Let's talk ASSETS FLIPPERS , should Asset store publishers stop including Demo scenes ?

But I wasn't done complaaaiiinnniiinnnggg

 

Well it's also a little bit of double standards, if an indie kitted out with M4K packs gamers would shout asset flip.. Quite a bit of Witcher 3's assets didn't look that different from said packs, but it's fine for them..

I agree refunds shifted the tide, doesn't mean some gamers don't have a sour taste in their mouths and are less willing to try out new stuff.. Ultimatley though it doesn't really matter, there's plenty of dev's making great games instead of always focusing on the negative more support should go towards promising projects (others might eventually catch on hard work is where the money is).. That's one thing I like about Amazon / Epic, do well and they have the marketing prowess to give your game a good push..

Which is cool within itself.

 

Eh. Dunno.

I mean I don't care about Asset Flippers, but I'm all for some form of curation. Or better algorithms? The current ones on Steam are not that great.

I mean refunds are cool and all, but Google Play has refunds for quite a while now and it's not a great marketplace.

 

The real problem today isn't the asset flips.

The real problem today is there are too many good titles.

I use steam pretty regularly, my problem as a consumer is that there are just too many good looking games. As a gamer, you really will never have to leave your favorite niche ever again.

 

And yet, I've rarely bought any of the games Steam suggests to me.

 

I don't know, I seem to be getting decent suggestion from discovery queue, aside from valve stubbornly presenting me VR titles (I have no VR headset). I think if you use suggestion queue regularly, play stuff and add things to your wishlist it sorta tunes to your preferences.

The problem is finding time to play all that stuff.

 

At first it suggested games I already had. I think they fixed that. Now it's mostly suggestions based on ONE tag (mostly useless) or what's popular (useless AND insulting). Occasionally it'll show me something interesting, but it's getting rare.

 

Yeah but it's not done, because as long as this hype about asset flipping is going on, Unity is going to continue to be denigrated and eschewed by gamers, and it affects all of us. I get most of my revenue from contracts, so I don't tend to feel much if any backlash from this but my clients certainly will. And that will affect me and my aspirations, when I'm trying to market one of my passion projects I certainly won't tell people what engine it's made with.

I first came here because Unity empowered me to quit my dead-end job and become a full-time game developer. Without it, I wouldn't have a chance. Unreal isn't performant on anything but a high-end gaming rig and I want to keep making web games anyways. It's important that we get this right and do something as a community to improve Unity's reputation. Perhaps if you make a game with Unity and it does well, say 100k+ installs, you let the audience know it was made with Unity after the fact. If enough of us do this, it will have a restorative effect.

 

If the "Made with Unity" splash screen is affecting your business, you should get Unity Plus (or Pro) instead of Unity Personal/Free.

 

How do I know that it is important to get this right? We'd need some way to measure or estimate how many sales this phenomenon is costing, and I dont know how to do that. I would kinda presume that game market saturation, poor discovery on asset stores, and more general difficulties trying to stand out from the crowd are far bigger issues facing developers than this stuff. But thats another data-free presumption on my part, so I dont know, but from what I've seen so far this stuff is all very vague and its not clear how much of a problem it really is.

I know issues with the Unity brand can rub off on other people but I really think it's up to Unity to lead the way with any attempts to fix that stuff - if its a problem worth fixing then its worth them throwing some money at the problem. Maybe they are used to the situation and in a funny sort of way try to profit from it - if the brand is seen as a negative then it encourages more people to pay for a version of unity that lets them hide the logo!

 

I mean, I played a lot of FTL and Steam keeps suggesting me pixel art games. Which. uhh.. I'm not playing FTL because it's pixel art. I play it because I like the game.

I don't know. These suggestion algorithms never seemed to quite work for me. I used to listen to pandora and I don't think I found any new music I liked from it. And Netflix suggestions don't work for me either. (You clicked like on "The Expanse"? Here is a list of terrible scifi films). And for those two I actually spent quite a bit of time trying to train them. And Youtube keeps suggestng me videos I already watched, or other videos from the same channel (which I don't necessarily like).

I've always had more luck finding new stuff I like by finding reviewers I can understand where they're coming from (even if our tastes don't quite match) and music stations I kind of like.

The problem is with all the art mediums being flooded with stuff, I can't possibly expect actual humans to review everything. Which leaves me either with algorithmic suggestions that don't work for me or searching blindly in a sea of products.

And yes, refunds minimize the risk and let's me give something a chance, but that whole situation still takes too much time. And Asset Flips are not a huge deal, because usually you can tell what they are by just glancing at them, but it makes my searches for stuff return a 1000 results instead of 100 results. And that makes it more tedious for me to find something I may like.

And yes, what people like is all the way subjective so I completely understand that the stores may be reluctant to play gatekeepers. One person's trash another one's treasure etc.

But requiring a minimum amount of effort somehow would be nice. Somehow.

 

Major FTL fan here. I still play it years later (this week actually, and probably tonight). That studio has my custom for keeps. Going to pick up their next game.

