Digital Art Zone

Dogz - 06 February 2013 11:47 AM

Sighman - 06 February 2013 11:39 AM

Well, I for one am livid.
I don’t want to spend my spare time elsewhere but I am fed up with this conservative, isolationist, right-wing attitude. You are an ART site for pete’s sake. You should be ashamed.
.

Well while I understand your frustration, they are a business rather than an Art site, and they are acting in the best intreast of their own business which is within their right to do.
I admit It was nice they allowed 3rd parties to advertise here (I found it handy sometimes myself), but that was really a privilage and not an entitlement. And like I said, Rendo has never allowed for this AFAIK.

Not really in their best interests, not when their changes drive away customers.  Where I spend time and hang out, I buy things.  I hung out at Daz to browse galleries and seek inspiration and talent, to find ways to make Daz do more and better (such as with 3rd party plugins), and add more content made to work perfectly for Daz Studio.

Now that’s not possible.  I buy less PA items, not because of 3rd party off site items, but because Daz did away with vouchers that worked on PA items and took them out of fast grab too. Most major sales and coupons work on the Daz originals only and the whole “if you buy this, you get this other item free” doesn’t work on me because I usually don’t want one of the items, and the “buy this to get 20/30/40/50% off another item from that PA’s store” didn’t work for me either.  All these new stunts are what drives sales and loyal customers away.  Some may not care about the new tactics but it’s not cool. 

If these moves by Daz make them loose customer trust, loyalty and satisfaction, I can’t see us sticking around to take more bad treatment from them, much less pouring money into their disintegrating Platinum club. 

Sites that encourage people to hang around, visit daily, browse the store, and look at content and plugins that help renew and revive interest in the software are vital for keeping sales going.  I can’t tell you how often I came to the store “just to get the freebie” and left with a cart full of purchases.  But now there’s much less incentive to hang out, share the word, browse the store really.  Daz forums are more and more unhappy these days, and its not just because we all got whiny.

Just got a newsletter from another vendor who has left DAZ…

Pret-A-3D - 06 February 2013 11:25 AM

Spyro - 06 February 2013 07:26 AM

Really? So even a render/discussion thread for a WIP product is not allowed? That really sucks :(

One of my customers posted a thread about the new update of Reality. Not a commercial thread, the upgrade is free and it’s about a Studio plugin. The thread was killed immediately.

Similar things have happened recently with threads in the Carrara forum. I personally feel that these types of threads are a service to the community, and a benefit to DAZ. I’m sorry to see things take a turn like this, these forums used to be a place where I spent most of my lurking time. It was always in the forums here that I was able to find the best information about companion products for either DS or Carrara. Purchasing those products actually made my reliance on DAZ products greater (i.e. I had a greater financial investment in the product, or had a different software product that worked well with DAZ products, therefor re-enforcing my reliance on, or use of DAZ products).

I can see maybe restricting open commercial threads to competing products, but I fail to see the logic in not allowing commercial threads to companion products. I hope it’s not an attempt to strongly “encourage” the vendors to sell here, and just an over-site by uninformed or miss guided management, because moves like that typically don’t benefit anyone. The customers are the ones who ultimately end up on the short end of the stick (this hurts the vendors as well, though they can typically refocus their talents where they are appreciated).

DAZ_BHowell - 06 February 2013 11:56 AM

scorpio64dragon - 06 February 2013 06:20 AM

If there are to be no linking to other commercial sites, how will this effect the linking of free stuff on sites that are commercial. For example I know that for the freebie challenge you have to post links to where you got the item, if its a commercial site will this still be allowed?

DAZ is not prohibiting all links to all other commercial sites. DAZ is just limiting the posting in the Commercial thread section to DAZ PAs and their products published on the DAZ site.

Then why did DAZ3D removed “learn and share” threads about DS plugins? They weren’t commercial promotions. They were here to make Daz Studio a better software and encourage people to use it!

We have the most popular community forum in the 3D Universe….. so lets copy the same rules and restrictions as the dead forums at other sites

——Daz Manager Peter Griffin

I understand about commercial threads - on old forums 70% of visible Commons were buried under commercial threads, most of which didn’t sell through DAZ3D but just used it as a free advertisement route; I suspect Commercial Forum shared the same fate. And I can understand why DAZ3D closed this route.

But “learn and share” threads? Announcements for plugins for software made by DAZ3D? Celebration threads? WIPs? It is too much of the stupid decisions for one day - plugins especially.

Why DAZ3D just didn’t make a separate forum for 3rd party advertisements, somewhere at the very bottom of the list? It won’t impede with PAs commercial threads and it still will keep an open and welcoming atmosphere of the place which I"m currently finding severely thinned.

araneldon - 06 February 2013 12:01 PM

Just got a newsletter from another vendor who has left DAZ…

I think I got the same email.

