these are my reasons why it an initial fee will greatly impact myself and others in small countries.
as well as why i don’t think it will fix the issue, and the problem of the fee getting shifted to the end consumer, and the idea that there are still other things that can be done that are less problematic.
Sellers fall under the same legal requirement that drivers for uber do, epic can keep a copy of your drivers license if you are a seller for verification. They already do this with their trader verification through a third party provider.
That’s actually not a bad idea. Or FAB team could restrict the number of uploaded products per day/week.
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You are pushing so hard against the publishing fee that I am afraid you are precisely one of the low-quality asset sellers who definitely needs to pay the fee.
People can check the project in your profile to make a judgment themselves.
The LinkedIn in your FAB profile says you are a successful manager from New Zealand with 22+ years experience.
Here you claim to be a poor guy from Latin America who can’t afford even a $1 nominal fee.
How do you even afford your hardware and software? Did you acquire it legally?
This looks like a questionable seller trying to push a narrative in his favor.
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Too bad you’re playing the AI game with chatGPT. A simple Google translation will use 10 times less electricity and water. Think about the planet too; AI is much more destructive than you think.
We’re entering the world of the movie IDIOCRACY. People are going to become stupid. Why learn if a machine does the job for you? And then, work is disappearing more and more. I’m 50 years old, an experienced graphic designer, and I can’t find work…
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Adding fees left and right won’t solve any problem, personally attacking the guy just makes any point you try to make baseless.
Why not just shadow-banning all the AI slop altogether instead like cubebrush did? Why not letting all AI crap in their own category so they can have fun posting useless trash? There are lots and lots of workarounds for the issue that don’t involves extra charging.
Any fees added to the seller will just be directly repassed to the end customer. Plus, when a fee is not enforced in every other major marketplace in the same way, you’re just making your service unnecessarily expansive and unattractive. People who don’t think so are just delusional with no grasp of basic economics.
FAB right now is beyond broken, the QA doesn’t work properly, they are understaffed and half of the things we had on the OG marketplace is offline. They are in no position to ask for this sort of thing, it just would be a step backwards.
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That’s a great idea, but apparently FAB also has problems identifying AI generated assets.
My asset with the fastest development time took me 1 month of full-time work, my longest asset took 7. Any seller already pays a cost much higher than $10 per product (unless he’s not actually creating the asset). A $10 one-time publication fee isn’t even worth the time to calculate the price increase per selling unit, let alone a recoupable fee.
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Do you say the same to the government about taxes? One goal of taxes and fees is to encourage certain behavior and discourage other behavior.
Steam has many garbage games not because the $100 publication fee does not work, but because it is so low that even school kids can afford it. Without the $100 fee, every Roblox hobby project would be instantly uploaded to Steam.
That’s great 
, but we need to fight against AI garbage on many fronts. And against low-quality asset spam too. An initial nominal fee is a barrier for both of them.
Not true for a small nominal fee. It is nothing compared to what it costs to develop a full-fledged functional good quality asset. Let alone the hardware, software, electricity costs.
FAB should indeed be unattractive for AI or low-quality assets. Such sellers should go to corresponding shops - that have no AI vetting and QA control - and drown among similar AI and LQ assets.
FAB is big enough and has some UE monopoly to not rely on those sellers.
Indeed.
As a buyer, I would be glad to not scroll through hundreds of AI or low-quality assets to find great assets.
As a seller, I would be glad to not lose sales to AI spammers or to low-quality asset competitors that beat me in quantity and stick in “Newest released” forever. They both push down the work of HQ asset creators in “Newest” and reduce our visibility.
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Hey man, i can see this topic is very important to you. and you might have strong feelings about it.
but there’s no need to attack me. Ad hominem won’t really get us anywhere.
I’ve made my point out of my own thoughts and experiences.
If you don’t agree it’s part of life, it does not mean anyone who does not agree is an enemy that needs to be attacked.
I don’t need to defend myself nor even explain my point. I’m just presenting my view, like any one would do.
I only speak up so that people at epic knows that it’s not a 100% consensus and or that i don’t care. which is called silent agreeing.