I don't play it for pixel art either (don't think it's as nice as it could be frankly, but it's functional).

 

There's not a single game I've bought because of the art. Not one. It sure helps if it's nice, and sometimes I can live with pixel art, but if anything I'm more likely to skip a pixel art game people aren't gushing over.

 

Well I will skip a game if I dont like the art style. What I do is use my tag top-down-shooter and thats how I search for new games, I wish we could create a tag called "zelda64-like" so we can get more games in that sub-genre

 

Didn't know zelda64-like was a genre now, and that enough people have played it to know what it means. That's not a criticism of your post, just an observation.

 

I don't see it as such. There are alot of crappy home builders that do shoddy work and anyone who looks close can tell. There are about a billion solo/indie automotive mechanics that know very little and do horid work. This does not make all home builders look bad anymore than it makes all mechanics look bad. In fact it does the opposite it makes the good ones look extra good because you have poor quality to compare it to.

This can easily be solved by taking your buisness seriously. Any person starting out in a field has to spend a little money......buy the license. Just like a mechanic or home builder will buy tools or a person starting any buisness will buy the needed things for that buisness to succeed. The only people I see the supposed image problem hurting are the people like me. People who are making a game to release but who also have a regular day job. People who cant afford to spend a ton on their hobby to avoid a slight bit of unwarranted criticism. Anyone who decided it was more than a hobby would have already subscribed and deleted the splash screen.

 

Me too. It's often suggesting stuff I've got and played elsewhere. So, good job on nailing it as something I might like to buy, but poor job on the UX because now it keeps wasting space on that stuff.

Perhaps they could use an "Already own it" button? Updates your stats as if you've purchased it, but without logging a purchase. Then it can stop wasting space while still learning about me as a customer.

That aside, though, I can't help but think that Steam has me in somewhat of a "Filter Bubble". I have a core type of games I'm into and generally Steam does a good job at recommending those. However, that's not all I play, and these days I find it really difficult to find other stuff on Steam that's strongly appealing to me. I want to use it like a discovery service, where I can find stuff I wouldn't usually play but that's awesome. What I generally instead get is it telling me about stuff I already knew about, or me leaving the "bubble" and ending up with acres and acres of other stuff that's hard to manually filter through.

 

Unity requires asset publishers to include a demo scene, even for assets where it doesn't even make much sense. I've had an asset rejected for lack of a demo scene previously.

 

Yeah, could be useful. The thing is, though…those suggestions from Steam were games I had on Steam!

 

Ahh. Well, you'd think they'd fix that!

 

I think they did, but early on it was a bit dumb

 

Some people may not be able to afford the license, or be able to buy it, and game development might be a way out of that situation. Life has been hard for me in the past, and being able to turn a profit with nothing but a crappy laptop, Unity free version, Blender, Gimp, and Internet at the library, I was able to get myself to a good place financially by turning a profit on my skills using free software. If I had to pay a licensing fee just to get people to take me seriously, I would have been homeless in a month because I could barely afford hot dogs at the time. So saying something stupid like "just buy some licenses and stuff" just shows your ignorance of business and entrepreneurship, and our society in general. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps because of Unity's free version and I personally know two other people with similar experiences. You're adding nothing of value to the conversation.

Furthermore, we are not building homes. When a contractor does a crappy job on a house, it affects just the people that live there and their immediate acquaintances. When a game developer does a crappy job, everyone on the Internet can see it and many do. In fact, it's advertised, because 'content creators' like Jimquisition directly profit from the failures of others. Since most consumers are pretty dumb when it comes to game development, they just assume that anyone who uses the same software is a hack, and don't particularly care if they're right or not.

Finally, Joe-Censored makes an excellent point as well, demo scenes must be included AND they must be of a high quality or the asset is rejected. This policy has been in place since the beginning and it makes sense - if I buy something as complex as a game system of some kind, I need to see how it works. This can only really be done through examples, with accompanying documentation and ideally an excellent tutorial video.

 

I must have struck a nerve and I'm sorry I offended you. Though I may not know much about the game industy or game dev in general I have been part of buisness building in the past. We did it with our last paycheck from a previous job and a prayer. I have been close to homeless myself and do understand that it takes an input to get an output. No one starts a serious business without expecting to spend some cash on it. Your story is touching and I do understand coming from nothing and being proud of it but I stick to the fact that it takes capitol to start a buisness 98% of the time.

Im sorry but I just don't see living in a crappy house that you spend years paying for while maintenance eats any money you have left because you bought a crappy house as being better than having to put down a $3 game because you were an uninformed consumer.

 

Yeah I don't see this nugget of philosophy bearing much fruit.

 

Does anyone here genuinely think that they could peel some assets off the store, publish a build and make decent money on Steam?

If so, then why aren't you doing it? If not, then what are we talking about it for?

 

No offense, but a good idea is to just accept that "life isn't fair" in general. Unity does not owe anything to anyone (you, me, anyone), and is under no obligation to make the engine available in the first place. Enjoy what you have access to.

If you believe that disabling logo gives you more credibility, then either look for ways to afford logo removal, try another engine, or forget about the idea completely.

