Recently I discovered I had a bunch of complaints written on a couple of my store products which dated from April and running up till now, all berating me for media which was broken by the Public preview released back then. Instead of sending me a ticket which I would have seen right away as I receive no notification of 'reviews' on store products, some folks simply used the review process to complain about me not updating assets for such a long time.
I would like to make it clear that store products must work in the last Offical Release only and with such a long time span between Preview and Official release that it isn't our fault as store Artists that users had to wait so long for a fix, my hands are tied with this. With a complete change in the graphics pipeline it wouldn't have been possible anyway with some products till things settled in and I could be sure what shader requirements were needed.

To TGC if you release a Public Preview please make it clear that media may and probably will be broken if users install and that they should stick with the Official Release if actually building a game to prevent issues, it should also be made clear that they are Beta and not full release.

To store Admins since it appears you approve reviews you could at least let a store artist know if complaints are being made on products and if they are during Public Previews then you could at least maybe post a comment yourselves to that effect rather than letting it roll for months like this. After all it's your rules and you could have said something to these users, even better send me a notification of some kind for so called reviews that are complaints so I can be aware they have been posted on my products. I have too many items to be trawling through every one of them every day to catch reviews like this.

To reiterate, store products must work in last Official Release ONLY.

Absolutely agree Rolfy, there's no point fixing something to work in public preview, because a couple of days down the line something else can change and you'll have to start all over again. I tend to stop making models for GameGuru completely while a really big update that can effect entities is being worked on.

Also, I always get an email when there's a comment/review on one of my models.

Absolutely agree …
There should also Never be complaints about the Public Preview IMHO ... Only reports
That's what previews are for … Feedback to help it become an official release

I have never seen a single one and the only 'reviews' I have on my products are these complaints, it may be that these notifications have been sent to the spam folder but find it odd that I checked several other products and those had no reviews whatsoever so it appears reviews are rare.
It also shows for me that all products have zero sales on product pages, lots of little glitches, but it's a trivial point the fact is I am not responsible for not updating store product till Official Release and it would have been nice if Store admin had pointed out their own rules, these users even stated they were using Preview.
I am not even sure the so called 'Monster update' is official particularly since they just released a patch called a 'Public Preview' which is an automatic download setting things back to this grey area again.

The main reason is so that users who purchased store items don't find them broken by store updates for a beta, any changes to media will break for the majority who don't use beta's or previews. And as you say things can change rapidly during beta stages.

considering the public preview is only obtainable under the "beta" tab i would say it's pretty self explanatory that it's a "beta"... but you can't reason with the stupidity of some (not you rolfy)

you do great work so naturally you will get more customers than some... the stats do appear to work as far as i can tell, in general there aren't many reviews.
it is a difficult decision for you and especially true with the recent changes because it has effected models and such perhaps more than any other update has or will do again due to it's very nature... but i would say if it works in the official release then your job is done.

as for reviews... well that's just how it is right? people tend to be more inclined to leave reviews or comments if they have a reason to do so and if everything is working then they don't need anything whereas if it's broken they will leave a review in the hopes it will get fixed.


it is the normal (not beta) build, yes.
there is a beta update in the news yes but it is not part of the official release yet, just a preview of the next update.

It is actually store rules and policy and I agree with it since you got to have some sort of rules lol. You aren't allowed to change store media for Beta's most of the confusion is caused by TGC naming these beta's as Public Previews so users aren't clear on what they are installing to confuse things further they now call it 'Monster update' whats next?..

I am not really going to get onto users here, store admins know the rules and yet they let this go on for months without saying anything in response to complaints though they took the time to approve them. If it was the Artist error they wouldn't have been slow in pulling these items from sale or at least contacting the Artist to demand a fix before they do. This is entirely store rules and my hands are tied but no one said anything to me, it was pointed out by someone who did the right thing and raised a ticket.

I haven't put up anything new on the store for probably nearly 2 years. Mainly because updates keep breaking stuff and frankly it is a pain in the rear to have to keep fixing things. It's not as if I make a living off it, it's just some pocket money which I normally spend on other game dev stuff anyway.
It is unfair to blame artists for things being broken by GG updates really. The simplest solution of course is to remove the offending items completely, but I then think of all the people who have purchased them in the past and if they need to re-install then they won't be available on the store anymore. So, I have always fixed any issues when they crop up so far.
If you check out the Unreal and Unity stores, there's plenty of stuff which only works in specific versions and they don't get updated to newer ones. Perhaps we need to go that route as well at some point.
I wasn't even aware there were reviews now. Shows how much I check out the store. I check for messages every so often and that's about it of late.

