I'm not a fan of long posts(tm) but I don't like this idea at all. It's a no from me. Suuuuper duper yikes. And I feel like I should say something about it.

I appreciate your good intentions! I thank you for trying to find a way to give something back to the users. But this just feels very much like you're trying to kick out the 'middlemen' of cws, releasers who commision artists instead of drawing their own items. I apologize if it sounds harsh but that's how I see it.

But wait this is like the opposite of what was originally intended I can only see this going one of two ways if implemented. 1.) Artists will stop taking commissions and just draw and release for subeta. There would be NO incentive for anyone to take commissions and draw for someone else that is going to profit REAL MONEY from your artwork. Not if subeta could easily give you cold hard cash as well. I would not even blame them, that is the logical state of things. (Re: Artists and comissioners could work together to split the profits, why would you want to put so much effort into working together with someone else, someone else who would easily scam you and take the share of your profits, when you could just draw and release the item yourself? Its too much trouble)

2.) Artists would increase their commission prices to compensate for potential earnings the releaser might have. I'm all for paying artists proper compensation for their work, they're amazing, they deserve every penny. However I must admit that adding a fee to every recolour I commission is going to take a toll on my financial ability to do so.

has already put things very eloquently in that I love commissioning and releasing things I personally enjoy. I don't even care about making a profit in csc. Profit is seriously way low on my list, way way low. It's not going to stop me from making things limited/private that's for sure. Any profit I make off my releases goes towards buying other cws. I care even less about making actual money of it, in fact it would make me seriously uncomfortable to be making real money off someone else's art. I don't expect any artist to let me do that AT ALL. That's what I have my day job for.

If I lost my ability to commission and release CWs, I would leave subeta, that's all it is. That's all I do here, and I don't see myself staying if that is taken away from me.

It's true that most releasers can only provide money and no talent (I am of course talking about myself), but releasers probably contribute a huge chunk to subeta's income since CWs came out. It hurts to think about being shafted aside like this I know that is probably not your intention, but that's the community that would be harmed the most if this was implemented.

I appreciate that my view on how this would end up is really pessimistic, but I feel like I had to say something on why I think this should not happen. If you wanted to give something back to the users, I think several have made very good suggestions on lowering the price of cw submissions or slots.

I can honestly say after talking with a lot of people about this, while the idea was initially interesting, it’s just not worth it.

I’m fine making csc from my shop because I can put it back into releases and get more items on site, but this is a hobby. I don’t need to make money off of a hobby.

The fact that this might cut us out of the equation entirely too is worrysome. I love commissioning artists and working with them.

And I will say while I love when I can commission some cws with csc when I have extra, I will 100% support having the mandatory csc slot removed because digital art is just as important and creative as physical art.

I would fully support lowering the cost of cws and I honestly believe that would generate MUCH more people being involved in CWs as a whole.

I can afford 700 csc/$7 for a pixel wig but many people can’t. If prices were lowered I’d be much more likely to buy a ton more recolors from artists and get them on site much faster.

While I already commission many items and get a ton of recolors it’s HARD to get some things on site. Even the price of direct to shop isn’t worth it anymore. When cws cost 5k to submit a batch I was okay spending 1.6k to push something straight into my shop, but now it’s just not worth it when I can get a full batch for not much more.

I’ve definitely got one of the biggest cw shops in the cash shop, and I love putting items there so people who don’t like the forums can access cws, but making actual money off those sales when it’s the artist that 100% should get the money would really make me consider closing my shop entirely.

Besides the fact that I’m Canadian and wouldn’t be able to use this feature anyway, I’d much rather prices are lowered than make money off a hobby. I don’t need to make money off of a hobby. I do this hobby to SPEND money.

We have a LOT of amazing artists on site. So many amazing people that honestly work so damn hard to get commissions done for so many people, and I’d much rather they get the kick back for creating this art for us than get any myself. They do this to make money, the rest of us don’t. And unless there was an option to send the money right to them, I wouldn’t want to be a part of this.

