Overpriced assets?

Distribution UE Marketplace
87

For me personally, most of the marketplacestuff is too high priced, because i play only with that stuff, like a toy.
I do no real serious commercial stuff with that and thats the only point, why it is to expensive for me.
If i would plan to make something commercial, then i would for sure buy things from the marketplace, with some money i still own, to make things going quick(er).
Its like to have a well tuned hammer editor in my hands, but diving into every aspect of this tool sucks away my freetime for twenty lifes, but i have fun (most times).
When the price is relative to the quality, then it is ok. In another big store, for another engine, you can find any stuff/quality you need, but hard to find out, before buying.

When you are a coder with 1000€ in your pocket, you can start a biz with all that greenlight/kickstarter/alpha/idiocrazy.
I would do it, but i am lost in codethings. ^^
I want to make a game full of gore, where you can kick and hunt human/dog/cat/pony-babys, because you are cuteness-allergic, and hurt them bad with napalm or fire, or poisoned sweets. “Burn baby burn”.
That would be like throwing money out of the window, no one shares my style of humour…

88

This debate will go on forever as both sides are quite strongly opinionated on the topic. It’s good to keep in mind that the buy/sell system only works when both sides participate as well. So condemning one or the other would collapse the system in the end. I can tell you honestly I would never buy packs no matter how many “A’s” you throw in front of the word quality, from certain contributors here solely based on how I’ve seen them represent themselves when they’re work is questioned at all. Would simply make me wonder about getting support from them, but anyway.

most of the quality assets for sale are priced pretty accurately considering once you own them you can use them commercially at will. Thats pretty . The reason they aren’t $500 - 10 000+ is because they’re avail for mass sale. One time the effort sell the same thing repeatedly with no material costs. My outlook was two pricing plans, personal use and commercial use. Like music. Buy an indie song for $0.50, use it however you want in your personal life, but if you want to use it in a commercial product, theres a higher fee for that. Nothing insane since it’s an indie artists song. Whether the artist thinks it’s superstar “Aerosmith” quality or not is irrelevant to what its worth to the masses.

The issue is that enforcing such a plan is extremely tough. I think it would be the best way to keep both sides happy. The hobbyists that never release can play and enjoy all assets while the creators still get paid from that instead of the hobbyists buying none or just one. The serious buyers would pay the commercial price up front or at time of release and still everyone gets paid. Since that isn’t possible, the prices will stay as they are. As more content comes in they’ll drop and the “quality” work may stop coming due to volume and undercutting. Which isn’t .

Theres a thread I started recently with a lot feedback on this topic not long ago where most of this was discussed.

89

Well, it is the main reasoning that sellers post in almost every reply in almost every thread about pricing:
" I charge $50 and not $5, because if I sell 100 pcs than that makes up the usual rate that is charged in industry. In the end I need to make as much money as my usual industry rate, otherwise it is not worth my time"
Just go through the replies here and in other price topic thread…it is always the same reply: in the end they want the assets after being sold by a certain quantity to amount to their industry rates.
And then look through to-be-submitted threads how exhaustingly long it takes them to get eg plants done etc…it really explains why they are still freelancer.

Any kind of professional who really is one and not just puts the term in his job title pulls most things on the marketplace out of his sleeve half asleep, because he has the right software/workflow set up and thus would not even think of charging anything more than $5 for what’s on offer on the market place. Like the background mountains
https://www.unrealengine.com/content/2b09b786ac9a4dd4ae1f47d06244b422
This is so brutally simple stuff, to charge 40Euros for this is…well, you can finish my thought…

So yes, if any…ahem…professional moderator could please lock this thread, because I am not sure I can stop. The professional pricing somehow upsets me.
Should not really because I do every asset myself…strange.

