I don’t want to keep arguing so this is my final say. When a person is cashless, it doesn’t justify that person to steal other’s money. SEMC is not profiting from this work doesn’t justify SEMC taking advantage of artists. The artists are doing this because of their passion and love for the game. If you look at it, SEMC is not even cashless, they abandonded VG because they got millions for a new project. And now their attempt to keep it going makes SEMC looks like the hero. If they didn’t abandon VG, this whole thing would not happen.
For opening the source code and adding new characters, items, etc, there are many way to look at it. You are right when you said they cannot open their EVIL engine. Howevers, than how can community keep this game fresh with just balance notes? If you say they can, then that’s your opinion. It is not a coincidence that decline of player base happen at that same time with SEMC shutting down API, tournaments, few new characters, items, etc.
Don’t expect a reply, you’ve said your piece and I don’t want to debate all day, but the way we could keep the game fresh is if SEMC continues to allow us to provide content that they then publish on the app store client. How great would it be if SEMC made a hero design content then implemented that hero in game? But wait… that’s exactly what they are doing here and you are all against it.
Just personally I think if SEMC was truly open to a ‘community edition’ they would be adding mod support. Currently, the only way that they’ve announced is the ability to change the numbers (and even that’s a hard maybe) so from that many people have come to see this as SEMC cleaning their hands of the game but still clinging onto the IP/Engine. It’s pretty clear that SEMC doesn’t plan on coming back and developing CE further, which leaves everyone in a baffling limbo where the game can’t grow.
In the end, to me at least, it all just seems like a strange attempt at damage control; they develop the game to where the community can deal with the business side of keeping the game alive, but they can’t funnel their energy into creative endeavours like new heroes or items. That’s why a lot of people are taking it as a slap in the face when SEMC is saying that they’ll put fanart onto the homepage; it’s a hint of the community creativity that a ‘community edition’ should have without any risks or real commitment from SEMC. Getting paid in the mythical metaphorical ‘exposure’ for giving the illusion of community interactivity doesn’t help either.
They’ve (and Rogue) put themselves in a bad spot, honestly.
I didn’t really want to argue this but your trying to support that semc essentially say ‘do our work for us so we can put it in game while we don’t pay you.’ Right now vg is just running for the community and costing semc money but that doesn’t mean you don’t pay people for work you’ve asked of them. If they went ‘hey fans make a 3D model for a hero and we’ll take the winning one and implement it’, I’d expect money in return or another one ‘hey fans write some lore for this hero and we’ll make the best one offical and put it in game’, again I’d expect money.
Art contests are horrible cuz usually winner(s) get paid not much money if at all, they get that ‘exposure benefit’ people like to use instead of paying, other participants despite not being the winner can have their work still be used elsewhere by the company without their knowledge and credit and no pay. These contests drive a lot of work with nothing but maybe exposure in exchange, it’s free labour.
I get it, you being a fan of vg and being hopeful for this vg:ce you’d want to help out, just like other fans hopeful and participating in it cuz they want vg to still run and be great and playable but that doesn’t make it right. You pay for work.
Ok, let’s assume SEMC made the game open source and let us develop it (impossible but whatever). And a community member makes a hero then publishes a version of the game with that hero. You believe that person should be paid? There is no meaningful distinction between SEMC hosting community content, and us hosting community content ourselves as long as the SEMC aren’t making money from the game (or in this case losing money).
You could argue that it’s somehow protecting their IPs value, but this isn’t particularly meaningful regardless. If anything allowing community content muddies the VG universe.
Semc is literally asking people to make art for them, not going ‘here’s the engine and codes mod as you please’. When semc themselves ask people to do what they paid others to do before, payment should be there for these people they’re asking. The examples I said were of semc asking for people to do work for them, not them giving us the ability to put anything and everything from the community into the game. If that were the case were anyone could put anything they wanted in the game without further help of semc then that’s a different story, but this is them asking for work and then they get to pick winners with no payment in return. You pay for work you ask for.
Why is that impossible?
It is extremely unclear what point you’re trying to make here.
Again, it’s difficult to understand what you’re attempting to say here.
Regardless, I think it’s hard to argue that someone who creates something of value (e.g., art that’s used in a game) should not be paid for the use of their work, but that seems to be the argument you’re making.
Because the EVIl engine is proprietary, and Vainglory is on IOS. It would suicidal move of SEMC to give out free access to the EVIL engine, arguably their only valuable property at the moment. Second, community mods have never been done on IOS. For anyone to make a “mod” you would have to publish a separate app, unless SEMC completely re-designed the game to have a in game MOD download feature.
I feel this is fairly clear. If you take your position to its logical conclusion you would not even be ok with community mod collaborations working for free together to make something. Unless one party profiting from the result, this is a collaboration with the community. We are not giving work the SEMC for free, because SEMC is not benefiting from our work, it’s collaboration with the community because we both care about the game. The moment SEMC takes one cent of monetary gain from this project I am not ok with this at all.
Addressing the idea that SEMC is benefiting at all from the community work. As both parties are doing work with no monetary compensation, or indirect compensation (ie the idea this helps SEMCs IP), there is nothing problematic here.