I've been sitting here and lurking this board since it was posted and I feel I need to say something now. & put a lot of my feelings into words already so I'll leave this pretty short.

But, I too just release CWs for the fun of it. I don't mind making a CSC profit because it just rolls back over into me submitting more CWs, and I do this for my own enjoyment because I personally want an item. I don't submit things solely for the reason of "oo I can make money off of this". Also, in my personal situation, the CWs I've released were done by my friend for me, for free. I absolutely could not get behind making a monetary profit off of that, not one bit. That's wrong and disrespectful. Profiting off of an artist's work is not ok and I would absolutely stop releasing items if this became the case. Now, I know that I could send her the profits but that also brings up the fact that money transfers through paypal are monitored pretty closely. A high volume of money transfers will absolutely get paypal's attention and raise red flags; enough so that they could slap a big ol' suspension/ban on our accounts. This is something to keep in mind for anyone in any situation, really. (Also, as a general artist myself, if anyone asked me to enter a non-legally binding profit share with a random client I would absolutely backflip the fuck out and never look back. Hello scam opportunity lmao. That's a lot of trust to ask an artist to blindly put into someone, almost to the point where I find that suggesting it is a bit disrespectful.)

As this is, it just seems like a big mistake that cuts out a large part of the CW community and potentially puts divides between the artists and releasers, which really just kinda sucks. Also, it seems that a lot of artists/releasers aren't from the states and not being able to include them because of tax reasons is a bit of a spit in the face.

I want to add, as an artist, I agree with the sentiment stated here by releasers. I would find myself hard pressed to sell designs / commissions if I could just make the money myself through subeta.

And while this would cut out a lot of stress and extra work for me...

It would entirely remove the 'community' aspect of CWs. I've met really great people through CWs and I feel this idea would absolutely destroy the opportunity to meet even more people so I'm switching my position to a hard "I don't want this".

I'd rather see: "Digital art must have a csc slot" removed as a rule since it's easy to loop hole anyways. And CW submission costs be lowered for the whole community.

I am not at all artistically inclined but I commission and release as a hobby (more than I should, probably). Personally, I'm not interested in the payout option because

1. it's a hobby, I never expected or intended to make any money
2. also not interested in complicating my taxes
3. I'm not comfortable with the idea of making monetary profit off an artist's work
4. I'm not sure I'm okay with artists getting paid again for something I had to pay them to do to begin with. basically the all or nothing on either side does not seem right to me
5. Even if there is some happy medium I don't see busy artists taking even more time to submit stuff for me, especially if it's something that is not going to sell well anyway (all releasers have some thing that just is not a crowd pleaser), especially as I (and others) are waiting for fixed denials as it is.
6. I do use csc profit to help pay for my own slot claims and submit batches of less popular items, etc which I'm assuming would be cut out if cash payout was implemented, basically i just push that (if there is any) back into the system anyway
7. So basically I'd be paying for a design idea that I had but I wouldn't have any say or hand in the distribution or submission and I'd only be getting a copy of the item (at basically the cost of the commission). If that were the case, I'd definitely stop commissioning. I can't say for certain if I'd still be involved at all in CWs or not.

I agree with what several other people have said, lowering the slot costs would be more incentive for newer users. I think that is part of the reason less people commission users -- if you go through the process of commissioning something you really like but perhaps not many others do, you incur the cost of the commission as well as the submission, which means you also have to buy csc to submit your commission. Rarely do you actually find yourself in a position to make csc profit (especially as a new user getting into the cw market).

Hell, if submissions were cheaper I'd just directly submit more on my own and leave copies in my shop. I know I would because I also did it when the batches were changed from 10 slots to 5 slots.

I also 100% support removing the required csc option for commissions/auctions because it does deter artists. Why work for something you don't want or need?

