I want to pay more to good Asset Store plugin developers!

Now that is very odd example I must say.

We are talking about Asset Store business model and its sustainability for the service providers. It has nothing to do with well established supply chains and goods. Physical goods are not same thing as services and digital products.

If you fail to see who is paying your bills, and you don't care, the downhill is right there. Pretty basics of business?

 

How about we develop a system where we can purchase beer, snacks, maple glazed sugary cream filled donuts, pet treats, small toys, energy drinks, or bottles of maple syrup, deliver them via drone (which we'd be able to control), and then a small web cam where we can voyeuristic watch and comment on the person consuming / using said gift?

Just send them paypal money. As was stated earlier, there's always this awkward, "No really I'm good, you don't need to send me money," but I'd have a hard time believing someone would be like, "Welllll, they did send me some money, I'm going to refuse it." A tip jar sounds like an interesting idea, and all I really see it doing is bypassing awkward refusals. I just send the dude some paypal money and it worked fine.

I see the interest in continued support for assets, but... that's kind of the deal with the asset store. You're buying the product that exists now, not a future state. Of course, if you contacted the dev and were like, "So.... how about I send you $100 and a box of maple glazed sugary cream filled donuts to update you asset, or provide X functionality..." they might listen.

As a Bolt user, before it was sold to Photon, and it seemed like sales were lagging due to saturation of market, I suggested that new-future functionalities be added as new assets and charge for them as add-ons. I understand if you have a large asset, and spend 500 hours to make some new functionality, it's really up to you how you want to handle it. This talk of a tip jar I think falls outside of that scope.

 

Exactly my point.

 

If it isn't sustainable then a few random donations are unlikely to change that and I know if I were at or near the point where those donations would make it possible to stay afloat I would start considering a career change.

 

The developer can put a donation link on their site, there is no need for Unity to deal with. Also, for extended support or additional services, just contact the developer directly. From experience, they are more than happy to accommodate additional needs/services/requirements.

 

Not only that, but many artists and developers do not solely develop for Unity. Some freelance, or do contract work, or even make assets for other engines.

 

Who would mind earning some extra bucks Definitely recurring revenue is a positive thing for all asset publishers, as it will help them to support the product for long time. But we are really doubtful about the number of turnouts for this. Now you might ask, why do we feel so? It's simple, we find handful of customers who write up a review and express support for the product. So number of people contributing few extra bucks to support publisher will be much lower

And to be frank, for us getting a review is much more valuable than earning some extra bucks. Firstly, it tells us what our customer thinks about the product and other thing is, indirectly it will help us grab new customers. So for us reviews matters a lot and even brings joy to read about product

And just to provide an insight, we want to share how low the reviewer percentage is. Lets consider our asset store product CPNP. This plugin is available in multiple bundles like iOS Pack, Android Pack, Ultra pack, Lite version. And among these, Ultra pack(original price $45) and Lite version(Free download) are most selling assets. So far, Ultra pack managed to get around 6-7% of customer reviews and its much worse for Lite version(Free download) somewhere around 2-3%. And interestingly, in most of the cases, we got review when customer faced some trouble and got it working after contacting support team.

And considering this fact, we are not too confident about this donation/subscription system success. Anyways its a good thought and we hope to see more people standing up for publisher

 

UAS Roadmap

Theres several great developments that could stem from those R&D points and partially resolve some woes discussed here. I do agree that there should be a global option to decide to sell your asset as a per-seat license (with a few exceptions), but there's probably implications I haven't thought through with that.

I dislike the current implementation of Lite packages. It's a valid concept, but not implemented as it should be.

 

Just change the category of your asset to Editor Extensions and it will be per-seat. Why would you not do that if you wanted it that way?

 

It would definitely hurt small teams not currently working on commercial products. Larger teams could afford the cost and one-person teams, probably the bulk of the people here, would not be affected. But teams from 3-5 in size might hurt, especially if there is one coder, and several artists/designers.

I get Editor Extensions completely, since the purpose of those is to use them in the editor. But not sure about the rest since artists sometimes never even touch Unity. Maybe the good thing would be that people like us would have be much less willing to purchase items if we know we would have to buy multiple copies and we wouldn't spend so much money on assets!

That $45 asset now becomes $150! Not much to a successful middle sized team, but a lot for a small team without any game-related income. It would mean paring down, being much more selective. More money maybe for some but fewer asset developers supported. It would mean making absolutely sure that the asset is what you need and no more "oo, that looks cool, let's try it!"

