the short answer is no, pointing to asset store means you know nothing about the whole "asset flipping" industry.

yes, there is an entire industry around "asset flipping", "reskin", or let's just say "piracy"  of commercial games.  fully automatic pipelines with hundreds people copy games, from concept, game mechanisms, game data, to reverse engineering code, asset stripping, etc. and it's a very profitable industry producing a lot of profit and employing a lot of people. And it has nothing to do with unity or asset store, while at the same time being very evil and insidious. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I guess that answers that then.

Very surprised that nobody finds the idea of selling games this way to be sketchy.    And no- I don't know much about asset flipping as an industry.

Are we all just ok with shovelware and asset flips then?  I mean, shrugging it off and saying it's steams problem just shifts the blame from one place to another, and calls it a non-problem.

5 hours ago, Kylotan said:

The only complaints I see from people about 'unworthy' games being on Steam are from other devs who are angry that being on Steam is no longer a guarantee to get eyeballs on your game

Are we not the appropriate people to be discussing it then?  We're those devs.  We're the ones who have to fight for those eyeballs.  It directly impacts us.

5 hours ago, Kylotan said:

or from Gamergaters who demand that only the 'right' kind of games make it onto 'their' platforms

I don't think this is helpful to the conversation at all- all you're saying is that if someone has an opinion different then yours then they must be one of those terrible gamergater-types.

5 hours ago, Kylotan said:

Having some shovelware buried on page 7 of a search on Steam has never impeded me from finding or buying what I want

What about mobile app stores that are so full of garbage that it's barely worth trying to find decent games on a phone?  I don't think it's fair to say that gaming doesn't have a problem with shovelware, asset flips, derivative cash grabs, etc.  It's not just steam - all of the stores are full of garbage, IMO.

Sure, I can understand leaving Unity itself out of the discussion - but I'm surprised to hear so many "it's not a real issue" comments.

1. asset flipping games using, well, shovelwares have no value, such way makes little or no money(apart from the Steam feature/bug with trading card). Players simply ignore them.

2.most "garbage" games are not asset flips, but they are diligently made, hand crafted. but still less than playable, especially compare to commercial grade game.

3.even decent( commercial grade), or even excellent games find it very difficult to reach intended audience, last time I checked it costs something like 5-10 USD to get just one download. 

4. true asset flipping games are usually produced with higher quality than...average indie game, even carefully produced ones, simply because they have so much financial and manpower.

so yeah, I guess it's really not a problem

if you are a player find garbage unbearable, there are all kinds of ads and recommendation , curator sites for you to find good games

if you are a producer trying to make good game but worried about being out-competed by asset flipping games, you are right, but these are made by professionals, not someone who buys on asset store.  And to win against them you simply have to do better.

22 hours ago, trjh2k2 said:

Some of them claim to be for educational purposes, but why would you include a complete, polished, full featured game with ads

Unity's ads is a pain and honestly I downloaded a example file so I could review how it's suppose to be setup.

These complete games are perfect learning tools for someone who wants to see how it works and unlike the tutorials videos and web pages is more up to date with changes to Unity. Unity makes ridicules changes for no reason.

18 hours ago, trjh2k2 said:

So we're just absolving Unity of any role in the practice....?

Unity has no legal responsibility to stop asset flips and doing so would cost them money.

They would have to pay money(maintenance) to loose money(there cut from the sale) and there would be no gain from it and could even be backlash from developers who use the asset store. It's easy to see why Unity doesn't dare change things.

19 hours ago, trjh2k2 said:

They created the environment where terrible games can be easily made by purchasing big chunks of work and slapping them together.  Legit question - Does any other engine do this?

The only thing Unity did was provide people with a beginner friendly engine. That's the thing about people who asset flip, they are new developers who are desperate.

I in counter the type all the time, a new developer who just quits his job because they don't like it then go into indie development because some website somewhere told them its easy. The new developer spends a month or so and learns the hard truth: it's easy to make a game but hard to make a good game.

Financial pressure gets to them and they either sell what bad game they made or buy a better game and try to sell that.

So if you want to blame someone for the bad games on steam and the stores you can blame the people who go around telling people that they can quit there jobs to make games.

A good example of how few developers actually want to sell asset flips is how small of the percentage of games on steam is asset flips. It wasn't even a 1% last time I checked and I think it's less now as many of the ones I know about has been removed.

Unreal has almost no asset flips even when it has assets in the store that can be exploited as such. Most new developers who try Unreal abandon it in a few days, so it has the least amount of new developers. It also has the least amount of asset flips.

