Why do marketplace items become redundant every time a new version of ue comes up?

I’m resilient to purchase stuff on the market because i see a lot of reviews saying the dev isn’t updating the assets for every single version of the engine like from 4.18 to 4.19. Why are assets so dependent on an engine version? Aren’t they the same (mesh,textures,etc.) all the time? why should they be updated to fit every version of the engine? This makes you dependent on someone else and it makes it hard to spend 100+ $ on something knowing it could just loose support and be unusable. Hope someone can answer this

Certain kinds of marketplace content are dependent on particular features where the implementation can change with a new version of the engine, so assets need to be altered by their creators and then tested and re-reviewed as still working on the latest engine release. Although it’s frustrating sometimes (for example Runtime Mesh is still only listed as being usable on versions up to 4.16 - though there’s good reason for that) the alternative would be a lot more messy, in my opinion. If they didn’t keep track and monitor what works in which versions, you might end up buying an asset which was totally broken, and not easily knowing why.

With assets that are just meshes/textures etc. you could very easily create a project for the most recent version they’re listed as, and migrate them to a project for the current version of the engine, because you’re right, in cases like that it seems more of a formality, but it’s an easy thing to get around.

Thanks for clarifying it.

because we sellers have to manually update them (which has been made much smoother nowadays) and that sometimes takes time.
additionally, if no support is given be sure to notify the marketplace team about it so they can contact the author.
and in the case the author doesnt reply or tells the mp team he is no longer supporting it, they’ll take the pack down. (at least, that was the promise about a year ago)

Most of assets: textures, materials, meshes, sound, do not rely on changes of engine versions, but sometimes some C++ plugins need changes, specially the ones involved with rendering (since that part has receiving gradual changes to have less impact on devs). Sometimes a creator has too many assets and takes time to submit all of them.

For my point of view, I do encourage people to use the latest engine version, but that sometimes is not feasible. When a project starts you don’t want ongoing development to have any tool changing, unless some impacting bug is fixed only in a future version, you will keep things simple. Also MP team asks for a 10-15 business days to review assets and if no further changes are needed you will only see the update almost a month from release.

Sellers whose assets are compatible with new releases just need to change a flag to enable that version on the front store (no iteraction with MP team), so that takes no time at all.

dont forget the payout are too long to get. also we only got 70 % of our profit.

and time are precious.

that does not warrant not updating or not providing support ever.

i still give an update for latest version, however. this become tedious if you have 100 asset.

In my experience, since 4.15 i had to do a lot of code refactoring…first because of the Compilation Manager breaking the Custom Compilations, second because a lot of changes into Sequencer API, third because 4.16 or 4.17 had IWYU, so there was a lot of refactoring (but mostly on the header import order). The api for the graph editor did change too, specially on the navigation when using GraphNodes.

With every update i have to test my plugin a lot, and that’s me only having 1 plugin (though pretty heavy on the code side). New plugins that rely on more standard things (like Render Targets or whatnot), are easier to update.

That I wont argue against hehe.

Also, it’s worth noting that the “older” version of the items CAN often be brought into the new project, by copying and pasting, with no further problems. The official stamp of approval from Epic is what allows you to add it to your project directly.

I don’t know why so many people think engine versions have to match in order to add the content through the launcher. As long as it isn’t a plugin, you can almost universally add older content to a new engine version without problems. https://youtube.com/watch?v=0NJe8JrI9lM

So far with the few kits or plugins i got , like menu starter kit , third person shooter kit, and auto savior plugin, ive gotten excellent help and support. Been above and beyond what they needed to do.