hey there,
I am seeking feedback and guidance regarding a potentially illegitimate asset that I recently purchased. To avoid slander, I will not name the publisher or the asset until the issue is resolved. While I believe my concerns are valid, I welcome any input.
I’ve come across stories about stolen audio assets, so I’m cautious with such purchases and often contact publishers to verify their asset origins. The asset in question cost approximately 6€ for 1,500 audio clips. The publisher has a decent presence on both the Unity and Unreal stores, which initially seemed legitimate. However, the low price raised some flags.
After purchasing the asset and reviewing the files, I noticed many clips sounded nearly identical. For example, out of the first ten clips in one folder, seven were almost the same. Using Audacity to compare them, it appeared they shared the same source but had minor alterations. These changes did not create different-sounding clips; rather, they seemed intended to inflate the asset pack’s volume and deceive customers about its size.
I estimate that only about 10-20% of the clips are original, with the rest being essentially duplicated. Below is a zoomed-out view of a few clips, showing minor differences in length but identical overall wave shapes.
Zooming further in reveals minimal modifications:
As an observer, I can spot very slight differences. However, the clips are still 99.9% visually identical with no audible differences. This suggests the modifications were made to create fake variety and plausible deniability.
Based on these findings, I reported the asset on the Unity store, filed a refund request, and left a one-star review warning others. I initially hesitated to contact the publisher, assuming it would be pointless. The next day, the asset was deprecated, likely by the publisher, as customer support couldn’t act that quickly.
Before writing this post, I did message the publisher, who quickly got back at me, being understandably very upset. They claimed the sound effects had subtle differences, which were stated in the product description. They removed the asset due to my harsh review and felt hurt by it, stating they would resubmit it after removing some identical clips. They also forwarded our email conversation to Unity customer support. I explained my reasons and showed them my “evidence” (as I did above) and the publisher repeatedly admitted, that the clips were identical, but claimed they were not mere copies.
Here is my perspective:
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The publisher likely removed the asset to maintain their public image and eliminate my review. If my review were unjustified, they would have defended the asset’s legitimacy or reported the review to Unity.
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Their claims, that the product description adressed the “similarities” between the clips are false. Naturally, after removing the asset, this is impossible to verify, however, the publisher did not remove the asset from any of the other stores (unreal, gamedevmarket), which further strengthens my assumption that the intention here is not to fix a mistake or to make improvements, but to make a bad but justified review disappear and to hide the evidence.
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The slight alterations to the clips suggest an intent to create fake variety and pass Unity’s quality control.
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This is my biggest issue regarding the whole subject and the actual reason I reported the asset: the suspicious behavior of the publisher puts the legitimacy of their whole store into question. when a publisher tries to intentionally deceive a customer, how can I be confident that the asset’s source is legitimate? I would accept it if the asset I purchased only had 10% original clips, due to the low price, but I fear that it is just not legit, because the publisher seems shady.
So yeah…I’d welcome any opinion on the matter. I am waiting for this to be sorted out by customer support, but I still wanted to share and ask for some input. even after reavaluating my actions, I am very strongly convinced that my assessment here is correct and the conversation I had with the publisher confirmed this, despite them seemingly trying to sell me their side of the story. all their explanations and excuses honestly just sounded like BS to me and the way they are acting is raising so many flags, that I have very few doubts left. I could be wrong though.