[Released] Morph Character System (MCS) - Male and Female

The sarcasm was so thick in that initial post, it's difficult to tell your opinion was the opposite of how it reads. Thanks for the reminder about Fuse, I completely forgot about that. Hopefully Adobe doesn't ruin it in the end, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop on Mixamo for awhile, maybe it won't.

 

Thankfully, I'm not doing MMO, asset streaming, or in-game asset purchasing so the restrictions don't apply to my project. I'm sure there are many others that won't be affected by this as well. So, everyone should be sure they understand the restrictions and realize that they only apply in those scenarios.

 

Yeah, I was using Fuse until I found MCS, but then had to go back to Fuse because of performance issues. So now I'm going to give MCS another try with 1.6. The main reason I prefer MCS over Fuse is the ability to do the morphing in-editor and in-game, which is a huge benefit over Fuse.

 

Well, I'm afraid I can't get the new version working.
After having the same issues as FredrikSwe I proceeded as he suggested by deleting all MORPH3D content, then only opening the actual Male and Female content packs, but not the Core. Then reimporting.
This seemed to work at first, I could drag MCSMale and MCSFemale into the scene where they seemed to behave correctly, but when trying to save any MCS character as a prefab the Materials on that prefab are lost immediately. LOD0 does not longer have any Materials assigned, sometimes all LODs lose their Materials, sometimes only LOD0.
This was tested on a new, empty project.

The Materials that are assigned to LOD0 of the MCS character in the scene seem to be runtime instances (clones) of project materials, because while clicking the Materials on the other LODs highlights the Material in the project folders, clicking the LOD0 Materials has no such effect. If the MCS character is already prefabbed, the LOD0 Materials are shown bold in the inspector, which also suggests they have been meddled with by some script. This explains why the prefab doesn't have Materials assigned as well: prefabs can't reference runtime/scene objects. This clearly seems to be a bug.

I suppose this means reverting and going back to working on AI until a hotfix is released. Or did anyone actually get it to work?

 

I seem to be getting import errors with the MCS Male character that prevents the other scripts from compiling, however I deleted the existing MCS folder and imported the core first ect.. but something is funny with the DLL.

 

Anyone tried 1.6 with wireshark or anything to see if there's any phone-home involved?

 

@LennartJohansen said he got it working just by following the instructions in the readme file. He also said it is working better than ever.

 

I also discovered some problems later with saving to prefabs and duplicating characters in edior instead of adding multiple. But seems to be simple runtime texture reference problems. They will fix this in a patch.

 

Okay something from me again. And as @Lysander misunderstood me yesterday (haha sorry again for that) I will keep this short.

@hopeful @Whippets
As far as I could see and if I haven't missed something, there should be nothing in the male and female package to fear, like phoning home or such. M3D really did some suspicious actions and we all agree that this EULA thing is a mess. But if M3D would implement some "phoning home" parts, this would be, as far as I know, highly illegal without telling it their customers. And I don't believe they would do such.

I tried some stuff with the blendshapes, duplicated the models etc and never got any errors.

 

From license restrictions:

https://www.morph3d.com/eula

Quote:
"Users shall not be entitled to distribute or transfer in any way (including, without, limitation by way of sublicense) the Converted Content other than as integrated components of electronic games and interactive media or through Morph 3D with Morph 3D acting as a reseller or broker of Converted Content."

Does this mean that any content made for the Morph 3D system must be sold through the Morph 3D store?

ie. If one makes content and wishes to sell it on the asset store separate from Morph3D this is not permitted?

 

Same problem here. As a temporary workaround I managed to import the male and female into a new project. From there export into a custom package. Import the custom package into the real project. Reimport! Following import of cloth packs works fine. Not sure how this is going to work out once the hotfix is available, but for me it's fine for now.

 

Well, as DAZ3D is Morph3Ds parent company, I really think that's what it says and I don't wonder then.
DAZ3D has a lot of the same kind of restrictions.

