Asset Store Issue : Tampering with reviews "Helpful" votes

Hello,

on last Friday, I wrote a slightly critical review for this asset on the store : https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9440 .

Then 10 hours later, I checked and I was greatly surprised to see that my review got 5 negative votes, while all other reviews didn't get any new vote. I already wrote reviews for other assets, and never got much votes, even for a daily sale review. As my review wasn't in the Top 3 reviews at 1st (obviously, as it was new), it'd have meant some people would have expressly clicked "See all reviews" to read & rate only my review, and none of the others. Quite strange.
I then waited 48 hours more hours, and like I suspected, there was no additional votes on my review. Now it's almost 1 week later, and still no new votes.
I think it's pretty clear what it means : the author of the asset down-voted my review because it is slightly critical (it offers a technical analysis of what is lacking in the asset), either by having several accounts, or by asking some friends to come promptly to help him.
I also re-checked the other reviews that I didn't find much useful at 1st, and was surprised they all got only positive votes, I then gave them a negative vote (a bit out of exasperation), except for one : like mine, it offers some technical analysis, noting the low quality of some of the textures, which I found out to be true once I bought the asset, but ignored at 1st because that review got a lot of negative votes, likely because the asset author also down-voted it in the 1st place.

I think this attitude is deplorable and greatly damaging to the asset store review value ; I wish Unity could prevent that, but unfortunately, I guess there's no easy fix.
Personally, I've been often reading reviews, as they're often helpful in the purchase decision process, but if there was a lot of reviews, I wouldn't read the ones with negative votes. Now, I guess I'll have to check these ones as well...

Note: I'm posting this in the Gossip forum, as the Asset Store forum seems to be dedicated to promoting & giving feedback to new assets.

 

Actually, I suspect that there could be an easy fix - or at least an easy mitigation. Why are up/down votes on reviews being taken into account at such small numbers? I think that in statistics you ignore any pool of data until it's got at lest 30 samples... why isn't the same done here?

I realise that means that a lot of comments couldn't get a rating because of too few votes, but I think that's a better position than having it so easy to manipulate them. It's super easy to manipulate these when the numbers are so low that two or three votes makes a night and day difference. It's not so easy when even a dozen votes would only represent 30% of the field...

 

It's for issues with the asset store itself as well, hence the title "assets and asset store". I would guess the asset store staff, when looking at the forum, probably only read that category.

Nearly 100% of them in fact.

--Eric

 

Everybody go upvote his review and make the the most useful review to teach the author a lesson.

 

yeah, I had someone go and downvote several of my positive reviews once. Not sure why and probably someone that didn't even buy my asset. :/

 

Has this thread been shadowbanned or something? It shows up as show in the attached image in the forum. Shows no replys, no nothing. I had a post show up like that earlier criticizing the asset store that got zero responses.

EDIT: I think this is a result of the thread being moved to another forum (in this case the Asset store forum).

 

For what it's worth, I checked it out and the comment in question is actually the kind of comment I wish there was more of. People gushing about things don't really help me make a purchase decision. Knowing what people least liked about an asset is useful, though, and not just in a negative sense - knowing that the worst thing about this is some "marginal" texture work actually tells me that it's probably a good fit for my current project where I wouldn't care about that. Ganking the comment in this manner, if that's what happened, doesn't look good...

Well then, to me that just says that this "most useful" thing is nonsense that's actually degrading the experience, at least in its current format. To work properly it requires data that doesn't exist. If it can't properly rate comments then surely it would actually be more useful to show some randomly selected comments? That would at least normalise the impact each comment has.

 

There's no such thing as "shadowbanning". Yes, it's because I moved it; that's what the arrow means. It will go away after a day, so it will only exist in the asset store category afterward. The "topic moved" link is there temporarily so people know the topic was moved and not deleted.

No replies to your topic typically means nobody has those issues so nobody can really say anything, except for "it's fine here", which isn't really that helpful. I would guess the asset store delivery network was temporarily having an issue for your location. It's very rare that the asset store has stopped working for me, and when it has it's fixed soon enough, so I'd only be concerned if it went on for an extended period of time.

Yep, the more time passes the more convinced I am that it wasn't a good decision. Maybe it could be an option, but you'd have to specifically select it, so showing all would be the default. (So the opposite of the way it works now.)

