I need to spill my guts out!

Community Marketplace
43

As a buyer, I should be able to get a refund if I’m unhappy about the project. EPIC could do a small amount of checking in the editor/launcher to make sure I don’t use a copy of the files, but even that isn’t strictly necessary. As long as there is no additional fee to you, the seller, for a refund, then a refund doesn’t hurt you. (Unless you count your dollars the very day someone buys something, which is a bad idea – count them when they actually hit your bank account!)

Overall, worrying about the 1% of people who will serially buy-and-refund and then try to use the content anyway, loses you sales from the 99% who will happily buy most content, and ask for a refund only if they are genuinely not helped by that content. Given the refund policies of PayPal, Amazon, and the likes (even for digital goods,) I think EPIC should be on that same bandwagon, because the additional business generated by having “no risk” policies for buyers, is bigger than the cost of issuing occasional refunds. If you can only “see” the refund costs, and don’t get excited by the additional business/sales generated by the policy, then you’re not a business person, and should probably leave the business decisions to those who are. (Or you can choose not to sell at all, that’s always available, too!)

Anyway:
Naming conventions: A good thing for a lot of people.
Refunds: Overall, a good thing for the marketplace and the sellers (EPIC should probably loosen up their policies!)
“Infinite Affordable Landscapes”: They are not infinite.

44

Dunno, but i feel like some people expect personalized assets on marketplace, which would fit without any problems into your specific need for 20-100$ and its wrong approach, from my point of view. Especially price argument sounds blant, if you consider how much it cost to hire artist and how long it takes to actually get what you want.

45

When it comes to digital goods, happiness with a product has nothing to do with it. I can buy a movie on iTunes, not enjoy it, request a refund and it will be denied. Why? Because it is a digital product that has already been consumed. The same goes for marketplace content. Sellers aren’t just going to take your word that you removed the content when there’s no way to confirm that. The refund does hurt the seller, because it takes away money that they had before. When it’s paid out is irrelevant, we still lose out on money. If it’s for a legitimate reason such as a product that doesn’t work as advertised, fine. But if it isn’t, then there is no refund. This is the way the current policy works. There is plenty of information out there to make informed purchases, Epic makes sure of that with their submission guidelines. If you want more, then reach out to the seller.

Dismissing the abuse of a weak refund policy as 1% is erroneous, it was more common than you may think back when the policy offered zero protection to sellers. Do you honestly not realize that the current refund policy used by Epic is commonly used with many digital distributors? People keep citing Steam like theirs is a common policy and it isn’t. Especially since those who cite it conveniently leave out the DRM that allows them such a policy. I suggest you take your own advice about how to run a business, because many people on the outside who are attacking sellers would be singing a different tune if they were on the other side of the line and saw just what we have to deal with. If you don’t see enough information to make an informed purchase, reach out to the seller or just don’t buy it at all.

This is a good point. Many people seem to confuse Epic’s “game ready” marketplace content requirement with “make it ready for my personal game”. There is a huge difference. That is impossible to ask of any seller, and verges on freelance work which is worth plenty more than the cheap prices you see on the marketplace.

46

A town pack would presumably have a picture where you can see the town as a whole- which would showcase the single lane road. You see the single lane road, but want the buildings. You buy the pack, download it, and copy it over to another folder, before making a snarky video about how there are no two lane roads. You get a refund. You now have the building assets.

Look at how many games launch on a daily basis, and tell me that anyone can sift through all of them and catch people doing that. ‘Oh, this person is using this pack- did they steal it? Did they refund it? Did the pay for it?’. There’s no way to know.

I’ll give you that one, sure, but it is still an honor system- If even a single piece from that pack works for your game and you keep it post-refund then the seller doesn’t get paid for that work.

47

Exactly. Say your pack cost $100 and they get a refund, then use your stuff in a game. What are you going to do, hire a lawyer to sue them? What are your damages? $100…

48

I don’t have them, i stole them! (that is a difference for me)

To be honest… there will always be ___holes out there.
But should all customers be treated like they stole that stuff?

