[SOLVED] Contacting asset store seller, no Unity account

Why are there so many people selling assets on the asset store that have no Unity account?
I literally just viewed 5 items in a row, with no way to contact the seller through Unity (i.e. forum, Conversation)
One of them has links to you tube, whose videos are private, requiring you to log onto youtube before watching the demo videos.
It seems to me the default communication path should be through unity, not links to external sites and such.

 

If that's true then it's an easy way for you and Unity to drop those assets from the Asset Store or consideration from buying.

Maybe the Asset Store needs to consider a monthly ping and response and after 6 months, or a year, with no response they deprecate asset if it's a paid asset.

If it's a free asset then don't look a gift horse in the mouth if you want it and the author(s) were kind enough to provide it to Unity users free.

 

If you're selling an asset for Unity, be part of the Unity community. That's the point I am trying to make.
I'm more or less referring to new $50 assets, only released a few months ago.

example:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/33932

No link to a forum or Unity user. I'm not going to buy an asset to use with Unity if they don't bother creating a dedicated forum or a way to start a Unity conversation.

 

Well, there is a link to YouTube tutorials section which includes a discussion section. Have you tried that? I agree though, a public working email address should be the one mandatory requirement to publish a paid asset, even if it's an outlook, gmail, icloud, or yahoo email address.

 

When I submitted my package in May they rejected it because they didn't think my publisher website was professional enough. So, yeah, a little annoying to see someone can get something through with just a YouTube page.

 

Its come up in a few conversations lately. You might get the attention of the asset store folks if you post it in the asset store forum.

Basically it comes down to this question

• Is the Asset Store itself responsible for ensure assets sold on the store meet minimum requirements?

Those minimum requirements include things like

• Doing what is says it does
• Being under active support
• Having a contactable developer

I think the asset store does a decent job of this on initial reviews. But I get the sense that once an asset is up on the store it is not subject to the same level of scrutiny.

 

The developer is contactable. This thread is bullpuckey.

Click on publisher name (cutie cube) from the plugin's Asset Store page and use their support email listed there.

A support forum is not necessary and a Unity forum user name is not necessary. Email is a fine form of communication. No reason the contact has to made "through Unity".

 

That's your opinion I guess.
My opinion is that someone should have a forum and Unity account when selling $50 assets for Unity. Because I'm not going to create a youtube account and external e-mail account just to get info on the asset. It makes no sense to me. There's really no sense in arguing about it because I'm not going to purchase such assets. Maybe other people feel the same way as me, if so, the seller looses some business.
There's plenty of good sellers out there who create a thread and forum. People, like me, see the forum and responses from the developer and can be assured that support is available.
In the above link I post, there is no way for me to be assured of that.

 

In that case, most of my previous post should be disregarded. If they have an email, send them an email. Otherwise what's the big deal?

 

I shouldn't have to send someone an email outside of Unity for support/info for a Unity asset.
I should be able to send them a message through Unity or view their forum.
I also shouldn't have to create a YouTube account in order to see a demo video on the product.
I don't get why no one understands what I am trying to say here.

 

Aye, the developer does have a email address listed. That's enough. Why waste time & money monitoring a forum thread unless your job becomes exclusively your Unity Asset Store products?

 

It's not a Unity Asset - Unity will not support it.

The other things you say are reasonable but Unity probably won't want to add a whole new department to manage such a set-up and also tell product creators that have their own domains and system setup they must abandon that and adjust to using the Unity sanctioned system of support.

You are basically asking Unity to make it mandatory that a small time developer with few resources is made to appear as if they have all the resources of Unity behind them when they don't. Yes, it would be a nice convenience if Unity supplied a madewithunity style Kiosk front for asset store vendors with their own kiosk forums, kiosk chat, a Unity email address, and all that but Unity would need to be crystal clear the Kiosk owner does not work for Unity. And it'd cost Unity a lot of money to set that up and support it. None of the App Stores create a virtual business store front for the businesses that sell apps in those app stores although Amazon sort of does create a mediocre one. However, the current situation at least helps you to judge whether to buy a product in it being transparent to you that the creator of the product is a single individual that created the product in their spare time.

 

The only reason you might want a thread on the unity forum is someone bumps it with a question it might get more people reading it and help sell you another unit. But if your not a regular on the forums then it can be quite problematic you'd have to constantly monitor everything all the time (because you never know when someone will pop up with a question).

 

We understand, we just don't agree. By the way, if you wanted to post in their forum (if they had one), you'd have to create an account there as well.

To send them an email, you don't have to create an account. So it saves time over using a separate forum. I agree, they should have a Unity forum thread for their plugin. They might, and just forgot to link it.

Anyway no big deal, email the person...

I'm pretty sure they do have a Unity account, it's just not linked anywhere from the Asset Store probably. Maybe that should be a feature request?

Do you really have to create a Youtube account to watch a video? I don't think so. Maybe to post a question to the video you do.

 

EXACTLY. THANK YOU. That is partially my point.
No one else here gets it.

 

Yes, you do if the video is marked private and requires permissions given to you. Like in the case with the 1080p video link given for that specific asset.

 

Wow. The author is....strange for publishing it that way.

 

I'm sure there are some that still buy that way but it's easier to search the actual asset store. It's the seller's prerogative and you can't force them to keep at forum thread.

