Epic Fab - multi-engine competitor asset store

Just read the announcement from Epic for Fab and it looks interesting to say the least. Its a multi-engine, multi-platform, digital asset store for content creators to sell their products on. That includes assets for Unity and at Epics 88% revenue stream. Its a little unclear at this point if Fab will only be for digital content like models, textures, or if they will include scripting packages, but I don't see why it wouldn't include everything.

Honestly I'm kind of surprised at myself for never even considering that companies could sell and support assets for other game engines. I guess it just seemed so natural that Epic, Unity and others would stick to only supporting assets for their own engines.

However now the cat is out of the bag it will be interesting to see what Unity's response will be. I think this will be especially true regarding the tiny 12% fee that Epic will take vs the 'traditional' 30% that Unity charges. Maybe there are some differences between the stores that when accounted for means the difference is not quite as large, but I don't see that closing the gap that much.

So will Unity have to drop the percentage they take from asset sales to compete from Fab? I would say its inevitable, unless they can really find some way to add value to selling/buying an asset on the store, and sadly at the moment I don't see any - certainly not the painful package manager interface to access ones assets.

I doubt we'll see an exodus of content creators from Unity asset store, but I'm sure they will push hard to direct buyers to Fab instead. Since if they charge the same price or even at a small discount they can still earn more than selling it on Unity Asset Store.

Luckily Unity have a bit of time to respond as Fab website wont go live to later this year, but time is ticking.

I think overall this is just another indication of Epic doing something good for their community. Just another in a long list over the last 3-5 years where I've been impressed and interested in something Epic are offering that makes me think how cool a company they are for developers ( though sure they have issues too ). Compared to Unity's announcements which are frequently lacklustre, do not target myself or often what I feel the demographic of Unity is, buy company's with little to no value, make then abandon anything that is interesting etc.

Which is not to say that Unity is bad ( though its easy to argue they have been ) I think its a perception issue. Every announcement Epic makes is generally a positive or exciting even if I don't use their products, whilst Unity's are just meh.

 

Sounds interesting. Though I hate the scroll-based design of their page.

Regarding "what should unity do"... I think this is not my concern and not my problem. Tools come and go. Same with asset stores.

 

Interesting comment about scroll design, as I'd say the same thing about Unity's paging system, but actually I think its more nuanced than that. If I'm honest both scrolling (infinite) and paging are not ideal, while I'd prefer scrolling in general, that's only true to a certain limit, infinite scrolling does become annoying. Not sure there is a good solution other than providing a really nice and functional filter/sort system.

As for 'not my concern' it would seem to be a little short-sighted as Unity will have to respond to this in some form. What if they went with a provision banning selling assets on competing stores? How does that impact sellers, and would it mean that assets you want are suddenly split across stores? Maybe they can get away with just offering sellers a better deal, in which case changes would be minimal, though that will affect their bottom line.

Maybe you are someone who really doesn't care ( great for you ), happy to have you assets across dozens of stores and dozens of stores looking after you private data and don't view it as a negative. Though I find it hard to believe it wouldn't have the capability to become frustrating in the future. For example I only have a few of the game stores installed and purchase from, but even then I still have to double check everytime i look to buy something in sale to make sure I don't already own it, and thats just on PC.

I mean some Unity sellers have already set up their own store fronts for purchasing or subscriptions and that is a concern to me, not least due to the ramifications around data protection and payment security. Granted the size of a store ( or company behind a store ) doesn't guarantee safety, but it certainly provides a greater level trust.

 

The state of asset store does not affect me specifically in any noticeable way, as I barely used it. Hence the comment.

Asset Store does not appear to be a significant income source for unity either.

Whether sellers decide to migrate and what unity should do about it is unity's problem, and not mine. No matter what they do their API will remain available.

Now, if someone threatened to nuke github, for example, that would be a good reason to worry.
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Regarding "banning selling assets on competing stores": there's no point. I'm not sure if you know, but one positive thing about asset store is that its content can be used with any engine, though on other hand you're only allowed to access it through unity. So "multi-platform" part advertised by epic is actually copied from unity, though unity didn't quite advertise it widely. It is just allowed. There's no point in banning competition because there's not much gain from asset store in the first place.

