You've been heard. Response re: 4.9 and Encryption
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Is content encryted/DRM'd in the Unity store? I think that was mentioned several pages back, but I would be interested in hearing more about that, or if soemone could verify it one way or the other, or offer other details on it. Or if anyone knows of any other app+store combinations that sell DRM'd content. e-on/Cornucopia/Vue has it, but you can often buy an unlocked version of the content at a higher price. Edit: Or depending on how you want to look at it, you can buy the DRM'd version at a lower price. Edit2: Also, the $5 vouchers for their equivlanet to the PC+ can often only be used on the locked version (if voucher friendly at all -- vouchers are not a good reason to join the Cornucopia Club).
Yeh, been altering some stuff in blen
I support encryption; I don't support DRM.
I doubt it.
That was quick.
This could also get DAZ off the credit card processing "hit lists". It's a relatively frequent occurance for your credit card company to deactivate your card if you make 3-4 purchases fron DAZ in the same day (which can easily happen when flash sales are going on, and also happened a couple of times when DAZ had promos that caused you to break your purchases up into multiple small transactions. And yes, I can detail when this happened, so don't say it didn't).
But then again, a piracy solution that actually eliminates an inconvenience to the customers is probably too radical.
Three months isn't necessary. I'm betting the "proper" time is something like 48 hours after purchasing something. So, you buy something, and you have to have an encrypted download for the first 48, then it's back to plain old unencrypted. The 48 hours should be replaced by whatever the period it takes a stolen card to get deactivated.
It makes perfect sense. Credit card verification is something that's probably already in their shopping cart software, just flip a switch and it goes.
DRM took a lot of work to implement.
So, when some exec is talking about what they did to address a problem, "oh, I had them turn on a website feature we hadn't been using" isn't anywhere near as impressive as "I had a team of six researching and implementing a sophisticated DRM system".
To be fair, a few new faces have popped in recently to voice their opinions, both pro and con.
But more to the point, if people feel strongly about something, they're not just going to let the topic die. Otherwise management thinks "So the forum whiners have finally stopped? Good, now we know that our DRM is A-OK with everyone".
You folks may be sick of hearing about the problem, but certainly no more than some of your customers are sick about having to write posts concerning its impact on their work.
What you should be concerned with is when they DO stop posting, because that means they've probably gone elsewhere, and that will show up on DAZ's bottom line eventually.
I don't think you can stop it.
Maybe what Daz has done is enough of a deterrent for some pirates, thus slowing it down sufficiently for them to consider it to be a success. I think the success will only be determined over the long-term.
Certainly there have been some interesting links on pages between 47-49, and there been many suggestions; some not viable, and others dismissed already.
Offer a Paid-For Daz version without any DRM or Connect; anyone purchasing must either be a long-term customer. Or new customers will have to wait a number of days before their downloads are verified. The paid for version allows the installation of DRMed content that isn't DRMed.
Offer a guarantee that if the DRM ceases to be part of Daz, that those paying for the none-DRM version will have a credit/refund of a proportion of their payment - say if they had owned the product less than a year, they get a proportional amount returned relating to how much of the year left.
Depending on how much, I would consider buying such a package; yes I think none-DRM have more value. Basically what we pay now. Of course, I've refused free DRMed items, which is an indication of what I think they're worth.
+1
What are those two old sayings? "Out of sight, out of mind" and "The squeeky wheel gets the grease"
Without more information (which based on what DAZ_Jon said, they cannot or will not provide) we are left waiting, debating, or speculating. And we want to make sure that the people at DAZ remain aware that we are still dissatisfied with DRM/Encryption and why.
I wonder how we can "Move the conversation on" when all the alternate suggestions that have been made are dismissed with a "We considered this, but rejected it for reasons we can not say". I guess they hope the conversation will move on to how we are now happy with DRM, but that's as likely as a repenant pirate.
At this point I don't know that I have any hope for the future of Daz Studio or the store. I've put the weekly PC freebie in my cart twice now without completing the purchase, not because of encryption since it's not encrypted but just I'm not sure there's much point. I'd already cancelled my PC membership at the end of the term.
Thanks to technical issues with Connect and it's authentication I ended up having to ask for over a hundred items to be removed from my product library because that seems to be the only way to simplify the mess my system has become due to these issues and to deal with a very real concern that I will have to keep reinstalling everything each time I test another supposed 'fix'.