 

Another absolutely awesome asset bites the dust BECAUSE USERS CAN NOT PAY SUPPORT MONEY!

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ra...0-now-with-damage.310487/page-10#post-2683432

So so sad...

 

Supporting = buy more copies or other assets by the same dev. Donations / undetermined "support" income is complex depending if the receiver is a company and where he lives.

 

That is exactly what I'm trying to suggest, let me buy subscription, don't offer me some third party hacks. it is real problem and undermines development reliability to assets

 

Had the developer wanted to continue creating/supporting the product he could have posted that in his thread, started a Patreon account and signed up all interested folks from his Unity forum thread, asking them to pay for support and/or updates.

However, it looks to me as if his life is busy and he doesn't want to bother with it, which is a very valid reason.

It is sad when asset developers disappear. Much of the reason, I believe, are the very low prices and the saturation of the asset store with low quality assets. There is so much out there, that the good stuff just gets lost.

Another reason, in my opinion, is that many of the asset developers are just not business folks. They love making stuff for us and enjoy seeing use use their stuff. But they don't ask for money for updates, don't create add-ons so they can charge more, and end up selling thousands of copies and being overwhelmed by the support.

Of course, then you have the few who raise their price for the latest AMAZING update by a measly $15 and get attacked on their own forum thread. Of course....the overwhelming support from those of us who are benefiting from the asset and the developers support was fantastic and heart warming.

If you asset has grown to some whopping size and you are afraid to lose sales by raising the price for new updates, then just consider the sales you will lose of you can't keep up with the support. The vast majority of us will be willing to pay more if we get more and the support stays consistent.

 

Then suggest the developer start a Patreon account. Unity should not be responsible for subscriptions. Patreon already does this.

 

Wouldn't generally higher prices be a better solution than separate payments?

Prices on the Asset Store are low, and this is encouraged by the various sales cycles that are going on. If you look at the prices for a lot of assets they'd cover less than an hour's wages (in a western country). That means you need a huge volume of sales to break even (if you account for your time, which you should) and that's before even considering support. Even once you've broken even, it means less than one hour of support is being covered per customer.

That's no way to sustain a product. Or, perhaps, it means that the market only really supports easily developed products with very low support requirements.

If you look at software or art libraries elsewhere you'll see that things generally cost far more than what we see on the Asset Store. (To be fair I haven't looked in a while, so maybe things have dropped in price everywhere.) For example, see the voxel libraries available on the Asset Store, then go look up VoxelFarm.

That's not generally because the vendors are greedy, it's the actual cost of running a sustainable business based on these things. That's not to say that asset vendors should always be a stand alone business in their own right, but if they're not then that's definitely going to reduce their available time and for some products that will have an impact. If they have to sustain a job and their product and provide support then they're clearly going to have to balance or juggle time commitments carefully. Then also consider that they probably got into this because they wanted to make games, which also needs time...

In short, their asset needs to be solid and desirable and - importantly - the market has to be willing to pay enough for it that it pays for its own development and support time plus a margin on top. A minority willing to pay an additional support subscription is cool, but is unlikely to make the needed difference. You need a willing market moreso than you need willing individuals.

 

Please try to understand the business aspect. Even use case named "Unity3d" where they had to change business model to subscriptions. Recurring revenue is the only way to go and Unity is the sole party responsible for making that possible. Not the asset developers. High prices is not the point. Selling 10 assets for 100€ is the same as selling 100 assets for 10€. The key is building customer base that is happy with the product and must be able to rely on the third party assets.

This exact same phenomena is behind the fact that any asset must offer source code of asset to be considered useful. Reliability.

 

How about a Donate button on top of the usual "buy" button?
This would give users that have the cash and want to express their gratitude or ensure the dev has the needed resources to improve an asset the possibility to easely transfer some additional cash to the asset store dev without having to leave the asset store ecosystem.

 

BandCamp have a "pay what you want" option artists can use for their tracks and albums. Maybe that could be an option on the asset store too.

 

Let users buy as many copies of the same asset as they want and be able to gift them to other users.

 

Hm, that is fine, but I might not want to tip the asset store dev from the beginning. Given I have no expierience with the dev, I really cannot judge the quality of his asset and support before buying the product and starting to use it.