I don’t need to explain myself or justify. But just to satisfy your curiosity:
Quoting a latin american:
“Siempre supe que es mejor, cuando hay que hablar de dos, empezar por uno mismo” - Shakira
I’m glad and flattered you checked my profiles and project.
But it seems you have missed that my profile was created in 2017. As in fact i took the time to fill out, and expose my personal info. So i think i’m a bit more trustworthy that what you implied
On top of that i have about 700 posts.
And while most of them might be not from a genius level engineer, you can see that my aim is to help people, and not scam them. As can also be seen by the amount of answers in the forum. which is less than what i wish, but about 20. In any case, i really love to help people.
For each answer i’ve manage to accumulate there are 5 or 10 posts trying to help and failing.
At any rate, it means i’m interested in the community.
There’s no need to be mean.
I know the quality of the project that i make in my spare time, while i’m falling asleep very tired, only two hours a day, and first time modelling meshes and writing narrative, looks poor quality. It’s something i do out of love and moral.
I’m proud its almost all done by myself, even if some people can’t appreciate it. I could have asset-flipped if i wanted to scam people.
And having spent more than 2 years on it, i don’t think i qualify as someone who wants to make a quick buck.
I dont plan on earning money with it. I have a day job, and i work really hard.
If you were to read the description on itchio, you’ll notice that i proudly claim that it’s 100% organic.
i don’t use ai, including copilot and gpt.
And as you can tell by the way i write, i don’t even bother asking gpt to correct it.
Ive stated cleary in the forums before that im not interested in ai content.
Also please check my plugins, the ones i want to publish on fab.
About 9 plugins. They are free, as in beer and freedom.
Opensource. MIT license.
If i wanted to scam people i wouldn’t put 2 years of hard work of my 22 years of experience for free.
Also its on codeberg, because i care that much about opensource.
I do them out of love and desire to expand and help the community.
It’s what i can do with what i have.
Yeah, i went through some very very rough stuff.
Those 22+ years are real, and its because i worked as much as i could since i was legally allowed.
In fact i’m proud of those 22 years of work.
That is an excellent question.
I could not afford rent at the time. I was living with someone else.
I could not afford a reasonable 3d accelerated graphic card maybe after 10-12 years of work.
Which, unfortunately, and it’s a big point of my story.
this reason alone kept me away from my desire to learn UE.
In fact, out of those 22 years, only 12+ are in games, and only 7 on unreal. Mostly because of the lack of hardware (also because ue was not free, so another reason against fees). You can tell the date of this profile is about 7 years ago too.
I confess my dark past: i could not afford a graphic card and enough ram to run ue.
Not even multiple hard drives (in new condition).
How did i do it? well, you work really really really hard. At the same time you study very hard to get ahead. and then you stop eating nice things and going out, you dont buy any fancy clothes, nor video games.
then you save for about 3 to 6 months, sometimes even more. and get whatever you can, which is usually very low end old hardware.
paying a ton because of the import taxes, and the exchange ratio.
my first 3d video card, was actually a very low end one. i doubt it could run ue reasonably.
But i think i had the luck to have the ability to do programming, and find some jobs, as well as have the help of family and friends. Not everyone has such luck…
I can also tell you first hand that in argentina technology is like 4 years behind.
there’s tech that doesn’t even arrive in arg due to that. (Like laser disks and hd dvd, i never saw them).
As for the software, a lot of people don’t pay for software in arg.
i used opensource. so i never touched photoshop (maybe a bit), but i used gimp and krita now.
On my linkedin profile you can see i’ve focused on opensource techs, like linux, postgresql, python (<3), php, javascript, flixel, haxe, openfl, phaser, unity, etc. Only started using UE when i got the hardware and it became free.
Now since ive talked about me let me tell you a story.
I wanted to publish some apps on the google store when i was younger. The fee was “small” in usa, but it was really hard to pay for me.
And i had to pay with an international card. It was very difficult to get one. I had my brother get a credit card and lend me the money. It was very painful. Would not want to do that again.
Having lived in argentina i can tell you that the gov loves taxes. Its quite a contentious topic.
