At least the public copy auctions aren't even half as bad as they used to be. I couldn't believe the amount some people would pay for a wig or a pair of shoes.

Hmm, I had never considered that aspect before. I know that users use the Pawn Shop to sell off items quickly when they need more CSC, which I have never found to be wrong, but I never knew there were people selling almost immediately. However, they have every right to do that, just as you have every right to get mad when people do this practice. If only there were a way to protect releasers from this happening without having to shut down the Pawn Shop entirely - would there be a way to prevent the pawning of an item within a month of the release of an item?

However frustrating this may be, it is the decision of the releaser to continue putting items for sale or to want to release further items if not all slots will be filled. Kudos for you for continuing to release your commissions despite this frustration. From what I understand about CW releasing, it is not easy to turn a profit and should not be done solely for making a profit. At least your art and your items are being released on the site, I can never say that my own work is here on Subeta for others to enjoy.

I hope that the shops can be improved to incentivize more users to turn to those instead of the forums. Right now, the forums are the best way to buy CWs but they are still much more inaccessible than the shops.

Holy smokes, that's a lot of ping groups! Definitely more resources and contests would help to get people involved. Anything done to get more people interested should mean more sales for everyone. Win for the buyers and win for the releasers.

This, my friends, is what's called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

User claims CW forums are off-putting. Creator says to ask questions and someone will answer. User asks, and gets this type of response. Creator wonders why more people aren't slotting on their first batches.

I know the answer why. Because YOU are the problem. THIS is the elitist attitude everyone is complaining about. You cannot expect everyone to know what you do. You cannot expect everyone to be comfortable jumping in head-first. You cannot expect people to understand the "rules", when there are no concise, site-wide uniform rules. You can, however, expect people to not feel welcome when the first thing they see is "FRIENDS ONLY!"

Please, do tell, how can a user go to your shop and buy your items if you, as you say, can't even fill a single batch? These items that you cannot fill batches for more than likely will not end up in your shop, so this isn't a viable solution. This is your problem right here and you're too stubborn to realize it.

IF YOU AREN'T MAKING YOUR SHOP/BOARD/PING GROUP ACCESSIBLE AND FRIENDLY, YOU AREN'T GOING TO FILL YOUR SLOTS.

For the record, I've never had a problem waltzing into a board and slotting, unless I happened to miss an open slot. Generally, everyone I've ever purchased from has been nice and more than willing to work with users on covering payments if necessary, pinging for recolors, double checking interest, etc.

But not everyone is comfortable just diving right in, which is part of the disconnect. As evidenced above, someone was nervous about the boards, one user was welcoming and answered questions, while another was quite condescending. That's a 50/50 scenario, and doesn't bode well for your cause.

If only Yethi's answers could be stickied into a CW FAQ for buyers. While it arguably should be the staff's responsibility, it's definitely a nice gesture on the releasers' part to ease the barrier to entry. With so many different things that can grab your attention on Subeta/the Internet, paving the path a bit can help entice a wider audience! (Plus then people don't have to answer the same newbie questions repeatedly)

And yeah, honestly, I may be missing something but I have no idea how to even browse CW shops extensively. When I go to the CW link under the Cash Shop tab, I get a few random shops under my feed, many of which only have one or two items in a shop (maybe my bad luck?) How do I browse more of the market from there? (just keep refreshing?) How are items within a shop sorted? (new to old?) I think it's a poor representation of the CW market compared to the forums and a poor "replacement" for the pawn shop where it was much easier to see more items at one time.

As I've mentioned before, it seems to me that the main fixes should come from Subeta's end to make an easier central system that's more accessible and attractive to releasers and more casual users alike (which I'm happy to hear should be in the works). I do think it's unfair to put it all on the releasers' shoulders, and I definitely appreciate the efforts of people like and in the meantime!

If people can't use my CWs and want to sell them off quickly, I have no problem with that. It's the people that skip over slotting on my stuff, hoping they can catch it for a much lower price. That's where the issue comes in, that's what was happening with the pawn shop.

And it's not my art. I can't art, so I commission. So not only am I paying to cover slots that don't fill on first batches, but I'm also paying the artist for the CW in the first place. I've only had one CW ever I've probably made my money back on, and I've released a fair number of them.

THISSSSSS.

I've tried to browse through there, and yeah. It's just the same handful of shops, over and over, despite my refreshing. CW shops need a gigantic overhaul.

