Game Devs Crying About Asset Flips?

Am I missing something here?

Using assets from the asset store, or any other art store, is fine and who would complain about that. *Unless* its too "much" of the assets in a game. There has to be enough originality there to make it yours - the odd model here and there is fine, indeed common.

But a true "asset flip" in my definition are people who take things like the completed game kits from the Asset Store, change the name, flip some of the assets and then put it for sale. Adding nothing to the game at all. They are people who should be called out and if possible, blocked from cluttering up the stores with crap. They are not developers.

 

I also don't understand what you are talking about exactly. From my perspective as 3D character artist who publish on asset store, my goal is to make multiple sales of same asset over time. Otherwise there would be no point in making them and publishing at X times lower price then their real value. No one would publish if they don't make multiple sales of same asset, and asset store would not exist. I encounter people saying this "asset flipping" often lately. For me, bad thing is only what @AnonnyMoose said in previous comment. But what i see are people who say using assets from asset store is somehow bad thing and it makes you not being "real developer".

 

Maybe in todays gaming culture the story of how the game got made is a significant part of the core gamer's end-user-experience? Like with Hellblade where "an indie team delivered true AAA production values and showed those filthy publishers that nobody needs them anymore and they can F*** off with their 59,99 + season pass games". Those are the new heroes. Or the devs of Ark and We Happy Few, who did the opposite: started indie and now got publishing deals and 50$+ price tags, which according to reviews seems to make them sellouts and the worst kind of people.

Emotions are a huge aspect of games, and there's no hard divide between the emotions the gameplay creates and the emotions created from the environment around the game. And "we bought the character models for our game on the assetstore when the bundle was 40% off in a sale and we saved like 20k+ $ compared to what it would have cost us to commission that" just makes for a terrible story around your game. Sounds much better when you sacrificed your live's savings to make that game because it mattered more to you than financial stability or sustainable business models. Or at least have cancer or something...

 

I hear you. Well, who can afford to be all unique, awesome for him/her... I remember when i was gamer. I still am actually, only i don't have much time to play them anymore. But before i knew anything about how games are made, i never cared about sort of things you say todays gamers care about. All i cared about is for game to be fun and interesting.

But if gamers are so thorough today as you say, then if they go to such depths to understand what asset store is, then they can maybe also go and examine who the artist who created those assets is. What is his/her story. How long it took to learn how to make them, how long they made them, etc etc. If you bought assets on asset store, and you want to present your game, maybe contact asset creator. Let him/her tell you your story, and include that in your article. There are limitless possibilities

 

It seems to me that the only one who should really have a complaint in the case of the asteroids game is the original asset creator themselves. No one else should even be worried about it. The original asset creator should have done a better job at legally protecting it. Anyone griping about it who is not the developer should take the asset, create the same game, and sell it on Steam for $0.99. Problem solved.

Now using 3rd party assets is allowed, encouraged and expected here. But really, ethically, I could never release something that was at least a majority of my own work, and even then, giving credit to the hard working artists and devs who have unknowingly helped me out.

My two cents.

 

Is not every Unity and Unreal game ever made an 'engine flipped' game? No game deserves to be called a true game unless they roll their own engine! Hell I'm using an OS and a PC that I didn't build myself either...

As long as the assets are acquired and used legally, within the user license agreement of the assets then there is no issue.

 

There's a tale about a businessman who earned money by taking books that didn't sell well, changing their title and reselling them for profits with success. I'm not sure if this person really existed, but this kind of tale is usually used as a positive example of business being done right. So someone who's trying to resell an asset is doing exactly that. See, normal players do not hang around the asset store, and do not know if this or that framework exists. So, someone who sells the framework as a product elsewhere, simply exposes those people to something they didn't know existed. Is it a bad idea? I'm not sure. Buying something low in one place and reselling it high in another one seems to be a common business tactic.

