Since Epic Games don’t do jack to prevent piracy only way of authenticating legitimate customers is the 
key icon on the questions page. It also helps the users with similar problems. I got over 100 5 star reviews and answered over 1000 questions now it’s all gone… Maybe it’s time for me to leave the marketplace too. Someone decided to throw all my hard work into the garbage and as a creator I got no power. This must be the worst decision Epic Games ever made.
20 Likes
Might be a good idea to solicit feedback from the community before making such a big change and / or at least give some warning so data can be backed up.
20 Likes
True! Also - reviews served as our promotion tool also. People could get idea if product is good or not. It will really hurts sellers! Same with questions - potential buyer can check if seller responds to questions which means product is supported. Also it was only official communication way with potential buyers.
It is like we build a store, made posters, banners, market it, getting clients trust and someone take it all down without any reason 
16 Likes
If I may also be so bold as to suggest…
Can we score products based on multiple criteria? Rather than a simple 5 star review structure, perhaps something similar to the “Ebay” way, where you give a rating out of 5 stars for (in our case):
Product Quality
Support Quality
Update Quality
The Product quality can be tied only to the product, and the Support/Update quality can be tied to the seller account, therefore allowing people to gauge the support/update support from the seller regardless of which product of theirs you’re currently considering.
11 Likes
This is not a good idea.
9 Likes
Stretch conspiracy theory:
Sudden removal for interim has something to do with Orca Games Full Animations Bundle, which is the current FFTM (Free for the month), getting caught stealing animations, and people putting up warnings via reviews and questions all over the page.
`
`UE developers, be
—
aware: current set of free content of the month on @UnrealEngine
Marketplace contains a bundle that has animations lifted from Mixamo
and other UE asset developers. Here are few comparisons. I really hope
Epic Games will investigate this. pic.twitter.com/EqZtTFhOfQ
Vladislav Zharkov(@_vladislavzh) January
4, 2023
I hope it’s just coincidence, but it would be funny if the sudden removal without keeping up the legacy system for interim is because of this gaining traction. 
4 Likes
Why did you make a contradictory statement, and also KILL your market in a way that hurts sellers and customers? We are paying $$$$$ for assets and you are not taking our business seriously!
Have you learned nothing from the past - all the times you switched forums = broken links when we search for old answers. So now you’ve broken/removed old answers and reviews which provided quick/important information to BUYERS.
What part do you not understand? - you cannot be a marketplace that gives timed sales, but then make it SLOW to find answers for buyers to determine to purchase or not. Who made the choice to destroy the answers Knowledge base on each asset? I want that person to:
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Pick an imagery asset goal you want, e.g. something with [Components], and you have a [spending limit] - so you have to pick the best asset.
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Then Click thru 80 - 100 pages of “on sale items for 5 days” and see if you can get an “answer” of if the asset has “Components” without being able to read the past ANSWERS/REVIEWS.
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I.e. put yourselves in our shoes before you waste our time by taking away knowledge, yet still having timed sales.
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I spent hundreds of $$$ on assets to make something - to save me time. Sellers also are dependent on sales. We have a right to complain when you arbitrarily destroy fair business practices with no vote or feedback, and we want you to address these issues.
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You are a billion dollar company, how can you have an subpar market?
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You should have at least done a transition phase, and warned us, so we can go screenshot Answers/reviews to assets we already bought/in our wishlist. This information is valuable to use and you don’t seem to understand wasted time = our wasted money.
14 Likes
The only way to verify that they own the asset was the key icon left by comment or review, e-mails don’t allow that; anyone can edit/photoshop a receipt. Anyone that pirates/steals your asset can still e-mail you.
I always gave them the option to leave either comment or rating and never forced to rate it good or bad (Someone rating 1 star will still get them verified). So, how is it ‘fake’?
All this does is get people that are fine with the asset(The silent majority) to communicate and voice their opinions that would of otherwise stayed silent.
4 Likes
Whoever at Epic Games who signed off on this should be fired. Shame on you Epic Games for removing knowledge. I’d expect this from EA but not Epic Games of all Places. Shame
11 Likes
As a new seller, with 3 5-star reviews and a couple of valid questions I find that losing these could hurt my product a lot. Also I had to put in some effort to gather these few, but very meaningful reviews from people who received support to a point where they felt comfortable writing those down.
I really truly hope you reconsider the idea of erasing the previous reviews and questions and migrate them into whatever new system you are building.
12 Likes
This is a really bad idea, Many communities will be affected by this disastrous decision, Just disappointed @Unreal_Josh
3 Likes
This was a horrible idea. I was unaware of this change as it happened without notice or warning, I only came across this announcement by searching for it manually. As a buyer, it drastically hindered my experience and knowledge to purchase many assets I was browsing. If you are in the midst of implementing a new system to replace reviews and questions, why not replace it when the new systems are ready? Why remove knowledge and systems in place before the new systems are ready to replace them?
