I’ve purchased a couple of assets lately, and I’m shocked at the number of assets out there who just no longer provide any support.
So you go and spend your hard-earned money on an asset, all works well, and then boom, you hit some sort of platform incompatibility issue or a bug.
Note : I am referring to scripting assets here specifically, but this should apply to all types of assets.
If an asset is no longer supported by the author, it should either be removed from the asset store, or made free so people can still download it if they want, but at no risk to their pocket.
Alternatively, have some sort of ‘report’ feature on an asset, that allows someone to report they no longer received support. Then flag the asset on the asset store as such to notify potential customers. But I really don’t think people should be paying for an asset if its no longer supported.
This. An auto-deprecation system would be sweet. Ideally, have this done through email verification - send them a link and have them click it, since that also proves that their email address is valid (edit: and monitored - which is an issue I’ve had). Do this on a quarterly cycle, and if someone fails to verify their continued support then mark the asset as deprecated.
(Edit: Possibly also have deprecations give a reason. I wouldn’t want the lack of clarification to make developers who properly deprecate assets that reach EOL to look bad because it gets the same label as developers who disappear.)
Maybe also have some kind of bot-detection form on the end of that link, because we don’t want people automating it.
I don’t think it’s as simple as sending a link to an email address. There’s really nothing stopping people from clicking the link and continuing to ignore support requests.
I do agree there should be some sort of flagged as Unsupported feature, but it would be necessary to handle it through a Report system where UT arbitrates and ensures the asset owner is attempting to support their product.
I don’t think Flag As Unsupported is the answer here. Plenty of people already use the rating system to make ridiculous unrelated feature requests by making a 1 star review, imagine if they could also rate some asset as unsupported - it would waste everyone’s time and be very ineffective.
As is stands the existing users are typically the ones making the ‘this is unsupported’ reviews when they realize it. If the author doesn’t contest them, its pretty clear he doesn’t intend to support the asset anymore. Unfortunately there is no incentive to make such reviews other than to just be a nice person. I don’t really have any clear ideas on solving the issue, honestly. =/
This was my experience with U3DXT. They had a basic version available for $10, so I figured ‘why not’, and although they had several reviews saying the plugin wasn’t supported, the developer had responded saying something along the lines of “Sorry, we’ve been busy adding new features! We’re still here and fully supporting!”
A short time later, the plugin went free and all communication just stopped. Luckily for me, it was only a $10 purchase, but if I were one of the people who sprung for their full-featured $90 version, I’d have been pissed.
No system is perfect. You win some, you lose some. The best any of us can do is rely on those who have gotten burned warning us not to make the same mistake, I guess.
As a publisher myself, I would also be in favor of flagging assets that are no longer supported, but I agree that implementing such a system is going to be tricky if not impossible. Auto email links would be easily defeated, and a report feature if unchecked would also be abused in the other direction.
The best I could think of is having Unity arbitrate perhaps relying on users to initially report but then following up with asking for the request for support and then the lack of reply, and to make a judgement on those that are truly asking for support vs. those asking for new features. Its obviously very easy to propose such on Unity’s behalf but it obviously would require hiring more asset store support personnel, which I’m not sure is realistic especially as the volume of submissions has gone up for them to review such that it is common for first time submissions to take 2 weeks to get through.
As a publisher and a customer though I’m always in favor of being clear. No longer having support doesn’t always mean a bad thing (i.e. good ol’ sockets is important in Unity 4.x but not Unity 5.x) it’s just important to be informed as such before you make a purchase (and this asset in my opinion does it right stating that on its page clearly up front, that it only helps 4.x free users).
Not to mention you could have competitors flagging things as a way of trying to reduce competition.
The asset store is old, some of the assets are over 3 years old, and if its not that popular it means its not making much money and not selling many units. I guess maybe unity could have some kind of automated system like if the author isnt selling many units per month total or something.
Of course, so it won’t be 100% effective. I think something like that is a decent first pass filter, though, and any such filter that can save effort on behalf of the Asset Store staff is great, because that gives them more time to work on the cases in the middle.
How about an ‘asset forum’ on the asset store. Each asset gets its own forum, and people can go in there and browse questions and perhaps find the question they have is already been asked. The forum will be linked to from the asset main page.
This does three things…
1.) It creates a knowledge base for the asset, and provides a central report location for all support for the asset. No rogue emails or questions lost in 20 page Unity forum threads.
2.) The forum can be divided into two categories, Support and Feature Requests, that solves one of the problems mentioned above.
3.) It solves the problem I brought up in this thread. Potential customers can see how active the support is for the asset and make an informed purchase decision.
Not blaming OP, but “depreciation” system is already there. Simply look when that asset was uploaded, what version of Unity it was using and when was the last time it was updated.
That’s what I check before I buy/download asset. Also reviews.
That’s not at all the same thing. It’s quite possible that an asset hasn’t been updated in ages because it’s genuinely a well designed and mature product that hasn’t needed updates in ages. Some things do need regular maintenance as Unity and/or 3rd party services change over time, but many things don’t.
Reviews are a good way to know whether developer is active or not. Plus most asset store publishers create a thread on their asset in the Assets and Asset Store forum, which is a way to determine whether developer is active or not.
Also, I am not sure how many assets are mature enough not to get updates versus number of assets which have been actually abandoned.
There will be thousands of forums and navigating will be overwhelming. One thread per asset is relatively organized: people ask for help and questions in one place, along with feature requests.
However, if there are too many questions mixed up, then I assume asset is popular, meaning that developer can afford getting his own forum up and running (there are free alternatives anyway).
Rather than an email with a link, we could just require publishers to log into the publisher administration and verify their assets. Unity could send reminder emails before the assets are disabled. No need to permanently remove them, just disable them until the publisher goes back and re-verifies.
As a publisher myself, I bet I log into the publisher administration to check sales and/or verify invoice numbers at least a dozen times a day, so there’s no excuse for an active publisher to not ever be logging into that portal. That still won’t guarantee that the publisher is actively supporting, but it will guarantee that the publisher is alive and paying attention. Now, if publishers are not responding to support requests, it becomes easier for Unity to mediate. They know that publishers are logging into the portal and verifying, so there’s no excuse for them to be non-responsive to support emails.
And it does have to be case by case. I’ve had to start monitoring my spam pretty carefully because I actually have had a couple of support requests that Google thought was spam and I didn’t even see them for over a week.
Yeah, this is the main reason I think some kind of standardised method built into the Asset Store itself could be handy. That way Unity and the seller have an agreed way for the communications, which Unity demands have to be dealt with, to be sent and received. It’s also not at all unprecedented - for instance, eBay uses a built in messaging system for this.
I think a full built in forum is a bit overkill, but it doesn’t have to be anything of that kind of scale to get the job done. Some benefits of an eBay style system:
Contacts are less likely to get spam filtered, as they’re coming from a single source (the Asset Store) which can easily be tagged as trusted.
Unity can easily see if/how quickly a seller is responding to such contacts if they need to find out.
It’s more convenient for buyers.
For the vendor, any contact can still be sent straight to their preferred email address, so to them the experience could be seamless (with a tracking number in the subject the asset store can handle the rest).
Works for me.
Yeah, to me it’s not about guaranteeing any quality of support. It’s about identifying a clear lack of support, as an easy first-pass filter. And that’s only really useful if it’s automated, because otherwise it’s increasing work rather than decreasing it.
