Ok, thanks for the clarification.
Are there any hard rules on what name your content is sold under?
If you don’t have a business, does it have to be under your real name? Or have to match your UE4 username?
We don’t have any restrictions, other than: You need to sell your content under a name under which you can lawfully do business and (if the content is paid) accept payment. So, anybody can do business under their personal name, and you can use a company name if you have a legal right to do that in the USA and the country where you reside.
See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doing_business_as for guidance on whether you need to go through an official company registration process in order to “do business as” under a name besides your personal name. And, of course, you cannot use a name which infringes someone else’s registered or common-law trademark.
After we use submission form for Marketplace, how long does it takes until we get any kind of response?
Hey TDoro - We review all submissions fairly regularly (at least weekly), so you should see something back a few days after submission
Ivey, I’ve made a submission, for textures, but I forgot to add the line with 100 models and counting… what to do? Make another submission or? I did not find a way to modify my submission:(
Also, can I start a thread here with my submission for marketplace or I have to do it in WIP and if it’s approved you move it here?
Follow up your submission with an email - ill look out for it!
For everyone concerned with the revenue share and licensing model - First of all the market place just opened for community submissions so I’m sure certain things will be tweaked over time along with everything else revolving around the engine and it’s business model.
The revenue share of only 30% plus duties is very low and more than fair from an exposure to ROI standpoint compared to any other comparable asset marketplace especially when taking into account the demographic usage focus of the UE4 marketplace - As for the licensing model, the way it is currently set up should actually drive more purchases for community submitted content on a per asset pack basis compared to a version locked, user locked or multi-tiered license model which always creates user commitment hesitation and that is a very bad thing for digital goods.
A non business minded person would look at the pricing and licensing structure and say “oh, I’m earning 10% less than i would on X marketplace over X period of time.” Whereas a business minded person would look at it more analytically and say that “Oh they might take an extra 10% revshare than most comparable marketplaces but I’m going to sell almost 3 times as many assets over X period of time so I’m actually going to generate almost twice as much revenue over the same period of time.”
You never want to look at the numbers at face value when dealing with business, you want to look at them from an overall ROI standpoint and when doing that the UE4 Marketplace model is very fair and competitive - Never let a greedy attitude get in the way of good business.
@ Ivey
Just out of curiosity - What is the vote criteria for going from the Trello board into the marketplace and how long does it take once the asset is put onto the Trello board to get processed into the marketplace?
My asset pack was just put on the Trello board about a day ago and already has 40 votes but i noticed that some of the content that has made it onto the marketplace has as little as 2 votes so I’m just curious how that works. Thanks in advance.
@, agree with what you said. But you forget one thing. Marketplace cut indeed is 30%, but we still have to pay tax after, so in the end (considering tax is 25% +30% Marketplace) we keep around 45%.
@TDoro - ‘Duties’ includes country specific taxes which i mentioned in my comment.
I’m also not sure where you’re getting the 25% taxation unless you live outside of the US as tax on digital goods in the US is treated differently from standard personal property sales tax. 35% of US states don’t even have a digital goods tax requirement and those that do have a very low taxation amount by comparison to physical goods. In some states it’s even illegal to levy sales taxes on digital goods in accordance with the ITFA which expires in a little less than 2 months but will most likely be passed into permanent federal legislation before then.
Since Epic is taking 30% of revenue from items sold you’re basically consigning them a digital product then they sell it for you, deduct whatever taxes (if any) they are liable for on those sales then you get paid out by Epic as, i would imagine, a general contractor sans whatever tax they may need to pay on your payout.
Then, when it comes to your tax on income if you live in California for example and you are in the high tax bracket and earn, for example, $520K in a year you would pay $85,205.30 in cumulative income taxes (11.3% plus incremental) which is still only 16.39% of your total earnings. There are also claimable deductions and loopholes where you can decrease your taxation amount on consigned items (physical or digital) if you can prove their worth and depreciation of sale compared to value meaning that the 30% Epic takes can be mostly made up for when paying your income taxes.
