I am an Elite Author, member for last 5 years. Since last 6 month, Customer Service & Author Experience is deteriorated day by day. Tickets are pending since last 1 month, Nulled items are available everywhere (Envato encourages to upload frequent updates but each & every new update is made available on nulled website), License terms are not clear & much more. Any author facing similar experience with Envato?
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Tickets are pending since last 1 month
Envato has been struggling to manage support tickets for the last few years, but it is pretty bad right now. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that their support team has remained quite small despite the author and customer base growing significantly (and rapidly!)
We must also keep in mind that a lot of companies are struggling with support queues right now.
Nulled items are available everywhere (Envato encourages to upload frequent updates but each & every new update is made available on nulled website)
To be fair, this isn’t really a problem with Envato. As the sole copyright owner, it’s your responsibility to enforce your copyright and battle piracy. We can’t expect Envato to monitor or enforce the copyright of every author; it would be impossible at this scale.
But enforcing copyright is hard, time-consuming, expensive, sometimes even impossible. Adobe has put tremendous time and money into fighting piracy, yet every new update of their software is put on nulled sites as well. 
License terms are not clear & much more
What exactly isn’t clear?
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Envato only allows to sell full developer source code. Some user purchase it and then put it on nulled website. Atleast Envato should allow to sell encrypted source code with a propert tag “Encrypted Item”. Those who are willing to purchase can go for it. (Adobe is not offering its developer source code anywhere). Your purchase verification is not useful in such cases.
The license terms are not clear. Users buy regular license in their name, install it on multiple locations & even charge their customers. There is no clear description of use of license term.
I personally reported 25+ such instances, not a single action is being take against the user account by Envato.
Envato only allows to sell full developer source code. Some user purchase it and then put it on nulled website.
CodeCanyon is a platform for selling source code. Developers who use that platform to sell entire applications, scripts, and plugins are still selling source code. If your intention is to sell an application and not source code, you’ll need to find an alternative marketplace.
Atleast Envato should allow to sell encrypted source code with a propert tag “Encrypted Item”.
You mean encoded code, not encrypted code. The difference is that encoded code (e.g. Zend Guard) can be decoded. The problem here is that reviewers won’t be able to see the source code.
Adobe is not offering its developer source code anywhere
That’s correct. And despite that, it’s still among the most pirated software in the world. If something executes, it can be analyzed, manipulated, disassembled, or reverse engineered. Your script connects to an API for activation? Well, let’s see, I’ll just write a small open source program that performs a local MITM attack to intercept that API call and… boom, we’re activated! That took 10 minutes.
Users buy regular license in their name, install it on multiple locations & even charge their customers. There is no clear description of use of license term.
“A single end-product, for which users cannot be charged” is quite clear to me. I do wish that these terms were displayed more clearly on item pages - currently, you have to click the “regular license” label to see the terms.
But ultimately, any time you have a customer who is misusing the license, it’s not a case of them misunderstanding the terms, but rather a case of intentional abuse or carelessness. It really falls on you to enforce the licenses.
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Unfortunately, everything is going from bad to worse.
Envato “legalized” the blackmail and that’s one of the most stupid things because you don’t lose money, but time as well.
The blackmail works just like this:
- The buyer asks for support (in case he need it)
- The buyer writes a bad review
- The buyer asks for refund … for some funny reason
And the author has to deal with this: 1. accept the refund and get rid of the bad review or 2. Keep the bad review and the money.
Of course, 99% of the authors accept the refund request to get rid of the bad review.
The good news is that such buyers are really easy to be recognized.
The bad news, Envato knows that and don’t do anything for authors.
And of course, we know why Envato don’t give a … for this matter. Because there will always be authors that will accept the situation 
Envato removes blackmail reviews if you contact them. There’s plenty of posts from customers on the forums complaining about their review being “censored” to support that.
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I understood that Envato is platform for selling source code, but what if an author reports that regular license of source (without any modification i.e. as-is the Envato item) is being sold as it is to any other customer by an Envato buyer? Can’t Envato take any action in such cases against their buyer?
Since we are selling the item on Envato Marketplace and know this license term, we understood that the buyer is also familiar with this license term. But the buyer keeps misusing the license just because Envato don’t take any action against its buyer. Is it again responsibility of Author? If yes, then kindly allow a button for us to select to which customer we want to sell & not to sell.
Regarding your MIMT attack, why you need any such attacks when you can simply comment out those lines which verifies purchase. That’s the reason I said that the purchase verification is not useful in any case.
Everything that is 1-star rating followed by a refund request is blackmail man
The message: “this theme is ugly” or “the code is poor” is blackmail. It doesn’t sound like blackmail and it will never be removed by Envato.
Buyers can give 1-star ratings and ask for a refund, if the refund is accepted then the 1-star rating will be removed. If the review will be removed what is the point to write them in the first place?
Buyers should choose between rating and refund request.
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Yes, I don’t get any 2,3,4 star now in last 12 months. Either I get 5 star rating or I get 1 star rating.
Again, many authors on the forums can confirm this is not the case. They make an effort to remove such reviews. You really can’t say they “legalized” it.
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That’s why I quoted that word.
What kind of sad person are you, if you write something that you know will be removed later?
Are you a person that likes writing?
C’mon, are we trying to find the elephant in the room?
They don’t typically know that it will be removed later.
Check this out: https://forums.envato.com/search?q=Review%20removed
Envato can’t remove them all - they have to try to mediate - but you cannot come on here and say they “legalized” blackmail when it’s clear to us all that this is untrue.
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Everything I said is well known by Envato. Plus, this is not something new.
If you can prevent blackmail by making a simple option but you don’t want to do that, the word “legalized” is legit used.
You want proofs, ok: https://imgur.com/a/L8ocP4N
“You have 24 hours…” - Blackmail, big time.
This does not look like blackmail but it is 100% blackmail: https://imgur.com/a/z6tFlf5
Actually I didn’t answer on the same day, I answered in the first hour
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Have you contacted support? They would 100% remove that review (provided the same screenshots)
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Such a review: “zero code-quality” will NEVER be removed by Envato. Because that does not violate any of their terms.
Ok, you can ask “why is that a blackmail?”
The answer is simple: because after a few minutes it was followed by a refund request!
And still, why is that a blackmail?
Because after a few days I got threats like: “I’ll find you and I’ll kill you” :)))
Is it blackmail now??
Envato support is the best! And I don’t know why they should always fix Envato’s biggest problems.
I’m tired honestly to contact the support, I did it before (many times) and I was hoping that Envato will stop allowing 1-star rating followed by a refund request in the end (“blackmail” as I named it previously).
In the end: If I leave the market, another 10 authors will join it. That’s why authors will never be a priority That’s why problems like preventing blackmail will not be resolved soon.
Thanks for your answers.
You are right @shadyro , I had to remove one of my item from envato , due to same kind of blackmailing. Even my product was running good with all 5 star ratings till that time ( http://prntscr.com/thpfo8 ). Envato not doing anything for authors.