--Eric

 

Another thing I have noticed about this 3DForge publisher (I wasn't going to say anything until I saw this because it could be nothing) - take a look at this user who has reviewed almost all of this publisher's packs. And until recently, that user had only reviewed 3DForge's packs, along with the Asset Store Tools (free). Now this user has rated one more pack (which just happens to put the pack up to the 3-rating minimum for showing the ratings.) But this new pack is by a publisher, "NeatWolf", who has only that one pack. Neatwolf has reviewed 3DForge's pack, and 3DForge has reviewed NeatWolf's pack.

Every one of the reviews mentioned was totally positive, and they are all written in a very similar style. Now 3DForge seems to make good quality stuff, and I didn't want to go out and say this publisher was creating new accounts just to review his own stuff, but tell me with a straight face that this doesn't smell a little more than fishy.

 

This is not really a surprise, seeing as Unity were flat out deleting negatives reviews, not once but twice. Claims that one review doesn't matter just to improve sales of top selling assets.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wo...etes-negative-feedback-on-asset-store.249824/

Then the whole scandal with DFGUI being removed from download of those who already purchased it. As a result I don't use the UT Asset store any more. The review section has zero creditability and UT has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to act professional.

 

There are plenty of negative reviews on the asset store. If a review was deleted it was most likely because it didn't add anything constructive which has been shown in many cases. In your case, maybe the reviews shouldn't have been deleted. It's subjective, but there is an entire thread dedicated to that.

Right now this is only for Daikon Forge... it was a one off fix to get it up and going again but from what I read they are working on implementing it for other assets as well.

 

I just realized a major problem here - you can sign up and vote on assets before clicking the link in the confirmation email.

This means you can easily write a bot to create 100 accounts and downvote all helpful reviews.

 

@Zeblote - Please report that issue to the asset store admins... might also be a good idea not to post it here as people might exploit it.

 

I have no idea where to report something to asset store admins, so I posted it in a related thread.

 

It's not as easy to find I guess if you're not a publisher. Send an email to: assetstore@unity3d.com

 

Help -> Report a Bug
Like that, Unity won't miss it. If you post it here in the forum, it may not be seen by anyone from Unity.

 

Hi,

I came across this thread and would like to clarify any questions and misconceptions that there might be.

There is a large amount of of assumption and accusations here that is completely unfounded and they building on top each other each time basically excepting the previous then as fact and totally makes them invalid and untrue.

I am emailing the thread link to the head of the asset store as well so that the person can see the discussion and input if they think anything is still missing.

The initial review in question:
The reviewer complimented the assets on the points that were relevant,
Then he went further to criticize items such a normal mapping, spec mapping and such.
I never advertised that to be in and tried to create the impression that this was there.
The review criticized something that was not in the package, It is like buying a car after seeing all the features and then when you get the car you are unhappy that it does not have air-conditioning

Here follows the emails where you first asked about this and I offered to provide them to you in private via DropBox

Hello,

At 12:32 05/08/2014 +0200, you wrote:
I can make these for you specifically with a tool like Shader Map.
It is a pretty easy task and give them to you via Dropbox.
Really..? :-o

I'll give you an example to be sure we're on the same page : for the potions, the glass part should have a lot of specular, the cap & strings, just a little bit, and other parts some but not too much.
It could be done mostly automatically ?

For the normal map, I noticed an amulet that has shadow lines that should actually be done by pixel lighting so the shadow side would depend of the light direction. This one I guess you can't change easily as it'd require to change the diffuse map (although I don't mind too much to use it like that, as it won't be seen from too close in my game world).

I will see about adding them to the actual project file on the store.
What they will do is give the perception that the project is resource heavy becasue of the perceived file size
and in my experience will frighten of prospective buyers.
Oh yup, I understand ; I guess most buyers use your kits for mobile games.!

Please do have a look at the Village Interiors Kit and its demos and see my texture quality with the diffuse only.
Exactly the same assets for TopDown and FPS
27 x 5* ratings and many shiny reviews
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17033
Yes, I follow your work since a few months. What you do with only diffuse maps is pretty amazing and looks great on screenshots. Unfortunately, my game is for PC, and diffuse only looks terribly flat and lacks details once we're walking around in the 3D world with dynamic lighting (especially in FPV, like my game is).​

I have stated in the emails to you upfront that for me to provide them to you is not a problem, that the only problem is where your taste of how bumpy they need to be is quite likely different from mine, so I could give them and lets see.

