fab

[small siren]

2 Questions: If I create a vr project with starter content turned off, am I free to use anything that is created automatically as part of the template (such as the hands and stuff that are already conveniently set up) in a game that I eventually publish? And can I use anything I get from the marketplace as long as I credit the person who made it in the game's credits?

[scarlet mountain]

even with starter content you can use that in a game you publish. Marketplace stuff you can also use in games you publish

i don't believe credit is technically required for marketplace stuff either

but it's always nice

[small siren]

Ok that makes things easier because the vr template already has the head and hands set up

[dusk veldt]

Thanks, it seems like it doesn't include the sales I made in December, so the total revenue is less than $100. I guess I will need to wait the next month then.

[gaunt lake]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/steamvr-input-for-unreal

Something i saw while ago, a Steam VR input for Unreal Engine, its Free maybe you can combine it with the Epic one.

[heady sparrow]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/chain-component

I am trying to download the V5.1 version of this plugin, but nothing happens when I click "Install to engine". Any suggestions?

[hasty nexus]

Yeah, some bug from the marketplace. Tell the creator about it and he has to contact the marketplace team so they can fix it.

[heady sparrow]

Thanks!

[small siren]

That's the one they officially integrated in 4.24. I was going to use that until I found out it was now just part of the engine lol

That's why the plugin is only updated to 4.23

[gaunt lake]

Yeah i saw that 4.24 thing but i was thinking "what changed anyway in VR" its not like you get 5th arm or so
So the Unreal Engine NOW uses already the Steam plugin + updated?
Because in the Steam VR description it says it has additional blueprint beside the EPIC ones, maybe that menu? I am not familiar enough i just remember that there was a STEAM VR thing as well and who knows maybe you can get some pieces out of it.

[small siren]

I've successfully run unreal projects on a valve index without any plugins just fine

[ember hill]

Another month, another house and forest

[tawny hinge]

at least the house comes with a reasonable amount of useful/good props

[tardy charm]

And Nanite can probably allow you to use archviz meshes, they’re normally very high poly

[ember hill]

If it's asset, you better make sure it's limited to your projects only.

If it's a plugin, they'd have to buy the plugins by themselves

If you don't and the paid asset is being leaked, that's pretty much piracy.

You could try enforce NDA if it's a closed source project, but if it's going to be open source or the editor files available to public as mod kit, then you don't use them

[small siren]

If someone else is working on it, I think they need to own all the same assets. Not an expert though, and I plan to remain a solo hobbyist so I don't know for sure

[ember hill]

Personally I won't use anything from marketplace beyond the prototyping phase, and replace them with assets authored for the project.

I've gone past that to the point where free for the month no longer excite me

[small siren]

Same here, especially for anything visual. Visual assets made by different people clash in really jarring ways. Plugins I'm a bit more likely to use if it actually helps with the hard part

Personally I still use quixel assets and metahumans but for visual assets those are the only thing I wouldn't make myself

[ember hill]

Those are fine because at least those are UE-only content from Epic and provided for free for all UE users

[small siren]

Yeah I just mean in terms of making sure they don't clash with anything I make those are the only things I would use (and since quixel isn't only for unreal I would probably put textures from that on my blender models to help reduce the clash and because I suck at texturing)

And since the models I make in blender would only actually be used in unreal anyway I'm fine with using quixel in them

[shadow musk]

But it's PITA to convert Unreal Assets to Unity and so on.
It's better if the asset dev provides the .UnityPackage oneself

[ember hill]

If the assets are really meant for UE, don't leech them for Unity.

[ember hill]

Some assets creators who sold their stuff to UE also sold them on Unity Asset Store for use in Unity.

[scarlet mountain]

that wasn't what the conversation was about. It was about licensing. Difficulty of conversion and buying a unity vs unreal based package is a separate topic

[shadow musk]

Either way UE marketplace is expensive for some reason

I just think the sales are low on Unreal Market

Or maybe Epic is charging outrageous fees unlike what they do with Games

[ember hill]

Yeah, but that's not what the whole conversation is all about

[small siren]

I think that's partially because the ue marketplace has pretty extensive quality control

[scarlet mountain]

could be a different type of client too, maybe theres more enterprise that can pay more for unreal assets so assets can charge more?

[ember hill]

[scarlet mountain]

I think the unreal sales percentage on the MP is public info, and it's pretty inline with their standard

[small siren]

They literally say that in the faq for submitting content. That's one of the reasons they mention for why stuff gets rejected

[ember hill]

I've seen genuinely shit listings go through the Unreal Marketplace

[small siren]

Oh ok

[scarlet mountain]

yeah but it's slipping somewhat vs when it launched

[small siren]

I only look at free stuff and past that I don't care about it

There's no reason to buy environments now that quixel is fully integrated for free for example

If I have to pay for it, I'll just make it myself

[shadow musk]

Also BPs. They might not be as productive, maintainable as C# for assets devs

And C++ is hard too

[scarlet mountain]

cost v time. From a business perspective in most western countries an environment of $100-200 is like a few hours of artist time

[small siren]

Yeah but in my case I'm doing all this for fun anyway so time v cost doesn't really matter to me

But that also means I refuse to spend any money on it

So if something isn't free, I'm not interested

[shadow musk]

If only I had as much self control as you do

[small siren]

It helps that I just didn't set up a way to buy stuff on my epic account because I only use it for unreal engine and the occasional free game on the store

So my own laziness acts as a pretty good barrier to spending money

[delicate dove]

they had a pretty extensive quality control when it started. but at some point that got dropped and it's sadly the bare minimum nowadays.
The team itself --imho-- has improved a lot between them dropping the quality control and now, but the quality of content also significantly dropped. there is stuff on there one shouldnt even use for linear media due to how poorly its optimized.

[ebon leaf]

Oof, no, the Unity store is just way too cheap.

[ember hill]

Also some listings that are plain bad come through.

I don't know what happened to that Stockfish plugin, which itself uses GPL code and goes against UE license, but it's not for sale anymore as of now. Maybe marketplace team give it a second look, or the seller backed off due to backlash.

[shadow musk]

According to my understanding of GPL, if the code is run in interactive terminal mode instead of using it as .dll or code it's fine

[ember hill]

Still though, better safe then sorry.

[tardy charm]

the quality has gotten more worse these days on marketplace assets, I also really hate how there’s these non-customizable character designs, they’re just asking for asset flips to happen

Like I’ve seen that horror fat clown model on at least 10 different games

There’s only like 8 publishers on the marketplace that I think are actually releasing good content

[small siren]

Oh yeah, that's another reason why I tend to stay away from too much from the marketplace. Optimization is completely secondary to so many people now. I remember my dad said that he wished they would force programmers to test their stuff on worse hardware so that they would be forced to optimize it

[gleaming linden]

I think an exception can be made there for high quality models, but code definitely

[delicate dove]

its great for prototyping, and im sure there is some excelent code here and there, but --especially coders-- are well known for being super critical about any code that isnt theirs.
(saying that as a vfx artist with a history of modeling, and can whine about those things myself :p)

[shadow musk]

Also, UE Marketplace is horrible

Unity Asset Store is way better

Or one can use https://orbital-market.com/ for UE

Both UE Marketplace and Epic Games Launcher need a lot of work

[prisma flare]

A lot of work that we'll never get

[ebon leaf]

the marketplace pulls in a relatively small sum when compared to things like fortnite, so they would rather work on that

we're lucky that they even bother hiring marketplace support

[scarlet mountain]

Has plugin review time normalised yet? Or is it still inflated post engine update?

[shadow musk]

Sadly, they don't even bother with Epic Games Launchers and think free games will make users loyal

They spend money on free games and assets and don't bother with EGL and Marketplace

[ebon leaf]

they still make a bit of money every time someone downloads said free game

[shadow musk]

How would that be?

They loose money to get users

[ebon leaf]

that's just how it works, I'm not quite sure exactly how it happens

like if I get 1000 downloads on a free mobile app I make a certain amount

that's how it works in the game industry

[shadow musk]

Epic Games looses money and pays these devs of free games and assets money to gain users. It's long term investment.

Sure the devs make money, by EG looses money in exchange for users

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/08/07/epic-is-losing-an-astonishing-amount-of-money-securing-games-for-egs/

[ebon leaf]

wait what's epic's case against apple?

[shadow musk]

They tried to bypass Apple playment 30% and directly allowed users to purchase Fortnite stuff

which is against Apple TOS

[ebon leaf]

oh

wait does fortnite really make its money purely through microtransactions?

[shadow musk]

Yes

They sell skins and maybe other stuff too. But it's mostly skins I think

They have a currency called VBucks IIRC

[ebon leaf]

5 billion a year

in skins

in cosmetics that don't affect gameplay

that's crazy

[shadow musk]

That's how F2P games work

Also I read an article that kids are pressuring their parents to buy skins because poor kids are being bullied/riduculed for not having skins

[ebon leaf]

that sounds ridiculous

[shadow musk]

https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/7/18534431/fortnite-rare-default-skins-bullying-harassment

[ebon leaf]

"you may be the best player out of all of us, but you don't have this new skin so you suck"

[shadow musk]

https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/kids-who-play-fortnite-say-they-get-bullied-and-shamed-if-they-cant-afford-paid-skins-according-to-a-damning-report-on-gaming-habits/articleshow/71709061.cms

Mostly kids who use the default skin

[ebon leaf]

wearing the default skin means ur not an idiot who fell for the system

doesn't sound like a bad thing to me

worst case scenario someone makes fun of you for having default skin and u simply unfriend/block them

[scarlet mountain]

You don't remember childhood? Kids can be cruel....

over the dumbest stuff

but yeah, it's a problem with lots of those microtransaction games

[ebon leaf]

social status is such a waste of breath

[scarlet mountain]

fortnite is just the latest example

[shadow musk]

It gets worse in Pay2Win games I assume

[ebon leaf]

it's odd how these virtual skins can decide ur status

[scarlet mountain]

Wait until you find out about iphones and green vs blue bubble texts!

[ebon leaf]

well in pay2win at least ur actually getting a gameplay advantage

[ebon leaf]

I'm very fine with my old android thank you very much, sure I can't send the fancy little emoji faces you can but is it rlly worth the extra 900 dollars?

I feel like at that point it's just the "but moooommmm I didn't want the PINK lamborghini"

[shadow musk]

For privacy and security iOS is good, but feature wise and price wise iOS is shit

There are fewer apps and they cost a lot more than android apps

[ebon leaf]

ios and aos rlly aren't that different, in fact ios tends to use up a lot more of ur performance for features u likely never use

now ur rlly cool if u run one of those windows phones

[shadow musk]

No, iOS uses a Microkernel and doesn't have features that impact security IIRC unlike Android

For example iOS doesn't even have a third party TTS API

iOS doesn't have many features except security and privacy features

I could buy the TTS voice I wanted for 5$ and use it in any app that supports TTS on Android

But on iOS I had to pay 25$ for an app and more for the voice

And it works only on that app

The voice doesn't work in other apps

[ebon leaf]

yeah android seems more cost effective anyways

a lot of the hype behind the iPhone just seems like the status that comes with it

a $200 android is likely just as usable as a $800 iphone

[shadow musk]

More usable in cases like TTS

[ebon leaf]

tho if ur doing photography or smth I will agree that iPhone would probably be better

[shadow musk]

Pixel is good too for photos. IIRC it uses AI

[ebon leaf]

oh yeah i heard about the new ai stuff

But I'm the type of person who has no pictures

just saved images

so idc about camera features

[shadow musk]

AI makes these phones take better than DSLR

Most people are obsessed with selfies

So, it's understandable that these companies focus on photos

Social networks have made people attention seeking

They confuse the lizard brains of humans

After all we are social creatures

[autumn hedge]

What are you looking for in a monsters and creatures sound effects asset pack?

