Epic Games launches Fab unified digital content marketplace

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

Fab is a one-stop destination where developers can discover, buy, sell, and share digital assets, and
it’s now live. You can probably think of it as the necessary foundation for a metaverse, should Epic Games ever really want to build it. And this asset store also has assets built with the Unity game engine, and in the future, it will have 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 creators with content for use across 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 through Fab in UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite, which is for user-generated content and third-party professional Fortnite creators).

Epic Games said you can already discover an enormous offering of high quality, real-time-ready game assets, environments, VFX, audio, animations, characters, plug-ins, and more.

Background

Epic Games collected 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 Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told him some years ago that his mission was to bring together the different assets of the Unreal Engine Marketplace, the Sketchfab Store, Artstation and Quixel Megascans. 

“We have these really great, vibrant communities and combined, just in millions and millions of high-quality digital assets that ultimately make it faster and cheaper for people to build worlds,” Clifford said. “We saw some great statistics in marketplaces, very widely used by UE developers. About 50% of active projects are using assets from Unreal Engine Marketplace. It was super valuable, but we had multiple disjointed experiences. So we wanted to try and bring them together into a single destination where users could access all the content, discover, share, buy and sell any type of digital asset on Fab.”

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

It’s been a labor of love for about 2.5 years of development, Clifford said.

“There’s a lot of ambition for the product. What you’re seeing here is a step change improvement from Unreal Engine Marketplace and each of our marketplaces on their own,” Clifford said. “We’ve got a very aggressive growth plan for 2025, and we will continuously add features and also connect Fab to the broader ecosystem of content creation tools through APIs.”

Discovering (even Unity) assets on Fab

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

It’s easy to browse the extensive content library that includes top-quality 3D assets, VFX, environments and more from amazing creators 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 meets their needs. Fab offers a Creative Commons license and the Personal or Professional tier of a Standard License. The Fab Standard License enables you to use the assets, including Megascans, in any game engine or tool you want.

Developers can acquire the Quixel Megascans library for free through the end of 2024 — free for use with all engines and digital content creation tools. With one click on this new page, developers can claim over 17,000 Megascans, including 10 packs with brand new scene files from Quixel. And Epic Games said devs should be on the lookout for free sponsored content from Quixel and other creators on Fab.

Epic said developers can make informed decisions about what they want to download or purchase. They can inspect 3D assets with Fab’s real-time 3D viewer to know what they’re buying before they make a purchase. They can also see on each product details page if a product was created with the help of generative AI, and developers can use filters to include or exclude generative AI products from their searches.

Developes can also find assets that are right for their audience. Mature content is allowed on Fab.com but individuals whose parents have enabled age rating restrictions using Epic’s Parental Controls will not be able to access Mature content. Devs have the option to ‘show,’ ‘blur’ or ‘hide’ mature content on Fab. Mature content cannot be used in UEFN since these assets exceed Fortnite’s maximum age rating.

Developers can also redeem a free six-month subscription for Adobe Substance Painter and Modeler.

A live demo

The site has a featured content carousel as well as a carousel for featured sellers. 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 drill deeper and deeper down our taxonomy and find what they’re looking for,” Renninger said.

There are also tabs where devs can find Quixel Megascans for free. The Unity content sits right alongside the content for Unreal and UEFN. The goal is to let anyone organically discover what they’re looking for even as they see fresh content that they didn’t know was there, Renninger said.

“The idea of our channel for getting UEFN and Unreal is that this is filter or scoped view for anyone who’s creating with Unreal Engine or UEFN, where you can find just assets and just products that work within the different game engines,” Renninger said.

The Unity channel has content that is just as easy to search through as the Unreal content.

“We’re encouraging ourselves to include all available formats, so that as a buyer, when I purchase this, I’m getting access to both formats here,” Renninger said.

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

What’s next?

Epic Games said it has ambitious goals for Fab and today’s launch is just the beginning. Over the coming
months, it will continue improving the user experience, adding new content and shipping 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 to make it easy for creators to publish content directly from UEFN to Fab, and new analytics to enhance the seller experience.

And in 2025, the company is making a cross-section of the Megascans library free to all users regardless of which engine or platform they are using. This starter pack will contain more than 1,500 hand-picked assets, including a variety of popular 3D assets, plants, trees, surfaces, decals, imperfections and the 10 packs Quixel released on Fab’s launch day.

Epic Games said it is on a journey to create a community and marketplace for all your digital content needs.

Over time, Epic Games wants to graduate from helping devs make their own games to making contributions to the wider “metaverse,” or the next generation of the internet that combines lots of experiences in a spatial way.

“There’s long-term strategic value to this,” Clifford said. “Our first step was to bring everything together into one place and build on top of common infrastructure that that can scale. We take the best of all of our existing marketplaces and bring it into one destination. Connecting it to various tools is the next step, and to different metaverse platforms (after that) is the next step.”

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

I asked why Epic Games would want to highlight Unity assets.

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

Of course, the assets aren’t all that versatile. You can’t just mix and match Unity assets with Unreal assets and expect them to work together.

“We’re not magically solving the interoperability issue here, but we are giving people the opportunity to sell all different types of formats with different consumers and buyers through one purchase, reducing the fragmentation of the buying experience for creators,” Clifford said.

In the short term, Epic Games will roll out a new ratings and review system, replacing a five-star rating system currently being used. The company will add technical FAQs as well. It will also become easy for UEFN creators to publish directly from UEFN into Fab. The company will add other game engines like Godot formats, Roblox, and Minecraft as well.

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