The multiple licencing/ pricing tiers is very bad…
I had a plan…
Step 1: open fab.com Step 2: search for sales Step 3: buy a heap of stuff Step 4: Live my life and create amazing games with amazing assets meanwhile supporting my fellow devs in the process
What actually happened…
Step 1: opened fab.com Step 2: Tried to search for sales but couldn’t apply filters for the discount amount e.g. 70%, 50% etc… then I very reluctantly proceeded to manually troll through the list trying to discern what the discount was, then I clicked on an item for sale I was potentially going to purchase, only to then realise the discount was referring to the personal tier price/licence and wasn’t what I was looking for (professional licence not personal) to my surprize the professional licence was not actually available in the sale! Is this false advertising I’m not sure… what I do know for sure is it was a total waste of time and energy Step 3: Decided not to buy anything Step 4: Started this passive aggressive question thread
So, my questions Are:
Can you please reassess & remove the multi levelled licencing tiers as this seems ridiculous for devs to manage, everyone needs & wants full use of the asset, we have no way to predict the success of the game we are developing, it is legally risky territory for the devs if the game accidentally performs well, this also adds another level of cost for no good reason (I’m fairly certain all game devs are using it for professional reasons).
At the very least can you add a filter to only show the professional licence? so those of us who only want to purchase the professional licence can find exactly that… every dev should have this anyway in my opinion. Currently the filter for professional licence only indicates if the asset has the licence attached to the asset as a tag.
if you made it this far thanks for reading, if you are a fab.com user and you agree please comment and share your thoughts.
Similar Experience here, Although it was pretty much expected after seeing Fab Launch State and current State Fab Team hardly had any time to Fix such mess on order of Executives.
I am not defending Pro Tier Pricing, but there is confusion among lot of Developers, that they have to pay later if you Succeed (That Half True).
No you won’t have to pay later, you only have to Pay later if you used that Asset again in you Upcoming Project.
Here is example, You Bought Product A for Project A with Personal Tier, now fortunately your project generated decent Kickstart, and Later sold many Copy for example 1M. then you won’t have to buy Pro License (Because License terms are Applied at the time of Purchase) unless you are Planning to use Product A in Project B (Since currently you earn more then 100k / year)
Yes, it is must have, to prevent sudden surprise of 10x Pro price.
I’ve new so never sold anything yet but the licensing has been causing me some “What If” anxiety.
Imagine I sat on a bunch of horseshoes and my little game sold 200K.
And imagine my silly little game had assets from 5 different creators on the marketplace.
I’m getting the feeling I would owe EACH creator whose assets I used 5% of the amount above 100K for a total of 25% in addition to the amount I would owe Unreal.
You won’t pay any Creator % wise regardless of any license.
You only pay Unreal 5% if you have reached 1M USD threshold (5% will be applied to the revenue after 1M for 1.1M you would pay 5% of 100K USD to unreal)
You would only pay Creator if you want to use their Assets again, So with your example if you bought assets from 5 different Creators with Personal Tier Price then you won’t have to Pay them again even if you have earned more then 100K, However if you want to use those Assets again in new Project then if you are earning more then 100K then you would have to Buy them again.
It only applied to the Time which License is Bought, at that time you are earning less then 100K go for Personal otherwise Pro,
5 year later if still you are earning less then 100K still personal License will be applied.
If 5 year later you are earning more then 100K then go for Pro License when creating new Project regardless you bought it earlier with Personal or not.
Don’t think it as Debt. Instead think of all Scenario as New and Fresh State when you are trying to use that Asset. If you plan to use same Asset think again what is you earning.
I wish Epic would have explained it in better way to avoid mass Confusion, instead they named it Horrible (something like Personal even if it is for Commercial Purpose).
I hope it clarifies you doubts regarding Licensing.
This is kinda strange. In the formular - we sellers had to fill - there was no mention of separate discounts for the 2 tiers, we could only set a discount or no discount for each product.
I just verified all my products and both tiers are in sale at the same discount rate.
Probably the reason of your experience is another bug in fab, there are so many of them. It doesn’t make things better, but maybe you should fill a bug report and let them know of it.
