We've won a battle, but not the war. Yesterday, Sketchfab sent an email to cultural heritage accounts, promising a delay in the Fabpocalypse for the "many companies and organizations that use Sketchfab as a service." 

But what about the rest of us? What about the countless 3D artists and small businesses who will suffer when Epic kills the Sketchfab Store? 

Several top-selling artists have spoken to me about the impending financial consequences of this greed. It's devastating. "My best selling models helped me cover some of my bills, and Sketchfab was a big part of that," wrote one artist. "I actually migrated and, sadly, I lost over 60 models in the process. Some formats I used on Sketchfab aren’t supported anymore. I might have to consider changing my job if things don’t improve, and it would be tough to say goodbye to making 3D models." 

Another prominent user told me, "I'm likely to lose my monthly income for a period time and also I have to manually resubmit all the models... For sure thousands of people will be affected. I can imagine there are some super invested people in lower-income countries that might in a very harsh spot now." 

Epic knows exactly what they're doing. That's why they're disabling comments on "Fab." And yet, in that email, they claim "we’re building a unified community of creators, artists and worldbuilders on Fab." So why can't we speak to each other in the Fab-verse? And why are we forced to surrender "moral rights" to our models?! It's all so peculiarly dystopian. 

But Friday's email worriedly begs those big-time accounts to stay on the site: "We won’t make any changes to these functions until we share the plan with you and give you plenty of time to prepare. Until that time, we hope you’ll continue creating and sharing awesome content on Sketchfab." 

Maybe Epic fears the consequences after all.

We have to keep going. Send the petition around. For that matter, send a complaint to support@sketchfab.com. I'm sure you'll get the canned denial response, but now we know they're listening. 

Thanks to Sketchfab seller Kenzie_SFT for the error message text.