Looking at it from a bit of a different perspective. I would like to have a standardized place here to discuss each product. Even if it’s just with other users. I don’t really want to join yet another discord, forum, or use reddit (I still don’t to this day) if I don’t have to. I’m already here. I know it’s already fairly common for threads to get made when code/bp is involved but they can be hard to locate sometimes and get lost.
It would be cool.
On the old Marketplace in the beginning a seller had the obligation to open a forum thread for each product. Then, I don’t know what exactly happened, but at a certain moment (right after Epic changed its forum and a lot of links/files/screenshots were lost, I think) people stopped to do it.
Also, I have threads for my products, but nobody asks me questions there anymore, even if they are linked in the product description.
Another big problem is that email notifications on the forum don’t always work.
My colleague doesn’t receive notifications since a few years now and, even if he asked at support several times, the problem is still not solved.
Maybe that’s also a reason why people don’t use the forum anymore.
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No, unfortunately -as I’ve mentioned - it doesn’t really work reliably. As I was saying, my friend doesn’t receive email notification for replies to his threads since already a few years, despite several support requests to Epic (in the end he just gave up asking for it). So, that’s one thing Epic has to fix before.
Also, the Question/Answer and Review sections of the old marketplace were instead over-notifying sellers, but it never notified the buyers about answers they got from the seller which also was a big issue. I’ve got several times emails from buyers who asked questions in the Q/A section of mp asking me if I could answer it when I had already answered since several days.
So, imo, first step to insure people use the Unreal/Fab built-in tools for product discussions is that e-mail notifications work.
Second step is to ensure that links are not broken by an update of the system, like it happened when Epic switched from the old forum to this one.
Otherwise people will look for alternatives outside Epic.
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I’ll give an easy example of why reviews and comments are important. There are some products which in some cases were once free, or which were quality products and managed to get a crapton of reviews… And then stopped updating their products. Some of them are broken. Yet they still have four star reviews.
If you read the comments on them at the marketplace you quickly would see that the most recent page would be mostly complaints. Now you won’t see anything. That’s unacceptable.
And what is the idea behind sale control?
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Relying only forum notifications is for me super weird.
Because of the numerous bugs I’ve encountered with Fab I’ve started looking more often to the forum, but honestly I don’t visit forums if I don’t receive an e-mail notification or I’m looking for a solution for a problem.
For productivity I try to navigate websites as less as I can. And I can see other reasons other people don’t visit the forum so often.
E-mail notifications to both seller and buyer (who asked the question in case of answer) are imho mandatory if one wants to implement a reliable system for fab products.
What I’m trying to say is that without a proper notification system per e-mail, the support will continue to end up on 3rd-party platforms, unfortunately.
Personally, even if I understand that the forum is already implemented right here and right now, I think it needs to be a little improved to be reliable.
Also, I think that to have all this stuff directly in Fab together with text reviews and mandatory for every seller would be better.
It’s interesting. I haven’t bought a single thing from FAB. Downloaded free stuff. Wondering if I should just switch to a different game engine. It’s nice to see Epic put me in this frame of mind.
And just to be clear: I switched to Unreal to get AWAY from Unity. And yet here I am AGAIN.
i guess I’ll switch to Godot. Oh wait, they’ll join FAB soon too I guess.
Seriously, what is this FAB $ hit that’s being pushed on us?
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Totally agree with you there man! Only way we will ever see change is if it hurts their pockets.
+1
For me, FAB is the WORST THING EVER happened. It suck, it works bad, and the person behind this is an absolute stupid monkey.
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Make you can make it default to ‘On’ 
Because nobody wants to see this.
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This must be a joke. So all the potentially fake star ratings are coming over but no meaningful review content? This marketplace is now dead for any new creators. Gj epic.
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Just let me get this straight, Epic: You are selling 3D models and software (plugins, scripts) - in other words some of the most complicated things on the planet that one might sell - and your review system doesn’t allow anyone to express ANYTHING besides a 1-to-5 rating?
