Winter's Blog

Mega Hassles

In mid May of 2008, a brief window of opportunity opened in Second Life. A glitch in the server code briefly allowed Megaprims (prims larger than 10m) to be created. During that all-to-brief period, I and several others created many hundreds or thousands of “new” or “second generation” Megaprims. The first set of megas, created in 2006, had been extremely limited in number, and since they couldn’t be resized, many had resorted to “torturing” the prims to create new sizes (by cutting, trimming and/or hollowing). The window for new megaprim creation in 2008 was open for several days, and this allowed for many many more such prims to be created, in more useful or desirable sizes.

Like most other 2008 megaprim creators, I made my megas available for free, with full permissions. This allowed people to use my megas in their builds.. and my megaprim sizes had been chosen specifically to work well for floors and walls.

The downside of course, is that anything that anyone makes out of prims I created, shows my name as creator.

There are more technical aspects to this of course, when it concerns things made using multiple prims from multiple creators, in that case it’s the “yellow” or “parent” prim in the linkset whose creator will show.. but generally speaking this is a “noob mistake” in terms of building with other people’s prims. It happens now and then to most of us.. but the experienced builder will usually check things like this before putting an item up for sale.

Now let’s enter the year 2012.

My megaprims are “everywhere”. You can get them in my shops, they’re available on the marketplace, they’ve been added to “mega mega sets” of megaprims from many different creators, and some people have built online databases that have indexed thousands of available megaprims, and organized them by size. Need a megaprim? Just type in your desired dimensions, and services like Megaprim.sl will return a list of the closest ones it can find, and deliver the ones you choose at the touch of a button. But it’s not just through libraries, and the marketplace, and mega-sets.. it seems at least one third party viewer even added the megaprims to their building tools in such a way, that people can build with megaprims without ever realizing they didn’t create the prims!

Additionally, many creators now use “prefab” parts in their builds. A whole market has opened up over the last few years, in specialized sculpted prims, sold with full permissions. Now you don’t need to be a furniture designer to sell an attractively furnished home. Simply buy some premanufactured couches, load in some animations you bought, and call it good. I’ve seen a lot of these builds.. and it extends well beyond furniture.. shoes, clothes, even hair and skin. The market for prefab elements is huge, and there are plenty of people buying those parts, and putting them together in new and interesting ways.

But with all of these prims, animations, textures, scripts, and sculpts floating around with all different creators names listed, it becomes easy for the casual, less-skilled builder to make a buck, simply by slapping other people’s things together, and putting a price tag on it. Oh I’m sure they add their own touches, their own sense of style as well, but very often, these “kitbash builds” tend to be made from the lowest priced prefab elements, often by people who don’t really care about the quality of the product, and who may have no skill in terms of scripting, sculpting, or texturing, to fix errors and mistakes.

My name is listed as creator of 689 full permissions prims of varying sizes. My name is apparently also listed as creator on all or part of hundreds of items made with those prims, on display inworld or for sale.

Since 2008, I have received literally thousands of support requests for items I didn’t create, items in many cases that I’ve never even seen. broken doors, missing teleporters, sculpted caves that can’t be entered… I’ve received hundreds of heartbreaking compliments for awesome artwork I didn’t create. And I’ve received thousands of requests from people looking for, and unable to find, items I had nothing to do with. I’ve received well over a hundred complaints from people who were banned from sims I’m not involved in, even more people asking about rules in malls I don’t own, or complaining about griefers in sandboxes I have no control over. And hundreds of people begging for help with failed purchases, in stores that aren’t mine. And hundreds of angry people demanding I remove whatever horrible thing  it is that their neighbor has rezzed.

And then there’s the lovely situation where people accuse me of stealing things they created, while they were creating it. That’s always a lovely situation to try and deal with.

This is on top of the messages I get that actually relate to things I did make!

I’m tired of having the same conversation over and over again.

