No encrypted for me.
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I should clarify: I doubt that the intent was to run them into the ground, just that I read that the people in charge really wanted control of those programs (so Smith Micro didn't get them.) They probably had every intention to continue developing and making them flourish. Buuuut it hasn't happened and regardless of the intentions we have 3 software packages still on sale with no communication about whether they're still active and a lot of evidence that they aren't (except maybe Carrara sort of.)
Using Studio and being unable to find the specific outfits I wanted led me to learning Blender and how to make my own things. Nowadays I pretty much only use Studio for posing a character and exporting it, then modelling clothing and surroundings around it in Blender. I have been until recently importing them back into Studio when finished for Iray, but since I can't use Iray right now I might finally start to learn the terrifying Cycles (though using Studio bought shaders feels much simpler than trying to build my own shaders for EVERYTHING in Cycles.)
Some things (people, big landscapes) are definitely easier to purchase in quality via the Daz Store for me right now. But that list is smaller than when I got here, and it shrinks every time I'm pushed into finding a way to make something for myself (the battle against laziness is real.)
I'm definitely putting money into Blender this year because of how useful it's been. More than I put into Studio? I don't know. I spent a ton here last year.
...but why acquire a programme asset from another developer if you are not going to keep it current as times and needs change?
Hexagon has been a Daz product for nearly a decade. In that time it has seen two updates (the first being the bridge with Daz Studio, the second one a few years ago which did little to nothing to improve performance or stability). So for the most part it is still 10 year old 32 bit software with pretty much the same bugs and issues it had when Daz acquired it.
While I wouldn't care to speculate on the reasons why Daz did in these cases specifically, usually it's a case of not being seen as worth spending the money on, so they either become pet projects or have every intention of being updated and somehow never seem to get any time or budget allocated to them.
If you mean the reason for intentionally acquiring and asset and crushing it, it's because you see it as either a rival piece of software or a piece of software a rival company can do well with and wanting to keep it out of their hands specifically.
Worse
I bought Hex from Evovia and could use it somewhat now I can't use it at all since it crashes on the first function after the program opens
Have pretty much given up on it and moved on to other options
....so given the latter condition, then why not make it better and give your company another ace in the hand against your competition?
If you can get the investors or a company official in general to announce the reason, I'd be super interested (and even more impressed.)
My wild guess that is in no way meant to be represented as fact would be that most people don't like to risk money on things they can't see a definite profit on (look at how stale the big companies in the movie and gaming industry are with sequels and franchises because they're safe money.)
Will let you know.
...at the time Daz (Digital Art Zone) was still primarily a purveyor of Poser content as their Studio programme was still in it's infancy.
Based on that criteria, why take the risk in trying to develop your own programme to compete with Poser (which was already in it's 7th version and was fairly well established) when you offer quality 3D content and have three programmes, two of which (Carrara and Bryce) were developed significantly enough by this time and one (Hexagon) that with the right resources could have become the benchmark for 3D modelling?
Were I an investor, I would have opted for updating and improving the three acquired programmes as they already had a market identity.
Poser was at version 5.0 and was in danger of disappearing completely. DS was developed so that if Poser died there'd still be a market for Daz content.
I might be wrong here, but I think Daz was only a couple of people (or at least led by a couple of people) at that time. Then later on they decided to bring in investors who now basically run Daz. There's an article on Hivewire by the former CEO of Daz which I'm sure can't be linked here that is a really interesting story. It is only one side of the story, but it's also the only side that I know of that's been told.
A couple of people will be risky crazy creative decisions. A board of investors will look for every last dime for themselves and not much else.
...according to the timeline for Poser, in 2005 (when Daz Studio 1.0 was released and Daz acquired Bryce) Poser was in it's 6th release. When Daz acquired Carrara and Hexagon (2006) Poser 7.0 was released.
There used to be a full timeline of Daz3D releases but it has since disappeared.
Apologies for the derail.
Daz acquired Bryce in 2004, and when Daz began developing DS they didn't know that there would be a Poser 6.
They did a thing!
Cool, much better than leaving the Install Types blank on bundles... at least now it instructs you to poke around to figure out if anything in the bundle is Encrypted Daz Connect only.
The whole DAZ Connect / Smart Content mechanism in DS 4.9 is really giving me trouble... every time I launch DS, I get a "Resource Error" message now.
It says "A valid PostgreSQL CMS connection could not be established. Several DAZ Studio features require a valid PostgreSQL CMS connection, such as context aware content views and loading content installed using the Daz Connect service, will not be available. Check your network, anti-virus, and firewall settings for conflicts."
Then I sign in, and all seems to be fine, but if I quit and relaunch, I'm back to the error message first all over again...
Man, I was perfectly happy with DAZ Install Manager (DIM) queing up all of my purchased downloads and updates — at this point, I could really do without encryption *and* DAZ Connect... I only want DS to display content that I have installed, not browse for additional content to purchase, or show content that I haven't installed yet.
I've never used Content Paradise in Poser either... it's just not ideal for a 3D marketplace to live inside the UI of a 3D application. Even the Unity Marketplace suffers from these same sorts of issues (though it never gives me database error messages like DS at least).
I find the Connect and Smart Content features kludgy and disruptive to my previous creative workflow...
Yes, though unfortunately not necessarily accurate! With the detective bundle only the trench outfit product page was marked as encrypted to start with - the props and poses were updated a couple of days ago. And there's no point in saying the advertising said they were encrypted only - a lot of people (myself included) would skip most adverts and go straight to the product information to make sure its suitable for my needs, and would therefore expect this info to be accurate. I understand mistakes happen sometimes, we're only human after all. But given the sensitivity around encryption at the moment I would have expected better from DAZ.
