Six Reasons Unity Needs to Quickly Address Upgrade and Review Asset Store Policies

Six Reasons Unity Needs to Quickly Address Asset Store Upgrade Fees and Review Policies

1. Section 9.1 ( https://unity3d.com/de/legal/as_provider ) misleads all Asset store customers
Section 9.1 states:
Provider will, at no cost to Customers and Unity, supply via the Unity Asset Store any upgrades or otherwise updated versions of all Assets that a Customer has acquired a license to via the Unity Asset Store. For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 9.1 applies (a) only where the upgraded or otherwise updated Asset is the same SKU as prior to the upgrade or other updating; and (b) applies also to any Asset that has been distributed for free via the Unity Asset Store.

This clearly is no longer the case. Unity needs to change this statement immediately, and instead define the minimum amount of time before a publisher can charge for an upgrade, so publishers do not start charging monthly or weekly upgrade fees, or an upgrade fee every time they implement a new feature or fix a bug.

Unity also needs to define how upgrades and or subscriptions will be clearly spelled out for the customer before they open their wallets.

To say it is "misleading" is generous, and I will leave it at that.

2. Allowing publishers to charge for an upgrade when they never mentioned they would be doing so on their asset store page is unfair to customers

If a publisher feels they need to charge for upgrades on their product, they should be required state so on their asset store page. It is unethical to never let the customer know this would happen, even when the publisher states elsewhere that they intend to do so, or even institute a yearly upgrade fee.
Although the publisher's time and need to feed their family is important, so too is the devs time and need to feed their family.

3. Allowing publishers to charge for an upgrade when they never mentioned they would be doing so on their asset store page is unfair to that publisher's competitors.

Pricing a product is a big decision for an asset store publisher. Among things they have to consider is how much work they put into it, and how much work they will have to put into documentation and support. Most importantly, it is usually the most important factor to the average customer, all things considered. If a publisher can hide how much their product actually will cost by not mentioning there will be upgrade fees, or an upgrade fee regimen, then the publisher who chooses not to charge upgrade fees is competing against a price that is not completely transparent, and can lose sales. This is unfair on two dimensions: 1) the publisher who decides to upgrade without charging their customers more is punished for doing so and 2) the publisher loses customers to the competition who does.

Unity can not allow hazy small print, general legalese disclaimers at the bottom of the asset store that say that the publisher may, at will, decide, at their discretion, to charge and upgrade fee, and reserve the right to do so... blah blah blah, or worse, just have it for every asset store page, as many customers will want to make a decision based on whether they will be charged upgrade fee in the future or not. If all publishers are given this legal disclaimer, than no publisher who wants to make "no upgrade fees or subscription service" a selling point will be allowed to do so in a concrete way.

In other words, the customer should be assured that there will be no upgrade fees or subscription services unless it has been spelled out clearly on the asset's store page.

4. Upgrading and maintenance is necessary for any publisher to continue selling an asset on the Asset store. There is no clear demarcation, and no clear enforcement regime about this.

Any asset store publisher should know that once they publish a product, they will continuously have to keep it updated with current Unity versions if they want to keep it up on the asset store. Unity needs to make it clear that their asset will no longer be allowed on the asset store once it has become incompatible with a certain series of Unity, and specifically how far back the asset can lag before it is considered deprecated.

5. Scrubbing negative reviews because the publisher feels the negative review is unfair, or does not address their product in the way they want their product to be addressed, makes the entire review process a joke.

It should be left up to the reader to decide whether a negative review has merit or not, not up to the publisher that does not like the negative review. We are all adults here, and we have all seen reviews by people claiming the asset is completely broken, yet we still buy because we all know some people find the game dev thing harder than others. There is absolutely no reason Unity should be scrubbing negative asset store reviews unless the customer somehow illegally obtained the product or has been refunded or of course is using the review process to post pornographic or otherwise highly offensive statements that have no place in an asset store review. to scrub negative reviews takes away highly valuable information, and if the customer paid money for that product, yet feel unsatisfied, they should at least be able to say something about it. Furthermore, what is the point of having a review system if only 5 star reviews are allowed?

6. Allowing publishers to claim on their asset store page that more specific features are coming can lead to false advertising and bait and switch.

