So, my last thread was predictably locked and is being buried, but I had just a few more things I wanted to say before giving up. The last thread was buried because one of the scammers came in and used some foul language and yelling, which makes the moderators lock and bury the thread, protecting the scammer’s identity. Again, the implied rule is that the moderators want to protect the scammers and allow them to continue to scam the public, but will lock down and bury anyone who outs a scammer. They blocked one account (kudos) but allowed him to come back with a second account and continue to run the same scam.
My point is this: without these scam alerts, I would have no idea that certain posters were scammers. When Unity lets someone continue to post assets in the store or on this forum, it gives them an air of legitimacy. When they lock and bury people who point out the scams, it gives them even more legitimacy. I don’t think it’s doing anyone any favors to allow scammers to bury the threads that expose them by just posting a few bad words in every post to get a friendly mod to cover their tracks for them.
I’ve seen a few responses from people who want to ensure that threads exposing scams always get buried because they seem worried that otherwise, there would be a bunch of random people accusing innocent sellers of being scammers when they’re not. I feel the need to point out that A: they already can do that if they want, and it doesn’t seem to be happening nearly as much as actual scams, and B: if the real world decided that it would be better to forbid anyone from accusing anyone else of a crime because it is “nicer”, do you really think that that system would somehow work out in favor of non-criminals? The only real weapon we have against internet scams is information, and insisting that we bury that all the time is not helping anyone. It also seems a little hypocritical and selfish, because most of the time the people who self-righteously proclaim that they don’t need any information to tell who is or is not a scammer have already had the benefit of reading the information exposing several repeat scammers on these forums. For anyone who doesn’t patrol these boards daily looking for alerts before they’re buried, it can be hard to tell which sources are reputable. If you’re an innocent seller who is really worried that some random is going to accuse you of scamming with zero evidence and everyone will turn on you, you should have a little more faith in your products and your audience. Businesses in the real world learn to deal with their image in the face of people saying bad things about them; you should be able to deal with it too without demanding the imposed silencing of all negative opinions. Picture amazon.com or newegg or ebay if the moderators were under an imposition to delete any negative reviews and only allow positive reviews. Sure, it would protect the few innocent sellers who were randomly given bad reviews by vengeful idiots, but it would also make the entire rating system pointless and be a haven for scammers.
I forgot about that old thread, and that it had come out that some of the moderators said they felt pressured to defend the scammers instead of the victims because they were worried scammers would sue them if they didn’t. As I said in that thread, if a scammer is telling a mod that he’ll sue them for libel if they don’t agree to protect their scams, IT’S A SCAM. Scammers are not going to win in court against you, moderators. Show some backbone.
Since yesterday’s fiasco (there were many more since I raised the issue last year), and the way UT carry on the same way of locking the thread and allowing scammers to come back operating as usual, don’t expect things to turn out any differently.
running the same scam? if you ask me you’re the one being a hypocrite. its in my opinion that Mr bones did you a favor. if you would have tried to tell you these motions that were ripped by somebody else they might have shown up some other way like in your game and you could have been sent to jail for receiving stolen goods. do I think that Mr bones does a scammer or a criminal and deserve jail time? no of course not I know Mr bones personally he is a really nice guy. does Mr bones need to steal motions in order to make a living? no of course not he has lots of the équipement to make his own motionS. if you want to stop the real scammers. you need to go to the source. nobody said anything about the guy on YouTube who actually ripped the motions and models from the singularity game. they’re on YouTube he’s being hailed as a hero.
This isn’t about Truebones in particular. Also, as an asset purchaser, I don’t really care that much about who is nice and who isn’t, or who is a hero and who is a villain. I really only care about the quality and legality of whatever asset I’m buying. The fact is that if you use stolen assets you can get sued by the company they were stolen from. If Activision sues me for using their assets, they’re not going to care if I tell them that the guy who sold me them is a really nice guy, so I don’t really care about that either. I’d rather buy legal assets from a guy who punches kittens than illegal assets from the world’s friendliest gentleman.
Again, that’s pretty irrelevant. I also don’t want or expect anything from you/Truebones. This is addressed to the moderators, asking that they don’t continue to bury posts that alert others of stolen assets. And it’s irrelevant to me whether Truebones purposefully or accidentally stole Activision’s assets; the only thing that matters is that we are not allowed to use those assets, and we need to know about that.
I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt in saying that you didn’t know that the assets were stolen when you were reselling them, by explaining that it doesn’t matter if you personally are a bad person or not - game companies CANNOT use stolen assets regardless of whether or not they think you’re a good person. That is why we need this information. We aren’t sharing the information just to punish you or make you feel bad about yourself. Maybe your mistakes have all been “accidental” scams, but if you’re going to continue selling the same assets it will continue to be a scam, and people need to know about that regardless of whether or not you’re really a good person with pure intentions.
For the record, yes, I do think you are a scammer since in your threads you kept insisting that they weren’t stolen, and then that you weren’t actually selling animations at all, and then that you would not give anyone refunds. Just because you finally relented doesn’t mean you weren’t trying to scam people at the time. But again, it’s still irrelevant; I need to know which assets are stolen REGARDLESS of whether or not the person reselling them is only doing it by accident.
so you don’t care who the real scammers or thieves are. your only concern that the moderator is doing his job in a way that only you see fit?
you’re making more and more sense by the minute. it seems to me that you’re not interested in getting to the crux of the problem and that is in my opinion folks like you , that’s people who will let people do their job and mind their own business. there’s no way to please every one. and no way to police every asset that is uploaded to the Unity forum or store.
so you don’t care that Mr bones apologized and gave refunds your only concern is that the moderators don’t put up a scam alert.?
I hope you’re not using company time for this nonsense…
As was pointed out earlier, you’re either being willfully ignorant or do not understand copyright at all, both of which is very bad news and again is something people need to know before they buy your assets. Unless someone SPECIFICALLY gives you a license to use their material, it is by default copyrighted and they own it. It works that way in pretty much every country in the world. You are not allowed to take art from another video game and use it in your own unless you specifically get a written license granting you that permission. If you’re not just pretending, and you really don’t grasp this, I have to strongly suggest you read a little bit about copyright before trying to resell art from other games.
And again - even if you are innocent and just didn’t understand that copying art from other games and reselling it is illegal, it still doesn’t matter. Game developers can not use that art, regardless of whether or not you know it’s illegal. That is why we can’t just drop it when someone says they’re sorry. As long as you continue selling stolen art, it keeps putting game developers at risk. You can say you’re sorry until hell freezes over; it’s not going to make those assets any more usable for the people buying them.
Yes, exactly. I’d also say that moderators shouldn’t lock or bury your apologies or that you offered refunds either. That is also valuable information for people making a decision on whether or not to buy from you. But burying only one or the other does not work.
so what you’re saying is that its okay for the guy to rip the games animations and models and upload them to YouTube for everyone to see and download. and that its okay for him to render movies and post them on YouTube for profit?
Actually that is generally legal, but even if it wasn’t, two wrongs do not make a right. Just because someone else is doing something illegal doesn’t mean it’s ok for you to do something illegal.