Regarding "private data": I think at this time I have at least a few hundred profiles all over the internet, and whoever spent plenty of time online are in the same spot as me. Meaning the idea of being "private" online is long dead by now. But that is just my opinion.

 

It's brilliant (again) actually. FAB will cancel the Unity Asset Store and convert many Unity users to Unreal eventually.

On every meaningful level (technical, content offering, business strategy and execution) Unreal seems to have the upper hand. As a long time user I hate to say it, but the future of Unity looks dire if major changes at high(est) level aren't implemented soon.

 

epic will be cool as long as they have competition. Once they defeated all the others then they'll become the ultimate bastards.

 

Success of it depends entirely on the execution, and there are already many unanswered questions, like how will the multi-engine approach work, via plugin or just downloads like on typical CG stores like Turbosquid and CGTrader? Will the existing Quixel scan content remain free? Will Fab be integrated into Epic Launcher which is probably the worst piece of software in history? Will it have bundles/sales, which are great on the Unity Asset Store?

We'll have to wait and see. By the way, Unity's Package Manager is million times better than what Unreal has at the moment. Anytime I occasionally launch Epic Launcher I wanna kill it with fire, I don't understand how people live with this on a daily basis, and purchased asset management on Unreal using their launcher is absolute nightmare to deal with.

 

So many get hung up on the 12% vs 30% issue. However, for a dev selling assets I’d rather get 70% of 100k in sales than 88% of 40k in sales. Now if you can get both that’s the best for sure, but the fact that you get to keep a higher percentage of your revenue on a store that is most often still generating less than half the revenue than the competing store means these 88% are just not enticing for devs to sell only on the Epic store.

 

Ah that makes more sense.

Really I thought it was or at least used to be a decent chunk of revenue. A quick search doesn't reveal any numbers though.

Banning content has been a thing, though most examples that come to mind funnily enough originate from Epic/Unreal, but its a tried and tested method to lock content to a single platform. While Unity and Unreal assets could be viewed as multi-platform, depending upon the content they often require a fair amount of effort to convert unless you have access to asset source files. So while Unity technically may offer assets for other game engines, they don't to my knowledge come with say an Unreal version that could be dropped in, nor quick and easy to convert - I think that is likely to be the difference. One positive of this is that you might find more publishers bundling multi-engine versions into a single asset, maybe at a discount.

Not private data, but data security, you know your credit card numbers, personal information etc. While I too have had hundreds of profiles most are 'low level' meaning they have limited to no real personal information beyond say email tied to them. Those I don't worry about, but anything linked to banking thats a concern.[/QUOTE]

That is a good point and can probably be backed up by the 'middling' success of the Epic game store. However in that case other than free games, the paid for games are rarely competitive, whilst I feel Fab.com, may take advantage of that more.

I know I'll likely be checking both stores whenever I want to buy an asset. Though perhaps in time we'll get to a point where instead of checking stores for assets we'll just go to isthereanydeal.com instead.

 

Small tangent but I agree about the scrolling.

Infinite scrolling bothers me personally because it's impossible to locate your "position" in the results and know whether you're halfway through, or close to the end, etc. Basically I don't like feeling there is no end in sight or not knowing just how long it's going to take me to look at everything.

some webpages really take "infinite" to heart and will start showing you things you've already scrolled past before just to keep the scroll going, it drives me crazy because I want to definitely know when I'm out of new results.

 

Unreal is a bloat install from hell. Get outta here with that ten cent trolling stuff.

 

The reason why they originate from unreal because Unreal has a habit of offering "golden goose" level technology for free. Like MetaHumans. Assets they offer are also often very high tier, like Infinity Blade. It is against their interest to offer this sort of thing for free to their own competitors.

Unity does not do that, or does it very rarely. Unity does put tech demo content on the store occasionally, but it is often experimental or hard to use.

So in case of unity there's no point in locking it.

If a model comes with an FBX, it can be dropped into unreal. You'll still need to set up its material, though, but that's the same thing as with unconfigured fbx in unity.

Expect all of that to be leaked too. At some point of time I had a hundred spam emails mention my full name and street address despite never posting it anywhere. The leak apparently originated from amazon or paypal. Bear in mind that I'm t he kind of person who has no facebook account.

Also keep in mind that's the reason why in my area all online banking transactions have 2 factor auth. You pay for anything online - you have to confirm it with a code from your phone.