That being said, I do think it'd be nice for artists to be able to make cash on their own releases if they wanted to but the whole idea sounds like it's going to be more trouble than it's worth, especially if you're worried it would end up costing Subeta more than it would bring in.

If you're hoping to bolster the whole market maybe a spending incentive would have more effect. Like some kind of bonus or a csc refund (similar to a tax refund) at the end of the year. Personally I know I drop 15k csc during black friday alone when buying items from the cash shop (not even cws!) Unlike actual cash payout, csc or a bonus item of some kind wouldn't cost Subeta anything. Subeta already does items during bonus csc weekends to encourage people to buy csc, now encourage them to use that csc (and then buy more).

So, while I appreciate the sentiment behind this idea - I'm going to also decline any support for it.

1. I don't commission/buy designs with the intent to profit in RL money off of someone else's hard work.
2. This will effectively shut almost all releasers out of the market, because the vast majority of people releasing designs are buying them from artists. There's 0 incentive to sell a design to someone if you can submit it yourself and get profit. Beyond that - if they do sell designs/take commissions, chances are very high that the new cost will be reflective of potential profit to the releaser - which means that the cost will go up by quite a bit and make it so that people cannot afford to commission CWs, which will again lock us out of the market.
3. If you somehow found a way to require us to split profits with artists - it's going to hinge on a ton of trust or mandatory programming changes to enforce it (especially if someone isn't on the site any longer).
4. This locks out any non-US people from getting the profits.
5. I'm not giving you my social security number. You will HAVE to 1099 all of us who receive any sort of monetary profit - regardless of whether your payout to us is $1000 or not, because almost every single one of us has outside income (whether from additional jobs, independent contracting, or spousal income). If we're making over $400 annually in any way, shape, or form - we MUST claim this as income. Whether or not you can write it off for the business, we'll all have to claim, which means you'll be 1099 every single releaser/artist who is in the US and it's not worth the work on either end.

I already don't turn a profit on CWs - I'm out the cost and the submission in quite a few cases, it's rare for me to have a CW that sells well enough that I recoup what I've spent (and it's always in site currency when I do recoup it), and that's fine with me honestly.

There have been a number of other good suggestions to help stimulate the market and get new artists and releasers:

1. Do a special event where you buy designs from artists - put them in a special tab, price them the way you do other CS items, buy out recolors or buy the rights. This stops you from having to 1099 anyone, because you're buying a digital product. You can do these for site events or random special intervals throughout the year. Open it up to a theme where people submit to you their design ideas (that they retain ownership of until you purchase the design from them) - see how it goes. That might encourage more people with the skills to start participating and hey - if their design isn't bought by you, they've got a ready-made one they can sell in the market! - This was 's idea too!
2. Stop demanding a site currency option for digital artwork. I understand why it was required, but I don't think it's actually helping the site. As noted by others - quite a few artists (both for CWs and other digital art) have already found a workaround that basically means you'll never be able to commission/buy for CSC anyhow. The work is the same whether or not someone pays in USD or CSC - and artists should be fairly compensated for their time.
3. Finish CW related projects: namely, the CW database. It's been worked on for years, and having it actually functioning will allow more people who avoid the forum boards etc to see what's available. Every time there are questions about it and help requested, tons of feedback is provided. We want to help you make it work, we want to see it on site, a lot of us take time out of our overtaxed schedules to give the feedback and discuss the previews etc. It will be a great tool when it's done.
4. Reduce the cost of direct-to-shop (which did not adjust when batch minimum slots and price reductions did) and consider reducing the cost of submitting simple recolors, as suggested by . Colorfills for pets take less effort to produce and check before they're site ready - CWs are often the same (unless some glaring errors crop up when something is submitted - usually when submitted in white or black - it's almost always an easy accept).
5. Allow same-design body mods to have a cheaper submission. By this, I mean, if you've got something where the skin tone of the HA must be added in via art, allow for a special submission where the only thing that changes is the skin tone at a heavily reduced cost.