I did so inside an hour or two.

You went then and gave it a bad review based on "a shopping list" perspective of what you thought was missing,
not what was there. That is not an accurate review in my opinion and I would guess many other peoples opinion as the down voting have come back to show.
*****

Now concerning getting buddies to come over for a voting party.

I do not have the time or need to do that.

1. I can confidently tell you that I have more that 200 users whom own all or most of my packages.
Do you not think that many of them already have the asset ( I have sold more than 600 since it's launch)
and do not agree with your review maybe, but the fact that some people don't agree with your point of view or
analysts of the package you now make unfounded accusations that by reasoning of any of these points could be a
very plausible reason for the way your review was seen.
2. If my products were so bad, would they come back to buy more.
3. Would I have problems to have web demos available for almost all my assets to you can go and through an
eyeball on them and make a best possible choice of buying my assets.
If I wanted to trick you into buying my stuff I would have maybe made videos where I can control the FPS and lighting
and many more factors, no I give the the chance to go and run the same webdemo over and over and over so you
can make absolute sure before you spend your money.
4. I have been on the Asset Store for 14 months now , and have not had 1 request for a refund, just the odd
charge backs deriving from fraudulent CC transactions.
5. Google analytics showed me more than 15 000 visitors to my page for the Loot Kit during this last MADNESS SALE, do you not think that it is
EXTREMELY possible that 5 people from that could not have agreed with you.
I would say any reasonable person would say yes it is very possible.
6. If you gave a positive review of a package and come back and see another person reviewing
it and is talking nonsense in his review, what are you going to select, helpful or not helpful

*****

I have seen many same reviewers:
I am greatful for the more than 200 regular customers that like my stuff and immediately buy them when they on the store next time.
I have in fact a list of users on email that receive early review viewing of the packages, give feedback and suggestion and help shape the products.
The Village Interiors Kit i itself was in fact a customer request that developed into a full product as you see it today

*****

Deleting reviews:
Thee only time I have seen one review removed was when a matter that the review hammered on was either resolved or the users did not read/use the recommended method in the documentation for it to not be a problem

Can I ask you, would you want to miss the opportunity to get your hands on a good package, but because it is being miss-represented with a wrong review just because the reviewer did not bother to read or does not know how to use Unity. I would not want that.

To show you an example please look at this https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17033
Second last review by Stephan Tauguay, do you honestly want to tell me that the other 10 reviewers and the other 30* ratings are all wrong and he is right.

He has in one month not bothered to email me, come back and communicate on the review, which is not the platform for that in any case.
I would say that is a review that is mis-representing the product and clouding the judgment of prospective buy don't you.

And the cool thing, his review is still there

*****

Any further questions please feel free to engage me via email

If anyone here want to be added to that list then please email me on info@3dforge.co.za and I would gladly add you, I will add you Emmanuel anyway so that you can see that I put my money where my mouth is.

I am a one man show that work 15 - 18 hours a day 7 days a week to build a reputable business.

I had users email and ask my PayPal details because of there happiness with the contents and quality of the Village Interiors Kit and the volume of the FREE updates that it has received (More than doubled in package size) wanting to donate and in that way say thanks.
I guess I must have really tricked them into buying my product?

Emmanuel it saddens me that you would just come out and make such accusations after I offered to help, kept to my promise (you asked for Normals and Spec, I provided AO and Displacement maps as well)

Emmanuel, if you want you money back, then please email me the proof of payment and I would gladly refund you for your product that you dissatisfied with. I want happy customers, if getting your money back will make you happy, well then I have another.

And this after you received extra personal interactions and bought the package at a 50% discount, shees, you know here is only so mush I can try to do to keep someone happy.

Cheers
Cobus

 

So "many other peoples" came and voted right after the review was posted, but then there was no one for the next 48+ hours? You may not have thought the review was accurate, but if I was considering buying it, I would have considered it a very helpful review. It was mostly positive, but it pointed out that the pack was lacking specular and normal maps, which is very useful information to be aware of as a potential buyer.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Lacking, now I am sure one can make a whole page of what is lacking from any package on the AS.

