[Feedback] Versioning, Release Notes, Notifs, Previous Release Downloads & More...

General Feedback & Requests
1

One of the major pain points with the Unreal Marketplace was never knowing when assets were updated or what changes the updates consisted of… the constant scanning of product descriptions and seeking outside channels of communication for further information does not create a pleasant user experience.

Can we PLEASE get:

  1. Mandatory semantic versioning
  2. Mandatory release notes (per release)
  3. The ability to download ANY previous release; since we all know that updates don’t always fix bugs and often introduce new ones
  4. A listing of what platform(s) and version(s) each INDIVIDUAL release is compatible with
  5. Asset update/release notifications on the site & the option to opt into email updates for individual assets

Additional Feedback:

  • ADD QUESTIONS/REVIEWS & MIGRATE EXISTING ONES FROM OTHER PLATFORMS
    They are an integral part of the buyer experience and failure to add them will ultimately hurt your sales… which will drive away creators.
  • Ditch the 5 ratings requirement, this only helps bad assets sell and good assets fail
  • Provide sellers with analytics and other meaningful metrics for marketing campaigns - @Loden - Heathen
  • Provide sellers with a way to view sales and verify buyers
  • Provide a public-facing API for sellers to integrate with and do everything the can do manually on the site (as a seller)
  • Provide a more advanced search with the ability to do a combination of fuzzy and exact matches with the ability to have required, optional, and negated terms
  • Add some form of likes, bookmarks, favorites, collections, wishlists (without a silly 200 item limit), etc. to help improve the buyer’s experience and organize/categorize items they may wish to purchase at a later date

Other "Nice-to-Have"s

  • Add native support for “Bundles” that include other assets that are handled as a sort of collection instead of requiring sellers to create an “Item” for their bundles
  • Add support for some sort of “BYOB” (Build Your Own Bundle) that gives sellers a creative way to market their assets by allowing buyers to gain discounted pricing without necessarily buying assets they may not be interested in
  • Add option to require payment for major version releases / updates - @Loden - Heathen
  • Add product product tier support, so sellers can have (for example) a “Base” and a “Pro” or similar tiered offerings instead of creating multiple listings for essentially the same asset - @Loden - Heathen
  • Add subscription support for assets that may require ongoing development cycles - @Loden - Heathen

For more feedback, see my post about the Unreal Marketplace from Jan 2023.

If you agree, please upvote for better exposure!

2

This!
Release notes directly on the store page and in the library are much needed!

2 Likes
3

I would add to that there MUST be some means of

Paid update, Major update, Lite to Full, Updates/Support Subscription or some system so that a developer of a software tool can account for the ongoing development and cost that supports their customers properly.

As it is, FAB is only fit for purpose for 3D models and 2D textures. Maybe audio … but software No this is not gonna cut it. We will be here for a year at least but we cant remain after that if there isn’t some means to address this.

Major Update / Paid Update
Is not ideal but works in a pinch

Lite to Full
Is required for various use cases

Subscription
Is the gold standard … no I am NOT talking about SaaS
I mean a “maintenance” subscription aka Updates and Support subscription.

The idea that you can buy once and receive life time updates and support for that initial purchase is not sustainable and Epic knows that they are a functional software company with various systems in place for recurring revenue.

What we would ideally like to see is a subscription model so that clients can buy updates for the period that suits them be that a month, a quarter, a year whatever and such that returning customers dont get screwed but can simply pick that sub back up to get the latest updates.

Major / Paid Update can fake this via annualized paid update and a steep discount for existing customers but the MAJOR draw back to that is customers that purchase any time after release are losing out on that first year, even if you add a Grace Period system in place its still not ideal

The ideal is that you can subscribe to get updates
The license to use it is perpetual, but if you want updates and support you need to pay for that service as a service e.g. a recurring cost.

For our direct customers they can sponsor us on GitHub or Patreon and that gets them a site based perpetual license to use all our tools. While they are “subed up” they have access to updates and elevated support channels. They can cancel at ANY time and they DO NOT lose access software, the license doesn’t stop, etc. they can keep using it all … they ONLY lose access to updates and elevated support channels.

As a subscription a user that subs up for a month on 6th June, can choose to renew on 6th July if they want

Where as the Major updates if we release on 1st Nov (as we tend to do) and you buy on 3rd march then you just lost 4th months of that 1st year, come 1st Nov you would either stop getting updates as we moved to the next years release or you would be asked to pay (for us 20% base price) for the next year worth of updates.

