AssetStore needs improvements

As a buyer who has spend thousands on the AssetStore, I think there is a serious need of improvements. Recent incidents have caused me, as a buyer, to lose trust in the AssetStore, as many others (links below). My suggestions.

1. Assets should include author contact information. They should also include a demo, a lot of assets have vague descriptions/no demos, it does not help buyer in assesement.

2. New items in store are not reported properly in the RSS. I read all the items in RSS but i still find a lot of assets that are not announced.

3. If Assets are removed from store, they should be made available for download. There are cases of author who changed company name and re released it under a different company, we buyers should not need to purchase it again.

4. If the author stops supporting, and item breaks in latest Unity, it should not be sold anymore or needs to be clearly marked. Relying on a user to buy, try, write review (and refused refund later) is not the right way.

5. There should be mechanism for us to get notifications when items are updated. Currently I have zealously monitor update threads.

6. Items should be vetted for accuracy. I recently bought an item which states working for mobile, but it uses an known unsupported method. I was given an automated response "Please contact author..." (I suspect Ben is a automated robot) but there is also no author contact. If you cannot vet through items, don't impose this sneaky policy that "All Sales are final". This is considered fraud selling in some countries.

A collection of links of unhappy buyers

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/194783-Buyers-Beware-All-Sales-Are-Final?p=1322241#post1322241
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/20...-demos/page2?p=1361897&viewfull=1#post1361897
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/201680-Unity-Should-Redesign-Asset-Store
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/201265-A-Better-user-experience-for-Asset-store-customers
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/85077-Refund-policies/page2?p=1320558&viewfull=1#post1320558
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/14...LEASED/page6?p=1294006&viewfull=1#post1294006
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/189815-Storm-Effects-WTAT
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/186274-Unity-refuse-refund-when-package-did-not-work
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/173157-Asset-Store-removed-items-is-or-not-a-little-fraud
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/16...-false-advertising-and-Unity-refuse-to-refund
http://hutonggames.com/playmakerfor...gc2oqikv5tlikt87&topic=3700.msg18246#msg18246
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/192473-Unity-what-are-you-doing
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/18...oducing-LITE?p=1304256&viewfull=1#post1304256
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/13...a-MADness-sales-putted-us-out-of-the-business
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/19...t-assets-from-the-asset-store-are-legal-first
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/198581-ASSET-STORE-ISSUE-Please-help
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/19...purchases-not-showing-up-no-longer-showing-up

 

I'm in the same boat with you. Lots of assets bought and its have been getting worse and worse with the asset info and other stuff.

During submit each asset should be marked by the author with platforms that it fully supports (been tested) and not leave the info out or hide it under star *line inside some link or readme you can't even read before buying. These should be in database so you could use them in search like show all plugins that actually support Win8/WP8. There are several assets that do not work with WP8 now and you have no idea without digging around or trying and maybe getting all sales are final reply

All assets with code should have some kind of refund policy when they do not work as described or don't work at all.

 

Seems to me like all of the points you make are valid. I was unaware of point #3 you made. That sounds ridiculous.

 

I was burned once. Once was all it took for me not to look at it again. A store should not just be about being able to find stuff easily, it also should mean the store management is the one I need to contact for a refund.

If I get an issue with an iOS app, I can contact Apple and demand a refund.
If I get an issue with a Steam game, the same holds true.
If I get an issue with any product I buy at Best Buy or Wal-Mart, they take the thing back and give me my money back.
Amazon will even pay for the shipping to return a product!

I should not have to hunt down a rogue asset creator to get my money back. Refund should also not be the last resort, it should be the first thing in the table. Hunting down the asset creator, convince him to help me, and then find out things are shady, then being forced to go back and demand a refund... that does not cut it.

The asset store should make us safer, it should be a safe place to make transactions. Else, there is no much point to have a middle-man.

 

I agree with OP.

 

All good ideas. I also testify to seeing new assets/updates missing from RSS feeds... my own stuff maybe showed up once or twice after updates but mostly have not appeared in the feed.

 

I aways thought Asset Store would give a refund if asked.

