100 and I can use it whenever I want?.. Hmm
The fact that these sellers are jacking up their prices is them thinking they are clever but will soon find need other jobs becuase no one is paying this much.
There needs to be better regulation on Epics end to controller these inflated prices and NOT have it negativly affect the consumer.
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What I proposed is $30 / month for subscription to buy assets not for a license to use them. If you don’t pay the subscription you can’t buy the assets. Then the maximum price that sellers would be able to set should be $99 and whatever you buy the license is yours to keep. The subscription would need to be paid to unlock the buy button. Like some sort of exclusive club option. If you don’t pay the monthly fee you can’t access to buy the assets. And even if there was a clause to pay 3 months straight it would still boost sales due to the enforcement of $99 maximum assets price.
Yeah, there’s hardly much of anything in the old (and the current one, while we’re at it) marketplace that’s worth paying this much. Because with our industry as it is, one can’t just buy something without modifying it to make it distinct enough to avoid some legal issues. And paying for the privilege to buy it will only alienate more people than how Epic handled launching Fab. Although, the only exceptions to this would probably be the game templates, animations, and the environmental packs.
But let’s face it, most of this stuff is already redundant with how people are setting up shop in Patreon
Because you cant buy software once and get free updates for life that is not sustainable. Software requires on going development and maintenance so as a publisher we require a means to monetize the service we provide of ongoing updates and live support.
Now when your talking about a 3D model or similar sure that is static and rarely requires any updates. Buit for software and services, ya no … FAB is not fit for purpose because there is no means to monetize updates and support.
It is completely unreasonable to think you can pay 30-50 even 1000 and get lifetime support and updates. We have clients we have supported for over a decade, to whom we have provided thousands of hours of support and released hundreds of updates. we charge 100 for the base license and 20% a year for “maintenance”
Maintenance is optional you can keep using whatever you have forever if you like but if you want support or more updates then you need to pay us for our time.
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That is true for “content”
That is not true for tools, systems, frameworks
FAB, Marketplace, UAS, etc. offer more than just 3D models, 2D images, etc.
For tools, integrations, systems and frameworks there is an ongoing cost to development and maintenance and support is a cost that should be provided for as well.
FAB at current is completely not fit for purpose for anything other than artwork honestly. So its Adobe Stock but for game dev basically
That is not what it has to be limited to but that is what they have by design limited it to. If they want to foster tools, integrations, etc. then they need a means by which developers and publishers can monetize the service of ongoing development and support. Subscription is a fine option, Paid Updates which is just subscription by a different name is a hack option but works okay … what they have at the moment is Goose Egg … Nothing
Back to the topic, yes a hope see this soon
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For most things the “subscription” isn’t relative to the price of the tool
For example if you license from us directly, the tool is basically free, the subscription gets you access to updates and support.
You can subscribe for 1 month pay just $15 and get all the tools … if you want or need updates you can subscribe for another month get those updates … have a question that requires support … something more than just community forums … okay … subscribe for a month and get a month of live support from our dev team.
This is not a new model its how software use to work, you used to “license” a product and then pay a recurring “maintenance” fee to cover updates and support as required
I am not talking about the HORRIBLE subscription model you see from Unity, Adobe, AutoDesk, etc where you have to maintain the sub to keep using the software … no the software license is perpetual. You can use it forever once you have the legit license … the subscription is to cover the cost of the services … software IS NOT a service … software updates and technical support IS a service.
Thanks for that suggestion, @HamidrezaS . I’ve shared it with the team.
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And yet, people yell at me for describing an large chunk of the marketplace as an artist’s market.
Yeah, I’m well aware of the other stuff that gets posted on Fab. It’s just that if the subscription model is handled the wrong way, it can price out an lot of people. Especially of it requires an active membership to constantly use the advance features of an product.
That is not a subscription … that what you describe there is SaaS (Software as a Service) and and 99% of the world would agree sucks lol.
A proper update and support subscription:
Its not a new concept its how commercial/enterprise software has worked for the past few decades. You license the software, sometimes its even free with your first contract. And then you pay for what in enterprise software we call a “Maintenance Service”. This gets you updates and support for a period of time. In enterprise these are usually sold in multi-year blocks but at the smaller scale its done yearly or even quarterly and for indie nothing wrong with monthly.
We already offer our tools via a subscription option.
$15 a month you get all our tools, effectively the tools are free
And the license is perpetual, yours to keep forever
You only have access to updates and tech support if you are subscribed, you can of course use community support and we do provide full source so you can patch and fix it yourself if you don’t want to pay us to.
But if you expect us to patch it, you pay for that service
If you expect us to provide you with live support, you pay for that service
There are channels to license our products that don’t support subscription, for them we use anual “major” releases. … basically its a yearly subscription. You pay for the year, you get that year’s worth of updates and support. You are obviously welcome to keep using it past that but if you want another 12 months of updates guess what … your buying the next year’s release.
Fact of the matter is software has an ongoing cost to maintain and support of software requires technical staff and hours of time per ticket in the best case so there is a real cost that we must account for.
If you think you are being priced out by a sub, if we where to account for the average life time updates and support cost per license I assure you that you couldn’t afford the tool at all. With a subscription, you can get the tool for nearly free and only pay for the updates and support you need. If your looking to do something HUGE and need constant live support and on demand patches … we can do that, if you want to get 1 month of updates and then disappear for 4 years only to come back then and get 1 more month … you can do that to
But no Pay Once and get Life Time updates and support is not even vaguely sustainable and isn’t expected in any other sector of software precisely because the unit economics of it just cant work.
