TurboSquid is one of the most popular 3D marketplaces, with millions of assets available for any project imaginable. But if you wanted to start selling there, you might want to read this article first.

The platform's forum is filled with messages from upset artists who complain about sudden drops in sales and infrequent payouts, and some even believe that something nefarious is going on.

Here's some context. Shutterstock acquired TurboSquid in 2021 and then introduced the Contributor Fund, which used artists' assets to train AI, with an opt-out option added later.

It is estimated that Shutterstock paid over $4 million to contributors in 2023, with average revenue from the fund around $0.0078 per image. The last payment was made in November 2024. Since then, artists haven't received anything, even though Shutterstock promised to pay in Q2 2026, which has already ended.

The deals are a mysterious business: the company doesn't reveal what assets were sold, when, to whom, and for how much.  

The anger is further fueled by Shutterstock's silence and the lack of a response on when the next payment will be sent. Only one community manager is replying in the forum, and he claims he doesn't know anything.

The only reason many artists agreed to sell their works to the AI slaughterhouse is the fact that there is no protection against scraping, and their 3D models would eventually end up training machines in any case. This way, they could at least get some money out of it first, but Shutterstock's promises were short-lived, it seems. 

Creators can't sue the company because its Data Deals FAQ states that "earnings are pooled in a collective fund and distributed to contributors periodically as the fund accumulates revenue," and nobody knows when this period arrives.

But even if artists want to return to the traditional way of selling assets, they might not find much there: the TurboSquid forum is full of complaints about drastic sales drops and returns: "There are already a few sales and then returns. I got a sale at the start of the month, then a few days later returned, and the reason was purchased it twice. Again, a few days ago, the same model got a sale and two days later got a return again with the same reason, purchased twice, which it was not purchased twice, and also another model got a return. Not sure what’s going on behind the scenes, and we have no way of knowing apart from what we’ve been told, and who knows how true it is," said one user.

"I used to create high-quality models that easily made it to the top, but now they’ve disappeared amidst old models that don’t even have stemcell – it’s bizarre," added another.

One fed-up TS user even created a petition, demanding transparency and fair pay, but I doubt it will lead to any satisfying results.

I'm afraid artists will have to wait even longer, as the merger between Getty Images and Shutterstock has recently been abandoned, and Shutterstock's chief executive officer, Paul Hennessy, has just resigned, leaving its finance chief, Rik Powell, as an interim CEO, who will likely not have time to deal with the commotion any time soon.

We have contacted Shutterstock for comment but haven't heard back yet.

Unfortunately, we don't have the answer to the secret of TurboSquid deals, but hopefully, exposure will push the company to at least address the issue.

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