bingomion posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 8 April 2026 - #4505130

Thanks for your reply, and you bring up some interesting points.

Well my "suggestion" was to remove the Standard and Extended licenses and replace them with something that doesn't make game dev's third class citizens here because obviously you can monetize with the Standard licence a lot easier than the "Extended" way and yet monetized Standard license content doesn't seem to bother anyone??  It's only the "rich" game dev's??? lol IMO it's complete nonsense! And if it actually worked you would have game dev's here.... where are they? I want to talk to them!

You are talking to them, or one of them anyway. Hi, game dev here, worked professionally on my first title in ... 2009[?] I think. I'm not here for the marketplace content in that regard tho, I'm here for what remains of the forums most of which are now long gone. Speaking of "long gone forums" the game dev forum here was one of the shortest lived, and first to go when they started culling forums. It existed for a few hot minutes around the time Poser Pro Game Dev that @jonnybode mentioned above came out, bolstered by the support for Unity at the time, and lingered for a bit after, but never saw much traffic. Make of that what you will.

I don't believe the "extended license" was ever necessarily meant to attract game devs here, I think it was meant more as a way for vendors already here to offer their products to a wider audience SHOULD any of that audience happen to wander by. There was almost a hot minute when Poser and the Sims could have been a thing, but around the same time the Sims got draconian with content rights, and NOBODY wanted their content anywhere near that game.

Perhaps you're right, and extended licenses could be done away with entirely here, and then no products [or considerably fewer anyway] would be allowed for use beyond the standard image rendering that is the foundation of this site. I don't have marketplace numbers to know how many, or how well extended licenses actually sell compared to regular ones, but perhaps that could be an option.

bingomion posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 8 April 2026 - #4505130

So, game studios are using Poser and assets and need to pay their fair share BUT you insist that Poser isn't a game dev tool??? That logic doesn't make much sense my friend.

No game studios are NOT using Poser, and they're probably not using Poser assets either. For the most part, neither Poser models, nor assets created for it, are particularly game friendly. The polycounts are typically too high, textures and geometry aren't optimized. A heap of work needs to go in to making them game-ready. If you have to start rebuilding the mesh, you've hosed the UVs, the new geo may not produce UVs that fit the old textures, and so on. There's a break even point between the amount of work it takes to clean-up an existing asset vs just making a new one, often times the latter becomes the path of least resistance. There have been a number of times I've started with actual game assets, even ones I've made myself that needed tweaked or changed, and its still proven more effective just to start fresh.

Now that said, and this is where extended licenses come in handy, just because A LOT of Poser assets aren't game friendly, that doesn't mean assets can't be developed game friendly from the start, and then also used in Poser. I think I would eventually like to sell assets here, given my background my assets would almost certainly rely heavily on game friendly techniques and optimizations meaning there would likely be little to no work to get them into a game engine. As such, I would almost certainly want to have them under an extended license. I would expect extended license sales to be few and far between, but I would like that option to be available to me, none the less.

bingomion posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 8 April 2026 - #4505130

For me 100% Poser was (and still is) a game dev tool! It has good and reliable import/export (collada/FBX), scripting and now with GLTF an PBR support IMO it's still a good game dev tool and I don't mind paying for it, it's obviously not a "serious" (game studio) tool but it doesn't have to be when the learning curve is 1/50th of blender/UE etc. And well if you're making janky shovelware games, is that a commercial game to you?  lol because that's the kinda game you get from Poser right, I've stated that and now you have also.... so what are the chances of anyone paying for the game dev tax making a janky shovelware game? That's been my point.

That's great, if it works for you and what you want to do with it, have at it. Please don't let my criticism yuck your yum.

I absolutely consider "shovelware" games to be commercial. They are the lowest common denominator of commercial games, sure, but I'm not sure how you'd label them as anything other than "commercial" when they're being sold, even if the price is only $1 or $2 on an app store.

Let me clarify, when I'm using the term "shovelware" I'm not talking about every game that isn't a AAA title, or even necessarily "janky" games where the developer tried, but maybe some things just didn't work out, they've still got stuff to learn - I'm talking about games that are churned out in a short time span, using primarily pre-existing/recycled/stock assets, and typically recycling if not out-right ripping off mechanics from other popular games - ie "can we make a game for $1X that suckers enough people in to buying this that it generates $2X?". How many Angry Birds-a-likes were there for awhile for example, promising the Angry Birds game-play experience for half the app price, but were just half baked clones? Many of those titles exploiting microtransactions to increase revenue as well. That's "shovelware" by my definition, and that is absolutely a commercial pursuit, a scummy one, but a commercial one regardless.

bingomion posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 8 April 2026 - #4505130

https://www.oreilly.com/videos/poser-pro-game/9781771373425/ (You can watch for free with the trial, unfortunately it can't be bought out right.)

I've watched this a few times and Mark goes through a lot of content without ever mentioning licensing! I'm not that autistic enough to check if they are game dev licensed tho. lol

Anyway,  that's why I've bought Poser (a few times) and then signed up here, assuming Poser content and store were game dev friendly.... wow was I wrong!

Don't worry, I was just a tinkerer, I haven't put anyone's hard work on any stores potentially getting rich from my janky shovelware game! lol do you guys hear yourselves???