It would not surprise me if it ends up with 88% of 100k and 70% of 40k in the long term. No offense intended.

 

is just another asset store... or did i miss something?

 

I'd care far more about the standard license terms and the quality of curation than I do the royalty figures.

 

Hard to imagine them doing more than 2D/3D assets, I doubt Epic will have a team testing if a Unity editor extension actually runs in engine. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

 

Didn't Unity update their license agreement a while ago to block anyone outside Unity from making such extensions? Basically, you are no longer allowed to distribute Unity editor extensions that download stuff into the user's projects.

There was quite the uproar because this directly affected Google's android packages, which managed dependencies on its own.

 

You misunderstood what Panten said. They meant whether this new store will also verify Unity-targeted packages which would require Epic stuff to run the Unity editor.

As for your remark, this is new for me and would make an asset like impossible: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/asset-inventory-226927

As a buyer. But also as a seller?

 

It is possible to make a tool to generate *.unitypackage without running unity. The file format is neither difficult nor secret.

They can also ignore the package format completely and provide assets as archives or git links.

 

How would that help for "testing if a Unity editor extension actually runs in engine"?

Hence why the question was whether this new store would offer anything for Unity besides "raw" 2d and 3d work. No code. Would be surprising if they even verify that Unity materials are set up well.

 

Does Unity Asset store perform this sort of check? Because I distinctly recall encountering assets where users complained about compile errors and explained manual steps necessary to make an asset run.

Basically, uploaded archive could be made author's responsibility, and if the user has a problem with it, they would report the asset.

 

Would tend to believe that is version incompatibility and sometimes assets can break each other.
Unity does test the assets manually in at least one version. There are occasionally threads in the Assets subforum where people ask for help regarding that their asset was declined etc. (and hence why approval of assets takes several weeks or longer).

If there would be no manual testing, you can be sure there would be looots more issues...

 

I've had a long time paid asset that the developers released an update for that had everything ( code, libs etc ) removed and left simply a readme.txt file in it saying they had discontinued the asset!

So yeah wouldn't surprise me if Unity have little to no checks - which is very worrying, especially if an asset is using compiled dlls. Surely Unity must run basic checks for viruses and things, but maybe not always a human to validate that the package contains, you know, the actual content.

 

Very impressive and inspiring for Epic to acquire a bunch of companies that have some overlap and then unify them into a single ecosystem that will no-doubt work smoothly together. Unity can learnt alot from this.

 

If they can make an actually useful search, this will probably be great. Like, if I can filter by polycount, texture resolution, rigged or not, all that stuff and with relative ease? That alone would be a major game changer compared to most places. Those features exist on other storefronts but they're barely functional.

 

I was under impression that no checking whether asset runs is done on unity asset store. There are simply too may versions and too many scenarios. For example, there could be an asset for 2018.x, and unity might be able to auto upgrade it to 2021.x, but it hasn't been updated since 2019.x. As a bonus there are 3 different target platforms. Obviously unity wouldn't re-run checks for everything on the store every time when they release a version. It would be too time ocnsuming.

 

From memory, they check that it works on the claimed version(s) for the initial release. They don't check every update against every version in perpetuity after that.

 

Yeah that's pretty sure what they do. You have to supply a minimum version where it works in after all, so they do not need to chose randomly.

It's implied even by the docs btw. See #9 here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AssetStoreSubmit.html

If they'd work like Github or only check formally, we'd get 10 times more dysfunctional assets, lol.

 

They did. Here are the guidelines and here's the oficial thread about it.

They mentioned security risks, that downloads could misrepresent themselves as coming directly from Unity, or there could be unauthorized data collection. They also mention monetary fairness. The reasons behind these guidelines seem understandable to me, even though I don't like some of the rules. I feel like these guidelines were designed to avoid other companies skipping Unity's distribution channels by using scoped registries for UPM.

Ha! I had misunderstood Panten too. Thanks.

As for why these kinds of plugins are still allowed under these guidelines, I can only guess. I imagine this addon only distributes assets through the Asset Store, which is a Unity approved channel, but there are some other cases where this doesn't apply. There are some some popular plugins in the Asset Store that have an ecosystem extension to download free packages from GitHub.

