One chart, one finding
Bite-size reads from the Marketplace Index — each is a single chart and a single takeaway, with the data behind it a click away.
Magic & arcane dominate VFX — but water, weather and sci-fi are wide open
Magic & arcane are the single biggest VFX sub-niche (561 packs); fluids, weather and sci-fi effects are far thinner.
89% of VFX packs ship with a video — and that's the whole game
89% of VFX listings embed a preview video, versus about 48% across the whole marketplace.
VFX went UE5-native faster than the rest of the marketplace
Recent new VFX releases are roughly 74% UE5 — ahead of the catalogue at large.
The same asset costs about 150% more on Unreal than elsewhere
Across 2,260 assets sold on two stores, the Unreal listing is typically 150% more expensive.
UE5 went from a rounding error to 93.2% of new releases
UE5's share of new monthly releases climbed from near zero to 93.2%, even as 46.7% of the version-tagged catalogue is still on UE4.
Buyers ask 17× more about game templates than 3D models
Game Templates draw 43 buyer questions per listing; 3D models — more than half the catalogue — draw just 2.5.
70% of 2023's listings never got a single review
Among listings launched in 2023, 70% have no reviews at all — up from 43% for the 2015 cohort.
Sellers cluster obsessively on .99 price points
A handful of .99 price points — led by $19.99 — soak up a huge share of the catalogue, with conspicuous gaps in between.
The typical Unreal asset has cost about $19.99 for years
The median catalogue price sits at $19.99 and has barely moved for years, even as the catalogue grew to 79,792 listings.
43% of sellers have shipped exactly one product
43% of all sellers have published just one listing; only a sliver ship at scale.
Material packs quietly overtook audio in new releases
Annual material releases pulled ahead of audio — a small shift in the supply mix that signals where the next crunch forms.
83% of all reviews are five stars
83% of every review on the marketplace is five stars, so ratings barely separate the good from the rest.
The Unreal asset boom started before ChatGPT, not because of it
The catalogue reached about 79,792 listings, roughly 7.3× its 2020 size — and the steep climb predates the first LLM release.
Each seller now ships ~60% more — the marketplace's clearest AI fingerprint
Listings per active seller held near 3.4 a year through 2022, then climbed to 5.4 by 2025 — about a 60% lift.
3D Models are 57% of the entire marketplace
A single category — 3d models — accounts for 57.1% of all 79,792 listings.