I recommend watching the video but if you don’t have the time, here’s a summary:
In the Auction House, a seller can auction off a car that has a design or tune created by another player.
When a seller does this, the painter and/or tuner is credited on the auction listing.
If a seller creates a Livery by downloading Vinyl Groups (which are locked) and then puts that car up for auction, the seller is listed as the painter, and the real painter gets no recognition.
Looking at the comments (both on twitter and YouTube) I see differing opinions on this, and it does bring up some valid questions about user-generated content and how it should be handled, both by the developers and the players themselves.
What do you think? Let’s get a discussion going in this thread.
Here are my thoughts on the matter; I’m double-posting here as I don’t want my opinions to inject bias into the conversation starter above.
As a long-time painter and somebody that works in Community Management I don’t see this as an issue. Here’s why:
If a player compiles locked Vinyl Groups and sells copies of the compiled design on the Auction House (as Stig mentions in his video), those designs don’t have a permanent home.
As a player I can’t look up the seller’s Storefront and download the design; if I delete the design from the car I can’t get it again without buying another car. Additionally, the design is only available when the seller makes it available; once the seller stops playing Forza Horizon 3 (which for most players will happen after a few months) then the design disappears. The seller cannot import those designs into future Forza titles as they contain locked elements.
Although the Vinyl Groups may have been created by other players, the actual compiling of them into a Livery is still the seller’s own work; he technically did paint that car even though he didn’t create every element from scratch. To give an analogy, it is like decorating a house: the people that made the chairs, carpet, picture frames etc. didn’t decorate your house, you did.
For the first time since the Xbox 360 generation of Forza titles, it is possible to collaborate on a design again, albeit in a limited capacity.
A fantasy painter who specialises in “photo real” Vinyl Groups can collaborate with a race painter who creates logos to assemble and sell a design that neither of them could create on their own. This is already happening. It isn’t an ideal solution (the gifting of editable Vinyl Groups between players is unfortunately still not possible) but it’s better than nothing.
The work created by painters has no “real world value”, and even in-game the CR rewards are small enough to not be worth mentioning.
Liveries and vinyl groups only exist in an in-game form and cannot be exported for use in real-world design programs. In-game I can potentially make more CR from a single 10 minute Exhibition race than I could from thousands of Storefront downloads. The main benefits of players spending time to create Vinyl Groups and liveries are for personal enjoyment and to make the in-game world a nicer place to look at. Some skills may carry over to the “real world” but for the most part the work created in-game stays in-game.
It is clear from the comments on this video that the painting community cares about recognition for their time and talent. That is natural, as recognition is one of the ways that most modern artists can create opportunities to make a living. Recognition in-game however is not the place that painters should focus their efforts on.
There are a number of things that can be done outside of the game to give painters the recognition they deserve for their hours of dedication to their craft. These rely on the involvement of Turn 10’s community team (2 of which are highly skilled painters themselves) in order to be most effective:
Showcase weekly livery contest winners on social media and in Forza Hub.
This already happens for photgraphers and has done for the past few years. Unfortunately, no such albums are posted for livery contest winners despite the images being easily available in entry threads, or compiled by the community afterwards. It’s almost as if the Social Media team is actively ignoring the painting community despite them putting in just as much effort with their work as photographers do.
Have more livery-based articles on the official blog.
A few years ago an article series called “In Focus” was a semi-regular feature on ForzaMotorsport.net, and the Community Team even requested for users to submit images for consideration via the forums. The frequency of these articles began to drop in 2015 and have pretty much vanished entirely now. A weekly article simply posting the designs of the livery contest winners would make a big difference to the painting community and encourage more people to get involved.
I have a big problem with this! In Forza 4 my vinyls and liveries kept getting unlocked my modders. Which caused me to pull everything off the storefront. The fact that I put massive hours into artwork it pains me to think it can be used like that. If it doesn’t get resolved I will be forced to pull everything down out of this game just as I did in Forza 4. I know allot of other artists that are allready pulling their stuff down. I just spent a combined 40 hours into a piece and it turned out awesome and now I don’t feel the risk of sharing in is worth the trouble of knowing sombody else will make $ off my hard work ! It’s not right period … So I pulled all 145 liveries and all my vinyls off the Storefront. I just finished making a HellBoy piece and now it won’t be shared in Horizon 3 or anything else I create from now on unless the game is changed ! Basically you took what would’ve gotten you banned and baked it right into the game! I feel like I just got mugged … Sooooo sad !
Why? It says in the auction house who did the tune for the car, and who did the paint quite clearly on the screen. Not sure why you’re making this big of a deal about it, the paint is still locked and you still get your credit for it as i mentioned.
But hey, you do you, just saying it isn’t that big of a deal.
@VerrucktSchakal … that’s not how it currently works at all. The person you see in the auction house as the ‘painter’ is NOT who actually created the paints. In the scenarios that most artists are unhappy with, the person you see listed as the ‘painter’ is actually the person who is downloading others’ work. This is why much of the painting community is upset. I can spend hours and days painting a seriously amazing work. You can come along and download my shared work … spend all of about 10 seconds putting it on your car … and then sell it in the auction house that will list you … VerrucktSchakal … as the painter. Not me … who did all the work.
Nope, it shows the actual designer so long as it is a full design that’s been downloaded and put on the car. In the case of vinyls though it won’t credit individual vinyl artists.
