Why is this allowed on the marketplace?

Distribution UE Marketplace
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Hello,

I’m a new marketplace seller, and I’ve spent months working day and night on my first product to ensure it offers the best quality possible. The product is a ‘creative toolkit’, a collection of expanding UI/UX tools that I’m building for my own projects.

Upon releasing this product, it was quickly pushed away from the New Releases section by hundreds of AI-generated packs that were released in bulk, sometimes filling an entire page every couple of hours. For context, my product remained on the first three pages of the Blueprints section for weeks but barely lasted a couple of days in the New Releases section.

I have absolutely nothing against anyone trying to sell on the marketplace. My main concern is the influx of low-value, low-effort AI-generated content that has impacted me as a new seller and as a long-time buyer on the marketplace. Before AI content was allowed, browsing the marketplace was a pleasant experience despite the lack of basic features like proper filtering and sorting.

How is this not being moderated? How can content that is irrelevant to the nature of Unreal Engine and what Unreal Engine developers usually require be allowed to overshadow every other relevant category? For example, why are more than half the results when filtering by the tag “User Interface” AI-generated 2D images? Shouldn’t the results be more about UMG, Unreal’s tool specifically for building user experiences and interfaces?

For more context, just like how my product was pushed away from the New Releases section, it was also buried in relevant categories. For instance:

When browsing all products and filtering by the tag “User Interface,” there are 1408 products, and my product is on page 15. When adding the tag “NoAI,” 832 AI-generated products are removed, and my product moves to page 3.

Currently, in the New Releases section, setting the products per page to 100, you get 6 pages. Adding the “NoAI” tag reduces it to 3 pages. This means half the products in the New Releases section are AI-generated spam that anyone can create with basic text prompts. When removing all tags and adding “CreatedWithAI,” you get barely 100 products. So, out of around 300 AI-created products in the New Releases section, only 100 are properly tagged.

How is it acceptable for a single seller to share more than 700 AI generated products in a matter of months, releasing an average of 20-25 products per week, and sometimes per day? Allowing this behavior has invited other sellers to do the same, and now there are multiple sellers sharing AI-generated content in bulk, with new products being added at least once a day. This flood of similar “1000 potions” 2D images has no real value and is not something any serious company would use in production.

Out of 3575 products in the 2D Assets category, 2792 are AI-generated, and almost half of the Textures category!

I would appreciate any thoughts on why this is being allowed, especially from a business perspective.

Thank you.

8 Likes
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Make this vote-able :slight_smile:

I totally agree. This 2D crud really has to go. Who wants it anyway? I assume they’re making money by hoodwinking the occasional unsuspecting buyer, in bulk…

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Thank you!
I was actually curious enough to browse most of these products; the only interactions these products had came from people who thought they were 3D models!

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Yup :expressionless:

I look at some of these vendors, and then have pages and pages of stuff, and no star ratings. That’s always a bad sign.

Talk about dedication…

Thing is, we’re also seeing posts from vendors who are unable to get totally legit products through verification!

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In the beginning, I was opened to the idea of AI generated content in the marketplace. But, I did not anticipate it would be abused to this extent.

I think 2D AI Spam is unfair to Human created content. I see some publishers trying to be slick and push this 2D AI Spam off as Textures and Materials.

Unfortunately, I anticipate this practice infecting other media such as Audio and 3D Models as generative AI capabilities expand.

I've withdrawn my approval for this abuse by taking action, silently boycotting publishers who participate in this practice.

I’ve ceased purchasing ANY assets (specifically non-ai generated) from publishers who engage in this behavior.

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This is huge problem and it’s being reported multitude times. It still baffles me that after all this time there is no official policy from Marketplace Team about it. At the very least in my opinion it should be pushed to separate category.

It will and it will be probably even worse. What we see now in 2D is just spam that most likely isn’t generating sales (aside from a few accidental ones). With other media they will generate some sales, so people practicing in this will do it even more.

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For me, the tragedy is to see Publishers with great human made assets mix in AI Spam with their product offerings.

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ai 会减少获得工作的机会 这点我不喜欢

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This is just a reminder that since my original post, around 2 full pages of AI generated “products” were added to the marketplace, by just 2 sellers.

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If this is allowed, then the AI flood in the marketplace is very much natural and expected.

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The Unreal Marketplace honestly feels like a joke. I started the year with half a dozen products and slowly ramped up to 25 products. Yet sales got down almost to nothing. AI spam burrying human created products is probably part of the problem. This isn’t a healthy environment where one can build and slowly grow a business.

Getting a new product approved also is a pain and gets refused for the most silly and random reasons. Meanwhile the new products section is full of often complete and utter garbage that made it through somehow.

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Kindly post a similar random link every now and then to bump the topic. :pray: :stuck_out_tongue:

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This is all very disappointing to hear. I am just about to start selling at Fab now I’m not so sure it’ll be worth the effort.