I wonder how much this was happening to other users. Not to call your experience invalid, but I am curious if there are any other stories from other releasers about this happening on a wider scale, just because I have never heard of it before. There is always a risk that people will try to flip your items immediately after you put them up and it makes sense that the Pawn Shop would enable this. However, I'm not sure how many wait around in the Pawn Shop to snatch something up because there is little chance the item you want will turn up and not be snatched up immediately.

Again: from what I have understood from reading the threads, it is incredibly difficult to profit off of CWs. Many releasers don't even break even. That is something that each releaser must keep in mind, that profit cannot be the end goal.

I'll never make a profit, I know that. But some people acting like 700csc is ridiculous for one item, like we should only sell CWs at base batch price? I got a problem with that. I spent money, I should get SOMETHING back.

Well, that is $7 USD. Some people are not in as good financial situations or are unwilling to spend nearly $10 on a virtual item and that is their decision to make. It's difficult - charge more for CWs and get less buyers or charge less for CWs and get more buyers? Of course, that is all dependent on how popular your item may be and what people are willing to pay. Are there other items similar out there? Is it super unique?

Sorry! I'm back! Had a few things to take care of around the site, and in light of your questions (and what's left of a bit of my night where my brain still functions), viola!

CW Buying Process

In light of the recent happenings, a couple releasers are also holding public giveaways:

OCEANIC free CW giveaway Custom Love Giveaway

In regards to pricing CWs...

Subeta has a categorical fixed pricing for CW submissions that can be read in this post here.

The market standard is to charge +100CSC of the base price, with the exception of category 5000's to be +200CSC of the base price. Base pricing is determined by categorical fixed pricing divided by 10.

In most cases, at the very least, the artist's slot will be "free" so the releaser will have to, in some way, come up with that cost (hence the +100/+200CSC of base price). It is also hopeful that the releaser will also be able to get their slot for free, as they have most likely spent money on buying the CW art in the first place.

Several releasers I know of have already subconsciously began dropping their prices to only +50CSC of base price due to this pressure we are under and in hopes that it will somehow attract more potential slotters and new blood.

I absolutely understand that some people are not in the financial position to spend $7USD on a virtual item. At the same time, the high cost of submission is also something that is imposed by Subeta, which is out of our hands. Of course we would love to lower our prices! But there is also the primary issue that it seems like a fair amount of people find the CW forums difficult to approach.

Thank you!

I completely agree with you--the CW shops in it's current state is a little more than difficult to work with in terms of browsing. And it's true, a lot of items you mentioned are really out of the releasers' hands and need to be addressed by the staff. In the meantime, we'll just have to sit tight!

it's not necessarily pawn shop, things would show up in r200 soon ish or later and later had a greater chance of being priced at less than slot price

people were so nice they'd drop the price by at least 100 csc, and like it was mentioned before, when you're in a pinch for csc, that 200 csc off seems like a lot

what I see is oftentimes it snowballs one way or the other when it comes to slotting if the batch fills quickly, other people pick up on the perceived popularity and there's a good chance other colors will do so as well due to perceived demand

selling things for a lot of csc / auctioning things isn't really in vogue on r200 as it used to be years back like mentioned now it's a trades / wishlist only thing which means if people see something fill up quickly, they're going to think it retains value enough to even trade and that's a big deal as older stuff is harder to get

so if something is filling up super slowly first batch, the chances of it being in demand later are not much and perceived long-term value drops which means shelling out full price is not as enticing when the item seemed to have devalued itself by problems with slotting

these are just my observations, but that's the feeling I get when I see some items always struggling to be filled versus something that gets even historically harder to sell recolors sold out extremely fast

and to add, the site should have been more welcoming with explaining the cw process heck, I had issues when I first joined the site as I read the forums (and I think there was a brief newbie guide at that point idk?) and I had no idea how to make sp and things that cost 10k seemed like a fortune until my friend told me to just do the quests more and I'm usually fairly self-reliant and would look things up on the boards etc but even that time I felt overwhelmed

so I get the lack of info on the cw process I just don't think each user has to inform newbies on each board

and for all the talk of elitism and privates, I really don't see many different people slotting on cws which are advertised to the general public via customwear ping (open to all) without mention of pinged only or friends only so really how much of buying behavior would change? are people just feeling bummed they couldn't get x or y private? is this what this is boiling down to? because like I said before, trying to force people to distribute another way is imo disrespectful when it's their money on the line, it's rude to suggest everything must be public. there are plenty of non-private things and yet there isn't much demand for them and if you really want a non-elitist vibe, why aren't more public things being slotted on faster or more often?