 

Hi everyone, we're paying attention and working to fully understand the concerns that some of the EULA terms have raised for members of the community. The entire company from the top down is genuinely interested in your feedback - in short, we want to make our products really valuable and something you are excited to use, while also making it a healthy space for the company and its independent artist community to continue developing products that benefit you. Naturally that's an important balance and its a top priority for us to refine those terms with everyone's interests in mind - most especially yours.
We want you to be able to make your MMOs, your large scale multiplayer games and also for you to be able to make money off of in-app content purchases. At the same time, some EULA restrictions are necessary to protect our efforts and investment (and that of our independent artist community) so we can continue to develop new products and features, like those we'll announce this week at GDC and a lot more in the future. For example:

• • Streaming content and streaming APIs
  • Character / avatar definitions
• Access to stream the entire MCS library, along with your own content, and more into your games and resell it
  
  • All infrastructure, unlimited use of the back-end cloud technology and hosting costs for streaming content for free
• In-app purchasing and distribution of revenue
  
• All that paid for with a revenue split on in-app purchases so everyone's incentives are aligned and everyone benefits together.

During GDC we'll be releasing a publicly available demo download that will share more of this vision with you. We appreciate the feedback you've shared already and will be taking it all into account. We sincerely want to provide you the most affordable and versatile character and avatar platform to power your games. Thanks again for your feedback, and please stay tuned!

 

But..what if we don't want MCS to be the back end for our game but still want to use MCS stuff in our game? Confused.

 

Understood, but should artist/ content creators really be restricted to a single store? Art content is really separate from the tools in that the artist is really just providing something that was made "with " the tools and not redistributing any part of the Morph3D software. If they have to purchase a license, they should be able to resell their content as they like. Does the Morph3D store take a percentage of the sales? Do the artist have to pay a license fee and also have a percentage taken from their sales?

 

So this tool essentially lets you rig and skin the art that you make to the M3d character and yet you get money off the work the artist did. If your company made it easy for artists to make custom content using the tools they already own and pay lots of money for, then you would get nothing.

So really, the tool is not to expand the use of your character system, but to make more money. Because you, unlike other game assets that people purchase, need to make more money off of people's hard work.

Sad.

 

Ok, so how does it affect my scenario. I host my own game. Morph3D content is built in asset bundles and downloaded as part of the game (not live-streamed). Any one game zone can host up to 200 player-characters, and possibly double that in NPCs. It's unlikely that 600 avatars could interact at once, and almost certainly bring the server to a grinding halt. I have no in-app purchases.

 

There is a quick guide on how to upgrade an existing MCS 1.0 project to 1.6. The guide may make the task seem less daunting than it actually is. There were significant changes and so there will be some work required. Here is a link to the guide: https://www.morph3d.com/community/upgrading-from-mcs-10-to-16

Hopefully those of you who have started upgrading read my post about backing up your project. Please make sure you do so prior to upgrading.

I've seen a few people mention some issues with creating prefabs. This is something I'll test first thing Monday, I saw a few other bugs posted here as well. I'm trying to track them as best I can.

If you have an issue with either MCS 1.6 and/or Artist Tools (bug or otherwise) feel free to post here but I would really appreciate it if you also submitted a ticket to our zendesk page morph3dhelp.zendesk.com This will make it much easier for me to track issues and make sure they get into the bug tracker and prioritized. In the ticket please include as much detailed information as possible. If you are having an Artist Tools issue please include the FBX files you are trying to convert in the submission as well as a zipped up project folder. This will help us quickly track down the issues.

We should have documentation for Artist Tools out soon. We are just putting the finishing touches on a few pieces for that. Hopefully with those out it will be easier for users to know what Artist Tools requires in terms of rigging etc in order for the processing to work correctly.

 

If Morph3D are listening; this guy is one of the top character content creators on the Unity Asset-Store.

 

It seems that every time you change the prefab it loses its lod0 material (even tough you dont see it in scene until you hit run). so if material is lost (check by removing and adding againg to scene): save prefab then delete prefab from scene. Drag it into scene from folder. Add material to Lod0 Body, Head, Eyes. then save prefab and it will work.

 

Downloading the artist tools means accepting the MCS EULA, right? I would like to get that situation cleared up before I download ANYTHING from the MCS store site.

Like anyone here, I hope these concerns are addressed and we go on to have healthy successful business. I don't want to wind up losing control of my game or having to pay extra because I used 21 MCS parts at a time or exceeded 49 people in a chat room.