As I said before, it seems things are becoming too impersonal here and while I'd expect to have my concerns and issues ignored and dismissed by Smith Micro or Adobe, I really had thought to at least get something more here. Instead it seems like the line is 'our DRM is wonderful and will never inconvenience anyone, now just be quiet and wait for our hotfix'.
Metrics? Analytic data?
Not credible.
Have you read the probably quite large collection of messages from your paying customers — at least, they were paying before all this incredible mess started — who were in actual physical pain because of what your analytics claimed was a good design choice?
Something I'd like to know; this is not a rhetorical question, I would like an answer. When we had the choice, the lighter theme in the store was easier on my eyes, because I was looking more at pictures than at text. The darker theme in the forums didn't give me eyestrain because I was looking at lots and lots of text with the occasional picture. Which kind of site visitor, am I, then?
I'm sorry, but all you've done with your statement is confirm that whoever was part of the site design decisions didn't have a clue how those decisions adversely affected actual people.
In the spirit of moving things forward, I don't think I've seen this idea suggested yet:
DAZ's objective is to encourage people to buy more content. Instead of trying to punish your customers, how about rewarding them when they do the right thing? Imagine this email appearing in your inbox:
"Hi, we noticed you've spent over $500 with us. As a thank-you from us, here's a free $20 coupon code for anything in the store(*). Thanks again!"
"(*) Note that NO restrictions apply. When we said anything, we meant it! New items, towards a PC+ membership, anything you like."
Add up what DAZ has spent on developing the DRM scheme plus what it will spend on maintenance in the future, and let's see how many $20 coupons you could sent out. I know, that's privileged info
I'm not expecting an actual number, but hopefully you get my point.
Reward, not punish.
I very much doubt that any decision is going to be based on forum posts read as votes pro or con; Daz will decide on sales and effectiveness (however that is measured) how much content will be released in encrypted form.
If I recall right the lighter color was the default and one had to select the darker. So one wonders if they bothered to correct for bias in their metrics for people who never looked past the default?
That has already been done. Just a few days back I (and many others) got $7 as store credit with no strings attached valid for anything. And that was not the first time.
Ciao
TD
I added a mesage to my sigline beyond that I just give up honestly
Nice! Did they mention why you got a store credit? That is, was it a reward for being a good customer or was it because one their sales discounts got a bit confused with itself (as they sometimes do).
?????!
You think that anecdotes are more credible than actual data?
I really disagree
As many companies know, analytics tell you the WHAT, but they don't tell you the WHY. You need both to make good decisions.
If I recall correctly, it was based on the purchase of Gia/Gianni 7 bundles? Someone might remember the exact wording (I deleted the message), but yes, a reason was given.
TD
Edit: Found the thread. It was based on an early purchase of Gia7 or Gianni 7.
Yes, it was a credit for something you should have got.
Speculation on my part, but there were a lot of complaints/concerns about different pricing base don what had been orderd, so I think it wwas related to that. Could be wrong though -- maybe they are hoping to encourage more early purchases. Or maybe it is a bit of both.
Speaking of confusion, it sure seems like DAZ makes some deciions on how confusing a sale is based at least in part on forum posts (and presuambly customer support tickets).
Regarding DAZ being "cold", they have always imo been poor at communicating with customers, community building, etc.. And while Smith-Micro and Adobe may be cold, I also have much higher expecations that their tech support will resolve DRM/activation type issues quickly since they are used to working with business customers. I have no reason to believe DAZ is up for that task given how reactionary they tend to be. My guess is they do soemthing after several people end up locked out of content for a week or two.
And I like the idea of a paid for version of DAZ Studio that enitles the user to non-DRM'd versions of products. Or a PC++ club with that as a perk. I would pay a reasonable amount for that.
Go back a page and read all of the post I was replying to. IMHO it explains a lot about some of the answers we were getting to the large number of complaints about the new forum colour choices, and the lack of a second, darker forum theme. It didn't seem to matter how many of us said we could only stay in the forums for a short time before the eyestrain/headaches/other physical symptoms started, all our comments were shrugged off.
Yeah, the casual ableism evident in DAZ_Jon's "what more people used" is appalling. Hopefully this discussion will be spun off into its own topic and given the attention from DAZ it sorely needs.
Yeah, they should have at least gone with something less bright.
But I do not consder the answer given a valid one because we can use tools to adjust the colors used on the site and get a dark theme that way, and I have not seen anything that looks terribly out of place. It may have taken some additional time to hammer out what is needed for the CSS, but plug-ins like Color thhat Site! prove a passable dark theme is possible.
I find it weird that multiple themes or settings is too much work here, and yet I've been on sites from much smaller, less funded groups with many themes.
