For a number of years now I’ve had a small collection of assets available for sale on the Unreal Marketplace. These products were the first time I ever tried commercializing my work, and even though there’s no way I’d be able to quit my day job any time soon it was always an enjoyable and (technically) profitable endeavor.
It’s been just over a month since the Unreal Marketplace closed its virtual doors, replaced by the slowly unfolding disaster that is the Fab store. Almost immediately after Fab’s launch my sales dropped to zero with no indication that they’ll ever pick up again.
This sucks, but I don’t have much control over the situation so I’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
I have had three products on the Marketplace/Fab since 2022.
I have been tracking my sales day-by-day since I launched my first asset pack, and I always intended to share this information and make it easier for you to decide if it’s a path you’d like to explore. The switch from the old Marketplace to Fab seems like a good breaking point so I’ve collated my sales data into some fancy charts that you can browse below.
But first I just need a quick moment to complain about Fab.
Complaining about Fab
I don’t think it’s a controversial opinion to say that one month into its existence Fab doesn’t provide a good experience for either buyer or seller.
Although the written Question/Review sections on the old Marketplace were being blatantly abused to artificially raise product review scores in return for promises of support, they were one of the few ways a customer could vet a product before purchase. Completely removing them has done more to erode trust between buyer and seller, and I believe this is one of the primary reasons sales have dropped off for so many asset creators.
This issue has been exacerbated by a flood of illegally-sold copyrighted material, AI-generated slop, and thousands of low quality assets pouring in from other storefronts.
I have no idea how this kind of thing is allowed.
Fab is a pretty hostile place for both new and established sellers at the moment, and I don’t have plans to add new products in the foreseeable future. That said, I think it’s also worth acknowledging that merging Quixel, ArtStation, SketchFab, and the Unreal Marketplace into a single megastore is an immense and terrifying undertaking. It’s not surprising that it’s still a complete mess one month into its existence.
I look forward to seeing what the site looks like a year from now, and I’m optimistic that the community’s needs are being taken into account.
Fab Roadmap
Just as I was about to hit publish the Fab team did a livestream Q&A where they talked in-depth about the future of the service. You can check it out here.
The newly released Fab Roadmap includes a lot of the positive changes I was hoping to see. Even though I am pretty disappointed and confused that many of these didn’t exist at launch, I am looking forward to seeing things improve over time. Hopefully it’s not too late to save it.
Sales data
The following is all the data I’ve been able to collect about my products. There are a few things to note right off the bat.
- The Time Cost value represents the hours I spent creating the asset as well as the support and maintenance it required post-launch, which was often significant.
- All monetary values are in USD and are not adjusted for inflation (not that it would make much of a difference)
- My Gross Profit includes paying myself a minimum hourly wage, which at time of writing in Australia is $15.70USD. Other miscellaneous expenses like software subscriptions and server costs are not included.
- All of my projects have always been available to members of my Patreon, which creates a difficult to determine impact on their sale as individual products on the marketplace.
This is every payment I received from Epic Games from April 2022 to September 2024. There was a minimum threshold of $100, so in some months my income would carry over to the next. This explains why sometimes a month is skipped and the following month contains a higher than usual payout.
Flashbang VFX
Flashbang VFX was my first ever project that was intended from the outset to be sold as a standalone product. I made a number of mistakes when it came to preparing the asset for sale that caused the time cost to balloon significantly, but I didn’t really care. I had a great time making it.
The biggest issue I experienced with Flashbang was that I woefully underestimated how much time it would take to properly document.
| Time cost | 103 hours |
| Standard sale price | $19.99 |
| Gross profit | $319.65 |
Platformer Drop Shadow
I launched into making Platformer Drop Shadow right after Flashbang VFX went live. Unlike my first product, which was made mostly for me and where I got lucky that there was a gap in the market, Drop Shadow was the result of significant research into what was on offer on the Marketplace and where my skillset would be most useful.
A much simpler project, Drop Shadow is by far and away my most successful.
| Time cost | 36 hours |
| Standard sale price | $6.99 |
| Gross profit | $675.7 |
Competitive Recoil
Competitive Recoil was my most advanced and expensive product, and right out of the gate it was stifled by the launch of my FPS Template/Shooter Sandbox project which became available on my Patreon around the same time. Recoil also had an almost complete do-over about a year after release in response to feedback, which took about 20 hours to complete.
I think this helps explain why it failed to reach profitability despite being featured by Epic on the Marketplace Showcase for over a week.
| Time cost | 104 hours |
| Standard sale price | $24.99 |
| Gross profit | -$245.7 |
What does this mean for you?
In the grand scheme of things I’m strictly a small-time seller on the marketplace and you should definitely seek out other people’s experiences before making any decisions with financial implications. That said, if you’re looking to create products for Fab here are some useful conclusions I’ve drawn from my Unreal Marketplace Journey.
The frighteningly abrupt drop in revenue caused by the move from Unreal Marketplace to Fab brings the risks of this kind of business into sharp focus. I am lucky that my livelihood doesn’t depend on my products selling a certain number of units each week, but I’ve seen a number of people on social media that do and my heart goes out to them.
These platforms are not in your control, and you should always seek to reach your audience through other means wherever possible to lower the risk of losing everything in one fell swoop. Diversifying your products across services like Discord, Patreon, and your own website provides a measure of insurance.
Take your market research seriously and pick your battles carefully. Platformer Drop Shadow was the only product in which I intentionally sought out something I thought was missing in the marketplace, and its relative success speaks for itself.
These kinds of products have a long tail and will sell for years if properly maintained. Documentation and supporting material is more important than you might think, even for assets that have been out there for a while.
The time cost in proper support and maintenance shouldn’t be discounted when you’re planning out the profitability of your ideas. This is a time sink that only gets worse the more assets you put out there.
That’s all for this one, thanks a lot for reading through. I hope you’ve been able to pull some useful information out of the experience!