I bought multiple things from the MP, but i double and triple-check if i can really use it.
I am pretty sure that i would not buy anything expensive at the MP if i could not refund it, if it for whatever reason is not what was expected. (from the Screenshots)

Why dont we let Epic check the Games before they get shipped for assets that are from the MP, but have not been bought?
I am sure that there are not hundreds of ue4-releases every week.

I know, but how do you want to protect the sellers, and the “good” buyers from that? (actually… if someone pays 45 EUR for 475+ Assets, how many loss would he really make, IF someone would keep a few of the tracks? maybe a few EURs)
Dont get me wrong, it is NOT ok to steal stuff from the MP (and everywhere else).

Why dont we let people buy “smaller” packs isntead of a 400+ asset collection?
Some Problems can be avoided by the sellers… (people are more likely to refund a 100 eur pack, instead of a 10 eur pack.)

I actually bought something that did not work as it was advertised at the marketplace - but i did not refund it, maybe i will some day fix that myself…

I get the problem, and i am on your side, but “bad people” will always find a way - and if it is the way of directly ripping the assets out of packaged games.

That does not make it better, but you can not get rid of them without really hurting the “normal” customers. (This is why i do not buy games that need a constant internet-connection even for singleplayer. I as customer do not want to mess with that stuff, i just want to play the game that i WOULD buy if it would not have that 24/7 online-stuff for a singleplayer-game. I really can get angry about this. IF i pay for something, i dont want to be treated like that.)

EDIT: DO NOT get me wrong, piracy is a bad thing. But hurting your normal customers because of that will lead to more piracy. (that is the point i wanted to make with the always-on-singleplayer-game argument above)

49

Not quite, that would depend on where you buy from.

For the record, 5 screenshots are required for the marketplace, as well as a video (On all submissions since I submitted last year anyways).

That’s not very easy to do when your livelihood is dependent upon sales.

50

I’d be willing to bet against that 2nd statement. Though, how would we let Epic check for assets?

51

Someone should spill out some numbers about that.

How many % of People try to refund the stuff?

I have no idea of the dimensions that this Problem might have, or might not have. (i am currently assuming ~2-5%)

I know - but that still does not help with soundpacks that come with 400+ tracks and almost no previews. (but hey, at least they have a fancy picture at the MArketplace -.-)

I think there should be some test-levels with neutral lightning etc. for at least some of the screenshots.

I know that projects have some unique ids, assets could have one too, epic knows what an account has bought.
And i am pretty sure that asset-renaming, duplicating etc. can be logged somehow.
maybe assets could have a signature or something like that.
And a game can not be published until it went through “legal check”.

It would at least make it more difficult and time consuming to “steal” content.
On the other hand, it would not mess with the “good” customers. (they can still refund, and they get a “legal check” for free - sounds not THAT bad… )

In the end… this is Epics Marketplace, it is their job to get it right, because we all pay for that.
We pay the Content creators, and they pay Epic a fee (x% of the price or so), and in the end we pay Epic too, if a game creates enough revenue.

PS: I hope that no one is selling “stolen” stuff at the marketplace… (Everything that i can download via the launcher can be used for commercial projects, or did i got something wrong?)

52

Epic receives 30% of our sales revenue from the marketplace, so you can imagine the frustration after we stack on top of.

53

That was a hyperbolic example with rhetoric question…
100 bucks is nothing comparing to how much it costs to make a custom, tailored specifically for your project, asset. Keep in mind that even in case if you commissioning assets, you won’t get exactly what you want as you simply can’t specify it in so much details and with such clarity, that the other person will understand what exactly you want. This is why people hire artist in-house, so they can iterate over assets as many time as budget allows.

Sorry guys but this is just ridiculous, I have no idea how such perception of MP and digital assets appeared. 10 years ago it was almost impossible to just go and buy a generic collection of vehicle models for Archiviz, you had to budget them and outsource. Nowadays you can purchase a complete AI middleware for 200-300 bucks and people are unhappy that it doesn’t work exactly as they want in their specific project. What the hell did this industry became?

