Epic Games launches Fab, a unified marketplace for digital content

Epic Games has launched Fab, a new unified content marketplace that gives developers access to a wide range of digital assets through a single online marketplace.

Fab is a one-stop shop for developers to discover, buy, sell and share digital assets
it's live now. You can probably think of it as a necessary foundation for a metaverse if Epic Games ever really wants to build it. And this asset store also features assets created with the Unity game engine, and in the future it will contain assets from all game engines, Epic said.

Fab is the successor to the Unreal Engine Marketplace and Sketchfab Store and the new home for Quixel Megascans – as well as Unity assets. This new open marketplace supports all types of content creators for use in Unreal Engine, Unity 3D, Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), and other digital content creation tools.

Unreal Engine developers can access Fab directly in the Unreal Engine 5 editor, and Fornite creators can discover Fortnite-ready assets via Fab in UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite, intended for third-party user-generated content and professional Fortnite creators) .

According to Epic Games, you can already discover a huge range of high-quality, real-time game assets, environments, VFX, audio, animations, characters, plug-ins and more.

background

Epic Games accumulated its marketplaces like Sketchfab through acquisitions over the years.

Bill Clifford, vice president of Unreal Engine and Marketplaces at Epic Games, said in an interview with GamesBeat that Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, told him several years ago that his mission was to use the various assets of the Unreal Engine Marketplace, the Sketchfab Store, Artstation and Quixel Megascans.

“We have these really great, vibrant communities and together millions and millions of high-quality digital assets that ultimately make it faster and cheaper for people to build worlds,” Clifford said. “We've seen some great stats on marketplaces that are heavily used by UE developers. About 50% of active projects use assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. It was super valuable, but we had several unrelated experiences. That’s why we wanted to try to bring them together in a single place where users can access all content and discover, share, buy and sell every type of digital asset on Fab.”

(Tim Sweeney will be a virtual speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat Next 2024 event October 28-29. Use this code, gbn24dean, for 25% off.)

The development was a labor of love that took about two and a half years, Clifford said.

“There are great ambitions for the product. What you see here is a significant improvement over the Unreal Engine Marketplace and each of our marketplaces on their own,” said Clifford. “We have a very aggressive growth plan for 2025 and will continue to add features and also connect Fab to the broader ecosystem of content creation tools via APIs.”

Discover (even Unity) assets on Fab

Fab offers content compatible with multiple game engines, a wide range of asset types, various
Licensing options and more. Today on Fab you can:

It's easy to browse the extensive content library, which includes high-quality 3D assets, VFX, environments and more from great developers and studios like KitBash3D, Dekogon Studios and Leartes Studios.

Creators can use channels to find content compatible with Unreal Engine, UEFN, and Unity. And they can choose the license that suits their needs. Fab offers a Creative Commons license and the Personal or Professional tier of a Standard license. The Fab Standard license allows you to use the assets, including Megascans, in any game engine or tool you want.

Developers can purchase the Quixel Megascans library for free until the end of 2024 – free to use with all digital content creation engines and tools. With one click on this new page, developers can request over 17,000 megascans, including 10 packs of brand new scene files from Quixel. And Epic Games said developers should look out for free sponsored content from Quixel and other developers on Fab.

Epic says developers can make informed decisions about what to download or purchase. They can check 3D assets with Fab's real-time 3D viewer to know what they are buying before making a purchase. They can also see whether a product was created using generative AI on each product detail page, and developers can use filters to include or exclude generative AI products from their search.

Developers can also find assets that fit their target audience. Adult content is permitted on Fab.com, but people whose parents have enabled age restrictions using Epic Parental Controls will not have access to adult content. Developers have the ability to “show,” “blur,” or “hide” adult content on Fab. Adult content cannot be used on UEFN as this content exceeds Fortnite's maximum age rating.

Developers can also get a free six-month subscription to Adobe Substance Painter and Modeler.

A live demo

The site has a featured content carousel as well as a featured seller carousel. There are also product categories that make it easier for people to find what they're looking for, said Justin Renninger, director of UX at Epic Games, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“From a category standpoint, they can go deeper and deeper into our taxonomy and find what they’re looking for,” Renninger said.

There are also tabs where developers can find free Quixel megascans. The Unity content sits right next to the Unreal and UEFN content. The goal is for everyone to find what they're looking for organically, even when they see new content they didn't know was there, Renninger said.

“The idea of ​​our channel for getting UEFN and Unreal is that this is a filter or pane view for anyone who builds with Unreal Engine or UEFN, where you can find only assets and only products that are available in the different game engines work,” said Renninger.

The Unity Channel offers content that is just as easy to browse as Unreal content.

“We encourage ourselves to include all available formats so that as a buyer I have access to both formats when purchasing,” Renninger said.

He showed an example of what it's like to search for 3D graphics images with subway content. You search for the word and find all sorts of images. “With the 3D viewer you can look at something, rotate it instantly and see what it looks like from all angles,” Renninger said. In the demo, he enlarged a monster that a developer could place in the subway after it flooded with water. Developers can set the price of the content they sell in the store.

What's next?

Epic Games said it has ambitious goals for Fab and today's launch is just the beginning. Over time
Months it will continue to improve the user experience, add new content and provide new features.

Epic plans to introduce new file formats, including Roblox and Minecraft assets, access to MetaHumans, a new listing review system, product-specific FAQs, a pipeline that makes it easier for creators to publish content directly from UEFN to Fab, and new analytics to improve the seller experience.

And in 2025, the company will make a cross-section of the Megascans library available to all users for free, regardless of what engine or platform they use. This starter pack contains more than 1,500 hand-picked assets, including a variety of popular 3D assets, plants, trees, surfaces, decals, imperfections and the 10 packs that Quixel released on Fab launch day.

Epic Games said it is on its way to creating a community and marketplace for all your digital content needs.

Over time, Epic Games wants to move from helping developers create their own games to contributing to the broader “metaverse,” or next generation, of the Internet that brings together many experiences in a spatial manner.

“This has long-term strategic value,” Clifford said. “Our first step was to bring everything together in one place and build on a common, scalable infrastructure. We're taking the best of all our existing marketplaces and bringing it together in one destination. The next step is to connect it to different tools, and (after that) to different Metaverse platforms.

Interoperability is critical to the development of the open metaverse, he said.

I asked why Epic Games wanted to highlight Unity assets.

“We’re trying to create a destination for everyone, not just Unreal Engine developers,” Clifford said.

Of course, the assets are not all that diverse. You can't just combine Unity assets with Unreal assets and expect them to work together.

“We're not magically solving the problem of interoperability here, but we're giving people the ability to sell all different types of formats to different consumers and buyers through a single purchase, reducing the fragmentation of the buying experience for creators,” said Clifford.

In the short term, Epic Games will introduce a new rating and review system, replacing the five-star rating system currently in use. The company will also add technical FAQs. It will also make it easier for UEFN creators to publish to Fab directly from UEFN. The company will also add other game engines such as Godot formats, Roblox and Minecraft.

“This is definitely just the beginning of a long road ahead,” Clifford said.