 

I don't think Unity can afford to make sure every asset works on every new version. Instead, I would suggest making it so that the asset's author has to go in and specifically mark it as working on each new release.

I also agree with the refund policy changes suggested here and elsewhere. If it's going call itself a store, it needs to act like one. Instead, it's acting like a broker, and trying to disavow all responsibility. That clearly isn't working well.

 

No, as stated above, they'll send you a response that says you must contact the author of it and ask them for a refund.

 

It's strange because the only thing the author can do is to send the money back. He has no control over who can download/import from Asset Store after buying the asset.

 

Not only that: but you cant ever expect to get a full refund from the author. Unity takes 30% (if im not wrong) so an author that is expected to do the refund himself is also expected to actually return more than he was paid.

 

the problem is unity is not backwards compatible (even between minor versions), so if you are constantly updating to newest version you are going to lose out sales because most people wont bother to update. If you look at the top 10 top paid and 7/10 arent even using unity4. I bet people would complain if the asset no longer worked for version 3 anymore. When unity5 eventually comes out things are going to be a real mess -- i think unity will have to allow the user to select which version to download that way it would encourage developers to push the newest without losing sales because of the stragglers , because right now you are actually get punished for updating your project.

 

Just to clear this part up to stop any misinformation:

Asset publishers can contact Unity to approve a refund, so 100% of the purchase price is refunded to the user, and it is deducted from the publisher's balance.

About refunds in general:

Remember that the Asset Store is different than purchasing something through Amazon or retail, or even purchasing from an app store - these are full assets, usually including code, that can be used on multiple commercial projects. Thus the potential for abuse of the refund system is much higher. Pirated assets obtained this way can be a real problem, as well.

I think the real issue here with the refund policy is that there needs to be a dispute resolution system in place, outside of just email contact. I am definitely for contacting the publisher before issuing a refund - it helps prevent cases of fraud on the buyer's end. But, the problem is that the contact has to be done through an email conversation (which the publisher may not respond to). If the publisher doesn't respond or isn't professional about their handling of the situation, the buyer is a bit screwed - and that's never good.

I think a better strategy would be (just some ideas):

1. Buyer requests a refund and opens up a case #. When opening a case number, Unity should automatically display the publisher's contact info and explain the difference between a support and refund request.
2. If buyer decides to go ahead with the dispute, the publisher is contacted automatically. Buyer and publisher must resolve the case (by the publisher either issuing a refund or another solution being reached) within X days.
3. If the publisher does not respond at all, the refund is automatically given.
4. If the buyer does not respond to the publisher (either by direct response or indicating that the proposed solution won't work), the refund is automatically declined.
5. If the case is not resolved, it gets sent to Unity, which will decide on whether or not to approve a refund.

This would all be implemented quick, easy to fill out web form, and only run over the course of only a few days (a week or so).

A system like this benefits the buyer, publisher, and Unity - refund requests are tracked in a central location, so abuse is much harder. Also, buyers can potentially have their issues solved by the publisher, but can still be issued a refund if neither of them can reach a resolution to the situation. It also allows Unity to be able to give refunds with a lot more context - they can see the buyer's request as well as the publisher's handling of the situation.

 

Agree with Thinksquirrel, well said!

 

Thats why Unity should be doing this. They have the tools to kill licenses directly on their account servers. Any piracy from that point forward is not any more useful than just going to some piracy site and downloading assets there.

Human interaction can mean that its very easy to spot a pattern (some user that buys and requests refund on everything, or way too regularly.)

For me, when I am interested in buying an asset its in great part because its a time-saver. If I must go through any lenghty process to get a refund, you are very likely defeating the entire purpose and I may had as well spent that time developing my own asset.

 

They can mark invoice numbers as refunded, yes, but as a publisher I would have no idea if someone is using a refunded asset, unless they approach me with a support request.

Also, pirating assets becomes a lot easier when the initial person sharing the asset doesn't even have to pay for it, which was possible before.

