General Asset Store Complaint / Feedback

I'm part of a studio that works mainly selling unity assets. They are one of the most popular and best paid on their category so I wanted to give some feedback as an independent user of Unity.

Clients information

We don't have any information about the clients we have, which are literally hundreds, if not thousands. Not even their usernames, or even location or any information we can gather at all. Just the number.

Having at least some statistics would help to tell us where our sells come from so we can invest in translation, for example.

Also, we don't know where our asset is being used, or which project, and that's really sad, because we've been told maybe our asset is used in some great games on the market and we don't know about them or even be able to tell our buyers that we are gathering cool projects to feature on our website. We simple can't, unless we are lucky they see the forum.

We can't ping any user who left a bad review so they revisit it and change it. Sending a message would be dangerous, but just giving them a ping to remind them we fixed their problem and they still have a bad review in there... This was just an suggestion.

Piracy

Basically, let the buyers of an asset connect with the sellers in a different way than the rest of the users. Those who seek support, should be, that way, easily identified through there. Not showing a support webiste and email to everybody.

Just because we receive too many emails who are not from real clients, but also pirates who got our asset from a torrent site. So we have to deal with it by hand, building and paying extra for our own support site, just because buyers don't have a different connection with us after buying the asset.

Percentage of profit

I agree with the standard 30% of profit to be given to Unity, they deserve it. But, I think it's not fair to keep it the same when an asset is successful. It should decrease slowly. Otherwise I don't feel it's nice to keep 30% if, for example, I sold and asset for 100k (whatever) and they get 30k because I decided this was going to be the price. The only difference with a 10 euro asset is the price. Not the bandwidth, not the piracy control, everything they offer us... etc. But the asset store takes 3 euros from them, and 30k from us...just because we were successful and decided to ask for more. Makes no sense, I know it's industry standard, but I still don't see the logic.

But since everybody thinks it's fair, and they gave good ideas in the answers, I updated this whole post and... I'll say no more.

Thanks

 

I think this is exactly why they don't provide customer information. And technically they're not exactly considered your customers... they are Unity's customers and you are the manufacturer being payed a wholesale commission for your product (the 70%).

It's a tough one for me because as an asset store publisher myself I'd love to be able to see who purchased my asset for verification purposes but as a customer of the asset store the last thing I want is asset publishers directly marketing to me unless I've followed them on Twitter or something.

That percentage that Unity takes covers asset store staff, hosting / bandwidth / storage costs and processing fees for credit cards as well as processing fees for payouts via paypal so they don't keep anything near 30% and their costs continually accrue so that doesn't make sense.

That is some of the most bizarre logic... if you consider that a cost, just stop selling your asset altogether. Then you'd be -4000 / month and Unity would have nothing to do with it. Technically you pay nothing to Unity. You set an MSRP for your asset and provide it to Unity at a wholesale price. They sell it at MSRP and give you wholesale for each unit.

 

Ok. I get what you say, and you have good points in there, but you must admit the Store is far from being a good place for sellers. We just have a number out of it. Nothing else. And many people complain about this and other asset stores were built, but died fast because of the integration of this store into Unity.

About giving your info, I know what you mean. We don't need anybody's information, but it would give us great hints. But what about being able to follow a publisher or an asset for announcements integrated here? If I had bought an asset I'd like to receive announcements, not follow the developer's life on twitter.

About the percentage, I don't agree. Of course they have to get money out of this, they deserve it. But if your asset is more successful, it doesn't mean they have to spend more on yours than others, right?. Also, I don't think it's good they keep 30% of your earnings above a reasonable limit. There's no justification for that.

 

This already exists, there are announcements about assets in asset store under the mail icon.

It is 100% justified, normal and expected. Every sale is a new sale, and there are costs associated with acquiring, maintaining and updating. Its retail, just like every time you buy shoes, the store that sells them to you gets a percentage of sale. The first sale of your asset costs Unity just as much as the 10,000th sale.

 

This is the wrong analogy. The Asset Store is, well, a store. If you make a movie, you will be paying a large percent to distributors and retailers. Unity doesn't take 30% of a game you make, which is what would be required for your analogy to make sense.

 

• Anonymous analytics would be nice on purchases. Currently I think most authors try to track this through google analytics on the store page link.
• Unity should absolutely not provide any contact details to asset store publishers. If you want to contact the people that own your products then make a website and offer a newsletter subscription. Unity currently sends non-invasive notifications of any owned assets that are updated, but that is basically where it should stop.
• You can confirm ownership by asking for the product id and running it through your publisher page to see if they are valid paying customers. This is a pretty normal step if support is taking too much of your time and piracy is in question. There is no good way to fight piracy, just accept that it is going to happen and get back to making better products.
• Their fee is already fair and similar to other marketplaces.

 

I would be adverse to my email being handed out to every random asset seller if I mess with their asset for a few minutes. I get enough spam as it is.

Agregate statistical data would be relevant and useful.

Piracy is just a part of doing digital business. You can try DRM, but that tends to harm legitimate customers more then it hurts pirates. If you don't want to deal with piracy, move into physical goods. It's much harder to pirate a box of paint. Of course we pirate each other's colours all the time, so you can't get away from it completely.

The 30% fee is pretty much the standard across most digital market places. If you don't like the fee, you can try sell elsewhere. Build your own website for direct sales. But you'll find that the asset store is well worth the 30%.

 

You must be completely new to the industry. Just about every major store takes a 30% cut. Apple, Google, Steam, etc.

You are always free to sell your own asset through your own store but then you have to deal with hosting and bandwidth costs, the fees associated with a payment provider, having to maintain your site and protect it against hackers, advertise to generate traffic to your site, etc.

You might be able to eliminate many of these by choosing a lower fee store like Humble Widget or Itch.io but you won't be able to eliminate all of them as advertising will always be necessary to bring people to your site.

Simply put you'll find yourself reaching or even exceeding that 30% very quickly on your own.

 

Ok. You had good points. Some good ideas, thanks for the explanations.

I changed my post so that the important ideas I wanted to keep, stay alive. The rest, I just feel bad leaving my whole rant in there.

Cheers!

 

You might consider reviewing how hutong Playmaker is doing business.
http://www.hutonggames.com/showcase.html
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/playmaker-visual-scripting-for-unity.72349/page-46#post-3019909

They seem to have NO problem gathering information on the teams and projects that use there tools. Either they are proactive in there efforts to see who is using there tools in successful titles, OR teams are reporting back to them that they have used Playmaker in the development of specific games.

 

It's free advertising for the game.

 

You can validate the invoice number from the store, and there's even an API for it, so just do that?

--Eric

 

The thread will not be deleted due to the fact it is our policy not to if there are replies. I will lock the thread instead as there may still be value.

In response to a report.