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Yes this is a nightmare scenario, I would not be able to support products sold by anyone using this model. Unfortunately I think there’s not a good way to do subscription services that don’t lead to this, because it’s a foot-in-the-door to worse subscription models and the temptation is there to go the adobe route if you already have a subscription-based service in place.
Personally, I think the older software model was better - the way it used to work was really not a subscription service as you describe (for a lot of softwares anyways) but instead you would have to buy newer versions of the software, and those came with time-limited support. E.g., You bought Photoshop 10…well, when it’s out of date if you want CS2, you have to re-buy it.
Not at all
Has been done for years, is currently done now will continue to be done.
Look here is the reality
Software is not static, it requires maintenance, that is ongoing development, support, etc so there is a cost to keep it viable over time.
Okay, this means the users that use it, well they have to account for that cost over time in some way. You can either inflate the buy-in price but let me assure you that you will never buy software again 
If you average out the cost of supporting and developing an asset its … well lets just say its not cheap
The reason for this is while you might ask 1 or 2 questions here and there … there are much larger clients that take hundreds or thousands of hours of support and need updates and changes in a quick turn around
Hummm … okay well bill them differently… ah yes and use the honour system to right?
So your really going to rebuy all your tools at the 10-100x markup that would be required for the commercial version?
No I didn’t think so
Okay so what if we simply billed you for what you used … this would be fair
If you have zero need for any updates or support, you just pay once and that’s it all done
But if you are a bigger client and you need support and updates … well you pay for that of course
Okay and what do we call that?
O wait … we call that a subscription
You subscribe to the service you want to get
Sure some stores and products call it a “Yearly Release” … or “Maintenance” or “SLA (service level agreement)” or whatever
but lets be plane about it
Its a service you are subscribing to for some period of time e.g. it is a subscription by any other name … its just a subscription
Will some products try and find ways to force you into the sub … yep
That is called SaaS (Software as a Service) it has its use cases, not have many, but it does have a few use cases. Live games for example MMOs, MOBA, etc. they are services not products. They are not permanent sorry, and while some try to hide the “subscription” fee behind season passes, expansions, etc. the reality is there is an ongoing cost and if that isn’t accounted for they go away
In the realm of tools and assets, there are services, PlayFab, GameLift, etc. again they come with a bill, dont pay, dont play.
For what I am talking about though, tools, integrations, frameworks … these are products. So they should have a perpetual license. The updates to them and the support for them … that is a service and yes means you need a subscription … no matter what you want to call it … it is you as a user subscribing to those services (updates, support, etc.)
I get thinking that … however there is a reason it was only ever used in consumer software
Enterprise never really adopted that model even Adobe … if you had an enterprise license with them you got all the updates that cam out during your SLA as part of that agreement agian its just a subscirption
For consumers its easier to sale them a product,
So instead of saying hay buy Photoshop and subscribe to get updates
is much easier to advertise
Buy Photoshop 42 its so much better than Photoshop 41 its new
and in reality this is far far worse for the consumer
If you buy Photoshop 42 6 months before 43 comes out … well what your just screwed for the difference?
Or wait no you expect “grace period” well thats the same difference
A “Major Version” upgrade scheme is just a annualized (or whatever other frequency you choose) subscription
Only its one that by its nature always screws every user that doesn’t join in on launch day so its a FAR worse model than a true subscription
In a true subscription if you sub for 1 year and you start on July 2nd 2024 … well then on July 2nd 2025 your due up again
If you buy a Major version that comes up on Nov 1 but you purchased on Jul 2nd … your just out those 8-9 months or whatever and will have to buy the next one on Nov 1 just 3-4 months later
So no Major version was fine for consumer software as a means to simplify the marketing angle but it was never a better model for anyone … its also a lot more work to have to do all that spin up every year or 2 years or whatever frequency yoru doing so much waste goes into justifying vN+1 because you cant simply admit that hay updates and support cost and we have to monetize that so either buy another block of updates and support or don’t and you just don’t get any more updates and support thats fine to
Then you have this issue with the Major Update model that I HATED as a dev
we would have features designed, built, ready to go and be told nope hold that for the next major … but this is not only better for them it also makes our lives easier … nope marketing needs a box feature and this is it so its not going in till next major … well thats … dont care hold it
Where in a subscription system
New things come as they come, no need to wait for the marketing team to spin up vN+1 feature list no mental gymnastics to do just do your updates as they are fit for release simple as that
I agree to buying it once and have the option to subscribe for updates sure. But not for the license of use while subscribed if that is a better way put.
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Yep if I were to word that in terms you might see in software industries
You are happy to subscribe for maintenance/updates
You are not happy with SaaS (Software as a Service)
And we are right there with you, SaaS needs to find a hole to die in. Adobe, Unity, AutoDesk, GamePass, Humble Bundle Subscription
I get why it seems appealing … at first anyway but it is a negative in the long run, especially for tools, assets, integrations, frameworks, etc.
I get “consumer” software being accepting of it … e.g. GamePass … I’m not a fan but I get why some are. But…
A consumer doesn’t “need” the software it a nice to have
For “commercial” software e.g. tools and all that we use in our trade, having your tools evaporate if the sub lapses is a problem. It puts you on a treadmill that you have to stay on and that isn’t cool.
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