Then, after some months or even years of usage, and receiving good support from the asset store dev, I might want to leave a big tip in a "digital tip jar" to thank the asset store dev for his/her continued support and a product that exceeded all expectations.

So while a "pay what you want" scheme with a min price might be a good idea, the additional donate button should still be there for users that want to tip the dev AFTER having had good expieriences with their services.

 

Asset Store is a store for business and should have nothing to do with donations and other wild stuff. For other ways to support there are plenty of suggestions here already. Patreon and Paypal donations are probably the most common ways and can be mentioned at the authors home page if he/she so wants to.

 

How about then call it the "Tip Jar" Button? A lot of serious non-digital businesses have those in their stores, so why not put a "tip dev" button somewhere?

If not in the store, the asset stores dev profile? Add the functionality to the forum so asset devs could add it to their asset store threads with ease?
I still think it should be linked with the asset store system to make it a) easier for devs to receive this additional payments without having to set up an additional account, b) make it easy for users to make this additional payments without having to go through third party sites, and c) make these additional payment options as visible as possible.

 

Asset store is a business platform with real transactions and fixed prices that may include taxes such as VAT. Donations is a whole different matter and they would make Unity to be a different type payment provider in the middle for "unknown" payments.

I don't think those belong in any store but would not mind if the author page might mentions sellers Patreon page for example. Tips/donations belong more to places where content providers might have limited abilities to receive support (streams, youtube, tutorial sites etc.).

 

Mh, good point, haven't thought about the legal implications for Unity and the Asset Store.

Well, I just do see that the asset devs are sometimes seem to do a fabolous job, creating AAA class assets, yet not always asking for a price that seems sustainable to me given the amount of sales that could be expected (I could be totally wrong, as I don't have the numbers)...
At the same time I have used "pay what you want" systems, and rarely ever paid more than the minimum amount, because I really cannot judge the quality of what I am buying before actually having used the product.

But anyway, problem with leaving things in the asset devs hands is a) some might not feel comfortable putting a Patreon link on their page, even though they could use the additional money, b) some people might call them cheap for it (makes no sense to do that for an optional payment option but hey, this is the internet after all), c) and yet again its something the asset store dev has to take care of.
Thus, to me at least, it would make sense to find some global solution that adds the possibility to send an asset dev some additional funds without the dev having to opt in or set it up themselves. But then, I am not sure what would be the best option for that....

 

Absolutely and this is the best solution in my mind. However, whenever an asset developer suggests he must raise his prices or asks for money for a huge update or has an idea to charge for add-ons, he/she is crucified in the forum posts.

Some of these people make their living on the asset store, and most of those are the most prolific, provide the best support, and are constantly updating. Yet we refuse to pay a fair price for the product and/or support.

Sadly, I have paid huge prices for things where the developer disappears afterwards which makes me much less likely to buy from an unknown developer these days. However, a known developer, one that has good reviews and provides solid support should be able to charge a fair price for his time.

I will admit my view on this has changed a lot as I have dealt with developers over the past few years, getting to know them, and realizing the difference between product and support. It is really the support we pay for, especially for editor tools and scripting. I have reached the point where no matter how good something looks and how shiny the videos are, I am going to buy from people I know.

I will spend more money per product, but less money overall since I won't end up with assets that are never updated and become obsolete.

As for asking Unity to create subscriptions...does anyone realize what a bad business move this would be for them? It would add more work for current staff or possibly require new staff and add new processes, all of which cost money. So the price for a subscription to an asset on Unity would have to pay for the added work for Unity, taking more money from the asset developer and you.

Not only that, but they would have to add a way for us to keep track of our subscriptions, cancel them if we need to, bill us regularly, deal with complaints when asset developers don't update or do what we expect, and a myriad of other issues that might occur with a brand new system.

Patreon has all that and it works. Fees are low and the asset developer gets most of the money. They already have a system in place. If a developer is too afraid to put a Patreon button their website, then they have decided it is not worth it to them. The choice really is theirs.

In the meantime, offer them more if you can and wish to do so. Buy other assets they make, even if you don't need them. I have done this numerous times. Give them reviews and talk about their stuff in your blogs and tweets. Advertise for them. Post in their forum threads....pictures and praise.

Betcha that will help them a great deal and and they certainly will appreciate it.

 

No, it is not.

Selling one asset for $100 means you have one customer to support. Selling 10 assets for $10 each means you have 10 customers to support, and the same amount of money to do it in.

