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I’d say its important to remember WHY people spend countless-hours creating tables(or other vpin stuffs) in the first place. I’m going to assume its because you enjoyed the ACT/FUN of creating something and sharing that with a community who many will enjoy and give thanks for. Creating/helping the community made you feel good, and in the process you joined a small group of people who shared a lot of interest with you…win/win.
The fact that someone comes along and sells your stuff after the fact doesn’t change the above paragraph. Obviously it sucks, but dont let these guys take away any joy you had in making/sharing things…
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Yeah it sucks that some people make money on your work. Personally I don’t think anybody is sending their kids through college with what they make. I don’t think there is anyway to really prevent that in a free sharing community like we have. But to pull down your work to everybody, hurts everybody period (good and bad). Your hurting a whole lot of good community people because of a few bad people. You let it ruin your enjoyment of the hobby that I think you really must have loved. I’m sorry, but your action isn’t going to stop these bad people, its only going to hurt the good people. You are mad and I understand that, but what can the community really do to prevent this? I mean there are people policing eBay, and people reporting as much bad stuff as they can, actions are being taken where they can, protesting where they can, and doing what they can, but ultimately there is nothing anyone can do to completely lockdown the tables and lockup the offenders.
I’ll probably get pounced on for this view, but even if someone buys a DVD or a cab full of games… oh well. Ultimately it will bring new people to the community for the updates and new releases. Feel proud that your tables made the cut and made it on the DVD or cab. I started in like 2006 and how did I start? With a download torrent package of outdated VP tables. I didn’t even know a community existed until I got that package and started playing. Soon after I was looking for more and here I am today. I know a lot of hard work goes into these tables I’ve made a few and modded a few, but your willing to do the work, and you enjoy freely sharing your work. The more the merrier right? Personally I don’t care how you got my work or if you mod the crap out of my work. In one way or another, you liked it enough to play it and I like that. That’s all the reward I need. I had fun doing it. I like the schedule too, if I’m tired I rest, if I get stressed I take a break, I may lose motivation too, but something always catches my interest. I’ve been where you are brother, I’ve been to the VP cliff edge. That’s when you have to take a break and walk away for a while, but you shouldn’t take your toys and go home. Some good people still want it.
Ok, I’m under my desk now. Ready aim fire!
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Rascal you keep re-iterating the point that commercial selling of tables isn’t bad because it ultimately brings more people to the hobby.
I’ve given this much thought and the more I think about it the more I don’t care for it. On the surface it sounds good, but the more I consider, the more I realize I don’t care if it reaches more people. In fact I’d prefer it to stay underground and exclusive to people who are involved in the community.
You’re right there isn’t really any way to stop them from selling tables etc. I have been trying to think of ways to hamper them but I have nothing really substantial.
I thought we could annoy them by having a big pop up disclaimer upon table load that says something along the lines of “THIS TABLE IS NOT MEANT FOR COMMERCIAL USE, RESALE OR DISTRIBUTION AND SHOULD ONLY BE ACQUIRED AT <Insert website>” Have the pop up sit on screen for about 10 seconds before vanishing and have some way of disabling it in the script. So anyone involved in the community will know (by reading release notes) how to easily disable it, but for commercial sellers looking to load lots of tables it will mean they have to go through each tables script and do more work before selling it…. a hindrance at best.
Another thing I was thinking about is maybe vpinball should limit the amount of downloads for newly signed up users to 5, kind of like vpf except instead of having to buy a subscription to download more, you simply need to become a verified user. Of course commercial sellers could weasel their way and become verified users but it could hinder them a bit.
Not the best ideas but they’re all I’ve got so far, at least it would raise awareness that vp tables should not be bundled for commercial use.
Myself I will continue to do the odd 3D model if I decide to, but really I have lots of 3D stuff I’d like to do un-related to VP that I don’t have time for as it is. I’ll do it for personal reasons as I always have, because I want to see the model done well on a table I like, time permitting of course.
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Even Scotty Wic can tell you….keeping a table to a Closed Group like he has and asking no one share link,etc to it…. still results in some ass-clown somehow getting the table and sharing the link or table / pup-pack in their own groups as part of a collection,etc.
We confronted someone who did just that… and after Scotty respectfully asked this guy to please stop doing it…. this guy (and his buddy who I’m sure was The Ghost) showed their true colours of being an unbearable and disrespectful prick. I typed up my warning to him to apologize to Scott…or I would boot him from the Pinup Group. Something I have never done or felt the need to do. The jerk left the group before I finished typing and had a chance to boot him!