What I offered and showed, and you can click on each of the tiny thumbnails before you buy something, is exactly what you got, to then criticize the package because of extras that you would have liked, and this case the users received for FREE on request, is an inaccurate review. Other just saw this inaccuracy in the opinion and down-voted saying that it was not help full concerning the contents of the package.

And sorry the review was not deleted now was it., HAHA to think that I have any say over it being removed, that is which-full thinking.

Please ready the Car & Air-conditioning explanation above.

With so many users viewing the page ? , some have given the opinion and after that not, if you see a review that you don't agree with, some have already voted it down, then very likely not bother to also add your voice

I had many sales and one extra review and 5 extra * ratings added, it is less than 2% of the amount of buyers during the SALE.

So it very clearly is the behavior of the general shopper.
If I read reviews and I agree or not with it, if it already has many click that is in agreement to my opinion, I don't go and also click it

Surely I can not be the only person thinking like that?

I have answered all the items thoroughly if anyone have more constructive input and anything with reasonable/provable grounds then please email me.

Adding normals and other data:
Look at the Cave Adventure Kit and the file size.
I provided normals for each and every file as well as 1024 & 512 maps for everything, It has hurt the package more than it helped, I had countless emails wanted to have explained why the package was so large and can it run on this and on that

Look at this web demohttp://www.3dforge.co.za/3DForge_DEMOS/FantasyInteriors_Village/TheCrypt_FPS.html it is 10mb only, nice light, runs super smooth and look pretty good.
That is what I opt to supply, good looking, lightweight art that can run on Unity FREE.
With the MANY regular users that but my stuff I would say that the general users are in agreement.

That is why the Loot kit does not come with these maps, but I was more than willing to supply them to keep a user happy.

Cheers
Cobus

 

What's that I hear? A thread lock coming?

 

Accusations aside, I think OP's review is not a "bad review" it is just his opinion and I don't think his expectations are out of line. The review is generally positive and provides good information (i.e. the lack of normal and specular maps). Perhaps the author could just add a line to the description saying that normal and specular maps are not included.

 

I will do so inside the next hour if that would provide you with better clarity on the package.

Anyone can click and browse the product an see exactly what is in the package.

In this case the reviewer was told that it was not there and therefore asked for it.
That is why my and others have the opinion that the review not accurate.

And the review is still there ain't it, I respect every person opinion, but I am allowed to differ.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Publishers are in a comparable position when it comes to free assets. Everyone can vote whether it is appropriate or not.

 

Hi,

" *** normal and specular maps not included " added to product description just now.

Cheers
Cobus

 

Any you comment on a post regarding voter rigging ???

 

Hi,

Just some background on Alessandro "NeatWolf" Salvati

He is a user that gave me mountains of feedback and advice on how to better my Particles effect that I include into the packages.
He is an expert on FX, I asked if he would mind me name one of the Demo scenes after him out of gratitude for all his input.

http://www.3dforge.co.za/3DForge_DEMOS/FantasyInteriors_Village/St_Alessandro_Cathedral.html

It was during the dev of the Cathedral FREE Update.

I convinced him to do a FX package and place it on the store for he has skill and that I am sure that others can benefit from this.

I tweeted this to my own follower and lo and behold some of the same people actually went, bought it and reviewed and rated it.

He reviewed my package when it was on sale, way before the Cathedral UPDATE and for me to be happy with a purchase and review it because of my happiness, explain to me what is wrong with that ?

Cheers
Cobus

 

Honestly, there's a lot of bad apples in the Asset Store, but from what I've seen, 3DForge doesn't seem to be one of them. I think the review is helpful (I was in fact even eyeing the 3d interiors pack with the crypt/cathedral) since even I didn't know these didn't come with normal maps.

But aside from that it sounds like he's a good dev since he does seem to provide some nice free updates and it looks like quality work for a decent price.

I would recommend you include specular/normal maps so you can grab more customers though. It's pretty much required for any Desktop projects

 

The whole system with the scored reviews is flawed, since anyone can have any number of accounts / credit cards / friends and start writing his own reviews of the product and there is no way to tell when this is the case.

The only way to circumvent this flaw is to have only written and unscored reviews, without any scoring.