If these "additional restrictions" apply only to new services being offered by MCS, then that needs to be stated in the EULA. Right now, it looks highly and unnecessarily restrictive to game design.

 

It seems like enough people are having this issue that I will submit the bug right now rather than waiting to test it myself. That way the MCS team can see it first thing in the morning on Monday.

 

Almost no one who's wanting to use your product here has any need for these niche features- it's certainly not worth the restrictions placed on content creation, usage, and reselling, and it's going to do infinitely more damage to the "artist community" than it helps them. No one expects any sort of continued revenue from sold art assets for Unity, even for MMOs- there's a reason the UAS has a completely standard license. You're obviously doing this because you're used to a completely different paradigm, and I can understand that, but if you keep pushing in this direction you're going kill your own product before it's even usable.

The fact that you guys didn't come out and say this was the direction you were heading back when you started the MCS project is certainly not helping either. The "we put it in the EULA a long time ago" argument just goes to show how completely unusable your assets were until yesterday- no one noticed because no one had a reason to notice, since they couldn't use them anyways. That's still the case though, with these restrictions.

At this point frankly, I'd be afraid to use the Morph3D store in any case. Who knows how many hidden charges might be tacked on the moment I hit "submit" for a purchase? That might seem like a ridiculous worry to you, but to many of us here, that's exactly what just happened.

Please, I beg you, fix the EULA and bring this back on the proper track before you kill it!

 

The prospect of having to pay more brought me over from some complaints that spilled into an unrelated thread. It was something about being charged extra potentially just for using Morph3D. I already swallowed paying full price for some assets that are now free and 60% off. Now thinking that there's secrets has me simply feeling about to get betrayed.

If there was an upfront explanation of what I'd be paying if I did X- then I'd be fine. I can build with each available option in mind. However, if Morph3D has landmines in their product, I'm not amused.

 

I can definitely see your point. Respectfully, I'd like to point out that the workflow for Artist Tools requires building on a foundation built by Morph3D, as well as then using the tools to enhance the content to be able to work with and have all of the dynamic capabilities of MCS content.


Also, as to your question about just one store, due to the in-app purchasing capabilities that we will be demonstrating the first phase of at GDC, we will actually be opening up the opportunity for an artist’s content to be sold (and for them to earn on those sales) in a huge number of stores (several big ones already lined up.)


As to the price for the use of the Artist Tools to create content for your own games, or the revenue structure for in-app purchasing through various stores, games, and social platforms, we are still finalizing elements of that and will keep you all posted once we have more information.

 

@Morph_JN Are the Reptilian and Minotaur characters coming back?

 

Thanks for the reply.

Right. I figured this would be covered if a license was purchased. It seems that a license doesn't have to be purchased for creating the content itself or am I wrong? For example, does one have to purchase the artist's tools in order to create content which will be sold through the store?

Great. I'll be checking that out.

 

Thanks for helping me finalize my decision. Enjoy your commissions off the purchase I mistakenly made yesterday before learning about all this bs. They will be my last for you.

This is definitely not a business model I need or am looking to support. The business model which Will (@justb) works under with UMA fully supports artists without the addition of a middle man. I was pained at the thought of moving to MCS because of losing access to packs I had already bought from Will for UMA. But the original business model we were sold on for MCS was enough to make me switch and enough for me to talk to Will about considering porting his models for use for MCS. Reading this post makes me sorry that I wasted my money and time and wasted Will's time having him look at your stuff.

I wish you the best of luck but at this point I've lost interest and after this message will no longer be lurking and reading updates on this thread.

 

Just vote with your wallet guys, don't support MCS, I am turned off from this product from the way it was handled to this new licensing. If everyone votes with their wallets, let this product sink.

 

@Shawn67 If you've got the time I'd love to get some feedback from you as to which specific aspects of the business model are deal breakers for you. We are always open to suggestions for making MCS something that the community of artists, content creators and developers want to use.

Edit: I should add that any one who wants to provide specific feedback that I can present on Monday is welcome to do so. If you tag me in the post I'll make sure to read it and include it in my report on Monday morning.

Edit2: If you include any potential use cases that you were planning but feel you can't with current restrictions that would be particularly helpful. If you don't feel comfortable posting that in this thread feel free to DM me.

 

There are three questionable aspects of the MCS system now.

