My Position (Patreon)
Content
Hello Everyone,
I actually wanted to create a post today showing how I created an Azulejos wall for next month, I shared the WIP on insta last week, but It does'nt feel right just yet as the past days have been rather difficult.
I dont want this to come across as some kind of angry rant. The past days have been draining, and this is a culmination of thoughts.
A lot of misinformation and disinformation was spread about my stances regarding doxxing and tracking patrons, once and for all, I stand by my statement from Tuesday. I feel silly explaining where that comes from but let me tell you my point of the story:
Imagine you just posted a statement to reassure your patrons and community, there comes a person commenting with false allegations wanting a personal confirmation of what you just stated is genuine. I am wondering if your responds would have been welcoming and friendly or if you would have felt maybe slightly provoked or even insulted and how your reaction would have been like. I for myself was frustrated reading something like that, hence my reaction to that person ( who by the way was'nt a patron of mine). Now immediatly the person creates a tumblr post with a screenshot of only her innocent question ( without my statement post attached, some might call it misleading) and my answer, slandering against me how rude I am and that I am a close collaborator with one of the alleged creators in question. Let me tell you and I think you know, the only person I ever worked together with was HeyHarrie, so that accusation was purely made up to drive said persons agenda. The post and it's comments were rather uncomfortable to read and it saddens me how people dont question the integrity and ethics of someone who does something like that, let's just call it what it is, it's defamation, it's bullying, it's toxic behavior, it's not friendliness or innocence.
But the story does'nt end here, now another person trys to find evidence that I am involved in the drama and shows a screenshot of a conversation that talks about a screenshot of a conversation that apparently involved my name, that has yet to be found/ presented and again it saddens me to see how easily people think that there is evidence when there is non, it's all speculative. What is with the stance innocent until proven guilty, what happened to critical thinking.
Next the narrative of the personalized links and Wetransfer. I host my items on Wetransfer, it's a payed service that is reliable, it's never down and most important it makes it easy for you to download content and has no advertisment, used in many different industries and areas. You can't track people via wetransfer, I have 2 million downloads of my cc and not from a single person have I seen where they downloaded my content from, and to say it bluntly, I also don't care! I create two links each month, one for the unmerged and one for the merged package. I attach one of these links to the 20$ post which hosts all the links of my back catalog, everyone with that tier downloads my content from there. I send the merged and unmerged link to the 5$ tier to around 4000 people in the beginning of a month. It's a batch message that contains the new content, these are not personilzed links. I don't attach links to a post because not everyone wants the current month some patrons want a set from my back catalog. It's frustrating to see the misinformation spread about this, mostly from people who don't have patreon, who don't use wetransfer and who are'nt cc creators.
I knew from the beginning as soon as I publish cc there will always be people taking my content and sharing it elsewhere. I decided for myself that I need to focus on the people who are willing to support me rather then on the ones who have no interest in supporting. I was lucky that my patreon grew the way it grew even though my content had been shared on downwithpatreon and whatnot forever. It didnt hinder my growth, so why doing anything against it in the first place?! I create 25 to 30 objects each month, believe me I am busy enough with that :D.
Paywalls: I have the slight feeling im getting dragged into the latest drama because of this controversial subject. Ea has been vague about the monetization of custom content, we have the EULA, and we have two posts from former SimguruDrake that since their creation have heated up discussions in this community. I do know of the forum post that states that mods have to be shared with the public after a period of 2-3 weeks ( thats alerady not really precise, but in favour of the cc creator lets say 21 days) However, there has also been a conversation with SimguruDrake and a member of this community that states that if the item is not made from EA content you can do with it as you wish. These are two contradicting messages. Until EA gives us finally the clearity that we all probably need, part of my creations will stay exclusive as I create my content from scratch, meshes, high/low poly, texture bakes, material textures, colours and so on and it is solely up to EA to enforce it, but until now they havent done so. The whole topic is up for speculation and that is my view of it, as custom content creator. However I do understand that some people can't efford my cc, therefore I am creating the Collaborations with HeyHarrie, which are normally bigger sets on early access, 'Shop the Look' is going to be on Early access too and I will continue sharing content from my back catalog, by the way so far there are 600+ items already available either here on patreon or on houseofharlix.com.
As mentioned before, the bullying, the defamation and the slander of the past days haven't been really enjoyable and I wish the whole discussion of leaking patrons personal information would have stayed on topic. If you dont agree with someone dont try to drag them into something. And for the people who do enjoy my free cc but truely dislike me as a person, grow some backbone and take my content out your game, its strange when I see you using my cc but insulting me at the same time.
I will most likely not comment, I think you have seen my point of view by now. I am not open for further speculation.
Thank you for time and support, I'm looking forward to getting back to a normal state of mind.
Felix xxx