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I’ve completely stopped submitting content to the marketplace. I was doing pretty decent (as I have posted sales stats in the other relevant thread). I saw the current trend once I completed my final release. The submission process was taking a full month at the minimum and was creeping up to 6 weeks. In addition to that your sales data and receiving payment were so disconnected.
is my last submission (Zipline/Teleport/JumpPad):
- Submit mid May
- Release July 22nd
- September 10th: Email with sales data for month of July (One week worth).
- Payment September 14th
That is 4 months until I receive any kind of sales data at all and only a weeks worth at that. is from someone who had already 3 assets already published. There were some issues in between there resulting in the delay that I won’t go into.
Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt is a best case scenario for turn around time you can have to receiving worthwhile sales data reliably.
- Submit December 1st.
- They reply the next day. Say, “Wow is great we will schedule it for release right away!”
- December 7th, "We have set your release for 3-4 weeks in advance (January 1st).
- All of December your asset is finished, polished, looks great and is ready to go. But it isn’t for sale.
- January 1st finally arrives after a really smooth submission process. Congrats people can purchase.
- Wait
- February 1st arrives. Wow awesome I wonder how many units were purchased?
- Email marketplace support to see if you can get some early numbers on your sales.
- Email gets lost in the ZenDesk system like it does nearly every time.
- Throw a DM on twitter because you have built a report with him over the past year and he’s helped with sales data before (he’s gone now, no help there)
- All of Februrary goes by with your asset selling. No sales data
- March 7th: receive an email with your sales data for January
- March 14th: payment
You submit the asset on December 1st. You can expect to receive sales data in 3 MONTHS. Does anybody else see a problem here? In June I was told live sales data in the seller’s portal was coming soon!! We are coming up on a half a year later. That is not soon. marketplace has been open for a year and that is the best case scenario above?
No retailer on the planet would be okay doing business like that. Doing business completely blind with no ability to adjust marketing, prices, or trends. I’m not even going to get into my struggles to get a sale established for my asset store which I was in talks with for longer than I can remember until eventually your ticket gets lost in some really horrible email system. I’m not even going to go into my horrible experience with updating my assets. I am an established highly rated asset publisher and I can’t update my assets the exact second they are ready for my customers? Then I have to field support emails and forum complaints that things are not updated?
I had high hopes for a long time and wanted to be apart of marketplace for the long run, but now I am just upset and disappointed. I know from speaking with other sellers that I am not alone in feeling. Now is gone and it is clear there is no direction established or being controlled. At least it isn’t being discussed publicly or at the very least in a private section of the forums for sellers like I suggested I can’t count how many times over the past year.
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I can’t disagree at all with what you’re saying. It pretty much sums up my experience as well. I’m not sure realizes the critical nature sales data plays in running a business. It’s imperative for taxes, budget management as well as bills. I’m working on the marketplace full time, so you can pretty much imagine how it is for me to have to wait that long just to see the data for months ago. Next year I have to begin paying estimated taxes quarterly, and without sales data that has the potential to go wrong. We were told we would be getting the data before the end of the year, but as it approaches we’ve heard nothing new. I inquired about over a week ago in thread, and still no response on when the sales data is coming. One of the main reasons my packs come out months after each other is because I have to wait so long for sales info in order to gauge how to proceed next. I have general ideas, and work on concepts in between, but can’t commit until months after a release because I don’t have real time data to go off of. I could be producing more content if I had reliable data to pull from and understand which sort of packs people are responding to the most.
Another good point you make is with regards to updates. When we first made the switch to manual updates for all in 4.9, it threw everyone off guard. Epic then instituted 10 day windows from major version releases, and tells sellers we have to submit our updates within that period. The problem is, with how vast the marketplace has become the team is unable to publish all of them within that time line. Consumers then see content that hasn’t been updated, and they complain to/about the content creators as if we deliberately held back on submitting updates. sort of thing only hurts the credibility of content creators in an unfair way, it’s something that is out of our control. Earlier in the year there were talks of manual updates through the seller portal. seems to be the only viable solution to sustaining updates on a large marketplace with hundreds of products and sellers. Manual updates, and sales data are two features that should be the main priority right now. Implementing both will help to alleviate many of the problems that plague the marketplace currently, for both consumers and sellers.
Like you, I had high hopes for marketplace. I still do even now. I know things may have been thrown off balance a little with the departure of . There definitely seems to be a lack of communication since he left. Whereas I once felt as if I were working closely with and we were all in together, now it feels a bit disconnected if that makes sense. We haven’t really been told anything. Is there going to be a new curator? Will the team be expanded to account for the growth of the marketplace? Where are we on the promised sales data, manual updates, launcher comments/reviews, etc? From what I can tell has taken over responsibilities of the team. (I could be wrong though) Like you, throughout the last year I built a pretty good rapport with . I think we should give a to do the same, given her new position as the point person for the marketplace. But I also think we should convey the necessity for these systems that are long overdue. I’ll reiterate, I work for the marketplace full time. But it is increasingly difficult to do so without these tools that are essential for the survival of any business. It’s already challenging enough without having to work in the dark for months not knowing how the product is doing, or being unable to implement updates instantly. You aren’t the first person I’ve seen who has said they stopped putting out content for the marketplace, and it saddens me to see that you have given up on it. Great content creators like yourself and others are being dissuaded from using the marketplace when retention and encouragement of new sellers should be a primary focus.
We all are in together, and I think steps need to be taken to address these concerns. Communication could be a little better between sellers and the marketplace staff, and critical features need to be prioritized so that we can run our businesses properly and not have to add more problems to our list of worries. Taxes (estimated) and bills are essential to any business. I’m now worried about how I’m going to plan for that next year without real time information if the isn’t implemented when it was expected.
I also want to add, I am in no way blaming the team for all of . I know they are doing the best that they can with what they have. But I think they need to prioritize these features that are instrumental in running a successful marketplace experience. It’s very disappointing to see people are discouraged from continuing their marketplace development, or from starting altogether. I want the marketplace to be successful for everyone, sellers and consumers alike.