This problem is creeping up more and more. Publishers are selling us stolen assets. Be it animations, textures, sounds. I just went though my assets and found one publisher (Cafofo) has deprecated all assets. Quick Google search, stolen sound effects. /sigh
I’m not accepting removing the publisher and the assets and that’s it. As a curated store that’s taking a 30% cut you have to take liability. I also don’t want to find this out myself. I expect you sending out pro-active emails to buyers and refunds for your fuck up. Sorry for using that word, but that’s what it is.
I think this is a fair enough expectation, to be honest.
Unity probably can’t “take liability” for this, for a bunch of reasons. But they could inform people who’ve purchased something when it gets taken down from the store, which at least raises a flag for those who care to go and see what’s up.
Or, regardless of storefront, buy only from creators who provide you with some way to do meaningful due diligence.
What Untiy could do is give us the RL identity of the sellers so that in case of blatant selling of stolen goods that later cause trouble in a game for copyright reasons, we can sue them.
That would deter at least some of the offenders too.
Hence why in Germany for example even if you just have a homepage, you have to publicly show your RL identity (as an “Impressum”).
Unity for sure should refund at least asset store credits in case purchased product is removed. Asset Store purchases should not be a gamble, this is not eBay, Unity approve each and every asset before it appears in store so it’s at least partly on them to compensate the loss.
Two years ago I’d never programmed. So I started learning and am pretty good at it now.
Many, many years, I wanted to model my own weapons into games like Morrowind despite not knowing how. So I downloaded Blender and learnt how to 3d model, and this was well before the days of widely accessible tutorials.
So I don’t really accept that. Anyone can learn how to do these things, especially in this day and age.
What if you’re working as a solo dev? They now also have to make every single 3D models for each of their games as well, or borrow money from the bank for an artist?
Or accept some level of risk, and only purchase art from vendors who provide some kind of evidence that the stuff they’re selling is actually theirs.
For what it’s worth, even hiring someone doesn’t make this problem go away. I could hire someone tomorrow and, unless I do my due diligence anyway, for all I know the art they’re “making” for me could be ripped from published games. There is never zero risk in anything. Making sure that you see work-in-progress shots of the stuff people are making is one way to mitigate this.
These are such non-answers. Just because anyone can learn any one thing, doesn’t mean it’s realistic to do every single thing from scratch if you intend to do this for a living and not as a hobby on the side. Especially, when a lot of the current market employs all possible resources out there including the Asset Store and studios are looking for highly specialized people, not jacks of all trades but master of none.
These “just spend years learning a new skill bro” answers also don’t address the issue OP highlights, Unity are selling stolen assets that they themselves approve for selling and don’t compensate people for their loss when they remove them.
Alternatively restrict your purchases to only publishers that have a solid reputation. Publishers like Manufactura K4 and Synty Studios. If you don’t recognize a publisher or if they’re very new don’t purchase from them if you don’t want to take the risk.
Everything posted to Youtube should be above board, yes?
Except it isn’t, and it’s impossible to police. YouTube have probably spent millions if not billions trying to solve this problem and it’s still incredibly flawed. In fact their solutions probably still have more false positives than actual positives.
So with all this harking on, no one has actually suggested how Unity might solve this in a preventative way. And the problem is… you can’t. You can only ever chase your own tail.
The proposal “just make what you’d get from the Asset store yourself” is just silly. The store would not exist if that would be an option for everyone.
The Indie Dev today has to compete against an ever increasing level of quality by their competition (because the competition will use sources like the Asset Store).
I have in previous threads on the matter. Submitting a “finished product” is not and should not be considered sufficient. The due diligence I’ve mentioned could be done by Unity (and any organisation running a storefront) by, for example, requiring history of the asset’s development be provided as well as the finished product. It’s not going to cover 100% of cases, but it will make selling rips harder because it would require actual work, and stop it from being the low hanging fruit that it currently is.
Of course, it would also be more costly for Unity because they’d have to look at whatever historical data they’re given with submissions. And it would also raise the bar a bit for vendors, though I’d sincerely hope that anyone selling their stuff would be taking appropriate professional steps in the first place (e.g. using some kind of version control).
Hmm, is this feasible for works like 3D models art and sounds? Don’t think most of them use version control
Those are the way more common stolen ones compared to code.
It is an idea, but hard to convince Unity to…
The idea of reimbursing removed Assets with an in-store currency would be great and more feasible.