I'm inclined to choose te next format for my future packs. For every monster there would be: Idle, Agitated, Attack, Attack Hit, Monster Death. With 3 slight variations of each to avoid repetitive sounds.

[delicate dove]

No need for it myself, but when I had to do monstersounds, quite a while back there was this pack the company purchased that lets you easily layer multiple sounds to get more unique results.
Might not really be what the people using the marketplace want, but imho its a cool concept.

(basically you could combine low, mid and high frequency sounds)

[autumn hedge]

That is the way I create the sounds basically, by layering at least 5 different elements together

[delicate dove]

yea, though finding those packs where its not layered yet are a bit more rare.
again, not sure if its something to put on marketplace, or put on a personal website and ask way more money for it.
good sound-packs are expensive.

think one of the littlebigplanet sound-packs was already around 3500,-

(was massive though)

though, this was pre-indie/pre-marketplace era

[autumn hedge]

With the marketplace it's very strange, it's hard to balance between keeping it simple and offering flexibility. Some people are even spooked by the packs that seem complicated 😄 I've seend SFX packs that sell very well and offer very little flexibility

[delicate dove]

yea. in that case offering simpler packs on mp might suffice.
If it was me though, I'd prefer samples that I can layer myself.
kinda the difference between "I added the sound" and "I added the sound I made"

even though its just layering XD

[autumn hedge]

I see what you mean, there should be an option for buyers to 'create' something, even if it means layering a few things

I think people are often looking for simple stuff packed with content, and I cant force myself to create 600+ SFX where 50% of those are just there to fill up the space XD

[delicate dove]

agreed

[autumn hedge]

but then again I need to pay the bills, so it's a constant dillema

[delicate dove]

im sure you know your stuff, but take a look at i.e. "cymatics" for instance. they sell sound sample packs, loop packs, etc. each pack on its own isnt that expensive, but they also have --with a lack of a better word-- suites, where they combine packs and occasionally add more source material to them that are quite a bit more expensive. (in this case, for regular music producing though)

im just spouting random thoughts by now though XD

[autumn hedge]

Just their thumbnails make me want to buy stuff 😄

[delicate dove]

ikr

https://i.gyazo.com/7a6fa1858793373aa40ec869a97083b5.png

XD

[autumn hedge]

they got you

[delicate dove]

yea, im at a point where I dont plurge money on samples anymore, because I cant even remember 10% of all the samples I own

and thats just a hobby-thingy. a fun one though.

[ember hill]

Why does Cymatics name ring a bell...?

[delicate dove]

iunno

[shadow musk]

A charge and charge attack is a must

Breserk

In Souls like games a charge attack gives a good chance for players to dodge roll and then attack after the monster is stunned etc after charge attack

For example a boar rushing at the player after some time

[autumn hedge]

I will send you guys an example that I've created today for a flying monster. It has 3X Idle sound effects, 3X Attack (this could be considered a charge, as it doesn't have any impact attached it can also be a missed/dodged attack), 3X Hurt sound effect (this is the sound that happens when the player damages the monster. It has an impact attached which is not too prominent so that developers can layer the sounds different weapons over it), 3X Target Hit sounds (short sounds with prominent impact, they can be used a few milliseconds after the Attack sound if the attack connects) 2X Death sounds when the monster is killed. The variations are all slightly different to give a more natural feel when randomly rotating.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KGZv__M_EpQ6xpMl8J3Iq7dtc-lsU9Tp?usp=share_link

And this is how it sounds when you play Attack + Target Hit (a few milliseconds after), and the other one is Hurt + Death playing at the same time to create a final blow for example (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JAvsy1g7ahGsx0Z6KthGpUbQp_jAmDrF/view?usp=share_link)

[dusk veldt]

Hey everyone. I'm confused so I would like to ask this question.
Let's say I sold four marketplace assets in January and expecting to earn about $400. ($100 each) Am I going to get the money in the end of the January, or is there something else? What if I sell the last asset in let's say 20th of January? As far as I know there is a refund option. So how does it exactly work? I remember someone mentioned about 45 days but I don't remember so I wanted to ask here. Thanks!

[autumn hedge]

The revenue earned (100$+) for the month of November was paid out to me on January 1st

December will be on Feb 1st

of course its sometimes a day earlier or later, and I don't know why is that but it's in 2-3 days range always

[dusk veldt]

Thank you, do they send email when pay out?

[delicate dove]

generally yes

[dusk veldt]

Thanks!

[gleaming linden]

Hey how would you guys recommend going about advertising? I've made a few products, but I havent done much to advertise. All I have is a YouTube channel, where each asset gets a showcase video, and then tutorial videos where needed, but I don't think those are doing much for me, as they dont get many views, and almost all the views come directly from the store, likely people clicking the showcase video hyperlink. I'm wondering if there's more I can do to get people to see my content, and if you guys have any suggestions.

[shadow musk]

I'm not sure if this helps, but some devs release the demo build on itch.io

This works mainly for code projects, I guess

Also https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/search/?q=asset&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=

Redditors are very against spam

The UE subreddit seems to have many people who posted their assets, so I guess the subreddit allows it, but don't do it too many times

[gleaming linden]

also does this thing ever actually move at all?

I have more than 100 in my current sales report (tho not payout yet), and ive made well over 100 in my payout report

so where does the payment threshold come from

[shadow musk]

#fab message

[gleaming linden]

whats that have to do with it

ive already been paid for multiple months

and i dont recall the slider moving at all ever

[shadow musk]

I dunno, I'm not a seller. Maybe others can help you

[scarlet mountain]

I think it updates when you are due for payment IF you haven't passed the threshold

As in, if you pass the threshold and they pay you, it's back to zero again

[gleaming linden]

oh so if I make 50 bucks in a month it will store it there until next month?

[scarlet mountain]

2 months later, but yes

That's my understanding anyway

I'm newish to the mp too

[gleaming linden]

oh ok

[shadow musk]

I guess the 2 months is to prevent scammers. There was once a guy who uploaded Genshin Impact textures to MP

[gleaming linden]

i think its for refunds

refund policy is 45 days

[shadow musk]

Ah, Ok!

I didn't know MP had refunds

[gleaming linden]

yeah I think if you email support you can get a refund for a valid reason

[delicate dove]

this should be posted in the community creations tab, as all non-creation tab channels are Q&A

@unkempt zealot :)

[unkempt zealot]

No prob

[unkempt zealot]

What category you think?

[delicate dove]

if you are still working on it, work in progress. if its done, project launches?
if you consider it more a tutorial with the content you used, tutorials.

[unkempt zealot]

Yeah it’s not my plug-in. Just a video about it

[delicate dove]

i'd pick work in progress prolly.

dont worry, we wont suddenly be angry if one of us thinks its better suited in another :)

[dawn nest]

https://twitter.com/_vladislavzh/status/1610671501996429312?s=46&t=yVfiLPh7Vn6ngBnVaivIlQ

Vladislav Zharkov 👾 (@_vladislavzh)

UE developers, be aware: current set of free content of the month on @UnrealEngine Marketplace contains a bundle that has animations lifted from Mixamo and other UE asset developers. Here are few comparisons. I really hope Epic Games will investigate this.

▶ Play video

Twitter · Jan 4, 2023, 4:16 PM

[pliant forum]

Ahh this takes me back to those Jetpack animations we got a few years back

[scarlet mountain]

Oooof, that's bad. Can't imagine Epic is gonna be happy about that one

[ember hill]

Wasn't there a FTTM asset from stolen assets?

Doubt Epic is going to do anything after it went publicly FTTM

Also I don't know if the Stockfish plugin seller backing off for good, or Epic intervene on it

[scarlet mountain]

probably epic jumped on that, as GPL affects them and their source

[ember hill]

At least I don't regret learning animation for a year, so I'm not dependant on anim packs lol

[delicate dove]

I always wonder if Epic tries to get their 7500,- back, they sure dont refund the people who purchased it unless they ask for it. (afaik)

[scarlet mountain]

No idea, but my guess is that it's paid out on the same delay as normal purchase cycles, so in this case they probably just don't pay it and contract is voided?

[agile shadow]

yes it's not paid instantly

[ember hill]

I'm inclined to think the problem is more on distributing reselling the paid assets (which is the case with Kubold anims) - Mixamo is practically abandoned, but Adobe clearly keep the page running.

[hybrid holly]

I picked up that pack unfortunately

time to never use it

[ember hill]

https://mobile.twitter.com/_vladislavzh/status/1612106213906386946

Vladislav Zharkov 👾 (@_vladislavzh)

@12CatBlack @UnrealEngine Apparently, but he managed to convince the marketplace support team that these animations are made by him. That's an interesting turn of events. I really need to send this video to support myself now.

Twitter · Jan 8, 2023, 3:17 PM

[merry field]

I wonder if I'll remember not to use it if I'm ever looking for animations to use in the future . . .

[lucid osprey]

i am making all my animations myself these days :3 so

[merry field]

Who has that kind of time/skill? 😉

[ember hill]

Me

[ebon leaf]

happy Monday (for some ppl)

[dusty crypt]

Are you doing it in a program for it? Or are you being hip & modern with Control Rig 😅

[lucid osprey]

i can use blender and control rig to make animations

i made my own control rig for my current character

[tardy charm]

Y’all with animation skills, I envy you

[woeful falcon]

HI! We have uploaded multiple packages on marketplace, that went through, the last one failed to pass with this error message: (pic)
Could someone enlighten us how to provide the sources/programs used to create the textures PRIOR to importing to engine?
What does it mean? How should i do it?
(we used CC0 textures, and our own texture atlas generator +Affinity and PS)

[scarlet mountain]

Sounds like you need to say exactly that. Say where you got the images and what you did to make them your own. According to that they just want to make sure that unmodified public domain assets don't make the core of your project. As they say, unmodified PD (cc0) is limited to presentation stuff only.

So list sources and list modifications

[woeful falcon]

Thanks a lot for the fast answer! 🤘 Okay and is it enough if i just send this list in an emil to the marketplace staff, or should i write this to image descriptions before importing to engine?

[scarlet mountain]

Sounds like 2 things from the snippet you shared, 1) provide the full info to marketplace staff, and 2) list sources of cc0/PD stuff on store description page.

[woeful falcon]

Thanks for your kindness and patience 😊 .

[scarlet mountain]

No probs

[ember hill]

Partly thanks to anime

[graceful arrow]

I have a project that I move anything I'm going to use in to. Then I move it so somewhere that isn't Content/. That way I can easily migrate at a later date.

[ember hill]

Personally I left them as is, with project files also structured in the same way to avoid mix ups

[scarlet mountain]

It depends on the project for me. One of my project revolves around testing against other marketplace assets (vehicles in particular) so in cases like this I leave where it is while my main project content gets it's own subfolder too. Makes updating those assets much easier.

On longer/bigger projects that's less likely to need those updates, and i'm more concerned about content maintenance I'll either migrate what i need from a temporary MarketplaceProject, or add directly but always the content gets moved into Marketplace/SomeThing.

The more marketplace heavy a project is, the more i'd lean towards option one. Pitches/Demos in particular

[grizzled fractal]

Well, I was moving everything but it is really slow and ended up breaking almost all materials that used material functions. If anyone has a method of getting third party content into your own folder(s) without "clean up redirectors" hell, I would really love to hear it

[zealous spire]

Please move this to #1054845218723209226 and tag it with Tools & Open Source.

Self promotion isn't allowed in this channel.

[quasi marlin]

Thanx 🙂

[vale prawn]

I used to move everything to Content/Marketplace, but I gave up on that for multiple reasons:

• Moving complex products (e.g., BP) can break things. I've had multiple ones that just stopped working once moved.
• Some things are just plain lost on move, like asset thumbnails.
• Updating products becomes a major headache.