1. First, the inability to use the assets in MMO environments or in-app purchases without spending additional money on the system. Maybe you're doing this because of your up-and-coming streaming services, or whatever, but there's no reason for that to be the case. Your streaming/cloud services should be a completely separate subscription and have nothing at all to do with the content people purchase outright. The fact that people don't know about this massive limitation when purchasing the product is already grounds for refunds IMO.

You, and everyone else, should be aware that this restriction doesn't actually apply to anything purchased directly from the UAS, since Unity's EULA can't be overridden, so it only applies to custom content modified through the Artist Tools, or things sold directly on the Morph3D store. This inconsistency already means you aren't going to be able to control things to the extent that you seem to want, so there's utterly no point except to piss people off. Just let it go.

2. Requiring people to pay for the Artist Tools is one thing- I wasn't happy about it because the Tools were a selling point for MCS long before they were actually made available, so I always thought of it as a part of the value of the individual assets we were buying. Bait and switch tactics are really quite rude, and after the amount of time we had to wait for them, it's frankly downright rage-inducing. That said, I'm not really against the idea of paying for the Tools- I just wish it had made perfectly clear that they weren't going to be free a long time ago.

I'd prefer if the Tools were sold on a subscription-basis, since it seems a lot of the rationality for point 3 below comes from the Tools being such an expensive development tool for M3D to make over the last few months. Photoshop is currently $20 USD a month- I wouldn't mind doing the same for the Artist Tools as well, as long as the garbage in point 3 is voided.

3. Custom content we make does not belong to M3D, period. Paying for the Artist Tools is fine, but the use of those Tools restricting the rights we hold to do whatever the hell we want with the result is a deal-breaker. We can't use the Tools to create anything- it's just an adapter, which we pay for, to convert the clothing we already also paid for into a format compatible with the MCS system, which we also paid for. You're already getting your money, so not being able to sell on the Asset Store, or our own personal stores, is absolute garbage.

*** Worth noting that there's absolutely nothing stopping people from selling outfits for use with MCS on the Asset Store anyways, as long as the Artist Tools weren't used on them yet. Model the clothing, texture them, make sure they fit the MCS base models, marketing it as "MCS-ready" on the Asset Store, and then the only thing left for people who buy it is to use the Tools to adapt it to their needs. Takes all of 5 minutes, and it's completely legal. You guys should keep this in mind and just lose the Morph3D-vendor-only idea right now IMO.

 

@Lysander thanks for the detailed, thorough and succinct reply.

 

LOL guys..., they don't want to sell you content.

They want YOU to sell their content to your vast hords of faithful game fans. You'll all get rich. It will be great.

 

Just a quick correction: Photoshop is $10 a month. It's only $20 if you want their cloud storage and you should just use something else like Google which is $2 a month for a 1TB. $10 a month for 20GB is a riot.

It seems to me more like they want a cut of any content you sell to your faithful game fans and a cut of your IAP and a cut if you're a successful MMOG.

 

Is that really the plan? Good grief. I'm not in that business. I bought their art to use in a game that I'm making where I have total control over the art and total control over every other feature of the game. That's pretty much what Unity is about: creators making games.

I guess Morph3D is trying to make some sort of DAZ game universe, if what you say is true, but I don't want to be a part of that. I just want the meshes and textures that I already bought from these people to be usable in the game I am making, without any restrictions.

And I can get art - licensed for gaming, without restrictions - from all over the place. Just ... apparently not from Morph3D. If they'd been honest from the start, they'd have told us that the plan was for the art to only be used in "official Morph3D games" ... and all of us would have avoided it like the plague.

In fact, it's doubtful it ever would have been sold in the Unity store.

 

I don't get how a business goes from building a character creation/management/clothing system to wanting to complement missing, promised functionality with a new paid product and now an online store, a cloud service, an IAP platform and an asset streaming service. Oh, it's the dartboard system to revenue generation, throw a million darts and one might hit the bullseye. Might as well throw in a networking stack, shader framework and an animation system. Oh, don't forget the kitchen sink, it's looking kind of lonely over there.