90

This won’t work. I already told you that every time I’ve seen this type of licensing - it was unsuccessful and every time community was not very pleased with such system. Remember I was talking about GameDevMarket?
A few days later after my post this I’ve got this email:

603×885 202 KB

If it works for music(Apple with oranges, IMHO) it does not mean that it will work for another type of market

91

I’ve seen far too many unnecessary arguments about prices so I am going to tell everyone now:

To those of you concerned with the overall price points of the Marketplace, you are welcome to bring your concerns to the sellers. However, continuing to argue with them after they have told you no is unprofessional and unproductive. There are plenty of opportunities for an item to go on sale or for the seller to drop their price but to argue with them about how they should set their prices is unacceptable.

93

Epic’s official policy is not to dictate or influence pricing. Even if it weren’t the policy, I wouldn’t want to. I know what industry rates are better than many, and I also know that pricing assets on a market to sell to many people is completely different. Just because I have some qualifications that I could theoretically use to impose price controls, that’s not even remotely close to my job, and I think it’d be somewhat arrogant of me to tell everyone here I know better so here’s how much your work should cost. So instead of dictating price, we choose to let the market sort it out, and I nurture discussions so everyone here can figure it out for themselves and have healthy discussions. :slight_smile: And this is moving very quickly away from being a healthy discussion. I would advise you to start listening to our warnings.

I can speak for myself, thanks. Since you brought it up, no, that is not correct, and neither is most of what you’ve said in these pricing discussions with regards to labor, effort, and pricing. Humorously enough, if the “industry rates” argument was correctly applied and everything was priced based on labor * hours spent working, all Marketplace content would increase in price by 10 - 100x, meaning you’d be lucky to find anything below $1,000. Most content would likely be between $3,000 to $25,000 per item, which I think is the opposite of what you wanted.

94

On the flipside, the assets that ive bought have been priced so that even a broke, unemployed bloke like me can buy.

Sure, it would be cool if all them assets would cost as much as a cup of coffee at starbucks but at that price, im not too sure about the quality.

But seriously, i really dont see the problem with the pricing. If you need something, you either pay or put in the effort and learn to make your own. Its just what is more important to a person, time or money.

Oh, and that wasnt meant as a personal attack. English isnt my native language so being diplomatic sometimes gets a tad complicated :slight_smile:

95

So, they are not charging industry rates. The charge of something is the amount a single unit costs. If they sell something for $50 for a single unit, but they want to sell 10 units so that it adds up to $500 (which, let’s say, is the industry rate for that product), then the CHARGE is $50, because YOU are paying FIFTY dollars. Freelancing is in many industries. Freelancers freelance because they want to be their own boss and make their own schedule, not because they can’t get a job with a corporation (for the most part). If someone is freelancing full time, they want their work to add up to industry rates so that the can make a proper living. That’s normal. Let’s say an average 3D artist makes $1000 dollars a week. A freelancer spends a week creating something for the marketplace - he charges $50 for it and he hopes that it adds up to $1000. How is this not making sense to you? Do you expect freelancers to make a tiny fraction of what a corporate worker makes? Now, whether or not it took him a week’s worth of work to make that asset is unknown. You’ll just have to take the reputation of the freelancer into account. Just because you can make some half-■■■■■ asset in a few hours, doesn’t mean that’s what other people do. You’re not entitled to an opinion. You’re entitled to an EDUCATED opinion. Additionally, people who release stuff for free typically have jobs and they do that in their FREE TIME (so, maybe a week’s worth of work over the course of 1-2 months) OR they are trying to create assets to put on their portfolio. To recap - if you have to spend $50 to buy something, then they are CHARGING $50. How much they hope to make is not what the charge of an item is.

97

He thinks that because people want to make a $1000+ from the total sales of their asset, that they are charging industry rate, even though a single unit only costs around $50.

98

Well that escalated quickly. Thanks mods for trying to keep this discussion from derailing!

Edit: toxic comment removed. Wow you guys are on it! :slight_smile:

99

Yo dawg. I heard you like yachts, so I put a yacht in your yacht so you can yacht while you yacht.

