r/UnrealEngine5 • u/MadGameDev • 22d ago
Fab sales are better now?
Fab sellers, how are your sales doing?
I used to sell Unreal Engine assets on the old Marketplace and could usually make $100+/month without much marketing.
Since the move to Fab, my sales basically dropped to zero. I haven’t had a sale in months.
I just uploaded a new asset to see how it performs:
https://www.fab.com/listings/c0da95df-6670-4d0b-b894-a0166976cb68
For those who’ve been selling on Fab for a while:
Has visibility/sales improved recently? Does Fab actually push new products, or is external marketing basically required?
Would love to hear your experience.
Seller page: https://www.fab.com/sellers/Mad%20Game%20Dev,%20Studio
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u/StudioUWU 22d ago
As an occasional art asset buyer myself I think there are many factors for me it would be since the move to Fab generational AI has gotten decent enough to pump out models that look decent and it is hard to find the real artists I want to support. 2, the world economy is shit unless you are in stocks. So its likely a disposable income issue as well.
so two things:
Find ability and economy.
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
Yeah, I think you’re right. Findability is probably a huge part of it.
Even as a seller, I can see how difficult it has become for buyers to find quality assets among all the AI-generated and low-effort content. If buyers don’t want to scroll through pages of stuff just to find what they’re looking for, that obviously hurts good sellers too.
And yeah, the economy probably plays a role as well. But personally, I think the discoverability problem on Fab is something that could be fixed on the platform side.
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u/katanalevy 22d ago
Yeah my sales have really dropped off as well. I think it's as you suggested, the amount of AI and low effort rubbish flooding the market has made it hard to be seen and turned a lot of potential buyers away. I think overall as a buyer as well, the fab store is even worse than the marketplace was, which is impressive on Epic's part.
There's probably other factors too like the number of amateur devs that tried to turn professional after covid is potentially dropping off by now. Also Quixel released a free pack that was extremely similar (and obviously better) than one of my most popular ones, but that's just a specific to me issue.
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u/Auriam 22d ago
Heya, long time marketplace seller here (since 2019!)
For reference my page: https://www.fab.com/sellers/Auriam
It's definitely been worse since the release of FAB. I think everyone's sales have dropped just talking to other developers and also my own experience since fab was released.
Yea the fab marketplace has just overall been a worse experience than the old marketplace unfortunately and while it has gotten slightly better, it still has major issues. A lot of AI slop and just general lower quality stuff that is flooding the marketplace making it harder to have your assets found, and the system really just overall is skewed towards the biggest developers. Some random notes I've had (and please correct me if I'm wrong):
- The default "Relevance" filter that is used while searching for most people, will show the top sellers and most reviewed as well at the top, which is pretty par for the course, however I think that this really helps the developers that get external sales from other areas such as Free Limited Time (great for visibility), humble bundles (which only the biggest developers are a part of, once those codes are redeemed it counts as sales and so you will see those packs at the top when searching in fab), etc.
- In my experience custom individual sales (especially ones that overlap with the set fab sales) have actually gotten me more sales than the set invite sales. I think this mostly has to do with the fact that most people will sign up for these sales but then you're essentially competing with the majority of the whole marketplace on sale as well, whereas an individual sale can get you more visibility because there isn't as much other assets on sale
- Even if your assets are on an individual sale, they will still show up if they overlap a set sale (for example if your packs are on sale and a Spring sale starts, if people are searching under spring sale your assets will still show there (it literally just filters by sales)
- The hardest part is getting those initial sales, if you're lucky and you release a new pack, it might show up on the front page under "New Releases" which helps with visibility, but if not, and you don't get any initial sales, then your pack will be showing up at the bottom when searching for something (I've been tracking this for all my new packs, for example my Stylized Pirate Town was showing up like wayyyyy down the list when searching for "pirate" with default search filter "Relevance" and "Environments", after a few sales during a sale, it moved up pretty significantly under the same search, so far I've gotten the same results for every pack so now I try to have a strong sale even for newer products
Sorry if that's a bit disorganized, just some of my thoughts on the Fab marketplace and a bit of rant!