I remember someone here saying that to workaround the fact that Content becomes a huge mess if you don't move MP stuff, they just created their own subfolder (e.g., Content/MyProject) where all their own assets are stored. I think that's a pretty good idea, you can even bookmark the folder for easier access.

[civic bay]

Yeah, that’s what I do. All MY stuff is in Content/MyGame and then anything else is marketplace. I don’t even notice the extra folder anymore.

[delicate dove]

same.

very early on I suggested that the marketplace added a /marketplace/ folder for content. but sadly they decided against it, as it would break the content already available.

[scarlet mountain]

Kind of a shame they didn't decide to do it, especially at a logical cutover point like an engine version. sure, means sellers would have to upload a new version rather than just test and tick the new engine version, but would certainly clean up the user experience

it only gets harder to do as time goes on

[delicate dove]

yea, especially on really big projects that use quite alot of mp-content its a pain.

though, I would assume a tool that moves it and properly sets the redirects wouldnt be that hard.. right?

[scarlet mountain]

in theory, but we've all experienced the nightmare of redirectors gone wrong hahaha

[delicate dove]

yea, though I havent had much issues with em these last few years.

early UE4 did have em mess up from time to time.

might be muscle memory of knowing how to avoid mistakes though XD

[scarlet mountain]

I've learned if you take it nice and slow, close the editor regularly, do it folder by folder rather than BIG chunks of content at a time, it's pretty reliable. Just a bit painful

[delicate dove]

yea

back in ye olde UE versions if you migrated a material it would also try to migrate the preview mesh, and the preview mesh its material, and that material its preview mesh, ad infinitum.

[scarlet mountain]

I've used coreredirects for c++ refactoring a few times, i wonder if theres one that you can do a whole content folder and just move with explorer and then resave

lol, circular dependencies!

[delicate dove]

but yea, a good tool that would allow me to import mp-content into /marketplace/ and fix up the directors, along with "We notice you are updating a package, we'll make sure its moved to the right folder" I wouldnt mind paying some good money for.

not in pay to get it made money, but pay for the app itself XD

[scarlet mountain]

i'll send you my day rates

😄

[delicate dove]

haha

[vale prawn]

Or they could just distribute MP products as plugins, that way everything's clean (also easier to reuse, etc.).

[delicate dove]

yea, sadly (atm) there is a limit on how many versions you can support plugin-wise

[hybrid holly]

I always move my marketplace stuff to a marketplace folder

it's a pain though

if anything you should be able to specify a path when adding it to a project

[hybrid holly]

me specifically I feel so special

[thorny compass]

This channel is not for self-promotion, try #1054845218723209226 for example.

[wheat sapphire]

Oh thanks you for telling me I didn't know that

[vale prawn]

I was implying that Epic could make that change, not creators. Because for creators, distributing as plugin has a whole lot of implications that are not easy to comply with. But for all MP products, Epic could probably bundle them as plugins, which would probably be much cleaner (and probably easier) than moving to any Content subfolder. They already distribute some of their own MP content that way (the big Twinmotion pack is a plugin with only a Content dir).

FYI: The "Twinmotion Content for Unreal Engine Plugin" 0 currently had ~35GB worth of free assets. There's a whole lot of foliage (250+ trees), urban and house props, materials for a lot of surfaces (if Quixel is not enough for you), a bunch of rigged animals, etc.

[delicate dove]

ah yea, that would be one way of doing it.

[dusty crypt]

I do Content/Marketplace/{Asset}

Typical structure for me:

Content
    {ProjectName}
    Marketplace/{Asset}

[dusk veldt]

The most practical way is to leave them as is, in the Content/NameOfTheThing folder. Otherwise, managing your marketplace assets can become a huge headache when it comes to updates. Moving them into another folder would require you to manually relocate them every time you want to update the assets. That's why it's usually suggested to also have your project in a folder like Content/YourProjectName, so things don't get too messy with marketplace assets. What I'm currently doing is the worst of the worst. Let's say I have particle assetpack. I move particle assets to the Effects folder, and then move each asset to its respective folder (explosives go to /Effects/Explosives etc) based on the style guide I'm using. This is the worst, as it makes updating assets almost impossible. But since I don't usually update them, it's not a big issue for me. Still, I wouldn't recommend this method to others. Because sometimes you need to update.

[ebon leaf]

Dunno if anyone shared this but just found out there's a bunch of UE Marketplace art assets on Humble Bundle. Lasts for another 16 hours
https://www.humblebundle.com/software/unreal-engine-ultimate-game-dev-assets-software?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_2_c_unrealengine_ultimategamedevassets_softwarebundle

[scarlet mountain]

How instant or delayed is the sales report for the marketplace? and what timezone is the reporting in?

[hollow zephyr]

I think it's like once per day something like 12 AM here (5PM ET)

[scarlet mountain]

ok cool. Good to know. thanks

[tepid aspen]

Hi - Which marketplace assets have crops such as wheat, tomato plant, potato plant, etc?

[fringe viper]

hi, please post this in #released, not here.

[deep ravine]

Hi, there was asset on marketplace which is free, the cartoony water shader. I missed that but If my friend has this shader on marketplace, can he send it to me?

[pliant forum]

No, or not legally at least.

[deep ravine]

Alright, thank you.. I'll be mad because of making cartoony water shader.. There is just few tutorials for only UE5

[pliant forum]

You can always buy a copy yourself from marketplace, things that go free for the month rarely gets selected for it again

[deep ravine]

Yes in that case, i'll buy it. Thank you.

[marsh prawn]

How does epic decide what content to make free for the month? Do the creators have any say in it or is it just "Well, instead of buying your product we will give it away to everyone!"

[hollow zephyr]

No, you have to apply for it and you get money

[ebon leaf]

Hey there guys

I'm working on my prop package, and it comes with some textures which are essential to the package but unfortunately I can't publish my package because i got my textures from textures.com due to licensing ir something along the line like that

So i wanted to ask, does anyone here knows a website to get textures/photos from it that is compatible with marketplace guidelines?
Maybe Shutterstock? Or adobe stock? Or anything like these websites?

[lucid osprey]

<@&213101288538374145> guy is advertising his platform :(((

[ember hill]

Make one from scratch

[last pine]

He's already been striked twice

[lucid osprey]

https://tenor.com/view/lightning-struck-by-gif-14902359

[ember hill]

Lightning strikes twice
Shadows die twice

[half umbra]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/marketplace-content-in-in-app-purchases/744879
Anyone willing to respond to my post on the forums? Greatly appreciated 🙏

[hollow zephyr]

Are you not using substance painter?

[storm slate]

ARR?

[ember hill]

ARR!
#1054845218723209226

[fleet garnet]

@storm slate^
This is not the channel for advertisement

[storm slate]

https://tenor.com/view/thank-you-sticker-thanks-sticker-line-sticker-bear-sticker-bear-gif-26476682

ARRR!

[storm slate]

my bad it says marketplace

will do thanks!

[fleet garnet]

👍

[grizzled thunder]

Is there any channel that we're allowed to post updates on already released marketplace projects? It's not allowed here, and not allowed in new projects.
My current project has changed a lot since I first posted about it a year ago. Since this discord is the main one for Unreal users, it would be nice if there were some avenue of discourse/feedback/interaction for longer term projects like mine.

[quaint cedar]

So, generally, updates to your projects should probably be posted wherever you have your community set up. We for example also have our own Discord, where users that purchased the packs can get news about updates.
If however you are talking about an update that could count as a whole new release, then I think it's fine to post about its release. However before saying "do it", I will bring it up with the rest of the mod team.

I would say though that otherwise, any sort of update should not be posted and only the initial release is allowed.

Ah, also, since #1054845218723209226 is now a FORUM, if you do post about a NEW RELEASE there, you should be able to simply post into that FORUM THREAD about the bigger new update.
Not sure that every single change list should be posted into it, because then it just becomes a "Let me push my project to the top of the list with random updates.", which I think is not fair.

I asked about project updates to old projects that don't have a forum thread in #1054845218723209226 yet. I personally think, since the forum is new, it's fair to be able to make a post about an already released project and also posting about the update in that, cause you obviously have no existing post there.

Will get back here once I get an answer (:

And, one more thing, that sort of request is usually perfect for #969360633386655744

[ebon leaf]

Like in general? Or for that package I'm making specifically?

[hollow zephyr]

For the package

And in general 😅

[fossil barn]

I´m looking for a simple camera editor blueprint, so I can some stuff like aperture and focal distance directly in the editor view, instead of having to go through outliner.
Its a minor inconvenience but it can get quite tedious...

[grizzled thunder]

Thanks Cedric, I was thinking along the same lines but because my project was released last November I didnt want to post to project launches. There are forum threads in the Unreal forums that work like that - new releases/updates get tacked onto the original post so that people can see there is active development and maybe spot something useful.
I guess the balance is what constitutes a decent enough update for a post vs someone who "updates" each week as a sort of marketing tactic.
As for my own community, I'm only one person and moderating/maintaining my own discord would reduce the time I could dedicate to the things I make. I'm also not sure my limited range of products would warrant it's own space like that.
I can post it in #969360633386655744 if you want me to, fair point.

[balmy helm]

Hi, anyone know anything about the new marketplace coupon? It wasn't mentioned anywhere but many people got it, needless to say I didn't and thus asking what could be the reason or could it be a bug or I'm simply not eligible, thanks.

[quaint cedar]

As for my own community, I'm only one person and moderating/maintaining my own discord would reduce the time I could dedicate to the things I make.
We have 11 packs and there is usually not much to moderate or do. I have a few questions once in a while and that's about it.

Just to point out that it's actually not much or any work, unless you have some very active community and some really difficult to use project :D

[grizzled thunder]

I might poll some other creators I know what their thoughts are.
I just know it's not something I would do lightly, given once it's made it would be difficult to shut.

[gleaming linden]

I spent over half the day in excel making a better way to organize my products sales data, so I can just copy and paste in the data from the csv and get all the data I think the marketplace should give you in the first place. the sales report is just way too lacking in detail imo, tho maybe i went a little crazy with this one, i think it was definitely worth all the trouble to get my stonks in

[grizzled thunder]

Or you could use the tool made by Divivor

https://tools.divivor.eu/uemcs/

[lament blade]

Solved: Server Outage

[patent oasis]

Age restriction

[lament blade]

Not it, don't even have parental controls enabled and am 19

thanks though!

[patent oasis]

Aww then idk sorry

[lament blade]

ty for trying!

[dire meteor]

Region restriction?

[lament blade]

in america. Figured it out

ty for the help though!

[sand jay]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qtk2CsuDWA

[static patio]

Hi,

I have some trouble with unreal marketplace for my animated Glock pack. I don't really understand when a model is considered unreplicated.
I removed all the logos but apparently the shapes are too close to the real gun.
If you have more information to know more about the question it will help me a lot.

Thanks

[ember hill]

Your weapon shouldn't resemble glock at all

[static patio]

Well thank you.. I lost many hours of work. But I learned a lot thank you

[static patio]

Do you know where I can find a list of weapon copyrighted IPs?

[scarlet mountain]

If you recognise it as a real gun, it's protected IP

Better off doing "inspired by" that definitely has your own flavour to it, and don't use any names.

[static patio]

Wow ok so i can't do real gun on the marketplace, alright..

[scarlet mountain]

The only reason they get included in other games these days is they actually pay for licensing of the design and trademarks

[static patio]

I have submited a AS VAL and i don't have any problem with this gun i don't understand why, because it's a replicate of the real gun

[scarlet mountain]

It being missed doesn't mean it's "allowed". All it takes is a complaint and it's removed. When in doubt, avoid going anywhere close to infringing IP

[sick prairie]

Do you know why there are many M4 rifles on the market then ?