 

Look at it from the dev's point of view. Its entirely possible that they are not Unity specialists, rather water visualisation specialists. That means they have similar assets up on the Unreal market place, on Cry Engine, and on Game Maker. It also means they have a day job building traffic simulations for the local government authorities in Venice. They also do private contracting for Olympic sized swimming pools. And lecture on computational fluid dynamics at the local trade school.

All of these different activities require our poor overworked dev to be contactable. The dev decides to set up a single email address and use it across all of his activities. Far simpler then spending ten minutes checking each forum every day. That way he still has time to play Pond Wars with his kids in the evening.

If it really bothers you, simply vote with your wallet and don't buy the asset.

 

Did you just say you don't have an email account? Then how do you expect to be notified of a response if he had a Unity forum thread and you posted to it?

Do you plan on hitting refresh every so often on the webpage to scan for responses manually? Or am I misunderstanding what you said?

I thought you had to have an email account to register for the Unity forums and be posting here anyway...

 

That is a bit weird. Every sane person should already have an email account, a YouTube account and a Facebook account. Most devs have several lying around for various reasons.

If you really don't have an email account then I can understand your concern. But hey, you probably don't want to download any assets from the Unity store anyway, or even Unity itself. They are full of analytics and tracking software that can be used to track your movements. And the government now has lasers mounted on satellites now that can melt through aluminium foil hats.

Anyway, I should probably get off this thread before I end up getting it locked. It started off sounding somewhat legit, but I'm beginning to wonder.

 

I do have an email account. The unity account is tied to the email so I get the "1 alert" message when I get a new message. I thought it comes up automatically. So if someone sends me a message through Unity I get both unity alert and e-mail message

I notice you're an asset store seller and have a forum:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/25...olution-1-audio-plugin-on-asset-store.168074/
That is excellent and is what I expect to see for $40+ assets sold on the unity store. I can go through the forum, and see how other people used your product. I can see what others did. So I might just buy your product because of it. Why would you bother creating the forum unless it helps sell your product? So I just dont understand why you are disagreeing with me.

 

Forums are good but are too much of a hassle for a lot of devs to run, and not very useful at all for non-coding assets. Just because we have one and it's useful doesn't mean I think that everyone needs to have one.

I agreed with a couple things also. I think Unity Asset Store should show the user account for who published it so you can start a conversation. And chances are there's a thread somewhere (unlinked) for the asset in question as well. I agree that having a thread for each asset is a good idea. It increases exposure and the dev doesn't need to ever "check" the thread, unlike what someone above said. They can subscribe and get notified of responses via email.

Ultimately, nothing wrong with sending the author an email though. You'd get notified of a response by checking your email as you normally do (not worse than using Unity forums). Cell phone can make a sound when you get an email so you don't even need to check either if you set that up.

 

Ok. Thank you. I agree with pretty much everything you said now.
I think this thread got blown out of proportion here. The entire purpose of me creating the thread was just to express my point of view as a buyer of Unity assets, and what I would like/expect to see before purchasing an asset at the store. Maybe I posted this on the wrong forum or something.

 

Can we post somewhere for a feature suggestion for the Asset Store to show "published by {UserAccount link}" or something like that? Instead of just the support email they provide?

 

Are we all completely sure that one has to sign up for the forums to use Unity or publish an asset? It's pretty clear the vast majority of Unity users have never even visited the forums. That could be the case with that asset publisher. I'm still do business by phone many times because that's what the workers at those places prefer. At one time my forum account was separate from my Unity account. Unity joined the two. I am sure their must be Unity users that used a separate email for security reasons for their Unity account with which they make financial transactions and the forums, which are known to be visited by scammers. It'd also be bad security to use as your support email address as the email address you use to make any financial transactions with.

 

I'm not 100% sure. I know that I sign in with the same email/password when I click on "Sell" on the Asset Store page. And originally I created that account for the forums, not to sell things.

 

You have a good point, that really didn't even cross my mind until you just brought it up. Personally I could never have started using Unity if it wasn't for help on the forum, I learned so much by reading the forums, maybe I value the them too much, which is why I brought up the opinion.

 

Sorry for my English I noticed elementary school spelling mistakes on re-reading it. Good language is always the most difficult thing to do.

I originally used my email account to purchase Unity Basic. The forum came almost a year or more later. And if I ever had a support email address I'd make up one not like the one I do financial transactions with. I'm not entirely comfortable using my forum email address to do financial transactions with but the two seemed locked together now. At any rate my password its super hard to use a password dictionary on, they'd have to exploit vulnerabilities in the software to obtain the financial information.

 

Disagree.

This is just a case of buyer beware. The creator of that asset provided 2 different ways for you to contact them and get support. If you are unhappy with those choices, then simply do not buy the product. You can also contact the vendor and tell them the reason you are not buying their product, which may encourage them.

But the more you expect Unity to be the nanny and force things upon asset providers, the less asset providers there will be AND the slower things will get added to the store ( already 2 weeks) because staff at Unity will have to review more things.

Nobody is forcing you to buy this stuff, and you can easily check to see if the creator met ´your requirements´, but adding stuff to the store is already a pretty big chore and I would hate for a lot of guys doing the free - $5 assets to stop because the process is too cumbersome.