 

My mistake. I was on there earlier and saw $20 for Photoshop, but didn't read the details, so I guess I missed that bit. I was checking out recent FUSE improvements- I'll give you 3 guesses why. ^_~

 

@hopeful Would it be fair to say that if assets published by morph 3d had no additional restrictions you would be ok using the system? What specific use cases do you feel are personally limiting for you? Feel free to DM if you want.

I'm not trying to argue, just trying to gain as much insight and understanding as I can.

 

Ill add my 0.02c

I'm not an artist I'm a dev, I like the Unity App Store model because it's simple, I buy something I can use it in my game pretty much no questions asked.

This still applied to every asset Morph3d chooses to sell in the Unity Asset Store. Since I'm not an artist, I have no plans to use the artist tools myself.

I can absolutely understand those who are mad, but personally I will only be angry if this change in business model leads to Morph3d abandoning the Unity Asset Store for additional content packs because there is a dearth of some very common needs (like seriously, no modern police officers even?)

If you guys work with artists to bring their creations to the Unity Asset Store without your BS restrictions then I'll be very happy. Alternatively If you have decided that the terms of those sales are disagreeable then I will likely find your character system to be disagreeable as well.

Now for the technical side:

Do you guys have a QA department at all? I tried messing with the new stuff and it is WAY faster (yay, many thanks for this as it is the first step to making this stuff actually useful). But it's very clear that this stuff has seen little to no integration testing before release.

There is a DLL with editor references that isn't marked editor only that will break your build.

Even working past that, my characters bodies just don't show up in my actual build for reasons I just gave up on trying to figure out for now

Male/Female versions of the same content packs overwrite each other in some cases.

Packs are missing content they previously had (like hoodie down versions of the hoodies)

Missing material references abound

On top of that you can't save a prefab of a figure you've created, the materials somehow go missing.

So there is a small glimmer of hope that this stuff might finally be usable, but it's hard to see under all this crap.

tl;dr I for one am looking forward to more Morph3D content in the Unity Asset Store where I can ignore all of the BS drama this thread has stirred up; but please fix the code first.

 

@go1dfish first thanks so much for the perspective. Second if you submit a ticket our zendesk page:
morph3dhelp.zendesk.com and describe the issue with steps to reproduce, screen shots, and whatever else you think would be useful I can get a bug report filed.

 

This has been a pretty fascinating read--as I was doing research on alternatives for Fuse, and I haven't looked in on MCS in a while. Since with Fuse, their devs are being diverted into a different Adobe Project since Adobe wants nothing to do with us filthy Game Dev folks.

But it seems like MCS only wants to string Game Dev folks along and try to force the Daz3D Profit Scheme. I guess no company sees the value in making character creation tool for people making games and not graphic design. I should really just buck up and weight skins like a savage.

 

It's okay; I wouldn't think you'd be arguing. I'm upset, but maybe my feeling is more accurately described as shocked disbelief and feeling like I've been ripped off.

Unity is a game engine / community / asset store that is here to help primarily small, independent game makers make games. A lot of us are amateurs and hobbyists. Some are making architectural visualizations and other business visualizations. We buy art, C# code, shaders, sound effects, and music from the Unity store for the purpose of completing our projects. Many of the vendors who have their work featured in the asset store also have their own stores, and even though it is inconvenient to shop outside of Unity, we may patronize those private stores (which don't have to pay the "Unity tax") in order to toss a few extra shekels to help our fellow starving artists. This is a system that works for us.

What Unity users expect - and it's somewhat dangerous to generalize, but I think this is broadly true - we expect standard game licensing on our purchases. It's a guarantee given by the Unity store, and it is also observed by every private vendor's store. So if we buy music, we can use it however we want in our game. Play X many seconds of it here, X many seconds there, change the pitch, or play it backwards ... whatever. If we buy code, we can change whatever we want in the code and use it in our game. And if we buy art ... we can use the meshes and the textures and shaders and whatever else there is in the kit ... modify and use them in any way we please in the game, without restriction.

I don't want anything from MCS except the models I bought, and I want to use them in my game without restriction. That's the standard here. If MCS was thinking of something different - a different business model, and/or some different way of licensing their art - they never should have been in the Unity store.

People here also thought they were getting art tools for MCS, which was a key factor for getting them to buy in to this system. After a loooooooong delay, the art tools are finally here, but you can't seriously be thinking of making them give up their standard game license, and accept a more restricted license, in order to use the tools. It's a major deception.