[static patio]

Alright thanks

[scarlet mountain]

I don't work for the MP. I can't tell you how or why they got through. But theres 2 issues at play when you get rejected for a "Glock" pack. Trademark (the name) and patent (the design).

[ember hill]

They're not the exact replica (and named differently)

Even Modern Warfare 2022 went away with fictionalized name and modified design

[peak fjord]

Hello, does someone here use Dungeon Architect ?

I really need to ask a question regarding this tool... thank you!

[polar scroll]

Don't fully quote me on this but i believe that Colt failed to patent the M4 after a generic design and a few disagreements with the US military

I also see some info online about other manufacturers being allowed to use the model without paying any royalties

[sick prairie]

I see

[fossil barn]

Hey there,
I am just trying to get some basic noises (worley, cellular), already bought the 200 noise maps pack, but astoundingly it didn´t have any basic noises...
I know you can bake the standard Unreal noise with bake to texture, but its clunky with my limited BP knowledge (can´t live preview in viewport, can´t use a material instance for quick chanegs).
Is there some procedural noise baker out there I´m not aware off?

Pleas ping when replying!

[scarlet mountain]

https://nielsdewitte.be/index.php?page=Pages/VFExtra.php

Give that a try

[fossil barn]

Thanks mate, this looks promising!

[rigid lotus]

When setting up technical info for a plugin should I consider the plugin's files only or the example project too?

[tardy nebula]

GM folks,

Can anyone recommend some low poly stylized packs on MP for city buildings from different eras? Concept images attached for reference. I've been scrolling the MP for hours and seen enough castles for a lifetime.

Thanks so much in advance.

[ember hill]

MP stuff is meant to be more general - you'd have better mileage putting up contract/commission request for 3D artists that can make something closer to your AI gen arts

[tardy nebula]

I don’t disagree. Was hoping to luck out. Got all the wilderness packs I need for the job but that’s a little easier.

[fossil barn]

Hey there,
Is there a blutility or something let lets me put an override material on all objects in the scene? Bonus points for being able to exclude some objects and must have would be to reset the materials to the originals when turning off override.
Miss this sorely from offline renderers...

[fossil barn]

In some cases it might be enough to just use "lighting only" but I´m not sure if you can render out with movie render queue like this.

[flat hawk]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/assets?count=20&keywords=LP&priceRange=[0%2C0]&sortBy=relevancy&sortDir=DESC&start=0

@tardy nebula

or if you wanna spend the money

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/0fce6ce3b16e440291983c0e18414873

although this was on sale for 30$ two days ago so i would recommend waiting for the next sale

[dusk veldt]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/changes-to-reviews-and-questions-on-ue-marketplace/751544

[ebon leaf]

Wow.. reworking it was expected, but completely disabling it in the interim is... weak.

[somber badger]

deleting all the old reviews too. that's a lot of useful information that'll be lost.

[abstract shale]

I am aware of the review problem with Discord fake reviews but why remove the questions 🤔

[ebon leaf]

They have been used in the same way, making legitimate questions difficult.

[civic bay]

"Past written reviews and questions and answers will also be removed from product pages."

Omg - this is the wiki all over again. The amount of searches I do on google that lead me to an unreal forum post with the exact answer I want, with a link to a wiki that now leads no where is beyond frustrating.

But what's more concerning is the significant loss of of data that allow questions and answers bring. At the minimum couldnt Epic just do a "legacy" questions and answers page, behind the main one? Completely removing it is just been lazy.

It is also not because of the original issue about forcing people to rate becasue "...and any star ratings attached to existing reviews will be retained." - so all that happens is the useful stuff is lost.

So disappointing...

And removing it, while not having the immediate replacement? Come on now - it just shows complete disrespect for both the sellers and buyers. Just because you "can" do it, doesnt mean you "should" do it...

[ebon leaf]

Yeah, but as of a few days ago you at least knew that 90% of the review were just to get Discord verification.
Now you have amazingly well reviewed products, but you would be misled to think it was because they are actually good.

[civic bay]

But this is removing the QUESTIONS.

The 5 star REVIEWS are staying

they are literally removing the one thing that was actually useful

[ebon leaf]

And that's also a problem, for the reasons I just mentioned.

[civic bay]

(oh sorry - yep)

[ebon leaf]

Since you can't filter by rating anyway (as of now), they should maybe purge the star ratings as well...

[civic bay]

I've replied to the official post with my concerns - doubt anyone in epic will listen - I just dont get how they do such "own goal" stuff on this basic topic all the time...

[scarlet mountain]

as someone struggling for their first review atm knowing what it can do for a product, that'd be almost a punishment for established products

that's supremely unfair, even if there were lots of verification reviews

[ebon leaf]

I get that, but if there's no reviews at all, then it would be a leveled playing field.
But yeah, I don't see a great solution to this.

[scarlet mountain]

yeah, but wonder how many of those established plugins just walk away being unwilling to build up momentum again? and then that punishes all customers that have bought it who won't get updates

that would be disastrous

[civic bay]

the main issue is if Epic provided a way for sellers to verify owners via an API (for Discord etc), then the requirement to "leave a review" can be more policed. I agree to not wipe away current reviews, but it at least stops the issue moving forward.

But the whole remove "questions and answers", thats the bit that makes me so angry. This has so many useful nuggests of info when looking at some packages, the loss of that data is just lazy and silly...

Its clearly been decided by people who are not using it themselves... because why else would you wipe away so much data...

[scarlet mountain]

Yeah, i also don't understand why they just didn't freeze new reviews and give a crossover time to move that data to a wiki/FAQ

[ebon leaf]

Okay, another approach. Delete all star reviews that were referencing Discord verification. :>
Because like I said, I don't think it's fair to just give them a blanket check and say:
'well, yeah, most of your good reviews were for verification, but you know what, just keep your stars'.

New products on the marketplace are going to have problems competing with that, if you can't even check the rating's validity.
I know how hard it is to actually get reviews, even more reason to not just convert the shady reviews into real ones.

[scarlet mountain]

Yeah, theres something they could do to clean up for sure, but a full reset is a rough proposition

[wraith stirrup]

When the solution is worse than the problem….

[ebon leaf]

Pretty much that.

[red quarry]

I don’t actually see any indication that this move was to facilitate the removal of reviews/questions that are solely for the purpose of “verification”. Rather they claim this is to make way for a new system and they do not outline what that new system encompasses. I personally believe that verification, reviews, and questions should be their own system. Tightly coupling them as it has been is problematic. This is coming from someone who wrote a bot to handle verification which now doesn’t function.

They should have at least sent an email describing coming changes to the marketplace and given people notice that a mechanism they use in many different ways is being removed from their support cycle.

[dusk veldt]

I think it would be nice to have a method for sellers to confirm purchases in order to prevent the use of confirmation reviews and questions. Additionally, implementing detailed review forms could likely reduce spam reviews. When I encounter detailed review forms, I usually don't review or if I really like the product and am willing to spend the time, I will fill out the form. This could help to decrease the amount of spam and low-quality reviews.

[south sinew]

Why don't purchases have a order number that given to buyer, so seller can verify? don't other online stores do this?

[civic bay]

purchases do have an order number - the issue is there is no API to confirm who owns it

[red quarry]

The current verification method now is to email unreal engine and request they look at the order ID and verify that the order ID matches that of the email and product sold by the seller.

[ebon leaf]

Also now I can't even get in touch with people or verify bad reviews on my products.
Someone isn't capable of using my product and leaves a bad review for whatever reason? Well, tough luck, it's going to stick, without actually giving me the option to work with the customer, or explain the review to potential future customers, until Epic has a new system in place.
The average rating on the previously well rated products isn't going to tank as much, but this only worsens the harsh climate for newcomers on the marketplace.

[civic bay]

The fact they didnt even give sellers a heads up for 1-2 weeks to advice in advance is also just another major sign of disrepect.

[scarlet mountain]

I think you nailed why not to have a detailed review. Not everyone will leave a 3 page detailed review. There is value in those, but there is also value in "Product worked well and as described"

[red quarry]

Yeah, considering there’s a lot of valuable information in the questions and review sections. Even for the seller.
Fortunately the questions and reviews are still live. If you need to see your questions and reviews my bot caches those and will show them to you. So thankfully users using my system still have access to old reviews and questions. If anyone needs to see that data I suggest you get the endpoints and download it now or use my bot to cache the historical data.

[ember hill]

Also some people used the Questions feature to write a warning if the asset is dubious

[ember hill]

I guess they want to go with Epic Games Store route - they intentionally not giving social features like reviews and per game forums

[hoary kettle]

I do not like the fact that the written reviews and the Questions sections have been removed from the Marketplace. I hope it is a temporary thing for a revamp, and not a permanent thing

I've been calling for a revamp of the Review system for quite sometime, but a removal/lock out was never a consideration

I could not have said it better than @ebon leaf did a few lines back.

[astral lily]

hey everyone - is anybody seeing that the reviews and questions tab in the marketplace aren't showing on the epic site or launcher currently - not really engine related but wondering if their is web maintenance going on right now

like check this out

[scarlet mountain]

Scroll up 😄 talk of the town. It was removed

[astral lily]

trying to view the questions on william's product, easy fog and nothing is there

oh

What

[scarlet mountain]

Yes. Thats most people's reaction

[astral lily]

Well

like how the hell

I'm sorry I dont usually type like this but my jaw just dropped

[scarlet mountain]

Lol

[astral lily]

Ok now how the hell are people going to communicate directly through the market with the seller

[scarlet mountain]

You can't. Email and whatever other support channels the sellers offer

Email is required from all sellers

[astral lily]

Yea see, this is a problem.

I understand the influx of bot questions and reviews, but really there should be a backend to just help fight that, not remove the whole damn thing lol.

[scarlet mountain]

There is apparently plans for a revamp 'in 2023'

[astral lily]

Yea, I know that I'm a seller too, I just can't believe this man.

More spam emails I didnt ask for here I come.

[astral lily]

Wow, glad I popped in here anyways, now I confirmed my worst nightmares.

Thanks for letting me know Boris.

[scarlet mountain]

No probs

[scarlet mountain]

There's a post from MP staff on the forums. Worth a read anyway

[astral lily]

Thank you, I will have a look at this as well.

[red quarry]

I enjoy most how Josh dropped this bomb in a forum post then logged out for the day.

[ember hill]

kthxbye

[red quarry]

wait how did you know my AIM name back in 07?

[ember hill]

I don't know, I use Yahoo Messenger

I know for sure AOL doesn't really exist in Asia.

[forest prairie]

how to do this?

[red quarry]

From my bot dashboard (follow link in my profile) Add Bot to your discord, search for your product in the drop down and it will cache your reviews and questions.

If you are technically savvy and dont want the added hassle or worry of inviting a bot to a discord:

Question:
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/api/review/${productId}/questions/list?start=0&count=10&sortBy=CREATEDAT&sortDir=DESC

Review:
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/api/review/${productId}/reviews/list?start=0&count=10&sortBy=CREATEDAT&sortDir=DESC

You will want to replace ${productId} with your products ID that Epic has assigned to your product. You will want to replace count/start based on your needs start = the position of search cursor (0 the beginning) you will see a payload at the bottom of the JSON that says "total" divide the total by the count and round down that will give you the number of "starts" you need to get all your review/questions.

I would typically hold this information close to my chest but getting your reviews and questions is significantly more important than possibly getting a few new users to the bot. I will work on creating a small little website tonight to search for your product and then download the reviews and questions for all to use without the bot for free.

[ember hill]

Stretch conspiracy theory: It's somehow related to Orca Games getting caught

[scarlet mountain]

What's this now?