Some time ago I bought two backgrounds by applying for slots and had no problems. I'd never buy actual clothing items by this method, though, because there's no way of trying them on before buying them. This is why I've always used the CW shops and Pawn Shop for dresses and wigs etc. Most of the time I see something which looks good in theory but doesn't look good on my HA because I don't have anything that goes with it.

Maybe this is why so many items end up being pawned - people don't like them when they've got them and they wouldn't have bought them if they could have tried them on first.

I have never heard of the breakdown for slot prices and the configuration to account for submission/artist prices. That is really interesting and makes sense as to why many releasers are praising the removal of the CW Pawn Shop or at the very least wanting people to buy through their shops instead.

Thanks so much for that explanation - I did not realize the issue extended to slotting. However, with the removal of the pawn shop, I'd see more people trying to get rid of items through R200 and perhaps being willing to let it go for much less as they have no other option for selling, or at the very least, be more selective in what they buy. I also remember the R200 boards having a lot of "buy for CSC" but it makes sense that the trend has switched to trading.

I understand that users don't want to have to tell every newbie what's going on, but I think that if Subeta is unwilling to do anything further, it should be users who try to pitch in as well. It shouldn't be on the shoulders of every user to try and explain everything, I totally get that.

In terms of elitism: I think people are bummed that they can't get x or y private but also by browsing the boards, I see a lot of items that are "Pinged Only!" and not many that are open to all. People should be able to choose whether or not an item is public or private, but if you only make private items, don't be mad when others choose not to buy from you because of the perception that everything you make is private. Public items = more sales, private items = less. It's a different demographic. Maybe items are not slotted on because they're unusable, not pretty, or not unique? I get why people may be tempted to have everything private, because it gives the air of exclusivity.

No problem. n__n Yeah, I was one of the people bummed the pawn shop was removed actually. D: Because I don't think it was directly the cause of lower long term cw prices. r200 is probably going to see more things now that there is no pawn shop. Oh and don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of cws up for csc on r200! It's just the popular things which are trade only. Like some open up their owned lists for wl stuffs.

I feel like people didn't really know there was an issue. :C Because they probably assumed there's the help forum or that if anyone had an issue, slotting on something they'd like they'd post on the board. I don't think people realized people were anxious about posting in general or due to fear of being ridiculed, etc. D: In that sense, I don't feel like the burden is on the releasers or cw threads, because if they didn't know, they couldn't have helped. :l So in that sense I wish if so many people had issues, they would have raised it instead? Anyway, I blame subeta lol. They should have handled this with more tact imo but oh well. Too late now. xD

Thing is when people make privates it's never really about how many batches / slots fill (as long as one fills), so they don't care if anyone else is mad? Like the reason for privates is exclusivity like you mentioned! I think a good gauge of the market is how many slot on public items (like people could fill 2-3 batches years ago .__. /cries). And even those public cws go through pinged only stages. I used to ping customwear to my initial releases a few years back. And it wasn't easy filling them. I feel like there's a correlation between number of groups pinged and air of exclusivity around the cw. If you ping customwear only it's like oh it's available to all, less exclusive. If you ping a public group before it, it's like oooh get some slots on it first before everyone else hears about it so it looks like it's more desirable. People probably don't do it for marketing reasons. They want to ping friends first then their group then whatever but from a slotting perspective it looks like that because it also likely has a marketing effect.

Also I hope I'm not giving the impression of talking down to anyone (not saying you're suggesting this because you've been civil!). The market dynamics aspect of cws intrigues me since I've always liked economics. :3 So this is literally me spewing out my analysis which isn't perfect lol. X)

That's not at all what happened, and I'm pretty bummed to see you spinning it that way when folks may not have an opportunity to actually see what was said for themselves.

I'm gonna go ahead and quote the posts in question, because Keith is the one who brought up the possibility of compensation for tutorials as an incentive for busy people to set aside some time to help.

But none of the artists said they couldn't/wouldn't do anything for free. So please do not spread misinformation that will cause more problems in an issue that is already plagued with animosity.