100

Huh. Strange. I don’t understand what the controversy is here. If you ask me, the pricing for all of the assets in the market place are a steal of a deal. I think they should cost a lot more, but that’s just me.

I employ an artist and pay him an hourly wage. If I ask him to create an asset which can be found in the market place, it will probably take him a few days to create it. The total cost to me is Labor Hours * Hourly Rate, which is usually several hundred dollars and his time. His time could be better spent on something else. Assets in the market place are already built and ready to go, out of the box, for no more than $100. What a deal!

I’ve spoken with a two man company who has put a bunch of assets out on the market place and are selling them for pretty cheap. The assets are of a high quality and they work really hard to make them. Yet, they don’t make a lot of money. I’d happily pay a higher price for what they do.

Here’s another factor to consider for pricing: You’re not just paying someone for the asset they created, you’re paying them for the years of training and experience they used to build the asset. My background is in programming. I spent six years in university to get good at it, I spent several years getting professional experience. Cumulatively, I’ve got 16 years of programming experience under my belt. Sure, it’s easy for me to program some complex functionality and package it up as a blueprint asset, but for other people it is not easy at all. The fact that it’s easy for me now doesn’t devalue the final end product I created – if anything, it should be more valuable because it’s less likely to have defects and is engineered well.

Similar story from systems administrators: A sys admin was asked to come in to a company to figure out why their systems weren’t working. There was a systematic disaster on the enterprise network. He said that he’d charge them $15,000 for his services. They agreed. He came in, found the problem in a few minutes, pushed a button, and the problem was solved.
Then the employer complained. “We just paid you $15k to come in and push a button?”
“Well, you paid me $5 to push the button, and $14,995 to know exactly what button to push.” he replied.
They happily paid.

102

That’s actually quite funny. :slight_smile:

(though it can not be put in any relation to the problem under discussion here, that people need disproportionally long for asset creation and use this time for justification of their pricing, so that after so and so many sales they reach the industry rate corresponding to that time they needed…1h for those three plant assets in my post above, they have all the market place assets have (and look better). That is industry work)

103

People aren’t creating assets, placing them on the market place and charging a price so that they just barely break even on labor costs. They’re trying to get a profitable enterprise running. Are you opposed to businesses trying to make profits?

If you don’t think a particular asset on the market place has the value which the asking price is going for, then you’re free to not buy it.

Here’s a lesson I learned a long time ago about “Sales 101”:
If the perceived value of a product is equal to or higher than the price, and you want that product, then you’ll buy it.
If the perceived value of a product is lower than the price, and you want that product, then you probably won’t buy it.

The twist is that the perceived value is subjective to the purchaser.

I still don’t understand what issue you have with market place pricing…

104

The issue is simple.
A) Those who know the value of the assets are more than the price point are quite because of the fact they have bought and are using it.
B) Those who find the price point is more than what the assets offer are quite because they simply skip it and look for another option.
C) Those who want the assets badly and cannot afford it, try to devalue it in hopes of seeing the prices dropping.
But that’s not gonna happen because A, B are always the targeted consumer at least for marketplace developers here. And if by any the they are going to adjust their pricing it would still be based on the number of sales and the professional feedback they collect from serious people who still fall into A, B categories.
Hundreds of people would have been flooding these threads complaining about the prices if something was wrong on the marketplace. Instead, they are flooding the marketplace itself buying the content they need and they don’t have time for false complaints because they are in a professional cycle.

106

The problem is that certain people submitting to the marketplace have a warped perception of how to have a successful marketplace presence - Usually the canned response from these developers is that “Well, it took THIS many hours for me to create THIS asset so it’s worth **THIS ** amount which is less than what you would pay to have a contractor or an in-house person develop it” so you see people submitting asset packs for upwards of $150+ expecting that since they priced it higher they will generate more revenue and people will think it’s a higher quality asset.