Out of the loop

[ember hill]

Kind of old news, it has been a couple of week someone picked it up and gaining huge traction
https://twitter.com/_vladislavzh/status/1610671501996429312

Vladislav Zharkov 👾 (@_vladislavzh)

UE developers, be aware: current set of free content of the month on @UnrealEngine Marketplace contains a bundle that has animations lifted from Mixamo and other UE asset developers. Here are few comparisons. I really hope Epic Games will investigate this.

Likes

333

▶ Play video

Twitter · Jan 4, 2023, 4:16 PM

I was joking about that stretch conspiracy theory lol
But it would be funny if it somehow related to that, because people put up warnings all over the page in the review and questions section

[scarlet mountain]

Ohhhh that one

Yeah probably dogpiling the questions and reviews helped hurry it along

[ember hill]

Considering this picked up some traction, I won't be surprised if they're in some rushed rash damage control

[silent mesa]

I just hope the reviews will get back, its important to know the experiences from existing users which i always check aside from docs and videos. I do give an early review and then change to a more extensive review after thorough testing. I mean it helps good sellers that they have those reviews.

[red quarry]

You can use the above comment to get your reviews and questions downloaded as JSON: https://discordapp.com/channels/187217643009212416/222730877505896458/1065086939704864859

[hollow zephyr]

isn't this the second time they do this with reviews?

[civic bay]

I'm a member of a few of the larger marketplace discords (i.e. Voxel, ACF, Oceanology), and seeing those content people frustrated is just so disappointing. They make such amazing tools to fill the gaps that Epic cant provide.

Are we allowed to tag epic people here? I'm guessing not - just hope they can review the decision...

[next badge]

I wish they can do a bot of some sort and a place where marketplace creator can verify if a user buy their product..for example,a verified section where customer can present their key or something from MP creator told them to put so they can verify them

[thorny compass]

They are maybe reworking that part, hopefully. While in general, I consider 95%+ of the reviews useless and misleading, the other small part is still good to have.

[red quarry]

I have email out to them now requesting collaboration using the bot ive created. It happens to be the one thats used by oceanology, hyper and a few other sellers.

[next badge]

True,they need to purge some of them that do "ahshdj" and leave one star review

[thorny compass]

This was wrt to Reviews and QA

[next badge]

OWO

[thorny compass]

I doubt they will spend time curating/reviewing these.

[neat citrus]

imagine removing the questions tab wtf ive used it a bunch of times to help me

just add a confirmation page where u can leave a comment to confirm identity

[grizzled thunder]

Looks like it will be several months without questions or reviews

[next badge]

Well,gotta add question channel in my discord

[gilded kindle]

what happen to the reviews ?

[junior steeple]

yo someone took my asset and basically changed a few things and is reselling it, what can I do about this?

[hollow zephyr]

Links?

Contact epic

[next badge]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/changes-to-reviews-and-questions-on-ue-marketplace/751544

[grizzled thunder]

Sorry, just hits hard when I spend a lot of time trying to support as a seller 😅

[hearty swallow]

if anything, I was hoping they would add a text search filter to Questions , instead of having to ctrl+f every page

there's some assets with like 5 years of questions like Ultra Dynamic sky just gone.

also some assets that look good, work good but have trouble implementing in your project (Which reviews comment on)

it was great instead of bothering the dev for every little question, especially if they already answered it before

[mental comet]

Heh, shortly before this change, I received a question from a plugin user, and now I don't know how to answer it 🙂

[sturdy hawk]

I'll use this to save everything in orbital market. Hope they don't bring it down in the next couple of days

[red quarry]

Want to collaborate? I am working on a page right now for anyone to publicly download reviews/questions

I am making the API endpoints as we speak for public consumption of the data, along with the frontend to download via csv.

[sturdy hawk]

Well Orbital Market is open source, always up for people collaborating 😄 !
https://github.com/hugoattal/OrbitalMarket

[red quarry]

Thanks ill take a look and see if I can't publish something helpful after ive finished the tool for my side.

[sturdy hawk]

Saving all the reviews 🥳 ! (Orbital market is down in the mean time)

[pliant forum]

A hero indeed!

[dire meteor]

It's out of this world.

[red quarry]

Careful you don't hit their rate limit.

[sturdy hawk]

Honestly, seeing how they run the marketplace, I think they're pretty far from implementing a rate limit.

[red quarry]

they rate limited me yesterday after 3000 api calls

[sturdy hawk]

That's pretty weird, I'm at 10%, which is almost 3200 products and it's still going...

I'm at ~11k reviews for now

[red quarry]

Are you doing status ACTIVE only products or do you have a list of non-active ones as well?

[sturdy hawk]

All of them

I have a list of all the products that have been active in the last 2 years

[red quarry]

heh so I guess my 28400 product list is almost certainly nothing in comparison to your list.

[sturdy hawk]

Mine is about 35k IIRC 🤔

[red quarry]

oh not bad

[next patrol]

Thanks! If you can get the old reviews and questions to display on Orbital Market that will surely drive a lot of people to start using it who were not already. Your time to shine (well, even more than usual) 🙂. I'm certainly adding Orbital market links to my assets now, that's for sure

[ornate terrace]

Hello! Thank you so much for your work enabling us download comments and questions. Very appreciated

[mighty nest]

No sure if this is the right place but I have a question about the City Sample project. Every time I change networks (home to work or other way around) is says it need an update. And update is 23 GB? Is that really required?

[dreamy comet]

removing reviews will lead to market dying out and being flooded with low quality and ripoff assets

people will probably move forward to more user friendly markets, prices will rise on the official unreal market and asset piracy will rise too

rip

there's not even an email contact at sellers page anymore

someone at epic went full retard and paranoid while getting high lmao

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/changes-to-reviews-and-questions-on-ue-marketplace/751544/

people getting mad already

it will be funny once people start pulling off assets from the marketplace

[ornate terrace]

Hello, I've no issues getting the email at seller's profile page IF logged in. Did you tried to log in before?

[dreamy comet]

oh yeah, my bad

[ornate terrace]

Phew! after that massive trim.. who knows what can happen! 🙂

[red quarry]

They've completely locked me out by IP now. Are you seeing any Captcha issues?

[sturdy hawk]

I'm out tonight, I'll tell you when I'm back!

[bleak ice]

Please see the #rules on the appropriate place to post

This should be under #1054845218723209226

[cunning jolt]

Just finished a new video made with Essence Fractals ! What do you think ?
https://youtu.be/3eG4JTPzROI

[ebon leaf]

Is there a way to get contact info for artists on the marketplace?

I thought at one point you could click the artists name to see a bio about them but it seems to only filter the marketplace by the items they've made now

[sturdy hawk]

So, I'm back and I think it's done, I got 70k reviews

[sturdy hawk]

Reviews are now available on orbital market : https://orbital-market.com

I'm tackling questions now...

[scarlet mountain]

you both are doing a great job!

@sturdy hawk sorry to disturb, just have a question. I just searched for voxel plugin to see how the reviews worked, and there's empty slots on the result page

is that items that are no longer for sale, or a css bug, or something MP api related?

[sturdy hawk]

Yes, I must fix this... It's plugins that are no longer active 😕

[scarlet mountain]

gotcha

I noticed the same thing in my vault on the MP, I'd get a list of 100 results and only 98 showed up on some of the pages for instance

real weird

[civic bay]

Make sure you are logged in

Epic seem to be going out of their way to make this as difficult as possible…

[ebon leaf]

Yeah it seems so.

[ember hill]

Fetch regional pricing and it would be golden, but I know it's too tall of an order

Shame that the Marketplace is degrading

[sturdy hawk]

It's on my todo list I have an idea to make it fairly quick

I'm only at 30% of products, and there's already more than 50k questions, didn't expect to be that much more than reviews 😅 !

[red quarry]

In the mean time this does real time review/question look up and caches the results in my database: https://www.uebot.net/product-lookup
It’s rather simplistic in what it shows but all the data from unreal engine is downloaded and I am working on a button to download the data to CSV.

[sturdy hawk]

There might be a little bug somewhere, everything works fine on chrome, but I can't get the reviews/questions on firefox 😕

Nice work anyway 🔥 !

[civic bay]

Its amazingly that 2-3 proactive people on this discord have created a solution in 2-3 days that is order of magnitudes better that what Epic does in months/years. Awesome work guys - we're all better off thanks to your efforts.

[red quarry]

It’s almost certainly buggy. Thanks for the info I’ll test in Firefox. It was thrown together quickly using the existing backend caching system. Improvements will be out tomorrow morning for it. Your solution is awesome. I don’t see mine as more than a utility for those who want to DL the results.

[plucky moth]

Where is the frontend for this project hosted? Do you have a place we can donate to cover server costs? This is an invaluable tool and I am glad to give some income to keep it maintained.

[red quarry]

Orbital is an open source project that can be found here: https://github.com/hugoattal/OrbitalMarket they do have a sponsor section!

As for UEBot I have taken on 100% of the cost of hosting the servers, I dont have a a way to donate other than purchasing a monthly slot to manage more than 1 product sold on the marketplace and I wouldn't want/expect anyone to signup for a service they don't need. I would say Orbital should absolutely get support as they are offering a completely free service that effectively replaces the entire marketplace.

[pallid raven]

Removing the Questions and Answer section without a live replacement is basically the same as removing someone's heart, before having a transplant ready. WTH is going on here?
Sellers are going to suffer because people will not buy if they can't see reviews and get questions answered.

[hollow zephyr]

Downside of 88%

[pallid raven]

You are saying you already see an 88% drop?

Maybe Epic is trying to have someone else run their own Marketplace...

Because that is what is going to happen if they don't fix this like,.. stupid fast

once the people leave the marketplace they spent sooo much time building... ie, once they find a place where they can sell/buy and get questions and answers... they will move their stuff to a new point of sale.. with everyone else... and Epic will have lost their market share of this for good.

and that will be that.

I dont know what upper management is thinking... did they spend too much time compressed in VR not to see this coming?

[hollow zephyr]

No I'm saying 88% share for revenue leaves less budget for improving the platform and doing efficient changes like these

[sturdy hawk]

All the reviews and questions are now available: https://orbital-market.com/

[grizzled thunder]

nice, will check it out, I was getting a 502

[sturdy hawk]

(68k reviews, 127k questions)

[sturdy hawk]

Yeah, I had to take down the web server, my server is not that powerful 😅

[grizzled thunder]

Amazing, it's all there for my products

[sturdy hawk]

I'll have to redownload the reviews though, I skip the publisher response due to a bug 😬

[red quarry]

I just pushed an update that will allow you to download reviews and questions: https://uebot.net/product-lookup

I currently include the published replies.

@sturdy hawk will probably have historical data I dont. I only have access to the current catalog of items. My system will also run through and scrape on request.

[grizzled thunder]

When I try now it says scraping data, then eventually nothing appears on either review, question or download

[ornate terrace]

Great! Q: Is it possible that you’re scrapping somehow even hidded questions? I always answer every question but now I’m seeing questions that I dont remember even to be there.

[swift anchor]

Did they remove comments on reviews and questions on assets on the asset store?

because I can't find it all the sudden

[ornate terrace]

Yes they did without prior noticing

[ornate terrace]

This

[swift anchor]

Fuck man, that's how I would get verified by asset publishers.

That's ridiculous

[olive haven]

@red quarry @sturdy hawk One more problem to take into account with your efforts: If a user that already left a written review before the change rates the product again now, it will just "edit" the existing review and replace the text with "-----" (it won't count as a new review). This is kinda bad because now people rate again in an effort to help out and inadvertently delete their old (actually helpful) text reviews. So maybe you somehow can prevent grabbing new data for already existing reviews? It shouldn't be necessary anyway since new reviews cannot be edited, the only edit that can still happen on a review is deleting the old one by rating again (apart from changing the amount of stars I guess).

