Apologies if this has already been publicised, but I wasn't aware of it until now:

News Regarding Renderosity Products

Effective March 5th, Renderosity products will no longer be displayed on our site. Renderosity and Content Paradise have mutually decided to change our partnership at this time, as both sites continue to grow in positive ways. If you have previously purchased Renderosity products at Content Paradise, you have until March 31, 2008 to download or backup your products. You will be unable to access these files after March 31, 2008. If you have not done so, please visit your Previous Purchases section on your MyStuff page at Content Paradise and download or backup these products at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Bad move for CP.... they're slowly loosing their strenght, by ending parterships. They've got a lot going against them lately and adding onto it themselves.

i don't think it is that bad of a move they will more than likely start selling more Smith Micro products, they already are selling figures ie E.A. Poe, Ms Nelson and others. plus the exclusive partners have a lot of content
may work for them,, time will tell

love the way everyone assumes CP did this.. there's 2 in the mix and we had no details whatsoever.....

Why do you think it was CP's full decision>  Businesses have to look out for their own interests, in this case perhaps they could not agree on something?

As for losing their strength ending partnerships - what other partnerships have they ended?

Chuck me in w/ Khai on this one, though I think it was more a case of Rendo getting sick of not getting the full 50% out of a sale, when most folks that shop at CP also shop at Rendo. /P

Quote - Chuck me in w/ Khai on this one, though I think it was more a case of Rendo getting sick of not getting the full 50% out of a sale, when most folks that shop at CP also shop at Rendo. /P

I'll throw my ditto in with that one :)

There's a thread on this over at CP

http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php?p=59030#post59030

Seems they're bothered about not getting updates for Rosity products.

OT (sort off): Is CP's website always so slow. I could have gone around the individual outlets themselves by the time I'd filled a basket at that place:)

Quote - There's a thread on this over at CP

http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php?p=59030#post59030

Seems they're bothered about not getting updates for Rosity products.

That makes sense too :)

I would suggest that people go and do a "File/Save Page As" for their purchase history and also take a screen capture of their purchase history page in order to show proof of purchase to vendors here and elsewhere  that you own their product, so that you can get support and updates from them. Because it seems that once CP removes that information there will no longer be any proof of ownership.

Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

ContentParadise was originally a resource accessed from within Poser.  It was therefore an advantage to any merchant to be associated .    I believe that it was a failure  in that implementation  .

yup...ditto on checking your past history. I blew a Hard drive last year, went there, and went through my past history, and downloaded all my original downloads (all 3 pages of them, including Poser 5...can't be too careful..;)

That being said, why they gave away Poser 5, then limited people to Poser 6 and above, I don't get that part...;)

I use Poser 6 content all the time, with no ill effects...

Quote - Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

 
If you were (are?) a Passport member, you got money back on purchases.

Mike

Quote - Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

One-stop shopping.  Some people may enjoy spelunking through who knows how many websites, but I don't.....

This is a bummer....

I wasn't all that surprised at the move. I've noticed more and more Renderosity merchants starting to sell their products direct through CP.  When I visit CP I use a book mark linked to new products but all too often it seemed to be "older" products from a new vendor. any new Renderosity stuff seemed to arrive late several pages down.

If I were Renderosity I would not be too happy at having my venders poached and lower profile in the display of pages.

Quote -
OT (sort off): Is CP's website always so slow. I could have gone around the individual outlets themselves by the time I'd filled a basket at that place:)

That must be the reason if CP thinks if it gets rid of the renderosity catalog there will be less data to sort through and the site will run quicker. ;-)

PS yes it has been particularly slow lately , so much I gave up and went elsewhere - Their loss not mine - I kept the cash or spent it elsewhere

Yep i got 13 pages off downloads to get and that's gona be fun.

In my opinion Rendo is a better site all the way around. My opinion is it wasn't much of a partnership anyways. I mean come on, Rendo boosted there content collection while CP didn't share their's with Rendo(one way street). Then there is the whole customer relations issues. I never could understand why Renderosity did it to begin with.

While this was all happening I did my purchases of Renderosity content at Renderosity. It's not going to effect me one bit. I think this is for the best. Why Renderosity was ever part of that deal is beyond me. I thought it was dumb move and even wondered if Rendo was selling out to CP. Obviously not.