9 Likes
You could have left it as is while you work on a solution.
8 Likes
I don’t know who made this decision and why, (what caused this decision)
But from my point of view and from the point of view of all my friends, this is fundamentally a wrong decision, it interrupts the >EASY< contact between the seller and the buyer, this is a step back for the marketplace and for us as a seller too, as well as a headache for the buyer.
many data, many good answers and questions about various Assets is lost.
I am very sad to hear this
9 Likes
my epic games Unreal engine 5 <3 . thank you future 2023 
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.
22 Likes
Firstly, it is great to hear that you are planning major improvements and have put a dedicated team on it. However, instantly removing all questions and written reviews without any warning is frankly outrageous. I hope this is just an issue with the wording of your post and that you are at least planning to bring them back as legacy reviews/questions as you have before.
If your intention was to tackle the problem of asset creators abusing the review system for verification, then at least in the short term it has the opposite effect. I have spent years improving my assets and providing customer support, which has resulted in slow but steady organic reviews to my assets. With all written reviews being removed, potential customers can no longer read the detailed and thought out reviews written by developers who have spent many hours using my assets, and have no way of distinguishing them from a verification review with a discord tag on another asset.
This change actually actively rewards asset creators who have used less ethical approaches to garnering reviews over the last years and punishes those who have gotten them the hard way.
On a personal note, creating quality assets is something I take great pride in, and reading through the reviews for my assets has actually helped me get through some tough times. Having them all gone suddenly without even having the opportunity to make copies is quite upsetting.
At a minimum you should bring back the reviews and questions for a couple of weeks so that creators can take copies and make use of the questions to build their own FAQs and the like.
I hope this has all mostly been a miscommunication and you have plans to bring the old reviews and questions back in some new form.
22 Likes
This is so unexpected and frankly infuriating. Both as a seller and buyer of assets in the marketplace, the questions and reviews tab helped distinguish who were genuine dependable sellers and who weren’t. I published my product back in 2018, let it organically rake up reviews and then at some point Epic decided to reset the review system at the time. Fast forward to a few years, and now it is repeating again!
As mentioned by the above poster, this action of removing/resetting the reviews and removing the questions tab will only benefit those who thrived on unethical means, meanwhile genuine sellers who organically grew their reputation gets punished.
If you wanted to tackle the verification spam issue, all you had to do was give us sellers a more detailed analytics and info about our buyers. The moment you give us that, nobody has any justification to spam reviews and questions for verification. I hope this gets reversed, as most devs aren’t happy with this.
14 Likes
Feature request and Repetition to not destroy Question/knowledge base on each page.
Request:
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Give us 1 more icon next to the Like icon (heart), which displays in the main grid list (search results), and the page for each asset.
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Make this icon a 3 way toggle: of Thumbs up, Thumbs down, and blank (no vote).
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Make this icon display Private per user account - it is not meant to give any public vote on the asset, nor for the seller to see and feel bad – but merely for us to make a personal account note about an asset.
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Purpose: when I go thru 100 assets, I like to keep track of what I want, but not enough to put on my wishlist (gets too cluttered), or know that I don’t want (because it’s for the wrong engine, or seller answered a question to confirm I cant use the asset).
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So giving us an easy way to indicate a self-note per asset, helps buyers and timed sales.
Re-petition to not delete prior questions/reviews:
- I did more thinking after looking at assets, and again experiencing loss. Thus without my idea above, I also used questions to remember that I already looked at an asset (researched his doc or watched his vids = time spent), already got my questions answered (that were not in the product description), and/or saw a review that helped me decide not to buy, or why I have it on my wishlist.
- Thus for these additional reasons, the removal of the prior knowledge is unfair business practices, and you should reconsider.
- If a reason for the destruction was related to [Discord approval posts] (not a question nor review), and if your team doesn’t have the hours to manually delete those - then how about during the transition phase:
- You restore all reviews/questions by default, and
- Allow the community to use a new flag icon, or new flag drop-list reason: [Discord verifications] only.
- Then your employees can manually confirm to delete [Discord verification posts], or use AI to detect and delete if the post was [Discord related].
- This flagging will not count against a seller/asset - it is just for the community to tag a [trash post], for you to pickup and delete. (This is assuming this was a reason for the answer deletion, and thus giving the community a way to help you not destroy us 100%.)
- Thank you.
1 Like
Hello!
Yep thats not a good idea. A part from lots of info that was currently on review&questions page, this is a bold move. Please keep all reviews and questions on each product page. A solid ammount of hours were poured in there by customers and sellers alike. Please, UNDO!
Thanks!
16 Likes