Um.
I've largely avoided the encrypted content (I say largely because I 'bought' at least one free item without realizing it's encrypted. It's not installed, and won't be unless I need it for a render, mostly so I don't have to do the same on my rendering machine). Be That As It May and whatnot. Right now, I'd like to talk about mitigating factors to take as much of the curse off for users organizing their libraries.
If Daz is going down the encryption road, then I firmly believe it's time they release a real content management/database tool for Daz3D. One that takes the SQL database and metadata and location information in your content library and allows you to manipulate it -- including but not limited to encrypted content. Let the tool itself require activation if you're going to use encrypted content, so that if you restore your system you can still unencrypt and manipulate your content as you choose.
Add to that the ability to automate the importing of third party content (have it analyze the content as though it were making a Product in the content library, query a CDDB-like public database that users can update the way iTunes let us update the CDDB back in the day, and load that metadata in for use with Smart Content while letting you organize your directory how you like. For content that database doesn't know, give us an easier interface to design metadata (select what figure it's for, type etc. as part of the import wizard), verify it and then upload the metadata. Then, let the system 'snapshot' your finished design for reinstallation if need be (and give it the capacity to build a tar.gz/zip archive backing your directory up as much as possible).
If that sounds like an entirely different product, that's because it is. If it sounds like it would be a lot of work... well, it might be. It wouldn't be hard to build such a thing on the SQL side, though the encryption stuff would complicate things a lot. If it sounds like it would add more encouragement for people to go to third party producers, since it would feature a real importer... yeah, it would. Which would actually go a ways to making disgruntled users happier.
Without something like this, then the anarchic and badly laid out folder structure of so many Daz products makes a system that prevents [i]manually[/i] reorganizing their information unfeasible. With this system, encryption will still be problematic, but one of the biggest strikes against it can be obviated [i]and[/i] there would be major value add for other users.
Heck -- if we had this tool and Daz Connect ran inside it, I might actually start using it for more than occasional testing, because it would actually be integrated into the content management side of the system instead of smack in the middle of the actual 3D Modelling tool. It wouldn't convince everyone to go ahead and buy encrypted content, but it would make the pill a lot easier to swallow for others.
That a system like this should have existed years ago is just icing.
Because I often can't find anything either in content library nor smart content as easy as I would like, I did built my own picture library from promo pictures, one folder containing G2F hair, one containing G2M hair, one containing G2F clothing ... you get the idea. Everything proven compatible goes there as well. So if I look for clothing for G2, I just need to look at this folder to find something, look at the name, which in turn helps me find it in content library.
Yes, I know, it's awkward, but for me it works better than DAZ original system.
So I chime in, DAZ needs to make a better system for storing and finding the actual files. Smart content in it's recent form is not enough.
I'm just gonna toss one last thing in...
I don't recall anyone asking to see DAZ's books. But if my local market started instituting a policy that was known to be next to useless for it's stated purpose, angered a number of customers and even drove some of them away entirely, then it wouldn't surprise me to see people asking what on earth could prompt such a decision. They may not expect to actually receive answers, but they'd be asking. And if the answers given were cryptic or evasive, or only touching the most insignificant parts of the question, then I'd expect that people would speculate on why that might be. And having worked retail in a small store, I know for a fact they wouldn't be half as reasonable and polite as this debate has been. I've had someone physically assault me demanding to know the reason for a minor price hike at the store. So I'm not surprised that people are asking things you can't answer, any more than I'm surprised you can't answer all that's being asked.
But please recognize that for a few of us this decision is tantamount to trying to shop with a security guard looming over us watching our every move. And that this wonderful new system that seems to be so beloved by the company has made what for me was a wonderful and fun creative outlet into something that actually causes me distress when I think of trying to use the software because the new system has had such problems for me. Every time I can't continue without a login is like I'm being told that I'm somehow deficient for not having my system always connected to the internet. I'm actually thankful that I'm not currently trying to use it for any paying work, because I would feel terrible telling a client I couldn't work on something because I updated to the newest version of the system and it's not fully working yet.
I still haven't heard anyone from DAZ comment on offering DRM free versions of models at higher prices, or for users that pay for a specil version of DAZ Studio (DAZ Studio Enterprise Edition?), or offering soemthing similar to PC+ for DRM free versions (e.g. for $100 a year all DRM content I purchase that year is made availalbe DRM free to me).
Sites like those are generally run by people who care most about the site, and who don't have to answer to people who care most about the bottom line.