There are 2 different prices I can set for my Fab products: Personal and Professional. I assume that Personal is for personal use only. The user may create a youtube video with the asset, but not a work for commercial resale (like a product advertisement). I also assume that the resale of the assets themselves is prohibited.
Is my understanding correct? Can you provide a link to the documentation that clarifies this? Thanks in advance!
Personal - for buyers who have not generated more than $100,000 USD in gross revenue from commercial activity in the last 12 months.
Professional - for buyers who have generated more than $100,000 USD in gross revenue from commercial activity in the last 12 months.
I will re-iterate what I said in other threads, which is that calling it âPersonalâ is extremely misleading and disingenuous.
Many (incorrectly) assumed exactly what you did as a result - that it is for personal use only, as the name implies.
It should have been called an indie license because thatâs what it is.
There seems to be only one Fab standard license (according to their comments here on the forums) but two pricing tiers, and everything else is nebulous and unclear.
I am not sure why they didnât just make license purchases be per-seat, meaning your costs scale with the size of your team (since that is the intent, at least they say, behind having two tiers of prices). Engine plugin purchases already work this way under the old license. Thinking is hard vOv
I agree. Personal vs Professional is very confusing for a Seller and the only information given is the gross revenue difference.
There is no information about lifetime vs temporary ownership, seats, etc. Due that cloudiness, my prices will be ridiculously high, because Iâm assuming they can do what ever they want after purchasing them.
I would personally prefer to have an INDIE vs CORPORATION licenses with both having options to own your products for 1 year (renewal) OR a one time paying to own your product Lifetime. In addition, have an extra License to receive new content or updates of that product.
The way I see it, FAB is leaning heavily towards Developers/Programmers⌠who want everything for FREE.
Thanks all! I appreciate the input. Somnetimes it feels as if Iâm all alone in asking these questions. Iâm glad to see that is not true. Together, we will get it figured out!
the problem with this us that Indies ARE corporations. Just with much smaller size and revenues. So Indie vs corporation doesnât make sense - they are both corporations.
But yes itâs very confusing. Per-seat pricing I feel like would make a lot of sense as costs scale directly with the number of team members accessing them.
Also why recommend purchases have limited term licenses? You prefer the licenses for things you own now expire? 
instead of you-bought-it you-own-it, I donât agree with âassets as a serviceâ where you suddenly have to do upkeep for the lifetime of your game. Talk about a make-work project. These ideas are very bad for small developers.
I get what you mean, but you can say the same thing for any Personal license which he/she can also be a Professional in itâs own right. The wording is important and definitely should be explained further than just revenue gross.
About ownerships. The perfect example is Apps. They first began just like Assets: People purchased them and own them forever. Eventually, that model broke⌠why? because no Developer was going to update or improve the product for Free. This is the reason App Store is mostly a service now, most Apps adopted the Subscription model, shortly after⌠both the Apple and Developers thrived and prospered with record breaking numbers.
Now Assets are not Apps but they do need occasional updates and they definitely add improvements and content over time. So, it makes perfect sense to have an OPTION⌠to purchsae the Asset for Life or as Subscription per term.
You may ask, how are they going to lock the Assets I purchased from my Games?. Well, they absolutely can. Especially with FAB now integrated into Unreal Engine. If your subscription expires, that Asset is no longer available in your Content Browser.
Ah ok. I think this is different than how I understood your comment. I have no issue with purchasing access to future updates. Something like Ultra Dynamic Sky has been updated sinceâŚ2018? 2015? So yes, they should be entitled to compensation for that ongoing support. One year is definitely too short. The normal development cycle for a medium sized game is 3-5 years at leastâŚbut if you need support for 6, or 7, or 10, sure.
What I thought you meant was that you should lose the right to include the asset in projects after that term, which would absolutely be wrong. I.e., If you bought an asset in 2020 you should still own and be able to ship it in 2026âŚbut I totally understand not having access to new version releases several years after your purchase.
However you absolutely should not lose the rights to old assets you paid for in the past, even though that may mean being stuck with an old version if you didnât want to pay.
As a comparisonâŚthatâs like saying if Photoshop releases a new version that they could retroactively deactivate your access to a version you bought a year ago. So you can see why that sounds ridiculous.
In any case, the issue at hand for Epic staff reading thisâŚpersonal is a very bad descriptor for what you are saying this license tier does.
Old stuff before FAB, I agree. New stuff, should have option for Lifetime OR subscription seat per term. i.e. You buy a car asset in FAB for 1 year subscription (indie), youâll then can use that car for any of your games for the duration of that year. Soon after, you should get a warning when opening up Unreal Engine that âthe car asset is about to expireâ and get 3 options: Ignore, buy again or buy forever. If you choose ignore, just like Games, Apps, 3D software⌠that asset should lock 
.
I know you disagree with this because youâre on the opposite side. But if think about it, all big Game devs do the same thing with tockens, locked levels, upgrades, etc. to their customers. Why shouldnât we?
But anyway, thatâs a subject for another generation I guess. Cause presently, Epic fully support your side. They just want you to sell Games and give you everything for Free. Hopefully, that will change and compensate both Devs and Artist equally.