 

Replace decent with "some" and yeah.

I want to be able to sleep at night? (or at day, since I don't have the most regular sleep patterns)

 

This would not happen today thanks to Steam's refund system. However, there were several really outrageous examples where that did happen about three years ago, before Steam became a much more consumer friendly environment with a pro consumer refund policy. Back then (three years ago), some people bought assets and immediately posted their game on Steam. Back then, Steam would feature every new game on the front page of the Steam store regardless of the quality, so a lot of users did get tricked. A lot of users incorrectly thought Steam was endorsing those games, when in fact Steam was merely showing new games.

One prime example was "Air Control", which included an image from Microsoft Flight Simulator and text stating "Best next gen flight simulator", when it was actually a group of demo scenes from popular asset packs. Another example would be all of the UnitZ based games that popped up that were nothing more than the demo scene from the UnitZ asset pack with no other changes. I am not going to take the time to list all of them, but let's just say there were plenty of examples of games that were just the demo scene from UnitZ. In the worst examples, some game sellers did not even post their own screenshots and videos. Some of them just used the images and video from the UnitZ page in the Unity Asset Store.

Prior to Steam adding a refund system, those asset flips did trick users. Now days, gamers can easily get a refund from Steam for games like that, so asset flips are not a danger to users like they once were.

 

So it sounds like this is a non issue now. Glad we sorted that out!

 

This boggles my mind, it's not even hard to add new content to that pack. Super lazy.

Anyways we should not crap on the other developers who can't afford Unity Pro just because a few people abused it. We are most the treatment which we give to strangers. It's easy and free for developers who use Unity and gain success with it to broadcast that fact, it benefits the entire community and does them no harm.

 

It costs $100 a game now, your game will probably only be on the front page for a day and if its crap it wont sell anyway. Not to mention with steams refund system even if someone tricked you you could still get a refund. I cant really see the big deal.

 

Nobody is trying to crap on developers. There is still a completely free version of Unity with a splash screen and two paid versions (Plus and Pro) without a splash screen.

The current strategy of placing a splash screen in the free version has helped Unity grab a massive market share. Without a splash screen in the free version, there would not really be any reason for Unity to have a free version.

 

Actually, Steam does not feature new games on the front page anymore. New games are mostly hidden from view now.

 

Right, my point is that we, as Unity developers, should let gamers know that we used Unity if our game is successful. That way, there isn't a stigma for those just starting out just because of the splash screen. That way they will be judged on the merits of their game rather than the logo at the beginning.

 

I think that unity devlopers as a whole is not obliged to do anything.

I largely see things like "Unity stigma" and "I must buy pro to look credible!" as delusions some people have. None of it really matters. Anti-unity lunatics are not your customers and can be ignored. Likewise a bad game without splash screen will still be a bad game.

 

Unity Plus and Pro users have the option to include the Unity splash screen, no splash screen, or their own splash screen. Some of them include the Unity splash screen by choice.

In my current game, I don't have any splash screen. It is not to hide anything about Unity. I personally dislike splash screens at the beginning of games. I feel like each splash screen wastes a little bit of the player's time, and I personally want to get the player into the game as fast as possible.

 

I still think unity should pay for product placement even if it was just discounted subscriptions and have the splash screen included as an advert in a select set of games they felt were good enough to warrant it.

 

I think its ridiculous that the splash screen seems to be the sole descriptor of whether a game is good or bad. That its such a huge deal people will pay thousands just to avoid having it when their game is launched.

 

It really isn't. Nobody (of any value) cares except noob developers who don't know any better, or seem to think some abstract posts on steam or comments from a Youtuber impact sales.

 

Let's not just insult people just because they have a different opinion to yours, there are some valid points even if it's ultimatley not the main issue and some succesful Unity games have paid to remove the logo.. Do you have metrics to prove or disprove your statement? Word of mouth marketing is something everyone should know can be powerful in terms of sales..

Flooded markets are never a good thing for long term viability but whether it's an asset flip a cheap knockoff clone or just a poorly made game it all shovels into the same pile really.. Through Steam metrics we can easily deduce it's had a knock on effect already.

Although personally it's not the bad games I'm concerned with, it's the slurry of good ones which makes development interesting ..

 

Sorry, by "of no value" I meant youtubers and folks who are only critics/commentators who aren't actually developers or part of the process.

As far as metrics, tons. There are a lot of studies and analytical data that show what the key drivers and factors are that influence the purchase/install of a game. (Some are a little weighted in favor of those doing purchasing the report). I've never seen one that engine/technology has any reasonable statistical impact. And certainly splash screen doesn't even rank, as that only appears after purchase/download. Depending on platform, name, ip, publisher, ratings and key art are usually highest rank. Social awareness is often high (your friends are playing). And for mobile, the app icon is almost always in the top five.

 

After this thread I just need to buy that HQ Residental house. Maybe put it inside this asset for a little variance

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/72712

 

Thanks for that, it's good to know.. This is what I like to see in these types of discussions, raw data.