Absolutely disgusted by Marketplace refund policy

Community Marketplace
42

I seem to have an opposite problem, one of my packs was refunded with no notice from Epic or the buyer to give me a to fix the situation, obviously I feel quite bummed out about it and no clue as to what was wrong with my product, so how do I fix it from happening again? Now I feel some person has managed to get the assets for free and could easily pirate them out, I have no clue who bought the pack to begin with as we do not receive the buyers details.

I think the best course of action is to first speak to the owner of the pack and give them a deadline to respond and a to fix the problem first, CC Epic in. If the pack owner does not respond or does not attempt to help you Iā€™d escalate it to Epic with your evidence.

43

There was an that caused some refunds to pop up on many sellers accounts today. Pm Stephanie Markoff for a marketplace badge so you can see the post in the private seller forum. I donā€™t know if we are allowed to post what happened publicly.

44

Thanks for the info! Iā€™ll PM her now :slight_smile:

45

There is an with the first refund free policy, since the engine is free to download, someone could easily get an expensive pack, download and export all the assets, ask for a refund, and get one. After that they could make a new account and repeat the process over and over, even if you had some sort of IP address prevention, youā€™d have to start tracking credit cards and names. From there they could easily resell or share the ā€œfreeā€ assets they ripped off. Lots of free to play games have account abuse like this.

46

only if you was spend many money in markeplace (+500$ for example), prior to ask for one refund.

47

Slightly off topic, but one thing that makes me want to dip my head in a vat of hot chicken fatā€¦and that is marketplace items that are extremely old. I purchased a pack that is still on 4.8. No updates. It should be removed from the marketplaceā€¦ Or, Epic should vet the vendor and say if you do not keep up with the product, refunds may be given.

48

Totally agree with this, especially if Epic is going for the curated marketplace approach. Things donā€™t scream high quality if things that arenā€™t being updated are still on the store.

Personally, I actually think curating the store heavily actually is worse than leaving it fairly open and that you get better quality with fewer barriers to entry (you get a lot of junk too, but any basic sorting algorithm can filter by most popular so that stuff falls to the bottom never to be seen). That being said if you are going to curate the store at least keep up with it and do it right.

49

3 days still no reply. Sent email asking to speak to a supervisor. If they expected I was the type of person who would just go quietly away, boy they were wrong. Also anyone want to name a charity I can donate the money to in the very unlikely event that they actually refund me for this pack?

50

From what i can gather you bought the pack with the intent to use in a VR project but it didnā€™t work so you requested a refund, but did the pack claim to work with VR if it did then you should definitely receive a refund, but if it didnā€™t then i dont think they will refund because its not the sellers fault that the content didnā€™t work for your purposes.

51

Well I finally got my reply. It wasnā€™t the one I hoped for but it was an answer nonetheless. I am not allowed to post that reply here but it basically offered a solution that I had already tried and failed to work. It also said that there would be no refund. Now I canā€™t post what was said to me but I can post how I replied to this email and that is below.

Hi (Name redacted),

Thank you for getting back to me with more than a generic copy and paste answer. I did follow that tutorial and even though I was able to get the (Redacted) to follow the VRPawn it would not shoot at the player and this seems to be because the way that the (Redacted) is set up it will only fire at the main character if there is a character mesh, which in a VR mesh there is not. If you had checked my purchase history you would have seen that I had bought another marketplace item that was very similar and that did indeed work. Yes it is true that the seller didnā€™t advertise that this worked in VR and at no point did I say that the seller was at fault. I can now see you are unable to see why I am so upset about all of this. I understand your need to protect the seller from having a loss when it comes to sales but the fact is if I had known beforehand that this wouldnā€™t have worked with my project then the seller would never have got that sale in the first place and since it was less than a few hours that I realized MY mistake I wrongly believed that Epic was the type of company that showed any loyalty to its customers, would see that a genuine mistake was made and refund the purchase. Its not like I had bought this item days, weeks or even months ago. I know that you can see that I have spent quite a bit of money in the past. Well I want you to know that last item will be my last purchase in the marketplace. I had planned to spend thousands over the next few years but know that your very anti consumer policies will make sure I will never spend another cent on that store and as more and more buyers realize how poorly you treat them the only people that this will hurt are the folks trying to sell stuff on the marketplace. I can see now there is no point taking this any further as I can see that you and your staff are not trained to care or show any empty towards your customers and thats not your fault, that is obviously the company policy. Thank you for your time in looking over this.

Regards.

54

Having engaging employees is always a tightrope walk. Most would want to do so in an ideal world but when you become very engaging, especially when youā€™re already short staffed, the flood gates can open and can easily become overwhelmed. Since most of the process is currently manual, I would think automation could help with some of their workload, or having a person dedicated to being the public liaison.

As far as reviews go it certainly doesnā€™t have to be video, using the normal stars and comments would be good too. Like anything else though, positive reviews just take time even if people like your product. Positive experiences you are lucky if 1 in 10 leave a rating, but negative experiences will be much more likely to do so. If your product is really exceptional though the positive reviews will certainly come given time.