I recently thought I'd get serious with gamedev (again) and I was about to pay for Prime and buy a few assets, then I noticed the  store Standard/Extra license and then the actual Poser EULA. You can imagine my shock! I'm a Poser user but excluded from Poser content and the store, is that what you want? is that really fair?

Had I known Poser was so anti game dev with content, I most likely wouldn't have bought it.

It's a shame because I like poser and I'm still using it for 3D rigging/skinning and animation and the store looks great but the extra licensing is just unnecessarily insulting.

Looking at that its dated from 2015, that would have been shortly after the previously mentioned Poser 2014 Game Dev version would have been release. I had forgotten that  existed until it was mentioned here, it didn't appear to ever gain much of a foothold. It was an attempt to break into that market, but it fell flat. I could absolutely be mistaken here, there could be an entire underground Poser game dev community going strong out there, but if that's the case I've never run across it. I'm sorry you may have been misguided in that regard, that's unfortunate.

Even with everything I've said, I still feel its wrong to categorize Poser as "anti game dev", its not really, its just different worlds. Poser assets prioritize looking good, high resolution textures etc, with limited concerns about optimizations because its used for offline renders. If a model takes an extra couple minutes to render in Poser, that's not likely to make or break anything. Game assets prioritize optimization and performance and looking good comes second because its about real-time renders. If a game doesn't RUN and PLAY well, its not going to matter how good it looks, its success is going to be hindered by poor performance.

bingomion posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 8 April 2026 - #4505130

Like I said before (and you made my point), 3D game dev pipeline WAS expensive but it's not today (that's the divide I meant, free vs paid, cheap vs expensive), and that includes content but that's not a bad thing because if things are cheaper you get more sales, basic 101 economic stuff. But you need people participating not excluding them based on old and out dated perception of 3D content monetization. I'm not saying everything has to be free or cheap, but you need a very very good reason! and just saying "game's make money" isn't it because everything makes money and yet it really doesn't, at least it doesn't on the Poser janky shovelware game dev side.

I might argue extended licenses are the opposite of "old and outdated", if anything they're more progressive than "you get nothing, unless you make it yourself". I still don't think you're realizing how bad things could be if everything was cheap for commercial use. Studios employ artists because they can have them produce custom assets for a cost that isn't significantly higher than if they had to source and alter/update/tweak assets they bought on markets with appropriate licenses.

If those studios were able to pick up all the assets they need at a fraction of the cost that likely wipes out most of the artists they're employing. Sure you've probably still got a couple intern level artists to do the tweaking, and maybe a lead artist that's in charge of "art direction" or "asset acquisition" but that's probably about it. All those previously employed studio artists need to go somewhere, and there's not enough market space if they're all competing to sell the $2 barrel asset that gets used in the next 72 games produced.

I don't have statistics for this, but humor my thought experiment anyway - the number of users buying assets to use for renders on this site alone, likely exceed the number the total number of game studios including indie studios in the entire world. If that is the case, and I'm pretty confident it is, that means it might be next to impossible to ever sell enough volume of a game asset at a non-extended-license-rate to make it worth it.

bingomion posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 8 April 2026 - #4505130

Honestly I'd think content creators would make more money with more people here with better, equal and fair licensing ie:

non commercial / commercial

 attribution / no attribution

single use / multi use

etc etc etc

I like attribution / no attribution, if you're not crediting the original creator, well IMO that's more serious (ie "reselling someone else's work") than if something is non commercial or commercial (and hoping), or renders or video game.

And if most people are paying for attribution stuff, there's more sharing and growing etc etc.

That was my suggestion anyway.

Thanks again.

Ben.

You have to keep in mind, its not Poser or even Renderosity Marketplace that is responsible for the pricing and licensing designation. That's up to the vendors. I'm sure the Marketplace has people that will help steer vendors in the right direction, but its largely up to the vendor. They're creating the assets, its their content, they should absolutely have the right to say how its used.

Those vendors are coming from all different backgrounds, with varying skill levels, etc. Some of them are creating content for themselves purely as hobbyists, that they're happy to release and if it generates a few sales, great, if not that doesn't really hurt them, so they might not care much about restricting uses. Others are relying on sales ranging from a side gig to a substantial portion of their income, and would feel their work is significantly under valued if its used in a capacity that involves redistribution of their content.

Isn't "commercial / non-commercial" essentially the licensing structure you have issue with now? That sounds pretty much like what the extended license is - a commercial use license.

What do you mean - "Attribution / No Attribution"? That's just about the scummiest trick in the book - "Hey work for us, we'll give you credit/exposure and you can use it in your portfolio/on your resume". I thought we'd mostly done away with that exploitation/"speculative work", but sure, lets bring that back? Attribution doesn't mean squat. I'm far more interested in being payed a fair rate than I am in seeing my name buried somewhere in the credits that doesn't even make it clear whether I was responsible for the lead character model, or a crate that's in the background of one shot.

Single use / multi-use - so everyone here would have to purchase a multi-use license if they wanted to use an asset in more than one render? That feels pretty awful. Never mind how incredibly unfair that would be if users had to purchase a multi-use license so they could make more than one render, but a game studio could buy a single use license if they only use the asset in one game?

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