cool. piracy. cool
cool cool cool
needs to be banned from this community.
A joke called “democratization of game development” which raised Unity to a billion dollars company 
work pretty well the other way, if a customer have just bought any kind of asset (i dont care if it’s mesh, BP, anim, sounds, music, env) to realize that it doesn’t fit the purpose it was meant to fit… it just felt like someone stole your money.
real customer don’t spend their money to get a digital asset - this is just a mean - they spend their money to solve a problem they have ! If finally the asset doesn’t help, doesn’t fit the usage it was bought for… it means the seller doesn’t provide the solution the customer is paying for!
Although the irony is that in making tools (I’m a publisher as well) the bulk of your customers will be from this segment. In general though I think that Unity statement is a net positive but like anything else you have to take the good with the bad. While like any other profession (music, making movies, etc.) most will try and fail because nothing is as easy as it looks, there will be those that persevere and make something great. There will be some that feel entitled and complain on why is this so hard, or I want my money back, etc. but they are the minority just like those that make it big are in the minority. Most will try and use it and not make it big, but yet appreciate the fact that things are easier than before when only AAA studios really had a .
I really think that as far as a marketplace refund policy goes, Epic should really adopt the Unity one but they’d have to improve their website/publisher portal to support some of those features (invoice checking, telling whether the product has been downloaded, etc.). Although as a customer on the Unreal Marketplace I do have to agree that the descriptions on average should be better and more publishers should get into the habit of providing a demo, or at the very least have some meat in their screenshots and/or videos (not commenting on specific products just a comment on the average). Then there would be little reason for as a customer not knowing what you are getting so you can make the return policy a little more strict like the Unity one.
Given it takes about a month of work to just ATTEMPT to get Epic to update an asset to a new engine version, I hope customers can appreciate just how much time goes into making content for the market place. It is easily 2 hours of dealing with Epic on top of every hour that goes into the actual content. To go through all that and have refunds because your product doesn’t do a thing that it clearly says it doesn’t do can really suck.
Epic took 5 months to publish my Plugin 
But that was because someone was still developing Marketplace support for code projects.
Btw, I say it is a joke because “democratization” is a lie.
Unity was created by ppl who failed carries in game development and decided to go the services route.
At first they came with that democratization thing, but in middle of the way they’ve decided to become Adobe.
In the process they affected all other engines forcing them to reduce engine prices and killed a bunch of others like Torque, Ogre, etc while whirlpooling naive new developers and their dreams, making sure they’d be able to make games (but only if using Unity services).
That is no democratization, that is market exploitation.
The “race to the bottom” left the app stores and was introduced into development world carefully, so then more and more ppl would install Unity to make games. They was still selling licenses, all was good. for them.
Because such a race, Epic had to react, was sold a part to Tencent… CryTek almost died, had mass layoffs… Games today are worth very little on Steam.
Now that they, Unity, have so many developers dependent on their platform, they exploit those ppl even more year after year, they know most have no competency to learn any other game engine and accept anything Unity takes from them.
I’m talking about Unity because their ASSET STORE is the key point of why so many devs have no recognition for their work today and have to charge pennies if they want to see any sales. I had an asset for sale which was top #5 seller there for some weeks, I know well the environment.
The good difference in Epic is that they give you proper AAA tools and hints on how you can grow your skills as a professional; Skills transferable to any professional work environment where true experience is required, instead of focusing on keeping information away from you, disguised as “democratization and ease od use”.
Still, it’s community’s duty to void Marketplace becoming what Asset Store is, but I see it heading the same future. Helping games lose more and more production value while only the big studios are continuously making money. That is no democratization, it’s a fad.
I read this and had feeling your are right, for a brief moment. Then i realised it has no sence, because an asset is the product, its not a solution. You bought a thing and if that thing is what package says, you stack with it. Its your job as a buyer to decide is the product actually a solution or not. Because of nature of the solution, its your own imaginary problem, which cannot be confirmed from outside.
You bought a weapon pack, it is a weapon pack, it has exact same stuff inside as shown on screenshots, you download it and try, turns out the style and the feel of the product doesnt fit your request and your project - doesnt matter you stuck with it.
It doesn’t fair! I not gonna pirate it, i would delete all the files on confirmed money return!
No you dont, why im sure? Because you human, you cannot be trusted and i cannot confirm it from outside, so im as a business treat you as a human lier.
and , since i treat you like that, with all those questions for why exactly you want to return, you read the terms of service and realise, you realise - you cant just say i dont like it, so we get to cherry picking and finding issues and stupid claims.
No matter what Epic do, they stil would “hurt” one of the sides. The buyer, because did not return money and make him feel bad for spending own money or the Seller, because of uncertainties of the claim legitimacy leading to feeling you’re being scammed.
That’s why we have those submission guidelines, to avoid time and money loss caused by human nature. All discussion about feeling and what is right and wrong, you guys have , they are useless. What really needed, is your thoughts on how to strict submission guidelines even futhrer, so seller know how the product should look on every single aspect besides the “taste”/style. Since we left only with taste and bugs/violation of guidelines , all claims towards product can be resolved in binary filter by claim nature.