55

If there are no real form of DRM then how are they going to protect the content makers from copyright? Those that mean anyone and everyone can just buy 1 assets and distribute it? Are they going to fix this?

56

Content creators own the copyright of their works. DRM is a method of ensuring that no one who obtains a product illegally can use it. In all honesty it is generally futile and only delays piracy. It ends up hurting the consumer more so than people who download content illegally. Whenever websites are found that illegally redistribute marketplace content, the Unreal Engine legal team sends take down notices. If you ever find one, donā€™t post it on the forums - instead email marketplace-support@unrealengine.com and inform them so they can handle it.

And as far as piracy is concerned, hopefully UE4 developers understand that by engaging in this it only hurts the seller and diminishes the chances the product will continue to receive support/more content follows.

57

But how can you tell if someone is using a pirated content from the marketplace?

58

Epic is able to check if a person has been granted access to the content through purchase.

59

The Unity Asset Store is the same and is a thriving marketplace and has no DRM. In general this is a non. Anything that allows you to see source code or art assets in a non embedded form at first seems like a risk, until you realize that every protection scheme really doesnā€™t stop anybody and rarely even slows them down. Whether itā€™s Blu ray, .pak files, music, etc. anything that can be obfuscated through logic can be un-obfuscated through logic.

There is no to fix. While you can almost certainly point to a torrent or pirate site for just about anything, these donā€™t really mean that they were going to be customers until they got it for free. The reality is those were never going to be customers. From a legal perspective, sure you could spend a lot of energy for little results but itā€™s better off spending that energy into making a better product.

It should be telling that Epic themselves has their own source available and isnā€™t hiding that source behind DRM.

60

If you never made an effort to contact the seller directly to get assistance with integrating the pack then i dont believe you have a right to a refund at all.

I believe that sellers should help their customers to the fullest extent in this regard.

61

Hey everyone!

Though weā€™ve discussed this specific purchase and refund with tcla75 in an email, I thought it would be good to chime in and clear up any questions anyone has about refunds and other topics brought up in this thread. Itā€™s really important to the team that we are transparent and available when needed.

REFUNDS:

Our current standard requirements for a refund generally fall into 3 categories:

-Bugs found in the products
-False advertising through descriptions, screenshots, videos, etc.
-Lack of support from the seller

If there are bugs in the product or support is needed, we try and resolve the with both parties first so that everyone comes out happy. If you arenā€™t able to reach the maker yourself for some reason (out of town, business stuff, etc.) please let us know and weā€™ll help how we can. Marketplace creators must give refunds in the event that those 3 criteria arenā€™t being met or fixed as soon as possible. We always want to provide the opportunity for the content owners to make things right by the community as a whole. If you have issues or questions regarding the process or would like to report a pack for not meeting these criteria, shoot me a private message here on the forums.

We focus first and foremost on the quality and representation of the items in the Marketplace. Because of this, we enforce the above criteria in order to keep quality high, expectations clearly defined and accountability in place.

In this particular instance, we had reached out to the creator and asked if they could help. Though it is not supported in the way that the developer intended, the creator is actively trying to make things work for them. Please let me know if there are any problems and you need help with that.

Now, we do have a policy to help in the event of a purchase that was unwanted for other reasons, but that decision comes from the seller, as we want that relationship to remain between the two parties. If they are providing support, the product quality is good and there isnā€™t false advertising, a seller can still opt to give a refund if they choose to. It happens in some cases, but not all.

TURN-AROUND:

I also see a lot of mentions in this thread about the issues regarding turn-around time for emails and responses. To all, I sincerely apologize. In response we are expanding our team size in order to have more focused points of contact and speed up the submission/curation/payment processes.

With this, weā€™re planning to be more available both in the forums and on AnswerHub to help out in multiple ways. If youā€™re experiencing issues with lengthy turn-around or lack of follow-up, please let me know here via private message.

OUT OF DATE ASSETS:

We strive to make sure all assets are compatible with the latest release build when possible. If you find out-of-date Marketplace content, please report it to m via private message here on the forums.

If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to ask :slight_smile:

62

Reading OP, it sounds like OPā€™s. I tend to read description first. If I need something for mobile VR, and description says nothing about it, I double check tris counts and whatnot (should be in the description) and if I donā€™t think it could work for my project, I contact author and ask if they have any plans releasing version for mobile VR. Usually itā€™s either simple no, or some sort of explanation about why it would (not) work on mobile or mobile VR. With all the facts given, I can make a call (right one or wrong one) and either walk away or purchase it. After that, if what I buy matches with whatā€™s advertised, but it doesnā€™t work for my project (whether out of the box or after modifications), shame on me. There is no way I can justify asking for refund.

Being an artist myself, I wouldnā€™t not give any refunds to people who canā€™t make right decision given all the facts.

64

Actually, yes, I can get a refund on the movie. I can get a refund on the Book. Not sure what world you live in, but yeah, both of those are refundable.