Being combative really isn’t helping anyone.
This is why I don’t buy anything anymore from the asset store. The chance of getting scammed is too high.
Other one. It’s always the guys that live in this forum.
Sadly I have to agree. Good thing I’ve been learning to make my own assets. Still I think you can detect them by their lack of websites and the high quality of art. It seems they are mostly ripped from dead south korean games too.
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Well, me not buying from the asset store anymore is also my own boycott due to their takedown policy. I tried reporting assets before, many times and met a dead end or wall of silence. So, my wallet is closed to the unity asset store.
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I agree. Please stop.
The folks here have provided the right information. Getting heated towards them isn’t going to get you anywhere. We need DMCA takedown requests from the copyright holders so if this is something you feel strongly about, I suggest you contact the copyright holders and let them know so they can contact us through the proper process so this can be taken down.
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You know, if Unity wants to be very upfront about this they need to have a disclaimer on top in their Asset Store, clarifying that they provide zero guarantee that what they sell is legal.
Because otherwise getting a Korean publisher to bother with a DMCA is going to be kinda hard, so those assets are probably going to stay on there and Unity will profit from them.
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Appreciate the feedback here. I’ve shared this thread with the team internally to make sure they record this feedback.
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Is this a legal requirement, or an internal policy, or something else?
Mainly a legal one - it’s why when these issues come up that we ask users to go to the copyright holders to tell them. That way, the owner can rightfully take it down through the proper process.
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For the United States it is a legal requirement that only the copyright holder or a person authorized to act on the behalf of the copyright holder may submit a DMCA takedown notice.
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You put it a lot better than I did, thank you <3
I understand that only the copyright holder can submit a DMCA takedown, but surely a DMCA takedown isn’t the only option here?
It’s your shop. I would expect that you could decide to remove things from sale at any time for any reason. I’m not suggesting you go YouTube style, of course. And I do respect that this is tricky to deal with.
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if the case is so clear, then surely asset store admins should act, even without actual dmca…?
i mean how can any developer buy 3d models from asset store if the attitude is like this? (for such obvious cases).
and review process has failed here too,
in other websites, like stock photos, you definitely couldnt get pass the review queue if its clearly not permitted image… (which is good, you can trust the site to buy your images and use them)
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The Asset Store EULA provides space for Unity to remove under their discretion, but they are quite hesitant to exercise that freedom.
https://unity3d.com/legal/as_terms
So really while the DMCA notice from an author is the sure-fire path to get something removed on legal grounds it is really only getting action taken against it in the bare minimum sense. Unity has absolute discretion to remove anything they want for any reason they want.
It doesn’t seem often that they actually do it, though. Even when it’s pretty clear what’s going on.
There’s also no reason for them to publicly state “there may be illegal content on here we cant be sure” because the EULA - which people are too lazy to read - clearly states this.
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Photos are way easier to pre-filter. Rebuilt assets with new advertising imagery pose a much more significant processing effort to be identified accurately. Not that this cannot be done, but the effort to automate this is non-trivial.
While this is an appropriate approach for a service that is at the end-point of the distribution like a game store, a video website, or a streaming service, the fact is assets bought from the Asset Store are usually going to be used in commercial products made by Unity customers, and those are the ones that will take the first hit if the copyright holders become aware of it.
Of course the review process won’t catch everything, but it already seems to weed out obvious stuff otherwise the Asset Store would be full of things like model rips from popular games. The asset author in question even took the effort to slightly change some of the assets to make them less obvious (removing Black Bolt’s forehead tuning fork and wings) as well as avoiding submitting more easily identifiable characters (like Batou and Motoko from Ghost In The Shell), which shows they are aware of the review process (and probably got assets rejected before).
But considering the potential damage to customers who purchase these assets, reports of alleged copyright infringement should be acted on more proactively even if they don’t come from the IP owner via a DMCA takedown request.
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My guess is it is a CYA maneuver on Unity’s part, and a way to keep their workload investigating copyright issues to a minimum. Sending an email to support to report a copyright infringement puts it on Unity to investigate who’s story is actually true, and is a rather low bar open for potential abuse. You see abuse of such systems on sites like YouTube all the time. Sending an official DMCA takedown though probably fewer people would be inclined to abuse, and it provides a rather straight forward process Unity will follow. A process which if it results in the wrong content taken down, Unity has a good excuse they can point to as to why they took the actions they did.
There’s lots of anecdotal reports on the forum that the Asset Store support team is overwhelmed with their requests as it is, so doing it this way also helps to not further increase their workload with investigations. So to me it makes a lot of sense the stance Unity appears to be taking.
Good solution? Probably not, but real life generally consists of deciding between bad and less bad, not between bad and good.
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Why? Is there really no clause in the assetstore seller agreement that allows you to just suspend store items at will - just like newly uploaded items can and have been rejected based on subjective criteria? If there was none, it should clearly be added for cases like this.
It would seem reasonable to me in such cases where it’s very obvious something was stolen to suspend an asset and ask for proof of authorship from the assetstore seller (which they won’t be able to provide). If it’s something that isn’t obviously stolen, you could ask for proof of authorship before suspending the asset 10 work days later or so. I’m an artist, I can’t imagine making any asset without leaving a trail of work in progress steps that would serve as a clear proof of authorship that no one else can provide, even if they had the finished asset.
If UT doesn’t take this a lot more serious, it’s like saying “Don’t buy art assets here, they’re totally a legal liability because we don’t take any responsibility for what people sell on here.”
Pointing to the DMCA as “sorry, our hands are legally tied” is absolutely ridiculous in my humble opinion. That’s like the opposite of what it was intended for.
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To me it’s not even a matter of copyright enforcement. I agree with Unity that enforcement of other peoples’ copyright isn’t their responsibility, and nor should it be.
To me it’s more about safeguarding the level of trust people have in the store. If they’re willfully selling stuff that could get me in trouble with Marvel that’s not exactly inspiring confidence, to put it incredibly mildly. I don’t expect every Asset Store reviewer to recognise every IP on the planet, but they do have a report button on the store, and I’d expect them to be proactive about protecting their customers in cases like that.
Along with a couple of other checks, such as the publishing date of each work in question, that sounds reasonable to me in principle.
A potential complication is stuff like a recent case where it was decided that Call of Duty did not need a license to have Humvees in their game. So there are cases where it makes sense that a digital representation of someone else’s IP could be used legitimately by customers. Thinking aloud here, perhaps having a separate license (or obvious disclaimer) for content like that would be useful? Eg: “This is a model of a real world object. Depending on your use of this model you may be required to obtain a 3rd party license before using it in your work.”
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A little update on this: I asked for a refund because I bought one of those assets (before I knew it was piracy) but since the scammer deprecated the asset (most likely because he was found out) my refund request was rejected.
Amazing, so a scammer can protect himself from negative reviews and refunds just by deprecating.
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