Since DAZ3D no longer allows promotions to other sites, despite the MASSIVE amount of free advertising those sites give DAZ3D, I am no longer promoting DAZ.

I’ve just deleted every sharecg freebie I offered that enhanced a DAZ product.  Many of them were 4-5 star rated items.

Oh DAZ3D what have you done..

Why did you not just start a 3rd party specific section of your forum.??

I think your colours have now been very clearly nailed to the mast..business, business, BUSINESS.

A sad day indeed.

S.K.

Epithumia - 06 February 2013 12:40 PM

Since DAZ3D no longer allows promotions to other sites, despite the MASSIVE amount of free advertising those sites give DAZ3D, I am no longer promoting DAZ.

I’ve just deleted every sharecg freebie I offered that enhanced a DAZ product.  Many of them were 4-5 star rated items.

Good idea. When people ask me what software and models I use I’ll say poser and, er I guess Mika? Thats a SM model right? LOL

But seriously, I get asked regularly what software and models I use and it’s hard to send them here in the state the forums have been for the past year. New folk get scared off easily.

It seems like deleting things like threads on the Reality plug in, which is a huge selling point for Daz Studio, are pretty counterproductive.  It would have been far more practical and beneficial to DAZ itself for someone to go through and weed out the threads that actually benefited DAZ, but it’s been pretty apparent for a while that DAZ corporate has little idea what really goes on in the forums, so they’d essentially be starting from scratch.  At the very least, though, a graduated shut-down - ie: no more NEW non-DAZ threads, no more posting in non-Daz threads, would have served both the company and the community better AND left a less nasty aftertaste in everyone’s mouth. 

Of course, one of the most ridiculous aspects of this is that there are a number of vendors who are only selling on the other sites because DAZ’s own approval process is so convoluted.

There’s this thing many companies do when making a major change—you might have heard of it. It’s called “giving some notice.”

It annoys me to log into my Facebook and see a post from a vendor whose products I have purchased exclusively through the Daz3D store informing me that they are no longer allowed to post in these forums regarding updates, WIP, etc regarding their products.

Does that vendor have their own site? Yes.

Can I purchase through that vendor’s site, bypassing Daz completely? Absolutely.

Have I opted—until today—to purchase through Daz in order to support both that vendor and Daz3D? Yes, that is exactly my reasoning in choosing to pay a little more for purchases, products, and upgrades through the Daz store rather than the vendor’s site.

Guess what? That ends today.

Since Daz doesn’t respect me enough as a customer and doesn’t respect third party vendors who are also their customers enough to give at least a little notice so other arrangements can be made, I don’t give a rip about supporting Daz as a company. If I can buy directly from a vendor’s site rather than going through Daz’s store, I most certainly will do just that.

Vendors, if you have your own site and you do not have it linked in your sig, since there no longer is a forum that allows me to quickly and easily find you, feel free to PM me your site url.

As someone else has already said, this is a pretty small field. Daz has taken an important tool away from artists, some of whom might just be getting started. I respect and support the PAs here at Daz who sell exclusively through the Daz store.

What I do not respect and find myself increasingly unable to stomach is Daz3D the company’s decision to make constant changes, without notice, that can be so very damaging, not only to their business relationship with their customers, but to the community as a whole.

I’m in a similar position to Kattey.  I understand why Commercial products from other stores are not allowed any more.  A bit sad, but understanding.

I am disappointed (if not quite upset) that some WIP threads for products that were intended to be submitted to DAZ by vendors who happened to not be DAZ exclusive have been culled in this.  I can only hope that you will provide the PA’s with some sort of guideline as to under what circumstances they can post WIP threads.

Epithumia - 06 February 2013 12:40 PM

Since DAZ3D no longer allows promotions to other sites, despite the MASSIVE amount of free advertising those sites give DAZ3D, I am no longer promoting DAZ.

I’ve just deleted every sharecg freebie I offered that enhanced a DAZ product.  Many of them were 4-5 star rated items.

Our data shows that this was a VERY one sided exchange and that DAZ was sending huge amounts of traffic to competing (and other) sites while getting few referrals in return.

We have not made any changes to our freebie section or links to sharecg.

Of course DAZ wants to facilitate the community aspects of this forum. DAZ spends a significant amount of money hosting and moderating this forum. It is by its very existence a community building tool. But DAZ wants this to be a DAZ community tool.

It is not logical or fair that DAZ should take revenue earned by brokering DAZ PA products and use it to promote competing sites or 3rd party products.

RAMWolff - 05 February 2013 09:32 PM

It will be interesting to see if how this plays out.  If DAZ just shot themselves in the foot or if this is indeed a good move.

This has been R.com’s policy forever… they don’t allow any commercial linking, or freeware linking, for that matter, to other sites.