Absolutely disgusted by Marketplace refund policy

[anonymous_user_6634b661]

@SE_JonF;551706

The UE4 marketplace requires a support email address for this very reason. A seller can choose to refund you even if it is outside of the established policy, that is their prerogative. However they aren’t required to do so if your refund claim doesn’t fall within the parameters of a justifiable refund. Leaving a bad rating/comment because you aren’t able to secure a refund isn’t allowed at all. That’s pretty much extortion. The same individual I spoke of above who kept making up stories in order to get a refund did that with one of my packages, and the staff removed his rating and comment because of it’s retaliatory nature.

I also think it’s important to remember that as others have mentioned, there is no DRM on marketplace products. There has to be something to protect sellers from people who want buy a pack, move it’s contents to another folder and then request a refund. As I mentioned before, this was very common before the policy was updated, and still happens to this day (albeit harder to do). Most digital products of any nature deny refunds for this very reason. If you implement a refund policy that is easily exploitable as was the first incarnation, then you will start to see many sellers opt out of using the UE4 marketplace to sell their products. What buyers need to do is read the descriptions of products they’re interested in, check around the forums/reviews/elsewhere to see what’s being said about it, and if in doubt contact the seller. I can’t speak for others, but I am happy to answer any questions people may have about my products. I’ve even recommended other seller’s works when I know mine might not be the best fit for what the potential buyer is asking.

As previously mentioned, having the pressure on the publisher to do so outside policy will neglect the 30% Epic cut. There should be a way for the seller to tell Epic to refund the whole thing so a loss doesn’t occur, like what Unity does. This of course isn’t mandatory for the publisher to do, but most publishers would rather not make a legitimate customer angry as long as abusing the system isn’t involved. While I agree that bad apples will use the rating/review system as extortion there isn’t a marketplace around that I know of that has solved this automatically, you just have to take the good with the bad. The bad apples are generally pretty easy to report at least in the Unity marketplace just hit the report button and the staff will review what information you have supplied them with. For everyone else that isn’t abusing the system, if you aren’t satisfied leaving star reviews and specific comments is one of the most critical things in a healthy marketplace.

As far as the official policy that doesn’t include a publisher volunteering a refund, yes of course anything with source has to have a no refund policy once downloaded. Accidental double purchases, and other out-liers I can understand and it would be nice to have Epic provide a system of invoice checking and a status to see if the user has downloaded and what versions which could help, similar to what Unity does.