do you think that unity should have some quality control in the asset store?
the thing is that I just bought a package ($50) and there are so many bugs that the package is unusable… the developer is not updating it anymore so I just contacted the unity support to ask for a refund but it seems unity don’t give refund:
Hi There,
Thanks for the e-mail.
Thank you for contacting us. As specified in the Asset Store EULA, which all Asset Store customers have agreed to, all sales are final. However you may wish to contact the creator or publisher of the asset for their assistance. In some cases, they may be willing to authorize a refund at their discretion.
You must speak with the publisher, only they can authorize refunds by requesting the refund on your behalf.
Kind regards,
Ben
Unity Support
So, no developer support, no unity support, you are at your own…
I think that unity have to check the quality of the assets they approve to be sold in the asset store at least we deserve that.
When buying assets I always do as much research on it as possible. Look at the date it was last updated. Look at the reviews, etc. Generally if it hasn’t been updated in over a year, it’s a deal breaker for me, unless it’s a really simple basic thing
Maybe not so much a ‘quality control’ but more of a ‘report this package is bugged and does not work in the current version of Unity’ system?
We do have people that check everything that goes onto the asset store, which means that the package in question did at one point work. It may have been a later update (to Unity or the package) that caused it to break. Either way, I would definitely contact the dev and at least let our people know.
UT does go through an approval process before adding a package to the asset store. I don’t know how deep they test complex code packages, but if there are any crashes or console errors, it will get rejected. It’s probably a little more difficult to spot individual bugs, as that requires learning and using the product beyond the example scenes.
As for reporting that it doesn’t work in the current version, that would be great except for the fact that many people still use those older versions
I just got an email from an artist 3 weeks after I wrote but this was for wanting to buy more art. In any case, in places outside the US the workers typically get from 4 - 6 weeks vacation not the 1 or 2 weeks in the US per year and if they have any sense don’t take their email with them.
If they don’t answer in 7 weeks I’d consider the asset abandoned so your should fix the asset and say you are going to release it under an MIT license which you can do. That will get a response if they are ignoring you in order to keep $33.33.
The one easiest things UT can do to help in that regard is to refuse assets using a language other than C# as importing multiple JS scripts from different assets is an easy way to clobber your project and require those that use C# to one or more namespaces that includes the Asset Kiosk owner’s Kiosk / Real Name as part of the organizing and isolating the asset code from other assets and Unity code.
Deprecated API? Well if an Asset hasn’t been updated in 2 cycles and has deprecated API calls it needs to come with a yellow flag, ‘Deprecated’, rather than ‘Sale’ for buyers or removed. I still want a filter / cookie I can set in my account information that will filter out all packages by an arbitrary date I set, by version number, by content (Do I really want to scroll through pages of zombie and gun art assets? No.), and to allowed me to hide purchased packages that I likely never use.
It’s not like my IE 11 browser doesn’t already struggle for 5 minutes waiting for scripts to finish when I go to the asset store.
Then what? You have to wait 75 years? I’d file a complaint then with PayPal or the Credit Card company and try to get charges reversed. Just because something is ‘software’ and has evasive EULAs written with the express intent of avoiding culpability for your business’ work rather than protecting against an honest mistake should not give license to throw sh*t against the wall and see what sticks.
I think that the best way of helping people related to obsolete content in the Asset Store would be the following things :
Adding a filter/mention which include what versions of Unity the asset have been tested with.
Whenever someone add an asset to the store, he will have to select which one is the latest version in which the asset have been tested.
So, for example, if someone produced an asset for Unity 4.1 and haven’t updated it since then, on the asset store, it should be shown as “Tested on Unity 4.1”. If an update for a new version is done, then that someone could update it to “Tested on Unity 4.3”
Adding a Incompatible report button as well as a report graph on the asset store pages
My idea of this button would be a button that, upon pressing it, bring a small menu on which the user must enter what version of Unity he is using.
Then, once he entered his version of Unity and confirmed his report, this would update a small graphic which would give the total of people who have not been able to uses the asset with the recent versions. Since there are a load bunch of versions, it could be limited to 4 versions with a 5th one being “Other previous version”. So, with the current Unity 4.3.4, this graph would show something like : Number of incompatible reports :
Unity 4.3.4 = X
Unity 4.3.3 = X
Unity 4.3.2 = X
Unity 4.3.1 = X
Older versions = X
Note that only those who bought it should be able to report. (So that no hateful report should be done)
But, those who bought it can report it as incompatible for multiple version if they tested it.
This would allow :
Customers to have an idea about if the asset is compatible with their current version of Unity.
Whenever a new version come in, this would allow the system to quickly update the list by adding the 4th version on the “Older version” count.
Since this cover 4 versions, this would also allow older projects (since project can run for 3-4 years) to have an idea if the asset is viable or not.
If a project is having too many reports for the latest version or even worse, multiple lasted versions, this would allow UT’s people to retest older content (at a respectable speed) and, if needed, send an automatic report to the asset owner to inform him/her that its asset should be updated or might be removed from the Asset Store.
It’s not that rare that group/company/individual uses 2 versions of Unity. One might be for an older project which might have some problem if updated while the other is a newer project which uses the new features. This option would also allow them to be warned that an asset will only be compatible with one of their project.
I have many, many assets that have deprecated calls and they aren’t being updated although I know the asset store owner is still active. They need to update their code or we need a button to report the deprecated calls to the asset store review system. One review can be a self written view that can be ‘argued’ to be subjective although often they are objective and the other a purely technical review that is objective and the number of deprecated and broken lines of code is as objective a review as any. …and add namespace conflicts to that list of objective measures of quality.
I’d love to see something like that, but many authors do update their assets to be compatible eventually. The system would need some way for them to erase the bad marks against their asset if they update it to work. But by the same token, that process shouldn’t mean that Unity Tech has to do any testing, because that’s just expensive for them.
Perhaps the reports could be against versions of the product, and could also include reports that it does work.
Indeed, anyone who owned the asset could be given an update button in their download center that indicated for that asset that if they had reported that it was using deprecated functions, they could check that and remove their report, assuming they had any sense of decency that should be a nice system, esp if it gets a liked asset working again
A more comprehensive set of filters (That can be combined) to the asset store would improve it immensely, there aren’t enough words for how much it would make it easier to find, what you want, little known highly useful assets become easier to find (And profitability hence much better spread and fair to asset creators), and just generally nicer and improving productivity immensely. How hard can that even be?
No they wouldn’t because that metric is also a measure of how long it takes them to update to compatibility. I have no interest in the update after I’ve bought a competitive product that updates promptly.
For what it’s worth, I’ve not had an issue getting refunds in the past. Also, when someone once had an “issue” with something I’d made (nothing was broken, they had just changed their mind) and complained to Unity that I couldn’t be contacted (I’d got one email less than 48 hours before over a weekend) Unity got in contact with me within 48 hours to see what was up.
So, while I know that the written policy is pretty black and white, my experience suggests that in day to day dealings Unity’s staff are actually far more flexible and reasonable than the policy implies.
I do agree that higher quality standards would rock. But for the most part the system that’s there is quite workable. My main concern personally is wanting to check out code assets before purchasing them. There’s a fair bit of stuff out there that works but isn’t well engineered, which means that as a drag-and-drop it’s fine but it can be a pain integrating it into a larger work. That’s the main area where I see Asset Store stuff being sketchy - code quality isn’t really being promised, so it’s a risk that you have to accept prior to purchase.
@blueice08 Have you got in contact with the developer about this to provide you a refund? If you are unable to reach the developer then I suggest replying to Ben’s e-mail to let him know, make sure you provide your invoice number, then we can contact them for you.