Edit: The latter also means that you need to reach and convert 9 additional customers. So you're increasing required effort on both ends without increasing income.

 

They'd also have to implement some way to stop assets from working or being usable when the subscription ends. How is that ever going to work with source code (which people insist upon) or art assets?

 

I would imagine if you stop paying, you just lose support and updates. However, as far as I know, the developer does not have access to the names of his customers unless he has the customer send him an invoice. In the case of a subscription, he would have to receive subscriptions every month and keep track of them. It will be difficult to know who has paid for the support and who has not, especially with forums freely available.

Just seems like a mess to me, both for the customer and the developer.

I think you made a great point about the 10 sales at $10 not being equal to one at $100. Many forget that the support that follows the purchase is even more valuable than the actual product. I recently paid $149 for an asset...and the support is terrible. I feel cheated even though I own the asset now. When I paid that money, I thought the shiny publicity meant professionals who would provide superb support. Instead, they admitted they didn't have much time for support.

Yikes. I now look at assets in a whole different light. Some developers think the product itself is the sale and lose site of the true value of these assets.

 

What happens when you saturate the market? You have lets say 100 customers. After 1 year of development they are still expecting updates and keeping up with Unity changes. You just have to stop working on it, no new money comes in and you are "jailed for life" if you want to keep customers happy for "free".

Why not just realize the nature of business, one time license model is 90s, recurring revenue subscriptions are modern.

 

I can't imagine that I'd start throwing money as a customer of average financial means because I fear an asset they made will be dropped by support by them.

It's usually a sign that the problem has been solved within Unity that their asset was designed to remedy or competitors offered better solutions. In other cases of developers trying out moonlighting and deciding that it wasn't their cup of tea; well I don't think offering donations it going to inspire them to do something they didn't enough again.

A solution that is niche will depend on the developer enjoying their work to support it. Donations won't help. This donation scheme needs nothing extra done for the past customers to set it up for this asset developers or Unity or anybody else. Developers aren't paupers. This is as easy as creating decent support tutorials for their product(s) on YouTube and setting up a donation button. I've donated to two 3D modelers that make tutorials in the past for their good work.

 

For software yes, but for individual pieces of script and models? I don't think so. Sounds like a nightmare and a good way to lose money.

Not arguing that a subscriptions are bad, but I would hesitate to subscribe to a an asset made by someone selling on the asset store. Sorry, but history shows that they don't last forever. Ah, Goat posted about the same thing just before I posted.

 

Part of the problem with requiring a subscription for every little thing is that eventually your customers will start justifying the costs of building it all from scratch themselves. If I had to pay a subscription fee for the assets I purchased I simply wouldn't have purchased them. I'd have built them from scratch myself. After all I purchase them to save not spend.

 

Absolutely. $5 a month for an asset is $60 a year. Not too bad if the support is good, but why not just charge $60 and then after a year give a modest update fee? People still using it after a year and who have received good support already will be happy to pay.

$10 a month is $120 a year. That might turn off quite a few buyers for all but the most professional assets.

Honestly, I think it would be a wash. Developers will find they have fewer sales and those that do spend the money will be more demanding and expect excellent support.

 

Or the most dedicated asset creators. I have an art asset in my collection that has been frequently updated ever since it was released about three years ago and it's very affordable too. It's about the only art asset I have that I would be willing to pay a subscription for.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/7101

 

Support to me does not necessarily mean updates(that can be one aspect if it is a bugfix), it means walking users through issues and answering questions. If you release something, and it works, but people are constantly emailing you stupid questions, I would want to be paid for that time as well. I don't see why you couldn't just link a recurring support line item to the original asset for true support services and it could be optional.

 

No reason why they can't do that, but Unity is not going to handle the subscription. It would be up to the developer to do so. I know a few developers that I would happily pay or tip for support. However, initial support, getting the thing up and running should always be included with the price of the asset. That should include documentation and possibly videos.

I will never again buy an asset that doesn't have at least documentation and a start up tutorial, written or video. I prefer to figure things out by myself, not have to bug the developer to find out how it works.

 

Just because you give the devs more money does not mean or guarantee that they will spend any more time developing. Many will consider it a free gift.

 

Oh! My bad, I did not want to imply that it MUST be subscription based. I was more thinking that it could be optional sales model for those developers that do work long term on very fundamental assets. For example BestHTTP and in my opinnion Randomation Vehicle Physics was also such fundamental asset that many games were based on. When it comes to smaller assets that just makes sense to have one time payment I think its just good as it is.