See, for example, in my town there's a store selling radio parts I can order myself from china. The store is selling them at 3x..5x the price they're available from chinese factories. five times the price for the exactly the same thing. Are those guys "evil"? I'm not sure. Normal people don't know those parts exist, don't know where to find them, the store has bills to pay, this kind of stuff doesn't really sell that well, and if order it myself, I'll have to wait 3 or 4 forking weeks till my parcel arrives. Or I could just walk there, pay up and get the damn thing right now. This is not that different from asset flips.

one more thing.

The phrase "they are not developers" doesn't sound right for me. It implies that there's some sort of secret developer club, and only if you join the club and adhere to its code of honor, only then you're following the one true way of developer and only then their games are the true games. Or something.

This... doesn't really work this way. There are people who want something, there are people who make something, there are those who look for profit opportunities, and then there's you. If you call yourself a "developer" and try to put a deeper meaning into it, fine, but it is merely a label, and other people might not put too much weight into it. Maybe they're not developers, and are guys that are looking for profit opportunites. Does it really matter?

In the end, somebody will simply use people's desire to condemn "asset flippers" and profit from THAT instead. As certain youtuber has been doing it for a while.

 

Yes, I have one. And for only $1.99 you can join. Or you can just start your own and charge others $0.99.



Too on point?

 

Yep, time to start that silicon mine... with tools and machines you built yourself, of course.

There's a great TED Talk called something like "When ideas have sex" which includes, amongst other things, an estimate of the total man hours through history that went into making a normal computer mouse. From memory it's in the tens of thousands, because it accounts for things like the entire tool chain... starting from rocks.

Interestingly, I've had a few people compliment me on my game, and then lament only after they've asked that some of the models in it are from the Asset Store. When I asked why it matters, their response is something like "it lacks character/authenticity", even though that clearly wasn't a problem before they asked.

The truth of the matter is that we're a 2 person team competing with games made by 20 and 200 person teams. If anyone thinks we're silly enough to leave any advantage behind then they don't know us very well. It would just be plain stupid of us to leave advantages untaken. I agree it'd be awesome if we could make all of our stuff 100% ourselves, but that's not even remotely practical. The game is more important than any individual asset.

What a lot of people don't realise is that in buying a (good) asset you don't just get the asset. It's actually a two win situation. You get the asset and thus save a bunch of time compared to making it yourself. That's a win. Additionally, that time you saved can then go into custom work that's unique to your game. So if you're doing things well then buying an asset doesn't reduce the originality / authenticity / character of your game. To the contrary, it means you can get the common stuff done more quickly so that you can focus more on what is unique to your project.

Every moment you spend re-inventing the wheel is a moment you're not spending on the unique parts of your new invention.

Spend your time where it counts.

 

Fantastic point.

 

No I am sorry, buts not right at all.

There is a huge difference to using an Engine to make a game on top of, than just taking an asset kit, renaming it and calling it your own. Those kits are meant for learning and to use as a base to build your game on top of. Not just to rename it, change a couple of the graphics and release as your own. That is not right at all, and it damages all of us by clogging up the asset stores (where its so hard to get seen as it is among all the crap), gives a bad name to Unity (already happening because of this) and demeans our actual work.

 

Thats nonsense, sorry. Everybody is aware what a shop does. These people flipping these assets are claiming the work AS THEIR OWN. The only shops that do that are those that pay to have "own brand" products made.

These asset packs are for learning or for using as a base to build a much bigger and/or different game on top of. Its very hard to put that down in legal license terms.

They are *not* developers. At all. A developer is someone who writes their own code, creates their own art/sound/music - implements a design of their own creation or one someone else has created for them. Thats what the word DEVELOPER means. This is not a secret developer club, its the real bloody world. And OF COURSE IT MATTERS, its demeaning our work - the real developers.

The players know what this is and are calling them out. Thats what this thread was started on - the players *know* and they have every right to call it for what it is. As a developer, a long-time developer who puts a lot of work into this over decades, this makes me happy that players can see this now.

 

Rising above the noise in the app stores will not get easier without any of these apps. There are only so many spots in the top 100 on any platform at any one time and I doubt any of those are the apps you are referring to.

Unity's reputation is far greater than these developers can tarnish. Everyone who knows anything about anything knows Unity has nothing to do with it.

