I recently bought the Bug Reporter, and found out it is exclusively for FogBuz only (which is not free). Nowhere in the description does it mention this. I was expecting this to be useable with my own bugtracker. I contacted AssetStore for a refund, and they refused. They say this is a publisher problem, and told me I should contact them directly.
Beware of what you buy. It is false advertising and Unity refuse to take resposibility. I have not seen store behave like this.
Well, if you click the link to their website in the assets description, it clearly sais that it works with FogBuz.
Irrelevant.
If its not stated on the asset store page then its Unity’s problem (or whatever part of the organisation runs the asset store). I’m not sure i’d go as far as calling it false advertising but it is a lack of vitally important information, resulting in the purchase not being fit for purpose.
Honestly they should refund this, its there responsibility to validate stuff they put on their store and its the assets creator responsibility to clearly state any additional requirements.
It is for this reason that i’m very wary of purchasing stuff from the store. I bought AVProWindows (brilliant plugin well worth the money), but only after being able to download and use their demo extensively to ensure it was fit for my purpose. I also bought some particle effect, but found its description misleading in what was provided, but for only $2 it wasn’t worth asking for a refund.
Specially then I often find the asset descriptions lacking in important information and often the file hierarchy tells you very little about what you are purchasing. If an asset doesn’t have a demo or video I wont even bother with it.
In my opinion it is vital that Unity act responsibly with the asset store, they are taking a percentage of sales so have a responsibility to do so. Failure to do so will simply create situations akin to the recent WarZ on Steam.
I agree, this is definitely Unity’s problem. Its Unity’s store if Unity didn’t catch this during approval process, Unity should take responsibility because that’s their store.
Yeah, this is Unitys problem IMO
TBH I expect that my digital purchases to be refunded within seconds should I be upset… maybe Kindle Books has spoilt me though 
Their website is olympa.fogbugz.com. What did you think it would support? And fogbugz is free for students and small companies.
But anyway, It’s just $5. I’m amazed you or they actually care.
And how would Unity then go about ensuring that you aren’t using the purchased assets anyway?
When they do a refund you no longer get download access to the asset… though nothing to stop you using it secretly.
I was able to get a refund on several items that I was dissatisfied with for various reasons, they asked me what those reasons were but then they went ahead with it. I would keep pushing for it.
I got to say I agree with the mindset that Unity should do the refund.
There are so many reasons for this, but for one, the reason to buy via Unity (where I give a slice of the money to Unity) is so I don’t have to worry about the seller’s reliability. If he sucks or product sucks I should just be able to walk back into the store and return it.
I bought a few assets from Unity but after being burned by this same thing (garbage asset, unity refused refund) I opted to never again buy stuff from the Asset Store if I can help it.
Can you imagine how the world would be, if Wal-Mart told me to call Dell to replace a bad Thumb Drive I just bought at the store? It’s absurd.
There is also the fact that a refund given directly by the seller is likely going to force the seller to pay me in full out of pocket (unless Unity has some management tool to allow sellers to route a refund through them.)
Anyways, yea, I’m not crazy about the asset store refund policy. If I am going to be forced to deal with the manager, the Asset store may as well just be a set of links to the individual sellers.
I think I rather not risk buying in the first place if all refunds will require me to “keep pushing”.
Edit to add: in some states, retailer refusing to do a refund is considered illegal. Many states have customer protection laws that force retailers to take back products and give refunds within certain parameters.
There are certainly some things Unity needs to do to reduce the need to refund, such as requiring that documentation be included and freely downloadable, requiring that all dependencies be identified, letting you properly look at/listen to sounds/music/images within the store before buying, providing the embedding of webplayers and videos, etc.
Very strange case, I’ve got refunds from UT many times;
All I had to do was presenting proof that the asset was not working.
But when you buy by PayPal and request a case dispute there, things goes way faster.
It’s about principle not money. When somebody sells something they need to be clear on what it does.
If in a hardware store a company sells paint that only adheres to a special expensive type of material and they don’t mention that on the product, only on the website, it would be an issue.
I believe this is a publisher problem with a misleading description and as a gesture of good faith unity should refund the asset cost and order the publisher to reword their description – and take note of this for future assets.
Assets that rely on assets are very rare, and usually clearly worded as such. This isn’t about money, its about wasting time and insulting a customer.
Unity should make it clear in the asset store rules that “Any asset that requires additional assets to function be clearly labelled as such in the description.”
Description has a note what it works on but the tone constantly suggests it does not need a 3rd party tool to function. Their website says:
It uses the word associated with FogBugz, but also says exclusively for unity, and STILL isn’t clear on the wording. In my book, that’s not good enough. When going from the unity asset page to the master website, one is just left feeling confused. Clear wording would be:
The Bug Reporter requires FogBugz to function.
This isn’t unity’s fault in any area, but it is imho, unity’s responsibility to fix it and prevent it happening again.
I understand frustrated customers, but all the torches and pitchforks threads lately are getting to be a bit much.
The description for the product in the Asset Store is pretty light on information. It also says for more information to visit the provided link. Even for a $5 purchase most people would probably click on that link. Within about 3 seconds of landing on that page (or even waiting for it to load) it’s obvious that it’s associated with FogBugz. So let’s please not accuse people of false advertising or a lack of competence on Unity’s part during the approval process.
As far as the refund is concerned I’m not sure, but it does seem that buying stuff on the Asset Store should probably provide a certain amount of protection for these sorts of mistaken purchases.
I think the entire “false advertisement” or “unity review fail” comments would be non-existent if this one point was a priority. I know this kind of stuff happens, even Apple with its extensive approval process ends up approving some questionable apps. But as you say: there should be more buyer protection provided by the Asset Store. A simple refund policy would be enough.
It is slow, but should I feel dissatisfied with an App Store purchase, I can request a refund and I will very likely get it. Heck I had people that just did not like my game get refunds (btw, as a seller I LOVE the fact that Apple handles that, being forced to take care of refunds myself is another pain in the @#$ and the reason I dont sell paid versions in Google Play.)
As it stands, since my experience I realized I can’t trust the Asset Store so I went back to buy assets directly from the only source I trust: Prime31
I think many people have made valid points on both sides. The issue with refunds on the asset store is that the customer can pretty much keep the product. A refund system and digital goods don’t mix IMO. Some people suggested unity refine its policy to make these things more clear to customers I agree, it should also make a buyer beware policy that states that the customer is responsible to inquire what they are downloading. A little bit of research into this before buying would have prevented this. There is blame to go around.
As imaginaryhuman posted, in the cases they actually do a refund, you can no longer download the asset. Sure, you can retain the downloaded version, but that is considered as piracy as any other form. Also, it’s something unlikely to be abused because you can easily keep track of a user’s account and limit how many refunds he can go through before red flags get triggered.
Mind you, even if the user keeps the asset, he will never get updates or bug fixes.
So we are going to make assumptions that people will research before buying a product(No matter the price)?
When did you regain your faith in humanity?