Once a large project incorporates an asset, that team has spent a lot of time and money on doing so, and may even make a purchasing decision based upon what the publisher has stated they will deliver later on, only to never deliver, or start demanding the customer cough up more money to get what was declared on the Asset store page. A publisher should not be allowed to claim a new feature is coming on their asset store page. They should only be allowed to state what is in the actual asset. Although a publisher may be excited about what is to come, and want to use that to sell more products, and may even deliver on that statement in a timely fashion, it is quite clear many claim they will add more features, but never do. The Asset Store page simply is not the place to sell products and features that do not yet exist.

At the most, a publisher should only be allowed to state they intend to improve the asset, but this should already be a given, see point 4.

 

I really hope you publish and asset one day so you can come back and read this with some perspective. You have no idea how much support is required, especially when Unity splits the render engines into three completely incompatible pipelines, provides no documentation, removes the abstraction layer from the shader system, and then breaks 2/3rds of the new render pipelines on a weekly basis. No one asked for this mess, we're all just trying to deal with it.

Publishers don't owe you updates and new features and compatibility for the rest of time - there'd be a name for that, and it would be slave.

 

ive read your long thread about the headache you are going through, so i understand the troubles.

however, new products are coming out right now, and they have to integrate hdrp and urp as well, and deal with the headache and uncertainty. I rarely if ever ask for technical aupport, so i am not sure why I should have to pay so publishers can upgrade to keep up with new publishers who come using new unity features. many competitors are not charging their customers to keep the package current.

Furthermore, i never even got to use many products I bought, because i bought them on sale with intent to use later, now i gotta pay more, and some i gotta pay more just to use a newer version of unity, not even to use hdrp and urp.

i rarely if ever ask for support, never use the product, and n the case of one product, if i were to upgrade, id end up paying MORE than a brand new customer. How does that work?

and please don't diminish slavery. i paid money for a product that wants more money to use. slaves were never paid money for something, and then later demanded more.

 

You got what you paid for - a version of the asset that worked with the current versions of Unity, and at a discounted price. The fact that you didn't use it for years is your fault. Did it say it was going to be compatible with all future versions to the end of time? I very much doubt it. By your rules, do I have to provide new versions of my assets for free in 2040? How about after I'm dead? Do I have to be explicit that I can only provide upgrades while I'm alive?

When you buy an XBox game do you expect for it to be upgradable to all future consoles? When you buy your latest phone, do you expect it to be backwards compatible with your old chargers? Things change, people adapt to those changes, get over it.

 

Also, the changes unity are making are driving asset developers out of the store. I know many assets that are not upgrading to support SRPs at all, and others only making them for one of the SRPs, and others who've simply stopped developing anything new. I've rounded down my line to one set of assets because I can't imagine supporting SRP for multiple product lines. Developers will have to find a way to get paid for this extra work or leave the store all together. Unity's lack of fore sight here has created this issue, and until they fix it, it's only going to get worse.

 

section 9.1 did.

for the rest of your question, if you wsnt to continue to make sales of your product on the asset store, it has to stay somewhat current with unity. thats just the way it is. if you stagnate, you make no more sales, and a competitor, who does keep their version up to date fills the void.

do you expect to just run your products as a subscription service from here on out.? of course not. most of your money is made from new sales. new sales, might i add, that usually take at most a few hours of support, if any, and then the deveoper abandons their project.

furthermore, alot of support is actually customers providing quality control. I am not going to say this is wrong or horrible, but it is fair to say when peopke see an asset on the asset store with many reviews, they know the QC team is quite large, and community is large. There are advantages to having more sales. besides the fact that most if not all revenue is from new sales.

iirc, you are not charging upgrade fees. why not? furthermore, i recall you noticing your were recieving multiple tickets from a single account. why not out them? not only are they cheating the license, they have the audacity to soak up dev time with their own issues. why, do i, somebody who just handles things like that myself, and rarely talks to support, (because i dont want to soak up your dev time) pay the same upgrade fee as sombody using six seats on their team and constantly asks you to dev for them? How does that work?

 

People abandon their projects because of the support time requirements, it's literally the main reason. People have extremely unrealistic expectations for tiny amounts of money, and the less they pay the more they demand.