[grizzled thunder]

I made a reddit post outlining some of the issues and some of the forum posts where Epic gave their reasoning https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/10fvzux/epic_just_deleted_questions_and_reviews_from_ue/

[swift anchor]

The years of questions and answers we no longer have access to is a disservice to the entire community.

[ember hill]

Honestly the whole discord verification to determine piracy isn't going to benefit everyone

Best you can do is to have a well known issue and then say it was patched. Those who went on the pirated copy on their own will left behind, and can't simply agree to upgrade the asset.

[scarlet mountain]

I think it's more a lot of the time it's educating and working with users to solve their issue, rather than always solving a bug. It can be hours of time helping someone

In those cases it's a bitter pill to swallow to invest hours into helping someone who stole your asset when you could have spent that improving your product

[ember hill]

"I had issues on this!"
"It's been patched already btw"

[scarlet mountain]

Bit of an oversimplification

[agile shadow]

A gross oversimplification. A lot of support questions are more bespoke, especially with complex products.

[sturdy hawk]

(Just fyi, orbital market will be taken down one last time to scrap the publisher replies on reviews. This should last about an hour.)

[lucid osprey]

i was in tears

your baby is in trouble 😦

please be careful

[ember hill]

Kinda doubt Epic is actively suppressing Orbital Market for just serving as interface for the real marketplace

All it did is basically just scraping for public data, which I doubt enough to warrant C&D

[hybrid holly]

Regardless of that getting into the legal stuff costs money regardless of it being thrown out

but yeah

[sturdy hawk]

Orbital Market is a win for them anyway since it drives more sales.

[hybrid holly]

Hmm the sales still go through unreal engine marketplace

now separate the sales and they'd get real pissed off

🤣

take 5% instead of 12%

[sturdy hawk]

They'll instantly ban me, and I think it's not a good solution for buyers, unless I ALSO build a custom Epic Games Launcher 😅

[hybrid holly]

No you could even implement importing marketplace assets to specific paths

it would be great

[sturdy hawk]

Ahah, I'll probably won't go down that road, that requires far too much work, on I'm already onto something big 😂

[sturdy hawk]

(Btw, spoiler: this will take a bit more than an hour... Currently at 28% / 6k publisher responses 😬)

[hybrid holly]

actually you could make a add-on like quixel megascans even lol

import in engine

🤯

nah though understandable setting up payment stuff is a real hassle managing refunds and payouts

[ember hill]

FWIW creators can go to other genuinely better marketplaces like Gumroad

[hollow zephyr]

but there isn't much traffic there and you have to market your products. I also tried to sell on the artstation marketplace a while ago, zero sales, basically zero views

[grizzled thunder]

Just to put this in context to what was lost there are:
68,000 reviews
16,000 responses to these reviews
127,000 questions - 14% of which went unanswered by publishers

[sturdy hawk]

"16,000 responses to these reviews" => for now! (already 17.5k as we speak, 80% of products processed)

[devout kindle]

Guys, someone should make a tweet to epic and TimSweeneyEpic with a hashtag so we raise the hashtag and let epic notice their mistake. no devs should buy from the marketplace and sellers should stop updating or selling asset till Epic acknowledge their mistake.
I personally refuse to buy an asset without reading a review. I don't have time to waste my time with the refund process.

[sturdy hawk]

sellers should stop updating or selling asset
I think a lot of sellers can't afford to "stop" selling their assets

I personally refuse to buy an asset without reading a review
That's why I'm backing up every reviews on Orbital Market

Agree on the general idea of letting them know we're unhappy, but it hasn't changed anything in the past 😕

[devout kindle]

ok, I understand, but at least we need to show them they are wrong by not buying till they fix this issue.

[sturdy hawk]

They won't fix the issue before several months, as stated on the forum

[devout kindle]

not if they are pushed to fix it.

[sturdy hawk]

Not buying will only hurt sellers, the marketplace represent a tiny revenue for Epic Games

[devout kindle]

anyway, my suggestion was, someone with a big number of followers needs to make a single tweet and we will back him up.

[grizzled thunder]

I posted here but I'm not exactly big https://twitter.com/RonanMahonArt/status/1615987949988118528

Also the realist in me understands that UE marketplace is tiny for Epic

[devout kindle]

Unfortunately, I don't see how that will help, you should've tagged Epic, Epic community manager, and TimSweeneyEpic. and mentioning orbital-market.com is not going to help to revert such a decision.

[sturdy hawk]

Orbital Market is back online 🥳 => https://orbital-market.com

[devout kindle]

orbital-market is good but doesn't fix the issue we are having.

Can't send questions to dev or check legit reviews.

[rugged wasp]

Just got the news about them nuking the reviews ...jeeeeeez

[grizzled thunder]

Fair point, for now I asked some questions in the forum and I'm waiting to see if they respond with more info

[rugged wasp]

Second time we get the reviews changed and thus affecting our ability to showcase how the plugin is doing

[thorny compass]

Are you sure they are permanently removed, or just taken off while reconstructing the system?

[hollow zephyr]

Well they already permanently removed them once before didn't they?

[pallid raven]

Well, this won't just hurt the sellers... and while the total affect will be small on Epic financially, from that perspective... It really hurts the reputation of Epic.
Additionally, now I am going to be very very careful before I will consider buying on the marketplace. And this is probably going to reduce the number of sellers the longer the time this issues remains.

[thorny compass]

I was not defending them, just asking.

[opal hazel]

sooo epic games disabled the delete button from the marketplace....

best i can do is to hide the products

[opal hazel]

epic might be trying to kill off the marketplace tbh. they make so much money from fortnite to ever care for us.

nope it is over half a billion

they also need to refund the money they stole from children

total money is over half a billion

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations

they are officially the most corrupt company in US history

tim sweeney should be in jail tbh

[agile shadow]

i mean i get you're upset but that's just dumb

[opal hazel]

it's not me being upset

they literally got the record fine from ftc

i'm talking about trade

not governmental level corruption

[agile shadow]

there are us based companies that staged coups and supported wars and that's just me talking about coca cola

[opal hazel]

pfizer got the previous record fine i believe

nope pfizer paid way more my bad $2.3 billion they settled with department of justice i was looking at the ftc record

[agile shadow]

If they want to kill it, they can just do it. Doesn't have to be all smoke and mirrors. In this case I think the saying "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" goes well

they did the same thing with the wiki

[opal hazel]

yea they might not be competent enough to pull such thing

[agile shadow]

they kind of put the wiki back after a month I believe

maybe there is enough anger for them to do the same with comments

[opal hazel]

naa wiki never came back

The current wiki is unaffiliated with epic games. the community just copied it

[agile shadow]

then rip i guess

[red quarry]

@sturdy hawk are you using your prod server to manage updates and compute things? If you'd like to work together I have a number of machines that can host the computation of difficult tasks and then you can import from your prod site so you don't have to have down time.

If you'd like to push your parser to the backend of your public repo I can pull it and run the tasks on my xeon server then send you the export of the dataset for whatever you need.

[sturdy hawk]

I'm totally doing that 😅 ! That's super sweet of you, thanks a ton ❤️

But honestly, I do this for the only sake a simplicity. Any decent server would be able to do this computation while serving pages, but I think I'm a bit tight on RAM.
I just don't want to spend a lot of time on this, nor want to pay a big server since I provide this service for free. If a bit more people would sponsor me to upgrade the server, I'll happily do it.

[red quarry]

understand, If things change and you need the computation power of another server let me know, it would be free of course.

[agile shadow]

do you have a patreon or any way to raise some funds?

i'll pitch in

[sturdy hawk]

Yes! Github sponsor on the Orbital Market repo https://github.com/hugoattal/OrbitalMarket
(or the direct link: https://github.com/sponsors/hugoattal)

[sturdy hawk]

Wow, already got a new sponsor 😮 ! Whoever this is, thank you so much ❤️ ! I'll upgrade the server soon so there won't be downtime no more!

[next patrol]

Got a sponsorship from me as well, and links to your site from all my assets. Both electronic nodes and the Orbital Market are amazing, and Luna Park sounds fantastic as well 🙂

[sturdy hawk]

Thank you so much ❤️ ! (Btw, by adding a link to orbital market in your assets, you get a popularity boost 😄 !)

[next patrol]

oh, neat!

swapped out the monthly patreon for a podcast I no longer listen to in order to sponsor you instead 😛

[pallid raven]

I can tell you this won't go well if Epic decides to Abandon their sellers needs.

Sellers NEED Q/A as part of the marketplace.

its irresponsable to remove a feature without having a live replacement./

The main issue is not that you guys aren't helping tremendously...

its that you guys are now "PAYING" for their problem.

its wrong of epic to offload that onto the community.

Now you guys will ahve to deal with issues like "fake" reviews... with no real administrative way to ID anything

Unless you have access to the "KEY" Icon or something

also, how will you know the person posting is the same as the purchaser?

Epic needs to do the right thing... and fix it for themselves. We can use this as a backup... but we should not use it as the marketplace, unless the plan is to dump the marketplace completely,.

[lucid osprey]

no u

spreading all these lies here.

wasting peoples time they could invest into product.

[pallid raven]

What lies?

[dire meteor]

Try reading the thing she replied to.

[pallid raven]

Yea, and what are the lies?

Are you making the claim that Epic was not in violation of FTC rules?

[umbral lintel]

[pallid raven]

Every company makes mistakes... and clearly unless this was purposeful and malicious, I see no reason for any sentencing at all.

I also think the amount of the fine was way overboard... I personally believe that such things should first be as warnings with corrective measures... and only if not corrected should be punitive.

[umbral lintel]

what's happening

hehe brain is smol

[pallid raven]

Nevertheless, we are here now... dealing with a problem that directly affects all sellers and buyers... and that decision has to come from somewhere

and it needs to be corrected.

[pallid raven]

Marketplace has all Questions/Answers removed and all reviews as well.

It's one of those horrible decisions that someone has not considered the reputational fallout for Epic.

[umbral lintel]

oh

there were questions/answers?

welp i'll never know now

[pallid raven]

yea... 60,000ish

[umbral lintel]

jk ik there were

why tho

[pallid raven]

(scroll up... u will see various posts about it)

Why would you take someone's heart out for transplantation without a cross matched organ?

[umbral lintel]

[fleet garnet]

Considering reviews were useless this was a good change
From sellers abusing it, forcing customers to leave positive reviews just to get access to a support server
To customers intentionally making false reviews to try and get others away from buying it

This is a step in the right direction

[pallid raven]

I completely disagree.

WE developers WANT it.

[fleet garnet]

it's a fact that the reviews were mostly abused, there isn't much to disagree with

[pallid raven]

it was useful to buyers and sellers.

Garbage, what kind of moderator are you? Did you never use the Marketplace?

[fleet garnet]

I was selling on the MP for years

[pallid raven]

I have thousands of dollars in purchases

and I used the Q/A for years

it was MY primary method of determining if I should make a purchase

[fleet garnet]

Also what does me being a mod has anything to do with anything
I have rights to my own opinions

I'm just pointing out that reviews were heavily abused and it's a good thing they are gone, Q/A should probably get a replacement as I can see it being useful

[pallid raven]

You honestly and truly believe that Q/A was garbage?

I can't count how many times I found it useful

[fleet garnet]

^

[pallid raven]

Just because reviews are abused... doesn't mean you remove them...

[hasty nexus]

:)))

[pallid raven]

the right thing to do is find better ways to implement them

and certainly.. even if you had no recourse but to appoint someone to Sort thru it all... it is No reason to blanket remove the Q/A section Along with the reviews

[fleet garnet]

@hasty nexusI'm gonna remove that as we don't allow witch hunting and publicly exposing others but yes, it's a very very widespread issue

[pallid raven]

We NEED the Q/A

[hasty nexus]

no worries

[pallid raven]

Epic is really hurting its reputation by this action. And the consequences will be long lasting the longer this occurs.

