Due to some recent drama involving icons I've made for IMVU, I've started seeing the developer community for what it really is. A group of people who whine and complain about anything they can and even when you stop doing whatever they are whining about and do the opposite, they'll whine about that too.

So what am I talking about? Well, I saw some icons made by someone else on dA and they inspired me to try my hand at making something similar. So I sat down and made some icons from scratch without stealing anything or copying. I liked them well enough to share them with others. I posted them on my dA for free and put in the description that I was inspired by someone and put a link back to their icons. Only to find out that they are bashing me on FB about it. Apparently claiming that I ripped them off.

Anyway, it seems these days you can't do anything on or for IMVU without someone being pissed off about it. I swear, devs these days are like big business. All they care about is their profit and fuck everything and everyone else. They are just like the IMVU they complain about. They complain all day about people stealing their work (rightfully so) but when you try to do something creative on your own and share it with people in an effort to spark creativity and hopefully put some life into the market, they still complain.

Listen devs, you can't copywrite basic colors and shapes, the world is built on them. Imagine a world where 1 person owned the rights to a square. What would our cities look like if only 1 guy could build buildings with 4 walls? What if only 1 guy was allowed to paint stuff blue?

I tried to change my ways to help the community and developers a like. I wanted to start providing things to new developers, helping them to learn and create a way for them to earn. I wanted to help spark more legit business with the existing devs and just improve the quality of the community as a whole.

But after this, I just feel like burning it to the ground and watching all those developers die in the fire. Go take your greedy asses somewhere else and let creativity flourish. Stop ruining it for developers fighting real theft and wanting to just produce awesome stuff.

On a side note, I guess I should be flattered that my icons were decent enough to piss them off and cause them to feel like they were going to loose profit.

Well listen up girl, there's a reason I don't sell my icons for credits, no one buys them! No one wants to spend 8k on an icon. I learned that the hard way, that's why I changed my strategy and started making money from the download and not the icon themselves. Learn to move with the market. I'm not hurting your business, no one will purchase your shit even if I'm not handing out free stuff. And to be fair, I'm barely making anything off the download anyway, only $10 over a few months. So basically I'm doing it all for free. You don't hear me complaining like a whinny as bitch. I just make more stuff to increase my downloads, find out what people want and find more ways to monetize the content without making it harder on the downloader.

/rant

Yeah, people try to patent some pretty silly things.

Oh I know the feeling all too well, DM. Some people can just be so petty over the smallest of things. Wish they would take the blinders off and look at the whole world first, but yeah that would be like asking the rain to stop raining. Not gonna happen.

Glad I'm not like that, or I could have gotten several people in trouble for using textures and icons that I made, but you know what, I used GIMP, and with all the GIMP brushes out there, anyone could have made them.

Exactly, it's one thing to blatenly rip someone off or just steal all or part of their work. But that's not what I did at all. Yes, I got they idea from someone else, yes I did take a few ideas on what would look good. However, I completely made my icons from scratch, layer by layer. Sure, there could be some similarities, that can't be helped, but I made an effort to make mine different and the overall outcome does look different from theirs.

That being said, I did provide the name of the creator I got the idea from and I even put a link straight back to the icons they were selling at the top of my description. So not only did I give them credit and free advertisement for their work, but I was also hosting lots of their content in my group for people to see (they seem to have removed their stuff).

Even if for some reason me releasing the icons was causing a real problem, it's not like I put them up to intentionally harm the other creator, that wouldn't make sense considering everything I just said about giving them credit/advertisement. So why do I deserve to be bashed on FB about it instead of a polite message saying "Hey, we need to discuss you releasing these icons" or something along those lines. What cause is there for their behavior?

For the record, these are the icons in question:

Mine: http://tim-dm.deviantart.com/art/Free-I ... -391739138
Theirs: http://sinzimvu.deviantart.com/art/Prod ... -386793187

Personally, I don't think they look the same, similar sure, but not the same. Especially not similar enough to claim a copy or rip off or anything.

Bottom line, I don't think I did anything wrong here and their behavior is unacceptable. My icons were made from scratch by myself and I gave them credit where it was due. I contacted them about it, but as expected, they are being a little bitch and not replying.

How's that quote go? Any good idea is used again/repeated...(something like that) Sheesh the Japanese are geniuses at taking others ideas and improving upon it.

This is really true, some devs are way overly reacting not just with the icons, but with the textures. I also believed that most pro dev aren't really subscribed for DCMA coz that one cost too much just to keep their textures by themselves. These devs should consider that theres so many resources now to get textures that might look so similar on what they made. do some google and you will see so many nice textures already that you just need to re-touch a little using adobe ps or gimp to make it look more good. They should consider that there's alot of ways to get good quality textures these days and instead of whining about other devs works. They should make it as a challenge to think of a better idea to make there work more unique.