54

Because for the 20 year old game dev, this is the only reality they have ever known:

55

this is not what i meant…

You are reading stuff into it, that i did not say.

Nothing you buy will fit 100%…
But if only one of 400 assets fits… why should i keep it? (if i had no way to check how many assets would fit?)

As long as there are no trustworthy statements about the % of refunds and “stolen” content this whole discussion is difficult.

Are we whining about 5%?
Or do we whine about 50%?

How “big” is this problem?

I mean… people refunded “Firewatch?” on steam after the played it, because the playtime was below 2 hours, but it costed 20 bucks or so.

And now we talk about MP-Refunding.
As long as they do not steal the content, it should be fine. (just take that into account when you count the money you got)

This can and will happen to every game that is released on Steam too, people dont like it for whatever reason, and they refund it.

Tell me, what do you want to do against it?
Disable refunds, and people wont bother to buy stuff in the first place.
Maybe they just want to try out if it fits… i dont know.

There should be a 24h limit for a refund or so - or is this still not “strict” enough? (i know that it was like 2 weeks or so…)

56

Just don’t buy it in the first place and save everyone time and money. Let’s take people who are veterans in the industry, in area of content production and then ask sound engineers how big their sound assets collections, ask modellers how many texture packs they have, ask a programmer how much code base he accumulated over the years. These assets are suppose to be facilitators of your productive work, not a replacement for it. There are there so that programmer don’t have to get a license for Maya and learn how to model, rig and animate a character over a single weekend for your game prototype.

It’s largely irrelevant if refunded asset gets stolen or not. The problem is with the whole system, where at the end of the day, content creator have to spend his time to build a lengthy argument as to why customer claim is based on unrealistic expectations of what product is actually suppose to do. From what I understood, it’s not a rare occurrence where marketplace team doesn’t have enough qualification to dispel some of the claims themselves and they push them to content creator. With a little bit of math I can tell you that most likely it would be just cheaper to not reply anything at all and just get it refunded, just not to deal anymore with those clients. There are sellers who want to personally forbid some of their customers from purchasing any other of their products, as it cost to seller more to provide tech support to them then what seller makes from sales.

Marketplace creators are asking for a better environment and security of their work, if situation doesn’t improve they will switch shops or leave completely. It might sound bland but either agree with them or replace them, accepting the same rules by which they have to work right now.

57

I see I’m not alone in thinking the provided material, as per the guidelines, is usually not enough

I don’t think people are expecting custom assets tailored specifically for their projects. if they do then they are being unrealistic.
it’s just the notion of the assets, while still being generic, fitting technically and visually into a project. the main challenge when using marketplace assets (from any source) is visual consistency.
the assets might have nothing wrong technically or visually, but I can still be displeased with my purchase if they look out of place on my project (which was the reason behind my purchase) - something I cannot judge from screenshots or videos that use a specific lighting setup or heavy postprocess applied to them (the new Encampment Environment for example).

quick example: take any of the vegetation packages from the marketplace. now imagine you need more variety in your vegetation so you need more models. you can buy another vegetation package and unless it’s from the same author it will already be inconsistent.
in fact if you take the free Kite Demo vegetation assets and mix them with any other vegetation package it will look inconsistent. hell, even if you use SpeedTree the vegetation will be inconsistent with the Kite Demo (and remember the Kite vegetation was done with SpeedTree, but thei textures are custom made and much higher quality)

keeping visual consistency with assets from different sources requires a good eye for detail and some thorough technical inspections, something that 5 screenshots and a video usually falls short to convey.
the alternative is to modify the assets to keep the consistency together, but at some point this extra work defeats the purpose of buying assets in the first place.

58

If consistency is important to you as a developer and you understand that it’s an important value to people who are going to purchase your game. Then you have to commission those assets or develop skills good enough to extend content as good as you can or enough for your target.
You can be given as many demo materials/trials/personal tour over the vegetation assets, but if they are done by two different artists they will very rarely match anyway. Very often they don’t match even when made by the same artist at different time, as skill, tools, pipeline and artistic preferences change over time.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that we don’t need more information/materials/demo, we do, but perhaps it should be done in a more standard environment and not by content creator.

