New release: v2.2.0 FINAL

[freezy]

This thread contains a lot of misinformation, accusations, conspiracy, off-topic discussions, personal attacks and name calling. It was toxic, sometimes absurd, and some tried it the ironic way which came out cringey as hell. In the end, no progress was made, and that's why the thread was locked.

 

I've discussed this topic privately with a few community members, and we all agreed on the following points:

• When money is involved, a community of hobbyists will get hurt sooner or later.
• It's more valuable to have a safe and non-poisonous community than the content the monetizing members produce, even if their content is awesome.
• If you want to create colorizations in peace, you might be better of with Serum.

To conclude, here are my personal thoughts. I spent a lot of time thinking about this move before releasing v2.2.0. For months, to tell the truth. I knew that opening a format that was so heavily fought for would make some waves. I also knew that I would probably be the person getting kicked in the ass.

 

So, one topic where I wanted as much damage control as possible were the authors. My goal was to minimize the negative impact for the authors. I even talked to some community members about it. Long before releasing, and shortly before. But besides saving a bad actor two hours of work, nobody would come up with any other drawbacks. Even the real pin monetization would be kept intact, since PAC only works on v-pins.

 

I'm sorry that this obviously didn't come through. Whether you believe it or not, I still think that this release won't have a significant impact on how soon PAC will be available for real pins. There's obviously an impact of angry authors that will now leave or pull their files or both, but if it's for a healthier community, I think that's for the better.

 

I'll be working on a follow-up release with a few bug fixes, and then I'll be finally back on VPE again. Good ol' times!