What is Professional Community Feature and Asset Store Level 11? in unity 5 news

i was reading complete post on unity site about unity 5 features and latest additions but i didnt understand what are these two new things are coming? Professional Community Feature" and "Asset Store Level 11

can you guys explain me these?

 

Asset Store Level 11 is asset store sales and freebies available only to Pro users, or Personal users paying the subscription (not yet available).

The description for Professional Community Features is:

 

I think "Professional Community Feature" is business speak for the unwholesome vernacular "Pleb free forum"

 

Deals for only pro owners IE free playmaker
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/level11

 

Awww, I am miss all those really smart and experienced developers when they separate from us "Plebs". I hope you still come and visit us once in a while. You are always welcome, you know.

 

Personally, it's another one of those extras that I don't want. There's just as much knowledge and skill out there amongst the free users, as amongst the pro. History is rife with segregation attempts - and didn't they all do well.

 

So for the professional community stuff, we have planned the ability to have a Pro user badge on the forums as well as the ability to filter threads to only display those made by pro users.

 

I'm sold.

Those are the "Look at me, peasant" type of features I pay for. Easily worth the asking price for pro alone.

Btw, how do I use the level 11 thingy? I go in the asset store, click the banner, see all the discounted assets, but when I click them they are returned to their normal price...?

EDIT: Nvm, I logged out and back in again and now I can download them for free.

 

We get to keep the assets that we download for free if we cancel our subscription, don't we? I'd hate to learn how to use Playmaker only to have it disabled if I cancel my subscription.

 

I want a "Pro" tag next to my name in the shape of dollar bills!

 

Question about Level 11. Why would an Asset author agree to have their normally paid plugin offered for free for a month? What's in it for them? Specifically, I'm wondering why the Playmaker folks would agree to that. They already dominate their category of Visual Scripting (as do we in our category), so it's not for reasons of breaking into the market. Does Unity actually pay the author for free downloads?

And is there a Level 11 signup form somewhere?

 

Pretty sure that all plugins in the Asset Store are "buy / download once - keep forever". And you should get free upgrades on them forever as well.

 

According to @Aurore the publishers still get paid (I don't know if that means the usual price or a percentage or what).
And apparently the signup is the same as the form for asset store sales.

I asked the same questions and you can see her reply here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-launch.306485/page-4#post-1995291

 

Yeah I would guess it would have to be worth it otherwise no one would bother with it.

 

Thanks for the link. Yes, she said they still get paid, but I'm not certain by her short wording if that applies to both reduced price offers AND free offers, or only reduced priced offers.

Obviously they wouldn't pay 30% of $95 (Playmaker normal price) to the author for each free download. They'd be out of business in 1 day. And 30% of free is nothing...

So what exactly do they pay?

 

Yeah
But at the same time you have to wonder why the heck Playmaker would do it if they weren't making money. I'm thinking maybe they get paid some other way besides per download.

 

How many downloads do you get per day, sometimes when i go free you can get 25 downloads a day or more. So if it was 30% of 95 it would be around 700 a day for 1 month and 21k.

 

Yeah, well...that's exactly what I want to know. What is the payment for free offerings?

 

We never go free anymore. But free downloads we have gotten about 40-80 in a day before, depending on which plugin.

 

I assume:
1) Unity made a deal to just pay a reasonable price per install.
2) This is a thank you to Unity Pro early adopters (plebs cannot sign up as of now), so they take it from the $750/1500/whatever they already paid.
3) Later level 11 freebies won't always be that good of a deal for customers, because Unity cannot lose money with it (maybe they just take 0-5% on them and the store seller reduces his asking price significantly because he gets many more "free" sales than he would get normal sales (all paid by the $19/m)).

Edit: also all people taking it can probably not get a refund to downgrade to Personal. So anybody that would qualify for Personal but now uses Level 11 is a win for Unity bottom line.

 

Good guesses thxfoo. I've emailed Asset Store folks to hopefully confirm.

 

$250/month OR the average of the last 3-months of sales for that asset, whichever is higher.

 

If you cancel, you keep your packages.

 

Nice

 

Depends on the numbers but sounds like an average deal to me.

Lets say you sell 30 copies a month. Now you go free for a month and get lets say 500 downloads . You now have 500 extra users to support and have potentially lost some number of customers: lets for the sake of argument you lose 30 sales to people who would have have eventually purchased. At this point we can say its break even (slightly better as you get money now rather than later).