We NEED a maintenance subscription tool
At minimal we NEED Major / Paid updates

And without at least the Major / Paid updates the store is not fit for purpose we will have to disable our asset on it within the year.

We cant give FAB users free for life updates
1st that isn’t sustainable at all
2nd that isn’t fair to every other channel user who pays for updates and elevated support if they need them.

2 Likes
4

While extremely unlikely, I agree… added to the list. :+1:t3:

5

… And did I just notice there is no way to see page visitors, number of sales, or any sort of page metrics at all?

How are we supposed to market, handle marketing conversions, get feedback on what is or isn’t working, etc.

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6

Added seller analytics to the list too :+1:t3:

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7

There hasn’t been any metrics of any sort the entire 10 years we’ve had the UE marketplace… they’ve said, numerous times, that they were working on them - never got them. Now with fab they’ve said they will add them “in the coming months”… we’ll see

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8

With the prior marketplace we at least had report which showed sales on what day 25hrs later

Which was crap compared to other platforms but better than nothing … I don’t see anything at the moment where we can monitor at all in any way.

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9

The old report still works, or at least exists. Time will tell as to whether it works I guess as the update time hasn’t come yet for today

10

I didn’t expect it can work but maybe
Still

Silly that Epic has launched so many stores, owns so many digital platforms and didn’t thing this through better :smiley:

Do hope they get it sorted
UAS needs something to check it, love the idea of a multi-engine store front and internally we build on UE anyway so Epic is more “native” to us and would rather make it home

But ya its miles off from being good enough at the moment

1 Like
11

Still struggling to understand why you’d release a service that has fewer features than an existing service… every platform Fab has set out to replace (include the UE Marketplace) had more features (albeit, not many) than what we have here today.

2 Likes
12

I think … and not trying to be sarcastic or spicy
Epic still works like its 1999 and does a MVP (Minimal Viable Product) and builds up from there

Its a horrible approach especially with an existing market, when your prototyping something that has never existed before sure … but when your doing something that has a known market more so when there is an industry standard such as a marketplace/asset store

YOU MUST HIT that standard … NOT MVP

If I was them I would not have launched without

  • shopping cart
  • favourites / bookmarks
  • wishlist (not the same as above)
  • user lists
  • bundles including publisher bundles and if possible “make your own” bundles and dynamic bundles
  • paid updates, major updates or some facility for such
  • subscriptions or some facility for recurring maintenance/update fee
  • reviews (written ones)
  • detailed technical specifications for products indicating warranty, supported versions, method of support, etc.
  • version histories ideally with a means to download any specific version for any given asset
  • change logs
  • marketing metrics/tracking
  • some concept of “labs” e.g. store knows the user and shows the user items relevant to them
  • a plan for promotions and how that will work with the partners/publishers that population the store … See Valve’s Events Calendar … doesn’t have to be that kick-■■■ but SOMETHING is REQUIRED
  • Per product forum, questions or other store internal means of communication e.g. COmmunity Hub
  • And more but the ones above being missing is strait up FACEpalm inducing

The are just box standard things that if you don’t have can you even call yourself viable?
I don’t think you can. While not every “viable” store has every one of these they do have an answer for every requirement these solve for. For example in cases where they lack subscription they have devised procedures or standards for using paid update to fill that need and so on

FAB is less than bare bones
FAB has NO method AT ALL for supporting any of the above
FAB cant do anything other than process a payment … that’s it … that is not a store … that is a cash register

3 Likes
13

Few more bits I am noticing the store is missing

Unity Version
So the UE side will let (aka force you) to upload a different package for each labeled version you support. You need to do the same with Unity
Our Toolkit for Stemworks asset is splitting with Unity v6

Toolkit for Steamworks “Legacy” is for Unity v2021 - 2023
Toolkit for Steamworks “2025” is an annualized release for Unity v6 and later

We do not charge users extra for these,
Legacy is $80 2025 is $100

If you own Legacy you can get 2025 for $20
and if you own 2025 you can get Legacy for free

e.g. $100 get both but they are 2 different packages with different technical requirements yet the same fundamental functionality. In Unity Asset Store they are 2 different packages in the store with “lite paid upgrade” paths between them defined.

