Unreal Engine code plugin distribution on FAB

Hey!

I (and probably many developers) have a few questions regarding the distribution / submission process for Unreal Engine code plugins on FAB. The documentation and guidelines did not cover this part unfortunately.

  1. Previously on the Unreal Marketplace we only had to provide the C++ source files for code plugins because the UE marketplace team was responsible for building the plugin from source. Will this remain the same on FAB?

  2. Previously on the Unreal Marketplace only the three latest engine versions were supported. We could not push updates for older engine versions. Will this change on FAB? If so, will we have to provide binaries for these older engine versions ourselves?

Thank you!

P.S. I have submitted a support request to the Unreal Marketplace team as well. I’ll update this topic when I receive an official response.

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This was the official response from the Unreal Marketplace Team:

At this time, plugins are still restricted to the three latest engine versions on initial submittal.

Unreal Engine-generated Binaries and Intermediate files are not required.

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Hi @STRiFE.x . Did the response from the UE Marketplace team answer your questions?

It clearly states „on initial submittal“. So after the product got approved, are we able to also update lower versions? Also, I migrated my plugins to fab and I am able to delete and edit older asset versions. Is this supposed to be like that? @skfabby

I have the same question as @KibibyteCompany. If plugins are restricted to three latest engine versions, why do we have the option to edit these older releases? I’m also a little bit confused about why did the migration process even bring these releases to FAB if they are not supported?

At the end of the day I suppose it doesn’t really matter, but a little more clarification would be appreciated. Thank you!

My main question with regards to plugins is the licence: in the Marketplace, it’s seat-based. Will that still be the case in Fab? It seems not, and that would be quite a big change.

@KibibyteCompany @STRiFE.x Good questions.

After looking into it a bit more, I think that what you got from the UE support team might have been in reference to UE Marketplace, not Fab. On Fab, you’re not locked to only the latest 3 engine versions, so it is expected that they would a) migrate over and b) be editable/deletable. Some of your customers may wish to access these older versions so we wanted to be sure that they made it over to Fab.

@brifsttar I’m checking on this and I’ll get back to you.

I see. Does this also mean that we now have to include binaries for code plugins ourselves? I’m having a hard time believing that the Fab Team will handle building plugins from source for UE 4.27 for example.

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also as a tangential question will fab support CI/CD? so I can update a listing from a pipeline

It’s great that plugins won’t be anymore limited to the last 3 versions. However, I have a problem with the migration of the older versions on FAB because they are supposed to migrate through my original upload on Google Drive and not through the version the Marketplace has on their servers. Because of space limit I don’t have anymore all those versions uploaded on Google Drive.

Also for code plugins there is a problem with the Category, there is no “Runtime” option in the dropdown.

@brifsttar Yes, it’s per-seat pricing still.

@STRiFE.x @David_Morasz @berguina I’ll follow up on those things soon - have to check with the team. (But note that I have shared the request for “runtime” as a category, per the other thread where the request appeared.)

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Thank you very much @skfabby for the clarification. In that case, I hope that Fab will

  • Support bulk licence purchases
  • Provide a way to manage seats across a team
  • Make that licence very clear to end-users
    • The first step probably would be to include it in Fab’s CLA, because as of right now, there are no legal document attesting the existence of seat-based licences (AFAIK)

All this currently is a major limitation on the existing Marketplace. I know for my side, it’s the reason why I don’t purchase plugins.

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@skfabby
Seconding @brifsttar

  • It’s currently kind of ambiguous and confusing if plugins are per seat. Can this be included in a FAQ somewhere?
  • The best way of addressing the above point is having a “Number Of Seats” input on the “Add To Cart” form. This makes it immediately clear, and you could add a hyperlink to FAQ or Legalese page. You can see an example of this on any Unity Store product: The Visual Engine | Utilities Tools | Unity Asset Store.

Or you can see this FAQ that makes the License types clear. Extension assets would be akin to code plugins here i believe…

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This also worked for the Marketplace. You have to create a ticket with the source code and all the details. But it was too complicated for me. I used the engine version macros for some plugins and the customers can then compile the plugins themselves.

This is good to know! Thank you

Hi @brifsttar and @Aubrey. I’ve shared those requests with the team - thanks!

@skfabby Is it possible to have subscribtion based pricing for plugins? Developing and supporting product based on one time purchase model is too tough …

Hi @genetic.priest . Not at this time, but I’ll pass your request along to the team.

@skfabby Hi, I wonder would FAB have a “dependency manager” when it comes to build code plugins?

In unreal marketplace, we could only submit self-contained plugin, we can’t depend on any custom module that provide common functionality which is shared between code plugins. Just like the Core, Engine, or StructUtils module in the engine.

I think this is a crucial to the healthiness of unreal ecosystem. We need to introduce a dependency manager like vcpkg or cargo to allow code plugin developers bring together wonderful pieces of code together and make every code plugin better than ever.

Any improvement to this?