"Fab will not support open-text reviews or questions sections"

Come on Epic! You can make smarter decisions for the user experience AND the business.

I’m quite confident, that in an A/B test, sales will go up and refund rates will go down if you have the text-ratings and Q&A sections available again. Make your management aware, that they need to A/B test such a change in a controlled and isolated way to actually see the effects on the business of the sellers and the marketplace. Removing the text reviews whilst introducing a new marketplace is not an isolated test.

My hypothesis is, that customers are less willing to buy an asset without text-reviews since they contain info on the REAL compatibility with latest versions and known issues, solutions for certain issues and they provide the most important thing which is CONTEXT on each rating. Yes! We buyers are smart enough to distinguish between useless ratings and those that are valuable.
Ratings are an essential part of a marketplace. A big part of Amazon’s market dominance comes from having so many product ratings that you can scan & read through to help you make a dedicated buying decision. Don’t you think that they, as the most profit oriented company would have removed text ratings a looong time ago if they would financially benefit from that? Every other major marketplace uses ratings + comments in combination as well. If you think you have any evidence that it has a positive effect to get rid of the comments and only show the rating, I suggest you double and tripple check that data since everyone else on the market seems to say sth completely different.

Dear EPIC staff who is managing the forums, please make the management who made this decision, aware of this and other threads, clearly show them what the community thinks about their decision and educate them about A/B testing. They are ruining and integral part of the user experience for buyers and sellers and also affecting their sales!

Test it & bring back the text ratings & Q&A section. Thank you.

8 Likes

Your contributions to this thread are not only highly unprofessional but also unhelpful. Being rude to other sellers and sharing conspirancy theories won’t help anyone.

Since you clip your quotations in a way that hide the full context, here is the complete sentence for anyone else reading this posts:

"The review text section was key to gather feedback, sellers could also respond clients that needed help to orient them on what to do or where to open a support ticket to solve any issues.

But now, unhappy clients are must likely to just drop a 1 star rating and NEVER get in touch with the seller to inform what is the problem"

I’ve been making a living of selling game assets for 6 years now, I’ve only got so far by adapting overtime and providing good client support.

Situations in which clients leave a negative review and never get in touch are rare, but they do happen from time to time (unfurtunately).

The most affected pleople by the review system downgrade, was the professional and responsible sellers that provide good support and the marketplace clients which are now in the dark regarding the sellers reputation.

A final bit of advice kid, being professional and polite to overyone is the first step to build a good reputation. Being rude tells more about yourself than about the other person, it only negatively affects your reputation in the long run.

12 Likes

That’s false. I support Epic decision on removal of reviews and questions. If they ever change something… I would support text-review (purchase required) but never public Q/A. You have a question, send an Email.

Sure son. My advice to you: stop crying, adapt and move on.

Agree 100%. Epic should migrate ALL information, including the aforementioned text Reviews and Questions. It should also migrate: actual release date (not when the asset was migrated), and auto-migrate assets that were purchased but abandoned in the Unreal Marketplace. Some descriptions are less complete in the Fab version versus the Unreal Marketplace version (the author’s fault, yes), but Epic never should have relied on the author’s initiative to migrate to Fab in the first place. All the data is readily available, why should the customer suffer?

8 Likes

I have to respectfully disagree.

Questions are useful not only in guaging how the seller is engaged with their customers (a very important aspect in determining a purchase decision), but also provide useful information ESPECIALLY in cases where the seller isn’t responsive. I can personally attest that other people’s responses in the Question section has been very helpful.

The majority of the questions I’ve read and posted are sincere and written as intended, although I agree that anything can be abused.

But while bullying, harassment, using questions/reviews for Discord verification are all undesirable, let’s PLEASE not throw out the baby with the bath water!

8 Likes

I’m all in with Questions as long as we control it. That means, having a public Q/A section for each product, the Q/A offering popular questions with answers that only the Seller can edit at any time. The main feature: That Customers cannot ask direct questions, only see the posted Q/A. This helps avoid bullies and cheap Devs trashing products to lower prices.

If the Customer doesn’t see his/her question, they can send an Email. Problem solve, everyones happy.

Questions are not necessarily helpful, What I need before I purchase anything again are reviews from verified buyers/replies from Dev. That part is not optional.

Except this fails when the email isn’t responded to, or the seller responds in a rude, unhelpful way, which does happen. That’s when the community comes to the rescue and shares their insights/solutions to the questions being posted. Not a perfect situation to be sure, but far better than nothing, unless Epic allows refunds for poor or nonexistent customer support.

Again, I agree that reviews and questions can be abused and I realize this may have stung you in the past. Let me just say that the solution to abusive speech is not less or even censored speech, but MORE free speech.

Its obvious that these sections were immensely useful, otherwise there wouldn’t be a clamor for them. I wish I could cite the numerous examples of this, but alas it is impossible to do so with the Unreal Marketplace, er…Fab, in its current muted state.

