Josh - This is a very disappointing development and - I want to highlight again the really important point hamsterPL and others have made re question support. It would be invaluable if Epic could restore these questions and answers - even if just to a “Legacy questions” tab/temporarily for sellers to reference in their own FAQs whilst you put in the new system.
Although there was a lot of noise in the questions / reviews - the loss of access to this information deletes a huge amount of good developer FAQ support /clarification which is important to making a good purchase.
Examples of key information that can be found reading through the Q&A / Reviews:
- Product limitations - so you don’t buy a product expecting x and then discovering it doesn’t work. For example - has the developer tested it with VR? Does the product replicate listen, dedicated or both? Will older / newer engine versions be supported in future?
- Common installation challenges - Rather than a developer having to respond to emails from every buyer, they could interact with one question and we all see the answer quickly - e.g. Are there certain experimental engine elements that people forget to activate when they say the product is “broken” and review bomb it?(so we can disregard some negative feedback)
- As HamsterPL mentioned - Developer support style. Are they responsive? Patient? Frustrated? Reading their responses you can get a good sense as to whether they actively can help with technical issues around their product - or if it is more “as is” - where it is for the user to use it as a springboard to move forward on their own.
- Similar looking products - Clarification from the developer on why they “rereleased” their product (e.g. moving from blueprints only to a full plugin, or releasing a new version with substantially different features)
- Product “weight” - Is this a heavyweight project that requires an intense machine, or is it optimized for mobile / VR?
- Product withdrawal - Why did a product disappear from the market? It is very worrying to see a product withdrawn with no notification from epic or the seller. Was it copyright infringing? Did it fail to meet epic standards? Or was it just the seller deciding to sunset the product as they are working on other endeavors / features were made redundant with new engine versions? You can get some of that clarity by going back to legacy questions and answers.
Q&A isn’t a perfect system, and improvement is great - but I think potentially shutting it all down risks losing out on a lot of good information. Yes a lot of this could go in the product description - but it isn’t there at the moment - which is why the questions are so useful.