I’m considering getting started with UE4, in part because of the Marketplace – I’d be interested in submitting art assets for sale there. Based on the reading I’ve done, it sounds like one has to have a current, active subscription to UE4 in order to access the Marketplace, which is understandable.
My question is this: if you had an active subscription, begin listing items to sell on the Marketplace, and then cancelled – how if at all would that affect your ability to obtain revenue from the items you listed? Would you continue receiving payment as normal? Would your submissions be de-listed until you resubscribed? Something else? Just curious since I’ve never dealt with a subscription-based marketplace before.
I think you have to maintain a subscription in order to have your item listed and continue receiving payments. I know Apple does that with the Appstore, and I remember reading it was the same for the UE4 marketplace. Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong however.
@: And the vendor gets 70% of the revenue, doesn’t have to worry about offering download services or infrastructure, gets almost instantaneous access to the entire UE4 active subscription community.
Personally if you aren’t happy with the deal then sell the stuff on Sellfy or similar service.
Considering how much this engine is actually worth, and the pricing for previous iterations, 30% on marketplace sales + $240 a year isn’t bad at all. Especially since the royalties for selling a game are 5% and don’t require an active subscription. I think it’s fair to say Epic has been more than generous with their terms.
This is something where a million people could tell you a wrong answer, but a single person could tell you the right one: It’s best to ask Epic about this (Or wait for an Epic employee to post here) as they are the people that choose whether or not it’s the case.
It actually makes much more sense that the assets you’re selling on the marketplace would not be affected by your subscription status. Your transaction with Epic (in the case of marketplace) is you selling your assets, where the act of selling the asset doesn’t actually require a subscription once it’s already on the marketplace. Epic will take 30% on each sale, which is their return for handling that transaction (again, separate from the subscription).
You should also take into consideration the buyers - not just yourself - that would be affected if you were to cancel your subscription and Epic chose to take your assets down. Why would Epic want to remove content from the marketplace that they’ve already spent significant resources getting approved and hosted? The only thing they’d be doing at that point is shutting down an additional source of revenue from them (the sale of your assets) and potentially frustrating other developers who wanted to purchase that asset.
Your own argument: “You should also take into consideration the buyers”:
So, you have your subscription cancelled and something up on the marketplace. Now a new version comes out, lets say 4.7, which makes your published asset unusable. You yourself dont have a chance to update it accordingly, since you dont have an active subscription and you are not able to download the current version of UE.
Yeah i know, this will be most likely valid for Blueprint Assets, since Animations/Meshes/Materials dont have that much major changes (and i cant really think of much here). But it’s still valid nonetheless.
Another one, if for some reason i.e. a material doesnt look correctly in a specific version. Now you get a support request from a customer asking for help. You are not able to help, since again you dont have access to the version the customer is using since you already cancelled your subscription.
From a customer’s POV, i wouldnt understand why a seller doesnt have a active subscription, since he may not be able to give me support then. And if i got a response from the seller to a support request that he couldnt reproduce since he doesnt have that UE version i will be thinking twice before buying anything from that seller again.
I don’t believe Epic is going to pull an asset because the seller cannot update it. If an asset is outdated and the seller can’t update it, it will only look bad for the seller. Epic already has a section for assets that indicates what version works for each asset being sold.
Here’s a quote from the marketplace FAQ that suggests they may, “You must support your content sold on the Marketplace and ensure that it maintains compatibility with future engine updates. Epic has the right to update any and all submissions as necessary to meet future compatibility needs. If an item has fallen behind in compatibility, Epic reserves the right to remove the item from sale to new users.”
Which at the very least suggests you need to resubscribe when a new version of the engine is released.