This is so insane it is almost incomprehensible. 
You’re not selling jeans here. Come to think about it, even if you were, i’d still want to know if the fit, the coloring or the lining was the problem with a 1-star-review. You’re selling SOFTWARE. Software often done by non-professionals/self-learned people even (more prone to all kinds of mistakes/issues, way more important to discuss the product).
Even with the simpler assets for sale here, such as basic 3D-models, knowing what exactly is the problem is extremely important. Did someone leave just one star because the vertex count is way too high or the texture density is not optimized? Or because the design has blatantly been stolen and there might a copyright issue? Does the model clip through itself when it’s being animated in a certain fashion? Or is the buyer just so incompetent he couldn’t find the assets in his editor? Etc. etc.
Nah, no information necessary whatsoever, it’s only an insanely complicated product that requires extremely careful analysis before a decision can be made.
I don’t know what the person responsible for making the switch from UE marketplace to Fab looks like, but apparently that person would buy a mansion on craigslist, transfer a few million and just tell the dude to send the keys over whenever. “No i don’t need to check anything, it’s only a house, bro. I guess it probably has a roof and a floor and walls and what not, maybe an outlet. I work at Epic, Bro, I know what i’m doing.”
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I am here to post about my absolute disgust and frustration witnessing what Epic has turned the SketchFab marketplace into. I have read this entire thread in vitriol toward Epic. Corporations continue to ruin so many aspects of my life, and there is nothing I can do about it.
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As someone who sells on FAB and bought a LOT of assets on the old marketplace, I am at the point where I am no longer frustrated but I actively hope that another gamedev marketplace will come out, so I never have to touch FAB again … both as a seller and as a customer.
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This thread has over 4,000 views, and still no asset reviews system.
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Highly unlikely I will ever buy anything without the detailed Q&A and text reviews. This needs to be addressed.
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Even if the Epic marketplace team actually wanted to add it, judging by the time it took them to just edit the search function (mind you not fix it), it would take at least until 2026 or 2027 before we would see reviews and questions back.
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For real.
I used to have decent sustainable amount of plugin installations every month on old UE marketplace.
Now on Fab I am invisible, for the entire December I got 1 installation in total!
I’ve dropped any development of current UE plugins and future ones, still have a lot of ideas, but idk if I ever get back to them though.
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I thought about the issue for a while, and i think what we’re looking at here is not even a form of incompetence, but one of “soft” (inofficial, but deliberate) cancellation.
In other words: I think Epic ruined the marketplace on purpose, probably in order to get rid of costly quality control.
How do i come to this conclusion?
Well, put yourself in Epic’s shoes:
1.) Create one of the most complex programs imaginable, a program meant to birth new programs! And each of it’s subcategories (3d models, animation, c++, 3dfx, sound, AI, UI/Interface, shaders, game design, level design, music etc. etc.) is a potential career/lifetime of studying and improvement on its own if done properly!
2.) Give everyone worldwide free access. No qualifications? 70 IQ? No english skills? Just released from prison …again? Just off your psych-meds? AWESOME. ALL ARE WELCOME.
3.) Make them all compete for $$$ and pride/attention (“i am a respected independent artist with passive income!!!”) on your site, that should mean quiet and laid-back business!Please note how: Point 1.) implies an almost infinite need for qualifications and positive character traits and Point 2.) implies ZERO need for qualificiations or even the most basic decent human behavior
What could POSSIBLY go wrong by combining those!?!
Then there is the economic perspective:
Since UE covers all aspects of video-game-creation (and archviz and so forth), all of these aspects must also be covered on the marketplace by EXTREMELY talented staff in order to keep quality control running.
How are you going to filter out bad blueprint/c++code if you don’t have an actual programmer checking (the more complicated) submissions? How are you going to filter out messy/unprofessional geometry, poor design, faulty skeletons/animations if you don’t have at least one animator/3d-modeler doing nothing all day but checking uploads to the marketplace? All of these people could meanwhile be creating AAA assets for Epic projects (or be laid off), but they have to be employed doing quality control instead.