So yes ... I think most of us would be fine with MCS if it was like everything else in the Unity world. No restrictions on the use of the art in the game, no restrictions on the game itself, and a proper follow-through on the art tools.

Aside from that, there are of course the issues related to making models that work and are efficient enough to be used in a game.

I'm not sure what Morph3D thinks it is doing with its business, and I'm not sure what it thinks its product is. But from my view MCS is just art that is licensed for games (meaning that once you buy it, you do whatever you want with it in your game), and that's what I was under the impression I was buying.

 

I submitted bug reports for most of those, but honestly past a certain point I feel like I'm an unpaid member of a non-existent QA department and I just give up. That's where I'm at with M3D right now. Ill give it another try once there is another round of updates to the base characters at minimum.

On the bright side the combination of the tantalizing promise of M3D combined with the incredibly disappointing actual implementation has led me to abstract away my character avatars to the point where I can keep building and easily drop in M3D if and when it ever becomes functional.

I recommend your QA team try to:

• Build a character
• Add some clothes
• Save that character as a prefab
• Insert that prefab into a scene
• Build the scene for standalone
• Verify that the character appears correctly

This might serve as a good baseline checklist before a release in the future. I'm gonna start doing this every time I touch this stuff again because assuming that basic level of functionality would be present cost me a lot of time today.

 

@Morph_JN , first off in the beginning, when the call went out by Morph3D for talented artists to create content for MCS by directly contacting them via the website(which I did), only to be politely brushed off being told we have the artists we need, without so much as a discussion or opportunity to show what I could do. That was burn one, having paid for both male and female, and what packs were available at the time, ok, so I suck it up and go back to developing having been placated with the promise of Content creation tools dangled out there.

I'm gonna tell ya straight out, my company buys assets based on our needs, of our projects, based on what information we read both on this forum(paying attention in particular to the nature and promises of content creators, and their responses to the questions put to them by this community before making such investments.), and in item descriptions on the assets store, and having like many who have been burned plenty, we(those of the Unity community) tend to question and search for certain common ground between developers and creators.

At no point after the fact is any creator whose asset we've purchased welcome to monetize on us further without being invited to do so.

And while I understand the differentiation between purchasing a product which I now own to use as I please so long as there is no violation beyond the scope of the licensing terms offered by Unity where I bought it, and to which the creator agreed to by joining the Publishers Administration, and paying for a tool to use with that product separately(which I don't mind paying for once in full, as subscription models are leeching instruments.), I want Morph3D to understand that the term "Bait and Switch" is in fact probably the most appropriate term which is fueling the majority of the sentiment being expressed.

There comes a point when one must actually feel the pulse of the people to whom one has benefited via their monetary support as well as hopes and beliefs in the promises made to those people prior to actually being held to task by those people(refunds).

Just remember, before the tidal wave(irreparable damage to income, and image), comes the the rush of air(vocalized concerns).

 

For me the main deal breaker is lack of Linux support. I used to be a member of Platinum Club at Daz3D, and now have a whole bunch of content somewhere on an external drive that I haven't used since I switched to Linux over 10 years ago. I don't see wine as a viable option and just google 'daz studio linux' every year or so to see if there's a port yet.

It's the same thing I did with Unity and now there's a Linux beta (took me awhile to notice!), here I am spending money on assets.

As far as the EULA is concerned from a new customer view, I buy assets mostly to save time and make my life easier. Having to track usage and take action at certain levels more than reverses any benefit there.

 

Do the MCS figures not work on linux? This is not something I've looked into yet but I was hoping to support linux.

 

And this is a prime example of why I never purchase assets based on features that are talked about but don't actually exist. I've been following this thread for a while -- and I picked up a handful of MCS stuff when it was heavily discounted -- but I was holding off on making any commitments until the major issues were resolved.

So far, I'm glad I've invested in UMA.

 

The Artist Tools download link showed as a .exe so I'm assuming it's Windows only. I tried to download the templates to test in Blender, but that took me to the sign up screen and I bailed out. I don't think there would be an issue with the figures themselves.

I looked briefly at the MCS lite figures a few months ago but don't remember any specific Linux issues. I just decided at that time I was better off using MakeHuman and doing everything myself until I knew more about Unity so I didn't dig too deep then.

