This board is for this rule specifically:

This rule applies to Art (including CW art), Graphics, Coding, and Writing.

For the purposes of this thread, I will be referring to those affected by this rule as 'Creatives', as other terms feel too specific and feel exclusionary. The word Creative is being used in place of 'Artist', 'Graphic Designer', 'Coder', and 'Writer'

Why should this rule be removed?

This rule implies that in order for creatives to use Subeta to advertise their works, they owe a cut of their money / time to Subeta. This cut is taken routinely, as they're forced to continue to accept site currency consistently for the duration of offering their services here. This rule removes their ability to choose how they wish to be compensated for their work. Additionally, by forcing Creatives to accept site currency, it devalues the time and effort that they put into their work by forcing them to adhere to the site's economy based conversion rates.

In order to truly support Creatives, you should support their right to CHOOSE what compensation feels fair to them. Using Creatives as a forced third party to earn the site additional money is frankly, unethical. It should be up to the Creative to decide if they wish to offer their services for a currency that helps the site earn revenue.

Common arguments against removing this rule.

The following are common arguments I have heard from people who think this rule should remain in place.

1. This is a petsite, and therefore you should have to accept site currency. Subeta hasn't been just a 'petsite' for a long time. And considering that most of the communities that still exist for the site are Creative based, this site should actively want to encourage those Creatives to thrive here if the goal is to help keep the site moving forward.

2. If you remove the rule, no one will accept site currency anymore. This isn't true, and the idea behind this statement is purely to get other non-Creatives to oppose the rule. There will still be people who accept site currency. The only difference will be that the people you see accepting site currency actually WANT site currency. You will no longer be forcing artists to work for you under an unfair rule. Instead, you will KNOW that you are exchanging a good that your Creative wants, for a service that you want. You will not have to guess or feel badly about paying in site currency and wondering if your Creative would have preferred real currency.

3. I shouldn't be limited on people who I can commission for my projects / I should be able to work with whoever I want. All Creative products are luxury goods (this means you do not need them to live). No one is entitled to having products made for them, just because they want them. The Creatives that you want to commission for your projects have to work hard to get good at their crafts. It is only fair that you might also have to pay them fairly for their work OR compromise on what you're actually able to achieve with your project.

4. What about people who cannot afford to pay people with real currency / don't have access to real currency payments. There is nothing wrong with not being able to spend real life currency, but there is something incredibly wrong with trying to tell people they HAVE to not only accept a fake currency, but they also have to work hard for it. Again, Creative products are luxury goods (this means you do not need them to live). You are not entitled to someone else's hard work just because you want it. If you have limitations with the funds you can use, then it makes sense that you will have a limit on the products you can get with those funds.

5. Removing this rule won't fix the Creative economy. At this point, definitely not. A lot of damage has already been done to Subeta BY this rule. The majority of the Creative forums are almost entirely dead. Most people have moved offsite onto places like Discord, and those who are still here either genuinely don't mind taking site currency / have grown to shrug it off since the rule has always been here / or actively try to skirt around the rule with convoluted loopholes. Removing the rule won't 'fix' the problems that have been created, but they might allow people to be more honest / have more freedom to be here. Ultimately though, the purpose of removing the rule is for the benefit of the Creatives themselves.

6. I am a Creative and I think having a site currency option is fine. Having this rule removed wouldn't prevent you from offering a site currency option. You would still be able to offer it just like you did before. You wanting to accept site currency however, doesn't mean everyone else wants or even can afford to accept site currency. And just like the site shouldn't get to choose what a Creative thinks is fair compensation, other Creatives shouldn't get to pick for them either. Your situation in life does not dictate the situation of others.

Final thoughts.

We're in a time where the places left for Creatives feel like they're diminishing. Between NFTs, AI, and the general public treating Creatives like we're machines meant for non-Creative consumption, there aren't many safe places left for a lot of us. While Subeta may be 'just a petsite' to many, it is a place where a lot of Creatives have made a following that genuinely affects their ability to thrive IRL. I think it's well past the time where Creatives deserve to be able to choose their compensation and I strongly believe that by removing this rule, Subeta itself takes a step towards being one less thing that is actively trying to hold Creatives back.

