You say inflation, I say self inflicted wound.

Repeatedly having these insane, nonsensical sales that they didn't even understand the ramifications of. I have ranted about the "cutesy" gimmicky sales for what seems like decade now. Discounts go up, base price goes up. The actual purchase price remained the same.

They created a customer base that knows not to buy at full price. The average customer knows to buy early on sale or to wait for a sale to come along. I am willing to bet the items selling at the full base price are an extreme minority of all sales.

And yes, trying new things is the definition of innovation. However trying a half a dozen different things at the same time and not really putting much effort into all of them... That is what the average customer sees. Then not communicating only leads to more speculation.

At the very least you can admit that their handling of this fiasco has been piss poor. The communication is coming through the forum in a mostly non-official way. Messages containing promises being made by DAZ employees seem to be getting altered or just disappearing. There is no official statement on any part of the site other than the forum. There doesn't appear to be a road map for where this ride is heading.

Because of this, the speculation begins. Speculation then leads to rumors. Rumors then lead to accusations of wrong doing.

Certain DAZ employees are doing an admirable job of trying to reassure customers. However no one knows if they are speaking in any sort of official capacity. No one knows if they can be trusted. Or if they even have the real story from their higher ups. Why all of the distrust? Because of all the broken promises and non-communication of the past.

I don't begrudge you, or anyone else, for wanting to protect your assets. I would be livid if all my hard work was pirated on a regular basis.

However DRM is notoriously bad. It doesn't stop the pirates. It barely even slows them down. Most of the time it just annoys the legitimate users. It serves no positive purpose to anyone. The scheme they have come up with will not protect your assets. It will not stop the pirates. It will not increase sales. It will just be a waste of resources.

It also doesn't help when, to the average customer, it appears to already be bungled in the roll out. I know beta testing is meant to address this and refine the effort. However so far this just smells of a half baked effort. It doesn't appear to have been completely thought through. Particularly when developers are saying things like "we didn't think of that. And this is important enough that I am going in on my day off to work on it."

Yes, on one hand it is reassuring that it is being taken that seriously. On the other hand it makes people nervous that something so important was completely overlooked.

I am being objective. I am not being irrational. I am not threatening to never buy another DAZ product. I am not screaming for anyone's blood. I don't feel betrayed. I am taking a wait and see position.

However I am not optimistic that it will end well. DAZ has a track record of trying these new things. Setting off down the path. Then just giving up without getting to the destination. Leaving behind a half completed project that we have to suffer with.

All I ask of you is this... How will you feel if your first release with DRM is pirated just as quickly as the previous releases. And, ontop of that, the sales are less because of said DRM? I would think that if my worst fears are realized, you would not continue creating or selling things through DAZ. You would be foolish to do so if you were continually loosing money.

So you stop. And who looses? DAZ does, they've lost assets they could sell. The customer looses because they can no longer purchase your items. You loose because of the lost revenue. No one wins.

Do I think this worst case scenario is going to happen? No. Is the potential there? Yes.

Again, I am taking a wait and see position to see how things shake out once it goes live. I don't have any plans of using DAZ Connect because it really offers me no benefits. I don't use Smart Content. I am happy using DIM to update, in fact I run DIM every morning to check for updates.