Let me break it down for you:

MegaSplat was a reasonable sized hit when I released it, and has sold well. It's been on its long tail for a while now, still sells a few copies a month. In 3 years, it's made around $35,000 after Unity takes its 30% cut. (In total, I've made around 90k - and I have best in class assets that sell well).

There are approximately 1000 hours of coding in MegaSplat alone. Support, marketing, etc, all more hours. Combined around 2000 hours spent. That works out to $17.50 an hour.

I'm a well paid graphics engineer with a long string of MEGA-hits under my belt. My last company paid me $170k a year + bonuses, stock, benefits, 401k matching, etc, and when I contract I start at $150 an hour. I have more work offered to me than I can take.

Now let's imagine I was charging to explain this to you - You'd owe me about $60 already, more than you've likely paid for whatever asset pissed you off. When I sell a copy of MegaSplat for $50, I get $33 from that. If I spent over 13 minutes supporting a user, I'm already losing money - and that doesn't include all the time I spent making the asset in the first place.

People work on assets because they love what they do and enjoy seeing what people make with their work. That's the only reason to keep making things in the asset store- if you have these kinds of skills, you can make a LOT more money elsewhere, and you don't have to deal with people feeling entitled because they paid you a few dollars.

It works because Unity does not enforce their license. The best I can actually do is remind them of the license when this happens, and hope that they do the right thing. And your upgrade fee is not for "support time", is it? It's for new code. And I'm sure you're soaking up plenty of developers time in their threads complaining about this, just as I'm wasting my time explaining what should be obvious to you.

If their time is so cheap, why don't you just do the asset upgrades yourself? You clearly don't value their time, so why should they value yours and provide a cost effective upgrade path to new versions of Unity?

 

i said nothing of the sort, and you did not say why you are not charging upgrade fees
bye.

 

Currently I'm not, because most new development happens on new modules, which I charge for. However, as the nature of Unity is constantly changing, I'd certainly consider making my URP/HDRP modules subscription or upgrade based on the future. If Unity doesn't manage to stabilize things, then it would become pretty much a requirement, as supporting these pipelines is basically way too much work..

And by implying that we all owe you free upgrades forever because you purchased assets several years ago at a discount and didn't use them, you're absolutely devaluing our time and work. That's basically what you've done repeatedly in this entire thread, over and over.

 

This would read better like this:

"Oh, well I hadn't considered all of that before. Thanks for taking the time to explain."

Better isn't it? Don't got even have to admit defeat and it all feels much more amicable.

One other tip, if you suggest something should be done immediately (in bold), the next thing to do is make a strong case for such urgency. Think about it. If I barge in here screaming for immediate action, and it turns out there isn't a serious emergency, how am I going to look?

 

This is like, a fundamental truth, and a good reason for not doing cheap work. People don't respect you if you do cheap work. Kind of like how nobody respected Jesus, even though he was performing miracles and S***. That's just the unfortunate truth. People are little sh1ts.

 

The problem I see with the asset store, as a publisher, is that people treat products there with the same expectations that they would for mass market (Unity unrelated) software of the same price. The asset store market is not the same, it's very small, very competitive and very limited in the way that you can communicate with potential customers, by comparison. It also has a 100% dependency on what Unity do or don't do. I haven't had to go through SRP woes since my assets are not centered on graphics, but it sounds like a nightmare.

I don't think this attitude is surprising though, or completely unfounded. It doesn't matter how clear you make it that someone is paying for exactly what they are getting right now, having to pay for an upgrade for things to work on newer versions of Unity will never feel 'right'. That's why software out there doesn't ask people to pay for getting it to run on a new graphics card or processor or OS, they just include it in a subscription fee and it always 'just works'.

I think that a subscription model is the way to solve this problem. There has to be a clear way for publishers to create revenue from existing customers (who require support, upgrades, edge-cases etc). I'm sure that Unity realized that themselves (like most of the software world) but the asset store is lagging behind. Trying to maintain software continuously and profitably through a 'long-tail' business model, as I've found myself, is a losing battle. The add-on approach can delay the inevitable for a while, but, besides fragmenting a product, it seems that they themselves will suffer the same problem individually.

To sum up I think the root of the problem that @Ne0mega is pointing out is the fact that, by all appearances, publishers are operating on a makeshift subscription model where subscriptions come when the publishers decide, which doesn't make it clear what is going to happen. Besides this, the amount of support etc. that is profitable for the dev to provide is calculated using metrics that the customer cannot see.