For Example: [preview=Beloved Kilkacite Fox Satchel] I love this, but I'd never buy it, because I rarely use that tone (base 2? base 3? idek because I use base 20 99% of the time). If we can find a way to either allow people to submit all of the base tones when they submit the design so that it's transformable, or to allow people to submit exact recolors with different skin tones at a very reduced price (since the only thing changing is that single bit), that might help stimulate more base change items in the market. I'd love to have more commissioned items that modify the position of the arms/legs - but I'm tired of either having to have my artist find a position where we can mostly manipulate it so it uses the base color (and doesn't hit any of the lines on the HA base) or having to run the risk of not slotting any at all and having to shoulder the entire submission cost because I don't use b3 but nothing will slot if it's darker or lighter most of the time.

I honestly think opening up a thread for brainstorming that isn't restricted solely to releasers/artists would help a lot. We've got this handy Custom Wearables Creators thread that's locked unless you've submitted at least one item and had it approved - but that doesn't actually ask a lot of the rest of the userbase what would help them to want to join the market (as buyers or creators or releasers or all three).

I appreciate that a lot of what gets discussed here affects those of us already in the market, and that you'd like to discuss with us how to better the system - but I think it helps to foster some of that us vs them feeling that people who aren't super active (or active at all) in the market are feeling.

- most of you release and might want to check the first post and have a say here too.

I think the idea is good but personally i think this is pandora's box. There's too many risks with it.

I do admit though, I struggle to commission people for cws because I cannot offer them real money but at the same time, I fear this.

The direct to shop cost needs to be revamped to reflect the batch size changes.

Right now paying 1.6k csc ONE copy of a wig/dress just doesn’t make sense for me when I can get 4 more copies for an extra 900csc...

If direct to shop was 800 CSC per item (half of what it was since batch costs went down by half as well) or even 1000 CSC I would immediately start buying csc and submitting the dozens upon dozens of releases I have left to submit.

And I know I can’t be the only one that has a back log of files they’d love to submit but just can’t afford 1.6k per item.

If anyone could tldr me because I don't get anything at all. Thank you to @ Reaper for explaining what my last two brain cells couldn't handle.

My gif is still relatable too! What a time to be alive. I wouldn't tell Subeta my social security number, nor am I willing to receive money out of something I enjoy doing. This is not a website to include 'real' life. A lot of us are using Subeta as a hobby: a form of escape. I am very not comfortable with the idea of getting actual cash out of an artist work, regardless of my idea or designs beforehand. I feel like custom wears are a trade between the maker and the releaser as it is. We are already communicating and exchanging fees and such. I don't get why us, releasers, should get money out of something we did not even create in the very first place. This isn't selfish: the fees of getting our items onsite are already pretty much expensive but it is unfair to artist to let us get cash back on that. As of right now, a lot of us are investing these so-called profits in getting more colours and designs, often from the same artists. A lot of creators have left us in the light of what has been happening in the CW area. I fear a lot of them would ditch us, out of bitterness. I like our artists and their diversity. I want to protect that. Custom wears are niche because of its currency vs price value. The categories are unclear and poorly divided. Some accessories are bigger, and yet cost the same as a small ring. It doesn't make sense. Not everyone can afford custom wears - not everyone can afford commission. The fact that the value of CSC has been left unregulated has been hard on users. Which would make me believe that reducing fees to get anything onsite would be a first win for everyone. If we start getting paid for this, artists wouldn't see any need to offer commission, as it could be their loss. I fear they would increase their prices, which would put more of us out of the game itself. Then, it would create more niche. I am no longer releasing wears as I feel like things are too expensive and getting out of hands. I do not support this and never will. I doubt Subeta would enjoy making money out of their own artists. So why asking us to do that? [Edit] It wouldn't be fair to international users either. Don't create something for US players only. Launch when you're ready: hold back til then. Excuse my poor wording.

Tldr: noping out of respect for my fellow artists and releasers.