Otherwise there is simply no way to control what happens.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback Rico21745, I will experiment and see what I can do with regards to the items that you mention.

I try to provide the best looking stuff that does not require post processing and special shaders for many times mobile devices can not show them or show them decent enough or they very expensive on processing making the art useless. I only have Unity FREE myself, so I try to supply art that has a consistant look & feel to have them gel together and be believable to be of the same Large Fantasy World.

I am trying to build a business and relationships as I have with many users to listen to what they say and if I can comply and improve the packages.

I also want to give users the benefit, like with the Village Interiors Kit

I did not want to build and release the parts Catacombs & Crypts Kit, Village & House Kit, Taverns & Inns Kit, Castles & Cathedrals Kit, charge you $35-$40 for each, and then right at the end supply the bundles product for cheaper than the packages combined.

I did it the other way around, did everything, with early buyers getting the benefit for early investment
I am now busy extracting the smaller Kits and $35 is not a lot for a package with more than 1000 prefabs in.

Maybe someone only want that smaller part and will never buy the bigger one because they might feel they going to spend money on things they might never use.

Here is the first smaller(large) package

Catacombs & Crypts
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/asset-store-issue-tampering-with-reviews-helpful-votes.262436/

Check the webdemos they tiny with cool ambient sound as well
TopDown web DEMO (only 12mb)
http://www.3dforge.co.za/3DForge_DEMOS/FantasyInteriors_Village/TheCrypt_TopDown.html

FPS Web DEMO(only 10mb)
http://www.3dforge.co.za/3DForge_DEMOS/FantasyInteriors_Village/TheCrypt_FPS.html

I did added a warning at the end of the product description that getting the larger package will be way better.
Then you will have the whole collection.

It will be close to a 50% reduction if you add the smaller one together.

The completely modular Companion Exteriors Kit is well under way, it will be lone standing or use it to fit like a glove onto the interiors.

Think Skyrim, but you run up to a house, open the door and no load screen.
I will be implementing a simple to use method to be able to run underground coming into the side exterior entrance of the basement of a house and enter the house from there/

A simple tunnel system, to run underground between houses, or enter the tunnels at the sewers exit at the harbour.

Lots of cool features to come. please email me if you want to be included in exclusive previews for the purpose of inptu to help shape the product how you want to see it info@3dforge.co.za

Cheers
Cobus

 

True but you can't review an asset unless you've purchased it (unless it's a free one), and with Unity taking 30%, it would get rather costly to have people buying your asset just to submit reviews.

 

Maybe it should be that you can't vote on reviews unless you bought the asset? If you don't have it there is no way to know if a review is correct or just biased nonsense.

 

It already is that way.

 

No, it's not. You can create a new account and start downvoting random reviews right away.

 

Oh I misread your comment, I thought you were talking about posting reviews.

 

Please refrain from using this topic as an ad platform for your asset.

 

Not really, even 3 reviews of 5 starts would give an asset a huge edge over most in the store and those cost barely anything comparing to the benefits.

 

True. I think there are a lot of people who want to see that someone else has gone before them, and has tried the asset and found it to be without issues. The problem is that most people who download an asset don't ever rate or review it.

 

That would be less of a problem if there was no scoring, since only what counts (the written review) would be there and the number of the reviews would not matter and would give less of an edge. Plus it would require some extra effort to do all that

Removing the star scoring would be a balancing factor against a possible abuse of the review system

EDIT: Come to think of it, there is really no way to stop fake reviews from happening and giving advantage to a product, so we will just have to bear with the thought

 

Hi,

Sorry, I did not mean to do that, the users just commented about the free stuff and the package contents so I just got carried away and shared more than I guess I should have.

It wont happen again

About the bothering to review part, an extremely small part of users especially if something was on sale takes the trouble to come back to rate or review.
It is frustrating sometimes to see good sales, then no reviews, the *starring is quick and easy while you clicked download to just clicking it.
The written reviews sometime then just does not happen.

Even this user did not rate or review the items until I asked at the time of supplying the items via DropBox.
I always use opportunities that there is actual contact or such via email ask people to please take the time to rate and review. it is a fine balance between nagging and trying to not be too persistent.
Unity have been discussing with the publishers method to engage, maybe like a reminder one week later or such to ask them to please not forget to rate and review a product.
at the end it is good all round for these to happen.