I realize this was an insanely long read, but this is obviously something very important to me. Thank you for reading what I've written.

Additionally, because I know this topic can potentially rile people up and gets people really heated: I will only be replying where I feel it's necessary, and only to people that I feel comfortable replying to. I will not hesitate to block users who are being outright abusive or disgusting. TY for understanding.

Since staff has responded to this thread that they're discussing it internally, I will no longer be responding to users in this thread. Feel free to still post your thoughts and opinions but please don't ping me. TY.

Is Subeta's "cut" too high? Or do you feel that Subeta isn't providing a service by bringing buyer and seller together (and providing a reason for a buyer to want to buy the creative's work)?

I agree that a creative's work is often undervalued, that non-creatives can easily dismiss the effort involved, but I don't feel that's what this rule does. You could argue that no one deserves to profit off the work of creatives but the creators themselves, and I agree with that - but in providing a platform, Subeta is adding value.

Based on how creative work is bought and sold in other places is Subeta doing something inherently unfair, are they expecting too much? Are creatives being exploited? I've only sold a handful of things here, so I find it impossible to judge.

Maybe there is a more fair way that Subeta can be recompensed for their part of the transaction? If so, what could that look like?

If I sell my art on Deviantart, do they take a cut? No. If I sell it on Tumblr? No. How about Twitter? No. (And using another 'petsite example', if I sell it on Flight Rising, they don't take a cut either.)

The only people in those cases who 'take a cut' are the payment service, which is Paypal. And since they're actually providing a service, they deserve to receive compensation for that.

Subeta isn't providing me a service. "Using the forums is a service" but then any user who uses the forums should then also have to pay to use this service. Creatives are not getting any additional features in the forums that regular users do not, therefore they should not have to pay for services in which other users receive for free. As a Creative I still have to do all the coding, examples, and advertising myself. Subeta isn't 'bringing buyers and sellers together'. The Creative is doing the leg work for that by setting everything up themselves. None of that is automated by Subeta. ("Forum groups" fall under the same as above with the forums themselves, where if Creatives are being asked to pay to use them, then everyone else should too.)

Creatives encourage user engagement with the site already. Artwork, coding, and writing all encourages users to interact here. To create characters, pets, etc. Which in turn, encourages them to spend money. Custom wearables encourage users to spend money to get their designs on site, as well as encourage people to spend money to get copies of those items once they're onsite.

And yet, Creatives are further asked to continue to pay the site compensation.

(Based on the amount of CSC I've accepted over the years I've been here, I'd probably say I've paid $6+ a month to use the forums. This doesn't account for times I was on hiatus, I didn't make sales, etc. It's just a round number. This also doesn't account for any of the money I've made Subeta in addition to that by people purchasing pet slots, or cash shop items. Or from people buying custom wearables.)

So I guess my honest question back is: How much compensation is fair for Subeta to be asking for? At the moment the compensation being requested is 'indefinite'.

Haven't I seen people execute a technical loophole with this rule? Technically the "option" is still stated. But it's absurdly high in comparison to funnel people towards the IRL option. IE, real money= $15 but CSC=1,000,000 or like that. Or is that too blatant and then against the rule? It technically doesn't say that the options have to be of equal value...

Edit: Guess it is against the rules, though stated no where. 🤷

Really? that's odd... Thank you for the info.

That is actually against the rules. You are allowed to skew the rates only if done reasonably. And what is considered 'reasonable' will be judged by staff if the user is reported. When I filed a ticket about this a while back, I was basically told that I could charge x amount more in csc (so $10 vs 1500 csc) but that even in some cases, doubling the amount could be considered against the rules (so $60 vs 12000 csc would be against the rules, even if $10 vs 2000 csc might not.)

There are a lot of loopholes I've seen people to get around this rule, but tbh they shouldn't have to risk their account to be able to offer services here. They also shouldn't be forced to go offsite to places like discord to operate 'outside of Subeta's rules' because this completely removes any protection the buyers and sellers have since it's no longer onsite and no longer staff's problem.

I understand better now and that all makes sense.

I support removing the rule.