Does it matter, since customers are only paying for what they get at the time of purchase? I think it does, because it is better to find a way to solve the bigger problem that customers have (having something that works all the time) than trying to defend the balance of their cash to your investment as a developer, which is never a game that you're going to win.

 

Well, if you insist the flame war continue..

I have proven he is arguing form a position of emotion, and tribalism, and not logic.
This is the meaning of "actions speak louder than words"

He claims upgrade fees are absolutely essential, I have proposed charge more for the product to new users.

What are his actions?

He is not charging upgrade fees, and he is charging more in the future. Even though he says he opposes my view, his actions says he agrees, and is doing exactly what I say should be done to recover costs of development.

The emotion and tribalism is he feels I as a customer am attacking him as a publisher, even though he is not even charging upgrade fees.

Also, I will not be talking to him again. My hostility arose when he used words that did not describe my tone at all. I was, and have been, treating him with respect. I have not been putting words in his mouth, or any other dirty flame tricks. I feel strongly about what I am saying, and I am sticking to it.

How dare he claim I don't value publisher devs time when I specifically stated I do not even ask for support because I value their time!? Give disrespect, receive disrespect.

I may put assets on the asset store in the future, as it is definitely part of my long term strategy. Nobody has addressed point 3 i made in the OP. If I were to put assets for sale on the asset store, I would want the pricing to be fair and transparent. I certainly would consider the costs of software support, since I once worked for an anti-virus company where Clear, English speaking customer support was the core of differentiation form our competitors. I do know how much support drains profit from software.

Now lets say I, smart businessman that I am, factor this in, and charge $100 for the asset. Lets say the competition only charges $80, but intends to charge an extra $20 a year. Let's then say they are not required to disclose this.

So nobody is even addressing this point. They all are sticking to 2, and now 1. Even though section 9.1 is clearly not the case any more, and should be changed, yes, in bold, and caps this time, IMMEDIATELY.

 

You argument is too silly to be addressed point by point. You are like a child, playing at grasping economics, when somebody who is a proven contender is explaining in plain english to you what the truth is.

 

Besides the fact that these two business models are not the same, how would you manage this 'disclosure'? What if the dev wants to make changes to it?

You're essentially transferring all the risk about the future and meeting expectations back onto the dev's shoulders, without creating a reliable system for doing so.

How do you think it would look on an asset store page:
"FULL DISCLOSURE: Intending to charge you an extra $20 per year to maintain compatibility with new versions of Unity, and anything else that comes up."

Unless you have a proper subscription model, the current "you are paying for what you get right now" is far and away the clearest way to do business.

 

You are literally complaining about a dev not giving you free upgrades which they never promised to give. You demand they do work for you, for free.

Oh please do, please.

As for your section 9.1 claims, this is clearly stated that updates for the same SKU. In this case, it's not the same sku. Any paid upgrade in the store is a different sku, because it's a separate listing in the store - you can't do a paid upgrade without making another sku. So this language is totally correct and you're clearly wrong here.

 

That is up for Unity to decide, but I feel they should, and should do it soon.
I mean I think sales would not be hurt much if publishers did annual subscription models, as again, most customers buy and never use the assets they buy, so they would only pay once anyway.

 

That's assuming you have a way to predict that work. Unity might decide that you have to rewrite all your code for three different render pipelines, and $20 just isn't going to cover that. There is no possible way for people to predict what the upgrade costs of something are going to be, or what Unity is going to break or change, or how much work that might turn into. As far as I'm concerned, the work you are delivering doing what it says it does on the box for the versions it ships on is all you are entitled to. Anything beyond that, be that support, upgrades to new versions, new features, is bonus. A subscription model will help sooth this to some degree, but the amount of work which is created will vary massively depending on what Unity changes, and you have no say or control over that.

 

Great, get Unity to implement that for us then. Publishers have only been asking for that option for around 8 years now. And once they do, I'm sure you'll write this exact same complaint about an asset switching to a subscription model, since that's effectively what an upgrade a year model is.

 

Absolutely, and I think this is something that very clearly differentiates the asset store from other kinds of markets. You are building a layer directly on top of other software, not simply writing software for Windows or something. That makes it much more risky.