And finally, it's not really the fault of these developers at all. If the licence agreement says they can, then they can. Plain and simple.

 

In most of those cases someone has a product they have made and offers to do a branded version for those shops, it's just like asset flips really.

For game flipping they are publishers pretending to be developers. I think you've gone a bit far in your description of a developer though, it's like insisting a property developer makes their own unique bricks for each house. Some of them even use prefabs and it's not seen as a problem.

I thought the thread was questioning whether it was "players" or other "game developers" that were crying. Assuming it is the players, I wouldn't say all of them know - if the only non-original art in a game was Ethan (as a knowing nod to using Unity) you can bet someone would complain it was an asset flip.

 

That's not nonsense. As far as I'm aware, I have a point.

Asset store EULA does not require attribution. You can also do similar thing with images off pixabay.

Does EULA say that? If not, they're allowed to use the assets that way.

If you have your own definition of a noble developer, it doesn't mean everybody else has to agree with it.
If anything, "they're NOT developers" reminds me of situation when people that barely started drawing start saying "but I'm AN ARTIST!" at every opportunity they get, to add weight to anything they say, and maybe feel extra important. This is merely a label, by itself it is meaningless, and it comes with no extra privilegies or
recognition.

They don't. The number of players complaining about it is very, very, very, small. It is smaller than number of people who unconditionally hate all unity games. However, there's certain youtuber who financially benefit from "asset flipping" hysteria, and has been using it for profit. The ones who cry about asset flipping are usually people who are trying to build games themselves, and in all honesty, those complaints usually comes off as some sort of jealousy.

Either way. The way I see it, you let your sense of "justice" and "morality" get better of you. Morality is subjective and debatable. That's why I prefer contract agreements.Check the eula, see if the behavior is allowed, and if it is, then there's nothing to complain about. And hey, nobody prevents you from grabbing the same framework, and making a "proper" game using it.

 

Tfw we're all engine flippers

 

We are all Flippers

 

Just in case some of us flippers haven't seen this asset flip directed by Neill Blomkamp:

 

The issue is, people are using nothing but assets to make there game and not doing really any work to there game, but use assets and not even properly.l

they take 1 -2 months to finish....These kind of games with a one man team can take a few years..... Yet some of these" asset flippers" are doing it in months......and its poor quality......

I have done work contact work for AAA companies and still do which are nearly the same thing as an asset, since I make tools, art what ever......That is fine...if your using assets.....Its how some of these "asset flips" are being handled with no regard for quality or even matching art style in any way... I see this all the time. So some of these devs or just don't know better or are new and they think making a game, takes 5 mins.

I have done contract work for people and they ask me to fix this and that, and I notice 99% of the game is asset art, and asset code.... and nothing is set up properly or very little, and he wants to release in weeks......

So I could go on and on......So bottom line, I have been in this industry for 20+ years, its ok, to use assets of course... a one man two man team can't do it all, in a timely manner...... But developers no matter who you are, need to take pride in there work, and think about quality and not releasing, junk.... This is what hurt Steam, Android, to many doing this..

The developers that know better will spend the time, to making it right but some others won't ...what I have seen from a ton of research is gamers on Steam seeing game made with Unity and the first thing they say... ASSET Flip..

I defend it all the time, because that is not always the case....and using assets is common , no matter one man team or 50 man team, AAA or indie..... But its the way they use the assets, correctly and take pride in there work, rather than trying to make a quick dollar.

 

I agree and disagree, from another long time developer... no company really makes everything them selves....for example, I have use World Machine for years, now I used World Creator, GAIA, TC..... many companies small or large will spend the money as its not much for a tool..

Gena, same thing... Indie companies do not have the luxury of making every single tool them selves, nor should they, its called business time vs money.. But I'm sure you didn't mean that, buying some assets like this.

I'm sure you more meant all assets being made, and the person not making anything.

 

Let the customers decide. If they can't differentiate between your work and their 'not work' then i'm afraid to say that your work has the same value as their 'not work'. If you build something unique and interesting, who cares if other people aren't?