I had this error a lot in the beta. Every time I got it I closed and reopened and it seemed to go away most of the time. Surprised it's still persisting.
What economical benefits would they get from encryption besides stopping piracy (if it works).
The only thing I can think of is PAs thinking a DRM store will better protect their content and thus sell their content at Daz.
Now that the encrypted things have been out a week or so, is there any chance of a sort of round up on how well they sold compared to their nonencrypted similar products that were released at the same time, and how well they sold once the deal was gone? Obviously not exact numbers just an idea in ratios or something.
And/or what the plans are from here? How much more is planned to be introduced and when? Will the next figure be? Will there be non sale items? Are encrypted products going to be the same price as nonencrypted products?
Well the DRM bundle was in the What's Hot yesterday, so people were buying it, but that's also no indication of how many people also opened refund requests for it. It looks like it's been displaced from the list by today's new releases.
I'd also like to know what the future of DRM is. Will it only be for DAZ Originals? Will PAs be able to opt-in and have their new releases going forward? Will it be blanket all new releases?
security theater: the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually achieve it. Used in a sentence: Given the long-demonstrated ineffectiveness of encryption / DRM at stopping or significantly slowing file sharing (movies, 3D content, etc), when that's the stated goal it's use is security theater.
Define works?
Remembering the various discussions that have happened the DAZ_? comments; they have stated (paraphrase) that it is only intended to delay the availability of of newly released items on pirate sites.
This allows for a fairly broad interpretation of what could be considered a success.
Measureing this (without measuring the cost implications of implementation or the costs of loss of revenue due to customers buying less or not at all) allows those that need it to be successful some wriggle-room.
It may also be part of a long term plan to in some way change what Daz does; I've no idea what, and am not speculating on what. I'm merely stating it could be. I suggest it because I can't see the value in it as it stands; but say it delays the appearance of new products by only a week - that may be enough to consider it a success.
It may adversley affect their profitability, but that could be termed an unanticipated consequence of implementing the measures. Personally, whoever was responsible for this project, seriously failed to do proper risk management if that's the case, but is merely speculation.
Daz aren't saying, which is sensible of them; one doesn't tend to give information competitors might use to glean information if it can be at all avoided.
EDIT
It is possible someone reacted emotionally to the theft; I had my house broken into, and the anger was incredible. I wanted to 'do something'. Such a feeling in business though can be very counter productive.
Doing something would be something like, investigating options to protect products or prevent them being pirated. Then (after the investigation) decideding that either the benefits of doing nothing further were greater than implimenting a system such as DRM; alternatively that the benefits introducing DRM out-weigh the disadvantages.
I can only conclude that they were considered to be of greater benefit; I noticed a previous post stating that Daz had-to-do-something - note that investigating the benefits of DRM, and concluding they were not of benefit would have been doing something.
This.
DAZ should know (based on countless articles, research papers, and quite a few software developers dropping it) that DRM/Encryption does NOT stop piracy. They also know that pirated copies != lost sales. But PAs want more profits, i.e., more sales. Rather than make better products at reduced prices, they want to stop pirates (despite the fact that most pirates, if they could not get it free, would NOT buy it) so they sell more. DAZ knows it won't do more than delay piracy by more than a few weeks. But it pacifies the PAs and allows DAZ to say "See, we added encryption to protect your sales." And yet, those sales don't really increase.....in fact, they'll probably decrease. Why?
It has been shown in MANY cases that DRM/Encryption actually encourages people that would have bought an unencumbered product to instead pirate the non-encumbered one, simply to avoid the problems/incompatibilites/etc. that DRM/Encryption bring with them.
And yes, the encrypted-only content is ALREADY being shared. I went looking just to see. "Lynsey for Genesis 3 Females", a DAZ-Connect Encrypted Only product, is on the share/torrent sites. Decrypted. From the comments, it only took the cracker about an hour to do it.
Wow, how effective.
It was stated, several days back when that product was released, that the 3 items for that day had erroneously been released unencrypted for a short while.
I also have to add that "better products at reduced prices" (which rather ignores the brute fact that however low the price there is still a limit to total potential market, the price/demand curve is never linear) will do nothing to stop piracy - even free stuff gets pirated.
I said "increase sales" not "reduce piracy."
The only thing that will reduce piracy is using node-locked, online-only, server-based content. Like MMOs. Anything that uses less will STILL get pirated, and shared. And going to that extreme will often create a lot of bad responses from the paying customers, who will look elsewhere for content that is less encumbered and restricted.
And even MMOs get 'pirated'...private servers, etc. So even going to those extremes won't stop piracy. It only reduces it. Even hardware dongles won't stop it, as long as enterprising crackers can bypass the code in the executable that checks the dongle......
Again, the problem is that a lot of content producers seem to equate "pirated copy" with "lost sale"....but that isn't the case. In fact, most research in the area shows that only a tiny percentage of pirates would buy if they couldn't pirate it. If they don't have the money to buy, they either do without, pirate, or look for free alternatives (if any exist.)
So how does DRM/Encryption really help?
Reporting the addresses/links to DAZ might help.
If you've ever tried to put together a product from start to finish, you'd know that this is far easier said than done. And like Richard said, free items even get pirated. For pirates, it's not so much about taking earnings away from content creators, it's more about the collecting and sharing itself (that sounds more noble than it really is, and I don't mean to sound like I'm OK with it).
If this is like many game DRM schemes where upgrading the computer requires re-authentication then I won't buy any of the encrypted content. If it is applied retroactively (I mainly use Genesis 2) or all future future releases, then I am done with DAZ.
But in the case of DAZ going down, for a short time or permanently, and I get a new computer, will I be able to use the encrypted files on my new computer. That is assuming of course that my files are safe on an external hard drive.