LIVENDA will be back and better than ever with more groundbreaking products

Dear Unity users,

As some of you may already know, we have been developing leading plugins for Unity for years. Unfortunately, due to false accusations and entitled individuals, Unity took down all of our products. This has been a loss for everyone, as our plugins were unique and provided exceptional performance and quality for VR and other applications.

One of our most impressive plugins was VRSI (Virtual Reality 3D Stereo Imposters). This plugin was 100 times more performant than other imposter plugins and provided a vastly superior visual experience. It was only available for Unity, and we were proud to offer it to our users.

In addition to VRSI, we also created the first temporal anti-aliasing plugin for Unity, called CTAA, over ten years ago. We also made the first screen space reflection plugin, called Candela, which many of you may remember.

Despite our track record of providing excellent plugins, we were unfairly dropped and deleted from Unity due to the actions of a single person. This has been a huge setback for us, but we are not giving up. We are reaching out to all of our users to ask for your help and backing.

We are considering making a comeback and continuing to develop our plugins for Unity. However, we cannot do this without your support. We need your help to show Unity that our plugins are valuable and that we deserve to be back on their platform.

We urge you to speak up and let Unity know that our plugins were important to you and that you want them back. We believe that our plugins are worth fighting for and that together we can make a difference.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
LIVENDA LABS

 

What happened? I bought your assets, use them for a few days and just noticed with this post that those were deprecated. I guess it's not about piracy, otherwise they would have been disabled.

I read up. One of the quotes of this forum:

I didn't follow, as I said I rarely used your products, but it may be beneficial to state what you'd do different after you abandoned your community (at least that's what the post of the year 2021 and others in that thread says) and now ask for help from the community

 

Thank you for reaching out to us and for your interest in our plugins. We apologize for any inconvenience that our deprecation may have caused you.

The reason behind the deprecation of our plugins was due to false accusations and entitled individuals. Despite our efforts to prove our innocence, Unity took down all of our products, which was a huge setback for us.

We understand your concerns regarding our service in the past, and we want to assure you that we have taken steps to improve our communication and support. We are committed to providing our users with high-quality plugins and excellent service.

We acknowledge that we may have let down our community in the past, but we are here to make it right. We believe that our plugins are valuable and that our users deserve to have access to them. We are asking for your help and support to show Unity that our plugins are important to you and that we deserve to be back on their platform.

We appreciate your feedback and will continue to work hard to improve our service and provide our users with the best experience possible.

Thank you for considering our plugins, and we hope to earn your trust and support once again.

 

LIVENDA, I bought your CTAA asset when it first came out and have watched the forums go on for few years - both the negative and the positive aspects. I will be honest and say this, the delays were really bad and the way you handled it wasn't great. You kept on promising or sounded like promising something which rarely made it on time.

This doesn't mean that you are bad dev or a scammer - I myself have had few customers saying lots of nasty things purely because they expect a massive rewrite to happen in the next few hours. Literally spamming my email with profanities. Obviously its a minor number of people just dumping their emotions thinking they own you for the next 10 years after a $5 purchase. My experiences are not in Unity Asset Store so it might be slightly different but I've seen personal attacks happening on your forum.

I would like to bring the following to your attention:

• Have a clear written goal and support duration of the asset. I see many plugins/tools popping up on Unity Asset Store without any mentioning of this and this is really a dangerous thing. Let's say your asset is called SuperCool, then release SuperCool 2020 for Unity 2020, SuperCool 2021 for Unity 2021. Keep it separated so that you have a sizable client base purchasing annually (if they choose). This way you won't be stuck working on a project that is not financially viable 5 years later. Naturally people expect the asset to be supported indefinitely unless otherwise stated. And we all know that is not possible without a clear goal and I think an annual version of Unity is a reasonable standard.
• Try not to promise or give out information of a feature in R&D. It has no timeline, but you do.
• Don't make large changes in pricing (I bought it when it was the most expensive...and then saw the prices drop). Raising the price is understandable, but dropping the price made me feel...you know...a little not so cool XD

Personally, I would be interested in whatever you bring next, as I was pleasantly surprised with CTAA. However, if you handle your customer base the same way as before (long delays, premature release of info, and an indefinite support duration) then I would be worried as it will just be a repeat of what happened.

As for why Unity banned you, I have no idea or any info, so I am not going to discuss that.
But from my experience, I got what I paid for so no issues there.

 

I don't know how to help you on this one, but I would clearly like VRSI to be back on the store. It's a great asset that works very well and is very easy to use. With standalone VR headsets, it's a must have asset.
I hope that people from Unity will reconsider their decision.

 

Can existing customers receive updates and patches meanwhile ( after sending invoice as proof of purchase ofc ) ?