 

I agree that this "asset flip" witch hunt has to stop. Jim Sterling's sycophants are totally mad with self importance, we shouldnt pretend their BS opinions matter. Do I personally think using asset store is lazy? yes, in some cases it is. But it is a) totally legal and b) game development "from scratch" is an endeavor that is too taxing for any individual or small studio. Using store bought assets isnt automatically makes the game worse, as developing your own game engine doesnt automatically make the game superior.

 

I'm not aware of any large studios that do things from scratch these days either. It really is a pointless endeavour.

 

There hasn't been a product made from scratch since cavemen made a stick sharp. Everything everyone does is built upon what others did before. Building on top of what others discovered before is what makes humanity an ever growing force. There is no shame in this, in fact its a desirable quality that advances us faster exponentially.

 

Nintendo are the closest I can think of, in so far as they make their own stuff from the hardware and dev tools on up.

Of course one could still argue that the hardware is built with components made by others, and the dev tools probably aren't started from assembler...

 

I do think it's 100% OK and even necessary for a dev to flip their *own* assets. DLC (free or otherwise), MMOs, RPGs, addons, even modding is self-flipping.

I'm gonna flip myself off as much as possible.

 

TBH, his "game" Rock and Roll or whatever its called looks like complete garbage. It doesnt look fun at all, its graphically horrible and the music sucked as well.

Hes blaming other people for his lack of sales but in reality nobody is gonna buy his crappy game anyways, regardless if there are other similar games that indeed are just asset flips.

 

One of the reasons I shared this is because what the Rock n Roll developer is saying is basically the same thing so many people here have said including in this thread. Talking about effort or lack of effort. His whole complaint is basically just that. He put in a lot of time and work... a lot of effort... to make his Rock n Roll game from scratch and along comes another person who just buys an asset kit from the store and flips it as a complete game and he feels people will be more likely to buy that asset flip game than the game he made.

I just personally don't agree with this effort - lack of effort view. It is not accurate at all IMO. First it completely discounts the amount of work put forth by the person who made the asset to begin with. And I don't understand why people seem to not count that. It shouldn't matter whether a person puts in that effort themselves or buys an asset that another person put forth the effort into. Same as someone choosing to hire a person to do programming or art or music for them. You don't discount that effort.... effort was still made regardless of who actually did that and I think the people griping constantly about these asset flips seem to completely overlook that for some reason.

I am not saying the person buying the asset can't put forth additional effort nor that they shouldn't do that. I am just saying effort is and has been put forth already. And this example makes it quite clear that just as much if not more effort or certainly skill was put into the store asset than the custom asset. Probably not effort so much as skill. At the same time this Rock n Roll dev seems to have put forth more effort into the design and programming. Possibly. Not sure. I would need to buy both games to compare.

I guess I just get tired of hearing Jim Sterling and so many people ramble on about lack of effort especially when it comes to using store bought assets. It just is a very odd criteria to judge a game by. I'd say a lot of fantastic programmers could put forth a huge amount of effort into graphics for example and another person could buy store assets that completely blow away the art produced from all of the effort of those non-artists. Likewise, an artist could put forth a huge amount of effort into programming and another person could buy store assets for pooling, controllers, shaders, multiplayer/online support etc that blow away the work produced from all of the effort of those non-programmers.

 

Effort doesn't matter. Only results.

It is possible to dig a pond with a teaspoon. There will be a lot of effort involved, but results won't be great and it'll simply take much longer.

 

There is a significant attitude among the general populace that hard work should equal success. Its an attitude left over from pre industrial civilization where we depended on muscle to get things done and direct agriculture to eat.

Its now a massively outdated attitude. Effort is still mildly important. But it pales in comparison to effective use of the tools provided by a modern civilization.

 

The thing that people are missing is that things aren't valuable because of the effort, they're valuable because of the results. If you put effort into a thing nobody wants then the results are worthless. If you put arbitrary effort into something that could be easier you're just wasting time without increasing results. Either way, it doesn't lead to better results, so it does not generate value, and will not lead to your success.

