Feedback to improve Galaxy Themes store

Galaxy Themes
1

Hello,

I’m Gabriel and I work as an indie theme designer at Galaxy Themes for about 3 years now.

I would like to share feedback and point things about the Galaxy Themes app store that deserves to be improved for a better theme development environment.

Keep in mind that my suggestions are only to enhance Galaxy Themes app store, the experience of who are developing themes and love to doing it and that think the services has a lot of growth potential.

Issue: Was noticed that some new designers are flooding the “New and Hot" section of Galaxy Themes app with more than 100+ themes posted in the last 2 weeks. (It had the “new” tag on them showing that the theme was posted no more than 2 weeks ago.)

Suggestion: Limiting the amount of themes that can be released daily/weekly/monthly or limiting the number of content that can be displayed per developer in the “New and Hot” section so all designers can have the same chances of being showcased.

My opinion: Remove the “New" section again is not a good option. This feature is very important (specially for new developers) and in the past, when Galaxy Themes app had a standalone “New” tab to showcase brand new content, my themes used to sell more than 100+ in the first week release. It’s was the best way to gain some organic exposure from new customers.

I know that in the past the “New" section was removed because some designers was taking advantage of the feature and flooding with lots of themes that didn’t had enough quality just to attract more customers attention, but the issue was the developers taking advantage of the feature and not the feature itself.

Issue: As the service doesn’t have a limit of content that can be released daily/weekly/monthly, some developers seems to have adopted the behavior of doing lots of themes with minimal or almost no changes just for the sake of making sales volume.

This makes the value of a designer who puts effort in its works seems null, because the customer gets lost in a sea of worthless content.

Suggestion: It would help if Galaxy Themes team could be able to analyze sellers who puts large content numbers in short amount of time and see if they are committed with bringing unique and diverse content to the store, as we signed a term saying we are committed to it.

This would organically improve the content quality, bringing so much more value to our work in general, making people inclined to purchase quality content.

My opinion:

Not having a limit of content that can be released daily/weekly/monthly, has caused some developers to stop worrying about quality and focus only on quantity.

This is harmful with those who works on bringing unique content to Galaxy Themes app, because in an environment that praises quantity, the ones that care only about releasing quality content would have to start putting quality aside to create a higher quantity of designs to be able to compete with others.

This can be exhausting as it leaves creativity aside and puts numbers as the most important thing. BOTH are important.

The developers’ creativity must be rewarded and showcased on the store, because it’s the only one that will bring quality values to the name of the Galaxy Themes. Quality and attention to detail is the most important things and it gives a theme longevity.

Just remembering that my feedback is to improve Galaxy Themes app content quality and the work of designers who are committed with creating great content and loves to do this as a job as just as me.

I would like to see what you have to say about the points I talked about!

Since english is not my first language, I apologize for any incorrect use of the language.

Thank you for your attention!

4 Likes
2

This old voting thread has received 40 votes, probably the highest of any topic, yet nothing has been done. Your suggestions are good however they will probably lead nowhere as well, sad :roll_eyes:

https://forum.developer.samsung.com/t/limiting-quantity-of-theme-releases-return-of-new-tab/879
[edit: closed topic so reformatted to remove auto-link]

3 Likes
3

I voted for that thread and unfortunately nothing was made or spoken until then. This is just frustrating.

There’s a developer that had almost +100 generic themes released in the last 2 weeks made with generic free host images and repeting the same icon pack in almost all themes in less than 2 weeks!! It honestly seems like scamming, it drops down the quality of the whole Galaxy Themes and it’s very harmful for the ecosystem of the store.

The people that take care of the Galaxy Themes needs to understand that this type of content is taking place of other great developers that deserves to be displayed for the good work they do, people that actually seems like caring on what they’re doing.

I hope someone read this and I invite everyone that had feel harmed by this type of conduct to step up.

3 Likes
5

I made a screenshot to illustrate what I’m talking about. This whole content was approved in less than 2 weeks.
I uploaded on imgur since the image is quite big:

[Album] Imgur
2 Likes
6

I completely agree with you, but they don’t hear us …
As it turned out, you don’t need to strain and draw, just drag and drop some of the low quality photos into the themes.