3 Likes

The lack of professionalism is extremely unwelcome.

3 Likes

The only reason they clamor (cry) for Questions is because it allowed them to get cheap products and bend the system. Now they can’t. They’re stuck with high prices and won’t spend a dime. So let them :sob:.

I do support text-reviews after purchase. I believe they will add them later on.

Don’t. Feed. The. Trolls. They generally aren’t there to be helpful or add to the conversation. They aren’t professional. And they certainly don’t understand the needs of others for whom they have no compassion.

8 Likes

Questions are helpful. I’ve asked them before making a purchase based upon the answers. I’ve read them to see how responsive the seller is. I also find useful information there that was left out of the description and not included in reviews. I need both.

3 Likes

Well… you get none. Troll on that

“Cry…because it allowed them to get cheap products”?

“Troll on that”?

Well, this exchange already gives me an impression of how you would treat ME as a customer. You can do a quick search on YouTube with my handle “Jet Scalawag” and you will see that I have been an active buyer on the Unreal Marketplace and have purchased MANY premium products: Space Frontier Stations & Ships ($159.99), Sci-Fi Vol.3 Flyable Starfighters Constructor ($159.99), Space Creator ($129.99) just to name a few, all of which exeed the $99 maximum you have on your own Fab page. I certainly hope you aren’t alluding that I bent the system to get cheap products and “won’t spend a dime”.

I see that you also have spaceships on your Fab page that I might be interested in. Please know, that I utilize ALL information in making a purchase decision – Demos, YouTube/Soundcloud samples, Reviews, Questions, and now interestingly, FORUMS.

I won’t engage here with you again, have a nice day.

2 Likes

So, you think threatening people with money is OK? :man_facepalming:t2::roll_eyes:. Keep it and pay your rent.

This is just lazy. Epic should SERIOUSLY reconsider reinstating what so many consider to be valuable resources. BOTH text reviews and questions help the customer evaluate both the product (short term) and the seller (long term).

At least one developer (bless his soul) recognized this and made his written reviews accessible via Google Sheets. Sure, there’s no way to tell if they’re valid or not, but it’s a novel solution and I love customer-oriented sellers (and you should too). Its perhaps no coincidence that I bought a few of his products in the past, and look forward to confidently purchasing more in the future.

Check out “Hyper Outliner and Symbol System V2” by Hyper to see what I’m talking about:
https://www.fab.com/listings/640d4c6c-4142-419f-804e-91a8efd61e84

The argument that text reviews/questions can be misused for Discord verification and seller abuse doesn’t hold water. If anything, it certainly tells me that the seller has pretty shady customer support, or is incapable of listening to criticism. It tells me to stay away from the seller, which in itself is pretty useful!

Smart buyers know how to sift through the information to come to a sound buying decision. They utilize ALL information available: descriptions, pictures, demos, videos, audio clips, reviews, and q&a, and even forums (lol).

Unreal assets can be expensive, many costing upwards of $100. To deny customers the right to make informed buying decisions, especially when the information was readily available on the old Unreal Marketplace is a HUGE letdown.

Do better, Epic.

3 Likes

I still can’t see why people can’t just use these forums for that kind of stuff. After all, there’s an board for the marketplace (not this one)

Hello ScamBot45,

Just giving my opinion on this issue, hope I don’t come across as rude or anything.

Anyway, I suppose that you CAN use forums, of course. Or Google. Or YouTube. Even Reddit, or what have you. In fact, say if you want to buy a $149+ product, I believe you should do diligent research before committing to anything.

But, lets say, if you want to buy an Amazon product, it makes sense to check out the Amazon reviews first, especially with the “verified purchase” mechanic for writing reviews. Reviews from other sources certainly have their value and their place, but their veracity is certainly not unassailable.

I feel that information pertinent to the product should be made closest to the point of sale, which is in this case Fab, previously the Unreal Marketplace. Check out other sources if you will, but the first point (and I would argue the BEST point, the most information-dense point) of reference should always be the product page.

Now the questions section allows users not only to obtain solutions to their issues, but also to gauge the seller’s readiness (or even willingness) to support their own product. Red flags are triteness, or even rudeness, or even stark silence.

If a seller is unwilling to deal with issues on a public Q&A board, how much less will they be active in email? And good luck obtaining support from them in third-party forums!

Customer support is extremely important, especially in the highly technical, highly specialized world of Unreal Engine development. I’m just a solo developer, I need more help, not less.

Again, all this information (solving product issues and gauging customer support readiness) could probably be gleaned from a myriad of other sources – even forums – but the reasonable expectation is that it be found on the Fab product page FIRST.

3 Likes

Well, that is an fair point. After all, you wouldn’t believe the insane amount of shovelware that pops up on another storefront and the odd review that usually spares my time with installing it.

It’s just that out of all of the alternatives to dealing with the lack of customer feedback, I’m not an fan of emailing people or joining another Discord server.

But as far as Fab goes, it can easily get an lot worse, though.