Guys like that are not worth the acknowledgment that their existence bothers me enough to ruin my day. There are better ways to pass the time. Like playing Scott’s amazing tables!
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I can see both sides of this. On the one hand, we release tables with the specific expectation that they remain free for all, and get understandably upset when someone lazy comes in and basically claims money from our hard work while they lazily sit there and just do some simple assembly of bits. On the other hand, we can let our reactions to that laziness get the better of us and let it ruin our enjoyment. And, outside of closing things up and forming our own development studio to make a closed engine and release tables that can only be purchased from us (like Zen and Magic Pixel), there’s little we can do to control the lazy people who make those pincabs for lazy “profit”.
Do note: I expect that, in a few years, we’ll receive word of a C&D “bloodbath”, taking those lazy people to task for selling IP like ROMs that is certainly not within their rights to even sell because they were too lazy to make sure they were in the clear legally. Several taken down all at once, like Nintendo taking down two lazy advertisers distributing their ROM IP, and effectively scaring the rest out of that lazy market. It will probably be just a single IP holder; Gottlieb is the most likely, followed by Bally Williams and Stern in likelihood. One of them will likely be served at a pinball show, with pinball show staff asked to remove their lazy business from the show floor because, well, they’ll shortly no longer have lazily produced product to sell anyway.
Most of my issue isn’t that they’re doing it (although it is a factor, as they’ve found a lazy way to basically steal the money of their customers)… it’s that there’s always, always, the potential that that same IP holder will decide take a lazier way out, and go ahead and file C&Ds with the three VP sites as well as those lazy sellers, and possibly a couple of the FP sites, and overnight dozens of tables are made to disappear from the downloadable archives, in order to try to strangle the problem of the lazy businesses.
Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.You need to login in order to like this post: click here
No one likes my idea of them receiving a thousand phone calls a day to their business until they can’t take it anymore? Hell, you guys must love telemarketers
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No one likes my idea of them receiving a thousand phone calls a day to their business until they can’t take it anymore? Hell, you guys must love telemarketers
Unfortunately, it’s not worth my time. I’d rather be making and playing pinball when it comes down to it.
Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Well nothing is ever gonna change unless someone wants to put the work in.
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@Dark – I don’t condone DVDs or cabs being loaded with tables and being sold. I just realize that there is no good way to stop it, and I see some good also coming out of it. The good is new members, and possibly new authors, new artists, new 3D model guys, new real table owners for resources, or even new developers of cool stuff for the community. I personally think we need as many new members and new comers as possible to keep the community fresh and alive. I’m just being open minded about it all. Realistically you’re never gonna lock it down and all those restrictions would only hurt the honest person by adding hoops for them to jump through. People just have to take it with a grain of salt.
I would like to see a VP Download app kind of laid out like the play store, something that could be loaded on all the cab dealer’s cabs and also free to anybody, cab or desktop, to make it easier to gather what you need for a table. Make it so you still have to sign up for membership to the sites it downloads from or whatever, but make it easier for everybody to manage VP. Let it send you notification of new releases of all things VP and links to where to go when you launch it. Just dreaming basically, but taking the confusion out of the hobby is a plus in my book. It could even have links on how to ask permission from the table authors for each table to mod. A request permission to mod link that messages all people involve in the table.
The perfect VP utopia where we can all enjoy our hobby and dance in the streets. But then we would probably argue about what music we dance to.
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In the end if a pirate is successful enough and the reason is the IP they’re packaging, the IP lawyers will go after said pirate. So it might be somewhat a self-resolving problem given sufficient time. Similar conversations were had decades ago in the early MAME days, right?
The difference with today’s problem as compared to “yesterday’s” is multi faceted. One facet being the simplicity of worldwide communication and sharing (be it ethical or not) that is now the norm. Another is the exponential increase in an author/creator’s effort to create these works of art vs “just dumping a ROM” and running it in an emulator.
I hope the community at large can weather the storm.
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I’m definitely hoping so, too, on the weathering the storm part.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the pirate issue may have been part of why the MAME people took the effort to change license, even with the reworks they had to do for those who they couldn’t contact. Part of it was probably to reduce cyclical conversations like we’re having lately on Visual Pinball and lazy cabinet sellers.
For the most part, an IP owner will go after a pirate. It’s pretty much a slam dunk, any smart pirate in this space will fold immediately and move on to the next lazy business idea. Any that don’t are going to be easy to flatten with the lawsuit following the C&D; few of them have the resources to stand up to the legal standing, and any lawyer they talk to will be, “why didn’t you stop when the C&D arrived? They have a case, you don’t, take the first settlement and cut your losses because if this goes all the way, they will OWN you for life because you’ll never pay it off.”