Cheers
Cobus

 

You're right, there is no good way, but I wonder if there's a way to track if two users are from the same IP address or something - for cases where a user looks suspicious. When I'm reading a review for an Asset Store pack, I now frequently check that user's profile to see what other reviews they have posted.

 

I just realized that with 300$, a 70% sale and 50 friends you can get 50 easy 5 star reviews in a 70$ asset, that could mean a benefit of multiple thousand of $ possibly, plus reviews stay forever and their value is additive, so could mean much much more

It is terrifying

Also the whole review thing is very strange to have, since a pack that may have great reviews could pontially be surpassed by a new asset that has none and yet the customer would probably never have a look at the new asset if the other one has 200+ 5 star reviews or something

How does that help customers in this case ?

 

The asset store is constantly trying to improve visibility, it you check some assets will start to have YouTube vids display instead of the screenshots in the same slots.

That is why I do Web Demos and such to with the best possible way provide the most accurate preview of the package without giving excess to the assets.

I just find it better with a Web demo since I can not manipulate FPS, lighting or other factors that could be done with video editing.

With the demo, if it is crap and clunky, is its going to run crap, well, that is my opinion.

Giving as close to game example experience as possible is the best way I see, it is even better then a review for you can make up your own opinion and not have to trust or distrust anyone else's at all, you click and make up your own mind.

To see a looooong list of file names just does not do it for me personally, it removes the review factor completely

 

Sure demos help even things out, but i am fairly sure most customers would not even click on the asset if there is a similar with 200 extra 5 star reviews, it will just be very rare occurance and that would be before someone even sees a pic of the product in action

Of course that largely depends on the asset type and purpose

 

I can agree on that, that is why I Facebook, twitter and such the carp out of everything to get eye on the asset
Last month I has just over 74 000 views of tweet with many reported link clicks, knowing if they become sales I can only think that they must be helping, and then when you have a few sales and it appears on the front page that then helps at least.

Since we talking about visibility now.

Can I ask you as shoppers, there is this BIG question many of the publishers have that is part of what this is now.

1. The new page method that the store pages has been changed to from the older long scrolled page, which do you prefer.
2. If you on aa page and select by popularity, then many times 3/4 or more of the items are free itesm that populate that page, do you want to see the free stuff there or in another space so that you can see paid for assets first like on iTunes, paid and Free separated. I personally find the FREE assets really cluttering the page.

Cheers
Cobus

 

But everybody likes free. While many of the free packages are garbage, there are also quite a lot that are very useful. You are changing the subject though.

 

I was commenting upon the visibility of products and people not seeing them as nasos_333 was stating and elaborating

 

Nice to meat you again MutantGopher , for transparency reason I am just going to elaborate how we met.

1. I purchased one of the assets from this user when it came out.
2. I gave a review and detailed what I thought was not good about the package.
3. You the publisher then got personal and and attacked 3DForge stating.
"that I make the prices of my assets at the high level they are so that a person like him could not buy it and give it a negative review".

You ranted and raved about the negative review instead of communicating and trying to get to a point where the items that I pointed out was addressed.

you carried on and I did not want to associate myself with such blatant untruths that I went ahead and deleted the review after having copied the head of the Assets Store in on the emails to just have the matter on record.

So it would appear as if what you have to say about any of this matter to be by default extremely and most definitely bias.

Please fix your own house before you start to point fingers and talk from the perspective of a shopper, you are a publisher and would directly benefit from placing 3DFirge in a negative light here.

You unfortunately have shown to me and the AS email recipient that you don't like 3DForge very mush because I am a direct competitor in one of the sections you also publish.

 

This is probably going to get locked, and I don't think giving my side will make a difference but...

What you said in quotes above is not what I said. I'm looking for a screenshot now, I don't remember if I took one, but if you have a screenshot of the review it might be helpful to show it. I'm sorry that you feel offended with the way that conversation went but I in no way "got personal and attacked 3DForge." I had decided not to mention that incident because I didn't want to bad-mouth you as a publisher.