I tried not to talk much about it because i dont like politics discussions and i felt it could turn into one.
My dad is an accountant, and my first job was with an accountant. So i got to hear a ton about economics. Doesn’t mean i know much, but..
Anyone knows in arg that when taxes increases, everything increases.
While is true that taxes are used to coerce people’s behavior that’s a side-effect and an abuse, and not their primary goal. And also it does not mean they are effective.
Is well known that in arg, paying all the taxes can easily bankrupt some companies.
And that people still find workarounds to not pay them, that make all matters worse.
Other examples, if you work for a non argentinean company, you have to pay a considerable hefty tax.
And if you get paid in usd, the gov forces you to change it to ars before getting them. So you never touch a single usd.
Also most companies, based on usa or other countries, do not pay salaries in argentina in usd, they pay in ars. so you sign a contract in ars, and then it’s harder to raise the salary.
And i dont remember but i think you’re forced to exchange them at the “official rate”.
20 years ago the gov made all they could to keep an exchange rate low. But 10 years ago it has been sky rocketing, making everything cost way more.
Any payment with an international card incurs in extra taxes and an abusive exchange rate.
A reason why steam failed so much in argentina for the most part up till now.
So yeah you might say that taxes are a touchy topic for me.
Ive known a ton of truly talented ppl in arg, and i know their struggles.
People really talented.
Even if i can afford a fee, it does not mean i can not expose the situation, empathize with them, and propose my pov of why it might not be the perfect solution, and what other alternatives are available.
Thats an interesting point.
Let me add something ive noticed.
Maybe 10$ is a meager ammount to you, given the time it takes. But i think you make that money back, otherwise you will be losing money.
So i think that its not only whether you can afford the fee, but also if it makes sense for how much you earn.
There are people just starting or that wont sell much, or that just want to put things for free.
They might be able to pay 10$, but it might not be worthy. (Also there are people who cant afford it, like i said above).
So while the fee might slow down the ai slop, it will certainly impede new comers and free content.
And everyone is a new commer once.
I want to publish my plugins for free, 0$. 10$ is just pure cost. On top of all the other effort it takes. Makes no sense to me.
Id love to make money at some point, but i probably use donations instead. Id love to be able to sustain myself through the store but i dont plan on that.
So the way that i see it, raising the entry point affects everyone, ai and regular.
And that is unfair for regular content.
It will also remove or reduce the amount of free content. And even though one could say free content is lower quality (i actually dont agree with that statement) there are nice things for free that i wouldnt want to miss.
And also it has ripple effects.
Imagine someone getting into UE, he might not have money to invest on assets, yet he needs something to start, well, with the fee he will find much less content for free to begin with.
Just make the first 3 or 5 assets free, and all the following cost a 10 dollar fee to publish. That way the devs with less money available can publish something and the bad actors can’t spam the marketplace with hundreds or thousands of cheap stolen or AI generated assets.
That shouldn’t be so hard to implement.
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If a seller is afraid that their asset is so unwanted and low quality that it won’t recoup even $10, then they should rework their asset. Not upload it, by all means to FAB, overloading Epic’s server and wasting the attention of FAB buyers who look for good assets.
Even for a free high-quality asset, a nominal fee is worth it. You get more attention, you promote yourself, you showcase your work to ensure buyers of your quality. Just like many free games on Steam do, by paying the $100 fee.
The fee raises the odds your free HQ products won’t drown in a swamp of free LQ or AI assets.
FAB is a professional asset marketplace for commercial game development. FAB is not a hoster for portfolios of newbies who are just starting out and want to sell or upload for free their first Blender donut without a publishing fee.
Newcomers ≠ low-quality asset spammer. Those should indeed be impeded by the publishing fee. They should not be compared to newcomers, which start by publishing a great asset they worked months on.
That is unfair for high-quality content creators to be drowned in a bunch of low-quality assets spammed by sellers who had not a single extra obstacle to get the same visibility on FAB.
That is unfair for buyers who could spend their time on game developmet but are forced to waste it on scrolling through thousands of garbage assets.
I guess your intentions are indeed different and are not applicable to most FAB sellers. FAB cannot cater primarily to people like you. It would disadvantage many other sellers and shift FAB’s purpose in a wrong direction.
