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Let's be honest and not rationalize it: we're stealing from small time creators. Daz has an asinine business model that relies on the goodness of peoples' hearts to get the people who keep that program relevant their money. Daz is the company making money. It's a terrible model because people aren't like that. And so we get creative tools for free and hard-working creators get fucked. We're not stealing from Lars Ulrich and Metallica. We're stealing from talented creators trying to eke out a living. So if somebody makes good shit, we should set up a fund so they at least get them something for their work. How would we be able to do this anonymously, no questions asked, so they at least get a little money? Tor browser, whatever, with proof for members that they got what we paid instead of some scam? I'd gladly pay like 50$ a month on something like that, sorta subscription-ish.
The best way to support the people that make the stuff we love to play with is to simply buy from them. Many of us here download items, then after trying them out, go back to the store and pay money for the item.
BUT.....
The vendors like Daz and Rendo scalp most of the money for their own greedy selves. When I buy stuff I email or message the individual creator and urge them to go independent or sell through a place like 3D Shards. Many of us DON'T share stuff from small, independent creators either.
Unfortunately Daz doesn't provide contact info for their artists, probably for just that reason.
A few artists are in Daz's forums and you can post a message for them. Recommending that they go out on their own will be deleted immediately by that asshole Haseltine.
Still, many creators are reading these posts and we might get some response if we ask/beg/plead for them to sell on say Sade's site (3D Shards) where they'll get most of the sales money.The stores take a 50% cut most times. It's mostly to fund the web hosting, in some cases it's to pay employees to make stuff (DAZ uses their cut to pay devs and the folks who make in-house items), payment processing services, marketing, etc.
It's not just DAZ/Rendo/Renderhub/etc that does this. Patreon/Gumroad/Pixiv/Boosty/etc also take a cut.
So the point is this. The only way a creator gets 100% of the take is if he or she builds their own website, contracts with their own payment processor, and does buiness that way. Some creators do this even if they sell at places like DAZ or RH, so if you really want to support a creator, find out if they have a website of their own, and buy stuff from them there.
The main problem of having your own site is getting the traffic there to even make a sale, whereas being on Daz or in my case the Epic Marketplace does the marketing and hosting etc. for you.
The key downside from a creators point of view, (Its a bonus to sites like this one) is the lack of the asset stores measures to prevent "Sharing" or to track where is came from. Some Aset stores have a system in place but its incredibly weak. (Again goood for sites like this) but bad for the original creators.
Heck with a php script you can embed a tiny code into the image (just coloured pixels) and when you find your asset, you simply run it through the script and you can get the acc that downloaded it date time or any other info and then block that account from downloading etc. Still wont prevent the original share.
Daz has its own unique problems ok they may be restricted to for example genesis versions, so dont require regular updates. but even for things like Blender Assets, UE assets they need a constant update as UE Versions bring additional features or Drop features that the asset needed. And they have as far as I know the best Payout rate 88% going to the author per asset sale.
"Heck with a php script you can embed a tiny code into the image (just coloured pixels) and when you find your asset, you simply run it through the script and you can get the acc that downloaded it date time or any other info and then block that account from downloading etc. Still wont prevent the original share."
It's laughably easy to pop in a bit of steganography into, say, a texture file to identify who buys what (without even adding odd pixels). But, here's the problem: it will only work a couple of times at most before someone feels the effects of it and gets word out. The moment the rest of us find out, we'll simply (in this case) rinse the image files through a batch converter (e.g. .jpg -> .png -> .tga -> .bmp -> .jpg) and it becomes defeated.
It's not just that tactic either - you can see a similar tactic and its countermeasures playing out here.
It becomes an arms race in which a company (DAZ, RH, Rendo) ends up spending more and more resources (money, time) against all of piratedom just to save a couple of bucks, which they will spend on more and newer anti-pirating measures.
There comes a point where it isn't worth the cost. The music and movie industries are fully aware of this as well, which is why they've mostly given up on trying to stamp out all but the largest operations.
Piracy is low enough that the companies still make lots of money, and as long as they can maintain big enough profit margins, they will prefer to focus on products, not pirates.
An easier solution is to just abide by the unofficial agreement that everyone brings up all the time, but nobody seems to follow: no uploading of NEW releases until 30 days (or whatever official number is agreed upon).
Its been talked about here a lot, and everyone agrees its a great idea and the right thing to do... and then nobody listens to it and the beat goes on.
Make it moderated, no post go live until certain date.
Amen and hallelujah @gts6. I've been pounding that drum for years to no avail. I always wait at least a month and stuff from the good folks (3D Shards and Summoner) doesn't get released at all.
An easier solution is to just abide by the unofficial agreement that everyone brings up all the time, but nobody seems to follow: no uploading of NEW releases until 30 days (or whatever official number is agreed upon).
Quoted for amplification. It's not hard to wait a bit before passing something around in order to obfuscate its origin. If the item is extremely rare, maybe wait two months.
@medusa, I can't believe that it's that bad. Why would they continue selling there? Surely they'd get a better deal somewhere else. I'll bet Daz would shit it's pants if the artists went on strike to demand a bigger cut. I guess Daz would be forced to either cave or get it's stuff made at some Asian sweatshop.
@medusa, I know that Daz likes to say that part of their profit goes to write code, however this is obviously NOT happening anymore. We where promised Studio 5 over 2 years ago and so far nothing. It's been said that with the equity firm Tafi in charge, most programmers where let go and all they're doing is stabbing at short term profit schemes like NFTs, their version of AI, and the social media blitz, all of which failed miserably. Studio 4 keeps getting worse. I can see Daz going under as AI takes it's user base away.
Make it moderated, no post go live until certain date.
Something like this would be really helpful for those of us who have trouble telling which items are actually new and which ones are just new to us.
Not sure about that FleshKage. Surely one DLs on the basis of what they want rather than when it was made. The shares here do have a post date and apart from Daz, most source sites show the date of the product. At Rendo it's in the ReadMe file.
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