But what this mentality actually ends up doing is harming both the people who want to buy the asset because the majority aren’t going to spend that kind of money on the asset as well as the developer of the asset because they will generate less revenue due to restricting their potential consumer base.

Would you rather sell 500 units of an asset pack at $20 each or 20 units of an asset pack at $150 each?

For those of you who may not want to do the math - 500 X $20 would = $7,000 in revenue (70%) and 20 X $150 would = $2,100 in revenue (70%) which is $4,900 difference all due to over-pricing an asset pack.

This is a generalized scenario but it’s pretty well representative of actual sale numbers and when i see this it tells me a few things about the person who developed the asset:

A) Although the asset may be absolutely phenomenal and of the highest quality the asset developer does not know how to valuate their efforts and promote consumer trust which extends to, and calls into question, the overall competency of the asset developer and the quality of their work.

B) The developer of the asset undervalues their own work because they are willing to accept less compensation for their efforts by setting a higher price point which will ultimately decrease their sales volume.

C) The developer does not understand the indie development culture.

D) The developer does not have longevity in mind and is just trying to make a quick buck rather than wanting to build a relationship with the community.

The above statements aren’t just made up on the fly - I was an eCommerce manager for 9 years and have owned my own, successful, digital media company for the past 3 years.

People will continue to over-price their assets mostly based on the mentality stated above - In the end the only real detrimental effect this has on the community is that it takes up screen real-estate from the assets which are properly priced.

107

Well, it is not an issue, more like concerns that keep me posting while the machine processes.
Price is one point. To be honest, I if I see something worth it, I buy it also from the market place.
And I would like to, but here is what keeps me from buying:

When I looked through all reviews of the assets that I considered for my project, there were so many reviews saying UV mapping wrong, no LODs, baking wrong, and so on and so on.
I believe there is not a single asset that does not have flaws on the market place.
Then I look at the time it takes sellers to create their packages and it becomes obvious that most of them are not or have never worked in permanent positions related to the CG area that they are publising in, e.g. foliage for games etc…
They are learning themselves while creating the assets.
This is the point were stay away from buying because it is highly likely that I buy the asset and have to spend ages myself getting in ready to use.
Therefore I am also asking for reasonable pricing reflecting this fact.
Or better quality control from the market place curators.
For example I stay away from foliage packs and do it myself or that reason. I am just on the safe side this way.
The ones that are created right now and that are in the to be submitted phase and as threads here are on the forum might be ok, because you can still adress typical issues and creators respond and make sure it is OK. Those packs might reach quality. But then for some reason it takes the creators very long to get it done and by that time, I have done tens of assets my self.

The other option, and this seems feasible, is to price the assets somewhat in the $5…$10 range. There are some assets like this one here, which also have flaws, but because of the low price everyone accepts that.
https://www.unrealengine.com/content/7a118391a88a447a82c7760ceb15be03

Then there are assets like this one here, which for that price are simply too flawed. I see a few of those on the marketplace and my decision is that I just can not buy from it for such prices because of quality issues. There are simply to many flaw ridden assets for rather high prices on there.
https://www.unrealengine.com/content/f71dbd477ea541bb812bdb63f963cc6b
https://www.unrealengine.com/content/cc4d96268ec7406e83068672163b2ec8
Especially UV mapping issues are annoying. Noise at distance might be recoverable by myself, but if I have to bring it on the right track myself, then I will not buy but do it myself from scratch.

Anyway, hope quality increases over time. Right now it is on average high prices + medium-ish quality.

108

Unfortunately, this is unproductive. You’re just making up numbers to prove a point. Data arguments like this require real world A/B testing to even be worth talking about.

109

I was thinking the same thing. Why not:

111

I think some prices is to high, some is very worth there price and some is worth way more then they are being charged

but with thaT being said I have a question, can a developer put something of theres on sale if they want? or does Epic control that?