Frankly though, does anyone care who the artist is when bidding in the AH? They see a cool design then wonder how much they can get it for. The real issue is that someone other than the painter is able to list it at all.
You are correct about full designs. I should have been more clear I guess. The scenarios that painters are upset about are the cases where people can download complex artistic vinyl groups, decals, logos, etc. that are not found anywhere else and that they either can’t or won’t create themselves … apply them to base vehicles and then sell them in the auction house. These are the scenarios where the original painter is not listed and the downloader is shown as the painter … even though they did none of the actual painting.
And would that work? Let’s say I use 50 vinyls from 50 different players.
Do you want the auction house to list all the 50 painters? Lol.
This wasn’t an issue on other games, but now suddenly it is? If you don’t want others to use your work then don’t share it.
Anyway, there’s an easy way for T10 to sort this out: go back to FM5 / FM6 / FH2 and remove the auction house. Problem solved.
Not really “impossible”, just an issue of whether T10/PG wants to do it, and how hard the a certain portion of the painting community will whine and roll and cry about others using their stuff even though they’re being credited.
Instead of the current system that goes like this when I put up a car using a livery I made but using various locked vinyl groups from other players:
It can be changed to say this:
In addition, the Auction Options button that normally let you access the storefront of the painter (among other things), would instead have an option that let you view the full list of contributors (be it 2 people or 200).
That would solve the issue of vinyl group creators not being credited for a non-sharable vinyl being sold on the AH. Although I’m quite certain that some people would still cry foul about other people actually having the audacity to use the stuff they “shared” on the storefront.
Its such a shame to see FH3 hit this roadblock but its a serious one and is concerning all content creatives!!
We spend an insane amount of time creating all content for people to enjoy the game and something so simple as ownership of content should’ve been top of the list.
This impact has meant many painters who’ve supported others with shared logos and artwork have now unshared their entire catalog of vinyls, art and decals.
Painters have been undervalued in FH3, 100cr per download is not correct for time spent creating content.
(That is just my opinion as I spend hours/weeks creating logos let alone full designs, but I can live with that as its what i’ve chosen to do with Forza)
The creatives should have the power to decide if we wish to allow re-sell via the AH, seeing this happening is very frustrating.
Whilst this isn’t the issues of old with unlocked and hacked content, its just not what it should be. If it wasn’t meant’ to be like this we really need to hear a response from Devs to ensure something can be done, and likewise if it really is what is is, then we’d just like to know.
Communication is key on this topic imo, i just hope T10 are looking into it, but would just be nice to be told!!
Stella adressed this issue last week in a private email or message. No reply at all. That’s the reason for stella’s video, and that’s the reason why I am putting names together.
Communication!!
If it wasn’t for the sellers name replacing the real painter (that has to be a bug) and making the wrap become unlocked, I don’t see why it’s so bad for people to sell cars on the auction house with someone’s livery on it. It could potentially get the painter more downloads if the winner of the auction likes the design on it, and goes to look for your other designs. (Even those who see it in the auction and don’t win)
There is a tiny “payoff” of 100 CR to the original artists which is a pittance for the quality of work. I don’t believe those items should be allowed to be resold, even if the credits were dramatically increased. Period.
The “re-sale” diminishes the talent and uniqueness of the artists when anyone can make a sale based on someone else’s efforts.
I had not looked into the details of how it worked.
When i first realised it had happened i assumed the following (which to me would be a good solution):
I thought that maybe when you shared stuff you chose to share for individual use or resale ie the creator is in control of the item.
I thought the creator would get rewarded the same on an auctioned car as if the paint/tune itself had been downloaded direct by the user (from Snowowls post i assume this is the case exceot for.vinyls).
So i guess point 1 would be a good solution, the original creator gets to choose to share for direct use only or for third party sales too or maybe even a preferred auction house cut or something %.
Within the first day of receiving the game early, I noticed in the auction that other people can sell your liveries and work.
I and a couple others brought this up to a few guys and nothing had been done and now it’s resurfacing. I feel that we as painters as said above should be able to have a say what others can do with out work with a simple button: Share [YES][NO] and be able to change this option at any point without unsharing and resharing work.
Better yet if the person auctioning the car with someone elses livery, the livery creator should receive 75% or more of the auctions finishing value and if the person setting the auction uses someone elses tune/paint then the tuner and painter should share a 50/50 split of the entire auction winnings.
Sure it great to create work for people to use but ultimately the painter and tuner should profit the most as they are doing all the work.
I’ll say it again, we reported this to a few people way before launch and nothing has been done. So I’m not sure how much of an impact this will make.
Better yet is to just stop allowing other people to auction downloaded designs and or vinyls and tunes.
The paints I do are very simple by most peoples standards (General Lee, Army Jeep, Seattle Police Car) and I do them for my own enjoyment when driving those cars, so I don’t really care what happens to them when I am done but the current system does seem a little broken. I don’t share my vinyl groups anyways but I will not be sharing them now that I have seen this video.
Ideally the way I think it should work is like this.
The original painter can share paints and vinyl groups on the storefront and anybody can use them. If anyone but the original painter tries to auction the car a message should show up saying that the design is locked and must be deleted before auction.
If you buy a painted car off of the auction house from the original painter you should later be able to auction that car with the paint that was on it without having to delete the paint.
