Why are 20 threads on here about ripping/stealing assets? - Developers

My partner was browsing facepunch out of curiosity (he might make an account?) and saw this sub, and raised an interesting point. He figured that this was about development, creation, making things. But it seems the vast majority of this sub is about ripping models out of games. It just seems oxymoronic to claim to be about development when most just want to steal others' work, no? I'm liable to agree, as there's a stark lack of actual development happening. Obviously upon further investigation there's lots of great work on here, but it seems to be in the minority, no?

People mostly want to rip models so they can port them to garrysmod and SFM, Source engine models and materials have some strict rules and since this subforum was once exclusively for source engine modeling its what the majority was. There is a 3d art subforum in creationism corner (since most 3d modelers arent going to put bespoke projects into engines) and a programming subforum (where most game programmers will hang out anyways as they arent forming teams or working on anything). Even level design has now been given its own subforum so all that remains for "game development" is reverse engineering new engines to rip out files.

Even when FP used to have rules against piracy, it was completely ignored so long as it was in the form of ripping assets and sharing them. Weird shit tbh.

Yes it's all a bit of a grey area when keeping it 'technically legal'.. Look regardless of it all, I rip assets from SWBF1&2... I did purchase the game ($100+), so does that still count as stealing? I'm not selling any of the content I rip for financial gain, BUT, I have 'shared' with the facepunch community.. mostly when i have an issue reverse engineering a model/texture So I upload archive files for someone to provide assistance.. It's all for a fan film I'm producing & eventually once it's finished, I'll upload it onto YouTube for all to watch.. Maybe throw in a few tutorials on how you achieve the CG effects used in the feature??... I mean for me it's purely driven in the name of fun..you go on YouTube & I guarantee you'll find a dozen fan films, most of them stating it's a non profit affair and either for fun or educational purposes.. If it was so against the copyright holders approval, all they gotta do is contact Google & request for it to be removed from the site, which never happens, but shows there is tolerance so I believe essentially knowing 'where' not to cross the line is key.

It's very straight up illegal, no gray zone when it comes to sharing others copyrighted content. The thing is just that nobody cares, so you're safe.

Not entirely accurate.. Disney do care.. Thingiverse & possible other popular 3D printing sites were asked to remove select Star Wars content from their marketplace.. leaving a few 'not the best' models left for the public to print...If they & EA cared about people using their models from games, I'm sure they'd be contacting Facepunch by now... & maybe it's yet to come??... Disney Pulls Star Wars Models From Thingiverse

Correction: None of the moderators on Facepunch care, and neither do most users. Facepunch is sort of small, and doesn't get much attention from the big boys at EA or Disney. But we'll see.

Yes its not exactly a huge site for general public but one of the most popular for game reverse engineering I've seen

If anyone cared about model rips the entire Gmod and SFM workshops would be shut down, as both are filled with virtually nothing but model ports. But seeing as how very little has been done in the 13-14 years Gmod and the small community of content creators (and content rippers/reverse engineerers) it largely created have been around, it's safe to say few to no devs/publishers give enough of a fuck about what some kid with pirated 3DS Max does with a character model from their games.

You'll never see Arma 3 ripping threads on here as Bohemia is strictly against it, and one of their employees even posts here.

I remember some forum members being extremely rude towards them for taking that stance as well.

If it ends up easily accessible to the general public for 3d print like Thingiverse, it will turn heads.

The difference is that Thingiverse exists to allow users to download models for 3D printing specifically. This actually competes with Disney directly, because it can potentially eat into sales things like toys and knick knacks, which is the primarily financial reasons Star Wars even exists. GMod and SFM can't eat into sales of toys because that content isn't advertised as something that you can print into the real world as a toy or desk gadget or collectible. Sure you can alter that content to be able to 3D print it, but that's not always easy and more often than not, a change of context is good enough to dissuade all but the most litigious of companies.