I'd argue the asset store was the beginning of the (very slow) end.
Before the asset store Unity's community was a hotbed of openly shared innovation.
The moment Unity gave people an easy way to slap together what would have been a quick post to the forums with a webplayer link, some code samples and a few paragraphs explaining it... into a paid package that sells for $5... that ended quickly.
And the worst part is, the skillset to manage a paid library is not the same one needed to develop some cool tech! There are so so many packages on the asset store that are practically abandoned, or poorly suited for integration into someone else's codebase (some people have no issue with warnings everywhere in their code for example...), or are poorly documented, or will break on any platform that wasn't the original dev's personal machine. The list goes on.
-
I don't have anything against indie game devs making money, I know the struggle of slaving away at something and ending up broke for your trouble... but I really wish the asset store had been restricted to game assets like 3D models, sounds, etc.
It's not like people wouldn't be able to sell their code then either. It's just before the asset store if you wanted to create a paid distributed library, the inertia you'd have to overcome was a pretty good filter against low-effort attempts. There were still successful libraries that were worked on full time and sold as products
Before the asset store Unity's community was a hotbed of openly shared innovation.
The moment Unity gave people an easy way to slap together what would have been a quick post to the forums with a webplayer link, some code samples and a few paragraphs explaining it... into a paid package that sells for $5... that ended quickly.
And the worst part is, the skillset to manage a paid library is not the same one needed to develop some cool tech! There are so so many packages on the asset store that are practically abandoned, or poorly suited for integration into someone else's codebase (some people have no issue with warnings everywhere in their code for example...), or are poorly documented, or will break on any platform that wasn't the original dev's personal machine. The list goes on.
-
I don't have anything against indie game devs making money, I know the struggle of slaving away at something and ending up broke for your trouble... but I really wish the asset store had been restricted to game assets like 3D models, sounds, etc.
It's not like people wouldn't be able to sell their code then either. It's just before the asset store if you wanted to create a paid distributed library, the inertia you'd have to overcome was a pretty good filter against low-effort attempts. There were still successful libraries that were worked on full time and sold as products