I’ve bought a lot from the Uni­ty Asset Store, and it quick­ly became appar­ent that I need­ed to be mind­ful of cer­tain things — you don’t want to be buy­ing a dead/ unsup­port­ed asset that won’t work with the ver­sion of Uni­ty you’re using (or with future ver­sions). When decid­ing whether or not to buy some­thing from the asset store, I use this list to help me decide:

- What is the rating?

Obvi­ous rea­sons here, if it’s rat­ing is 4 or 5 (even 3 if the description/ screen­shots look like they’re what you’re after) stars con­tin­ue research­ing this asset.

- What do the reviews say?

It’s always use­ful to read the reviews, you get to see how good some­thing actu­al­ly is. Any prob­lems will prob­a­bly be post­ed here too, which gives you the chance to see how respon­sive the pub­lish­er is with sup­port­ing the asset. It could also be why the asset is sit­ting at 4 stars, instead of 5, but might not both­er you … for exam­ple, “doc­u­men­ta­tion not good enough/ non-exis­tent” for a script asset, if you’re pro­fi­cient enough with cod­ing this won’t both­er you, but if you’re a begin­ner this asset prob­a­bly won’t be for you (yet).

- When was it last updated?

This one is more rel­e­vant for script­ing assets, the old­er they are the less sup­port they’re receiv­ing, which means they may not work with the newest ver­sions of Uni­ty and/ or become incom­pat­i­ble with future Uni­ty ver­sions (the next one? the one after that?). Art assets don’t have the same prob­lem, but still check the date the asset was last updat­ed and look for any reviews after that date to make sure there aren’t any issues.

- Is there a forum post you can read through to see how active the dev is?

Many devel­op­ers have a forum post on the offi­cial Uni­ty forums and use this as their sup­port sec­tion, here you can see how active the devel­op­er is, what prob­lems oth­er buy­ers have had and if they’ve been fixed/ sort­ed in a time­ly fash­ion. It can give a good insight to what the asset is like before you buy.

- Is their a twit­ter account to do the same?

Here we’re main­ly look­ing to see if the dev is active online, if you can see they’re post­ing reg­u­lar­ly then you know they’re around for sup­port should you require it after pur­chase. You can also con­tact them here (or via email) before you buy to clear up any ques­tions you may have about their asset, don’t be afraid to ask most devs will hap­pi­ly respond in a time­ly fash­ion. If the pre­vi­ous points don’t pan out, but you still think you want the asset, It can be use­ful to con­tact them any­way to see how active they are, or if their still sup­port­ing it.

- What’s the sup­port web­site like?

The sup­port web­site link on the Uni­ty Asset Store will quite often link to the forum post, great! If it goes to an actu­al web­site, what’s it like? Again for script­ing, does it have doc­u­men­ta­tion on? How to guides? FAQ? Con­tact info (email/ con­tact form/ Twit­ter), if the asset is big enough does it have prop­er up to date doc­u­men­ta­tion (a good exam­ple is DOTween).

 

There’s cur­rent­ly a sale on the Uni­ty Asset Store, use the above info to arm your­selves before mak­ing a pur­chase! Click here to go to the asset store sale.

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