I had just put up a new environment pack which was a competitor to one of 3DForge's. Within a couple days of the package going live, 3DForge wrote a review saying that the texture quality was poor. (This has since been updated and improved.) Initially I apologized and responded by saying that I would update with increased texture resolution along with an extra demo. Then I looked at his profile and saw that he was a direct competitor. I mentioned this in an edit to the reply, because I thought people deserved to know his bias. I also mentioned that it looked like he had bought my pack just to post a bad review. (This environment pack was only $10, a small price to pay.) I also saw the user mentioned in my above post, but didn't mention anything because there is no proof that it's not a legitimate user. You won't find the review there anymore, because he requested to have it removed.

3DForge, you seem to make good quality assets and I mean in no way for any of this to be a personal attack on you. With all that said, I think it would help if you addressed what I said in the above post.

 

Everybody (except S4G4N ),
thanks for your comments, I agree with most of them.
And I couldn't agree more with angrypenguin's one :

I watched the vote evolution yesterday, and my review got only positive votes and other reviews didn't get any except for one positive for the other slightly critical review. Strangely, it took S4G4N to notice this topic for my review to get 2 additional negative votes, and for the "It's great - there is a lot of stuff" reviews to get some additional positive votes. Maybe my review was getting dangerously close to get in the Top 3. Or it was just a coincidence.

Moreover, in the week I followed the votes on that asset, except for the instant negative votes on my review, and my own votes on other reviews, I think it has 0 or 1 vote only (I should have taken screenshots to count exactly, as I have a doubt on 1 review count). Can't say people vote too much.

Before posting here, I had some doubt, but now, seeing how S4G4N is twisting my review meaning and what happened between us, and seeing randomperson42 reporting the same behavior, and even worse, as S4G4N negatively reviewed a concurrent asset, which is highly unethical, I have no doubt he actually tampered the votes. Seeing how much free time he had to write several long posts in this topic, I'm sure he had 5 free minutes last week to take care of the votes.

Funnily, he pointed out Village Interiors Kit where the top comment is a comment from a friendly asset store creator who got a good review back from him https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/20308 (S4G4N name = Cobus Saunderson). Talk about collusion of interest...
Moreover, once again there, the reviews that bring technical highlights got a lot of negative votes, while a "This is great! It comes with cool stuff!" got 2 positive votes and none negatives.

I then went to check one of S4G4N's concurrents : https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/publisher/585 (except he's better, but unfortunately, he doesn't do loot models ). And I didn't notice any heavily down-voting on review offering technical highlights, unlike on S4G4N's assets.

Anyway, all that brings a new light to the review system of the Store, and it's kinda saddening... (although this kind of issues are all over Internet as soon as customer reviews are in play)

S4G4N,
I reply here, in case some other people are curious to know my say.

Nowadays, top quality rendering on desktop usually requires good specular & normal maps. I bought your assets knowing they didn't have any, but that doesn't stop me to regret there's none. My review indicates in no way that I think I have been deceived to believe this package was coming with these maps. Beside, I think it's important people are aware they'd get better quality if they were to get assets with this kind of maps.

I absolutely didn't write your assets were bad. My review is not negative. I wrote "Best pack at this date". Can't really ask for more. Except I knew it would not have been good enough for you, as you begged for a review from the very start (and bragged about your reviews before I bought anything). I knew you wanted a "It's great - there is a lot of stuff" review and nothing else. But I'm sorry, for me, this kind of review is totally useless.

My review doesn't misrepresent your package. Your package would be better with specular & normal maps. It's a fact. The "specular" maps you sent to me are not specular maps. It's a fact. I even sent you a specular map I created for one of your asset so you could compare the 2 results.

And if you actually read my review without a twisted mind, you'd know I don't want a refund. Your assets are good. I just regret they're not great when you could reach that state without too much additional work (at very least, the specular maps are easy to do ; the normal maps might be more difficult, though).

You said : "EXTREMELY possible that 5 people from that could not have agreed with you."
But it's EXTREMELY not possible that 5 people out of 5, within hours of my posting, would have not agreed with me, while everyone in this topic who mentioned an opinion actually agreed with me.

You said : "If you gave a positive review of a package and come back and see another person reviewing
it and is talking nonsense in his review, what are you going to select, helpful or not helpful".
Strangely, you're the only one here thinking my review is nonsense.
And these people came back right after I wrote my review. How convenient.