I never bought anything from CP.  The "mandatory" nature of the connection to Poser
got my hackles up .... when you tell me that I have to shop here or can't do this
or can't say that, I'm going to run the other way as fast as possible. 

Unless you're paying me, of course, in which case it's Yessir Yessir Three Bags Full.

What does this mean for us if a product has updates?

I find it hard to believe there is no way to share information on user purchases between sites.

Well I'm taking the suggestion of downloading all my items AND making screenshots of all I have bought.  Wonder when they were going to email me and let me know.

Content paradise once tried to tell a friend how many people to have over his house for memorial Day dinner!  This was when they had their last $5 GF promotion. He told a half dozen of his family members to sign up, but then CP took his Passport Membership, and an $80 GF away from him!

I suspect this break up is for non-payment, on CP's side; and, regardless, am glad to see it happen.  This was the best thing to happen to CP, since Smith Micro!
And I seriously doubt this decision, over what to do with the CP site; was at all a decision made by the vendor, Renderosity!  "Sorry Charlie..."

Well I would have gone to download but haven't been able to get on yet.  8^(

Well I'm finally finished downloading my entire collection of purchases that I was allowed to redownload. Burning new Data-DVD's now. It'll take 2. Total of about 10 Gig's.

In my opinion Rendo is a better site all the way around. My opinion is it wasn't much of a partnership anyways. I mean come on, Rendo boosted there content collection while CP didn't share their's with Rendo(one way street). Then there is the whole customer relations issues. I never could understand why Renderosity did it to begin with.

Well, you can say that Renderosity boosted CP's content collection, or you can say that CP gave Renderosity a second outlet - not a one-way street.   Certain CP personnel do seem to have played truant, from time to time, from vital lessons at Charm School, but I don't have any complaints about the place as a whole.   There are some comments above about the site's speed, but, for downloads, CP's speeds generally are higher than Renderosity's, or DAZ's, in my experience.

I'm still going to deal with CP. I have to admit though that I consider the artist and the store and where they are going to get the most for their product or service. If it is a Renderosity marketed product then I'd say Rendo will get more if it is purchased at Renderosity. Then also if an artist wants to market over at CP, why not just become a vendor there? As for people who could only buy Renderosity products when they were available at CP, they are the one's that are left out. I don't understand why they cannot get an account at Renderosity, but who knows? I don't know where they live or what their reasons are personally.

I don't think alot of the comments about Smith Micro are fair because most of these arrangements took place while it was e frontier's. I would consider it likely for there to be some changes now.

Quote - Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

Because at CP you get a % back on everything spent at the end of the month, so if something is the same price on both sites I will buy at CP.

Quote - Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

Because I can shop, download and extract right inside Poser?

Because I can buy from RDNA nd Reno in one basket, one payment.  I actually do the majority of my shopping for RDNA and Rendo at CP.  The onl time I do not purchase from there is if I'm using store credit here or the item is not listed at CP.  I tend to see what I like here and buy it at CP.

Plus  I get a little back every month from the previous month's sales and coupons ;-)

Quote -
I suspect this break up is for non-payment, on CP's side; and, regardless, am glad to see it happen.  This was the best thing to happen to CP, since Smith Micro!
And I seriously doubt this decision, over what to do with the CP site; was at all a decision made by the vendor, Renderosity!  "Sorry Charlie..."

you would be making some ill-informed assumptions then and you know what they say when you ***assume

;-)***
As for download speed, the slowest speeds for me were Rendo products, but then they are not stored at CP as far as I can discern, this is unlike most other partners and why the products would not be available after the partnership ends as the link up would be severed.

Speed up CP like you do DAZ - block the google analytics.

*Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

*All the products in one store, very convenient, saves time, one time payment. The idea is great but the reality is different, unfortunally.

Quote - *Why would anyone buy RDNA or Rendo products someplace else when you can get them at the original store? I would think CP would want individual merchants so they would have unique content.

*All the products in one store, very convenient, saves time, one time payment. The idea is great but the reality is different, unfortunally.

Benjamin, sounds like you have a gripe there, ;-) how is the reality any different?  As a buyer and as a Partner I am more than happy with CP both in my ability to buy at one storefront and in the sheer volume of my sales.

Considering your above posts about them ending other partnerships - did they end yours? Just curious about the ending partnerships comment and your dislike of a site you  are partnered with and sell through.  Puts a different light on your comments if that's the case.