IMHO, its unrealistic to think that you can publish a quality made game with a stock assets from the marketplace without extensively customizing them.

59

there are levels and thresholds, it’s not black and white.
you can still use assets that are inconsistent, it’s a matter of how much inconsistency you’re willing to tolerate. but it’s really hard to determine if the inconsistency is acceptable just by looking at the provided material

60

I’m interested to know why some of the long time sellers are so convinced that the high refund rate seen with the earlier policy was in large part due to people refunding with the intention of continuing to use the assets. I’m not saying it’s not the case, but I don’t see how anyone could be so sure. Could the refund rate not have been high just because of poor asset quality, or inaccurate portrayal, coupled with the fact that it was possible to get a refund?

I think it’s important because to me this boils down entirely to that question. If refund abuse was in fact rare, then there really is no longer any reason to say that refunds can only be given if there’s a deficiency in the asset. Not refunding someone because they’re going to abuse the policy is of course reasonable. Not refunding someone because you’ve got their money and you’d rather not give it back is not reasonable, no matter how ridiculous you may personally think their reasons for being dissatisfied are.

I’m not having a go at sellers who are of course trying to protect their interests, I’m just questioning whether it’s necessarily the case that a relaxed refund policy truly was harmful.

61

A couple reasons:

  1. I didn’t get any refund requests after the new policy was implemented around Summer or so last year. I had two requests this year but they were ultimately denied due to the ridiculous nature of the claims. When the old policy was in place I had around 30 (and that was when I checked around April). I asked Epic many times for the specific reasons they were refunded (thinking back then that perhaps there were legitimate reasons that I wanted to implement feedback on) and was told I would be informed. Still haven’t been.

  2. Someone mentioned not too long ago that during that period, there were guides on pirate websites telling people how to purchase an asset and get a refund.

Now maybe it’s because it is my work and all sellers think this, but I don’t think my products are of poor quality and I certainly didn’t misrepresent what anyone was getting when they bought my package. I definitely wouldn’t say it was rare, though in truth not many sellers would have known about it back then because we didn’t have the seller portal. I only knew of it because Jon Jones would sometimes provide me with a sales data chart and it had negative values. Unless other sellers were getting the same reports from him they wouldn’t have known. I can’t imagine I was the only one affected.

I think you are confusing the . No one is saying buyers aren’t entitled to their money back if a product is broken, or didn’t deliver on what was promised. I’d gladly give one out in that case. However buyers requesting a refund because they don’t like something, or because of any reason other than the product doesn’t work at all/as it was advertised then yes they should not get their money back. The reason for this has been discussed many times not only in this thread, but the one that ultimately led to the new policy: Digital products, unlike physical goods, cannot be returned. There is no way to know if a user has actually destroyed all traces of the digital good were a refund to actually take place. This practice is used virtually everywhere that offers digital goods. A perfect example is iTunes.

One example of a physical good that is generally treated the same way is food. If you go to a restaurant and the food is moldy, or otherwise bad then you can get a refund for your food. However if nothing was wrong with it, but you just didn’t like it you are not entitled to a refund.

I think it’s quite clear that the old policy was harmful, because people will only request refunds if the product does not work as promised which is the only valid reason for requesting one when it comes to digital goods. I can’t buy a song from iTunes, claim I didn’t like it and receive a refund. Same with a movie. Because it is easy for me to move the source file elsewhere, regardless of the official revocation of rights Apple could apply to my account.

62

I think the is because buyers who requested the refund just gave flimsy reasons, and Epic accepted it. The people behind Epic should be more diligent in approving the refund, and therefore, sellers are not contacted unnecessarily.

I know it is easy to get agitated when the products are said to be defective (more so when the reasons are just not…well reasonable) after pouring some dedicated, long hours…

And also, the piracy concern is quite valid to me as you cannot compare the refund policy of say, wall mart. Malls like wall mart get the goods back physically (therefore no questions asked is okay). But this is digital product, and quite niche too - the buyer should be reasonably well informed before buying it.