I have seen this before...

and I know exactly what happens to the community.

it will fall apart

[hasty nexus]

we adapt or move forward. nothing is life changing

[pallid raven]

I am PLEADING with you.. to rethink removing the Q/A and please sent that request to upper management

you can remove it AFTER you create a new one.,

[fleet garnet]

We are not affiliated with epic in any way

[pallid raven]

Well, you got people ears

people have some respect for you...

do what you can please.

[hasty nexus]

don't let this hurt your soul this much.

[pallid raven]

You just don't get it... each DAY... this remains, the sellers are losing massive income.

[hasty nexus]

i'm a seller as well

[pallid raven]

Many sellers rely on this income

if this is supposed to go on for months... there won't be a marketplace when it goes online... it will be abandoned and devs will create their own version.

is that what Epic wants?

[hasty nexus]

probably

[dire meteor]

Was the review system before unmoderated? As in, they just post straight away without having to be approved?

[hasty nexus]

yeah

[pallid raven]

yea. as long as you were an owner.

you had to be a purchaser to post.

[dire meteor]

Well that's probably the root of the problem right there.

[hasty nexus]

if someone would have posted some porn link in your review page, your only chance as a publisher to get rid of it would've been to report it which could've take days or weeks :))

[red quarry]

Unreal provides mechanisms (emails to support) to remove reviews.

[pallid raven]

No doubt reviews can be abused.. But, we don't need reviews. I can LIVE WITH JUST THE Q/A

[red quarry]

thats not true, you could also email support directly, they are responsive when it's a TOS violation. You just need to be clear it's a violation of TOS.

[pallid raven]

but if that is gone... I can't really see the marketplace surviving

[fleet garnet]

Q/A should have stayed but not the reviews

[pallid raven]

I am ok with that...

[hasty nexus]

the only thing that currently affects me as a seller is the Questions Tab being removed and now we can only verify ownership by email with Marketplace Team, which again, can take days if it's Friday

[pallid raven]

Agreed.. sellers need a good way to verify ownership... one simple way would be that each owner gets a verification key in their marketplace account for each product.

[dire meteor]

That's besides the point. It relies on support staff getting to the complaint quickly. If it was the other way around, reviews may be slow, but there would never be unfair or abusive feedback.

[sturdy hawk]

Just so you know, Orbital Market now add a penalty for product reviews that has a discord id in it. Those reviews now count as 20% of a "genuine" review.
So popularity sort should better reflect people usage.

[pallid raven]

None of these issues are important enough to justify removing the Q/A section.

[sturdy hawk]

I agree on the Q/A section, I have no idea why they removed it...

[fleet garnet]

First thing is Epic should punish sellers that force customers to leave a positive review, revoke their rights to sell anything on the MP would be a good start

[dire meteor]

In your opinion. You aren't Epic.

[red quarry]

Firstly I hear this claim more than I would like and the fact is Epic has not announced that they've done this to deter the verification and 'gaming' of the reviews section. The only claim they've made is that they plan on releasing a better feature in a few months.

More importantly, I know each and every user of the verification bot I made very clearly wrote notice about using Reviews for verification. They objectively told their customer not to. Id love to see a known message that makes claims that a review needs to be 5 star as I have yet to come across a single developer requesting that.

I really hate to see this situation being muddied with conjecture about verifications being the reason for this move.

[pallid raven]

Why does it need to be replaced ? With what? It was working just fine.

[red quarry]

To put it simply Marketplace Sellers were hurt by this. They've lost a very real, public and official forum of communication with their customers.

[fleet garnet]

Someone posted a screenshot of this a few min ago
I removed it tho as we don't allow public shaming

But I have personally seen it many many times

[sturdy hawk]

Just so you know, out of the 32 444 products there are on the marketplace, only 79 of them has 10 or more reviews with a discord id.

[pallid raven]

(And Buyers as well.. I have no easy way to review what other people think about the product... and no way to easily ask questions that other people might also respond to)

[red quarry]

Highlighting Fraud isn't publicly shaming someone. Perhaps repost it with their username grayed out?

[red quarry]

This is a great note. Now, run a query highlighting the count of reviews per product from 1 - 5 stars.

[pallid raven]

Of course, moderation requires staff... but meanwhile these moderators do the work for free. right?

[hasty nexus]

another thing that bothers me is epic trying to enforce support by email =)) if you as a seller ask someone to join discord for a more fluid conversation (problems can be misunderstood, sometimes you need to have a clear discussion about what's happening, sharing, videos, audio, screen etc), they can report you to epic

[red quarry]

Epic claims that support emails should be the first touch point. Not that all support has to go through emails.

[pallid raven]

That's ridiculous, they are trying to force a corporate view of how sales should go because then no one else will see the issue with any products.

[sturdy hawk]

What do you mean? Other stats:
14936 products has at least one review
389 products has at least one review with a discord id

[pallid raven]

I can guarantee sales will plummet if they force this.

BTW, these stats are very awesome... makes some really good points about :"claims" vs "reality"

[red quarry]

select the count of 1 star, 2 star, 3 star, 4 star, 5 star, per product that include "discord ID" or some fuzzy search of the like.

[pallid raven]

I don't see why Epic can't simply punish the abusers... when shown adequate proof, as opposed to dismantling everything.

[fleet garnet]

even "just" 389 products is pretty bad when you consider some of those are among the popular assets on the MP

[pallid raven]

Please explain how a discord ID is equal to be forced to give a positive review???

[dusk veldt]

If I remember correctly you rate when you comment

[sturdy hawk]

So out of the 68 160 reviews there are, 3 857 of them has a discord id in it
Out of the 3 857 reviews with a discord id, 3 624 of them were 5 stars

[hasty nexus]

I had an incident with one customer, i told him to post question or send order id for verification, and he didn't like that, and he posted 1 star review saying something like "see, i told you i own it"

[pallid raven]

ok that works...its mean... but it works

[hasty nexus]

i banned him

[pallid raven]

The sellers I know... Simply requested an ID post in the Q/A section without any review.

[sturdy hawk]

And out of the 68 160 reviews there are, 55 792 of them are 5-stars

[pallid raven]

But this simply points out the problem is that sellers NEED a way to do perform Adequate Verification.

[dire meteor]

It's almost like people have signed up to discord just to buy them own product and give it a 5 star review.

[fleet garnet]

Out of the 3 857 reviews with a discord id, 3 624 of them were 5 stars <- very suspicious

[pallid raven]

If Epic would put a verification code in their Epic Launcher Marketplace next to each purchase.. this wouldn't be an issue

(and on the web browser under a purchased section)

[red quarry]

Out of the 3 857 reviews with a discord id, 3 624 of them were 5 stars 93.95%
And out of the 68 160 reviews there are, 55 792 of them are 5-stars 81.85%

[dire meteor]

Why would a verification code help?

[sturdy hawk]

94% of reviews with discord id are 5-stars
82% of all reviews are 5-stars

[dusk veldt]

Discord roles

[pallid raven]

so... the problem is piracy

[dusk veldt]

Also some sellers give Github access

[dire meteor]

Not sure I understand that reply.

[red quarry]

There is 0 evidence that this move was done to stop verifications.

[dusk veldt]

Some sellers want you to post your Discord id via review system so they can confirm you purchased the product.

[pallid raven]

But it IS a problem related to the 5* reviews

basically, the idea is that devs are forcing people to give 5* reviews to get any sort of real help.

[red quarry]

It would stand to reason that a product that has direct seller engagement in a forum (such as discord) would see a reasonable increase in positive reviews and more so 10% isn't very much versus the rolling average of ALL marketplace assets.

[fleet garnet]

And that's fine
But it's less fine when a verification process requires you to leave a positive review which I've seen talked about way more times than I'm comfortable with

[pallid raven]

they also need to verify that the person asking for help is a verified purchaser.

[red quarry]

Thats just not happening at scale.

[fleet garnet]

Would disagree with that

[pallid raven]

so, giving someone a "Verification" code enforces that a person actually OWNS said product... and should get help.

[red quarry]

Heres a little snippet from my bot.

[sturdy hawk]

Even if that wasn't the case, a product with a ton of "forced reviews" (that people must post to get support) is misleading on the number of actual users

[pallid raven]

and any request by a dev for 5* review or no help... could simply be reported.

[dusk veldt]

I agree with you on that. That's why it shouldn't be done in review part at least. People tend to give five stars when they request via Review part due to social reasons.

[dire meteor]

Surely they can verify this on Epic's side? They must hav ea list of which accounts owns which product.

[hasty nexus]

guys, don't worry, in 2024-2025 we'll have a verification system

[hasty nexus]

=)))

[pallid raven]

interesting..

I just used the "Key" icon next to my name... but not everyone uses the same name as their discord id

[fleet garnet]

Just because your bot isn't doing and it's again the TOS it doesn't mean others aren't doing it

[pallid raven]

sure.. but again, why should EVERYONE be punished for the actions of a few?

[hasty nexus]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/changes-to-reviews-and-questions-on-ue-marketplace/751544/159

last post

:)))

[red quarry]

Ive read that it doesn't say "give me a 5 star review" it says give me an honest review.

[hasty nexus]

sure

[dire meteor]

It is better than 10 criminals go free than 1 innocent person is convicted... except on the Epic Marketplace!

😄

[pallid raven]

I am not really sure if I should interpret that as a joke.

[prisma flare]

Low poly shooter pack is a huge example of every review basically being solely for verification. Their discord server refuses any sort of support unless they're verified. Not only by moderators but also members

[hasty nexus]

the reality is, reviews were nice if moderated, otherwise reviews mean nothing, just another thing for some idiots to mess with you

[fleet garnet]

Fully agree with this People tend to give five stars when they request via Review part due to social reasons.

[red quarry]

There are no forced reviews. That's just not a valid statement. Not a single person is being forced to use the reviews and more often than not they use the questions. Ultimately the reviews are a personal choice over the question section of the individual posting it.

[pallid raven]

They should not be forced to avoid saying "Discord Approval or Verification" as a matter of verification. In fact, it seems reasonable to ban such a request.

I am not saying that the seller should be "banned", I am just saying that the seller should receive a warning to take down that requirement.

[hasty nexus]

we should worry more about the Questions section. Probably in the next period the responsiveness of marketplace team will degrade. everyone will send emails

[pallid raven]

followed by a period of time.

Again... if there was a "verification code" we wouldnt need to go thru these review gyrations.

and Epic could make a policy forbidding such actions.

[fleet garnet]

even just invoice ID and a tool to verify it

[red quarry]

Yeah that's probably a reasonable assertion but do you blame the creator requesting you to prove you own the product or do blame social construct? Because this still comes down to a personal choice and is not a matter of gaming a system.

[hasty nexus]

That would be more than enough, and some API to do it

an API for verification would be gold

[fleet garnet]

I blame the creator when the wording forces the customer to leave a positive review (and it does happen a lot)

[pallid raven]

Absolutely.

[red quarry]

The solution to verification is simple:
Epic creates an oAUTH that allows a marketplace seller connect to an API and provide Email and Order ID. The API returns the Currently owned products that are relevant to that seller.

[sturdy hawk]

Imagine a list of buyers mails... Just... IMAGINE 🤩

[red quarry]

I can give you 15 products that don't force that by wording. Can you give me 15 products that force it by wording?

[dusk veldt]

Yeah if the creator asks to leave review then I do actually blame the creator. But I also agree that Epic must give a proper way to confirm purchases because sometimes it's more than just a Discord role.

