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Recently we've been seeing a lot of concerns raised by users when staff take official actions with users, and of course with some recent bans the worries have resurfaced and have reached us. First and foremost I would like to stress that we only ever take steps such as these when there is ample onsite evidence that actions that breech our Terms of Service have occurred.
In this instance it has regarded the "USD Sales of Designs By Artists" section of the ToS, which reads as follows:
"This section governs the sale of derivative works (artworks incorporating official Aywas pet bases, SCC pets that have been submitted already, and HA avatar artwork). Players may only accept USD for their derivative artworks through the Commissions Platform or through the use of Artist Paintbrushes. Players are forbidden from negotiating or selling derivative artworks through any other means, or in any other location. This means that players may only receive USD direct to their PayPal account when in connection with a Commissions Platform official request, or when an administrator redeems a Paintbrush for them."
This was written into the ToS in June of last year when the feature was released, and a news post was made to make everyone aware. There is also a knowledgebase article which was linked in the news post and is linked on the Commissions Panel page, to ensure that the knowledge of this was clearly and easily accessible.
Previous to this all USD sales of derivative works were disallowed by the ToS, except through Paintbrushes when they were initialised. As such any purposeful circumvention is a permanently bannable offence.
The fee that the commissions platform takes is not to punish the artist, but a licence for them to profit from the use of our copyrighted materials. These fees also allow us to continue building and repairing the site, as well as support the many artists that work as contractors for us in the breeding and custom ticket systems.
No one on staff takes banning a user lightly, and none of us take any joy from it - it is simply a necessary part of the work we do to continue maintaining the website. As always, as long as you have read and abide by the ToS then you are not in any danger - and if you are ever in doubt about something you want to do, or something someone has asked you to do for them, then please contact a member of staff. We are here to help you and always happy to do so =)
Posted by Eve
(#2775) on Mon Apr 4, 2016 4:49pm
- Taffer
(#45139)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 8:50pm
Clarification on the do's and dont's of the knowledgebase article for the commissions panel is a must. I myself would have been under the assumption that, say, basing sbc pets for usd outside the feature would be okay because the article is not fully clear on what is or isnt acceptable. Surely this article should be re-evaluated and given additional information that is clear-cut and straight-forward in determining what is or isnt okay so miscommunication does not occur in the future.
- Issa
(#804)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 8:51pm
Kita & Riri (#3988) you seem to have a good understanding based on your posts, I hope you don't mind my ping but where would 100% from scratch drawings using ha as a partial reference fall? I'm not great at drawing humans and like using my ha to supplement my crummy drawings sometimes, along with general worded descriptions. Think this is safe to do outside of commissions since it's not using official aywas art in the new doodle/painting?
- Conium
(#39365)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 8:54pm
"cult of personality"
as in: when a bunch of people hero-worship a bunch of flawed human beings, and then say that if people don't worship said actually-human and flawed beings that they can get out. Idonno, I think I'm right on the money here.
and frankly, I don't give a toss if they think they're going to try and backpedal on that level of openness, doing it here and now makes it look sketchy as you can get. it's actively hurting what they want to do (if what they want to do is more "make a transition to a more clarified system when making usd commissions" instead of "get everyone all ready to storm the Bastille")
- Snuggles [ToT]
(#5560)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 8:58pm
If the user was concerned about something it's their responsibility to get clarification. Yes, sometimes the help forums are slow. Yes, sometimes you have to bump your topic to get it answered. Yes, if it goes unanswered you can PM staff. If you don't know something, there's a simple solution. don't DO that thing until you find out for sure if its allowed. Problem solved.
- Kita🦊
(#3988)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 9:08pm
Ellory (#804)
I'm pretty sure as long as you're not using the actual HA art anywhere in the image and also not tracing (or "referencing" close enough that it would match up if lined up with your image) it seems like it should be fine to sell art like that outside of the commission panel since its 100% drawn from scratch.
I would suggest referencing actual images of people if you're trying to learn/improve at drawing people (or humanoid things in general.) Referencing from drawn art isn't the best way to go about improving since everyone has their flaws when drawing and what you're referencing may have anatomy errors that will end up in your own art.
-Kita
- atherum
(#11846)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 9:37pm
This is all so ugly.
- ~KrimsonCreature
(#55438)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 9:42pm
atherum (#11846)
I agree.. 8(
- Arianna
(#40213)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 9:44pm
Reading through all of this is depressing as hell.
I don't have a lot of experience with this feature (any at all, really), but I think it's pretty clear that a lot of people are confused. It really wouldn't hurt anything if the staff clarified some things so that this wouldn't happen again. At the same time, I don't think it's a great idea to be spouting hate at anyone - staff or other users. You've got a right to be upset about things, but do you really have to be so rude about it?
I don't know. This isn't directed at anyone in particular. I just think that this whole thing got really ugly really fast, and it's kind of disheartening.
- Chelle & MIA
(#7310)
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Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 9:44pm
Ellory (#804) Kita & Riri (#3988) I spoke to Eve and she said HA items need to go through the panel as they will only work with the Aywas HA system.
~Chelle
Posted on: Mon Apr 4, 2016 8:46pm
"Oh i'm sorry, but did getting it turned back 'round onto you not feel nice? Perhaps you won't do it again if you can't take it. Sorry if that was rude."
Frankly I don't care if you "turn it back 'round" onto me. I'm allowed to air my thoughts just as much as you all are, and I thought making a post about how much Aywas sucks when staff were just doing their job was unnecessary. It was not productive critique. Additionally, I'm not sure you understand what "cult of personality" means, or at least you're misusing it.
"disproportionate to the crime"? A violation of the ToS can be grounds for a ban. Therefore, it's not disproportionate to ban someone for violating the ToS. Being upset that a friend was banned is one thing. Slamming staff for enforcing rules we all agreed to is something entirely different. Not to mention that, if these users were genuinely just confused, they can appeal it, instead of getting buddies to attack the staff, since that would be immensely more productive.
" they're saying they don't divulge details when they're broken that rule before"
A general policy about privacy is not the same thing as a rule. Perhaps they decided to be more private about issues like these specifically because of that last issue. Maybe being totally open about what happened had some negative consequences, so they changed the way they handled these situations.