@Unreal_Josh Would you care to make another statement as to why such a drastic decision was made that benefits no one, really no one? Neither the customers, nor the sellers, nor Epic Games itself has any advantage from this strange decision. Thanks.
7 Likes
@Unreal_Josh All the reviews with a # in them should be purged, now you just removed the comments on reviews which leaves products with only verify reviews(a Discord name for example Test#1234 as you can see with a # in it) which makes that product seem good even though it might not actually be.
7 Likes
Canāt Epic test the new system in a test site and, when ready, just do the migration on the fly, without leaving months without the previous system?
3 Likes
This is ridiculousā¦
As a seller, those reviews and questions help me show customers that I am quick to support and so on. They provided a bunch of support that I didnāt have to repeat over and over with things that really werenāt my job to fix (such as how to make systems work nicely with other systems). Removing them adds so much work. Not only that but after you changed the OLD system of comments and ratings, a lot was already lost (yeah theyāve done this before -.-ā¦). If you are going to remove the ratings on products, any older system is going to never get sales again - you are casting all old content into the void. I hope you are going to actually DO something about all those products that have zero support and such because the only way to tell taht was from the comments and now you are going to have buyers buy products without knowing their creators have been afk for years.
As a customer - this is beyond frustrating. SO MUCH TIME has been saved by reading the questions from OTHER buyers. Thereās more than a few products where the other customers are more help than the creators because you guys put in zero effort to ensure products are removed when the seller doesnāt reply.
Update the system - great. Iāve been waiting for 6 years for you guys to actually do some of the changes that the OLD marketplace staff showed a handful of us in video callsā¦ and you havenāt. But removing all the old knowledge and content is just stupid.
16 Likes
Just to put this in context to what was lost there are:
68,000 reviews
16,000 responses to these reviews
127,000 questions - 14% of which went unanswered by publishers
12 Likes
I understand your angry, But ā¦
To insult Josh and other team members, is NOT the best way to convey your thoughts.
I hope you understand, To inflict personal insult is wrong way.
10 Likes
Just noticed thisā¦
This decision really is very disappointing.
I always read the questions/reviews to make my decision whether buying or not.
Mostly the answers were very helpful.
So developers now have to answer all these questions over and over again??
Sounds stupid to me! It really is a loss for the marketplaceā¦
6 Likes
I have to agree with Six_Finger_Games on this one.
1 Like
Insanely huge kudos for this. Just wow!
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This is a decision made by people who donāt use the marketplace. Before buying any product, I verify reviews and questions to be sure the product Iām buying is of quality and works as intended. The question section always helps to quickly solve many common issues in no time without waiting for a response from the creator. As a regular customer I donāt see how this decision benefits anyone.
9 Likes
User reviews are a must-have feature, we cannot go for months without this!
I have always read the reviews before buying and made my decision based on that. Starts are not enough!
Please Epic reconsider this decision.
6 Likes
Horrible decision.
Reviews, questions, answers, feedback, etc are an integral part of any online marketplace. Out of dozens of purchased assets, Iāve not once made a purchase (other than free monthly content) without consulting reviews and author responses.
I canāt imagine Iām alone when I say that I personally will not make another purchase until this is either restored, or a history of review activity is available.
8 Likes
First of all I am happy that there is work going on the Marketplace, but I find this move of removing reviews very bad.
I would like to peacefully raise the attention of a few points:
- I learned about this marketplace change via my official discord, from buyers unhappy with this decision.
A notice with a more official statement via email would have been appreciated, at least for content creators. I donāt follow the forum and I donāt think you can expect marketplace creators to follow the forum assiduously.
-
I think reviews are one of the storeās latest problems, I donāt understand how it jumped to the top of the need to remove them suddenly without warning and without an āupdatedā version at the door.
-
Piracy cannot be defeated, it is a fairly well known thing, but it can certainly be limited or made life difficult.
The key next to a username was the only thing that could help us creators to identify who had bought the product or not so that we could help a user who legitimately bought a product and why not, also offer better loyalty with promotions or benefits.
itās marketing and I absolutely donāt see anything wrong with it, the problem is that Unreal Engine Marketplace doesnāt offer adequate tools to make it simple and fair to everyone.
This change, even if momentary, is pro-piracy.