On top of that you’ll need a team of lawyers to cover all the ridiculously complex aspects of selling various kinds of digital assets with varying and sometimes intermingling types of licences and to settle disputes and assess potential copyright issues.
All of that, just to keep a niche marketplace running.
Furthermore, from Epic’s point of view, there must be two different categories of UE users:
- Professional Teams/Entities that will actually finish, distribute a huge project and bring in millions in revenue and lots of publicity for UE
- The rest. This group sadly includes both highly professional standalone artists&programmers AND ALSO every delusional, untalented psycho that decides to upload the first thing he tried after just having created a blender donut. Why? Because both group’s revenue is negligible in comparison with group 1.
Notice how group 1 will almost never use an asset store, anyway, as professional teams do not depent on some self-learned persons blueprint script and will keep the assets they create for themselves instead of selling them. Group 2 mostly consists of people that will download the engine, initially buy some assets for a 3-digit or low 4-digit amount of $$$ and eventually give up. 90% or more of uploaders are so hopelessly untalented that their “creations” (abominations) will realistically never see a single sell. Nevertheless, they do need to be carefully looked at by a professional. To me this last aspects seems a lot like volunteering to take care of the mentally unwell, as you are going to invest most of your time into checking the works of literally any nutcase from somewhere around the globe that decided he wanted to work from home and is incapable of self-reflection.
It’s probably not far-fetched or hard to see how someone with an interest in cutting costs (or keeping their sanity) would want to get rid of group 2.
Then there is also the perspective that EPIC’s marketplace competes with other asset stores for basic models that are not UE-specific. But unlike their competitors, EPIC has to employ additional people for UE-specific knowledge. ==> can’t just raise fee’s/percentages arbitrarily
So you want to shut down an asset store. How do you go about doing that?
Option #1: Officially close it down. (Michael Scott-level of incompetence/bluntness)
- Public outcry
- publicity loss
- news articles in gaming magazines etc.
Option #2: “Renew” it for some obscure, made-up reason in deliberately poor fashion (also Michael Scott-level of incompetence, but quieter)
- outcry from professional standalone artists/programmers, aka a small percentage of users only (AI spammers and talentless people never cared in the first place or won’t notice, as by definition they are not capable of knowing what qualities a marketplace would need)
- no news articles, almost no publicity loss
- talented people eventually get the message and move somewhere else
- now that next to no professional content gets uploaded anymore, you even created your own official excuse to shut it down later if you want. or just keep a fully automated low-quality store online for the occasional buck from a newbie that thinks he can make the next Call of Duty by himself on a weekend and buys literally anything with Mom’s $$$ before giving up.
They might not even be willing/intending to eventually complete the official roadmap for the store. It is a complete joke, anyway (who needs months or years to implement TEXT!?). They might just be waiting for enough people to give up/move on so that it can be officially 100% automated or closed down for good.
I refuse to believe that a company as competent as EPIC would be incapable of setting up a store with the exact same features that it already had before. Which means the “issues” are intentional. At the very least, and i think this last point cannot be refuted, they do not seem to care about the few dollars that independent artists bring in.
tl;dr: It’s not going to get better. Move on.
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I agree with you on most of your conclusions. Why should Epic spend much on quality control, when they can have nearly the same revenue without it?
The risk of quality would bear the buyers now, but even then they can not report back, as any public text feedback is intentionally prohibited. Any “star” rating answers no questions. So there is not even any quality control before (like the Marketplace specifications and requirements as listed) necessary anymore and not even the community can do that from feedback of first buyers.
As potentional customer I dont buy any cat in the bag, but resort to other sites, even free Sketchfab which has more info and the quality from there is not worse than any Sketchfab asset ported to Fab.
So yeah, no Fab for me anymore, apart the monthly free assets.
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