But you can't count on that - if 5 different people handle refunds for the same person, none of them may make the connection. The chances of refund fraud attempts filtering through only increases with the volume of people buying stuff in the Asset Store.

Also, a dispute system still requires human interaction from Unity - refunds would only be automatic if the publisher doesn't respond at all or immediately grants the refund.

The idea I'm proposing would be a very quick, short form to fill out - the same length as sending an email to UT asking for a refund. And it's not unheard of - PayPal handles transaction disputes pretty similarly (over a much longer time frame, though).

In fact, if you're buying from a publisher who is responsive you could get a refund even faster than if you were going through UT. If you aren't, then there's a maximum amount of time before your refund is issued or declined.

 

Hi all,

Thanks for the frank insights into the Asset Store. We know things are less-than-ideal with certain aspects of the store, and will be focusing much on improving it over the next year... and do want to get it in exactly the state that you love!

Coming, quite soon

I wasn't aware of this.. Can you cite an example, if you happen to have a recent one handy?

Also coming soon.. generally however when someone changes their company name we will automatically associate all customers who have made a purchase so that they now own it from under the new buyer.

In a few other cases, assets are removed from the store at the publisher's request, or because of a violation of our TOS. At the moment the system doesn't return any helpful information, and this is something that, too, will be coming soon. Sorry!

Right now you can check for updates in the download manager, if there's an update, the 'Import' button will instead become an Update button. What would be a nice way for you to be alerted, though?

We do vet assets, however we're not the publishers' QA teams... some of these can be extremely complex and problems manifest under certain circumstances that can be hard for us to reproduce.. If you have purchased an asset where the description is clearly misleading or you can't contact the publisher, of course we will help out. Please do let us know if you have trouble reaching the author and we'll either get you in touch with them, or make sure the author does (and if not, take "corrective action").

BTW, Ben does have a shiny chrome body, super robo-strength and laser eyes but he is indeed a human.

Again, thanks, and we apologize for the store's shortcomings... it's super important to us that the store meets your expectations, and as it grows and scales widely beyond any of us could imagine (400K+ users!) we're working very hard to make sure it scales along with your demands. What started out as a relatively small operation with a tiny little team is now becoming quite huge, which is at the end of the day a good problem for a company to have, but not at the cost of your convenience or happiness. If you find yourself in a particularly nasty pickle, you can always contact me directly, caitlyn(at)unity3d(dot)com, and I will gladly look into it.

 

@Caitlyn - Well done. Handled with class.

Gigi

 

If. Else you are stuck in a lenghty process and likely, while you wait, are forced to buy something else or just work in your own implementation as you wait because your project is on deadlock because of this non-working asset.

It may be OK there to be an option for me to go and get support from the asset creator, but that should just be a choice not a forced path. If you are worried about keeping a database of valid active IDs, that sounds like something Unity should just give you (a list of all refunded invoice numbers.)

As for the refund abuse: any sensible system would have everyone handling it enter notes on the user's account. 100 different representatives may handle the case, but the refund history should be available to all of them.

 

I think the reason they don't do refunds is they fear, since these are digital assets, based from their knowledge of these forums and warez/bitorrent sites, that an organized effort is being make to pilfer and distribute the contents of the Asset Store via those channels.

They should go ahead and do the refunds anyway as they are likely a small percentage of sales. What you see on the warez/bitorrent sites is always stolen, in most cases altered, and an undesirable risk to use.

 

Many but I wouldn't know what's in the queue until I search and see something new. It's would be easier if you ran a RSS reader and see the difference.

I probably have a few hundred assets, and they are not downloaded at the same time, or active in the current project. Email about updated packages are still the best.

We don't expect you to cos of the amount of assets but when buyer (we) report an issue, we expect prompt action. Not like this.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/194783-Buyers-Beware-All-Sales-Are-Final

I emailed you another issue which I was charged twice for the same item, and metal Ben can't solve it. Hope you can.

 

+1 ..for thread generally.

I'm still tiny little customer without spending thousands, but still, i approve pretty much all the OP and others have said. And i am going to be also a publisher for assets. And if Unity takes 30%, i really expect something more, not just a place to sell your assets.

