The FALL OF ENVATO's QUALITY: Why I think envato is not good anymore by

Envato Authors CodeCanyon
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This post may be a little quirky but hear me out. I been a loyal customer of envato since 2011, I bought a lot of things for my clients, friends or myself. We not only grew rapidly but also we grew in monthly revenue from business. Some products of envato are tremendous like avada, theme necter’s salient,
Last year We opened a mobile app/game development comapny, and start purchasing codecanyon’s mobile app source codes. we sometimes look for dev’s help to start the processs.

But for the last couple of months we feel like codecanyon is being filled with products that do harm to business than success. Products that are hard to reproduce, doesnt go to production, buggy codes, and stolen source codes are now a common thing in code canyon. When I asked for help from envato team this is their reply:
(Removed)

An author is not required to help it’s customer even though the product is buggy.

I will let other forum members be the judge of this post.

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I’m the author on CodeCanyon and recently one customer purchased my item, the game, and asked me politely to change the graphics, because they’re too pixalated. And he did purchase with the support and I do support the item, meaning bug fixes, but some other authors do not support their items which is an option when uploading an item if I recall correctly. So if authors do not support item it probably means they’re inexperienced / poor coders and don’t know how to fix bugs they’re fully aware of.

Now, I made graphics deliberately pixelated to look like old retro style handheld console game, but changing graphics is not bug fixing, it’s customization (re-skinning which falls onto buyer), so this doesn’t fall withing the scope of support. Support means only bug fixing if you find one and report back to the author with full details, if the item is supported by the author (written on the right side, if I recall correctly).

I didn’t want to waste my time on graphics, since everyone will reskin anyway, but I totally agree with you that 99% of authors release items of lesser quality, it’s because the incomes are lesser. I’m telling you from my perspective, what I earn here is pocket change, literally, so I’d rather spend 8 hours making a game of low quality since it’s going to earn me 1-2 meals or zero meals than to spend a month creating high-quality feature rich 100% original game which makes me $1500 on a freelance market and give it away here as a stock item for 15 bucks. Hopefully this makes sense to you.

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It’s hard to comment properly without knowing the full details of the item and the bug you feel is there, and what exactly you asked envato.

For what it’s worth I agree there have been some lower quality items appearing across the marketplaces but if we are realistic then this is always going to be the case when a marketplace (iTunes etc. were all the same) grows to the level envato has. In amongst millions of files for sale and tens if not hundreds of thousands of submissions every month it is inevitable that some will get through.

On the support question. Whether the author supports the item fully or not should be irrelevant when it comes to bug fixes.

The reply from envato makes it sound like what your message may have read like was more of a technical query rather than highlighting an issue?

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Well we know at least 11% of your buyers won’t reskin, so that might be worth looking into.

The incomes are only lesser if you release items of lesser quality!

Yeah, but if you’re giving it away for 15 bucks and you’re getting 100 sales… then that’s just the same as selling it for a much higher price, and still earning $1500. You can’t upload a low quality game (your words) and expect it to be a best seller. Have you considered that your high quality 100% original game has made $1500 because it’s high quality and 100% original… not because of how much it is and where you’re selling it?

But to the OP, yes, unfortunately authors have the option not to support their items. If the item is so buggy that it doesn’t actually work, then you should be entitled to a refund and the item should be removed from sale. I guess it depends on the issue though, but hopefully the author gets back to you.

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@SpaceStockFootage wrote: “Well we know at least 11% of your buyers won’t reskin, so that might be worth looking into.”

So, that one buyer that doesn’t like pixelated graphics, 11% of him won’t reskin. Good to know, I’ll keep that in mind.

@SpaceStockFootage wrote: “The incomes are only lesser if you release items of lesser quality!”

There are items of extremely high quality, not mine, but other authors, that earned zero, so I strongly disagree with you.

@SpaceStockFootage wrote: “Yeah, but if you’re giving it away for 15 bucks and you’re getting 100 sales”

I’ve been here more than a year, got the badge to prove it, and I only had 9 sales so far, made ~90 bucks, so what you’re saying sounds like a fairy tale which you repeat every time.

@SpaceStockFootage wrote: “Have you considered that your high quality 100% original game has made $1500 because it’s high quality and 100% original… not because of how much it is and where you’re selling it?”

