Businesses in the free market usually have ways to protect themselves, with copyright or patents. People making content such as blueprints for the marketplace don’t exactly have that protection. I think specifically recreating a blueprint just to undercut price is very unethical, and predatory. I’m glad we have people to protect our hard work.
It’s a tough line to draw. I don’t see why someone who creates a similar product for the marketplace as something already for sale should be negatively impacted if they came up with it independently, but I guess that just means you better do a **** good job with your submission in the first place.
If someone makes a better product and cheaper it should absolutely not be rejected and its not unethical either. Rejecting it would allow people getting away with prices like 170€ for some textures especially when 3rd party assets are often a gamble in terms of quality.
I don’t think the issue is really that they don’t want competition. I think they don’t want someone buying a blueprint pack, pulling out what they need, and repackaging it as their own product. However, this will get really hairy to determine.
they are claiming that making a similiar product is unethical which is completely false. its unethical to think you should be in a field by yourself and not have competition. if you dont not want undercut on your product then welcome to the real world where you have to compete with other busness and prices on similiar products.
My initial reaction to OP was what it was because we see people doing everything possible to reuse, resell, reappropriate, and sometimes even take other peoples’ content to put it up for sale somewhere else. I’ve seen people scan book covers of major publishers’ really famous books, then submit them as textures. Other people will download free model packs then try to sell them here. Some people try to modify Epic’s free content and then submit it for sale. People may think “surely that doesn’t happen, that’s silly.” Yes, it totally does happen. I’m constantly surprised at what people think is okay or what they try to get away with, and at first, this sounded pretty shady. OP clarified, however, so we’re cool now. As long as you’re not downloading other peoples’ Marketplace content, ripping out\copying parts of it you like, then trying to sell that back to us, it’s good. heheh.
But this is something I’d like to urge everyone to consider: If you think something is overpriced, talk to the content creator about it! Ask if they’ve considered splitting off some of the features into their own separate packs instead of a bundle. Talk to them about what you’re looking for and get a conversation going. If you can’t work anything out, ask about it on the forums here, or see if you can make your own for sale. I’m fully in favor of competition in a thriving market that’s meeting the needs of game developers. Ultimately, that’s the entire purpose for the Marketplace existing, and it would be pretty silly to try to break away from that.
Oh yeah I completel disagree with using other peoples work that is crazy, I thought you was saying there should not be competition and I was liek wow competition is amazing lol especially for the marketplace
Even if it were the case the there was only one M4 allowed on the UE4 marketplace, it would still be competing with other asset stores on the internet.
Well, they say if you’re owner of asset you can contact them and they will delete it. Of course it doesn’t justify what they’re doing (actually its users of site who post assets).
hi, I have removed the link to that site because as far as I can tell everything on it is illegal and its against forum rules to post links to illegal content, I will pass the link onto epics piracy department so they can look into it, if anyone else thinks they have found someone pirating UE4 stuff please contact - or so they can check it out.
It’s funny because I had indie devs contacting me to know how it would cost them to get the same kind of stuff I did ( with my colleague Gui ) for the marketplace, but specifically done for them. Of course when I told them the hourly rate of a freelance artist to create unique content, they never contacted me again… I guess they changed their mind on the marketplace being “overpriced”.
I’ve read almost all the answers here and there is something I didn’t see : it’s about people living in different countries. I just imagine that people living in China or Turkey for example could easily create content for cheap compared to the US or Europe, because they don’t need as much money to live. Or are there restrictions about selling stuff on the marketplace from some countries ?
You are right. 1 US Dollar was 1.8 Turkish Liras a couple of years ago. Now it 2.8. For international products, they are more expensive in 3rd world countries because Euros or Dollars are more valuable than the country’s national money. So it’s better for them to make content and sell on marketplace. And there are no restrictions as far as I know. I think the thing here is the developer decides his own strategy. There are great things in marketplace cost about only 5-15 USD. And there are big packs with the price of 90-120 USD. Personally -especially in the models section- %80 of them are overpriced. There are exceptions though like Yoeri’s cave pack, steampunk etc. The overpriced ones are their owners’ decision. If they wouldn’t be satisfied about the sales they’d reduce the price. They are ok then.
But overall, the whole marketplace experience is amazing I think. I remember it’s first days and now… it’s incredible for it to become this big in such a short time. We must sure know how to save a few dollars for bundles
Just wanted to report back here and let everyone know that after some thought i decided not to sell anything on the marketplace.
Instead the systems / content i wanted to sell will rather be made publicly available for free.
I just started the ledge climbing tutorial series which is a 3 part and once the series reaches finale the project will be made available for download for free including animation packs that works with the UE4 4.8 mannequin.
In the meantime some placeholders are used instead.
I feel this is a better approach.
I have one question now that plugins can be submitted, I just sat last weekend to learn how to extend the editor and now I am perfectly comfortable in creating anything that works just how landscape and foliage tool works. So if someone creates something like that which replicates the existing functionality , but in much better ways , like the ladder, stair and the handrail systems completely depend on actor blueprint classes , how about a more user friendly Slate based UI and simple mouse and keyboard shortcuts to do the very same functionality 10 times faster? Will that be considered unethical as well? (I am not going to do it though , can think of lots of great ideas that can be successfully converted as a plugin, without having to steal someone’s ideas(Ivy generator , anyone?))
Appreciate that and thank you, Add a donation button aswell for us to show our appreciation for the hard work you put in, which also give you an added incentive to continue!
I think you confuse a “patent” with a “copyright.” A patent really does give the holder the exclusive right to build/use/sell a particular invention. There are some bars (non-obvious, no prior art, must be useful, etc) as well as some costs and time involved to get a patent, but once you have it, you can go to court and force others to not do what the patent says you’re the only one allowed to do.
Draw-back: You pay for that court cost, and it’ll easily run into multiple millions of dollars, so doing so for current marketplace content is unlikely to happen in reality. On that part, we agree
