Yes you are Right, In the end of the day Fab Team hardly consist of 20-50 Employees. I feel bad for them as they are getting hate for the decision taken by Executives. Poor guys were forced to launch Fab before October and we got results. It is completely broken but might be fixed by hard working Team.
But Core thing is- There is huge Flaw in Fab Foundation, as its Primary Audience is for UEFN and Kids instead of Game Developers.
Here is Timeline-
1- We can see when it was announced years back then it was on alpha for UEFN and was working fine without Proper Search Algorithm, without Inviting Unreal Marketplace Sellers for Trial (there were some invitation but I am referring to all sellers) to prevent such horrible Launch
2- Artstation and Sketchfab were merged, It was another blunder since it cause flood of Copyrighted/Stolen/AI Generated/Low Quality Assets without any moderation since Fab Team is not large enough to handle such Flood of Assets (On Unreal Market there were 300 Assets Release every 2-3 days now you could assume migration of assets + new assets)
3- At Launch most of User Written Input was removed, In my Opinion it was done for making platform Kids friendly (I will try to expand it later)
4- It will result in less visibility for Unreal Engine Seller, currently I see lot of crap even with Unreal Engine Filter
So In my Opinion here is Problem in treating Kids as Primary Audience,
Heavy moderation- They are removing every user input possible and don’t expect Written reviews (If you closely Pay attention to Staff Reply then you would notice they directly avoid answering question and instead answer like we will improve rating system so that it fulfill this or that)
they are even censoring Smoking Images in Assets and labeling as mature.
They are planning to introducing New License for “Copyrighted” and “Stolen” Assets (By non commercial or Reference). Since the core audience is UEFN and Kids not Game Dev.
Kids Purchasing isn’t too much they would spend around (10-50). So Diluting Market for Kids is not suitable in my opinion
They are not taking it seriously, They didn’t market it as they should especially to Game Dev Audience for example they are distributing Megascan for Free but didnt done enough publicity to attract potential Unity Devs or other Game Dev to Fab since there Core Audience is UEFN Kids
Also in my opinion, I think that epic was not considering Harassment or Abuse when removing Q/A and Reviews instead it was Part of Some sort of Regulation for Kids just like Youtube does for Kids Video with Miniplayer and Comments off.
Overall I think it would have negative impact on Unreal Sellers since visibility decrease and a lot of Seller are Discussing 0 Sales from the day Fab Launch also a lot of Game Dev have lost trust in Fab Due to Copyrighted/Stolen Asset and other issues overtime the only profitable medium will be UEFN (and thats what i fear).
After seeing where Fab is heading in my opinion i think that Unreal Marketplace should be Separated for Fab (With its own Problem and Ironing out Problem with time)