SydneyInPeril posted at 6:51 PM Fri, 2 August 2024 - #4487984

I pretty much stopped going when they rolled out ads on the forum and gallery - I've had at least one friend there tell me that they basically started doing it without announcing it, and in response they pulled their gallery images down because they were based on a home tabletop game and they'd posted in good faith that it wouldn't get advertising placed on them after the fact. And I more recently poked around and found they've been dabbling with a generative art engine, which pretty much finished me with them.

I'm still debating whether I keep using the software (I blocked internet for it at the firewall so it can't "phone home" in case they're pulling images to feed into that engine), switch back to Poser again (expensive upgrade for me now and requires abandoning content I've paid for), or even just abandon the whole thing 25 year old content archive and go back to sketchtablets and building my own 3D in Blender.

I stopped posting complete in the galleries. Which is sad, as some beautiful artists post there. But the mentality of their moderators, the fact that "support"(we will use that term loosely) is just about non-existent(yes, I can say that, as I have open support tickets that have had no reply since last july), I have no interest in supporting it more than I have to. Again, which is sad, as some great artists have their products there.

As for the GenAI, there is -nothing- they can say or do, that will make that ok. Almost every major company is turning their back on Gen AI for a reason.
The fact they think by stating "its trained from store images" is a "this makes it better" is boggling.
Talk about(literally) Missing the bigger picture.

As for the program, well, I hate to say it, but I now prefer it over poser. I have both up to date at the moment and...Daz does perform better(even with the bugs and issues) Than poser.

What is turning people away, is how they treat customers. The open censorship, the open favouritism, the fact they have zero respect for IP rights...it just bad business.
As I noted before, one of the products I have been trying to get help with, has had complaints since 2018. Is it fixed? Nope. Have they replied? Also, Nope. And yes, I even went into my tickets and tried to post a reminder of "hey, can I get a reply?"
And....silence.

https://www.darkelegance.co.uk/

Commission open.