No, they didn't end mine, but I know of some others. I'm looking from 2 perspectives at the matter.

First as a costumer..... I don't like spending hours hunting content, I don't even have the time to do so, I like to visit as little stores as possible and yet purchase the content I need. CP was good outcome for this, instead of visiting a number of large and smaller sotes, I just could go to CP and DAZ and had most of the content covered I'm interested in. Now the link between CP and Rendo is broken and a few other merchants I used to buy from are not offering items at CP or are not offering the same sales and discounts at CP anymore as they still do at their own website or other stores, while in the past they used to offer items or discounts at CP also. Lately I find myself 'forced' to spent much more time looking for content at various places in contrast to spending the same time doing the work I want/need to do.

Secondly as a mechant I just look at the lost business. The more 'larger' partners CP, has the more items are offered and the more we can all enjoy the visitors coming to the store. This has a good effect on the smaller sellers also, it's good to have a few large well know partners also. I know EF is going through changes due to their recent transition, but people are holding of purchased due to these changes and that effects all of us, it's not good. Also withholding vital information and lack of communication by CP/SmithMicro is NOT encouraging customers to visit CP and that is having an effect on all of our business. Due to it's partners CP has a good number of visitors, by ending partnerships, a number of customers leave also and as a merchant I want to expose them to my items still, so again more work for me, since I need to start selling at other stores also.

I'm still selling at CP and I will continue to do so, BUT after 2 years of sole selling at CP I'm going to look at other possiblities also, CP isn't giving much inside either, so I want to secure my items being sold and like to have an as large audience as possible.

So not really a gripe, more a dissapointment  and I'm hoping we're not faced with more of these sudden inconvenient suprises regarding CP/SmithMicro. They still have the benefit of the doubt and I do hope they will put our minds at ease a bit more and also be a bit more open concerning the future.

Meh - I got no kick against CP per se these days. The initial tie-in back in the days of Poser 5? Same reason DAZ|Studio was built. Back then, Curious Labs didn't want to be so heavily dependent on DAZ, and DAZ didn't want to be dependent on Curious Labs (specifically, Poser). Both set out to do something about it... the results were Content Paradise (the store) and DAZ|Studio (the app). Makes perfect business sense for both sides. I did have problems with the concept of CP at first, mostly because I could see the potential for it squeezing out the stores that weren't participants - no, not just DAZ, but a whole lot of smaller independent stores, like FW/PW, Renderotica, and (back when it was still alive) BBay. Obviously it never really turned out that way. CP is a fairly successful store... whether it stands on its own w/o Renderosity I do not know, and remains to be seen. /P

Renderosity is one of the Poser "mega" sites. I imagine it's a job keeping up with the content on the main site. I can't imagine doing it on TWO and paying a royalty fee for being there on top of it making less when they already have a very popular site of their own that is probably a major task to manage all by itself. I can see a lot of reasons for the split up. CP is a great place for smaller organizations with a store of their own that need a high traffic hub. Renderosity doesn't need somebody else to be noticed. If anything Renderosity is one of those places you go to get noticed. 

The unfortunate part of this mess is that the content artists are the ones who will have the problems. The community is VERY generous and MANY provide updates, sometimes adding additional content. The artists are now faced with the dilemma of having to either not provide this to their customers or hosting the files themselves. Rendo and CP should have worked this out better. It would have not been hard for CP to share the purchase history with Rendo and if the customer had a Rendo account the information could have been keep at Rendo. Some may ask what was in this for either Rendo or CP, simple; good customer relations. Most companies seem to overlook this today and then ask why; when things get tough do their customers abandon them. I feel both are to blame for not giving ANY consideration for their customers. Rendo should feel that whether the purchases were made directly or through CP they were still Rendo customers and doing nothing (they didn't even bother to past ANY information on the split) is just plain WRONG. Add to this CP has a major product (poser) and the associated character lines which give them one advantage and the fact that DAZ is now entering the common content arena with their Artzone market, Rendo should do something to show support for these customers. CP is equally in the WRONG, their selection of content is going to take a MAJOR hit and keeping customers should be a MUCH higher priority. There were many reasons for people to shop through CP at Rendo and both profited from it. I have no problems with the split (it must have made some logic to one of the parties) BUT hanging the customers out to dry was JUST PLAIN STUPID. DAZ will probably be somewhat of a winner out of this.