I think @zombiegorilla once said something to the effect of you can spend years wearing yourself out moving stacks of junk around, at the end you still only have stacks of junk.

Effort can still be extremely important. It just has to be effort towards a result that people care about.

 

You could get the skills to dig other things with spoons and people would watch on youtube

 

Interesting observation. I think I already said that I really don't care that much either way as far as asset flips are concerned, but in light of this, and in light of the fact that people tend to say that nintendo is the most "original" in their games...interesting.

Perhaps starting from such a place can better allow one to recognize alternate ways to build/design things (such as the systemic nature of BotW), though it's hardly a guarantee of a worthwhile outcome. Just conjecture.

 

But they're not doing everything (anything?) from scratch ... the Switch is the Wii U v2 (but better), Wii U was obviously a slightly more powerful Wii ... they bought the tech for Wii remotes from an inventor, who had got shot down by Sony and Microsoft.

Their engines/ software/ tools/ etc... no idea about though, I'd assume lots of re-used code.

 

Ha ha. This is what is so odd about the effort thing regarding a dev doing all of the work themselves. Who is deciding what the definition of effort is? It sometimes seems like people are taking things they enjoy doing and if someone else doesn't they label it as a lack of effort.

Like an artist wants to make all art themselves they get a lot of satisfaction from doing so and they know it is the only way to get exactly what they want. Anyone who isn't doing that must be lazy. Programmers want to do all of the systems and programming themselves they get a lot of satisfaction from doing so and they know it is the only way to make everything work exactly the way they want. Anyone not doing that must be lazy.

It seems like just personal preferences being stated as requirements for "effort". And yet no matter how much work is done everything is sitting on top of all of the effort of the game engine devs themselves.

Most likely none of these people are making the level of effort the folks making games in Assembly on the C64, NES and other retro machines are doing. I am sure somewhere there are people working on modern games using C and OpenGL. Maybe those are the ones making the real "effort". I bet someplace there are even people working on a modern game in Assembler. Might never get done or might switch to something like Unity in time but still maybe that is real effort people should strive for. Lol

 

I think angrypenguin's words are the answer.

If there's an easier way to do something and get identical results, your effort isn't really meaningful.

"Get identical results" is the operative term here. There are sometimes hidden benefits to doing something yourself, such as better extensibility or control over the final product.

 

I think they are both the answer and probably a couple of more things that haven't been mentioned yet too. I definitely agree with @angrypenguin and am sure that covers a good portion of it.

 

The hard worker carries a shovel of dirt at a time across the yard and won't finsh untill tomorrow evening. The lazy man sits on the couch today and spends tomorrow using his neighbors wheel barrow. Both did the same job and finished at the same time. Sure one of em had to use the same tool his neighbor used but he got to sit around watching netflix for a day. The smart man spent a hundred bucks to rent a loader for a day and spent 20 minutes doing a job that took the others at least a whole day realizing that time is money and he was worth more than 100 bucks a day. Sometimes it just makes sense to pay for the right tool.

 

Right! And that is the whole thing. In basically every other area people recognize it as a very good thing to "work smarter not harder" so it is very odd why that view is absent for some people when it comes to game dev. Too many people thinking of personal pride maybe. Kind of goes back to what we have all said in different ways... putting the focus on effort instead of the end result. I get it though it must just be a personal pride kind of thing... I guess.

 

Grownups teach kids that it’s important to work hard, to deserve some reward designated by them.
But that’s because, for kids, it’s a time of growth, and pushing themselves helps that growth ... so if kids do their best, they still get ice cream even if they lose the soccer match.

The mistake many people do is to think all that still applies to the real world.

What everyone ever need are results. E.g. You don’t want a carpenter to talk about and exaggerate about all the splinters he got in his hands, you want a chair that doesn’t break; you don’t want the cab driver to get lost “accidentally”, you want the closest cheapest route to your destination ... and that’s what you really want, and need, from anyome doing something for you. There’s really no honor in working harder for no reason, it’s just an echo of how we are raised as kids, makes no sense to bring that to the real world.

