That's not us

If you poke around the products here on Superhive long enough, you might notice something that strikes you as a little odd. There are creators on our platform with products that, for all intents and purposes, appear to offer the same products and services as Superhive itself.

We’re talking about products that connect to sites which host their own assets, add-ons, and training courses. That material isn’t hosted on Superhive and you may even have to have an account or pay for those things outside of Superhive itself. Those are our competitors, right? They’re actively encouraging people to use their platforms for some of the same things that are available on Superhive. Isn’t giving them space on our platform just bad business? At the very least aren’t we “leaving money on the table” when they charge for additional upgrades and assets outside of Superhive?

Short answer: No.

Being first doesn’t make us special

Look. Third-party marketplaces (that’s what Superhive is) aren’t a new thing. Apple, Google, Amazon, and countless others have been doing this for a long time. We happen to be the first one to exist within the Blender community, but that, by itself, doesn’t make us all that special. More importantly, because there are so many other third-party marketplaces out there, we’ve made it a point to pay attention to what they do, why they do it, and whether we like that behavior.

We saw the fight between Apple and Amazon. We saw the same fight between Apple and Epic Games. We’ve seen the exclusivity requirements that Amazon puts on some of their vendors. We’ve noticed that Google Play has started to emulate a lot of those same “walled garden” and exclusivity strategies.

That’s not us.

We don’t like that behavior and we don’t want to make Superhive decisions which make us even look like we’re emulating that behavior. That isn’t who we are and we want you to know that.

You should always have a good experience

Now, from a customer perspective, we certainly want to ensure that you have a good experience. If you buy something on Superhive, it feels awful to suddenly discover that you need to pay more money to someone else in order to use the thing that you already bought. We don’t want you to have that experience.

This is why we ensure that creators have products with no hidden costs, and that any additional payments after purchase are both optional and clearly stated on the product description. And if the product connects to the internet or provides you with assets or services that are not hosted by Superhive, that must also be clearly stated on the product description. We built a whole policy page on this and actively guide creators on how to best communicate these things with you.

This way, everything is honest, up-front, and transparent. You know what you’re getting, you know who you’re getting it from, and you understand where your hard-earned money is going. That’s how we think a third-party marketplace should operate. That’s us.

We’re not really competing

At the beginning of this post, I said being first doesn’t necessarily make Superhive special. That said, the entire Autotroph team behind Superhive genuinely believes that we’re part of something special. That something is the Blender community. And as members of this community, we don’t believe we’re really competitors with others in the community, even if we offer similar things.

Why is that?

We do things our own way. If you’re one of the people who likes how we do things, then Superhive is probably the right place for you, as a creator or a customer… or as both. If you don’t like how we do things, then maybe one of the other platforms suits you better. That’s perfectly OK.

It’s also possible that more than one of these platforms (including Superhive) meet your needs, just in different ways. That’s cool, too! In fact, we’re happy to collaborate with other platforms when the opportunities to do so come up. We can sponsor each other’s challenges, run events together, and, yes, even promote each other to our own customers.

Ultimately, that’s what’s going on when you see these other platforms with a presence here on Superhive. We’re promoting each other. You might then find yourself wondering why you don’t see Superhive products on these other platforms. That’s not their fault. It’s on us. We haven’t asked… or we don’t have a product that we think fits their audience.

But who knows? Maybe we will in the future. We like trying new things. That’s also us.