As for the link, those are irrelevant. If you are ok with two parties collaborating you are ok with what is happening here. Again, I’m an artist who works for commission often, this is unrelated to the pay with exposure choosing beggar BS we have to deal with all the time.
VG is not only on iOS, actually – it’s on PC and Android as well. If you recall, SEMC frequently made “server side hotfixes” throughout VG’s lifespan, which were modifications to the server-side code and which changed in-game features fairly significantly at times. There’s no technical reason that the same thing couldn’t happen using community-controlled servers, since many in-game features depend on the server for implementation.
Lol, you might, but it’s not as clear as you think. 
“SEMC is not benefiting from our work” is quite patently false. How is getting something of value (art) for free that they can then use to promote their game “not benefiting”?
They’re not irrelevant at all. And this is hardly a collaboration: it’s a company with significant resources (Kristian alone is worth millions, fyi) using a “contest” get artists like yourself to do for free what they should rightfully be paid for. Good gravy, open your eyes.
Have you read the roadmap? once the community can host servers (stage 4A I believe) they will let people do this. This does not let you bring new assets into the game though.
Because SEMC is not benefiting from it. They own VG, but VG doing well does nothing for them. They benefit just as much as any community member. Again, by your logic you are against any non for profit collaborations. I merely believe in consistent logic, how large SEMC does not matter, we are both working together for something, not doing a service for the other party for free. Why are you ok with devs spending their free time working on VG, which they have said they have done this?
Let me pose you a scenario then: a man who owns a park that’s free to visit asks one artists to make art for him, he pays them. He then weeks later gathers a group of random artists that like his park and then asks them to make art for him but he’ll only choose one and won’t pay anything for it. This art he is asking in both cases is art to be displayed out in his park that everyone involved likes and visits, he’s not making money off it just displaying it. Is that group case ok, the winner getting no pay?
Just want a yes or no, that’s all
<sigh> If you think “VG doing well does nothing for them” there isn’t really any point to continuing the discussion.
You really ought to read the first article I linked.
PSA: This discussion is about to get moved to a separate topic …
EDIT: Done!
Yes.
Have you not seen schools decorate local parks as a project? As long as everyone has equal access to the park, the “host” is not profiting off of the park, and he is upfront about the engagement and does not pretend to pay in exposure or anything. This is a fairly common occurrence. In general I’m all for local art studios hosting community art for free, music competitions having the winners composition performed for free, etc. I would hate for those things that benefit artists to be condemned. A lot of important art foundations would no longer be able to operate.
So him not paying that group is fine despite having given the same ask before to a single person and paying them, ok then.
It’s clear your not gonna change how you think on this art competition and I really didn’t want to get in an argument over it cuz honestly to me it’s you pay for work, simple as that. But that’s not how you see it and don’t see it wrong for doing free work for what used to be paid to others, then so be it
I posted this accidentally elsewhere and to the wrong person, let me post here aaaaaa, now I’m just making mistakes accidentally deleting this post too, I’m sorry lol
I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I agree this kind of thing is a huge issue for independent artists (As an independent artist). When you have people willing to work for free it hurts every other artist trying to earn a living in the same field. Asking a large group of people and framing it as a competition can further dilute a individuals bargaining power.
However, I also care about being logically consistency. There are so many situations where pay isn’t appropriate. I’m not going to walk down to my local library and tell them to take down all the high schoolers art they are displaying, or go to my local cafe and shut down an open mic night (This is arguably way worse because the cafe is profiting). With your black and white framing both of these things are immoral. The payed in exposure thing is obviously a huge problem, but that doesn’t mean we reject all collaboration. We have look at context and examine each case to determine if it’s moral or not. I’d argue the value a amateur guitar player gets jamming out at a local cafe is the venue to practice performing for a group, and the fun they probably have. Don’t expect another reply, but I am curious what you think of these situations? Seems like under your code they would be equally bad?
The library if partnered with the school or just their local library is fine, that’s not said to be a competition, if it were it’s usually either charity which no prize money to winner or if it’s a compulsory comp which no too since your forced into it. If an optional school comp like bands the winner would get money or prize like new equipment for said winner, not just exposure.
The open mic isn’t said to be a comp either, it’s an open stage allowing people to voice themselves but if it was a comp than yes prize money. Charity comps are fine as it’s to help a cause like homeless or fire relief but when that’s not the case, prize money when it’s a comp asking for work of any kind and not tied to underage people participating
sorry, but are you serious? And who will code that hero, animate that hero, code his abilities and so on? The expectations towards VG CE from some people are insanely optimistic to the point of unrealistic.
Why don’t you look from the other side: I spend 1000 dollars and more (yes, literally) in this game, now they shutdown ONLY EUROPE where I am located and rest of the world, but will NOT shutdown China - it’s not full shutdown of a game, it’s partial and I assure you it’s not ok. It’s literally that the product you paid for is denied to you (as they even refuse to transfer accounts!!!) while continues to work just fine for a lot of people in region.