I don't like the wording on point 3 because some people do rely on art and other creative works as their sole income. It might be luxury for you but it might be their dinner.

Otherwise, support removal of the rule.

I think you're misunderstanding what I've written.

If you commission me to draw your character, you are receiving a luxury good. You will not go hungry because I didn't draw your character.

I am talking about you, not me in point 3.

i would also agree with changing this rule! i don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said but just chiming in with my support, as an artist that didn't really try to sell art until recently cause i wanted to be pickier with what i accept. (i am offering art for site stuff now, and will probably continue to do so since collections are an endless money sink on here ha)

This rule made sense when the average user was a teenager. I think it could be changed.

There are a lot of old rule that we could do away with. I don't really see the need for the "no offsite trading Subeta items/currencies" being necessary either, given that the petsites that are thriving are the ones that DO allow trading currencies and items.

I have a lot of thoughts about this because for the entire time I've played here - which predates CWs even being a thing - I've felt like this was a vastly unfair rule for Creatives.

I do not make art. I am coming from the side of being a purchaser of other people's art - be it CWs or digital art in other forms - and I absolutely 10000000% support removing this rule.

First and foremost: the site does not require people offering physical goods/art to provide a site currency option. If I commission an artist for a digital drawing but they're going to print it out and mail it to me, they don't have to offer a site currency option. The amount of work is no different though, than if they did only the digital art itself and sent me that. It is fundamentally unfair to devalue the work that Creatives are putting into their commissions because they're not providing a physical copy, as if that somehow makes it more real than digital work does.

There is, in my eyes, no reason that people who are "only" offering digital work should not be treated the same as any other creative offering physical work. They are still putting in often hours of time and skill to create something. They are often already undervalued as far as pricing goes because of the way the world treats creatives. Forcing them to offer an option to pay for their valuable time and skill with site currency that cannot help them in the real world is fundamentally wrong. It's wage theft. They are not volunteers who are being compensated for their time with a GA. They're people who are trying to earn money they need to live on. It's really disturbing that this rule hasn't been revisited in all of these years. I'm not sure I really understand why it was ever a rule put in place. This isn't like someone selling their old weapon for USD or selling a pet off - this is someone putting in hours of work that they should be allowed to be properly compensated for.

Beyond that, I've watched how the community of artists grew after the implementation of CWs and then how it's dwindled smaller and smaller as more and more artists quit or move off-site to protect their income. Why bother engaging on forums when they can't offer their services and skills for fair compensation? Instead they can avoid that entirely and with them goes huge chunks of the community. We don't have active art forums, we have barely moving CW forums, we have less and less people actively engaging with the site during their day to day, which means any ad revenue is lower too. Subeta is smaller than it was when I first started playing here nearly 12.5 years ago. Petsites (of which Subeta is technically one, but is also a lot more) are not as big or as popular. It's harder for them to grow, but what really stagnates any kind of growth is telling people that if they want to offer creative services here, they have to accept currency that has no real value to their lives.

I had a friend who went through the whole sign up process to join, saw the rules regarding the art market, signed out, and never came back - and this was years ago when artists were more abundant and active and everyone wanted more artists. The prospect of being forced to do hours of work for something she wouldn't have an real world use for was enough discouragement to not even want to bother trying to get into the site.

In a time when there's ever more scrutiny for how workers are treated, we need to remove unfair rules that force people to accept fake currency for real work.

in case any of y'all wanna chime in on this - read the first post.

Claiming

I'm an artist and I've thought about this issue many times over the years. I think I even discussed this with directly years ago, though I can't remember any details because my brain is mush. XD

Honestly, I don't personally have a problem with the rule, especially when it comes to CW commissions which are my primary source of commissioned work here. Without the forums and the CW system in general, I wouldn't have access to these commissions, so it doesn't hugely bother me to have to offer the option of CSC payments as a "kickback" to the site that provides these things. That said, I do charge "more" for CSC payments vs USD because I do value real currency more, and because CSC has become massively devalued over the last few years. If this rule was removed, I would still continue to offer a CSC option because I know a lot of people, some of my friends included, rely on CSC payments to commission art in order to play the game they like to play, and I want to support that and I also like having CSC on hand to play the game the way I like to play it haha.