I am not saying there isn't people out there hoping to make a quick money, just that most of them don't start out that way.

Also the bad games on steam only hurts buyers who dive into the indie game part looking for games. To find a asset flip you have to really go searching for one.

1 hour ago, bonfireKaka said:

yes, there is an entire industry around "asset flipping", "reskin", or let's just say "piracy"  of commercial games.  fully automatic pipelines with hundreds people copy games, from concept, game mechanisms, game data, to reverse engineering code, asset stripping, etc. and it's a very profitable industry producing a lot of profit and employing a lot of people. And it has nothing to do with unity or asset store, while at the same time being very evil and insidious. 

Re-skinning is where a developer foolishly thinks they will make money by selling the same game many times with small differences. Don't get me wrong you can earn some money that way, but the effort you would put into it could have earned you more money as a waiter.

If you ever read online a post with someone starting with "If only I had know..." it's a scam. The people who re-skin the games charge more than a developer would ever make with a re-skinned game. You would need to do the work manually to profit from it and again that amount of work and skill could earn you much more money than re-skinning can.

"Are we all just ok with shovelware and asset flips then?" I'm okay with there being crappy things out there that I don't want to buy, yes.

"We're the ones who have to fight for those eyeballs.  It directly impacts us." Sure it does, so we have to ensure our work is more appealing, gets better reviews, delivers more value. I don't think trying to exclude things we don't like from marketplaces is the answer.

"What about mobile app stores that are so full of garbage that it's barely worth trying to find decent games on a phone?" Lots of people are happy with the games available on their mobile device. They may not be the same type of game you want to play. You're going to have to come up with a more objective argument, because right now you seem to be asserting that things are broken without providing proof it is so.

"all you're saying is that if someone has an opinion different then yours then they must be one of those terrible gamergater-types." Well, I was talking about what I see, which is slightly different from attempting to label the people I don't see. But I'm being completely honest in that all the arguments have been either:

1. "I want fewer games on Steam because I want my game to get a better chance of success" (from someone who, strangely, assumes that their game will obviously be okay)
2. "I don't want these games on Steam because I have strong opinions about which games are important".

I have little sympathy for the former, as open marketplaces are better in general, and no sympathy for the latter, because the existence of clones and simple games doesn't crowd out or somehow damage the 'core' games or their audience.

If someone can produce evidence that there are a large number of these games are consistently making it to the front pages of Steam or soaking up revenue that might have gone to better games, I might amend my stance. But I'm not seeing that.

11 minutes ago, Kylotan said:

because the existence of clones and simple games doesn't crowd out or somehow damage the 'core' games or their audience.

This is the most important fact isn't it. All these half made games are just killing the half made games.

The good indie games really worth playing do a lot more than just gamble there chances on being found on the app store. All of the good indie games I bought on steam are games I found out about elsewhere.

8 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

All these half made games are just killing the half made games.

I disagree though.  I often end up avoiding indie games because it's very difficult sometimes to tell the difference between a legit effort and shovelware- and I can't be the only one.  There are people who just open up whatever store and browse around- those are lost sales if you lose their confidence that random cool-looking icons and screenshots on their phone aren't going to waste their time.  I do think shovelware damages the market.  Maybe not in an extreme way, but I don't think it's zero effect.

Edit- an example, take something like Tilt-To-Live.  I'd see that icon, go "looks kinda cool", try it out, and I ended up paying for it.  I wouldn't even bother anymore in todays version of the app store.

22 minutes ago, trjh2k2 said:

Edit- an example, take something like Tilt-To-Live.

Wait what???

Did you get some kind of knockoff version of it or something?

I mean over a thousand people liked it, wouldn't call that a bad game.

^ You misunderstood.  I like that game.  My point is that I would not take a chance on similarly cool looking games anymore because I expect shovelware now.

1 hour ago, trjh2k2 said:

  My point is that I would not take a chance on similarly cool looking games anymore because I expect shovelware now.

1 hour ago, trjh2k2 said:

I wouldn't even bother anymore in todays version of the app store.

My apologies I didn't get what you where saying, I am a android user. Even my own games I focused on android and did not know apple changed how the store works.

You are correct with apple changing the store to remove info that other stores provide does make things a bit harder. You can still see if a game is good by checking the total rating and the amount of reviews.

This is more of a store problem than a asset flip problem. To fix it spam apple with complaints.