And funny enough you can get more youtube tutorials now for Blender than you would get for say Modo which is a massively expensive software.
When I was looking through for tutorials I automatically decided on Blender based on the sheer number of modeling tuts for blender lol
I am unable to read these kind of posts and interpret them as anything other than:
So Iâll continue as if thatâs your actual question.
If youâre looking to pirate Unity assets, itâs likely not the first thing youâve ever illegally downloaded. Youâve probably dabbled in games, movies, music⌠All the same risks that come with those forms of digital piracy exist here, too. Does everyone who pirates movies get caught? No. But some do. Enough that itâs worth pursuing them. Do all people who are caught and identified pay a fine or go to jail? Nope. But some do. It could be you.
If youâre thinking of pirating something, you should be aware of what the maximum allowable penalty is, whether itâs a fine, imprisonment, or losing your job. If you canât afford that penalty, you need to weigh whether the risk of getting caught is worth it for what youâre getting in return. If getting a $5 movie rental for free is worth the risk of a $1000 fine to you, then by all means⌠proceed to pirate that movie.
However, in regards to Unity assets, there are a few additional considerations to take into account.
Assets are rarely static
Most worthwhile assets are updated regularly. Maybe itâs to allow them to use a new lighting mode in the engine, or to fix bugs introduced by a previous version. When you buy the asset through the Asset Store, updating to the latest version is a simple click away.
Pirated assets are a rip of a specific version of an asset. Using a pirated package in your project will not add it to your list of owned packages, and you wonât receive updates. If you update your installation of Unity, you may actually break that outdated asset and be unable to use it. You might be able to find the updated version on a torrent site, but now your productivity is dependent on yet another source outside your control.
Support
Smart developers hide their support systems behind logins that require tie-in to your purchase information. So if you pirate something and canât get it to work right, youâre on your own.
Shame
Downloading a movie you would otherwise never watch because youâre bored some Saturday is one thing⌠I can even understand the argument that it doesnât translate to a lost sale because you never had a real intent of purchasing. But that argument doesnât stand up with game assets. You are specifically seeking to avoid purchasing something you want and âneedâ.
Letâs say you do complete your game and release it for sale. What in the world makes you think you deserve to be paid for making something, but the person who made the asset you stole doesnât? But if you can live with that personally, you still have to get past the effect it would have if youâre caught.
Much like child abusers donât fare well in prison with other inmates, pirates are despised in the game development community. We know how much hard work goes into creating this content, and for someone to blatantly disregard that and disrespect our whole process is a pretty unforgivable act. Weâre also a pretty tight-knit group, and a technically savvy one, so if you happen to burn anyone that does catch you, be prepared to abandon the community altogether.
Absolutely. I use Maya, but mostly because when I started Blender was confusing. Maya LT is $30 a month, which is a bargain compared to most other 3d Modeling programs and it works great with Unity. We no longer have to put down $1000 for software.
Sadly, I have known many who make models pirated with 3dMax because they equate cost with quality. If you cannot afford it, you need to use the alternatives. They work just as well.
Not only the game development community, but the gamer community as well. I have seen developers taken down in the popular gamer online communities for far less than pirating assets. Once you get a reputation, you will have a very difficult time getting back in their good graces. If your game is taken off Steam after people pay for it or even if rumors arise that it will be taken down, you will lose badly.
I have seen modders who steal other peopleâs work treated very badly by the game community. It is not worth the risk.
Yeah the great thing is if someone in this day and age is going to pick a software might aswell use blender, years ago you couldnât find tutorials for blender and its interface was horrible.
But today its the complete opposite. The more and more people use Blender the better, it will force these companies to sell their software at a more affordable price.
I like the implication that game development is in itself an immoral act, but that pirating is a despicable one 
Whoops. Not the best analogy, then, I suppose. But hilarious nonetheless.
Well, for some reason it seems to fit quite well âŚ
âSure, I may be making an open-world voxel game thatâs like Minecraft meets Final Fantasy, but you made an uninspired Clash of Clans clone with a blatant Asset Store flip!â
shank shank shank shank shank
I feel this is what the OP is asking about.
What happens if you use assets in your game you got from the unity store, or any store, that was actually made with pirated software or what not.