That said, 's point 5 is the biggest reason why I would support removing the CSC requirement:

It irks me to no end that so many artists have been driven off the site to try and make a living on their own terms. The CW and art communities used to be thriving! Maybe they don't want to play the game anymore, and that's fine, but their contributions and activities on site could help enrich the gameplay of those of us that are still here.

My husband and I are both CW artists. We are from Argentina, South America, a country with a 6% inflation rate on this month alone, and a 98.8% interanual. You can check these numbers online if you want. In mere weeks the price of a product can go up to a 100%, and never go down. Our biggest denomination bill isn't enough to get a Kinder egg. LITERALLY.

This work is our main money income. Sometimes, between denials and stuff, we end up working for less than 1 USD per hour. And sometimes, even for free.

Because of this rule we are forced to have a CSC/sP slot open AT ALL TIMES. That means balancing our precious time between trying to make the money to be able to eat and pay our bills, and get a life too, including sleeping. Sometimes we end up working around 9, 10, 11, 12 hours per day to be able to get everything done on time.

Do not get me wrong: we do love our work. We do love our clients. We do love to see our items on site. But we DESERVE to be paid for what we do.

If this rule gets removed, Ozo will no longer be offering CSC slots. He's not into CW's, and he have no use for CSC. I would still have CSC slots because I'm into CW's and love to have CSC to indulge myself and friends with nice stuff.

Not every artist is going to cancel their CSC slots, people who aren't able to pay with real money will still be able to get their ideas done by some artists. But, and this is very important, we should ALWAYS be able to choose if we want to work for free. Otherwise, you'll be forcing someone to work for free against their will, and I don't think I need to tell you why that's bad.

Thanks for bringing this up, . This was a very needed debate.

in case someone wants to share their opinion. <3

I support this proposed rule change.

I'm on board with allowing Creatives to accept whatever monetary preferences they prefer for their art...

But am I the only one that has ALWAYS misinterpreted this rule only spanning items that are already on-site? I've always considered that this rule applied specifically to Subeta-artist-created items and not user-submitted items. I've spent a ton of money commissioning artists for items over the course of my years here, never considered that Subeta was taking money from Creatives. That's very interesting and equally disappointing.

The way that I interpreted this rule: You may not ask someone to pay you $20USD for .

As a commissioner, I support the removal of this rule. There are some folks like who are willing to do CSC slots and that's great, because there are some people who don't spend real money on the site.

But I don't think it's fair for people who rely on their work for their income to have no choice but to take CSC.

A lot of times, too, the CSC option is no bargain. I fully support people wanting more CSC than the cash value of their USD slot could buy, but I also see people ask for items from extremely difficult wishlists in addition to CSC, which means that the CSC cost is much higher than the actual amount of CSC being asked, and when I think about what I would have to spend in USD to use a CSC option (plus the time it would take to haggle someone out of a high value item) it doesn't seem economical at all for either side.

I agree--the rule is fundamentally archaic and needs to go. I also think staff would have a vested interest in keeping transactions between players on-site as much as possible (rather than discord, etc.) in case of misconduct or other issues.

no, subeta isn't literally physically taking money from artists. this thread is referring to the rule stating anyone selling digital goods/services (e.g. artwork, writing, profile coding, etc) must include an option for payment in site currency (sP/CSC).

so for example if i were offering pet profile commissions, and i wanted to charge $20 per profile, i would also have to include at least one slot accepting sP or CSC instead of USD. this means that, if a user wanted to commission a profile from me and pay with $20 worth of CSC, technically subeta is getting that $20, not me. i would only get the CSC—which yes, is worth the equivalent of $20, but the exchange rate only works in one direction, as you're not allowed to exchange site currency or items for real money. in exchange for my work, i have received a currency that can only be used on subeta—which is fine if that's something i would have ultimately spent $20 on anyway, but it doesn't give me the option of spending it on bills or groceries instead.

not being allowed to sell site items, pets, or currencies for real money is a separate rule, but it does indeed apply equally to official site items AND user-created custom wearables.