Unity should take more responsibility

There were 1 000 000 Unity users 18 moths ago. Today 2 000 000!!! (http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/07/09/another-million-unity-developers-in-the-house/) ..and i'm sure expected doubling rate is more like 10 - 12 months today.

Most of us dont have Pro license, but many of us use Assets Store. I really dont know how big percentage of all income comes from Pro licenses, but i am sure Unity is going to make mainly all income from assets store in next couple years. I might be totally wrong, but i could imagine the assetstore is not just a small thing. I hope you ppl in unity read this thread with thought.

I also want to say in loud, Caitlyn is doing amazing job here. (not just this thread, but generally questions / all confusions what comes to assetstore)
And Unity, remember that many people are forgiving at the moment, because we love Unity, and we love, you give us such a great tool for free! But sure there will be others, sooner or later.

My point: fix the asset store, not only from customers point of view, but also publishers.

 

Caitlyn,

You can view the differences in the RSS feed pretty often by going to the RSS feed and looking at it and by going to the Unity Web Store front and going to Latest.

Pretty often they are out of sync.

 

Hi Caitlyn, it's been more than weeks. Yet to hear a reply from you regarding multiple problems in AssetStore.

 

add me to your unhappy customer list please imtrobin

 

I would also like to request to make it a requirement that people mention whether the source code is obfuscated and/or in DLLs. Often I have purchased assets and was not able to view the source code to make a simple change.

 

IIRC, I posted a longer message on this quite a while back on one of the beta-lists. Basically, what's missing right now is management in the projects of which assets are coming from where. And when you use a lot of assets from the asset stores, this can become quite a problem. In particular, it's impossible for Unity to know which assets in my project are outdated because they come from a package that has a new version available.

What we should have for each project is a list of packages that were imported, and with that list we should have the information which of the packages have an update. Ideally, if we have deleted stuff, this should also be tracked so that unless I explicitly include files that I previously excluded/deleted, they are not imported.

I understand that this is quite a big task - but once we have that, working with assets from the asset store would be so much more convenient for everyone, so it would be very well worth the effort.

 

Cool, found it (that was Sep 14th, 2012):

In the order of priority/usefulness:

1. Improved versioning and package management: This is the main reason my experience with the Asset Store so far was less than satisfying and I tend to avoid using packages from the asset store because of the pain it introduced into my workflow: I have a couple of projects, and a whole lot of packages from the asset store. And it's pretty challenging to keep an overview of which package I'm using where, and which version of what package I have installed in which project, and in which projects I might want to update a package. Another major pain point related to this: All the changes I'm making to packages and which might get overwritten when I update the wrong package. The good news here is that I have most projects under version control (Asset Server), so that's not as bad as it sounds - but to make the overall experience of the Asset Store really great and awesome, this would be something maybe worth looking into.
2. Package dependency management: Even my own packages have dependencies, and more and more publishers on the asset store build on packages of other publishers. When I select a package from the store, I want the store to tell me "ok, you can only use this if you have A, B, C" or "you can use this, but your experience will be better if you also use D, E, F" (and you already have A and B; but you haven't yet imported A and B into your project, should I do this for you right now?) While obviously, publishers can write part of that information into the descriptions - that's not the professional way of doing it. The professional way is having the store manage this for the publishers (and customers, of course), with a nice dependency management GUI (in other words: give us a way to say "I need package A, B, C to work" or "I can work well with D, E, F"). That's the "asset store" part - the other part is that Unity needs to provide mechanisms for package developers to be able to implement proper handlings of these dependencies (i.e. "if this other package is available, do this, if not, do that"). I believe conditional compilation is a good starting point for this - and it just needs to be standardized (it's very helpful that Unity 4.0 supports custom preprocessors compilation symbols / defines). See the section on namespaces below - that's absolutely mandatory for that kind of thing and it's UT's responsibility to get this right because most publishers won't do it right unless they're forced to do it right (the good thing is that people creating these kinds of dependencies are very likely to be capable of handling the resulting complexities - and people creating packages without these kinds of dependencies don't need to bother ... and if UT does its job right, customers don't need to worry much, either).
3. Unity version management: Each package should have meta-information about which Unity versions it can be used with. The asset store should automatically select the version of the package that works with my version of Unity, and give me information if a new version exists that only can be used with a new version of Unity. This also means that Unity needs to store these different versions in different locations so that they don't get all mixed up.
4. Enforce using proper namespaces to avoid naming collisions: This obviously would be unfair if started now because even Unity didn't support namespace properly until 4.0. But once 4.0 is out and more widely adopted, adding classes in the global namespace should become a reason for a package to be rejected. Putting classes into the global namespace really isn't acceptable - especially not when you are in an environment where lots of different people create lots of different components and users might mix stuff in unexpected ways. There's guidelines on how to do this, something like PublisherName.PackageName should be fine, the only allowed exception should be PublisherName.Common for stuff you use in several packages.
5. Enforce a "useful" folder structure: First of all, don't put packages from the Asset Store into my root folder. Put them into an "Asset Store" folder instead - if I want them some other place, that's fine - but most of the time, I want stuff that I haven't created separate from what I have created, and an "Asset Store" folder would solve that. Just like the Standard Assets folder ... speaking of which: I'd actually like to have "Standard Assets" and "Asset Store" both below a "system" folder "Xternal" which is always sorted to the end of my project. More in the details: Also, provide a good way of handling "common" stuff. In other words: I might be using a couple of utility classes in all my packages. When a user installs a few of my packages, these utility classes should be automatically overwritten so that there's no conflicts.
6. Project search should give me an option to search in the packages I already have: First, I want a local search in all the packages that I already have (my own, standard assets, stuff I have purchased or downloaded from the asset store).

