I’m not confortable with finger-pointing, but I think this particular case deserves it.
This user:
Has one-star reviewed all assets he owns (including some of mine), often accompanying the review with “Unity is garbage” or a similar message. From what I could gather by reading his “reviews”, the reason is that his own asset was rejected by the store for being too simple, and/or he has had issues with his Unity license, or Unity’s supposedly bad customer support has negatively affected his small business.
If they were only my assets that he reviewed, I would just have flagged the reviews and that’s it. But out of curiosity I checked his review history, and found literally dozens of these reviews. None of them have anything to do with the actual assets. They’re just complaints about Unity and how ignored/mistreated/ripped off he feels. This isn’t something punctual, done after a bad day at work. He must have spent several hours reviewing, if not days. He has done this to many well known, high-quality assets, from fellow developers/artists that certainly don’t deserve it.
I can understand that small businesses don’t have it easy. But imho bashing people in the same boat as you isn’t the way. It does not help you, it just drags others down with you. It’s time spent demeaning work done by others, instead of improving your own. So I wrote this to bring attention to such spiteful and toxic behavior, in hopes that it is noticed and something is done about it.
The issue at hand isn’t actually the reviews from what I read. It may be for you, but the real issue is that Unity refused his asset for being too simple. I’ve heard similar from other publishers as well.
While at the same time you have assets like this on the store:
A pumpkin model for €13.40 plus tax! That can be created in 5 minutes.
While the reviews themselves will be removed by Unity because they aren’t about the asset, I also see this as being wrong. A purchase justifies a review. Whether the review has value for them or not everyone else can decide, every customer here is mature. If a reviewer gives an asset a 1-star review because he thinks Unity or the publisher suck, then so be it. I’d like to read that. I can decide for myself whether the asset itself is good or not from other reviews. But if reviews about Unity or a publisher sucking being removed, that’s just review manipulation. I’ve seen lots of reviews being removed because the reviewers claimed the publisher is bad. Why would they want to rate the asset itself then when they can’t even recommend the publisher? If this one now says Unity is bad, it’s no difference. And at the same time 5-star-reviews with whole content of “Great asset” remain on the store.
If I see a 1-star review on an asset that’s probably great based on other reviews and what I can see of it, that just makes the reviewer lose any credibility they might have had otherwise (unless their review actually has a valid point about the asset).
If that pumpkin had any sales I’d consider saving for a 3D scanner and doing the same thing - could literally make a career of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” …empty chip bag, $10 (free wrinkle map included. note this asset is part of our Hunger Simulator Pack). hand sanitizer bottle (simulated surface of liquid included as integrated triangles, merged with bottle to minimize your draw calls), $15. Lighter, $5. Deluxe Lighter, $7 (includes separate models for flint, spring, metal piece - 10 special materials with different colors for the plastic shell). Deluxe LIghter 2.0 - everything from the acclaimed original, plus 20 more next-gen materials, now with adjustable smoothness! $12.
Edit: I’m not actually criticizing the pumpkin, I’m just being me - it does look great and if I needed a super-high-quality pumpkin that might be worth the price. Fortunately, for what I do I’d be good with moving a few vertices of a low-poly sphere.
Here’s yet another example: A publisher I know was declined a laser sword asset that he wanted to publish for free. The reason the asset store team gave him, I quote since he posted that in a public channel:
“This asset is too simple and too far below our current quality standards. We have chosen not to publish this package. However, we greatly appreciate the time and effort spent in preparing your submission.”
While at the same time there was a commercial one on the store claiming in the description
“It’s finally time. Now you can be proud of the only asset for Glowing Swords and Sci-Fi Weapons.”
The issue is that if the irrelevant or support asking reviews are not removed, then a great asset could be buried without any reason and i cant see how that would be a benefit to anyone, plus there is always the change of competition post fake 1 star reviews to remove an asset from store, so that case is also covered and would discourage such behavior.
In the end i would say is much more benefit to remove the irrelevant reviews, also i think old reviews that no longer apply at all could be remove material, as reading something that is no longer valid also does not benefit anyone.
The big difference with asset reviews is that are not final product, like e.g. a finalized game would be, in which case all reviews would be relevant independent of age, Unity assets can grow, be extended and evolve, so older reviews sometimes are not relevant.
It works quite good on e. g. Amazon. If I’d like to inform myself about something, I click the ratings to filter the reviews. People are quite capable to distinguish with the content of a review whether something is good or not.
Here on the Unity Asset Store there are lots of “Great Asset” 5 star reviews without any content in them. So why are those not removed? With the fake 1 star reviews also the fanboy 5 star reviews without content should be removed.
I agree totally that users can see if something is worth even with many bad reviews.
The issue is that many 1 star reviews will kill the asset completely, so the process of users evaluating those reviews will not take place at all in this case.
It will take place since the average will change if all reviews were allowed. There is no realistic way that an asset has only 5 stars. If it’s really excellent it’ll have 4+, but never 5. So it would be nice to have the rating accordingly with fractions in the stars. That way the asset won’t have 4 either. So that would be a plus.
