My assets are stolen!

Yesterday i also found that one of my assets was stolen and is being sold as a pack with other assets.

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In the meantime Epic receives the 12% rev share of the stolen assets?

There are some templates for DMCA take down requests on the internet, you can write your request based on these…

Unfortunately only the owner can request a takedown. There is no procedure for the community to make such a report, you as the content creator are the only one who is permitted to make such a request even if the IP theft is completely blatant.

I’m kind of on the fence on reaching out to other companies over this.

Yep. Only way they’ll listen is if they see their numbers go down :chart_with_downwards_trend:, and the best way to do that is to raise your prices sky high. You control the pricing, not them. You won’t get any sales but neither will them and you’ll get to keep your assets from being stolen :tipping_hand_man:

I was spectacing on one, he was mentioned above, seller that published stolen assets of other seller that I recognized.
For the past few days he published 2 stolen assets from other seller(the two I recognized, his other assets might be also stolen from other sellers, who knows).
The report was sent from the owner of that assets. So I just was waiting for the result.
And today I looked, and I saw that assets was removed from his account? So I guess the report was seen by the team, but I am still surprised that thief account is still in the store.

This is really concerning for me that FAB is not banning thiefs from the platform. I can just wish that the team is still working on his account for theft, and in the end he will recieve ban.

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This will probably only stop once we get the reviews and questions back. People wouldn’t steal like this, or their product page would get flooded with accusations of theft.

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The problem is theft should be prevented in the first place in any case where that is possible

That is part of the review process. It should be at a minimal a glance that the content isn’t from a known source … this won’t catch everything and won’t catch stuff like the OP is talking about… probably

However, there is a TON of blatantly stolen or “copyright infringing” content on the store so its VERY clear that Epic is making ZERO effort to keep the store clean.

Next, once they have been notified of theft that needs to be treated as very serious. Both the acquisition and that act. The accused needs to be investigated immediately and as a matter of priority. I get not wanting to block the sales of things till the investigation is done as false accusation is a thing.

Next someone should be in real legal trouble the moment a solution is found. Either you lied and its not stolen in which case you attempted to cause real financial harm to both Epic and that publisher and should at a minimum be banned with potential damages applied where allowed by law. Making a false statement that has a real financial impact in many places has legal repercussions.

And if you are found to have stolen then you should be treated like the criminal you are. The sum total of the damages you caused is calculated to determine if this is going to be a major or minor offence with legal action or not. Until there are real consequences this is just going to keep happening. And a ban isn’t going to be good enough in all places.

If for some reason a user is in a place where legal action isn’t possible or practical … fine, withhold 1 to 3 months as a security e.g. you get paid for your 1st month on your 4th month … why when you cheat lie or steal Epic has a tool it can use. Would it stop the problem no would it greatly reduce it … yep

This issue is not being treated seriously
People know there is basically no consequence for doing this so they do it

The result however is that the store can’t be trusted. I wouldn’t nor would I recommend anyone to buy anything on the store. There is a non-zero chance its stolen or not properly licensed which means if you go building a product on that you can be on the hook that is just not even vaguely acceptable.

No it won’t. Old Marketplace had those features and that didn’t matter. BTW, you can’t just trash some other Seller’s product page anymore. The comment section is optional and you’ll need to buy the product to post a comment.

Only way to stop theft is the subscription model: A FAB PASS, where they own everything but you get paid every month. Epic won’t do💩 until someone steals from them. That’s why you don’t see any duplicate Fortnite character in FAB, their stuff is off limits !!. In other words, they need to own your Assets if you want them protected.

Hi all,

As mentioned by @ScamBot45 above, the best way to take action in cases like this is to submit a (DMCA) takedown request here:

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/infringement

We cannot reasonably check every single product for infringement, nor know with certainty who does or does not have the rights to distribute content. This removal request flow is a known, legal process for any website hosting user-generated content.