A lot of software is updated and maintained without explicitly charging the customer for it, which sets expectations. Even if that approach doesn't quite work in the asset store market with the current pricing systems.

In the end I think that the fewer times a customer has to look at a price tag and debate the rationale for it, the better. There are assumptions made on the part of customers that will never be possible to explain away - even if you convince one person there will be many who don't give you a chance to. I think it's best to find a way to cover those costs in the business model itself - and the first order of business is a clear model that enables recurring revenue from existing customers who will need your dev time in future. Unity needs to provide a subscription model for publishers.

 

The difference is that one is clear and the other is implemented at the publisher's whim. That's why it needs to be part of the Asset Store payment system.

 

Well, windows versioning has this same issue- but those don't ship every 3 months, partially spread across package releases that happen on almost random schedules, and with no support for backwards compatibility.

I'd argue that most assets offer more free new features and updates than most of the software on the market does. Most software only offers new features on paid upgrades.

Oh I totally agree- but the tools just aren't there, and the revenue isn't there to support asset developers properly under the current structure. But that's all down to Unity making some major changes..

 

But publishers have no control over that. We are dealt a seemly random set of cards which sometimes include "Now your support costs are trippled and you need to rewrite your whole codebase 3 times". I can't really fault anyone for wanting to charge when that happens.

 

And you know, if something like SRP happens again, with a subscription model in place, I still think it's going to require paid upgrades to deal with - no subscription will possibly handle a change that big.. Subscription models work well for things that have fixed development costs- spending X time adding new features, fixing issues, and supporting users. But something like SRP is just such a massive amount of work that you can't really quantify the costs until after you've done the work. And even afterwards it's proving to have continued costs that couldn't be anticipated (Well, the fact that there would be costs could be- but not how much time they would take).

 

I can definitely see how the current SRP situation is a nightmare. I'm glad I'm not in the business of writing shaders right now!

That is actually a big part of the same situation. A lot of devs aren't sure how to charge for upgrades and end up setting bad expectations by releasing them for free. For example I pretty much re-wrote my space kit from scratch last year to make it more inspector-friendly, and at the time I wanted to charge for it but I wasn't sure how to deal with the risk of bad perceptions around upgrade fees. In retrospect I should have done so, because now it's likely to be expected that big stuff will be done for free.

Don't get me wrong, I totally support paid upgrades in the current system, but I think it's going to be rough on publishers until a proper subscription model is in place, because customers will feel like it's done on a basis that isn't clear from the outset.

 

Yeah I don't fully know about this situation but it sounds badly handled by Unity. If something is undergoing major changes like that it shouldn't be released yet.

 

This is precisely why MicroSplat is module based. I reached a point with MegaSplat where I realized adding new features was not going to lead to more sales, because users couldn't even evaluate everything that was there properly. Additionally, there were fundamental changes I wanted to make, and new tech approaches I wanted to take that wouldn't be compatible. I got some flack about it at first, but it was the right move long term. People can look at a module and evaluate if it's a useful feature set, and new features can drive new modules which means more sales. I still end up adding many new features to each module because it just makes sense for that code to go in that module, but overall it's a better strategy for both the user and developer. But it's not without it's downsides too..

 

You can not compare asset store assets to other softwares.
If other softwares offer upgrades, and the customer does not want to pay, they can just use the older version until the end of time.

If asset store assets require an upgrade, but the gamedev does not want to pay more, they have to stall the entire project on a version of unity, or pay the upgrade fee, so that all assets can be up to date, or stop using what they paid for. There is no real choice for the gamedev.

This is the difference between asset store assets, and regular software.

 

That's all well and good, but I think many of your assumptions regarding software pricing have not changed accordingly.

I remember the post you made about that, it really got me thinking about what I was going to do to keep myself in business. I've experienced the same thing with the diminishing returns of adding to a product.

At the moment I am considering an add-on approach, and will almost certainly do it, but it doesn't seem optimal.

 

What year are you living in? Photoshop, 3dsMax, Office, nearly every major piece of software, including Unity, runs under a subscription model now, where you pay every month or year, regardless of if you need the new features or not. No one is forcing you to upgrade to the latest Unity for your game. Ship it on the old version with all of the assets you've bought- thousands of other games have shipped just fine on those versions. Or just make your life easy and write all that stuff yourself, right?

