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Reform of the Asset Store

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by HonoraryBob, Oct 28, 2019.

  1. HonoraryBob

    HonoraryBob

    Joined:
    May 26, 2011
    Posts:
    1,214
    I realize this has undoubtedly been discussed before, but is there any chance of convincing the Unity team to end the requirement that you have to have an exact version or higher to download anything, even if it's a 3D model that works with any version? It makes no sense to prevent downloading just because the model was uploaded with a newer version than the one I have, since the model will work fine with older versions. In fact, even in the case where an asset includes code, we ought to be allowed to test it ourselves to see if it'll work with our version since code will often be compatible. This is just common sense. The current system is absurdly arbitrary and prevents me from using 90% of the stuff on the Asset Store.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2019
    Socrates and Ony like this.
  2. Murgilod

    Murgilod

    Joined:
    Nov 12, 2013
    Posts:
    10,082
    The asset store needs a LOT of fixes. This is a notable one, with some of the others being:
    • No way to download previous asset versions
    • Slow turnaround times for asset vendor approval
    • Terrible communication during the approval process
    • A nightmarishly slow interface, even with improvements
    • No way to choose which folder assets download to without using symbolic links
    • Increasingly turbosquid-like situations where it's harder and harder to tell if assets are IP violations
    The asset store should be a massive boon to working in Unity, but more and more I find myself avoiding using it simply because I don't know if I can trust it or if I want to bother dealing with its nonsense.
     
    HonoraryBob, joshcamas, Ryiah and 3 others like this.
  3. Amon

    Amon

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    Oct 18, 2009
    Posts:
    1,384
    This.
     
  4. Billy4184

    Billy4184

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2014
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    6,008
    Unity recently provided a lot more options for publishers to specify what assets can do/are compatible with, including all the compatible versions down to 5.0. Far as I know this enables anyone with the versions specified to download, regardless of the uploaded version. It's annoying to have to specify all this stuff every update but in the end very useful. There'll no doubt be a lot of old assets that haven't been updated with this.

    As far as downloading to test, free testing could be abused and non-free testing could lead to a lot of chargebacks and support issues for the asset store.

    My updates usually go up in 3-4 days which seems reasonable. Communication in the past has been pretty bad though, like a lot of big -> small fish communication they like to throw out fuzzy indicators (like excerpts from some EULA) as to a problem without follow up so you end up having to do unnecessary detective work.

    The asset store customer side does need to be massively improved. I have good reason to believe organic traffic is crippled, though I haven't done before testing so I'm not entirely sure. Recently I seem to have gotten a bunch of organic traffic so maybe they are tweaking things, but the last 6 months or so was not great considering how much I put into the asset.
     
  5. Murgilod

    Murgilod

    Joined:
    Nov 12, 2013
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    Updates are usually fine, but the big problem is submitting anything new. I've seen a lot of complaints from even established publishers where it's been like "yeah, I basically have to submit about three weeks in advance and don't really know what's going on with the process until a rejection or approval comes through."
     
  6. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    Yeah I've seen a few threads to that effect.