So cut it off with that BS how good they are, what charity they do and some off hours to transfer tasks to other people without paying them. They got plenty of content and ofc employees that can do the job. They could also find a way to keep VG going scaled down - few servers in Frankfurt are enough for Europe, few key locations in US are enough too to cover it. I am tired of people defending them when a lot of people got burned with a lot of money in a game that they played only for two years actively to say how they got their money returned. This is not LOL where if you spend thousands you can still play and you will play years in the future. VG got a really bright feature and SEMC made it look like it got even brighter with all e-sports and events, we invested a lot of money and time, and now they will deny the game from me, but not from the China players. The whole rogue fiasco - I was against it from the start, I am sure I got negative posts here about it, I knew what will happen and that it will be soon, it was obvious even then.
It’s totally possible in IOS, needs work on the app ofc and server side, but that’s the point of community edition in my honest opinion - to do the hard work so the game can be live forever via community and only heavy modding/adding content will ensure that.
I find this topic very interesting, so let me contribute my own two cents.
i’ll break my post into two sections, because i feel like both sides have sensible arguments, even though i don’t agree with all of them.
So, i skimmed through the thread ( because i had a zoom meeting while i was reading this ), excuse and correct me if i missed some key info.
First, i’d like to side with @coltonJW on the whole artists shouldn’t be discouraged to contribute their own work to community projects without compensation , even though the said community is owned by a corporation, SEMC for example.
Now, i think you guys severely overreacted to what this man was trying to convey. Why is this notion so shocking? It happens literally every day. ( But i don’t entirely disagree with you, you’ll see that in the second half of my post ).
i’d like to present two arbitrary examples.
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Youtube. i’m 100% sure we’ve all seen popular individual creators using fanmade thumbnails, intros, music, etc. The thing is these people willingly gave away their creation for it to be featured in the community they are part of. key word, WILLINGLY. Why did they do this? Probably because they wanted to be seen, they deemed it fun, or they were passionate about it.
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Now let’s hit close to home and talk about a certain game i absolutely love and adore. Terraria. Quick rundown -It is a 2D action-adventure, open-world sandbox / platformer game which was released in 2011 by the company Re-Logic, one of my most respected gaming companies next to Team Cherry and CD projekt Red.
Developers have been ultra transparent for years and listen, interact with the community on another level. Should i say the community is very, very friendly and one of the most passionate i’ve seen in a long time, due to abundance of mods and etc. ( solidifying @cha0z’s arguement, but that’s another topic )
Why i brought this up is to commemorate Terraria’s 9th birthday and its final update, They are hosting a Vanity contest. In short, you have an opportunity to design a costume set that might be implemented in the game.
Here’s the thread:
I want you to read a part of the announcement:
- By participating in the contest, you agree to relinquish all rights to your vanity design to Re-Logic for inclusion into the game. Winners will be required to sign a document to that effect.
and what happened is that they got over 6 THOUSAND(!!!) submissions by profssional and non-professional artists and designers alike.
the message i’m trying to convey is that these people, including me, love the game with passion and they are willing to etch their names in the game history without any compensation whatsoever.
Do these people deserve to be paid for their work? Sure, but in a different setting. Developers clearly stated that participants had to be willing to relinquish their rights.
If an artist refused these conditions, they simply wouldn’t participate and that’s that.
Now, i’d like to flip the coin over.
Artists have always been …“bullied?” in our society, dunno if that’s the correct word to describe it, but i’ll roll w it for now. This is quite personal actually. I come from a second world country some of you never even heard of and 20 years prior to ours life was an absolute struggle, people barely got by for survival. My mother studied art and was literally called a prodigy of her generation. She even got a chance to exhibit her works in Washington DC when head of The U.S. Department of Arts of the time noticed her while visiting our country back then, and she did. Back then this was close to impossible and was regarded as a huge success…but for naught. Due to the nature of living here, artists are basically nonexistent in the job market. You literally can not survive by art as your profession. Thus, she had to change careers and got into cultural management and PR. I am writing this in the room decorated by many of her paintings. Even though life got much better, the stigma remains. Artists aren’t taken seriously and that’s terrible imo. Thousands of talented individuals are forced to do or be something or someone they are not. It’s just sad, but that’s our reality for now
Regarding SEMC now. Seeing how shady this whole fiasco is, it’s understandable that the aforementioned statement about the new logo would cause distrust, more so when they clearly didn’t communicate enough, unlike terraria’s mods who outlined that there would be no material benefit, in advance. Honestly? If i were an artist and had an opportunity to, i’d not make them a logo, even though it’s a community game now ( questionably ), because there’s zero motivation and seeing all these disastrous imbalances and events in Vainglory right now make me think that the game is done for. But i’m sure there are still people left who are willing to contribute. After all, i wouldn’t be visiting vgforums, if i weren’t a lifelong fan of the game and the community.
To wrap this up, couple of key points:
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SEMC should’ve or should clearly explain the legal aspect of the process and the reasoning.
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Contributing to the community for free is nothing new, but i think the current situation of our game made people view this act from SEMC as a very negative one, which i can understand why, because i also harbor the same stance somewhat.
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" Why would i make something for them free, when they did almost nothing for us free "
Sorry if this stretched more than it should’ve.