 

To put it another way, asset store publishers are building on top of a software that does use a subscription model. That subscription model pays for Unity's upgrades/support, but asset store devs don't see any of it, even though Unity's problems are often their own problems too.

 

Exactly, I don't quite understand how we are fine with paying monthly subscriptions for Unity for... no support or features (after a point you're staying in the same version), but we demand if we buy an asset to have support for life for a one time fee.

Just... Avoid using the Asset Store in general, it's a messy place and has awful terms of service in general.

We now have a policy of contacting asset store publishers directly and doing deals outside of the asset store for our asset needs, but even then we don't expect like updates forever.

 

i am overwhelmed with unity version alone and asset store compatability.

 

This is how I view it, as hobbiest game dev.

I tend to follow Unity latest software, to keep up to date, specially my project relies on DOTS. That also reflects whole story around new rendering. Of course I could lock on with one Unity version, but that means, stuck with preview DOTS features. Yes my choice.

Now, if I would consider to use assets, that would be something, which is as much detached from Unity version, as possible. I.e. Pure scripts, none Unity API dependencies, or media assets. Which simply they always work, like graphical and model files.

I got number of assets from the past, I was considering to use in future. I was more playing around with them and used as learning tools. But many of them are no more functional with latest Unity. Or they gone from Asset Store, unless acquired before. How to trust really any other asset? Even these potentially on subscription model?

I have single asset, which I purchased rather pricy, but stil works after many Unity iterations. I would gladly support that asset maker further. But that besides the point I try to make now.

Consider now using multiple assets, which require continues updates and fees. For studio, or someone who has already established sales of the game, with further updates, that may be feasible. But I doubt for most, for which game maybe even never see the day light. Or go mobile, with only dozens of sales.

I vision many asset turning into subscription models. That feeling like an opportunity to suck devs into micro payments. In fact, many of them. And before games are even out there, many devs will be tied to dozens of subscriptions, charged regularly.

Before stepping with comment, like "is optional", wondering how many devs blindly buy tons of assets and never use them. I see here potential traps for abusive cash cows. Yeah blame them maybe. But protect them as well. Asset Store already plays range of tricks, to make specially new devs, to spend their money.

While I understand points from assets publishers point of views, there is also the point of view, they are not only assets publishers, which devs may choose. I don't mean competing assets. I mean potential different assets, for which build into a game, with potential subscriptions each.

Wondering, how many will be charged and realized they are on subscriptions after first month / year. Easy to forget things like that, when on shopping spree mode.

Subscription model is already tricking in and abusing many people in various fields. So personally I am rather sceptical about such system, on top of the software which already charges, along with many other less related fees.

Oh, this post was longer than I thought

 

It depends if your skills allow you to be so choosy. Many of my customers are not programmers, or have very limited Unity coding knowledge. The asset store exists not as a wiki for useful scripts, but as a place for products that solve very big problems, that are required to make the possibility of creating a game feasible.

I don't know if it's possible to include in a reasonable sale price the cost of future updates and support for an asset. Besides, what if someone wants to use it now, as-is, and never use it again, should they pay for the support for other people? At least you can cancel your subscription if you don't use the product anymore.

Whether or not someone's game is successful is irrelevant to the question of compensation for asset store publishers.

If they use the assets, what is wrong with being charged for it? The success of the game is again irrelevant. The publishers cannot guarantee that.

Nobody can force someone to buy anything on the asset store. Unless some deception is occurring I don't understand this point.

It's also easy for publishers to 'forget' to update assets. If you want something in future you need to pay for it. Both parties need to take responsibility for their side of the bargain.

I still don't understand the problem with subscription models as a concept (as opposed to deceptive information). Without the ability to be compensated regularly for new features and future risk, what obligation could a publisher possibly have besides fixing bugs in the version that an asset was released for?

The asset store is a place to buy quality products to solve big problems. It's not a charity, a communal dump of code and art, a flea market or anything else of that nature. Asset publishers should be held to account on the quality of their assets and the support they provide, and in return customers should be held to account to compensate them adequately for everything they do, and not to offload their insecurities about their spending practices or whether they will make a successful game onto publishers shoulders.