However my numbers suggest one in ten customers require an average of three hours of support (about 18 minutes per customer on average). 500 extra customers would require around 150 hours of support.

Lets adjust for the number of customer who just get it because its free and wont ever user it (say only one quarter actually use the product) and remove the 30 that you would have eventually supported anyway. We are left with around 35 hours of extra work in order to get one month worth of income in advance. It doesn't sound terrible, but it also doesn't sound great.

 

If you go free, you're going to get a helluva lot more downloads than 500 in a month I think. I don't think I'd go for the free deal no matter what. Discounted, sure.

 

I was assuming the Level 11 downloads would be limited compared to a normal FREE asset. Less users, and also a greater portion of users who are more focused on what they are working on (if I'm working on an FPS as my full time job I'm probably not going to download a bunch of unrelated assets just because they are free).

Either way I wont be jumping in when my new assets hit the store. On the other hand it might be good for niche assets that sell less than $250 a month and/or don't require much support (e.g. textures, models, animations).

 

Yeah it's less users. But how much % less? And pro users I think are probably more likely to buy assets too (just my opinion). It goes without saying that not everyone who has pro means it's their full-time job. I couldn't guess what that percentage is though.

I think you probably *should* (add to cart and check out) a bunch of unrelated assets just because they're free, for later. Why throw away money if you might need them later? You don't have to actually download them until you want to play with them. Takes like 30 seconds to not miss out, and the featured plugins only change once a month.

 

Nice, but where did you find that info?
I assume the assets available will change periodically - if so I don't see how this is a good deal for Unity.

 

I'm also interested to know where those numbers came from. A 3 month average means it's not going to increase your income, but at the same time you're definitely increasing your user count and support load. If your asset is well established you can usually assume you'd get something comparable to your 3 month average by doing what you were already doing, which comes without increased liability. That's without considering that some of those people would have purchased it anyway, and so on.

 

They change once a month.

 

Yeah. I agree with that.

People might be inclined to purchase your other plugins at the same time though.

 

True. I can see it being a valuable marketing exercise.

 

It was discussed in the AssetStorePublishers Google group.

I think for some assets, depending on the potential support load and current performance, it may totally be worth it. a few things to keep in mind..
a) You're getting paid by Unity to have your assets promoted... (wait, what? )
b) the more "purchases" you have the higher up in the page rankings you will be...
c) the more purchases the more likely you'll get reviews/ratings...

So being in this program has a long-term benefit as well (or at least a medium-term benefit).
All that being said, I chose not to part in this with my assets. I feel being in these sales and promotion while potentially good, also has the potential to dilute your perceived value. But to each their own!

 

As far as I'm aware, all pro users have the ability to request a refund up until May 1st. I'm sure this is regardless of whether you take part in downloading these promotional assets or not. Really they have no choice but to offer refunds for those who want them, doing otherwise would poison a lot of good will and drive away some of their most supportive customers. The "Level 11" thing is a way of saying "thank you", sure, but it's also a way of enticing people to keep their licenses and smooth over relations by making them feel like they weren't completely ripped off.

 

Link?

 

It's a private group... you have to be invited...
I don't know if I have permissions or not but I'll see if I can add you.

Edit: Email invite sent to your support address

 

Thanks, got the email but it doesn't seem to be working quite right.

 

Hmmm, well sorry then. Perhaps an admin or someone can add you...?

 

There seems to be another, more hidden reward: The freebies count toward top grossing stats, which again should lead to more exposure. I saw at least three of the Level 11 freebies pushing up the charts tonight.

A Pro post filter could be an excellent idea. Here's a suggestion for the filter button look:

 

What are the pricing for pro features? or just it included in unity5 pro?

 

Included in Unity 5 Pro.

 

Hope to be included in that Pro section. Yay us Pro users!

 

There won't be a Pro section, but Pro users will be able to filter out the forum to only show topics made by Pro users.

 

Hopefully it will implemented soon. There are days I just wish to find a thread or two for short time killing while project is being built but then blood pressure goes up from all the "I want to make MMO/GTA game" or "I want to learn without the learn section" style posts in every possible section from scripting to physics and general discussion.

 

I can't get Level 11 to work. When I get to Review Your Order it says "your order was declined - please verify your information".

 

Yep, you'll get to see only the rich kids making those kinds of posts

 

Yes, you need to order 2 or 3 free items for purchasing to work. If you order just one free item, it fails every time.

 

Wow that's great to see some great packages to be free in unity pro

 

Why "Level 11"? wheres 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,7 , 8, 9, and 10!?