Feedback My opinion: I hated how Unity's Black Friday deals were done this year.

Artificial digital scarcity is the dumbest thing ever. Especially moreso that I feel like I have to compete with my fellow Unity users to get a better deal.

1. When the sale first launched, the site was unresponsive and slow forcing many people to miss the 90% and 80% deals. Even then, on the really popular assets, checking out was still inconsistent later on.
2. What if that pricey asset you want has a good sale that's activated during a time where you're asleep? At that point, you're sacrificing your health just to stay up to get that deal.
3. It makes you feel like you're competing with your fellow Unity developers in a cutthroat fashion.
4. How do I know which assets will go on Lightning Deal? Wouldn't it be better to only buy the general sale at the very end when you know that the asset you want didn't go on Lightning Deal?

Just introduce all the assets that are going on sale from the get-go, flat 80% off, unlimited availability between X day to Y day. I'm too old and tired to deal with this capitalistic/corporate business shenanigans to induce hype, desperation, frenzy, and FOMO to squeeze and milk your userbase to get your share of sales.

 

So what's going to make it attractive to the developer to be selling their assets at 80% off on unlimited availability?

Because its mostly lot of little indie companies who make this stuff, not big capitalist/corporate businesses, and I sure can understand why selling only a very small number of copies at 10% or 20% of face value is attractive to those with relatively low revenues.

Not an accusation at you, so you know, but whilst I can understand the response to the technical issues, the pricing ones do feel a bit more selfish and unreasonable. It does feel like there has been a lot of expressed entitlement to 80% or 90% discounts. For some reason I doubt there'd be nearly as much complaining in general if it the sale was just 50% across the board. And yet look at the amount of people complaining about 'only' getting 70% or 50% discounts?
Hmmm. Im sure that's not going to be a popular opinion.

Anyway, as experiments go, looks like this one failed on multiple levels. But it would be nice if people remembered they're only buying through Unity, and who they're buying from are lot of small businesses.

 

I have no problem with this sales at all, even caught 1-2 assets on 90%. But, it could be remedied by Unity themselves by telling the folks that they split the difference (lowering their cut by the same %) or even throwing a larger amount of one-time money at the selected publishers.

 

I'm not interested in playing this game of trying to nab my store item at just the right time before they're all gone.

For those of us who prefer to sit back and relax, we reliably get a good 70% off, which is still a big discount. It's still a good opportunity in my opinion.

 

I pretty much agree with the OP, I kind of hate these things. Would have preferred just a blanket 50% discount from the get go.

 

I was surprised by the amount of negative reactions to flash sales.

I did end up buying Final IK at 50% off, so it wasn't that bad.

 

These things are all conditioning strategies that condition the user to regularly check the store. It's a kind of user retention.

The way to deal with these things is simply to ignore them. Stop buying crap on the store, etc.

Complaining that you don't like it while continuing to give the company money is like giving a mixed message in a relationship.

 

Same, but I will point out that none of the assets I purchased were overly expensive to begin with. I only tend to bother with flash sales if the assets I'm interested in are unusually expensive.

 

Imagine if instead of being 90% off in the lightning sale, it was free?

I don't think there'd be any complaints about that. And there's really not much difference between 90% off and 100% off.

The flash sale isn't really an offer so much as a gift. And in return for basically giving things away for free, Unity want everyone on the store trying to be the one to get it. It's basically a lottery.

If the lightning sale is bothering, it's better to just buy 50% off, which is already a massive discount. Or buy full price any time you wish.

 

There would be. From people who already bought it. "I've paid for the thing, why is it being given away now?"

 

Could be, but certainly not complaints from people who want the process to be easier.

 

Uh, "easier" is not the same as "cheaper" or "for free".

 

They are both forms of value. And unity have exchanged them here.

 

The obvious solution is to stop buying stuff on the asset store.

• The Asset Store EULA is terrible.
• A lot of the assets are stolen.
• If you want models and textures there are other better resources.
• If you want some script, most are pretty bad. Sure there are exceptions, but to find the one script that is actually good AND is useful to your project you will have to buy dozens of ones that are absolutely terrible first.
• (oh, and obviously the Asset Store doesn't allow refunds, because they know it is a terrible store that sells mostly terrible things)

 

They're different value. If something is 100% off, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna grab it and will be happy about having it.

 

I really didn't like it either when I went to get the 90% off asset to pay for it using paypal I only got errors every time I tried to pay for the asset. I tried to restart and relogin and still got errors when trying to pay for the 90% asset. Mins later it turned into 70% and then I gave up on the whole sale ! errors ! cant buy anything then I guess I wont try then ! enuff is enuff

 

Not sure anyone else had this issue but the store was unusually laggy and the annoying pop up about a sale ( I'm literally looking at) appeared every time I clicked and looked at something, after a while I just gave up trying.

And to those who say " but 70% is still a great deal", many of these assets had their prices doubled or tripled recently so that the sale brought them back to their normal price or maybe 25% off. This is becoming a very common practice that I would guess unity is encouraging..