 

Sure tools and services can be used in effective and profitable manner for both parties. My concerns are not against subscription model itself, but tendency to abusive practices, which they tends to follow, aimed at unaware customers. Again, this is my own personal view on the matter.

 

@jbooth firstly I feel your pain, when I released 2DPC (precursor to Platformer Pro which is precursor to Platformer Pro 2) I got off to a great start, as a leading asset in a new market it made me a lot of money and I was happy to provide very thorough support.

Platformer Pro was still quite successful, a lot more work in it, and a lot more competition, but still doing well.

Platformer Pro 2 is really only done for the love of it, for the relationships I had built, and the desire to keep people happy. If I charged my time at anything like what I get in my day job it is losing me money.

However the equation is pretty simple if you want to make profitable assets you have to make assets where support costs (including your time) are less than revenue. It is possible, but you probably have to lower your standards.

I eventually wound up CBSK (its now free), but before I did I paid a few dev's from the forum around $10-$25 per hour to upgrade and support it which meant that it was still profitable. I was also paid to build it (reduced price with the proviso that I won the code and can resell it). From an hourly rate perspective it made me well over $200 per hour (albeit it at volumes far lower than 2DPC/PPRO).

 

No, you haven't.

Every single thing he wrote is extremely reasonable, logical, and correct.

Engine changes over time, things break, and without source code access they're beyond their control. And because asset store project is a niche product, they're largely unprofitable, at least comapred to western salaries.

This is false.

Eventually you'll reach the point where your OS no longer supports your software, and your hardware no longer supports the version of your OS where your program works.

Realistically speaking, you can expect your program, no matter what it is, to work for something like 2 or 3 years. Past that point it is becomes less and less likely that the program works, eventually, if the package was popular, there will be emulators and work around, then you'll end up in a virtual machine, and then even virtual machine will break.

Additionally... all software comes with a disclaimer which says that "the software is provided as is, without warranty of any kind", so there's no legal guarnatee of "happily ever after" use in the first place.

But what's more...
What's more, larger number of companies are switching to SAAS, which is subscription fees. And in case of SAAS, if you do not want to pay, you lose access to the version you had previously. 3dsmax, maya, photoshop are SAAS now.

 

3. Allowing publishers to charge for an upgrade when they never mentioned they would be doing so on their asset store page is unfair to that publisher's competitors.

What? No. Literally no other software works this way, why would asset store? What your asking for is simply not feasible, you dont really expect them to keep supporting you forever offering you free upgrades?

I honestly cannot understand your reasoning after reading through the entire thread carefully. I am guessing you have never worked for a commercial software company or released anything on the asset store yourself.

 

I think you are confused about what point you are addressing. Please try and clarify what you mean. Did you mean to address point 2? And if so, exactly what are you saying that has not already been said before in this thread?

 

And you know up front it is a subscription service.
This thread has already addressed all your points, as your points have already been stated.

 

Well I pasted in the question I am refering to so its obvious. And there is no rule that says "only new info in each thread". I am posting my view on the topic. If you dont want to gather peoples opinions, dont post on a public forum. And above all, dont be so negative, have you read your tone throughout this thread? Its completely counter productive to producing good discussion. Its also not very professional.

 

The point where I understand where the OP is coming from is that the idea of selling software that may quickly become defunct in new versions of Unity is not a good way to do business. It doesn't matter whether it doesn't have that guarantee, it just won't make customers happy. It's like having a new bike that you can only ride inside your house.

To solve this, I think that supporting and updating assets should be expected, but so should having to keep paying.
Regardless of what @Ne0mega thinks publishers owe to customers, it's pretty obvious that leaving pricing plans so open-ended and up to one of the parties in the bargain is not a good idea. That's why a standardized recurring payment system needs to be implemented by Unity, so that publishers don't have to spring on their customers the idea of paying X amount for continued support, and convince them it's not a cash grab.

Obviously paid upgrades can potentially be abused by publishers, so let's at least take that into account and try to come up with something that will work.

 

Your retort makes no sense, as point 3 is about how hiding upgrade fees can make one publisher's asset appear to cost less than another publisher's asset.

