Awesome! Choose Your Own Inspector is now on the Asset Store. Link

A few days ago, I finally got an email reply from someone with the Unity Asset Store. They said that the content from this website was not visible to them, and that my submission was declined because of it. I immediately checked the site, and it seemed fine to me. Even from my phone over the cell network, it was fine. But, I checked it the next day from another location, and it wasn’t loading correctly. It turned out to be a bad .htaccess file.

I mean…couldn’t their initial email have told me exactly what was going on so that I could immediately resolve the issue? No, instead they sent a canned email which told me nothing. Three full days passed before the next email came, and I could actually take some kind of action! Far too long! And, yes, I did have to resubmit CYOI, essentially starting the process over, meaning probably two more weeks before I hear back again. That makes for a horrendous turnaround time! This whole process could use some streamlining.

Bad processes frustrate me to no end, which is why I started this little thing. There is simply no reason to keep a bad process when you could just as easily have a good one. For more interesting reading, see Wikipedia’s entry for Adhocracy. Maybe I’ll write a blog entry containing my thoughts on the matter sometime.

Unity declined my first submission of CYOI! Here’s the email:

Hi Imp Rock,

Thanks very much for your submission to the Asset Store.

‘Choose Your Own Inspector’ has been declined.

We are concerned about the level of your professional appearance online. We ask that you provide a link to a professional portfolio site to show your experience on your publisher page.  This is beneficial to establish yourself as a trustworthy seller to your user base.
If you’re a student or a start up publisher and don’t have a ready website yet, please provide a Linkedin profile, or Github account.

Kind regards,

The Asset Store Team

I had to look this up because it isn’t clear what is being asked for by the reviewer. Well, it turns out that this is a canned email response. Others have posted this exact text in various forums, including Unity’s own. Basically, this is the email that Unity sends when the asset author doesn’t provide a link to some “home” website. However, I did provide a link to a website. This website! It was in the asset description I submitted for CYOI. On top of that, the Asset Store Publisher account info requires a URL to your “publisher page.” It shows up on an asset’s store page as a link that says “Visit Publisher’s Website.” Well, that URL was already provided when I submitted JumpTo.

So, with the exact same data, JumpTo was already approved. Twice, now, in fact. And, of course, JumpTo has the same information provided as CYOI’s submission. If it worked for JumpTo, why would it not be acceptable for CYOI? I have no idea what the reviewer was thinking, but, as far as I can tell, there isn’t a problem. It seems obvious that what is described in that email isn’t relevant at all. If the reviewers are looking for a specific thing, then that specific thing needs to be specified. It just would have been nice to get some personalized feedback instead of the irrelevant canned email.

Other asset store publisher discussions said that uploading a new draft of the asset was in order, which puts the asset back into the approval queue. I’ve done that just now. Does this mean I have to wait another two weeks to hear back from Unity? It’s infuriating! I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t rely on asset store sales as a source of income.

Submitted on Oct. 5, actually. Still pending review.

On another note: I got an email today about 24 failed login attempts from somewhere else. This is new. Is it a brute force attack on improck.com? Why? No one even comes here but me! And spammers, I guess, but I’ve disabled comments.