 

I agree with this one. When I bought the models which are now free, it was advertised with a promise to be able to create custom content. (We've been waiting over a year for promised tools)

The way I see it anyone bought MCS models should be able to use the tools to create converted content for themselves freely. Maybe you could charge subscription fees from the artists who will sell the converted content, but not the ones creating for themselves.

 

@Morph_JN
So here's the deal, it's been well documented and expressed very well by others, but I'll weigh in now as well since the firesail has been quelled a bit and the focus is on the future and reparation.

1) If you want to regain some faith, admit to the mistake on the EULA and fix it. Whether this is a lack of legal department, an oversight, or simply trying to change the plan after the fact, the result is unacceptable. The EULA needs to be thrown out, and fall in line as a standard Unity asset. Anything short of this now, will create huge abandonment, and that "100k downloads" figure will have to be amended to "100k downloads and 95k refunded!". This is the expectation of the developers who obtained MCS assets on the asset store. How do you expect anyone to take your EULA serious, if you aren't respecting the one YOU agreed to when publishing on the asset store? This is a big issue right now, and legally speaking your EULA cannot be enforced, so there is some big questions right now what this is going to mean for the future of the asset. Some course needs to be taken immediately to clear the air on this one way or another.

2) Whether intentional or not, the "content creation tools" were made part of the deal. People got onboard with MCS based on the faith that MCS would act like other asset store developers and provide what they promise to the best of their ability, and would be the next great thing to bring nearly infinite customization to any character-oriented games. I do not feel this is the case with MCS, the bait and switch on the tools is a terrible tactic and to restore faith I believe the only solution that is really going to simmer some of the anger is to give a lifetime subscription to the current holders of MCS content, and in the future you can look to monetize the content creation pipeline with an "eyes wide open" approach to new adopters as a subscription-based (web?) application.

3) Any form of limitation on how the MCS assets are used is completely crap, as is trying to tell someone they are not permitted to create an asset that interacts with yours, such as the gentleman who was making a skinning tool in Unity for MCS and other characters because you feel this is stepping on the toes of your artist tools and would bypass your fingers in our pockets. When people buy assets on the store, we don't go looking for additional EULA's because this isn't standard practice. With exception to a handful of free assets for demo purposes (like Adam and Blacksmith assets), there is no custom EULA's in the store. If you want adoption of this product, you need to accept that you don't get to tie our hands on how we use it or we're just going to say it's not worth it and you can keep your product and store. If you want us to continue buying more assets from you, accept that we too need to make a few dollars to buy those assets, and stop trying to put your fingers in our wallets.

4) If you are providing some additional cloud-based streaming service with it's own endless pipeline of assets made available on the fly, it should be very clear that whatever your plans are for that system have nothing to do with how we decide to use MCS ourselves. If we want to create our own streaming services, that's our business. I don't care if it steps on every toe of your business model, it's called free enterprise. You say asset tools build on the back of MCS, and we build on the back of the artist tools, but what you fail to include is you are building on the back of Unity, a free product you are banking on for your product to even exist. Should they be charging MCS a 30% fee to introduce every new piece of clothing you want to allow people to stream into Unity? Seems pretty impractical right?

5) Spaghetti business. You're throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm not sure this was a smart idea going into MCS. None of this would be a factor if you had clearly defined where you were extending your business model going forward without trying to change the expectations you already set out by saying "well we never really said we wouldn't charge you more". Poor communication is our argument, not yours. It's time to clear the air, decide what the path going forward for MCS will be and possibly look at refunding those who want to back out of any expectations that won't be met. Once again, I refer back to my argument about SpeedTree, when you know what you're getting into you'll make an educated decision on whether those limitations are acceptable or not. Even when those limitations are exceptionally binding, there are no surprises going into it.

I have some other points, but it's clear M3D needs to make a move and until they do, I'm not holding my breath that it'll be anything more than an attempt to shift how our hands are tied. What I do see happening is this whole issue prompting a "screw it" attitude, and an alternative popping up from someone else that replaces MCS after all this frustration. So far the above points I've made is just keeping this niche wide open for someone else to take over, with a lot of potential adopters already ready to jump ship.