That’s a custom game buyer provided specs for, and the price has been agreed upon, so the price is known and guaranteed. Same game would probably earn zero here or 1-3 sales at best as a stock item. It’s a different kind of market, exclusive one, that’s why the income is 100+ times larger. Envato market brings risk into play because nothing is guaranteed, not a single sale. And people on your market expect low prices, so putting the price that would reflect the work involved to make a $1500 game would only repel them.

This already happened to me on your market. I exclusively released the game that took me an effort to make, a $250 effort. I’ve put the price of $59, months were passing by, no sales, it was an exclusive item, like all of my items here. Eventually, a customer of mine asked me to make a game, it appeared very similar to what I already released on your market, excluding a few features. I showed him the demo, he accepted it, I deleted item from your market and sold him for $450. That’s the amount of money that item would not have made on your market in 30 years or ever since there were no sales for months.

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You’re missing my point. If you upload low quality stuff, you can only expect low sales. Your sales are low because you’re not uploading your best work, not because stuff doesn’t sell here. You have to speculate to accumulate, so why not spend a week on a great product rather than 8 hours. What have you got to lose?

The best mobile app here has made the author $62K in total sales value. The best game has made them $9K. So it is possible to make decent money, more than the $1.5K custom item… but not if you’re just whipping up any old thing and hoping it will sell.

I was making about $50 a month here when I started, but I didn’t think ‘$50 a month, what’s the point?!’, I continued to make more items and better items. Now I make $1600 on a bad month.

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And you missed me saying how there are items here, stock items, that are of high quality, not mine though (or should I say fortunately), that made zero.

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They’re probably pretty rare. But even if you have a 50% chance of getting no sales with a great item, you’re more likely to have a 100% chance of getting no sales with a low quality item.

What you’re essentially saying is that because there are good items here that have had zero sales, nobody should bother putting much effort in, right?

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@SpaceStockFootage wrote: “you’re more likely to have a 100% chance of getting no sales with a low quality item.”

I’m having more sales with low quality item than with item of higher quality.

@SpaceStockFootage wrote: “What you’re essentially saying is that because there are good items here that have had zero sales, nobody should bother putting much effort in, right?”

LOL, no. I’m saying I’m not going to bother putting much effort into any of my items, because so far, it just doesn’t work for me and I released lots of them, time wasted for me. And time is money.

EDIT: and you’re talking about old items of old times before the economic chaos. Sales are dropping, it’s factual. The game I sold for $1500 is the kind of game I’d get twice the money for just 7-8 years ago. So, there’s no doubt that economy is no longer what it used to be. People are poorer, I guess, and it reflects onto your market too.

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first of all I asked the author if He can give a support, But he never replied, So I asked the envato team to check on him why he is silent when it comes talking with the customer. I believe this is a business, Both client and envato side, In every business customer satisfaction is a crusial thing.

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If your request was regarding the author “giving support” then that may have been the issue.

If the author does not support their items (they are entitled to do this as long as they make it clear), then this would explain both the lack of response from the author and the reply given by envato.

Was it clear that your query esp. to envato themselves was not only about support but also regarding bugs in the item that meant it did not work properly?

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Yes I fully concent in saying that at first the app’s souce code wasnt working, We make it work for android 6.0 version, We asked the author, but due to his silence we started fixing the bug ourselves. I think it’s not the author’s problem about this rule. If he upload a product on the market he “should” support the product. Cause we are buying with money, not free. Envato should revise their rule.

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If the original item you bought (prior to attempting it for other platforms or adempting to bug fix) was broken then you may well be entitled to a refund.

It does sound like, from envato’s reply, that they at least interpreted the message to be about the lack of support more than bugs or anything else.

The “paying for items” argument around support doesn’t really work because if authors were not being paid then they would not create the items in the first place.

That aside:

  • for what it’s worth most authors do support their items

  • those who don’t usually have a very valid reason

  • as long as envato use the model they do i.e. they don’t own the copyright to files, then this is unenforceable on any author.

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I request your team to give us the full detail of quality issue. New authors like me, its difficult to find the reason. make the posting process easier.

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If the item is close to the standard then they will give you actionable feedback.

The only time they do not provide this is when the item is too far from the expected quality and providing feedback will not be actionable or relevant

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Why my Last upload failed in CodeCanyon quality check?

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Closing thread and moving to other one.