Getting Started on Asset Store: Should I?

I'll be prefacing this post by saying I'm not quite sure where I should be posting it. I'll try it here, and hope for the best.

I've been working with Unity since 2013 on a personal level and I've developed packages and modules over the years that I find to be very useful. I figured that while the professional projects I've been developing are in the oven, I could try selling those packages and modules as a starting point for getting some returns out of my time spent.

I occasionally venture into the store to find art assets, but not often for code. Is it worth it to try? Most of my code is meant for character and application control, property monitoring, pooling, input and animation tools. Does the store already have enough of that? What else is expected of tool packages?

Thank you all in advance

 

Well, if you don't care about it, you just want to put your stuff up and see if sticks, then it does not matter. If you take it seriously, you will need to do your own market-research, actually open up the asset store, browsing, checking what's in there already, taking notes what you may can do better, what you can compete with, what you unique stuff you can offer.

Just storing your packages on the store for backup and maybe making a couple of sales accidentally is a perfectly valid move, just don't forget the support demand.

Please remove the feedback tag, you didn't provide any feedbacks.

 

Just from what I've seen:

• People like easy-to-use plug-and-play components that they can just stick on their objects without having to write any code.
  
• People want endless configuration options on these components, but they want the interface to by easy and not-confusing. (custom inspector helps with this)
  
• People want extensive documentation but don't want to have to read it. Every component's usage should be self-evident.
• People want your code to be compatible with any arbitrary version of Unity that they happen to be using (as far back as Unity 4 sometimes). No error messages, no warnings.
• People who know about allocation always want 0 allocation.
• Optional debug logging is nice.
• People want a working example scene full of prefabs that illustrate how to use every component with multiple examples of each one configured properly.
• When people import your project, they want all of your files and sub folders to import inside a single root folder. This folder should have a distinctive, descriptive name (not something like "assets" or "export" or "package"). People want to be able to move this folder without your product breaking.

 

seems like most the popular content is plug-and-play content for casual developers or artist-developers who want the easy button.

 

Thanks for the input. I thought that "feedback" meant that I've wanted feedback. My bad.

 

Are you ready to spend time giving support? because if you make a plugin, long term support is a big plus. Many plugins get abandoned and deprecated (it's kinda insulting too when you pay for one and the dev makes it free as an excuse to never fix bugs and give support).
That's why so far I've only made 3d assets despite coding being my main strength. Making a plugin with documentation, updating and supporting it after every time Unity makes a major change would take too much of my time.

 

@kdgalla has a point and the post is pretty funny ... I've seen that on a occasion but for the most part I've found being an asset store publisher to be an enjoyable experience.

Over the years I've released many assets some of which are now deprecated or free but it is worth noting that competition and expectations are higher than ever.

It's hard to say what will happen without knowing anything about your assets, but why not give it a go for the experience.

 

The effort involved with maintaining a code based asset usually means its not worthit in the current climate.

Unless your marketing and SEO is completely on point, in the beginning (first 12 months) you will experience very little to no sales, but for the few sales you do get you will get support requests where the time doesnt justify the money your making.

Generally its a lot easier to support art based assets because of this. The package manager, SRP and LTS versions of unity have made things a bit more difficult as people these days will expect it to run on something like 5.6 all the way to 2019.3 and everything in between, as well as on SRP, in built, and with any combination of packages. And if you dont give good support youll get bad ratings which will in turn canibalise your sales. And even if you give good report you get users who dont understand how to use it or simply dont like it and rate low anyway, affecting sales.



Its a lot easier if your able to gather one or more freelancers so that one of you can handle support whilst the other(s) continue to update and develop. Oh did I not mention that? If its not updated regularly as in once every 2-3 months not just with bug fixes but new features, then again it will canibalise your sales.

In general its a headache I cba with but if its your cup of tea then go for it!

 

My opinion is the Asset Store is a good way to bring in a small amount of money to offset costs in developing your project by selling some standalone parts of your game you've developed. Expect a trickle of sales not a flood (obviously there are exceptions, but I doubt from this question that you're building the next must have asset). If your asset is extremely simple to use and nearly idiot proof you will not get many support requests.

Spoiler

My most common support request is for an asset which is a collection of models. I have a couple smaller subset collections priced lower of course, but I sometimes get requests to post some other subset of just the models this person wants.

They of course don't realize how big of a hassle that is so I'm not going to do it, and it seems to me to be because the person making the request is of very limited income where $60 will make or break them, which is why they are reaching out to me. I almost always respond politely that no I won't because of the work involved, and give them a free voucher for the full asset. If $60 will break you, I don't want you to give it to me.

 

Keep in mind that the hours spent providing support will probably offset the income. If you're not doing anything with those hours anyway, or if you're doing it for the enjoyment of helping devs turns their dreams into reality, you'll come out ahead. But if you want to use those hours for something else, such as developing a game or spending time with family and friends, then factor that into the decision.

Also, everything that kdgalla mentioned above, with the exception of folders. Unity mandates some specific special folders for certain assets such as gizmos and editor resources. But, apart from that, put it in a single folder as indicated in Where To Install Your Assets, also keeping in mind that you can use assembly definitions. (In addition, your code must be in a non-global namespace.)

 

The support really isn't that bad. If someone is being unreasonable just stop supporting them. Point out where the boundaries are and add their concerns to a low priority queue.

If you aren't selling much you probably won't have many problematical support issues.

If your asset is code based and not using bleeding edge features you won't have that much issue upgrading between versions.

Personally I'm always in favour of giving it a go, the worst case here isn't very bad: maybe a week or two of wasted effort.

For some motivation I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the asset store. I've maintained a day job and still spend plenty of time with my family and socialising. I've also met a bunch of interesting people and ensured that if I ever want to ditch the day job I have quite a few people who are willing to hire me for remote consulting work.