We sell a number plugins on the marketplace, and while we try our best to make them as stable as possible, from time to time someone will report a bug. When this happens we may fix the bug and quickly send an updated version of the plugin to the user to test.
The question we often get is, how do I install the plugin?
Plugin’s folder
Installing a plugin is incredibly straight forward, all you need to do is finding the engine’s plugin’s marketplace folder and paste in the plugin’s folder.
The full path on my PC for Unreal Engine 5.3 looks like this:
C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.3\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace
If you install your engines in the suggested folder then yours will be the same. Otherwise, you will have to find the Epic Games folder where all your engines are installed.
Depending on the engine you are trying to install your plugin on, the UE_5.3 part of the path will change to match the engine version.
Finally if you have just downloaded your engine and have not installed any plugins from the marketplace then the marketplace folder may not exist yet. If that is the case just create it manually inside the plugin’s folder.
An example
Since we develop for VR using the Meta Quest we often install the MetaXR plugin which must be downloaded and installed manually. I will use the MetaXR plugin to give you a more practical example.
First let’s download the plugin from the MetaXR download page.
Then if we open the zip folder we can see the content of the plugin.
As you can see the plugin comes zipped and inside we can find a single folder called MetaXR which contains all the plugin’s folders and files.
Since the version I downloaded is for 5.3 all I need to do is navigating to the path I shown you above and copy the contents of the zip file inside the marketplace folder.
And done!
The plugin is installed and ready to be enabled in the engine.
Wrong engine version
If you try to install a plugin in an engine version the plugin was not built for then you may get a message like the following:
This is Unreal telling you that the plugin is not compatible with the engine you are trying to use it on. In this case I have installed a plugin meant for 5.3 in 5.2.
Missing modules
If while trying to launch an engine version you get an error message saying that modules are missing like the following:
Then the plugin you have installed may have not been built correctly or may be completely missing the required binaries.
What should a plugin folder contain?
If in doubt, the following is what’s required for a plugin to be dropped in the marketplace folder and work:
- Binaries folder
- Intermediate folder
- Source folder
- Uplugin file
- Resources folder
- Optionally a content folder
The content folder can be optional as a plugin can be just code and contain absolutely no content.