To be honest there is not enough GG users left to really worry about this.
I thought the store was not part of TGC anymore so this is not their problem.

Actually one customer complaint is a problem for any business, and TGC store is exactly that, I don't have any figures personally for GameGuru users and highly doubt anyone outside of TGC knows either, so can't throw numbers around...still... as I say there are still enough to cause headaches for store artists. If you really think this isn't TGC's problem then consider the fact that most users will certainly use the store or do we think they will only ever use stock and TGC can ignore that, whatever purchasers think. It reflects on their product...yes? The problem TGC are causing is by releasing beta's gift wrapped as so called public previews . Perhaps that has no meaning for someone with no store products, but for which I and others are held responsible.

It isn't a question of being unable to update product, some of which has been purchased by a lot of users past and present, but of inability due to store product rules, if it were made clearer that public previews will likely break things and if you don't want that then either roll back to official or wait, both by TGC and the store, then problem will go away. I know that occasionally Lee will state this in a forum post but it isn't enough since most will just go download and don't actually read.
I could easily say screw it and withdraw it all from sale but that isn't the coolest thing to do no matter how many users their are now.

I still get steady sales, so I think the user base is not too bad. GG is really improving of late and I think store sales reflect this. I agree about not just removing items as I think anyone who have no issues have the right to be able to download their prior purchases. Backwards compatibility has always been a big thing with TGC and GG so really they should update any old DX9 shaders with an equivalent DX11 one. That way most issues would not exist. I do however recognise updates take time and am always willing to wait for this to happen. Many people these days however have zero patience and expect things right now. A sign of the times perhaps.

Yep spoiled gamer's. Or in this case? Spoiled game maker's. I like Rolfy's stuff. Even if it does break because of an update. It hasn't happened to me. I bought the boat scripts. And their awesome! Go Rolfy......>

I support the concept and ideas of the original poster. I will say one thing though...


In their defense, I didn't know there was an option to submit a ticket to an artist until reading this post.

For me personally I'm always trying to keep up with what is the most popularly version among GG users. So when that's even the beta I'm updating for the beta. But you technically dont have to do this by contract.

Based on what ? It would be unprofessional to share sales information publicly, but based on information on hand, it's very much alive.
Unique sales and new users entirely contradict what you are saying. Personally I am planning on upgrading or revamping content in the future as there is an overwhelming demand for it.

I am unable to do so right as I am working on a Mega content project for the past 6 odd months which I would like to complete entirely before moving on to store assets.The next will confirm the store has at least 600-800 sales a month, with a fair number of that being unique sales and with winter approaching means indoor activities, which sees quite a bit of sales increases in general.

So while I appreciate the comment, it is baseless, with no physical evidence to suggest otherwise.

On Steam, GameGuru has roughly 4 times the total and three times the daily / weekly ACTIVE userbase of Leadwerks.

Just saying.

And just to point out like me I work 99% of the time offline, I go on steam once a week, get game updates, and go offline again, nor am I exclusive in this practice, there is really no need to be constantly connected to steam.

It is store rules that items work in the last Official release only, I reckon there would be even more complaints if changes were made for Beta's and broke things for previous versions.
My problem here is that there is no kind of disclaimer for this on the store pages and Public Previews are released which are in fact Beta's but for some reason named differently leading users to think store products should keep up with these.
Store Admins are aware of their own rules but chose to approve these complaints without comment, one user even said they reported it on github and were told they should contact the Artist for an updated 'script' which I have two problems with, one is that I have no intention of keeping up with several changes during Beta's and the second is that it wasn't a 'script' issue but a shader one, which I had no control over at the time. If someone raises a ticket with me I have done my best to help out but it isn't always possible.

The long period during the DX11 update made all this worse than it should have been and store vendors were left with the short end of the stick since they couldn't update product even if they wanted to.

If product isn't updated for an official release then it can and should be removed from sale. this doesn't remove it from download by previous purchasers they can still access it, though there may be no point if it doesn't work but as with other engines that are always updating the user can stick with the working version. Of course this doesn't really work with GG which isn't really in a complete enough state yet but thats how it's done with Unity/Unreal.