I'm not going to read through all eight pages of posts. Here are my thoughts:

I'm actually kind of upset about this. I'm rarely able to outright buy CSC, sometimes if I see multiple things from my wishlist that are in the pawn shop I'll drop $10 to the site to get the multiple items (often the sum is 1000-1100 CSC). The artist has already gotten their money for those items when they were bought from their shop.

Some of these items are older items and no longer available in the CW shop, so I otherwise wouldn't be able to get them. I'm not able to reliably be online to have an ISO/Buying thread that I can keep up with, especially seeing as the forums act up so horribly on phones.

We have no reliable way to browse CW shops. When we go to the CW Shop area, we see the users that we follow, as well as "a few others". There's no tags, for example. A user who made, or has made, Harry Potter themed items, could be found by searching "Harry Potter", but we don't have a way to do that. You have to have the tribute item page to even know that these items exist unless you randomly stumbled on it. The Pawn Shop at least has a way to sort by layer!

Do you know how I found most of the shops that I follow? It was by finding one of their items in the pawn shop, looking it up, and checking out their shop. I then end up far more likely to spend money directly through their shop. Most of my CWs are from the pawn shop, yes, but I've spent plenty directly in their stores.

There's no central way to find out who created a CW. I don't mean the artist, I mean the actual user who was selling it. You have to ask in a thread and hope someone gets back to you. (Unless that's changed recently). So if an item isn't still listed in their CW shop then you don't have a way to get to it, and you can't find the seller via searching, you're stuck hoping someone gets back to you on that thread.

Without an adequate way of actually browsing or searching CW shops, users will now have an even harder time discovering CWs, CW shops, artists they love... Which for me, at least, means less money being spent on CSC.

Hi! Popping in for a second. is actually working on a way to sort CWs in CW shops by layer right now and it looks like it should be up and running fairly soon! Additionally, pricing CWs in user shops for CSC is also in the works. There is also a kind of backend way to find out who submitted a CW and would therefore be selling it! If you drag the item image to the url bar and look at the url, the user ID of the submitter is embedded. So for example, the url of is https://img.subeta.net/items/custom/586057_187593.gif The part that I've bolded is where the user ID is. In this case, it's mine. So if you copy that user ID and add it onto the url of the wishlist page, it'll show the name. So you put in https://subeta.net/wishlists.php/586057, and it'll show you that user ID belongs to me. I released that CW. I know it's a few more hoops to jump through than would be ideal, but it works! There are more changes coming, and I wish would post them here as well, but they should hopefully fix the accessibility problems. In addition, I've made ">a public ping group directory for CWs, so that should help make slotting more inclusive as well if you're looking to get into CWs that way! Some of the artists and releasers are also working on making more tutorials and resources ( posted a wonderful tutorial on CW hair today [click on it to make it bigger!] and I've made this voiceover on the submission process and there's a couple more people that I know are working on things) and hopefully this whole CW thing should be easier on everyone soon! This isn't something we're calling a be-all end-all solution by any means; it's the first step in a series of changes and improvements and additions.

I've just read through a lot of the responses in this thread, and wow! I'm so glad so many people took the time to respond and offer their input. Thank you to the ambassadors of the CW community who so kindly chose to respond and try to explain the complexities of "our" side in this fight, too!

I for one support closing the pawn shop to selling (except for events or special occasions, which I think would be fun!). I love it, and have bought several cheaper items there, but ultimately it has become a barrier between the site as a whole and the CW community. The CW community is so insular, to an outsider I'm sure it's overwhelming to try and get out there and find things! This could definitely be improved. Some good suggestions I've seen for this have been to have more transparent information about the process of creating and buying CWs, some standardization of shops, and DEFINITELY more searchability and readily accessible info for CWs, shops, and selling pages.

Overall, I want CWs to be inclusive and promoted on site just as much as any other premium items, like Subeautique lines and Cash Shop items. All of these things are "limited edition" and require planning, thought, and saving (either of real cash or sP) to buy the necessary CSC. Why do CWs get singled out as the one that's "unworthy" of being purchased for full price or "unworthy" of expending a modicum of effort to purchase? Yes, there are usually far fewer of CW items on site, which can be frustrating when it's an item you really want. But with every other premium item, users are willing to go into trades or sales threads and haggle to purchase them, or go else go without purchasing that item. Yes, they cost more, but CW creators have ZERO control over the submission cost, and the site is unlikely to lower it, as we are paying for the "privilege" of getting a custom item onto the site with minimal staff input/control over what we submit.