 

I'm not sure how this is an argument against them having done anything from scratch. Besides, I'd already pointed out that they used pre-existing electronic components, which is surely a bigger deal than having improved on other stuff they previously made.

That's just a question of employment status. Whether it was invented on their clock or invented and then sold to them is neither here nor there. Someone put effort into a relatively original thing, and then it was incorporated into their product.

Even if I write something in plain old C (not C++, just C) I'm still using "lots of re-used code" - standard libraries, OS APIs, compilers, tools, and so on.

The whole "from scratch" thing is actually a bit of a joke, which is why most conversations about it come down to something like these (sarcastic) remarks:

 

The way I see it I'm not proud of the effort I put forth but instead of the work I have completed and the quality of the result so I don't even understand the personal pride part. I would feel better about a shining polished product that was fun to play and used every asset I could find to save time than I would of a boring full of bugs turd I worked really hard on while writing every drop of code from scratch/assembly. It only makes sense to me. Someone who does good work of any kind in any field does so by using the most appropriate materials and tools.

 

You're not worth $100/day if you're spending the time saved watching telly.

Spending money to save time is a valid argument if you're using the time to do something that generates more value. In the case of game development that's where I think a lot of the value in assets is - every minute I'm not re-making something that already exists is a minute I can spend making a new thing that did not already exist.

 

Really depends on how you measure it. Sure I might not make another $100/day doing something else. But there is more to life then the bottom line. A day off doing nothing might certainly be worth spending $100.

 

Absolutely. It did cross my mind to go down that rabbit hole...

While a day off can definitely be worth its opportunity cost, a day in which you just watched Netflix is not a day in which you were worth $100 to anyone else.

 

I think this is isn't right.

In addition to generating more value you're supposed to be taking care of your own needs and keep yourself happy. Because when you're feeling too unhappy for too long, your productivity will drop and you may actually get seriously sick which will cost more than the extra profit you would've gotten.

So spending money to avoid doing something you don't want to do is a valid approach, because it increases your own happiness/satisfaction. Concentrating only on maximizing profits is not the right idea.

 

The lazy guy watching netflix in that story only had 1 extra day and he spent it watching netflix....what a sloth. The smart one that spent 100 bucks on the loader used it to complete his job in 20 minutes then spent the rest of the day making 300 bucks helping his neigbor who no longer has a wheel barrow because he loaned it out to some lazy sloth and still had a day off.

That being said my time off is worth as much to me as I get paid. There are times in my line of work, during harvest especially, where we work 18 hour days for a month straight. A couple weeks into that and I would gladly pay you my days wages for a day off.

I do see what your saying though a day spent not being productive would not have made the wages in the first place. Its not like the guy moving dirt around in his yard was getting paid for doing his own yardwork. I do put a value on my time off for play though. If I have a major job to do on one of my days off I think about it that way. I can spend some money and have someone else do it so I can go play or do it myself. I think about how long it will take me versus how much it will cost to have it done and if I get out of a full days work for the cost of a days pay its frequently worth it to me.

Aside from some homespun fable about yardwork we have to agree that spending a days wages on a tool that will save you a days work in your job is a good thing. If I buy an asset that would have taken me a day to create and use it more than once its now more than paid for itsself. There is also the case of buying an asset that would have taken you a week to complete for a single days pay. This frees up 4 days to spend on the parts of your game that need your personal touch, that stuff which makes it uniquely yours. I believe the final sentiment of that story still holds true. Sometimes it just makes sense to spend money on the right tool.

 

BREAKING NEWS

 

There is a difference between which assets you choose too, we are working on AI for our game and first we looked at Tactical Shooter AI, basicily all the games using it will behave the same, and no to little modularity in said asset.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47248

We choosed to go with Node canvas instead with fine control over all aspects, alot more work, but In the end I think it will pay off

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14914

I hope the assetflipper advocates wont burn us at the stakes for using that asset!

 

I've only ever seen people moaning about visual assets, anything behind the scenes these moaners won't have a clue about (or even think about) so, no, you'll be fine