Last week I mentioned that I’d discovered another example of texture theft. This problem seems to out of control with far too many people thinking it’s ok. Theft of textures and models goes far beyond buggy designing. It’s become a big problem with clothing designers as well. The excuses for stealing someone else’s work range from: “it’s my first buggy” (what has THAT got to do with anything?) to “There doesn’t care, so leave me alone” (The “leave me alone” is paraphrased... Geea won’t print what they really said). My favorite was: “I paid someone else for the design. I didn’t know it was stolen.” The best part of this one is that when you ask them who sold it to them, they’re “honor bound” to protect the thief. I’m glad to see they have so much “honor”. 

There does care. The staff has a lot on their plate right now, and I’m not making excuses for the delays in dealing with incidents of texture theft, but they do care. The buggy I reported last week is no longer available. In fact, if you bought one, the textures are no longer on the servers and anyone who sees it for the first time isn’t seeing the buggy you purchased. My understanding is that they freeze the account of the “designer” in situations like these and refund the purchasers from that. I’ll be talking more to staff when they’re available so I can get back to you with all the details of how There handles texture theft. 

In the meantime I once again took my weekly trek through the auctions. I have one word for a lot of designers out there. That word is “marketing”. Maybe someone should do a class on it. There is nothing worse for your credibility than to state that an item is limited to 10, or 20, and then list 100 of them. In fact, there’s really no reason to list 100 buggies. Trust me, you aren’t going to sell that many. (See below) 

Another mistake is to state that a buggy is limited to 100 ever to be built. This statement shows that the seller has no clue about the buggy market. I’ve had some very successful buggies in my career. Only a 3 or 4 have ever sold over 100 copies. If every buggy listed in auctions sold 100 copies there wouldn’t be room in all of There for anyone or anything else. Most new designers are lucky if they sell ONE buggy. I believe (and I have no way to verify this) that the most successful buggy of all time was the True Blue by Grimm. I once asked him how many it had sold, and he said it was somewhere around 400 copies. The True Blue came out back in beta and sold for a very long time. For a designer to say a buggy is limited to 100 is sort of an insult to the intelligence of their potential customers. I laughed. Not a good start at getting me to add a buggy to my collection. Marketing. 

I couldn’t find much that was new in buggies to bring to you. There is the Silva Stinga by ShowStoppa. It’s a good looking buggy priced at 15,999t. It’s original and a good looking design.

 

Next we have a buggy by Sweet_Jamie called the WayOver Dew: Level Red. It’s limited to 10 copies and priced at 20,000t. This buggy is another in a recent trend to capitalize on the market for brand name spoof buggies started a long time ago by Melody Copeland. This one has a nice look to it, but the hood and grill seems to be shared by more than one designer. Other than that it’s nicely done and typical of the excellent skills Jamie is getting known for.

I moved on to see what else was available and since this is the week of Halloween what would be more appropriate than Animated Bat Wings by Carcus? The animation is smooth and seamless. The texture is, well... bat like! Priced at 12,450t these are a great alternative to a standard hoverpack.

 

As a counterpoint to the bat wings, Greenie has her beautiful butterfly wings. They aren’t animated, but the texture is very realistic and well done. Priced at 10,000t this is another great alternative to a hoverpack.

 

Finally, I found something in auctions that really bugged me. I do get bugged sometimes and I let it all out in the column. This time I REALLY got bugged. I tried out the new Cockroach bike by Aylana. Talk about BUGS!!!! The animated antennae were disconcerting. I was wondering if it was ‘hunting” for something... me maybe? The texture is so lifelike I wanted to squish it. I jumped on and suddenly found myself RIDING it! It drew a few spectators while I was testing it out, and I know I generated at least one sale! I WANT a COMMISSION Aylana!!! Priced at 16,727t, if you want to create your own bug infestation this is the bike for you!