Yes, I am probably being a bit paranoid about the what-if possibility that they decide to go after one or all of the sites to cut it off at the roots. I hope it doesn’t happen, but I do keep in mind the slim possibility that it will. It wouldn’t necessarily be the same sort of “slam dunk” (we do have some original content at least, no money is made on the product, and emulation itself is legal), but we also do have even fewer resources than the pirates to withstand if it came to a lawsuit.
Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Wow, I have logged in the last week but somehow I missed this thread. It’s a little late but since everyone is throwing in their opinions here are my own.
First of all, no matter their personal reasons, every author should have the right to remove their tables. This can be a real hassle to a site admin (of which I used to be) but that’s the way it is. I didn’t always think that way (as a site admin, when an author keeps posting his tables, then asks to have them removed, then posts them, then asks to have them removed again, etc that becomes an exercise in frustration…) but at the end of the day, the level of efforts in building a table or leading a team in doing so should infer back to them the ability to decide if/where a table is uploaded. Kudos to Randr for doing it right here and doing it in such a way that it’s not a challenge for the author to do so.
Secondly, I’m extremely sad to see Dozer go, beyond belief. As was stated by others, we’ve lost a few over the years and if you go far enough back, there are other legends that left. This is the cyclical nature of this hobby, where whether by frustration, burnout, lack of support, egos, etc, people will leave eventually. Although the loss hurts, the awesome thing with this hobby is there is always new blood coming in, new “legends in training” that keep surprising us with their interpretations and creations. At the end of the day though, the hobby, the work in creating these wonderful tables has to be fun. If you sit down at the PC and all you feel is disappointment and frustration because of the idiots of the hobby then it’s 100% warranted to walk away. Above all, this is supposed to be FUN, if it isn’t, don’t do it!
However my personal opinion is that although I respect AND SUPPORT all author’s opinion and choice on this issue, I also believe removing the tables creates more bad than good. Aside from what has been mentioned (hurting the community members who do contribute, not really stopping the problem that is selling cabs with tables), I think almost every new author learns the same way: They take an existing table, tear it down / study the script and learn from past and present efforts the technique’s used, then bring in their own flair to the creative process. Authors like Dozer leave behind an invaluable cookie trail that keeps giving years after the table is released. They are not only for us to play but are an educational tool for all. So when tables are deleted, we are cutting off the learning path of the future masters of our hobby.
This is an issue where I think it’s quite ok to be on opposite ends of the argument and still not lose site of the human element. Dozer is perfectly right to be pissed off at what has occurred. I share your frustrations Dozer, I wish you well and hope you understand that while I 100% support your decision to remove the tables, I also fully hope you change your mind and allow your tables to be reposted here and other places in the future for reasons discussed above and in previous posts. Your tables will always live on for us, we already have them sitting on our hard drives but consider there’s a lad or lass right now, who’s just discovering pinball. He/She will fall in love with pinball, the tech world and the internet will someday show them VP and that will lead to future contributions from them when they make a table in VPXI. Their level of excellence will no doubt have been nurtured by playing your tables.
Good luck and take care
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1 user thanked author for this post.
Its a damn shame that we lost another Talented vp artist and some really great vpx creations. to these greedy cab builders. But on the bright side of things of all the recreations out there. some where chosen because of how accurate the come to the real deal. Now i am not saying that the builders using these tables without permission is right. but compared to the big time companies recreations vpx always outdoes them on so many levels. But as with anything there are always 2 sides to the story. But to sum this all up. I just want to thank Dozer for all his work to this community. and i respect your decision farewell great one
.I’m sure with all of us we can come to some sort of Gentleman’s agreement or some solution to keep this hobby going. and not involve other big software companies having the only say in this particular hobby which I’ve been so grateful to be a part of since 2007 , I’m certain us all would hate to see it go away.
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I know I have no place saying anything in this, but at least a viewpoint from someone that just stumbled upon this glorious thing called Visual Pinball a month ago.
I’ve probably spent every spare minute in the last month reading, downloading, tweaking, playing, laughing, smiling, dancing, cheering, researching, planning everything Visual Pinball.
I’m enthralled, captivated, obsessed on what you guys/gals can do with this stuff. I never thought anything like this was possible and to have all of it locked behind a medium learning curve a little motivation and with little to no money there is no words that I can say or do to thank anyone. I just try to think of what I can do to give back.
I know I have downloaded plenty things with the name Dozer on it and plenty of others replying and every time I was like man this is so dope I can’t believe these guys can do these things. So all I can say is thanks and don’t let those types of people get you down you are only on this planet once so make it all it can be.
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