Some language in the Guidelines is kind of vague. Section A could be understood to prohibit this kind of extensions, as it could be said they indirectly provide commercial benefits. I think Unity has little to gain from prohibiting free features that make assets sold in Asset Store better, especially when they don't compete with other things that Unity sells. Another example: It could be argued that OpenUPM breaks some of these rules with some packages; maybe it's not worth it for Unity to alienate users over this.

I bet it would be very different in these regards for an extension for buying Epic Fab assets in the Editor, which I think it's what Neto_Kokku and I understood from PanthenEye's post. If I were Unity, I wouldn't want a competing third-party Asset Store in the Editor at all. Maybe Epic could have a separate application that tracks files in a project folder, though.

 

think this sounds the same as Quixel, not sure

anyway, if wanted something from Unity that was more, or less these ' asset ' stores, it'd be something like ' draw a sketch ' of something, and then Unity makes it into 3D, or draw a low - res drawing of a textures, add a few key-words, and Unity uses AI to make the stuff into a pro - texture . . .

it's a bit more ' creative ' process, and there should be licenses to the specific art to also person making it, not sure, it'd be very cool if one needed some 3D - chair, or something, make a sketch on paper, or a drawing - tablet, and Unity then 3D - fies the stuff, it'd make life easier for a ton of artists, and be bit more creative fun // help generate various assets over some AI - algorithm, that'd be on my wishlist, also to make prototyping easier . . .



it'd just save a ton of work, effort, and allow most people to also prototype faster, etc etc . . . .

 

That package (I have a copy and have skimmed through it) just interacts with the Unity Asset Store. I don't know how much of what it does is officially documented but some of what it does can be found in the official manuals and some of it can be found in the Asset Store Publishing Tools.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/upm-api.html
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/asset-store-publishing-tools-115

 

Epics been doing this quietly in the background for some time. I think it will be frustrating buying assets to use in Unity which will be easily used in Fortnite Creator tools especially... They will do this at a loss just as they are doing with selling and giving away games to bring people away from Steam to bring people away from Unity to UE until they overtake the market. It's how they are doing things so that they people will use their services. If you buy from the FAB store and use Unity there may not be an obligation for support if the model was purchased to be used primarily for UE. We're going to be put in a very uncomfortable situation if asset developers shift from Unity.

 

We are? People have been selling software libraries, models, audio, plugins, etc. etc. for a heck of a lot longer than there's been an Asset Store. Plenty of stuff is still sold by stores not attached to a particular engine or whatnot, or even by creators via their own websites.

Unity's model does have a bunch of potential strengths, though I've never felt that it's particularly capitalised on the ones I care most about, and their asset licenses (maybe solved in the most recent updates?) have always had quirks that make things fiddlier than they need to be.

In short, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you look for reputable vendors beyond the Asset Store.

 

Also, the asset store license options make it a no-no for bigger companies.

Editor extensions are almost always licensed by seat, but since there's no practical way to manage/assign/transfer asset seats in an organization (assets are just a bunch of files dropped into the project folder) it's impossible to guarantee compliance.

So, to avoid potential legal issues, larger companies ban the use of the asset store outright.

A select few asset store authors provide studio/enterprise licenses directly on their websites, bypassing Unity entirely.

Epic's marketplace, by comparison, only sells studio licenses (which is why Unreal code plugins tend to be more expensive).

 

This is not what is happening. What you describe is already the case, you can purchase assets from epic marketplace that are for unreal, but use them in Unity. There are some assets ( giveaways, MetaHuman, etc ) that are only licensed for use in unreal, but in general most can be repurposed for Unity unless explicitly stated by the seller.

FAB is different in that Epic will allow assets specifically designed for other platforms ( e.g. Unity ) or that support multiple platforms. It would be expected that offering an asset explicitly for another platform will require support from the seller for that platform to the same extent that is expected currently for unreal assets.

Whilst my original post points out that I feel sellers will move to embrace FAB due to the much better deal they provide ( taking only 12% of sale ) I doubt we will see an exodus from Unity asset store. What we might see is if assets can be sold for cheaper on FAB due to the lower cost of doing business is that buyers migrate to using that service more.

