Might be an last minute buyout or something for the web designers to ne making that kind of sacrifice. Kr that it might be more complicated than it looks.
By the way, what’s this talk about harassment and automatic 5 stars ratings for joining an Discord server? Because I’m not the type of person who regularly uses the Marketplace unless there’s something free or useful popping up. And fhe most that I’ve seen is just the odd tech support service and the Google doc on an particular product.
The discord server I don’t know but as for the harassment, it was the worst thing about the Marketplace because many Buyers wanted to burn your product’s page, simply because they didn’t like Price or the character look funny in the photos and they did that with all my products… Epic did not remove them even do there was a supposed “Report” button but did nothing. They abuse it because the Question section was public in our products. I really hope they don’t make the same mistake again. Because they don’t ask questions… they trash your products with harassment comments.
All Questions should be sent the Seller’s Email, while Text-Reviews can be public with the condition that you need have purchase that product before leaving a Review. That’s how the AppStore handles it and the way you get rid of bullies.
Future historians of Epic will have to figure all this out. But within scope of the thread… In the past 10 years Epic grew rapidly as a corp (think Peloton-like rise and fall 
). They haven’t put enough time or resources into a desirable marketplace or a thriving forums that are universally loved by all. 
So creators basically gave up on the marketplace ages ago for validation of buyers, and outsourced the job to Discord instead (which has its own problems). But this has created a monster problem for the marketplace, as reviews & questions are completely drowned out by artificial 5-star ratings (just to get access to support). This has destroyed what should be a valuable dataset for Epic to copy over to Fab. But by not bringing over the text-based reviews as well (which would help offer insights into products at least), Epic now plans to only copy star-ratings, which are completely contaminated. The rating / reviews system can also be gamed / abused by devs with an agenda, unhappy with support, fueling a more toxic marketplace. None of this is new. Epic know the problems, but so far lack the will to fix it.
There’s just not enough humans in the loop for starters (marketplace validation team 
). AI bots are also out of control. From posting APK spam on here, to low-quality AI generated crud overrunning the marketplace… These are all signs of an unhealthy place.
All this comes because sellers on the marketplace have no easy way to verify if someone made a purchase or pirated their product.
On all other stores a seller can easily know if someone bought their product and easily communicate with the customers (to announce an update for example). This is not the case on the Marketplace.
The only way a seller has to know if someone bought their product is the key icon that appears near the username when a buyer posts a review or a question.
For this very reason, some sellers abused of the review/question sections to verify their customers and give them access to their support Discord servers. None of this would have ever happen if the marketplace had a normal system to verify purchases (because even if you can’t avoid piracy, you as seller still don’t want to provide support to pirates).
Now, at FAB to fix a mistake (not giving access to transaction IDs) they are about to make another one removing text reviews and questions. It doesn’t sound good.
I kind of disagree with this because of some security issues. Or at the very least, the insane amount of spam that’ll eventually happen.
With the pricing issue, I think that charging around $50 for an low-poly character model is somewhat fair. It might not be the best value, obviously. But it’s something that isn’t really worth commenting on because I’ve seen stuff that went up to $1,400 for an pack of 17 photoscanned props (but to be fair, someone else is selling an complete game template for the same price). And regarding the harassment, it’s kind of weird, tbh. Like, it’s something that doesn’t feels native to the marketplace but I’m kind of out of touch with this kind of stuff
I kind of assumed that such an thing would be easy to filter out? Like, the forums doesn’t get an lot of traffic outside of certain threads and the easiest way to keep track of the apk spam is by actively searching for it
Contact your colleagues who are visiting the Unreal Fest Seattle, so they can make Epic aware of this issue, in the Q&A section of FAB’s presentation, or in conversations with Epic staff.
Join the livestream and ask Epic to return text reviews & questions.
Epic must be informed that open-text reviews & questions are very important for creators, customers, and FAB’s success!
Maybe is a good thing in the end, lets not forget how the Text reviews are used to confirm people from discord for different reasons…
Epic already said:
Fab will have an integrated purchase verification solution on launch.
I disagree with the idea that Epic should completely remove text reviews only because some sellers abuse it.
Was this really the reason?
Why were the fake 5-star Discord reviews still transferred to FAB but just as stars-only reviews?
Why was the question section also removed?