There is NO facility in FAB to handle this at all

Also noticed FAB doesn’t have a version listing for 2023 or v6
2023 does exist though only partially there are users using it.
v6 is different than 2023 and is the current “LTS” aka Long Term Support where all the new efforts are focused

This is only going to be come a more complex issue for FAB later
6.1 is likely to introduce breaking changes with shaders and low level coded plugins as Unity aims to “Simplify” which to Unity means to remove redundancy and normalize systems. e.g.

v6.1 packages are not likely to work on 6.0 and less likely to work on 2021 or 2022
even when they do work the way FAB is at the moment you would have to built it on Unity 2021 or 2022 and just trust the auto updater to update your scripts … cuz that never fails ← that is sarcasm it often fails

To summarize

Unity packages like UE packages have need per-version file uploads
Unity packages need at least v6 added but preferably v6 and 2023

Unity may not admit it but 2023 does exist and there are devs working on it
That said Unity doesn’t want it to exist and rebranded it to v6 so if it never gets support “fine” but you need to at least support v6

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PS:
I should point out its speculation at this point if they (Unity) break things for old versions but the expectation is they will

They want to replace uGUI with UIToolkit
They want to get rid of built in render pipe and normalize URP and HDRP to a single set of tools
They want to normalize the input systems at the moment there are 2
They are wanting to make DOTS the back end of everythign which means all the class based primatives have to finally be replaced
ITs safe to assume MathF or whatever it is will be fully replaced by mathmatics or that both will be replaced with something new but the old one has to go as its not DOTS compatable in many ways

e.g. there will be incoming breaking changes between Unity versions and its not good enough to say

2021 or higher

them days are done

14

This is great feedback - thank you. Many of these things are already on our roadmap and many of them aren’t yet or may not be. I’ve passed this list on to the team. We’re planning to share a roadmap with the community as soon as we’re able.

Order verification is already live, and a sales dashboard is coming very soon. We are in the process of making refinements to Search on Fab.

3 Likes
15

Appreciate the response!

That said, I’d like to make clear that this is by no means an exhaustive list… I could name dozens of other issues and concerns, but listing all of the minor things would only detract attention from the bigger concerns.

A public roadmap should have been made available long before launch… Why? For starters, transparency leads to trust. Second, it’d have given you time to collect feedback and focus on what’s truly important to your userbase… and listening and reacting accordingly is what leads to respect.

What I’m trying to say/emphasize is the importance of simplifying the community feedback process and doing quick iterations/improvements… none of these 1, 3, 6+ month sprints. These issues aren’t that difficult to iterate on.

16

Payment in my own currency is gone too, My bank has a crazy exchange rate!

17

Wow it is shockingly bad
Have you tried downloading something from the FAB store yet?
Especially anything from Megascans?

I am seriously dumbfounded that this was released

Again I hate to be so negative
I am sure a lot of people worked hard but guys … this is just not good enough in any way frankly

So shocked at how bad it is
You need a functional workflow for customers to get the things they purchased into the project …
And no sift through a slew of zip and glib downloads to find what you want is not it.

Download to disk is a fine thing to have as an “extra nice to have” … however you do require at minimum an import to the project.

You are Epic so you should have ZERO issue doing this for UE
As to Unity, it’s not hard at all, Unity Package Manager can use Git URL to import a custom package if you want to be fancy there are 3rd party tools or you could even do your own in the editor (Bridge-like tool) really not hard to script for that editor at all

1 Like
18

On the off chance someone from Epic does read this

We are finding the FAB store completely not fit for purpose at all

  1. User Experience for downloading and using tools/assets from FAB is bad they are complaining to us about it
  2. Really bad update process to push changes up to the store
  3. Poor information displayed both to the customer and us further complicating the relationship between us and the customer … so no questions, cant see review text, basically a blind store
  4. And then not-so-little things like no means to handle maintenance, paid updates released in the season when new versions are due out

You turned Unreal Marketplace into a worse version of Adobe Stock only we are not shovelling AI-generated images to users we are distributing software development tools for people running a business or attempting to.

We are debating whether we should remove our asset from FAB or leave it as it is … no updates … and try to direct customers to us directly for proper updates and support. We do not want to run afoul of Epics TOS so we are most likely just going to remove all our tools from sale on the FAB store until it is made functional it is not like we would be losing anything the day FAB went live is the last day we saw any attention from Unreal users on an Epic store.

Either way, this is simply “Not Fit For Purpose” It’s not just worse than the Marketplace we honestly cannot properly conduct business here and it makes for a bad customer experience for our customers and customer experience is KING

2 Likes