Quality control is lacking on the current marketplace. There’s often no way of telling wether a product was made by a professional or made as a learning project before you bought it and inspect the assets / code. The prices of course not reflect quality. Marketplace service such as the refund policy and perhaps improved quality control could avoid damages to trust with serious sellers and buyers. Buyer behavior is complex but if you work on any serious project then you simply don’t wat to waste time on testing out 20 10 dollar plugins if you could get one profesionally made right away. Worst case you simply can’t tell who to contact on the marketplace and decide to make your own copycat product, reinventing the wheel. As a developer it hurts to see how much time is lost when people reinvent things. There should be at least the option to request rapports on sellers (payment behavior, reputation, product quality tests). I could talk about real value all day but this post is getting lengthy.
Yes definitely, I’ve heard there are quite some pirates who even dare to ask for customer support.
Well, best we can hope for is that the voice of the community is heard by EPIC. Even though more than often there’s no sign of life, the community is active and we can make whatever we want to make. If the marketplace doesn’t work out there’s plenty of other options.