3 Likes
7

The spamming that made it into the watch face store has just emerged in the theme store. There are two new sellers loading up to 50 themes a day by taking their theme template, editing the theme info, and changing the wallpaper to a downloaded Zedge image! One minute max to do. Takes much longer to add it to the store. It’s a shame, indie developers were once very proud of the theme quality.

2 Likes
8

If these are Zedge images then there is probably something we can do.

There are limitations of how many new content can be uploaded at a time. I’ll check and see if that is being violated or if they are just setting a common release date.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

1 Like
9

Hello Ron, thanks for answering the thread.

I’m aware that there is a limit of themes that can be registered and scheduled to be released on a specific date, but that does not justify that +100 themes have been launched in just one week.

There should be a limit on the number of content that can be released, especially if that content has minimal or almost no changes like what is on the screenshot.

As I said before, this gets in the way of everyone working on creating themes seriously, and not only wants to add a lot of meaningless content to make sales volume.

We need you guys responsible for Galaxy Themes to understand the position of those who are complaining and try to help the developer community so that it doesn’t happen anymore.

Thanks for listening. Gabriel Santana.

2 Likes
11

I’m getting one theme and a couple of icon packs approved every couple of weeks.

The seller YY just had 120 new themes added over the weekend, and I didn’t bother to count the wallpapers or icons that were approved as well.

As someone in our FB group stated, they are the internet vacuum… sucking all stock photos from the internet LOL. I thought that was pretty funny :smile:

2 Likes
12

Hi Ron, how are you?

What is the number of limitations? Because in my opinion, due to the number of theme designers we have right now, to make fair and give a spot to everyone, up to 10 themes per week seems ok. More than that totally removes the possibility of other designers appearing on the banner of new themes. As we can see, the flood that YY (Yu Yao) made on Galaxy Themes doesn’t even worth it. All the theme is almost the same, he just changes some icons and wallpapers. It’s just a bunch of similar themes. I take almost a week to create something good, changing all the backgrounds, creating icons from zero, creating ringtones, video wallpaper, creating every kind of button, to be overshadowed by a thousand of the same content from the same developer? It’s not fair! Looks like Galaxy Themes is more numbers than quality today. Funny how many themes from YY gets approved so faster and how my themes take almost a week. Also, that same “theme designer” which is flooding the News tab is also stealing my icons and from other designers, and I think he has two profiles on Galaxy Themes (Yu Yao and Yanwei Chen, because the themes sold in both accounts has the same design, the same icons, and the same structure) which is worse because it’s double flooding. I already reported to Samsung, sent a copyright report form, got a message saying that the contents would be suspended, it’s been 4 days since the answer but all the contents I reported continue to be shown on Galaxy Themes. It’s been 5 years since I’m working with themes and it’s been a while since I feel very disappointed with that. We’re talking but sometimes it feels like Samsung isn’t listening to us. It’s very discouraging :confused:

2 Likes
13

It’s so unfair!!! As if the flooding was not enough, I just realized that YY is stealing my icons, editing and selling them in his account :neutral_face:

1 Like
14

I’ve brought it to the attention of the review team. If you want to send me content name of yours and his I can push the issue more. Send it to me in private message.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

1 Like
15

I feel really bad for you Felipe, all the effort you have put into your work, only to have it stolen. I also spend at least a week, custom designing and creating every aspect of the theme from the lock icon on the lock screen to the radio buttons to the navigation icons… all takes a very long time to get it just right. It is disheartening to have someone come along and load 100 themes a day just to flood the market.

But don’t expect anything to be done about it, the same thing has been reported for watch faces for the past couple of years. It’s the new model :frowning: I’ll eat my words if it changes :slight_smile:

1 Like
16

It won’t happen for new watch sellers but for the current “clone” sellers we have to wait until they trip up to remove them.

I asked the review team to see if there is a policy that the [YY] is violating but of course if they are copying they will be removed.

Ron
Samsung Developer Program

2 Likes
17

I tried to send you a private message but got an error message

“Sorry, you cannot send a personal message to that user.”

1 Like
18

I’m not able to see anywhere that I can send a message to any user?