Of course Unity could easily add a provision that assets may only be on the Unity Asset store and other stores if they price match ( that might even already exist to some degree? ) but that may end up counter-productive if it pushes sellers to use FAB exclusively. Alternatively Unity could maybe lower their revenue share of sales to try and match FAB or maybe push into providing 'Added value' to selling via the Unity Asset Store.

Ultimately I don't really see this being bad for Unity developers as it provides choice for both sellers and buyers, though it is likely to change the landscape of asset stores going forwards.

 

This has as much to do with Unity as the AI threads that you close @zombiegorilla ..Actually much less. At least the AI threads I was gleaning info for my large Unity AI project.This is just banter promoting a competitors site. Seems like more of a good takedown/lockout than the AI stuff you nuke constantly.

 

This provision already exist. See 4.2a: https://assetstore.unity.com/publishing/submission-guidelines

 

Nice find, though the use of the word ‘comparable’ would seem to provide some leeway, how much is anyone’s guess.

Stupidly I missed you gave the 4.2a reference and ended up reading the whole document, though that did mean I came across 1.1c

Which would be interesting, while you could probably avoid references in the product, I don’t see how you avoid mentioning multiple marketplaces in marketing content.

Again I think this supports my assumption that Unity will have to address FAB at some point, as I can see sellers getting caught out be these. I wonder what happens if a seller moves exclusively to FAB ( maybe they focused on unreal assets and expand to offering Unity support ) to allow say lower prices, but try to promote the asset on these forums?

 

wow bitter much?

Cannot understand how you don’t think this relates to Unity in any way, as they are literally going to offer assets for Unity and provide sellers a far better deal on revenue, that is going to be attractive. My hope in starting this thread was for the community to get out ahead of this and discuss what steps Unity might or should look to take. Seems like a good fit for ‘General’ since it is likely to affect both buyers and sellers of assets and ultimately Unity.

 

"Buy our THING. It is the best THING in the world. For mere XX dollars, you can do STUFF. You can do STUFF in the most efficient way than ever. We have a huge collection of comprehensive documentation and tutorials. Watch our youtube videos to learn more! And don't forget to join our Discord, to become part of our thriving community."

Like that.

Note that no marketplaces were mentioned.

 

I apologize if this confuses you, but this thread is pretty specifically about a an upcoming Unity resource (potential resource, it remains to seen how/if Unity reacts). As long as it stays on this topic, it is perfectly suited for this forum. Those other topics drifted off topic very quickly despite being reminded to stay on topic. No one needs to hear a bunch of rambling opinions about what AI is in general, especially not here. Those topics were shut down once an entire page had passed without mentioned either games or Unity. Which frankly is more leeway than usually is given.

So, like any other thread, if this stays on topic, it remains.

Back to the discussion...

 

Just look at any publisher that has assets on multiple stores. Synty Studios comes to mind. None of their assets mention other stores including the one they run on their own website.

https://assetstore.unity.com/publishers/5217

Incidentally here's that same line from Epic.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/marketplace-guidelines

 

Yep, that's pretty common and standard, as are clauses about pricing across multiple stores.

As a clear example, check out games sold on multiple platforms and storefronts and how they do things. Details will vary, but the overall approaches certainly apply. Working with multiple distributors complicates things a bit, but is achievable and common.

 

I also think now that Unity has acquired an AI generator type project, it's certainly worth discussing what makes AI good or bad for game development.

 

The contrasts between these two are stunningly prescient insights into the differences in these entities.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-and-bariumai-text-to-pbr-material-generator.1392916/

 

I wouldn't assume that these two lines have different meanings. One directly states marketing while the other uses the phrase "direct customers to" which is what marketing is.

 

At face value, there's an enormous difference.

Unity seemingly prohibits any (all) of your marketing (your website, your forum signature, your youtube videos, any ads you might buy, your twitter account, everything you do that is marketing of the product) from even informing potential customers of alternative places to buy, even if it's to buy a different product (not this one).

Epic's sentence says that merely your product (the thing itself) cannot direct customers (existing client/purchases of your product) to other online stores, unless permission is requested and granted.

 

That does not seem to be true. As youtube and twitter are not marketplaces.

Note that you can ask unity support to clarify that moment.

 

The wording is seemingly a deliberate catchall. It does, at face value, mean ALL marketing, including that outside the asset store.

 

I do not perceive it this way. I advise to contact support for clarification.