4. As mentioned above, the unreal engine marketplace has a lot of problems, well I wouldnāt really call them āproblemsā but complications;
4.1 Marketing tools for Bundles/Packs
As a content creator I offer Single Products, Bundle & Pack, this to meet as much as possible the needs of buyers with different economic possibilities.
The fact that to make a bundle of products, previously approved and published, have to go through all the approval phases again is really tedious.
4.2 Diversification of licenses.
Something similar:
Personal - Standard License
Commercial License
Study License
This should be placed at the top of the changes to be made to the marketplace, simply because it would be convenient for everyone.
4.3 Discount marketing tools
Give us the ability to make custom discount coupons, set % discounts and stuff like that
I also use ArtStation as a assets developer, just copy that style of store for content creator tools.
EDIT: Forgotten but not least, for heavenās sake do something about the 2D AI-generated assets sold on the store.
With that said thank you for all your hard work. I love Unreal Engine and everyone work at Epic Games. Take all this feedback positively, if we āget angryā (with respect) itās because we care 
13 Likes
Good to know that youre working on improvements to the marketplace.
I recommend adding the following features
- a method for sellers to check whether someone who requests support, has truly bought the product.
- a method for sellers to change or request a change to the product url, for evolving products whose scope and title has changed.
- a way to provide information or hyperlinks only to customers who have bought the product (this can be used to permit entry to Discord Server Customer-only Channels or a password for accessing a customer-only download area)
1 Like
Strange idea removing review and questions.
I always read the review before purchasing a product. About question they are a fast way to get in tpouch with the seller and fix problems. Angain: why you have removed?
As feedback.
Seller should be imposed to specify in the page of the product - because this never happen and it is an issue of the buyer - if a product is for seat or not.
3 Likes
the part about ālicenseā i will strong disagree this is one of the things i true hate from daz marketplace, because it means which i must āpay 2 timesā for the product if i want it to make what i want, have ālicensesā only make things worse, because it limits on how the customer can use it and force the user pr āpay moreā, because if i want to make a "gameā i must pay a āgame licenseā for the product not just the product regular price and it is with again āall due respectā disturbing and disrespectfull with the customers forcing then to pay 2 times for the product or make the product even more expensive and it somehow go against unreal rules since it say which aslong iām using inside unreal i can use at any way i want and not being limited only by a or b, ofcourse some product where naturally designated to be used on some specific cases like some products which for games can be too demanding in specs but still open the option and not being forced to "only use for that because āmy licence only allow thatā.
really horrible thing.
5 Likes
I third this. Itās incredibly frustrating, especially without the heads up. Now the expectation is solely email support, which is honestly horrible. I get 100ās of emails a day from multiple platforms so this is just going to make it all the more difficult to sort through my main business email. Itās absurd really.
8 Likes
forum already exist, they are linked with same epic account as the store. we already know that forums offer more easily searchable format and more structured for discussion.
So for every marketplace asset, generate two forum threads for it - one for reviews, one for questions. Reviews is read only unless youāve purchased the asset.
just throwing idea out there, iām sure thereās already a plan. But seems wasteful to make all these bespoke systems when forums is center of the online community and better than anything else.
also, i guess iām pretty new to software dev, but isnāt it a general no-no to remove something before you have a verified replacement ready to go?
4 Likes
Iām sorry but this terrible. Weāve been building reviews and answering questions for years and that shouldnāt be irretrievably lost.
As a example, I replied to over 180 question on a single product, and several users commented that one of the reasons they purchased the product was the fact that they saw 180/180 questions replied to. In addition, replies to 1-star bad reviews help mitigate the damage that āreview blackmailersā do (as potential buyers will read the replies and understand that the user was not being genuine) but now we only have the review scores and none of the replies: the worst of all worlds.
Now we have a saturated marketplace with no analytics whatsoever, with no ability to reach out to our customers, and one of the few things we could control (questions and replies to reviews) is also gone. It is as though Epic is trying to make the marketplace as bad as it can for buyers and sellers alike.
I donāt mean to be disrespectful, I imagine that managing such a huge online store must be quite the challenge, but these unexpected and un-appealable unilateral changes do impact the income of thousands of sellers with very little ability to react.
I hope the future changes are for the best, I was very excited by last saleās coupon. Coupons would would be a wonderful feature if we can just sort these other issues (questions, reviews, etc.) as well.
11 Likes
