The first 14+ or so alpha's of this very game used Unity Store Assets, yet TFP remained copyright holders of the work... food for thought.
Hm, I don't really see a connection to my considerations in this thread. It seems you think of my proposal in the other, you know, where I suggested that we should all steal whatever we can find and never look back. Burn down towns in the process. Also a great idea, but a different one.
Here, I am suggesting to discuss a collaboration of modders. Y'all might actually consider it, even if the idea comes from the community's designated black sheep. I suggest that we, because it includes myself, who is not into the whole SDX stuff - yet™ -, collect money among ourselves. Tons. Collect the cash and then have someone buy assets from the store. If it's a sound plan, it should even be considered to found some kind of organisation or company, that does not belong just to one person, so there is not just one person who has to bear all the responsibility.
And then those who know how to SDX create a master-mod. As far as I understand it, there is one or a few files in an SDX mod that contains assets - I'm particularly talking about models, like creatures, npcs, buildings, vehicles, decoration, workstations, weapons, tools and such. That master-mod, ideally, should already use these models, as an examplatory tutorial of how to use them, so people who have no knowledge beyond XML-modding can easily learn how to include these models in their mod.
Then, everybody, modder or not, could download the master-mod once from the person or organisation who legally owns it.
And then modders could provide modded files for that master-mod, that, however, do not contain the assets. Like I described in #3 of this thread. If it is legal with xml-files, it should be legal with any file, except the one(s) that contain the licensed assets. In that case, the assets are never downloaded from anybody who does not legally own them. And that way, every modder could have perfectly legal access to high quality assets.
Of course, this sounds somewhat like a trick. A dodge? Like abusing a loophole in the legal system. This might not be legal and my idea naive. But then again, how many modders actually spend considerable sums at the store? I honestly don't know. So practically, this might end up putting a lot more money into asset creators' pockets than if every modder has to purchase their stuff individually. Because if you had to spend fiddy bucks for just a few things, you're kinda thinking "meh, that's not worth it". If you spend the same fiddy bucks, but get access to a whole array of stuff, you'd be a lot more inspired. So ethically I don't see a problem with it.
Of course Vol. II, I don't know the technicalities, like how many assets you can actually put into one master mod. In the store, many packs alone have large file-sizes, so maybe it's not really working. Then again, maybe it's possible to make different master mods to meet different needs, but I don't know how licensing works. Can you use an asset you bought in only one project or multiple?