Negative, this is an awful idea.
âthe car asset is about to expireâ and get 3 options: Ignore, buy again or buy forever. If you choose ignore, just like Games, Apps, 3D software⌠that asset should lock
I am glad you donât work for Epic, and so is everybody else.
But if think about it, all big Game devs do the same thing with tockens, locked levels, upgrades, etc. to their customers. Why shouldnât we?
This is justâŚwow. Yikes dude. Maybe you should lock your marketplace assets behind loot boxes with rare chance to get the asset you want too?
Well, you are not everyone else (fortunately). You look after your interest and I do for mine. I may not work at Epic but they are a Company that needs to make money after all. Presently, we are tied to Game Devs but times are shifting and that could change, 3D assets may become more profitable than even Games in a near future with the rise of augmented reality devices.
Your missing the point man. Loot boxes donât apply to us. The idea behind is that Game devs profit from offering a locked product with expired or non expired content. They donât give away all the goodies from start. Thatâs the point.
With us, you want everything Free, cheap and owned forever and that needs to change.
It may be hostile for you but not for Artists. Think about it, people will soon be wearing glasses like iPhones and they will want to purchase more AR content immediately. What will they do? I can tell you one thing, they wonât be buying just games anymore 
Know creators whoâve left the marketplace because a subs model wasnât available. So sympathetic, but only in specific scenarios. So⌠What are we really talking about here? A subs model for a car asset thatâs seen lots of updates from 4.x to 5.x⌠Think car physics multiplayer plugin (lots of source change headaches to deal with for creators). But if its just a static car model, should that have a subs model too, with an expiry date? Not sure⌠
Weâve all seen subscription models that creep into other areas of life that have no credibility being there. Think printer ink / warm car seats / IoT toothbrushes (or the devices wonât function properly any more). So please, lets not look to rent-seeking greedy mega-corporations like HP for inspiration here, as thatâs just wealth extraction for the already rich. 
So what are Game Devs doing if not exploding that greed ? They want our Assets for free and forever while they offer loot expired boxes to Kids to milk their parent wallets, over and over again. So you tell me whats worst?
Letâs not play innocent dude, nobody is here to safe the World, we all come for the money and thatâs Ok.
For sure, loot box exploitation is real. But this channel isnât UDN, just the indie forums⌠And the official stats are grim⌠80% of Indie games make little or no money at all (90% in higher cost cities / countries). With all the consolidation, less and less studios are making a killing anymore. Just those at the top. 
And what must be a correct professional price? double than personal?
It would be nice if there was some suggested pricing logic.
Otherwise weâre shooting in the dark.
I donât know what kind of bills a 100k revenue studio has. They may in fact be on a tighter budget. I wouldnât assume they have more cash. If theyâre making 100-million then yes they can fork over $1000 for their kickstarter scam⌠
More importantly, I wonder if itâs going to be obvious enough to customers what âPersonalâ and âProfessionalâ mean? Are people going to assume professional means commercial, or will it be obvious enough.
Artstationâs personal vs commercial is self-explanatory. Personal vs professional is not.
Otherwise Iâd assume forgo âprofessionalâ, because small devs are going to assume they should have that and may skip buying altogether.
Itâs all a bit vagueâŚ
Since they decided to give away our Assets forever. My professional is 5x more than personal and all products over $100. I didnât want this, but they forced my hand
These are crazy takes. Iâm sorry but this is very obtuse.
You sold someone a product and you are mad that they now own the thing you sold them? Insane.
And as for making moneyâŚ
I donât even know what to say about this. You say your professional tier will be 5x, that means you are charging $335 for this purple man.
Sup Crap. Thanks for promoting my work. Like they say⌠thereâs no such thing as bad publicity Lol, keep it up. 
You are welcome. I am happy if your store succeeds, I am not trying to be intentionally rude or antagonistic - just trying to get you to understand why what you are saying does not work for the developers using the marketplace.
I feel you have a lot of misplaced anger at âdevelopersâ as though they are cash cows making all this money from your work. In reality the âbig boyâ studios are not your customers. They are making assets in-house by hiring artists (which costs, quite literally, millions of dollars over a few years). The people buying your things are mostly indie studios working on very limited budgets.
And the reasons marketplace assets are generally affordable for them is because they have a major limitation: non-exclusivity. You as a seller have the luxury of being able to sell multiple times to multiple clients. For the devs, this is a huge drawback. The assets in their game can also appear in someone elseâs game.
This is meant to be the trade-off for low cost per asset. You as the seller make up the difference in cost because you can sell multiple times, to multiple clients - but the people buying lose the ability to have exclusive rights to that thing you made.
We can agree to disagree on licenses, but just know that as a developer I would never pay for subscription assets. It is always a balance of cost and time, and if the cost or terms are not appealing, we will make them in-house instead. Why pay again continuously, and also accept non-exclusivity? We would rather cut those sellers out entirely if those were the terms.
P.S. I apologize if my post came across as rude, but I hope that given the above context you can see why this type of thing for those prices do not fit into the development budget for indie projects. Game devs are not the enemy; very much the opposite, and understanding their actual needs may be helpful for you in terms of making things that sell.