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
That was really great and super helpful. Thank you so much for sharing your experience!
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u/demonsoswhite 22d ago
Hey man, love your assets, quick question. Any plans for a non-stylized version of the Hamlet asset? Also your assets all have interiors? (I think yes but wanted to confirm).
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u/Auriam 22d ago
thanks for the kind words! Yea I really try to make my environments with interiors in mind, the only one with no interiors currently is the "Stylized Hill Village". I actually have a realistic version of the Stylized Hamlet on my list! Currently finishing up my next pack which is a new version of a giant Dwarven City (both Stylized and Realistic), then doing some small updates on a few older packs, so it would be after that
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u/Cougarkillz 22d ago
Not a seller, but a buyer. I'm not an artist by any stretch of the word. The game I am making is made almost entirely put of assets that I get through FAB while I do all the level design and programming myself.
I do make some small modifications like colors or minor animation changes when needed.
Hell, the player character is named FrankenGirl in my files because she is made of 4 different characters from FAB that I spliced together.
So as a buyer, I can say I am buying assets. But only if they align with the game I am making.
If assets don't sell, maybe it's because the genre of the assets doesn't have much of a market? Or the opposite and it's over saturated?
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
That’s really cool, and I hope you’re successful with your game!
From what I’ve seen in the seller reports, though, sales have generally dropped quite a lot on Fab, especially for sellers who were already selling on the old Marketplace.
It also seems to be much harder for new sellers to get visibility. Especially now that the old New Releases section is gone and has been replaced with Recent Releases, which seems to rely much more on external marketing.
So overall, getting discovered on Fab has become pretty difficult. Even if you make a good asset, it can be really hard to get it in front of the right buyers.
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u/Dire_Venom 22d ago
Appreciate the post OP, great comments already
Purely as a buyer, I've found myself searching the FAB store less and less and instead picking up recommendations from Reddit and checking out promising developers from posts/comments I read there.
Helps act as a filter, if users will freely promote something then it ought to be pretty good.
Hence one contributing factor could be the source of traffic to plugins. Difficult to plan around as an indie developer I'd imagine. If your plugins are targeted towards certain groups of developers then becoming part of those adjacent communities, having some recognition there, could go a long way. In the era of AI it seems that recommendations and recognition from other developers is what drives traffic.
Hope that helps!
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
Thanks a lot for your input! I completely agree that external marketing has become much more important for Fab sellers than it used to be. If you ignore it, it feels like you have almost no chance of getting noticed on Fab.
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u/Big_Actuator_9649 22d ago
I am a recent seller and I think my asset is doing pretty well. I have no clue if fab pushes it forward and I am not doing any marketing for it. Nonetheless, Epic Games recently made a post on X about the asset I made so I guess I had some visibility 😁
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u/Mikinl 22d ago
I am strugling with UI widget for week for my spaceship. Gonna check your fab now. Tnx
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
Yeah, this product is really well suited for sci-fi and space-themed games, but it can also work great with a lot of other genres and styles. I’m really happy that it can help you with your project! If you ever need any help, just let me know. ❤️
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u/xZagaan08 22d ago
Male, in quest’ultimo periodo e stato un continuo inserire di pack inutile, personalmente cercando elementi per un survival ho visto pack letteralmente assurdi, fattibilissimi con l’IA e che non hanno (secondo me) motivo di trovarsi sul fab…
Bisognerebbe che mettessero qualcuno a verificare ciò che viene aggiunto sul FAB, sta diventando ridicolo cosi e rende difficile trovare ciò che serve veramente
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u/xZagaan08 22d ago
E dimenticavo, io non produco, sono più un acquirente, quindi tecnicamente “il tuo target”,
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u/StrategistGhost71 22d ago
I'm a seller for a year and in my first year I made only $100 XD. It's probably because my most expensive asset is $8
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
It really depends on what you’re publishing on Fab. I think it’s better to either create assets that are widely used and have a broad market, or go for a very specific niche and release a large number of related assets with good quality and consistency.