Some interesting points in this thread and as always I am happy to respond, I will respond totally as the owner of the store in this case so nothing I say is coming from TGC.

The official policy is that media marked as supporting GameGuru only needs to support the latest stable version, this is the version that users should be using to develop games (although I know many do not). When all sellers sign up to the store they agree to support existing media through updates made to the engine, this is so customers get a good level of support for the item they have purchased, you only ever have to support that latest version not all GameGuru versions and you can also remove your items from sale at any time if you no longer wish to support the items and as long as there are no recent sales you can end support after a certain amount of time.

It is out of the control of the store, as to the amount of breaking changes that the GameGuru team introduce with each update and any media that breaks as a result of an update should be logged as a bug on GitHub, unless the team have indicated that the change was intentional.

While some users see GameGuru as a declining products from the stores perspective we are not seeing that. Since GameGuru has moved to GitHub we have seen an increase on sales each month with average order value increasing as well, which are all good signs for sellers and the store. We would actively encourage users to continue to sell quality media on the store, we have had a growing list of non-GameGuru users also purchasing media for other purposes.

Now onto the topic of store comments, I have seen these referred to as "reviews" these certainly are not meant to be reviews, that is something we wanted to avoid. There is no form of rating or positive/negative marker assigned to the comment a user leaves, it is meant to act as a small discussion area for the media. Think of it as a way for customers to ask questions and for sellers to answer them. It has been done this way to have as little impact on sales as possible while giving customers and sellers a voice. Of course if there are suggestions on how this can be improved those are welcome, I am very open with the way the store operates and if any seller wishes things to change in anyway or has ideas I am always open to change, remember the store only works if the sellers are happy!

At the moment whenever a customer leaves a comment the seller is always emailed to notify that a new comment has been left, it has worked this way since the system was added. On our end the systems indicate these are being sent so if they are not arriving I would suggest checking spam folders or adding "support@tgcstore.net" to your safe senders list. I am also working on adding a way of these notifications appearing on your seller dashboard but that has been delayed due to the fact I am getting married early September and have had very limited time.

When you receive a comment if you feel it is unfair you can choose to report the comment and a member of staff will review it and remove if they feel it breaks any rules or is unfair. However we don't normally remove comments that politely ask for fixes, ask for what versions are supported or similar. This is because the system is treated as comments/questions from customers not as reviews of the product.

It should also be noted that while some comments are moderated not all are and customers with a certain reputation or good sales history can skip the moderation process.

It is the responsibility of GameGuru users to understand that if they opt into a beta that anything and everything will break, when you download a beta this should be implied, at the store we never expect any product to work in a beta. We will never refund a product that doesn't work in a beta version of GameGuru and we won't accept blatant attacks targeted at artists as a result either.

I will subscribe to this thread and will reply to any questions you have for me so please hit me with it.

I do hope this means that items remain downloadable for those who had purchased them.

I also bought quite some assets from the store when it was possible through steam, certainly with the graphic engine overhaul it is quite clear that problems can occur but my trust is in the artists that they will update the items for compatibility.
Your store items are awesome Rolfy, these were on the top of my list, especially the interactive pack.

No not really .. Other stores don't
You buy a Model, download it and look after it …
Stores or artists can withdraw items at any time for many reasons .. Its up to you to look after them.

I've made a copy of the items, but that is outdated so i better make a new copy with updates which the artists have provided.

At the moment after an item is retired we continue to allow existing owners download the last version of the file. However we will not support retired items forever and they may be deleted in the future as stated on the website usage agreement. "Game Creator Store, does not guarantee permanent availability to asset downloads, you should always keep your own copies of purchased assets."

I remember asking way back about updated media and was told that assets must work ONLY in the last Official Update, your wording above comes across as a 'maybe' and confuses store vendors, I would prefer a more concrete answer to this. Far as purchasers go it is being thrown back as Artists responsibility when you say 'you only ever have to support that latest version not all GameGuru versions", when I feel it should be, "you must only support the latest Official version not all GameGuru versions". There are good reasons for this as I stated repeatedly above and there should be no grey areas about this.