So, about that. What’s up with the threat of permanently banning us on that page? Because most of us are obviously not the copyright holders for nearly everything that we found on the now deleted megathread

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You are absolutely expected to reasonably vet products you sale

You know full good and well when a major trademark is being used and no waiting for a DMCA is not good enough

More over a DMCA issue is nothing to be taken lightly and cant be issued by anyone other than the rights holder however you as Epic have an obligation to be proactively cleaning up FAB

If FAB cant be trusted … and by that I mean if we cant assume that content on FAB is legit … then its not only useless its an active risk to anyone that uses it.

If someone reports to you that something may be stolen it is reasonable to expect you to enquire sure you may not have the information you need to vet if “random farm animal model” is stolen or not but you know ■■■■ sure that Coke didn’t authorize the coke cans you have all over your store or that Apple didn’t authorize the use of iPhone and its branding … you have a HUGE mess on your hands and it is a mine field for anyone that might try to do comercial work

Epic has an obligation as the operator of a curated store to offer some level of assurance that you have done your best to ensure that all content on the store is legit and fit for the propsosed use its listed as. And when something is brought to your attention that something isn’t fit … you have an obligation to investigate that.

FAB is a curated store

Now if you are saying FAB is not curated … fine

Then FAB is not fit for purpose as a resource for professional commercial work end of

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You certainly can and should. In fact it is a requirement for the store to be at all usable by professionals that you do at least a cursory check. A 30-second google search to see if IP was taken from somewhere else is very little to ask. It is clear from the new product listings on FAB now that even this basic level check is not being done.

You can’t check every asset? Ok - let us do it…add a report button. Let users report stolen assets and where they appear to be ripped from and we will absolutely handle the heavy lifting here to stop putting FAB customers at risk. This is not possible when DMCA is the only report mechanism.

Please implement this, if the problem is that Epic simply doesn’t want to do the work, users will do it. But the massive amount of IP theft on the store cannot continue if it is to be usable at all.

The store is filled with content from well-known games, movies, TV shows, that literally EVERYONE recognizes as stolen IP (scenes and assets copied or ripped directly from Disney, Warner Brothers, Nintendo, Alien Franchise, etc. I do not really believe for a second that product reviewers are incapable of recognizing something like Pokemon, but letting users report stolen IP would at least stem the problem.

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Interesting… Yet Epic continue to push the merging of muliple Marketplaces to FAB anyway. And yet on launch, give users no way to write reviews to warn others off dodgy products (stolen / ripped assets). How was this ever supposed to work? Other marketplace leverage AI.

You would think Epic would see the community as a resource that could help with vetting products. As takedowns take time / work / effort / legal-ownership. Whereas devs posting warnings or stay away reviews now today would help solve this kind of problem right-now faster.

Its extraordinary! Jaw on floor / mouth wide open kind of stuff. Wonder what Epic’s competition make of this. Face palm moments at Unity HQ / Google HQ maybe? There’s too much white powder from fortnite billions floating around at Epic HQ or IQ’s have seriously dropped. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

What?! Not only you can, you must do it. When you’re running food store you have to check products you’re selling to not poison your customers. When running asset store you must not poison future games/apps by stolen content.

I didn’t spend a dime on Fab since launch and it looks like I’ll not have a chance for a long time.

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If YouTube was able to create an algorithm to detect copyright infringement and protect music artists… then you don’t have an excuse to not do the same. The real question is:

Will your Boss stop being so cheap and start investing in AI algorithms to prevent asset theft? or will he continue his greedy quest :money_mouth_face:?

Seriously, it only took me some using random brand names just to find the blatant violators. And most of them actually said what they were from in the title, alone.

There are Marvel and Star Wars characters on the store right now…

Epic does do (or did) some checking because when I submitted my first asset years ago I was required to remove the name “AR-15” from my static mesh.

I’m sorry to say this, but this allowance of illegal products and the decision of removing the questions and reviews sections from them is a combination that looks terrible…

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Hi Vendol21,
We’re looking into your situation and will follow up.
I’ve provided a general update on a related thread here.

Thanks for flagging your situation,

Josh

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Well im happy, after the claim, in 2 days they “disabled access to the reported materials on the Fab Marketplace”.