In addition to not having any review removed - except insulting ones - I’d urge the UAS team to allow screenshots and videos in the reviews. When others can see what people create it’s much more advertising than any written review.
I just took a random asset and calculated the real rating value from the reviews. It got 4.2, but has 4 stars. That’s quite unfair imo. So I made a post:
I don’t have an answer to the following question either so just out of curiosity if you have a solution. What would you do with these reviews if you remove the 1-star reviews?
imo depends on the consensus, if for example an asset has 400 5 star reviews and 10 one star, then the 1 star are probably biased.
So in the end the actual removal of a few reviews would not affect the outcome anyway, e.g. if remove those 10 one star ones and 10 5 star, the asset might go to 5 star which deserves and still be a fair trade,10 for 10.
But the actual move from 4 to 5 stars could make all the difference to the asset and make it even better for all users. Imo in this case the asset totally deserves to be a 5 star and not be affected by 1 star reviews if are not relevant.
It’s good to have sparked a discussion about this, I think it’s a healthy thing to do and it can help improve the store. Thanks to everyone sharing their opinion on this subject :). Many of my points have already been said in some form or another, but will try to make them clear.
Asset Store policies on what gets published and what doesn’t is an entirely different (though completely valid) issue, imho. Most digital stores (AppStore, Google Play, etc) have similar problems, or so it looks like. Consider the following:
Permisiveness in this regard could cause the store to get littered with lots of small, low-value assets. I think this is detrimental to both the store and its users, that now have to wade trough a sea of tiny assets. Is it monopolistic/totalitarian to impose seemingly arbitrary rules in a digital store to control certain aspects of it? Who knows.
If at some point in time the store decides to increase the complexity threshold an asset must rise above to get published*,* what should it do with already published assets that wouldn’t be accepted according to the new policy? Should they be left in the store, so that other users complain that their comparatively more complex assets aren’t accepted, or should they be removed even if their creators did nothing wrong to get their asset kicked out?
I don’t think there’s an easy, 100% fair answer to these questions.
This x1000. Spamming random assets with 1-star reviews not about the asset itself, but a bad experience with Unity as an engine or company, does not benefit anyone. It hurts the asset developer, hurts asset store users, and I’d even argue that it hurts the reviewer as a lot of time has been spent pouring vitriol on other’s work instead of doing something to actually improve his/her situation.
I don’t think these are comparable at all. A 1-star review about the asset is 100% legitimate, even if done with the only purpose of hurting the asset because you despise it for whatever reason. However biased, you had a bad experience with the asset and you’re entitled to share it, and let the publisher know.
A 1-star review that goes “I haven’t even used the asset because of X problem with Y unrelated thing, but here’s my 1-star review” definitely shouldn’t be there. It’s not about the asset or your experience with it (because you’ve had none), so all this does is hurt the asset’s rating and its publisher, for no good reason. Neither the asset nor the publisher deserve this in any way.
A 5-star fanboy review (“Great asset! 5 stars.”) is certainly not very helpful, but at least it’s about the asset. Not your experience with Unity’s license system, how bad you feel about the way Unity support treated you, or how badly you needed to vent because your cat died yesterday.
This particular user I wrote about has seemingly made a part-time job out of spamming assets with 1-star reviews, it’s not just a couple of them. He’s certainly determined to make a negative impact in the store and hurt publishers just because he’s been rejected from the store, and that’s what I find extremely unfair and reprehensible. If anything, his hate should be directed to Unity, not fellow developers/artists.
And is getting more complicated with things like the new pipelines and support for them for example, sometimes in complex assets is hard to remake them for a new engine in essence, so could take time and yet some reviews might fault the developer for that and not the inability of Unity to merge the pipelines to current workflow and result in a one star review that imo is not fair as well, even though relevant.
So in this case the mention of pipelines imo should be considered about the mention outside the asset scope, as the assets so far were not made with the promise that would also be compatible with another engine, then would be a fair review also to mention that dont work in Unreal engine.
Generally the review system for something that evolves is tricky in itself and there cant be a clear answer in general. There is a vast difference between final products like a finalized game and a middleware that evolves with an engine.
Yes of course, but the source is Unity rejecting his asset for “being too simple” reason and locking him out of a paid subscription. Unfairness starts there. That’s the source of unfairness, not his negative reviews to assets which aren’t involved.
Where do we stop the chain of unfairness? Unity was unfair to him, so in return now he’s unfair to others. Maybe these affected publishers should also start review bombing themselves, bitching about how the store did nothing to reduce the impact of 1-star reviews on their own assets?
Actually he isn’t unfair to others. He didn’t write the asset is garbage. He wrote this:
I guess every mature person with a sane mind can distinguish what’s this about. Definitely not about the assets. To me it’s just noise in the review system. Nothing I’d base my purchase decision on. Valid nontheless. He paid money for the assets, he’s entitled to have an opinion.
so just out of curiosity if you have a solution. What would you do with these reviews if you remove the 1-star reviews?