If you were truly concerned about good discussion and my supposed negative tone, you would have PM'd me about it.
Calling somebody negative publicly because of their "tone" is a way to project negativity on them, aka throwing shade. The only way I can react to your negative statement is by reacting with negativity... instead, I will just call it out for what it is, throwing shade.
You are trying to dogpile and bully, accuse me of being toxic and negative, get a reaction from me, and then jump on me for said reaction as proof of my negativity.

As far as good discussion, what exactly do you feel your two posts have added so far?

 

Similarly, when you buy an asset you know up front its description and the version of Unity it was tested against. If that doesn't suit you then why are you buying it in the first place?

Seriously, the good assets on the store are absurdly cheap. As @jbooth has pretty effectively demonstrated, they're too cheap. As a case in point, one of our team recently implemented custom terrain shaders for our game. It took quite a few hours. Multiply that by even a modest hourly rate and you'll easily blow past the cost of an asset like MicroSplat, even after you get licenses to cover a team.

To any team who's serious about making a commercial product, quality assets are realistically worth much more than the prices the Asset Store ecosystem seems to support. I can understand wanting cheap assets, and I can understand wanting quality assets, and I can understand wanting solid customer support, but it's simply not realistic to expect all three of those things at once.

My stab at a potential solution to get better support is simply to pay more for your assets. It sounds like @jbooth's assets need to cost about 10x more than they do to have their income competitive with his typical hourly rate. If you're working commercially then they're likely to be worth that. The catch is, many people shopping in the Asset Store aren't working commercially, so sales would drop considerably. Realistically you'd probably need to charge drastically more than that, to the point where the value proposition may no longer bear out.

I'm not sure a subscription would work, because ultimately the end numbers have to be the same, whether they're paid up front or spread out over months / years.

 

Because, when I first started buying assets, I saw nothing about upgrades, and figured the profit model for asset store publishers was new sales of their product, and the fact that most people never actually use their product.

I certainly have thought about putting assets on the asset store, but, the customer support thing has given me, and still gives me, great pause, because I want to make a game, not make an asset store business. So I have not put anything on the asset store, until I can find a way to be compensated for support, because I don't want to end up spending all my time supporting assets I sold. And that is the god honest truth.

I think many assets should charge more, up front, if they are not going to do subscription, but I would not call them "absurdly cheap", as they are not custom made assets for projects. There is a ton of retooling done, at least for me, to actually jam some of these assets into my project. And a lot of the time, I pay for 100% of the asset, but only use 10% of it.

As far as customer support, as I have mentioned, (and it depends on the asset what percentage of this is true), customer support is actually a publisher being made aware of a bug in their program, and fixing it. No asset is published perfect, so all assets get the benefit of QC and product improvement from paying customers, although in the publishers' minds, they consider it "customer support".

 

I think what a subscription (or any recurring payment scheme) does is allow someone to pay a modest cost to spend some time with an asset and see if it really helps them, and to keep paying to have the asset always working once they have created a dependency on it.

Games can take years, Unity can introduce new features that you need or maybe some other necessary asset requires a newer version of Unity. Realistically it's tough on game devs to stick to one version of Unity when they are looking to cut as many corners as possible. If the asset becomes something highly valuable (and necessary) to you, there should be a way for you to pay to ensure that it stays useable.

It's also much easier to pay for something over a long period of time than to fork out a sale price that covers everything about the future of the asset.

I do agree that devs need to take themselves a bit more seriously in the investment into their games, but the truth is that many hover on the border between being a hobbyist and a 'serious' dev for a long time. As a hobbyist, forking out a very large one-off payment for a dozen assets might not be feasible.

At the moment, Unity lumps all types of users of an asset (anything from tinkerers to professionals who depend on the assets for their livelihood) into one system of payment, and that's not a good idea imo.

 

And this is why it still often makes sense to develop your own stuff rather than use things from the Asset Store. It'll cost more, but it can be a purpose specific solution rather than a general purpose one, and in-house support is easier since you're directly familiar with what's happening under the hood.

Still, the math doesn't lie. If MicroSplat does what you need then it costs less than the equivalent of 3 hours of time per developer*, and that's assuming you need all of the modules. How many hours do you think it'd take to implement something equivalent for your project? That's a rhetorical question, as the answer will be different for every project, but I'm confident that it will be more than 3, and probably also more than 30.

* This is assuming entry level rates. It'll be even lower if your team is experienced.