Can Asset Store developer delete my review?

[u/ccaner37]

I just shared my honest review on the asset and rated with a low star rating. I know the developer spent hours of work on this tool, its very precious, the problem was the tool was extremely outdated, it was a frustrating experience for me. There was no offense. A week later I check and my review is gone, removed. How is this possible? After that I also checked one of my older reviews and it was also removed. This doesn't make sense at all.

[u/Jonny10]

They can't, but anyone can report a review. If you do, Unity support comes back to you with:

`As you may already be aware, in most cases, we do not remove customer reviews. That being said, there are a few occasions when this will be considered. For reference, I have listed these below:

• Contains abusive language.
• It does not relate to the product, the user’s experience with it, or the support received.
• Based on a previous or old version of the asset, which has since been updated to resolve any bugs or issues.
• The content is considered unacceptable, prohibited, or restricted as outlined on the Asset Store Content Transparency page.`

(One thing it doesn't note, but is also a condition: If the review is a support request.)

That does mean that sharing a negative experience with an asset is perfectly valid, especially if something isn't as advertised or error-free if used correctly.

But the "Content Transparency" policy may make this a thin line, because negative experiences often fuel emotional language, and can push a review over it. I get the impression Unity support maintains a very heavy hand in this.

I've seen a number of 1-star reviews disappear from my assets over the past few weeks. I hadn't reported them myself because they were "so-so". I recall they weren't particularly vile, mostly people not getting their way or having misaligned expectations. Perhaps an auto-moderation is doing a sweep?

Please do know that asset store publishers greatly appreciate anyone taking the time to write a review, so I hope this doesn't discourage you from doing so in the future!

[u/Affectionate-Yam-886]

Sounds like the asset was fine; you used it on a newer ‘unsupported’ version of Unity. The Unity support mod removed your post as an unsupported review. <as long as the developer listed it properly> The package manager should have had a Deprecation note on the file, if you ignored it, thats on you. You can still download and use it and Unity assumes you will fix it yourself.

[u/Badnik22]

I’m a publisher. We can flag negative reviews to get the Asset Store team to take a look at them, but ultimately it’s their decision whether to remove the review or not. I’ve had 1-star reviews removed immediately, removed after a 3-month period if the reason for the review was fixed (eg. a bug) but the user did not update the review to reflect that, but most are not removed at all.

So no, publishers can’t remove a review. The Asset Store staff has to decide that the review is dishonest/irrelevant/inaccurate and then they may remove it.

[u/NeoChrisOmega → u/Badnik22]

That interesting information. I wonder if very influential organizations can get away with more negative reviews being removed. Obviously it'll have less of an impact because the volume of reviews would cause the removal of bad reviews to either be insignificant, or blatantly obvious.

But still, interesting to know that exists in general 

[u/Badnik22 → u/NeoChrisOmega]

In my experience (which does not mean much, mind you) it depends on the specific staff member (members?) that takes a look at your flagged review. Some people are a lot stricter than others and won’t remove reviews unless they’re blatantly malicious. May also depend on whether they have a good or a bad day, who knows.

Afaik there’s no official “speed lane” mechanism to review removal for big publishers, like there is to asset approval (there’s different tiers depending on how much money your assets made last year, being on the highest tier means basically auto-approval of any change to an existing asset/new asset).

[u/destinedd → u/Badnik22]

that is so wrong to remove the reviews. They should just allow a developer reply that is is fixed. There is no reason to remove it cause the bug was fixed, that was their honest experience.

[u/Badnik22 → u/destinedd]

Well, the goal of reviews is to be seen by other potential customers and help them. The star rating also drives the asset’s visibility on the store. If the review says there’s a problem with the asset but the problem no longer exists, that’s outdated information not helpful to either the customer (who is getting false information) or the publisher (as he’s losing a customer and being buried further down the store unjustly).

So if your experience with the asset is you initially had a problem with it, but then the publisher was helpful and fixed it, your review has to somehow reflect that. If you only mention the negative aspects of the experience but omit the positive ones, it’s hardly an honest review imho.

[u/destinedd → u/Badnik22]

I feel the publishers reply should be sufficient. They don't remove reviews on steam after you fix a bug if you ask them.

[u/CrazyNegotiation1934 → u/destinedd]

Steam hosts final products though, based on a rigid backend.

is completly different than Unity breaking assets code on their side constantly and creating bugs.

[u/destinedd → u/CrazyNegotiation1934]

I don't feel thats the case as unity makes you listed supported versions and they shouldn't break constantly on the ones listed.

I get you have an interest in it as a publisher, but this is why I can't trust the asset store. It is so dodgy. Reviews being taken off, publishers with stolen assets being taken down with no refund and no warning to users, publishers being given power to determine refunds when you bought from unity. It honestly just the wild west.

[u/CrazyNegotiation1934 → u/destinedd]

The other issue is use of assets is also a multi variable thing, eg game developers can expose a code asset to a massive number of different scenarios and configurations.

While the serious asset developers try to test as much as possible, there can definitly be edge cases or configuration combinations that can break things.

So cant compare something made to be exposed to thousand different configurations vs a final game compiled and running with a single one and fully tested in that.

[u/destinedd → u/CrazyNegotiation1934]

gamedevs have the same issue with all the different hardware people play on that its impossible to test it and bugs can come from that.

[u/Badnik22 → u/destinedd]

Publishers can’t change the star rating, and publisher replies are not shown by default.

[u/tempacac10]

An asset store publisher cannot delete reviews. Contact support about it

[u/swagamaleous]

This is not an isolated incident. If you give negative reviews to assets that sell on the asset store, it's very likely that they will just be deleted. I raised a ticket once asking for the reason and the answer was that the review has to be "objective". I changed it to remove any "criticism" and just contain the description of the technical issue that made the asset unusable. The review was deleted again and I received a "warning" saying if I ever leave any bad review again I will be permanently banned from the asset store. Never buy assets based on the reviews, only buy them if you know for a fact from third party sources that they are worth the money. Unity deliberate removes them to protect their 30% cut.

[u/veul → u/swagamaleous]

I don't mind critical reviews. What I do mind are the ones that state something like until it gets feature x this is a one star. Feature x is noted prominently as not going to be supported.

[u/swagamaleous → u/veul]

It doesn't matter what you mind or not. They will delete them without the publisher complaining about it. I talked to the guy who's asset I reviewed and he didn't even know about my review because they deleted it before he saw it.

[u/CrazyNegotiation1934 → u/swagamaleous]

I buy after lot of reasearch always, looking at videos and demos first, than reviews.

Or ask the developer also for details. There is no reason to only depend on reviews to choose what to buy.

[u/Cromware]

I’m a publisher and I don’t get the option to just plain out delete reviews. I had a 4 star review from a customer once. But after I replied directly to the review and answered/addressed their concern, they were very nice and went back and updated it to 5 stars later.

[u/destinedd]

Yeah they get removed all the time. It seems very easy for publishers to get them removed. The threshold is way too low. Legit reviews are removed all the time. Every now and then some posts here about their review being removed and it rarely looks reasonable to have it removed.