We don’t need this abundance of low-quality assets on FAB. Not even for free.
Beginners, especially, should not be spoiled with poor quality assets. It would do them a disservice and completely deter them from gamedev. There are many lists of high-quality and free-to-use assets like here, here, here. Let’s not forget, beginners still require a costly PC to start out.
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For those who are confident in the quality of their products, a symbolic “deposit for success” is not a problem at all.
I am ready to pay 10 for each of my posted assets at any time and there is no need to return them(even though the situation in my country is on the brink of Armageddon, and 10 dollars is not a pittance by domestic standards.), the main thing is that it would clear the site from the mountains of garbage in which my works are drowning.
From the very beginning of my activity, even in the old market, I earned more from a smaller number of assets than now from a larger one. And all because the works are drowning in mountains of garbage or divided into 1 piece.
At least on the old market there was a limit on the composition of the package. Therefore, new works were visible on the main page for at least a few days and attracted attention if they were of good quality.
Now, in 2-3 hours, the asset has already drowned and is 2-3 screens below.
No one who is confident in the quality of their work will ever resist paying a deposit for publication. Or even pay for placement.
If someone just wants to share their work for free, then there is Artstation for that. There you will get a like. And it is easier to write a comment. And in general it exists precisely for creativity.
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You raise a very good point, the 10 dollar fee per asset will in return help us honest sellers to make more sales, as it will prevent (as you said) our assets being drowned in a flood of AI-gen or stolen assets.
Making the 10 dollar back is usually just one sale, as most assets are priced higher than ten. If you make a good quality asset and you also do good documentation and presentation on the store page, it won’t take long to get at least more than one sale.
It’s either a flat fee per published asset, or Epic forbids the upload of AI generated assets (or “hides” them in a seperate category / page).
Since Epic doesn’t seem interested in the latter, a flat fee is the only thing that can save FAB, before it implodes under the flood of cheap AI / stolen assets.
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I think flat fee is better. Forbidding would require extra effort for moderation. But a fee would just get rid of them completely. If those low quality assets sell so little to not even make the $10 back, then it means that it’s just a number games for ai bros. Cost of making them is negligible - so if they publish 1000 and only sell $50 - it still pays up their subscriptions to generation services. But suddenly the cost would be $10k to get that $50.
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I never paid anything to make my asset and dont want to pay every time i create a asset.
im already struggling no need to add extra fee fab already take a percent on every asset sold…
I think the primary issue is the overwhelming presence of low-quality assets, both AI-generated and non-AI. The problem is that with the AI being an open bar, they can really flood a lot.
I would not have any problem with high-quality assets, even if it is made by AI.
By adding a small fee, you just add a huge incentive to everyone to focus on a minimum of quality, and all the shovelware will have a hard time spamming the store.
The buyers win with a cleaner store.
The scammers will think twice before publishing stolen assets or assets made with stolen IPs.
The serious publisher wins, with a less flooded store for visibility.
And FAB will probably win with less support (mostly related to stolen IPs)
As for those comments saying that 5$ would ruin you…I don’t want to be rude, but why would you release an asset on FAB if you don’t think your own work is worth 5$ yourself?
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I would suggest rather large but voluntary flat upfront fee of $50 per product (not per asset), so:
- newbies still have their possibility to post cubes from Blender freely
- artists doing well-sold products still gonna cover this loss instantly
- we buyers should have possibility to filter out “free published” burden
- Epic even may exclude this sum from their 12% so in longer run nothing will change for seller
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It would make situation a bit better, but I and many others still would have problems with that. Quality is just one aspect of it - the other are legal and ethical issues mentioned in the article I linked above. Epic is actually putting buyers at risk allowing those things now on the store.
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50 dollar is too much, that would exclude a lot of small time sellers and beginners, especially from less wealthy nations.
I think 10 dollar is the sweet spot for a fee per published asset. It’s not a lot of money, yet enough to deter spamming FAB with cheap AI gen or stolen assets.
Even just 5 dollar per published asset will be good enough to deter the spammers and thiefs.
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