I get the feeling people are going to tell you to do your homework and make extra sure the asset provider isnt doing anything funny, such as checking their history, reputation, maybe even asking companies if the assets trigger any pirate detection, but at that point Id want to not even botherâŚ
The sea of assets now became a puddle.
This has been discussed plenty before (and, as it turns out, previously by this threadâs OP) and I canât imagine itâs as big a problem as the hypotheticals make it out to be.
Letâs say Playmaker included some 3D models (which, to my knowledge, it doesnât) that just so happened to be created with an unlicensed copy of 3DSMax. Everyone and their mother uses or at least owns Playmaker (âLike who?â âGame developers.â âWho else?â âGame developersâ mums.â), so this is a large number of affected users weâre talking about.
Is Autodesk going to track down every game that used Playmaker and have them pulled from their stores? No. Is Playmaker going to be removed entirely from the Asset Store. Probably not.
Instead, the Playmaker devs would get slapped with an enormous fine, and their current version of the app would be invalidated. Theyâd likely be able to resubmit the asset after removing the violating content, and sales would continue. Maybe theyâd be required to notify their users that a Playmaker update is âmandatoryâ and state the reason why as part of a court-ordered shaming or something, I dunno.
You as a developer using legitimate software have nothing to worry about. Unity, having cleared themselves of wrongdoing by making you attest, as the asset publisher, that you have the right to publish that content, has nothing to worry about. This is one of those rare scenarios where the only people who will be negatively affected are the people doing wrong.
I see, so is it since unity requires the publisher to attest to being clean, that all that use unity asset stores asset are 100% safe, or is it that once a publisher gets big enough, that all their customers are 100% safe since the wrong doer can be easily traced back to the source, the publisher?
(or both)
What if the publisher removes the asset and everything before they get too big, lol. Now its harder to trace back.
Even if the chances are small, are you basically unfortunately screwed?
Guess I should really look for that thread instead of repeating it here =)
Iâm glad you made that topic/post.
That topic was interesting to read. Iâll check out the rest of it, in a while.
Are people legitimately that worried that theyâll buy assets made with pirated software? Do these same people have concerns that their free-range chicken eggs theyâre eating may have actually come from chickens that prefer to live indoors? Or that their iPhone may have been manufactured in a factory in violation of labor laws, and that someone may come take their phone away?
I donât think so. As Iâve said, itâs impossible for me to believe that anyone wants this much fine-grain info on the situation as a way of trying to ask âHow do I pirate assets and not get caughtâ without using those words.
On the list of things you should be concerned about with making your game, legitimately purchasing illegitimate assets should be on the very bottom or missing entirely.
An FBX file exported from Max/Maya/whatever does not contain licensing information about the product used to export it. There is no way anybody would be able to tell if the FBX file was created in a paid or pirated product.
The same goes for most audio files, textures, etc.
It is unreasonable and unfeasible for purchasers of content from content stores (like Unity Asset Store, Turbosquid, Unreal Marketplace, CGTrader, etc.) to be concerned if the content was made with correctly licensed tools.
When you purchase a part for your car, do you worry about if the tools to make the part were stolen? No.
By default, and stated by IP laws, the author of a given work retains exclusively all rights UNLESS he/she explicitly put that work under some license, which is the only way to allow other people to use it commercially or in some way (for instance, redistribution terms).
This means that most material you can âfetchâ from the Internet without a license, chances are that youâre infringing some copyright or otherâs rights.
Itâs much safer to use any âfreeâ asset or resource that has a explicit license attached (either Creative Commons, MIT, Apache 2.0, Public Domain, or any other free license) than taking the risk of having downloaded/use/distribute it without the proper consent because you never know it was disallowed.
That is not the question he is asking.
Yes, I see. The thing is that IMO thereâre two questions here. The first one related to the created models, which I refer above regarding the necessary licenses to protect your own investment. The second is whether the author of those models has a properly licensed tool?The issue here is that if that author is stamping his name on a product that is clearly using a non-licensed tool, itâs a matter of time that his reputation will be destroyed and will be sued by someone eventually. I guess pirates donât mind about this anyway which is a problem for everyone.
There was only 1 question being asked. âHow do I know that these people didnât create these models with student license or pirated software?â
You (and others) are mucking up the thread by interjecting your opinions on other matters, which are irrelevant to the question being asked.
The OPs questions were broad as is the title thread. Discussion is on topic.