The idea is that the people who submit the cws will maybe start getting some actual USD back from the site based on number of copies sold.

But that only works for folks in the US right now, and would only be given to the submitter, not the artist (if they're not the same person).

Most of us are opposed for a bunch of reasons.

Absolutely do not support this idea. I do appreciate the sentiment behind wanting to show support for CW creators, but as many others have outlined in detail, I think this idea would be a nightmare.

1. I will never ever be in support of anything that might make my taxes even harder LOL.

2. I'm not comfy with a commissioner being paid for my work, even if they've already paid me for a design. Professional designers charge hundreds, even thousands, of extra dollars for licensing fees on commercial work on top of the initial design fees. I definitely don't think any CW commissioner is going to be willing to pay that for a CW hahaha.

If this practice is implemented without a firm policy allowing me to opt both myself and my commissioners out of receiving these incentive payments, I will just have to remove myself from the CW game entirely. I agree with others in this thread that this practice will essentially do the opposite of support the CW market, sadly. :(

HOWEVER, many people on this thread have already been spitballing other ideas to support CW creators/releasers/the community, and I fully fully support finding other ways to do that! You freely admit that CWs are a big profit driver, but they are still very much a niche part of the site. I'd love to see more attention paid to fully integrating CWs and the CW community into the site, listening to CW creators more, and making it easier to enter into the game and participate. I echo Reaper's idea of opening more discussion with the site as a whole as to how to make the site better, more attractive to new players, and more sustainable/profitable!

Hard pass. I can clearly see all the reasons that this will cause those that commission cws to be shoved out of the equation entirely. As others have already pointed out, artists will either simply decide to release on their own and stop selling designs, and taking commissions, or when you do find someone willing to take a commission, prices will be insane.
Most of the things I commission don't sell well, so I'm already shouldering commission cost, plus the cost of the first full batch just to get things on site. Hence it's a 2 or 3 times a year thing for me. If slots or direct to shop were cheaper, I would probably do a lot more. Also, given the fact that I do not live in the U.S. I would be locked out anyway. Not to sound harsh, but if you can't do it for everyone, don't do it at all.
As I believe someone else pointed out above, bonus items, site currency etc would be fine for me. Even if I could get in on this, I don't need the tax headaches. I release cws just to indulge my inner fangirl and for fun, not profit.

forgive me if someone has mentioned this already, and i know that there's a lot of back and forth on whether or not people support this idea, but my initial thought about splitting the profit between the submitter and the artist is having the submitter do all of the normal stuff (create image name, description, manage slotting and release), but have them designate the artist and have the artist submit the artwork themselves (sort of how the batches are done -- an artist gets tagged to a CW and then goes into some panel and submits the images). this would ensure that the artist is sort of "tagged" to the cw and subeta would be able to manage the payout this way. at first, it might be hard to enforce, as people could get the raw files and submit themselves as the artist, but if artists were able to profit on these, it would be to their benefit to just show submitters versions of files that they cannot submit (ex: .jpeg CIs, the HA overlay file without a transparent bg, etc.) the CW would go to submission review after that as normal (i would prefer the profit be split, since as some other people have mentioned, cws are pretty costly for submitters who commission upfront between cost of commission and cost of submission)

edit: to be clear -- i think that submitters should still get some of the profit, as it's a pretty expensive process, but i think that also incentivizing submitters to do this would work as well, for example giving submitters & artists a free copy of the CW instead of making them pay for their own copy, or just making it slightly cheaper overall to submit. tbh, i would be fine paying the prices i pay for this if i was given a free copy and my artist was given a free copy. idk what the financial burden would be on subeta for this, but this is my perfect world scenario, even without me seeing any profit.

edit#2: i personally dont care about making usd on cws either, like... i paid for the cws i commissioned but i'm happy to make csc to submit more cws lol but i think that cw artists might be able to lower prices for commissions if they were able to make some of that profit back in csc or usd based on the success of the item

If those of us living outside the states would have to report the income to the IRS I can honestly say unless we’re given a way to opt of out this program id stop with releasing cws because I don’t want to deal with another country’s tax laws. I pay enough taxes on my own county and this would really ruin subeta for me.