Customer: “Hi”
Me: “Hello”
Customer: “Did you create the Loft Skybox Magical Vista with Waves and Privacy Screens? I can’t find it in your store.”
Me: “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t create that. Try contacting the owner and ask them where they got it.”
Customer: “It says you created it.”
Me: “I’m sorry, I didn’t create that item.”
Customer: “I really want it, where can I buy it?”
Me: “I’m sorry, I didn’t create that item. I wasn’t involved in it’s creation, I don’t know who sells it. Try asking the owner where it came from.”
Customer: “But it says your name as creator.”
Me: “I understand that it’s showing my name as creator, but I assure you, I did not create it, and I don’t know who did.”
Customer: “But your name is listed here as creator!”
Me: “I’m sorry, as I said, I didn’t create that item.”
Customer: “Do you know where I can buy it?”
Me: “I didn’t have anything to do with the creation of that item. I don’t know who made it, I don’t sell it, and I don’t know who does. I don’t know anything about it, I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

At this point, the conversation usually goes one of three ways:

1. A short, curt “thank you for your time” or some variation on “whatever, liar”.
2. A teleport offer, or a series of screenshots, or both, trying to “prove” to me that I did indeed build this thing I’ve never heard of.
3. Or they make some kind of vague threat about reporting me to someone for something.

I have had this conversation three-to-ten times a day, nearly every single day, since June of 2008.

After three and a half years of this, I am extremely worn out from it. I have tried sending form-responses, I have tried sending notecards, I have tried being nice, and trying to help every single person who calls find the item they’re looking for, and I have tried just ignoring the  IMs, and notecards, and repeated teleport offers, friendship requests, comments on my blog and profile and whatnot.

Recently, Linden Lab lifted the build-ceiling in terms of maximum prim sizes. This means that people can now build prims up to 64m in any dimension, with their own name as creator. If even the most conservative numbers are to be believed, I have “sold” well over 10,000 megaprim packs. That number is probably way off, since it doesn’t include sales numbers from before I began tracking, or from when the SL Marketplace was known as “XStreet”. I suspect it’s more like 20,000 packs. They’ve been grabbed by experienced builders and noobs alike, and they’ve even been grabbed by the Lindens themselves. I’ve even seen my name shown as creator on official Linden builds. As I said before, they’re also “everywhere” and in a lot of places I can’t control them.

Even if I pulled the megaprims off the marketplace and out of my store today.. they’re out there. In people’s inventories, in libraries, collections, etc. They’ve been used to make trees and waves and privacy screens that are sold, and have been sold for years. Buried inside boxes inside boxes.. waiting to appear again.

There’s not much point to this post, beyond just venting about it. I know I’m not the only megaprim creator who has later regretted releasing them. I wish I could go back in time, and use an alt to create those prims, an alt who conveniently could just ignore all their IMs.

Would I undo it if I could? If I had a magic button that could delete every megaprim with my name on it, would I push it? No.

I made those prims with the intention of sharing them, of improving people’s lives by reducing the number of prims you needed to put a floor in a store. It is gratifying to know that people have used them to make beautiful things, and it’s also nice to know that their existence has made it easier for less skilled builders to make things, that obviously, people are interested in owning. I’m sure more than a few ER customers found their way to my shop by first searching for one of these things that I didn’t make… so it can’t be all bad.

But it does get tiring to have the same conversation over and over again. And I think I’m starting to lean towards “send form letter notecard, don’t respond”. Trying to explain the situation personally, invariably leads to my frustration and impatience coming out.. and even when I’m in the best, most helpful mood, these conversations invariably result in the customer basically calling me a liar.

It’s taxing, it’s tiring, and it wears down my energy. It slows me down, pulls me off focus, drags me away from friends and intimate moments with lovers, and it makes it hard to “feel like working on something complicated” when I’ve just been insulted, accused, or threatened over something I had nothing to do with.

/me  shrugs.