It would be a bad experience for us if Amazon, eBay, Metacritic or Steam would completely remove reviews because some sellers are abusing them.
Relax, they already said text-reviews are coming. Fab hasn’t even launched.
Now question section is whole other matter. I totally support the removal of questions from our product pages. I already state the obvious reason: HARRASMENT. People didn’t ask questions, they used it to bully lower prices while trashing your products.
I’m just so glad they took out that Spot-Light from them. So, you got a question… SEND A F… EMAIL
Sympathetic to the point about harassment. But on the flip side, that means more work for you and other creators (replying to the same questions over and over again by email). And lets be honest too. Many creators hate email, forcing Discord onto buyers which is a bad move… As it just returns to the old way of outsourcing support back to Discord, same as before. Meanwhile buyers have to wait for replies which slows the whole sales process, bad for buyers & sellers.
Instead, how about a moderated FAQ, so long as it is actively moderated by creators. Epic should think about this seriously. For the Q&A section anyway (reviews should still be moderated by Epic at least). The reason that toxic social media is unstoppable, is that the big players don’t want to fix it, as it makes them too much $. But for Epic, its in their interest to fix this and get it right for Fab / Marketplace / Forums. But that takes work and Epic often seem disinterested.
Your assumption is wrong. Apple has used this strategy for years and it has resulted in clean, text-review/star rating system that everyone enjoys. All Apps have the Developer’s Email or contact website for Questions. I have 12 published Apps and probably receive 1 email every 2 weeks. It is not a Spam at all. It’s very confortable and a great/quick communication for feedback and questions.
Terrible idea. Already stated why: HARRASMENT to push down our prices. They already gonna be monitoring text-review comments. Let the questions be handled by the Seller through E-mail.
To be honest I have not seen any harassment here on asset reviews, I would be curious if you can point them out. I could totally see it on Apple store but marketplace has been mostly amicable in my experience.
Not that harassment is excusable, I just haven’t really ever seen it as a problem here compared to other online storefronts
Outside of what was posted on one of Elemento’s products, there’s hardly anything else that’s going on
Outside of what was posted on one of Elemento’s
I have not seen what was posted at him
Basically, he created an low-poly female model and is selling it for around $50. And people are just heckling him over the price and the quality of it. There’s probably more stuff that I can’t see, but I think that it might be just some kid that’s messing with him.
But again, I’m just an freeloader who drops by there for the free content that pops up, every month. But if this stuff really is commonplace, then I really don’t know what to say. Like, it mostly feels like an digital artstore if we ignore the plugins and templates, for sale.
In my personal experience, I never had just once a user using the questions to bully for lower prices.
They always just asked questions. The advantage to have it that way instead of e-mail is that a lot of people ask the same question. Having the answer publicly available saves a lot of work to the seller. Also per e-mail only the seller can answer, on the question page other people can intervene.
The question section of the MP wasn’t optimal (formatting problems, length of answer limitation, number of replies limitation), but it was already better than nothing.
Now, with its disappearance and the forum that doesn’t notify per e-mail when someone comments on the products threads, I see more and more the necessity/obligation to make a Discord to offer support to the buyers of my products.
I never said Harrasment on Reviews, I said it on the QUESTION section!. Marketplace is flooded with those. Not even you can denied them. You want some proof, look for any asset that’s “expensive” and you’ll soon see those are not questions but bully comments to trash products and force the seller to lower the price. It’s a well known dirty tactic by Dev buyers to get the asset they want.
In my case, they stopped messing with my products after they saw my prices ain’t changing cause of them. I also kept reporting and sending screenshots to banned their accounts. Lots of them are dummy accounts use for harassment, in case they get punished. They had a pretty little scheme in UE Marketplace to get the assets they wanted … now with FAB it’s gone. That’s why you see them crying here all day 
. They’re gonna have pay now $$$ 
Wrong man. The question section had the ability to remove comments you made. So when they saw that many were removed and reported. They erase their own shiitt. But don’t get it mixed up, my questions section was flooded with harrasment stuff from various accounts, not a just single guy. This is a big network of Devs that know each other for years and support one and other. So when one starts fire, the others add fuel. Then if they see Epic coming, they erase everything like it never happen.
That’s why the question section was hell and it better not exist in FAB.
Epic officially stated the removal of open-text reviews and question section:
The migration process does not migrate buyer reviews and questions