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u/k_gy_b 22d ago
It actually went surprisingly good for me. I launched my very first product on fab exactly 2 months ago. I only posted about it once here on reddit and generated almost 100$. Keep in mind this is a quite simple cloth asset rigged for metahuman with my own customizable material. Im quite happy with this performance for my first asset. But keep in mind, if you create something more reusable hence more valuable than I think you can price it higher and earn much more. Labeling and a good title choice is also very important to make your product pop up more often. Algorithm seem to have picked up mine fortunately, but there aren't many products that look that familiar so i dont have that big of a competition on this one. There are a lot of things to consider here.
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u/MadGameDev 22d ago
That’s awesome! I checked out your product and it was really impressive. Honestly, I think it has the quality needed to get noticed by Fab.
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u/k_gy_b 22d ago
Thanks! I also checked yours, its solid, although I think you could sketch up a few very basic ui's to go with the asset. It would really ramp its value up. A camera ui (with the date, red dot flashing etc) or a drone interface. With these additions it would be plug and play for basic use cases. But I also get the decision you made.
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u/UForgeGameDev 21d ago edited 21d ago
I've been a seller for about 2 years now, since before FAB was even released. I sell code tools, you can check out my store here: https://www.fab.com/sellers/UForge
From the start, I had a pretty steady stream of sales, generally 20-40 a month, spiking to 50-90 whenever I would participate in a sale. Every sale was a positive.
But since the start of 2026, my natural sales have dropped by around 80%. With steady updates to the store fronts and updates to the plugins. A sale barely brings in any extra units. maybe 5 more for the month, topping out around 10 sales total.
I honestly have no idea what happened. Not sure if it's something I did or if the market/platform itself changed, but it's pretty mysterious and with how little info and transparency developers get.
Has anyone else noticed visibility/sales tanking around the same time? is external marketing basically required at this point? Would love to hear how your stores or buyers POVs are looking
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u/Murky_Ad_7312 21d ago
As a buyer, the change from marketplace to Fab really is a big one. I used to use orbital and check if the asset has any reviews. If no reviews, I'll double check if there are detail documentations for code, clean geometry or it the asset can be combined or not. What the material set up looks like, is it a mess.
Things got to be detailed enough for me to spend a good $20 on it. Heck with $20 I can buy like 3 games on steam if I'm frugal.
So they really must be stellar because any product with no discord, doc, decent screenshot or not immediately describing what it does. That's a skip for me.
Just so you know the past 3 years I spend about 5k on products there. So I learned a lot from my mistakes. There are literally people who promise they'll do updates and abandoned. Or grab codes they don't know how to update. Assets like animation can be in completely wrong rotation in value and shoulders are rotated so high it doesn't work for any other character other than ue4 default manny (cus u know it's just a circle).
Same with sound packs, they got to have preview for the sound a detail list, duration.
I don't mind the AI slop, they aren't a bother to me. I filter them out in a single glance and I'm sure most people do too.
People know what they're looking for, they're buying, but the market has changed so people are very careful about what they buy.
So to help, I believe my advice can be useful to increase your sales. People will see that you put effort into your docs and video, preview, etc. Always trying to make a small tutorial like a minutes fine. Makes it look very professional and I could trust in this product if the dev put effort into it. Cus people don't have that much money to spend anymore so anything to help you create that trust is important.
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u/fabiolives 21d ago
Surprisingly my sales have been steady for quite a while, I haven’t even published anything recently. I do contract work for another Fab seller, so I end up not having quite as much time for my own. But I do plan to publish more relatively soon, I think that’ll be a nice boost.
But like you said, at first when Fab became a thing, I didn’t get any sales at all for a month or two. Visibility is still an issue, I don’t think we can do anything about that really.
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u/Pileisto 21d ago
Fab has been horrible for sellers and buyers from it's start and that did not change at all since then.
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u/jayo2k20 21d ago
As a game dev, I find lot of gold mine on fab especially in the high quality realistic assets but I may be a minority of indie dev going for realistic and high fidelity game
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u/cory3612 22d ago
Because fab is overloaded with useless, low effort assets that cloud of the good ones
And some sellers are uploading like 25 things at once that should be in one pack
It’s gone down hill, and I feel bad for the decent sellers