Epic Games sold ArtStation on 10 August 2026. The buyer is KitBash.
KitBash sells 3D asset kits, vehicles and Substance materials. That is also a fair description of what I have been selling on ArtStation since 2018.
My landlord is now a competitor.
Every article I have read ends with the same line: nothing changes for artists. I want to show you the last time that line was used.
Why I am not writing this from the outside
I have been on ArtStation's top-seller lists for four years. Top 50 in 2021, top 10 in 2022 and 2023, top seller in 2024.
That came from smart materials, tileable textures, alphas and base meshes. It is the exact aisle the new owner already trades in.
What actually changed hands
Epic's own announcement says KitBash has bought ArtStation and Sketchfab. Terms were not disclosed.
Epic says it is focusing on Unreal Engine 6 and Fortnite. KitBash says portfolios and workflows carry on as they are, with no pricing changes. I have no reason to doubt it.
Here is the detail nobody leads with. Fab was not in the deal. Epic keeps Fab.
So the ArtStation Marketplace now belongs to KitBash. The marketplace it was supposed to move into belongs to somebody else.
Remember that migration? ArtStation said the move to Fab was still planned, but not in 2025.
They promised timelines later. Those never came.
That plan now sits across two companies with different owners. Neither has said a word about it since the sale.
I have heard this reassurance before
Not from KitBash. From Epic, on 22 October 2024, the day Fab launched.
Their post said very little was changing for most of the Sketchfab community. Under "what changes for a Pro subscriber", the answer was one word: nothing.
A few paragraphs above that, the same post said the Sketchfab Store was now closed.
Products stayed visible and stopped being buyable. Any seller who wanted to keep earning had to move everything to Fab.
Both lines were in the same FAQ, on the same day, from the same company.
That is why I am writing this. Anyone repeating the reassurance should say which artists they mean.
If you have a portfolio on ArtStation, nothing changes. Your images and your job leads are safe. You can stop reading here.
If you have a storefront, that reassurance has a documented shelf life. And the document is the previous owner's own.
The risk is not bad faith. It is defaults.
KitBash3D sells kits, vehicles and Substance materials. Greyscalegorilla lists over 5,000 materials, models and HDRIs.
Those are not next to my categories. They are my categories, in my file formats, to my customers.
A store carrying competing sellers is completely normal. KitBash has said nothing about touching the Marketplace. I am not alleging anything.
I am pointing at where the decisions live:
- Search ranking
- The front page
- The newsletter slot
- What gets recommended after checkout
- Which category gets a sale event this quarter
Every one of those is an editorial decision. The editor now has a catalogue on the same shelf as mine.
Epic never sold a smart material in its life. For them, those calls could only be about traffic. That is no longer structurally true.
It does not become untrue because somebody promises it will not happen. It needs watching. That is all it needs.
Four things I am doing
- Selling to my own audience. ArtStation pays more when a buyer arrives through your own portfolio than through marketplace discovery. Check the current figures yourself — those terms are pre-acquisition and nobody has confirmed they survive. The point is that it is the only revenue that does not depend on somebody else's ranking.
- Keeping every listing as data on my side. Titles, descriptions, tags, previews, licence text. What hurt Sketchfab sellers was not losing the store. It was re-entering hundreds of listings by hand. A migration should be an export, not a summer.
- Spreading the catalogue. ArtStation, BlenderKit, SuperHive, and 358 products on my own shop. Running your own store is more work and converts worse. It is also the only shelf nobody can buy out from under you.
- Not delisting anything. Nothing has actually happened yet. Pulling a catalogue over an announcement trades a year of ranking for a press release.
Where the pessimists are wrong
Epic was an engine company that owned an art community on the side. KitBash exists to sell assets to artists.
A store is their core business, not an inherited obligation. On the plain numbers, they have more reason to care whether the Marketplace works than Epic ever did.
So there is a good version of the next two years. The conflict I described could be exactly why the Marketplace finally gets the moderation and search sellers have asked for.
The thing I would really watch is not the ownership. It is the AI policy.
The Marketplace has an AI-generated-content problem sellers have wanted fixed for years. KitBash's leadership has talked publicly about putting AI deep into the company.
Those two facts point in opposite directions. Only one of them wins. That decision will change my business far more than the name on the invoice.
I am not moving. I am just not going to be surprised twice by the same sentence.