This isn't something I can really speak on, as I haven't released a single CW (YET -- I have 3 that I commissioned!), but had I already released them....

I'm actually not a huge fan of the idea of making $ from anything I release. I would much rather see a decrease in the cost of CWs as an enticement.

I already have a monthly allowance that I spend on Subeta. Closer to Black Friday and Christmas that allowance gets blown out of the water and I spend way more. ;) But a lot of times I second guess if I should be doing it. I love, love, love my CWs (lord help me), but unless I'm slotting on cheap accessories, my monthly allowance doesn't get me hardly anywhere. And then my WL blows up. And that's no one's problem but my own, and I kind of started rambling, so I'll just reiterate that I think lowered CW prices are the better compensation here.

I also agree with a lot of people who have said that this will unintentionally push releasers out of the CW scene. Because I know it would me. I'm not made of money. The only reason I was able to commission what I did with USD is because I got a bonus check from work. That's the first bonus check I've gotten in 11 years. If I want to continue to release CWs, I will have to do so with CSC slots (and this apparently seems to be very unpopular -- but to be fair, I didn't realize artists were forced to offer a minimum of 1 CSC slot), but this is going to be a snowball effect. If releasers can make $ from CWs, artists are going to raise their USD prices, and if the CSC slots are already more expensive than USD slots, then CSC slots are going to become even more expensive, and someone like myself will still be removed from the CW scene, which is something that I actually really want to be a part of.

I've been following this thread very closely and I think the general consensus is a hard no. There are lots of other ideas put out here that are better for the site in the long run. Honestly I'd scrap the USD payout idea, as it's clear that the site would lose alot of the current cw community if it was ever implemented, whether shoved out by increased cost, or by taxes that no one wants to mess with for something that's a hobby, or by disinterest in making money off an artists work. I can say for myself I'd leave the cw market as a releaser if it ever was. I have no interest in messing with taxes, or paying more than I already do for a hobby, or even messing with the fallout from artists leaving the market if releasers got the profit. I feel like this is just a can of worms that needs to be kept shut. Take the other ideas and scrap the usd profit idea. Also, it may be hard language but its honesty. I don't think the support or lack of for the idea will change no matter when its implemented.

I hate everything about this. Hard af pass.

Would it be possible, for when you're testing and trying to gauge the feelings of creators and releasers, to create some sort of group that you can ping to ask for feedback aside from the standard feedback and siteupdate groups?

I ask only because I rarely check this forum, as it's not generally super active, and I only knew about this at all because someone else pointed it out to me (and then someone who's group I'm in also pinged).

I think it would be easier to get more feedback if you had a way to reach out to more of the people in the community, since this forum is locked only to those who've had an accepted cw, so you can't use the traditional ping groups that would bring more people in to voice an opinion.

I'd also still really like to state that I think, if you're trying to stimulate more interest in the community as a whole, this discussion should be shifted to a thread accessible by people who haven't submitted a cw of their own yet because there's possibly a large, untapped market of folks who'd like to participate but don't know how/aren't comfortable yet trying to get into the community/who think that we're all elitists who are rolling in our large profits of csc from submitting cws (sadly an attitude I've encountered a lot from people who don't understand how cost-heavy it is and don't realize that we don't want to isolate the rest of Subeta from us). The us vs them idea that a lot of people have about the community might be a big factor in why we can't get new artists and releasers very often - and having discussions about stuff like this behind 'closed doors' so to speak, just adds to that feeling that they think we have special privileges with staff and that y'all only care about us because we're spending on the site (which we know isn't true).

ALSO - I am excited to see that there might be a limbs help thing in the V4 wardrobe ❤️ I want to submit more mods so badly but I need my b20 skin that hardly anyone else wears haha.