Luckily, staff has said they want to make the buying and selling of CWs, whether in the first batches or as resales later on, easier for everyone. I support this 100%! I also hope that those people who enjoyed CWs enough to browse the pawn shop and occasionally drop some CSC there, will start sniffing around the cw forums and try to join our community. I promise that the vast majority of users there are friendly and HAPPY to help anyone!

I personally pledge to make my own sales thread as transparent and informative as possible in the days/weeks to come! Please drop me a comment if you ever need anything. ^___^

I personally think it's easier to find an item that I'd like to purchase by browsing the pawn shop. I follow some CW artists, but I find the cash shop CW page to be difficult to just browse. 99% of the time I simply happen upon an item that I'd like. Browsing is easier in the pawn shop. If it were easier to browse the CW page by layer or item type, then I'd be completely fine with the pawn shop going away.

I read a bunch of pages, along w/ the majority of the comments in the news post. Having my own opinion on the matter is s/thing I usually think about before saying - unlike RL - but I wanted to show some understanding on both sides.

As others have said, the pawn shop gave me a way to find stuff when I first decided I was going to put money into "pixels". I was too anxious for forums at the time and didn't know much about CW's other than the fact that they were drawn and put on site by users. I loved perusing the pawn shop, seeing all the stuff that people had drawn; And honestly, I've never been much into "Subeta style". It reminds me too much of paper dolls... and yes, I'm an older user. :P (but in saying that, there are people who can use the shit out of the onsite stuff so obviously, it's a lack of my creativity)

After seeing all the creativity on site, I got inspired. Then I looked into creating my own CW and looked into the submission rules and costs. That's what REALLY got me. IMHO, it's been the fault of Subeta for charging such high prices from the start... It should've been MUCH lower, and then gradually grown as the rate of CW's increased to cause more server load. From that point on, I always understood that just submitting one and slotting for it wouldn't be for profit, and if I paid for one, well I'd never get that back. In other words, I UNDERSTAND where releasers are coming from. I've never felt that they were doing stuff "for profit". I also had the fortunate experience of meeting a VERY sweet releaser who also explained a lot of stuff to me (and more, since then), and guided me into the CW world and how to do things. If it wasn't for this, and my understanding that releasers aren't generally benefiting, I would probably be more upset about the pawn closing as I would've stayed in there forever. Not to mention the fact that if I had met certain, more stand-offish types that have commented on here, I definitely would've saved hundreds of dollars by not slotting and not buying from shops.

Now, I'm not in that group that can afford slot price a lot of the time. That doesn't mean I would hang around in the pawn and wait to see if it showed up for a lesser price b/c even if it did, I would still have to weigh out the benefits of it being s/thing I could wear/use long-term or s/thing I was just initially attracted to. Like another user said, s/times you just don't have the right stuff to go w/ it, although the avatars made for it at the time of the release are stunning. 😸

That also coincides w/ the level of interest. A lot of people have complained about the same old shit (and honestly, I haven't seen that) but in my perspective, the reasons people can't fill batches are simply b/c what the releaser commissioned is s/thing that they're personally attracted to, and it doesn't appeal to the general populous. And more than that, it comes down to advertising b/c if you're not in the ping group or following the shop of a releaser that you generally don't buy from, then all of a sudden they release s/thing that appeals to you in that moment, then you're SOL. There's just far too many ping groups to follow each and every one of them in the hopes that just once you'll see an item that personally appeals to you. Still, I don't blame releasers b/c they never know how many people are going to be interested and they have to go by the Subeta rules of releasing this many and how much it costs, and then not being able to change it once it's submitted. THAT is the damned part and should've been argued from the very start.

While there's love and hate on the side of calling these items/works of art, "pixels", my assessment is that it's quite a bit of money to pay for art that you will never truly own. It's not yours to do w/ what you want b/c you are confined to ONE site, and once you submit, it's actually the property of Agoge - not yours. It's the equivalent of buying s/thing from a museum - a work of art - and then the museum telling you that you can never take it home. This IS precious property to those that use their hard earned dollars to get it, make it or put it on site and there's absolutely no denying that. But the bigger pictures is that you don't actually get to "keep it", so to say. For some, or maybe for many, it may be the only reason they stay around - they "own" stuff and it would be a great loss to just let it all go when you've grown out of the site.