Prime31 makes some killer plugins – I’ve purchased a handful over the years ranging from the Game Center suite to a few ad networks – and with the exception of a few hiccups they work quite well. The Game Center and Game Center Multiplayer plugins are drag and drop. The iCloud plugin is an absolute breeze, and easily the best out there. But wow, has anyone else had an absolute nightmare of a time dealing with their support?
Their responses are just rude beyond belief. People had warned about this all over forums, but it’s hard to conceptualize how off-putting it can be until you have seen it first hand. I don’t know if they are making a conscious choice to be so abrasive or if they genuinely don’t know how to express themselves politely in written form, but I personally find it extremely unpleasant and unfair to be treated like that by a company to which I am providing business. Not big money, but not small money either. With just the smallest bit of effort, or perhaps even just a conscious choice to not be overtly rude, they could make things a whole lot more pleasant for their fellow developers.
Again, this is a total love/hate relationship because the plugins for the most part work well. I realize it’s a stretch to pass on a functional product just because their support team is unpleasant, but the way they conduct themselves publicly reflects poorly on their company as a whole. For me, that is enough to justify going another route when a quality competitor exists.
I’m sure there are plenty who disagree, but I felt compelled to voice my opinion after extensive personal experience with Prime 31’s plugins and support. Take it for what it’s worth :).
Prime-- you guys are technical gods, but I wish you would treat your customers with more respect.
i agree wholeheartedly with you. I’ve moved on from Prime31 in areas where a better alternative exists. Neatplug’s Facebook plugin saves TONS of dev time for things that are built in. I still use Storekit from Prime, but the last iCloud I used was totally broken and I gave on up that one too. Do check out Neatplug for Facebook definitely. Support is also TOP notch.
Well I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks this. Firstly I have to say I couldn’t have done what I’ve done with unity to make money if it wasn’t for the Prime31 plugins. Without them I would have needed to get my hands dirty with native on all 3 platforms I target. I personally have bought loads of them but there is a big BUT!
The but is I really wish I didn’t have to use them as they cause me grief every time I update one of them in a project. I too replace them as soon as an alternative exists. My biggest gripes are the very off hand bordering on rude curt responses you get when you ask a question, I wouldn’t mind if I were a moron but when the documentation is as extensive as a function declaration and a one line comment for most of the function calls giving you no idea how to use them in anger. The Facebook one is my pet worst, how the heck you are supposed to use it, call what in what order etc. is a mystery.
All that said, if all you have is a game all in one scene then just dropping in the prefabs does normally do the job. As soon as you try and use multi platform plugins all in the same project with multiple listeners needed, your code soon fills up with a ton of #if’s
A message to Prime31, I know us customers at times must really look and behave like morons but we pay your bills so no matter how bad we are, you must rise way above us and remember the customer is always right, even when they are not.
Mr.Arkon I hope you either have, or go ahead and buy the Neatplug Facebook plugin. Sooooo much better and the support is great. Plus it removes the need for a lot of code and just does it automatically!
I didn’t want to name any other plugins in my post because I didn’t want it to come off as a smear campaign, but since you guys dropped a few names…I can’t recommend Unibill highly enough for all things in app purchase. It’s constantly expanding, and the developer responds to support requests instantly. Nice guy, great plugin
Curious what you mean by this. Aren’t all of their plugins designed for Unity? Or do you mean that they don’t publish apps themselves, so they don’t have a good sense of the full pipeline?
Yes I think he means this. I now have 6 games live on 3 platforms and am forever needing to issue updates to keep players interested, add features etc. Problem is each time I do this say 3 months have passed since I last released it so I use the opportunity to update the plugins as they have always or nearly always undergone changes for different Xcode version, ios versions etc. I’ve lost count of the number of times when updating a Prime plugin, unity now crashes in a way that trashes my project. Leaving me no choice but to copy a backup back live. I’ve now taken to backing up prior to any plugin update. To this day I don’t know the cause and am too scared to ask the author.
Oh Yeah, We’ve had to do plenty of searching to figure out how to implement the Prime31 inApp Plugin for android. When we asked questions we were told to refer to the documentation at google. Huh? The reason we purchased the plugin was because we have no clue what that stuff means and we didn’t want to have to search all over the web to make it work. More in-depth tutorials and better customer service would go a long way. Hopefully other plugin developers are taking notes and are ready to offer a better experience to their customers.
I hear you. In Prime’s defense Apple and Google do often make changes that require significant behind the scenes tweaking, but there is no need for these issues to manifest themselves so frequently in the front end of Prime’s plugins.
I hope you have moved on to Unibill by now!
Prime absolutely loves deflecting to the platform. If you need help, refer to the platform’s documentation. If the plugin doesn’t work, it’s a problem with the platform and there is nothing Prime can do about it. That is, of course, until they magically fix it two weeks later.
Same problem here. I do not really like the way Prime31 treat us.
I bought U3DXT plugin (http://u3dxt.com/) when it was only 12$ and I’m REALLY happy, lower price and far better treatment.
I bought Prime31 Charboost plugin in past and I could not get it to work. I asked Prime, they say it;s Charboost problem, I ask charboost, they say it’s Prime. Screw them both.
I never had a problem with prime31 plugins they have always worked great. usually he will get back to you on the same day, I am looking back at my emails and I dont see any “rude response”, so I wonder if you could post one that you consider to be “rude”.
I’ll bite. Not necessarily rude, but usually not helpful. Anything more than a simple setup problem and you’re told to “consult the Facebook API online”. Of course that’s a ridiculously complex mess and you can’t help but feel alone and left to fend for yourself. In which case, why wouldn’t I buy an equivalent product from Neatplug instead? They actually explain how to do things on Facebook to us, over the course of several emails. Plus the fact that much less code is required with Neatplug. It’s a no brainer for the Facebook one anyway.
I agree with Jerotas, I usually get an answer within 24 hours which is great BUT, I don’t appreciate the replies that pass the buck, or the oh so annoying ‘You can check the demo scene for a fully working example’, Or ‘I suggest you read up on…’
Our team uses a ton of Prime31 plugins (indeed, I think that by now we have the majority of them) - they have answered all of our questions, and yes, we did get the “look at the demo scene” reply sometimes, but so what? The demo scene DID contain everything I needed and the rest was written about on their site. The rest, which may indeed be about bugs/changes to the way iOS works, etc was indeed answered. I think this thread just consists of lazy people that can’t be bothered to read the manual and then blame poor prime for their laziness. shame on everyone above who is like this
No, its the assumption that I haven’t examined the demo scene, or haven’t read the very sparse docs, Or that I don’t know how some facet of c# to the skill level of a Mekhon that annoys me. I too have most of the plugins and use them in anger. As such a good customer I personally expect a more helpful reply when I have a problem.
Your story is about how you emailed support without having consulted the demo scene, and somehow that anecdote is evidence of how “lazy” and “shameful” we are? I’m genuinely glad that you have found the solutions to your problems in the demo scenes, but there are many advanced applications of, and bugs within, the plugins that transcend the demos. I think I speak for everyone in this thread when I say that those are the instances about which we have complaints.
Our collective issue is that, even after having consulted the docs and the demo scene, we are treated like morons and given dismissive, unhelpful responses. Checking the docs and demo are obviously step 1 in any support case, and one of our gripes is that Prime offers disdainful responses like “check the docs” even when the nature of our question makes it clear that we already have. It’s transparently dismissive.
This is the first page on Google when doing “neatplug vs prime31”…
I want to get a Flurry plugin, and Neatplug’s “welcome guide” seems a bit more… ahm… welcoming.
As far as I can see here, I understand that people have good experience with Neatplug, right?
