From what he said in the link I provided above, I think the reason he's closing his store is because he wants to drop his prices to compete with those who are copying him. If we wake up tomorrow to find everything in his store $5, well, people who paid $20 are going to be annoyed. The way around that is to close the store for awhile. If you close for, say, six months, then re-open with lower prices, the customers really won't have any reason to complain. The ones who paid the higher price will have had that much longer to have used the product.

I only offered it as one comparison, because it was already mentioned. There are plenty of others to choose from (body handles, ERC, MAT files, MOR files, INJ files, various other files that scale or set centers or other joint params, etc.). Each of these 'innovations' was first invented/discovered/worked out by someone and developed further by the Poser community at large as the knowledge became common. Wyrm's deformer kits are mostly made up of magnets... which were designed to modify geometry. He's mastered his craft with them and spent the time to merge some remote control (and other) ideas to take it to the next level (again, Kudos to him for that), but it's not a huge leap to think that someone else would have eventually done the same thing. My point is, you can no more assert rights over what he did than you can the idea of creating a MAT file or a joint-controlled-morph. The functionality is built into Poser, it just takes some digging and innovation to bring it to the surface. Some of the MAT pose files I create are nothing but a one-liner (ok, mayb 5 lines, including the brackets and such) to swap out a texture. I had not previously seen anyone else doing that, so I pretty much 'invented' that method independently, but it would be fruitless for me to try to claim some rights in regards to anyone else doing that.

x-posted with randym77... that's my take on the situation as well... and it sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach/plan.

Okay I am going to jump in here pleading guilty to not having read every post in this thread, and may be going OT slightly. It seems at this point there is a 'domino effect' collapse of the Poser Kingdom, but at the same time a bright outlook for new beginnings and rebuilding. I am almost certain that these talented creators that are withdrawing their stores will continue someplace to offer their wares...creative talent cannot be stifled by 'conflicts of interest'. Many new sites are appearing and setting up stores offering better price structures in favor of the merchant. And Daz Studio may offer an alternative to Poser and in the process eliminate some of buggaboos over copyright issues. Only time will tell on these issues. At this point, regardless of ownership changes, Poser is going to have to make a dramatic comeback after the release of buggy version 5. At this point it seems this thread is on target...better to offer support, and encourage the merchants with alternate options, rather than berate the forces causing the problem.

Attached Link: http://www.2checkout.com/