My company sells a few million per year in digital goods so i have dealt with digital goods taxation and payout to contractors quite a bit - If you do your taxes correctly (In most US states anyway) then when all is said and done you’re getting around 65% of the total sale price - Some of also depends on how Epic has their marketplace structure setup but for most situations it still holds true.
To take it even further, if you become a huge success on the marketplace and are receiving tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on your assets you could/should setup an LLC or S-Corp just for that revenue to funnel through then you have access to even more tax benefits and your percentage of take increases.
@ - I am talking about EU, I have no idea how is taxation in US. Basically, you pay tax on ANY income you have no matter if you are individual or company. I just wanted to say, peoples think that the money for a product go all to developer, but that is false. Besides Marketplace cut, in general is another tax cut.
PS. Then what’s the problem with taxation in Cali, I’ve heard peoples do not like it to much and think is high? They should visit Denmark by example to see a flat 25% tax from start no matter what (from what I remember). I am personally for a progressive taxation, because seems fair.
@TDoro - Ah, ok, i know nothing about practices outside of the US but even 45% is not bad considering you’re getting a great outlet which you otherwise would not have had. As for taxation in California it’s not too bad considering what it pays for, we have a pretty high standard of living here in southern California so the taxes are worth it for the most part.
I’ve got a few questions:
- Does the lifetime license extend to non-UE4 usage? Can they export purchased assets and use in, say, a Unity game?
- When you submit to the Marketplace, are you supposed to receive an email back? I submitted, and then one day my submission just appeared. I would hate to miss out on any correspondence in case that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
- If we would like to update part of our submission on the Trello board, is that possible? I’ve tidied up some of my assets and added some materials, and wouldn’t mind if the pics reflected that.
- If your submission is eventually moved to Marketplace, is there a way to keep it updated? Say you make some improved materials and you’d like to add them to the pack, is that possible?
Thanks for any info!
Thanks for the questions!
- Yes if you include source or they’re otherwise able to export assets they could use that for other projects.
- Our process is a bit rough right now but we’ll be adding notifications throughout the process soon. Apologies for the latency and lack of transparency - we’re working to fix asap and will have more things rolling out week even.
- Best way right now would be to reach out to us directly to update. I’ll ask to sort out the best way to get in touch regarding marketplace submission updates.
- Yes definitely - eventually we hope to have an automated solution that allows content creators to update their assets. In the meantime we’ll need to use a manual process for now.
EDIT: noticed hit in a separate thread as well - https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?39838-Question-on-submission
How about single assets such as post-effect material (and perhaps couple of assisting assets like a demo map) for things likeoutline is generally something I would consider to not easily fit into a “pack”-deal. I have shared it through the website so far, but It’d be neat of these assets would simply be available in the marketplace where it’s much easier for people to discover. (Same question applies to material functions)
Can we sell things that use Unreal-provided textures?
I can’t afford FumeFX so I can’t easily make my own textures designed for sub-UV particles. However, I think I have a knack for making things in Cascade. If I’m open about what I made and what is provided by Unreal, would still fly? My assumption is no, but I thought I’d check! Thanks!
Edit: Nevermind, got things sorted out… Cheers, look forward to listing my assets on Unreal Marketplace.
hands on evaluation
Are there any plans to implement some sort of no questions asked return policy?
Also, any you could create a forum thread for each product and link it on their page in Launcher as a standard procedure?
thanks
Questions for Epic -
How do you comply with Copyright infringement and things of nature? Automated system or People?
The Unity asset store has become bad as of late with allot of stolen assets. Which leads to my next question.
How will you guys handle assets that are no longer being updated or maintained?
Again Unity Asset store has become very bad with and takes away downloads from paying customers sometimes. Or worse keeping non maintained assets on the storefront.
I am just using the Unity Asset store here as an example. No engine bashing please.