 

You can scroll through the list of assets in the package and see if there is a dll.

Though it would be nice if it were stated upfront.

 

Most of the OP's complaints are really just good advice for the seller of the asset and what buyers should look for.
The asset you buy should have a support thread started by the asset author. Email notifications of new posts in a thread are not always sent so,... clicking on the avatar of the thread starter should send you to a page where you can choose to send a Private Message to the author. The version the asset was made for should be clearly marked on the asset ad area. The items that come with the asset are listed. I was unaware that if an asset was found to be defective that buyers would not receive a refund! That refund thing is a PayPal requirement. Supplying a demo with the asset should be a no brainer depending on the asset itself. Also a short video on how to implement assets would be a good service to provide especially as people buying those assets are not into making them theirselves. Not sure the asset store is to blame on most of the points brought up.

 

Paypal policy now is digital items do not get refund. So now, as much as possible, avoid paypal.

 

Also think Unity should create a standard folder structure is mandated developers use. how to:
* - Do not use the root folder;
* - Demos should be mandatorily placed in the Demo folder (so it is easier to delete demos after);
* - Readme, always use a default name of the file (it has plugins that use read me, tutorial, etc.) would make it easier to find the readme a plugin.

 

Unity really should have an 'Asset Store' support site 'Store Front' for each and every asset seller as well as assign a email address to the asset seller too from that store front. None of this external web site / gmail and such 'iffy' asset support.

The seller abandons the store front - their asset gets listed as unsupported and the price reduced by 70% and Unity keeps all the profits of the remainder for maintaining the availability of the asset to past buyers that got support. It's up to Unity what constitutes abandoning a store but obvious things are inability to deposit earning in the given deposit account, non-support for support queries on the 'Individual Store Front', no sales for 6 months and an email checking for the individual's continued interest in maintaining a store in Unity Asset Store goes unanswered or declined.

 

For art assets, demos will only be played by a tiny percentage of Asset store customers and will not increase sales for the creator of the demo. They are fine as a technical exercise but provide no benefit to the vast majority of purchasers.

Even long videos demonstrating that each asset works are not necessary. I have made videos of all of my asset store packages and the average person watches thirty seconds before turning it off. This is consistent across all countries and over 60,000 views of my videos.

Example from my most watched video, 1:17 long:


Of course, every asset should definitely be tested and supported.