CGTrader, you always prided yourselves on being “unlike other marketplaces.” In interviews you promised to protect creators, pay a fair share, and build a healthy ecosystem for 3D artists. Yet on 2 June you wiped it all away with a new 26-tier royalty grid of 60–85 %. Congratulations: you’re now worse than the very platforms you used to point fingers at.
What we got instead of “improvements”
Minus 10 % royalties overnight. For most small and mid-size creators the rate dropped from 70 % to 60 %.
Annual turnover instead of lifetime sales. Years of work reset — the counter now rolls every 365 days.
Prices up, sales down. To stay afloat, sellers raise price tags; models are 2–3 × more expensive, and my own sales have fallen five-fold.
Triple fees. You take your cut, charge an internal transaction fee, and the payout system grabs another slice on withdrawal.
Visibility near zero. After the “algorithm optimisation” even former best-sellers collect dust on the back pages.
Marketing abyss. Buyers see no value, creators feel no motivation — the platform is bleeding relevance on both sides.
Where are the “promised improvements” you tout in every release note? In reality — less money, less traffic, more fees and zero support.
The further this goes, the less I want to play by your rules; I’ll play by my own. You have no idea what you’re doing. God knows, I never wanted this.