Fully agree with you!

 

Very good approach!

 

A lot of releasing on the asset store is niche and in general I don't think that niches and subscriptions play nice together. Unity, Adobe, Office, etc. subscriptions have a fairly wide market so that when they convert from purchasing to subscription they are usually able to extract more money out of the market than just purchasing. Also, all those products are fairly obvious that there are ongoing updates as there was a Unity 1,2,3,4 before we even got to subscriptions, countless editions of Office before 365 came around, etc. On the asset store there are very few products that will have this evolution to them, most are just written and then done, the ones that do evolve like adding models, or sounds, etc might be able to benefit but I doubt its enough of a dollar amount to matter. As far as the support question, subscription or not should not factor into support. There are tons of ways to increase the profitability and/or lower the support burden of any product (price, effective planning for tutorials up front, documentation, etc.) and simply adding another way to purchase your product won't effect whether or not a publisher gives good support or not.

To support full time artists or developers, my rough estimation is only about the top 50 or so publishers can even think about doing this as there sole source of income. Lets say some subset of that have some products that actually align with a subscription model and being optimistic, it allows them to earn 150% of what they do currently. This is a very small group of people that could be added to doing this full time now. The vast majority of the asset store is still in the same position that this is a part time endeavor. Plenty of part time developers still give good support as well.

 

If you've got a product that can properly support subscriptions, sure. As others have pointed out, most software that works that way either has constant updates and/or some kind of service backing. I can think of maybe one asset I've purchased from the Asset Store that approach might work for.

The idea of having a separate support fee is valid, though, at least for stuff that falls under "technical support" rather than "fixes". I don't know that the Asset Store is an appropriate place to purchase that, though - it'd make it a bit easier to charge for the service, but having Unity as a middle-man on a service they have literally no control over seems like a needless complication to me. Plus, if you're in a position to provide professional level support then getting a web site set up to sell it through surely shouldn't be an issue, right?

I do think that some level of maintenance should be included in the purchase fee, but it's unreasonable to expect that to last forever. I think that one way Asset Store providers might be able to address that at the moment is by releasing new major versions of their assets ("Blah v2.0") and deprecating the old ones, with a clear indication of what versions of Unity are supported by what versions of the asset. The Asset Store already supports both deprecation and upgrade pricing, so off the top of my head it seems like this is covered. In fact, I'm pretty sure some vendors are already using it - pretty sure I bought a shader pack for Unity 4 and "upgraded" to a new Unity 5 version a while ago.

 

"I do think that some level of maintenance should be included in the purchase fee, but it's unreasonable to expect that to last forever."

No it is not unreasonable. I am a paying customer of many asset store plugins and as CUSTOMER I am saying I need this feature to "pay forever" if I need that plugin "forever". I want to pay for the value I get, the problem is I can not do so on meaningful business relation where 3 parties are involved: Unity3D, me and a plugin developer.

 

My suggestion...create a relationship with the asset developers of those assets you depend on. Talk to them, help them advertise their products, give them suggestions to make the products better. If you feel the support is worth it, offer to pay them something extra for support.

I have found that those developers I get to know are typically the ones who stay around. And even if they decide to move elsewhere...we are losing a lot to UE4 these days...they are willing to help with issues and fix problems that arise. Sometimes developers, as their products fall off the top selling list, just let the product sit. If it requires an update, contact them, ask them, offer to pay them if they tell you the sales of the asset are not worth the level of the support at this time.

However...I doubt many assets will last forever. It is why it is a good idea to buy from those who are active, who have documents and tutorials, who keep their assets updated, and who interact with the community in a Unity forum thread. Choose carefully. I have learned the hard way that the new developer with the gorgeous website may not be the best investment for me.

 

@Cromfeli, what you're talking about is not the same as what the text you quoted is talking about.

 

Arbitrary cashgrabs?

 

We are talking about Asset Store business model and its sustainability for the service providers. It has nothing to do with well established supply chains and goods. Physical goods are not same thing as services and digital products.

 

Just saw this maybe more truthful comment on the RVP website:

 

I don't believe greedy people would be able to take advantage of a system providing extra revenue based on the idea of "I appreciate if anyone gifts me additional money if and when they get value above and beyond the original purchase price of my product."

 

That happens. It's not an asset store issue, it is a market/product issue.