I appreciate the fact that you post here. We all do.
Currently the new seller portal is going to address many of our issues so there’s less to complain about. But there are a few debatable issues.
[HR][/HR]
A) Title of this thread says “Dear Epic, Please Update Marketplace Products”. Updating existing files is a critical act for sellers. Marketplace had set to achieve a 1 week response time by the end of August, that didn’t happen. But even then 1 week wait is too long for updating existing files. So my question is this, (according to the staff) why updating files is still going to be kept manual even after the new seller portal is released?
B) The review process, if is going to remain manual (which is the intention according to the staff), is so far the greatest motivation killer UE4 Marketplace has ever seen as it’s plagued by macro and micro inconsistencies. Here are some examples the seller community experiences very frequently:
**1. **Submissions get lost. After months wait people ask about it and then they’re asked to submit again. We really don’t know how a submission is lost though given there’s a confirmation email right after submission.
**2. **Apart from Automation, are you aware that some other aspects of the Marketplace are also pretty disastrous?
For example the Submission-Guidelines are designed by preference, not professionalism.
For instance our projects are required to have a file/folder structure that kills the organization and fast access. The required structure is even COMPLETELY against the file/folder structure that’s being used internally by Epic Games itself. Here’sa project rejected while having the same standard structure as Epic’s internal projects. There are lots of submissions rejected for false submission-guidelines.
**3. **There is no order in the submission reviews. It’s clearly not First In First Out process.
**4. **Review length take up to an infinite amount of time longer than the time spent to create the product itself.
5. Lack of communication - Please take a look at Creator’s Hub, the place is abandoned. We really need better communication between sellers and staff. A few posts per day isn’t really going to hurt anyone. But if you look, I think thisis the last time we had a conversation with staff. Thread belongs to July 31st.
Point being, while you’re at it, please try to free us from such problems as well. Most of the issues here need no large $$$ investments or tons of man hours.
[HR][/HR]
Also most of the issues just need a simple understanding. For instance, Epic’s PBR documentation says that non-metallic materials should have nothing connected to Metallic pin so that’s what people naturally follow. But since Marketplace’s existence until a couple weeks ago staff continuously rejectedprojects that had any materials that had no 0 connected to Metallic pin (which is wrong and against the documentation). It took us +2 years of arguing until staff finally dropped this. Like I said, guidelines are designed based on preference, not professionalism and thisneeds to change.
[HR][/HR]
Well you might not be kept in the loop but the lack of trust has caused a great deal of disappointment among the sellers community so far. Actually we’ve had some features available since long time ago, but locked on us for what it seems precisely “lack of trust”.
For instance I can refer to the “Price” field that’s been there since many months ago but intentionally locked on us to prevent us from raising or lowering our prices at will.
If I want to bring another example, prior to the recent upgrade we were disallowed to update our own thread titles, staff specifically mentioned that this was to prevent abuse. We seriously hope they’re not gonna block that feature again.
If I want to bring a third example it’s the refund policy where we’re disallowed to be in charge of processing refunds on our own. Not to mention that we’re currently getting zero email notification every time there’s a refund on our products.
If I want to bring a fourth example it’s that staff refuse to talk to us about the “Fraudulent Purchase Detection” process. They refund such purchases and claim to disable those accounts before our files are downloaded but there’s been several cases proving there’s nothing preventing them from downloading the content along with getting a refund. But still nobody let us know what’s actually happening behind the scenes with such cases.
I don’t think sellers here are stalking for an opportunity to break a rule or rip people off. That line of thinking is something that needs to change.
[HR][/HR]
These are just issues from the back of my mind. There are far too many issues to deal with. From the bottom of my heart, we as a community appreciate every second of the time staff are putting towards making this a better platform, but in all honesty, most of the issues originate from their lack of actual development experience within UE4 and general online store management experience. Everything continuously collapsed after Jon Jones’ contract came to an end.
[HR][/HR]
Anyways, all super excited to see you actually reading and posting.
We all hope for a better future, looking forward to see that getting started with the new seller portal.
Cheers.