[pallid raven]

The KEY already marks valid buyers (in the marketplace)

[hasty nexus]

no email, just an api were you pass product id and order id and returns ownership status

[dusk veldt]

That would do the job yes

[pallid raven]

What is needed is for discord / external verification

[sturdy hawk]

Yeah but that require a bit of work, whereas a list of mail could be implemented in minutes

[fleet garnet]

Sure thing, maybe not 15 but a few for sure (which I won't be saying which anyways so 🤷‍♂️ )

[hasty nexus]

you can then hold a reference list of verified order ids so you wont have people sharing those, and p[roblem is solved

[prisma flare]

Following up with what I said about low poly shooter pack it does have a system that it uses along with document for verification

[pallid raven]

seems like a legit request

anyone see anything odd?

[sturdy hawk]

Pretty painful (probably ~3 days before getting verified), but THIS is the most legit way of doing it

[fleet garnet]

yeah Invoice ID is a much better way to do it than ruining the reviews

[prisma flare]

The reviews are still completely ruined due to people socially handling that way for other packs

[fleet garnet]

Doesn't force anyone, even implicitly to leave a positive review

[pallid raven]

right.

[fleet garnet]

the reality is the reviews were pretty useless
But Q/A should have stayed

[hasty nexus]

yeah

[pallid raven]

and a policy can be made by Epic that states that a Seller may not require a review or Q/A post inorder to provide support / assets included with purchase. Purchaser shall be verified thru the Invoice ID.

[red quarry]

Can we please use more appropriate terms. Not a single person has been forced or compelled to leave a review. There is nothing involuntary about the process.

[fleet garnet]

I'm not talking about your bot here

Sellers are doing it without your bot

[pallid raven]

I believe that Blue Man has stated otherwise... that he has evidence ?

[fleet garnet]

I'm not going to be exposing anyone to prove my point... but it is a thing that was happening

[red quarry]

I mean in general, regardless of my bot or some other mechanism.

[pallid raven]

right... understood.

[hasty nexus]

bring the forks

[pallid raven]

But, the point is that... we need some sort of action to take place to fix this at least temporarily...

we need Q/A back asap.

[fleet garnet]

We need invoice validation tools and API, bring back Q/A, reviews can stay removed and that would pretty much be perfect

[pallid raven]

aye

Q/A being most important... Validation and API when completed.

[red quarry]

I guess that means ultimately its an opinion of yours and not something that anyone can factually prove or disprove. I still think its inappropriate to make claims while withholding facts.

We as a group need to stop using gaming of the system as valid or invalid reason for this move by Epic.
Its garnered a lot of attention and objectively people are more upset than elated about this move.

Instead of conjecturing and blaming people for this we should rally together and work with Epic to get the sections we need back, until they've created and published their new system.

and to be clear, I respect you for your point of view @fleet garnet I am not offended by it, we've had very different experiences.

I want us to frame the situation more appropriately and stop with the conjecture around why the offering was removed.

[fleet garnet]

Agreed

We as a group need to stop using gaming of the system as valid or invalid reason for this move by Epic.
I didn't say that was the reason, I said I was happy the reviews were removed because those things were happening

I guess that means ultimately its an opinion of yours and not something that anyone can factually prove or disprove
It is my opinion and some will agree and some will disagree

[fleet garnet]

No, worries 🙂
So far it has been a pretty civil discussion

[pallid raven]

I am just hoping it reaches Epic...

[red quarry]

I was really looking to understand your perspective which is why I asked to see it happening, sorry I misunderstood your intentions with your messaging and made some poor assumptions about intent.

[pallid raven]

I was simply hoping to change his mind... about Q/A

Epics been amazing so far... and If we solve this quickly... it will blow over.

(next I just have to convince someone to fix the issue with DirectX-12 not being recognized on Windows Server 2019 ) hehe

Chrismfftw... which plugin do you sell again?

[red quarry]

I do not have a publicly listed product however, I do have a seller account.

[pallid raven]

O

ok

you make it sound like you "sell" a product

[red quarry]

I run a discord bot that ~~handles ~~ handled verification of assets sold on the marketplace. UEBot

[pallid raven]

ah very cool. Now it makes sense... I was wondering how you made that soo fast.

I see now that you already had it in place.

So, if Epic makes this API... will that adversely affect you?

[red quarry]

The reasoning behind the bot in the first place was to get the respect of the community so that I could go to Epic and request a better system to handle verification. If they create an API my reasoning will be fufilled.

[pallid raven]

that's awesome.

[red quarry]

I would also be open to conversations about being the sponsored provider of a bot through Epic.

Heres a message I left in another forum regarding verification of products via review: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/verify-reviews-should-not-be-allowed/657937/8

[pallid raven]

It is my honest belief, that the best way to solve this would be the Verification ID and API, and if your bot can interface with that and make it more automatic, I am ok with that.

[red quarry]

The real solution is to have Epic allow a user to connect their discord account to their services and provide a public list of known discord support servers along with an Epic provided bot that handles the symbolic linkage of discord users to Epic Account IDs.

Remove the thirdparties like myself entirely.

[pallid raven]

I don't really like that idea... because then Discord becomes a sort of defacto middle man

but..., I can also see that it has utility...

as long as the discord is not the "point of care" for service...

and that remains in the Q/A and discord is the "other area"... where you go for more extensive help... I am fine with it.

The marketplace Q/A should be the first point of contact for basic Q/A...

I am also disappointed that they are considering removing previous Q/A info rather than port it to the new system... there is a LOT of useful info there.

Including tutorial links and vids etc that aren't in the main description,

we all know it would be relatively easy to port old Q/A to a new Q/A when it arrives.

[hasty nexus]

maybe they will

[red quarry]

Not by Epics own rules. The first point of contact should in fact be Email.

[scarlet mountain]

Yeah pretty sure original intent for q&a was prospective buyers could ask questions. Email is the primary support method in the agreements from my recollection

Anything else is up to the seller

[pallid raven]

While Understand that the original intent for Epic was that Email be the primary point of contact, it makes no sense. What's the point of Q/A if not to ask questions that will benefit other people as well? I do use Email quite a lot when I have a big support question, but basic utility questions like "Does this plugin do this? " seem far better suited to Q/A

I can't express how helpful Q/A is to my ability to decide if I should purchase or not.

I dont know how many actual "purchases" I have... Because of the free assets included in the vault.
But, I have 1300 assets in my vault.

which should give you an idea, that I make a fair amount of marketplace purchases

And I know that for almost every purchased asset, I asked a question...

Sometimes, I would not get a response...

[ember hill]

NOOOOO NOT WRITING DOCUMENTATION

[pallid raven]

hehe

[ember hill]

We are lazy sellers mkay
Nothing irritates more than writing a bloody document!

||except I am kidding and I like writing docs lol||

[pallid raven]

One example I can think of... was a seller that I bought several products from.. and asked a simple question... came back week later... nothing... month later, nothing... I see that 3 months later no support answered... it tells me, they are gone.

[fleet garnet]

Nah all good, no worries
Late reply because I went afk

[opal hazel]

who does that seriously? people blamed me for it i even gave customer support people gave bad reviews they changed to 5 star after the support they received. i keep seeing this argument but never see any seller requiring a 5* review?

when someone comes to server already upset about plugin not working and you ask them to go one more step they are more likely to give you negative reviews than positive ones. you end up needing to work harder to get them change their review

and %99 cases the problem is people not reading the documentation.

i see people complaining about lack of documentation but i know from experience that's not the case.

[pallid raven]

We don't have any visual proof... but given that Blue Man has made the claim that he has seen it, I am willing to believe it. Nevertheless, that is not a valid reason in my opinion to destroy the system rather than tweak it.

[opal hazel]

even if its the problem then why remove the questions too?

[pallid raven]

yes, we made a strong case for that... (scroll up)

[opal hazel]

questions and reviews being used for verification is not the problem it is the symptom. solution would be providing a better alternative to verify customers

[pallid raven]

Yes, also discussed heavily...

If you go to your LAST post earlier today... and read them thru... you will see we tried to make a strong case for bringing the Q/A back, and for a solid methodology for verification of purchase.

[opal hazel]

yea reading messages now

[red quarry]

And I keep saying this but I’m happy to repeat it, there’s no indication the system was removed due to verification. Josh hasn’t made any claim to that sort. Just that they are removing the system for a new system in a few months.

Everything else is speculation.

[opal hazel]

yep highly likely it didn't have anything to do with verification

they don't have qa on the epic games store side of things

and they make way more money there

it might be just a simple business decision

[pallid raven]

Whatever the reason for removing it... it makes no sense to do so, until the replacement arrives.

[red quarry]

There are valid business reasons to remove it now.

[pallid raven]

yea.. like pissing me off??

and losing future sales?

ruining their reputation?

cause if I am feeling that way.. I can tell you that hundreds of others are feeling it worse.

[opal hazel]

i'll likely remove products if that new system promise doesn't come true.

there are way more illegal downloads than legal ones and epic games don't do jack. they even told me i should be sending cease and desist letters to every piracy site on the internet as they can't bother to do anything.

before verification i was spending hours everyday answering questions it doesn't worth my time if we go back to that

[red quarry]

Customers appreciate the new system more when it arrives due to the lack of current system.

Epic is piloting the response from the community to see what a new marketplace solution could do to its reputation.

Epic under estimated the value of the system.

Epic is loosing money due to multiple crawlers hitting the public api and consuming data regularly.

Epic found a bug in the data that’s being presented large enough that fixing it isn’t financially smart because they have a new system coming.

[pallid raven]

garbage answers from a media rep

[red quarry]

All of which are valid business reasons, I just made up.

[pallid raven]

meh... again, those are not valid reasons.. they are just BAD policy

[red quarry]

I think they each are valid enough on their own.

[pallid raven]

come on... you are a smart guy... stop trying to justify this as anything other than BAD Policy.

[red quarry]

I’m not justifying anything. Only saying that the reasons presented couple be valid under certain scenarios.

[pallid raven]

You know it is bad. I know it is bad... pretty much everyone who is a seller or buyer knows it.

[red quarry]

It’s definitely not a good situation for them.

[pallid raven]

Ok fine.. I will examine your "fake" reasons:

1. Customers will appreciate the new system more after months of not having one? really??? how many customer will be left?

horrible.

2. Piloting the response to see effect on reputation?
   Really... lets do something really stupid and see if the community is ok with it?
   Horrible

3. Epic under estimated the value of the system...
   Agreed. clearly. But that still doesn't explain the reason they don't turn it back on when they see how much the community does value it.

4. Epic loosing money due to crawlers?
   Explain please...

[tough crag]

I think the way epic sees it is: ok the reviews system has now been flooded with non-reviews for so much time that we cant fix it anymore and dont care enough to moderate it, so lets remove it completely, yea maybe theres' some useful information there but its just easier to remove it for us, so screw it, we'll just do whats best for us 🙂

doesn't explain the questions being removed though

[pallid raven]

Right.. but I am not even arguing for the review system.. I am arguing for the Q/A...

[tough crag]

but I guess they were probably thinking about refactoring/reworking the whole system: Q/A and reviews for some time

[pallid raven]

Again... no one does that.

Imagine if GOOGLE decided to refactor the NEWS.

[tough crag]

so they just chose to do whats best for them, and remove it, screw buyers/sellers

[pallid raven]

Imagine good news went offline for 3 months while they "refactored it"...

I guarantee they would lose 99% of their base.

The same will happen at the Marketplace.

Sales are going to drop really fast.

and after couple more weeks of this Devs will have it up to their boiling points.. and they WILL create a new Marketplace.

[tough crag]

well yea but they dont care, they will just do whats best for them, not best for sellers/buyers

[pallid raven]

And EPic can whine all day long about the loss... but it will be gone;

[tough crag]

its obvious its bad for both sellers and buyers

[dire meteor]

That's not even remotely comparable. Plus, it already decides what you should and shouldn't see on the news.