I often see people post their Discord name in a review to get verified and see channels in that asset’s Discord server, this however completely clogs the review system with 5 star reviews because those people have most likely not even used the asset yet and just want access to the Discord.
This should be forbidden, verification should only be done via questions or preferably just via a contact email the developer of the asset provides.
Not questions either. This should be a separate thing!
Agreed as I said in the OP.
Nobody is forcing anything, it is just often that people who sell assets have a Discord server with channels locked to only people who have verified that they purchased the asset.
Any update on this from Epic staff?
Hey! Thanks for the cross post, I agree with the majority of this topic. The current solution for verification through discord is rudimentary and needs attention.
The landscape for verification is muddy and in some cases outright goes against the TOS of Epic. By standardizing the current most accepted method I hope to become someone that can guide the future of verification and realize new systems that enable verification more anonymously for the community.
Soliciting verification through reviews is outright wrong, but unfortunately it happens. As such my system does support it, but has strong messaging saying that users should be prompted to be honest first and foremost, and to preferably use another method
When selecting “Review” as an option Sellers are met with the following dismissible warning.
Hey! it looks like you’ve enable Review checking. Do not solicit Reviews for the purpose of verification.
Why? Reviews should be used for honest feedback and not as a means for verification.
I am also suggesting that Sellers state this when asking for verification via Questions.
If you leave a question, please remove your question after verification so we keep the Q/A section clean.
I know how annoying it can be to attempt to sift through hundreds of posts to see how active the developer is or to get answer to a simple question that’s been buried by Verify MyName#1111.
As this bot begins to standardize the processes moving forward I hope to leverage that respect and trust from the community to move the process for verification into a healthier more succinct process. I have plans that rely solely on the infrastructure I have set forth using the current method, to enable verification via newer means that circumvent Questions or Reviews. More to come on that as I finish out this years releases for the bot.
While talking about the bot I feel it imperative to highlight the other features, both in the pipeline and existing that aren’t for the sake of verification. Those include, Change Log Management, Analytics, Ticketing System, Giveaway and Poll System to engage your community, Tools to request DMCA take down, Tools to see where your products might be leaked, and access to source control repos and beta releases through Github and GitLab integrations.
I agree whole heartedly that the current system lacks rigidity and needs to be rethought. That is what myself along with a number of Sellers in my discord are working towards now. Please, assist me in assisting the community in creating a more capable, less intrusive, tooling for the support of products on the unreal engine marketplace.
Epic needs to do something about this because otherwise things like this happen:
My reputation is being ruined because of this.
I can see both sides of this issue, However, I do not believe this issue is due to the current widely accepted verification methods used by most Sellers. I would also take the stance that this is exactly what the review section of a product is all about. You’ve left your honest feedback about the product and a forum of communication has been opened between you, others in the community and the Seller. It’s now up to potential customers in the future to decide if the Seller reacted appropriately.
The seller in question does recommend users should delete reviews for verification purposes after they’ve been verified. This aligns with Epics current stance on verification via Review/Question.
Reviews should be meaningful, honest and fair. If they happen to include a discord tag, that’s okay. As long as the Review has substance.
This issue reads more as an unfortunate misunderstanding between the Seller and yourself. It’s clear you currently own the product, its also clear there is context missing that sadly I don’t think the community will ever get.
Thank you for looping me into this issue. Its great to see the support cycle from both consumer and publisher. I wish you the best with getting closure and support on the product you’ve purchased, you may want to escalate to Epic directly for support in this issue.
I have escalated to Epic support but they have been slow to respond unfortunately.
I didn’t know about this practice and I’m glad you opened this thread.
That sucks and I totally agree with you. This explains a lot of new assets which are flooded with 5 stars review…
Finally maybe something is being done about this:
I have created my discord support server a few months ago. As there are many websites which pirate my game assets, I only offer support to verified customers on discord. I offered them 4 ways to verify: Via Direct Message, Via Discord Channel, Via Question on Marketplace Page or Via Email. I NEVER required and asked users to verify themselves via Reviews, but they do it anyway. Since I cannot remove reviews, my question is:
What do you think should I do? Remove my discord server? I can’t control what users write in their reviews, I have never required users to give any review to verify, but they just do it anyway.
Do not verify them and remove them from the Discord with a message saying as long as they have a verification request in the form of a review they will not be verified.
Well, IMHO the assumption that Discord is a good place for support and buyer verification really makes no sense to begin with. Why not simply provide support through the Reviews page ? The “verification” there is built-in since only buyers can leave reviews. Providing support through Discord may be popular, but in the context of the Marketplace is a solution without a problem and only causes issues and friction.
(of course the above only relates to the way the system worked up until yesterday, since Epic decided to suddenly hide the Reviews section altogether).
I have always given support via the Questions section and via email. It’s not like I wanted to set up a Discord support server, but I was asked several times by customers, so I set one up. At no point did I intend to " sneak" reviews, but I have seen this verification phenomenon elsewhere where sellers have made it a requirement to verify via reviews.
Exactly - customers may be asking for a Discord because they’re used to it in other contexts, but this is no way a requirement and imho is a completely counter-productive thing to do. Being pinged constantly by instant messages is pretty much one of the worst things ever for a product creator …
That’s why imho the Reviews and Questions pages (as well as the daily email summary whenever new Reviews and Questions were posted) were such an elegant solution, since it had verification built-in.
Anyways, let’s just hope that this whole mess will be straightened out shortly.
Well, I have muted my discord server and just look into it like 1x per day, and I have to say, due to the ability to directly adding images and videos in messages, it’s sometimes way more easier for me to answer questions. When I would do it on the marketplace questions, I would have to upload a screenshot on a platform and post an external link which is pretty annoying. But in general I’m totally with you, and I fav the marketplace questions section.
The product question page is probably the worst way to grant support. Maybe if your asset is super basic but for anything more complex than yes/no questions, discord is the superior product. There is a reason why people use discord for this purpose, not just for the marketplace, but for more and more products and games.
Well, part of it is a matter of taste and priorities, so of course opinions may vary.
My overall point is that a Discord server is not a requirement for Marketplace support. What is required however, is for users to be able to ask support questions without having to register to another service, and that’s why the Reviews and Questions were so incredibly important. If a creator decides to provide another level of support through Discord, so be it, it’s their decision - and it’s up to them to deal with the consequences of “verification” outside of the Marketplace ecosystem that they brought upon themselves. But a third-party service absolutely cannot be the only or first point of entry IMHO.
The two systems can coexist for sure, and that’s good. But I stand by my comment that “verifying” users for support on Discord is (or rather should be) a non-issue.
I suppose I am especially annoyed by this because I am getting the feeling that this whole Discord hype is partly responsible for the state things are in today with Epic nuking Reviews and Questions. But of course time will tell, we can only wait.
Written reviews and questions are back:
So is the problem of verification spam.
They need to remove all reviews with a # in them and it would be fixed.
