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 doesnât allow anyone to express ANYTHING besides a 1-to-5 rating?
This is so insane it is almost incomprehensible. 
Youâre not selling jeans here. Come to think about it, even if you were, iâd still want to know if the fit, the coloring or the lining was the problem with a 1-star-review. Youâre 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 itâs being animated in a certain fashion? Or is the buyer just so incompetent he couldnât find the assets in his editor? Etc. etc.
Nah, no information necessary whatsoever, itâs only an insanely complicated product that requires extremely careful analysis before a decision can be made.
I donât 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. âNo i donât need to check anything, itâs 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 iâm doing.â
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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!
Iâve 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 weâre looking at here is not even a form of incompetence, but one of âsoftâ (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 Epicâs shoes:
1.) Create one of the most complex programs imaginable, a program meant to birth new programs! And each of itâs 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 âŚagain? Just off your psych-meds? AWESOME. ALL ARE WELCOME.
3.) Make them all compete for $$$ and pride/attention (âi am a respected independent artist with passive income!!!â) 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 donât 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 donât 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 youâll 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 Epicâs 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 groupâs 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 âcreationsâ (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.
Itâs 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 EPICâs 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. ==> canât just raise feeâs/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: âRenewâ 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 wonât 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 Momâs $$$ 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 âissuesâ 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: Itâs 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 âstarâ 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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Epic is becoming like ADOBE. It doesnât count consumersâ opinions. When you become a monopoly this is what happens.
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I completely agree, and the core issue seems to be the ability to provide questions to the developer of a product, and reviews thereof one and the same.
Perhaps an answer in the short term is to create a third party forum site, whose root posts match the developer name, and whose sub-threads match their product names, and the replies the reviews. I know that this is a feature that should already be integrated in Fab, but perhaps we can solve the problem in the short term by doing it ourselves?
I realize that it would be a big task to undertake an admin role on such a forum, especially as it grew (and it would probably grow pretty rapidly if awareness can be sufficiently spread to unreal engine users), but many hands make light work. Having a few dedicated members of the unreal engine community as admins would certainly make the task easier.
Thereâs also the idea that such a forum, if successful, would also be a good medium for ad revenue or affiliate advertising, which is an opportunity to those who understand how those aspects work with regard to being a site admin for such a project.
Just a suggestion even though we shouldnât have to do it ourselves, it might actually be an opportunity in disguise.
Shhhh! 
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As stated before.
I wonât buy anything from Fab until they return the written review section.
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still no and again 
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Iâm supporting the request. Was there any dialog with the Fab representatives on this one? Did they explain their decision?
It on the roadmap and well since they are making everything from scratch, some features like text reviews are just low priority as it need more time to be implemented.
We can only wait and be patient for it 
.
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Im surprised this is still not fixed. I know it takes time to develop stuff, but i dont get why they would release fab in the first place if it was so unfinished.
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As a purchaser it is frustrating, I donât know why a seller has a low rating, and so now I donât want to touch their assets.
To be fair, it was Epicâs choice to launch something that isnât feature complete. (Some) people are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on assets, plugins and tools.
Wilfully and intentionally hiding information related to those purchases could be viewed as more than just a delayed feature (especially when they profit from those sales, are difficult to obtain refunds from, and already have the detailed information but are intentionally not disclosing it on the asset pages).
I could see someone taking interest in this as a potential legal issue.
Regardless, I hope they put the effort in to restore the functionality, itâs impacts my trust in Fab.
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Text reviews are not rocket science, specially considering the system was already implemented in the former UE Marketplace. A single developer is able to migrate the feature and create a migration script for migrating all the data in less than a week.
Considering this feature is one of the most important features for any online marketplace, it should have maximum priority. The only explanation for it not being ready at day 1, is a conscius decision to downgrade the review system.
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Oh, yes, 100% agree. I moved my tools from FAB to other places and got so much more value in return.
FAB team, your ship is drowning
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