I have no legal knowledge, but “strong feeling” that when someone stole your intellectual property and make money selling it, you claim not a price of the IP licensing, but the cut of their total business cost. (just a guess)
Regardless of whether or not making things accessible to indies is a good trend for the industry or not, there are features for publishers that you are well aware of on the website that Epic needs to catch up on. The website/portal has nothing to do with the merits of either engine, and features like a faster queue, automation for submission, invoice checking, analytics on where your customers are purchasing from, what OS, etc. are very important to Unity publishers and would only improve things if Epic were to add them to their marketplace. Making the refund policy stricter would also encourage there to be more publishers, and from the customer side having more publishers add a demo would help them understand more clearly what they are purchasing before they do so.
As far as the tangent conversation, even if Unity never came along most digital markets are always a race to the bottom, especially with globalization (previous examples music, movies, etc.). Personally, a developer should always try and use the tool that is best for them and any professional developer should always evaluate them all (Unreal, Stringray, CryEngine, Unity, etc.). There is usually at least one facet that any engine is doing better than the others, Epic clearly is better for AAA and desktop and Unity for mobile. Each engine has it’s drawbacks and quirks too as you are well aware. As far as the prices go, yes it is difficult to make a living as an indie developer/artist but it’s the same for indie musician and indie film directors. The AAA guys are still around and the industry as a whole seems to be growing just fine so I don’t see any harm in at least it being possible for an indie to do it. As I said most will fail because making a good game, or a good song, or a good movie, has always been really difficult and will probably always be. However trying and failing and trying again is a part of life. Democratization doesn’t mean easy it just means it’s at least accessible and there is no doubt with the lower prices it’s at least accesible. In the meantime though those indies are primarily who you sell to, so at least that is a positive. Every once in awhile I get a 10 or 20 seat purchase from a larger studio but the majority is indies.
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But… back to topic:
But why is this such a big Topic then? (if it, as it seems, has been fixed a year ago)
I also do not understand why everyone is assuming that everything just gets stolen, when there is a refund. (and it seems that there are not many refunds currently - at least that is what SE_JonF says. “2 Requests in one year, none got refunded” - and he currently has 4 MP-assets, that makes 0,5 refund-requests per asset in a year.)
So, i would assume: If you get more refunds, there are at least more problems than there are in SE_JonFs Assets.
And if the refund gets through epics check, they will have a reason for that.
If i read what SE_JonF writes, it is not half as bad as some of you try to tell us. (two requested refunds that did not get refunded are no problem at all, i think.)
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I agree with what says, especially this:
No one would be so stupid to use pirated assets (which it is if you would refund it and use it) in a commercial game, really. Not just because of getting sued, but also imagine the news if a game would be found to use pirated assets. Your game would be burned for the rest of its live and your whole name would be, you could never release a game again without people reminding everyone about what you did. So that’s really not an.
And if someone really would want to do that, then directly downloading the pirated asset from whatever website is way easier than going through the full refund process.
I think Epic should let people refund assets within 2 hours, like Steam does. Buy, see if you like it, if not return it.
this, so much of this.
although pretty much irrelevant for BP and Code assets
Well, unfortunately there are indeed enough people who publish games with stolen assets. Sometimes it gets into press, as case of Orion game and Activision. The question is why wouldn’t they? We have plenty of people who publish on steam, do any of them were contacted and asked for prove of valid license?
There are about 20-30 games published on steam daily, you have to screw it up really bad for anyone to remember your name.
That isn’t true. If it’s installed on your machine, it doesn’t uninstall itself, it’s still there. If you get a Steam game refund as an example, it’s still on disk and playable even after it’s no tied to your account.
Right, and BP and code assets are in theory far less at risk of exploitation in this way if the person is unable to obtain updates or support. I have a code asset on the marketplace, and would have no problem with Epic having a relaxed refund policy so long as they gave me the tools to verify that someone was a genuine customer before I spent time giving them support.
I really don’t want to come across anti-seller, but I’ve honestly yet to see any actual evidence that refund abuse was a real problem. @SE_JonF, your first point just shows that you got more refunds when it was easier for people to get refunds (no surprise there), it says nothing about what the reasons were. Of course it sucks that Epic didn’t give you the info, though maybe that itself is one good argument against a relaxed policy - it takes too much admin work to process them. Anyway, my point being:
- People reading instructions on how to abuse a refund policy were 99% not going to buy your asset if they didn’t know they could get their money back, so no sales loss there.
- You may assume you’re doing better as a result of Epic having tightened the policy, but in the long term it’s not as straightforward. Some of those people who were unable to get a refund after the new policy will be ****** off (makes no difference whether you or I think their grievances were valid) and won’t buy from the marketplace in future.
Also, all these analogies and statements of ‘digital assets’ add nothing to the discussion. No two scenarios are the same, why not discuss the specific case instead?
Solve this, solve everything.
I agree on the principle of refunds needing more verification… but honestly, Maximum-Dev, based on the video you posted I would have asked for a refund too. There are landscape edges on the ends and then there are massive holes all across what is being advertised as an “Infinite Landscape”. If I were making a flight sim, got your pack and saw those I’d request a refund on the spot because no, massive holes all across the mid-section are not industry standard if you can get to them.
It’s not being advertised as an infinite landscape, you guys. It’s being advertised as “he keeps providing you landscapes forever”.
I mean, that’s also not true, but cmon