I’m making this request on behalf of a content creator.
The new feature of the standard and professional licenses is a great idea, but it doesn’t function as it should.
A professional license shouldn’t just charge more money from those who have worked hard and succeeded. It should offer real benefits for those who pay extra, like better support, extra settings, more presets, or advanced features.
I urge the FAB team to improve the professional license. If a commercial project buys it, they should get something valuable, not just a higher price for no real gain. That wouldn’t be fair.
As a creator myself, I would love to see my professional clients gain access to my support channel, while the more affordable standard license would only include basic FAQ documentation.
And I would love to add some extra texture maps and few more animations for those who are paying more. At least I want to be able to contact my pro clients through the Fab and suggest them my support or send them a link to the extra features directly.
These are just some examples on how things could work, but I believe it reflects a fair approach in a free market—one that encourages sellers to build stronger relationships with their clients.
Thank you for your time
Please consider this feature suggestion
No. Never. It is a terrible idea. The whole Professional tier is already bad because its requirement of 100k is so low that solo indie devs in western country already count as being obliged to buy a Professional license.
Considering there is no cap on how big the price difference can be, some sellers charge disproportionally more for professional licenses, like $10 personal licenses turns to $1500 professional licenses.
You don’t pay x10 more for a Windows license if you use it in a business. Forcing solo indie devs to pay x10 more for an asset license - as if they are rolling in money, abusing content creators - is ridiculous.
FAB is already in a desperate state, and now you “urge the FAB team” to lock features and support behind paywalls. As if we currently don’t have the problem of most assets not having sufficient documentation and decent support from the seller.
Your suggestion is not a “fair approach in a free market”, but rather the opposite. It enforces gatekeeping and puts additional burdens on smaller indie devs. It encourages seller bad practices, like ignoring support requests, asset feature cutting, and content splitting.
Meanwhile, big FAB buyers will remain unaffected by those changes.
You can sell 10+ tiers of paid support and extra textures via your website or Patreon. No need to refactor the already not-the-best FAB license system for this.
I urge the FAB team to raise the 100k to 1 million for Professional licenses, just like Unreal Engine already has for years.
That is actually very oposite of what I am suggesting. I want to be able to extend the asset quality for those who pay more. I don’t have time to answer every question to every customer who buy an asset for 20 bucks, but I am willing to provide the support for those who pay 50. It is not about cutting features. It is about providing more for the valuable customers. Same as the Windows license. You don’t just buy more expensive license. You get more expensive features for it. It is fair.
And if you can’t provide additional value, then perhaps you should not be able to raise the price. But why letting sellers to tripple the price if they are not obligated to anything for it? What’s your point?
I am genuinely confused that you suggest professional licensees should pay even more through other platforms for the right to support and extra features when they have already paid double the price. My statement is clear: if you force some customers to pay more, then you should also force creators to provide them with something extra.
I think your idea is fine, but maybe not confuse it with the “license” terminology. The licensing was designed as a way to charge more for large companies vs small indie developers. Personally I think we should have the option for just a single license to not confuse buyers, but that’s a separate conversation I’ve discussed in a topic in the past.
I think what you’re suggesting, which is a neat idea, would be simply different “versions” of marketplace products. For example, a Standard, Pro, Deluxe (or whatever the seller wants to name them.)
We can tell this is a good idea already because there are many assets on the marketplace where people are doing just that very thing, however they have to make an entirely different submission and page for each version.
Your idea of having this as a single product with different versions buyers can choose from is definitely interesting!
Yes, you are right. I used licensing terminology as the base because it somewhat resembles the commonly known licensing model for modern software we subscribe to today. There are basic features for home use, some limited features for students, and extended versions for professionals. I also agree that we don’t necessarily need to turn it into licenses and could keep it as versions instead. But if, for any reason, Epic decides to proceed with licenses, the least we could do is upgrade those licenses with more features.
And it would also motivate creators to add extra quality to the assets for small additional price.