@garethcoker Well said my friend. And as we called it, some corporate legal type was sent out that really didn’t say a whole lot as you said. This whole thing feels rushed out for no reason. And you’re correct, not a lot of us can just up and leave. I personally don’t make all that much income music wise. The freelance projects I have taken on has been few and far between over the past year. As someone mentioned previously, when Elements arrived, the Marketplace seemed to just fall to the wayside. All the promotion, all of the support goes straight to Elements, not the Marketplace where I have spent over a decade building up.
While I understand that AI can be a good tool, this situation has so many issues with it. It’s obviously that the vast majority of us do not want this forced on to us. At least make this an optional road to take. The vast amount of lack of communication and obviously the planning foresight aspects of this decision were not looked at as closely as they should.
I agree, Envato can do as they would like with their company. That’s all fine and dandy. But this entire thing and how it’s being handled and presented, just fills the whole “room” so to speak with bad light. It’s borderline shady.
And after I’ve said all these great things about what Envato has done for me and provided in previous years, this randomly shows up mid-week with a slightly over two week deadline. With the double whammy of this and Elements literally tanking my income here. It feels like an extremely low blow and makes it difficult to get motivated to submit more content on the platform.
I urge Envato to at least include an opt-out addition with promises that it will not be done behind “closed doors and behind backs”. This at least can provide some confidence for artists in the platforms venture into this territory. If this cannot be implemented in time for your June deadline, then simply extend it until you can add it. Surely that won’t hurt Envatos income that greatly to do so.