It should be stated clearly on the store main page that Public previews/Beta's or whatever are not supported and will probably break media. Personally I have updated all media broken by the last updates to the engine (there were quite a few as I use a lot of custom shaders and thankfully a good few of these were updated by Preben as they became stock along the line in the past.
Some were not such an easy fix and would have required code fixes by Lee, who went on holiday just as I was looking into it so had to brute force some work in the modeling app. Sometimes the timing of these releases can lead to longer delays in getting updates to the store which leads to more frustrations across the board. I know you only want store concerns but this thread was concerning TGC as well so just throwing it out there. TGC please add the term 'Beta' into any releases which are not official.

These complaints spanned a period of three months which doesn't bode well if you plan to remove broken media not updated the artist,you seem to have missed all this as much as I did. It is also a little weird that as a store Artist I had to wait for my own review response to be approved.
I just realised my store account is linked to an old e-mail I used when signing up back in fpsc days and seem unable to change this, it won't enter any changes I try to make in the dashboard.

Actually they do for other game engines, it will be stated on the product description which versions it will work with, after a certain amount of updates if still isn't kept up by the artist then either they or the admins will set it 'deprecated'. After this it is still downloadable by previous purchasers, just removed from new sales.

I am unsure what wasn't concrete about my initial comment "media marked as supporting GameGuru only needs to support the latest stable version", it appears we are saying the same thing. The store only requires GameGuru media to work in the latest stable version. A stable version is the latest version officially released that is not a beta or pre-release. To provide the more concrete answer I will be updating the store pages with this information for users.



In this sentence I am referring to the latest stable version as outlined above this excludes betas and pre-releases. It is down to TGC to make sure users understand what is an isn't a beta or pre-release and what is the latest stable build.



This is not something we would feature prominently on a main page, however I will find a way of including this on product pages and also in the usage agreement so it can easily be found and understood.



It wasn't my intention to cut out any discussions regarding TGC, just pointing out my posts will be on behalf of the store not TGC in this case as I have a sort of dual role and they need separating at times.



As previously mentioned the comments are not complaints or reviews they are not used to remove broken media, they are discussions only. We were aware of the comments but we do not act on comments left on a product page unless a customer actually files a complaint with customer support.



Noted, this is something that will change, I am working on making it so artists always skip approval for comments.



This is likely because your account is linked with your old TGC profile and the email address is locked, if you can email me your new email to jason@tgcstore.net I will change it for you to make sure you get emails from us and we can get some of the others issues ironed out as well.

I appreciate you taking the time to give you comments on the store and the way it currently operates, like I mentioned before I want to sort out any issues.

These look a lot like complaints to me which are outright blaming me for things and recommending folks 'don't buy' my product perhaps I am just being touchy

I agree those specific examples are not what I would expect as constructive comments and as they were posted before that version was officially released I have chosen to remove them. It isn't fair to have comments like that on your products when they are great quality and users just didn't fully understand the problem was due to them using a beta version.

Please if there are any more which are like that hit the report button and I will review and get rid of any that are not suitable. There are hundreds of comments and I can't read them all but hitting report on any which have slipped through will really help get rid of the rubbish.

I have rejected a number of comments but obviously some that aren't great have slipped through, when mixed with you not getting your notification I can understand the frustration finding them this late.

Hopefully I am helping getting it sorted though

I have just released this page that outlines the stores stance on GameGuru media in a bit more detail https://www.tgcstore.net/gameguru-information

It is linked to on each store page, next to the text that indicates GameGuru support, it is linked on the usage agreement and it is linked on the refund policy.

I will work on further improvements as well, however I feel TGC also have a role to play in making it much clearer in beta versions that things may not work correctly. Users on the store quite often ignore text and just click buy based off the images alone the stats for clicks and time spent on certain parts of the pages show this, so however many notices we add the users will still complain when it doesn't work in beta versions.

You just helped a lot thanks, I reckon we haven't gotten the point across at first and I have simply sounded whiny, but it's all sorted now

I can only hope TGC see the point as well

Glad to hear that, drop me that email as well with your new email address and I will get your notifications working correctly. I can also send you an invite to the closed Discord group where you can get in direct contact with me very easily along with other sellers, optional of course but other sellers seem to like asking me for things .

There's a store discord? Is that why the forum isn't very busy over there? Never knew about that.

As to the Beta/preview issue. I'm not sure where people are getting confused, Public Preview quite clearly describes that it's not the official release, it's quite a common term in the gaming world, and regularly used to describe public open betas, especially with MMO's. Maybe Lee should call them Private Beta, Public Beta, and Live instead to avoid any confusion.