I think this is not correct; Abby stated beforehand that after purchasing items, you own them forever even for future projects.
You would only need to pay the pro-tier license cost if you buy something new and your revenue is currently above the cutoff. Basically, it’s whatever you revenue is at time of purchase. They don’t retroactively rescind your license to use that content again in a future project just because you exceeded a revenue threshold (and I don’t think this is stated in the FAB license anywhere). There is no need to re-buy assets for your company just because you made a successful game.
The only case where you would have to pay again would be if you had exceeded $100k Revenue and still (by mistake) purchased a personal tier. Even then, you would not re-purchase: you are only liable for the difference in cost between the two.
From the FAB license agreement:
If you complete a Transaction for a License Tier you were not eligible for at the time of purchase, you must, upon request, pay Epic the remainder of what you would have owed had you purchased a License Tier you were eligible for.
I may have missed that Statement, but we can’t totally rely on that statement completely because Staff members often say (This is not Legal Advise, Contact your Lawyer).
I know it is not Stated in Fab License nor is any additional Information, hence mass Confusion among all. Fab EULA Agreement is poorly written, You won’t find any mention of “Buy Personal License and Use Forever Statement or similar” nor you would find any “reference or allowance for Commercial Use for Standard License” although there is Personal Use Mentioned but Commercial use is not explicitly mentioned anywhere.
But to be on Safe side I found most Reasonable meaning at least for myself.
Let’s suppose you bought Product A with Personal License with Condition of Revenue less then 100K at the time of purchase.
now you Succeeded, and are using same asset again in you next Project.
Now Lets say Creator applied Lawsuit on you, that you are using their Product A with Personal License even if you are currently earning more then 100K USD.
Since Fab EULA Agreement it is not mentioned anywhere as well, Only Staff have mentioned (In that case you won’t have them to blame).
So Technically to be on Safe side with same example I would Rebuy that Product A.
So in any case Creator won’t able to File Lawsuit against me, whether I am earning Less then 100K or more then 100K as I would have both License in the time I need.
Also it would make my life more Easy since I won’t have to store all Records of Assets I am using as well as what Assets I bought in Past with what License.
In Moral Sense, it will also Support the Creator whose Asset you used to get Succeeded, Since it will be kind of Discrimination that the Assets helped me to create Successful Project will be used with Personal License for Rest of Life and New Purchase will be with Pro License.
The only discrepancy here is that I keep seeing repeated everywhere is the term “personal license.” There is no personal license. There is only one license, the FAB Standard License.
There are two pricing tiers, but you are not ‘using a personal license’ - you have the same license regardless of what you paid. So there is nothing to pursue here. You have the same permissions either way. There is only one FAB standard license, both personal and professional EULA are the same. The only difference is the price.
It is indeed poorly worded and unclear, unfortunately.
Ok thanks both for the inputs here, the discussion helps provide a little more clarity, what’s to stop the buyer from owning the personal licence and just always intend on making $0 “just for fun” and accidentally make money every time, this is my hobby forever if I accidentally make money on a game whoops sorry…, the way I see it is they have just made a simple task more difficult than it needs to be, the more difficult it is for the purchaser/user to make a decision, the less will get bought from the store. If you make a game too hard to play no one is going to play it… I’m probably going to skip purchasing anything this sale because “the game is too hard to play”, just going to wait it out and see if they fix it next time.
It just seems like a money grab and automatically makes the “professional” licencing tier over inflated for no reason, it’s not even required if you own the personal licence and can’t apply the rule retrospectively.
This was a very poorly thought-through scheme that only serves to confuse and lower sales. At the very least, change the naming. Something like “Indie” and “Corporate” would be infinitely better in communicating the intent. So many people have come to think that “personal” means “non-commerical,” then get angry that the price is higher for the pro tier.
I took it down. Another one will pop up at some point but actually they took action and took down most of the original IP-thefted assets, thankfully. I went through all of the links in the original post yesterday and 90% of them had been removed from the store.
I think they are still approving more unfortunately but the original list became redundant. At least they are doing something finally.
