Ok so...Last year in November, a friend of mine saw that I really wanted an adoptable that went up for auction but it was out of my reach. My friend ended up autobuying the auction, and gave me the adoptable as an early Xmas gift. The premise of the auction is that once the design is bought, it belongs to the buyer 100%. So since my friend bought the adoptable and gave it to me, he relinquished ownership to me.
Fast forward to today, I end up finding the adoptable recolored and raffled off. Confused, because the design was supposed to be relinquished upon purchase. So I asked the person about it, their gf won the raffle and gave it to the person that I found the recolored adoptable from. We talk back and forth, and upon doing some digging through what they presented me, said artist sold the original adoptable to my friend for a lot of money....but two weeks after that, they resold it to the person that my friend beat to get the adoptable in the first place.
Then, said person that lost raffled the recolored adoptable to the gf, and said gf gave it to the person that I spoke to.
At this point I'm pretty peeved because the design was unique, and there were NO recolors presented at the time of the auction. I'm wondering how my friend and I should proceed with this...
Fast forward to today, I end up finding the adoptable recolored and raffled off. Confused, because the design was supposed to be relinquished upon purchase. So I asked the person about it, their gf won the raffle and gave it to the person that I found the recolored adoptable from. We talk back and forth, and upon doing some digging through what they presented me, said artist sold the original adoptable to my friend for a lot of money....but two weeks after that, they resold it to the person that my friend beat to get the adoptable in the first place.
Then, said person that lost raffled the recolored adoptable to the gf, and said gf gave it to the person that I spoke to.
At this point I'm pretty peeved because the design was unique, and there were NO recolors presented at the time of the auction. I'm wondering how my friend and I should proceed with this...
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I would write a beware overall. Selling the same adoptable to two people means either the client did it willingly, or is very bad at keeping track of their own business and selling things more than once. Either is not a good business practice of course.
Then, if the artist did not give some response akin to an apology and some offer of compensation for the loss of the originality of the purchase, I would write a beware about that artist for reselling the adoptable in the first place.
This is how I would do it, just so I at least I had some sort of closure on the issue...
But if your mind is already made up on the artist being at fault, I'm sure a beware is warranted without contacting the artist first.
I feel like I worded this a bit weirdly, so I hope it makes sense.
"- Once this adopt is yours you're free to do whatever to the design, make changes, swap the gender, your choice since this character is all yours now! Have fun."
My friend and I are just going to chalk it up as an experience, and to make sure we get everything in writing in the future. The timing of the whole thing was just really suspicious, but not much we can do at this point.
It's really unfortunate, and imo shady. I wonder if this is the only one to ever get this kind of treatment, because it was obvious this one was meant to be a one-off like all of their other one-off designs.
Edited at 2017-05-02 03:32 pm (UTC)
That is a downside of the adoptable market is that entirely enforced through social capital and good faith. You can't always have a set of clear expectations and rules.
With adoptables you aren't specifically selling art but you're selling an idea which makes it much muddier territory, but I think selling the same adoptable twice has been considered beware-worthy in the past.
At any rate, only once a post is in the queue can we determine if something is bewareable. In this instance I feel (I can't speak for the other mods) it's going to come down to:
1. The original agreement. If the artist claimed that this design would never be reused then that's a big no no to do so.
2. How they handle Kayla-Na's concerns.
Edit: Fixed my sentences because I can't type.
Edited at 2017-05-02 02:21 am (UTC)
If the design was unique, something about it like the anatomy, that these elements as a whole design are suppose to be a one-off, then yes, a beware is well warranted regardless if the base was re-colored or even if lines or pose were redone.
I think the 2nd owner should either be refunded or be given a new design.
But if the re-colored adoptable is too similar to yours for comfort, I also think the second buyer will need to get a refund.
"- Once this adopt is yours you're free to do whatever to the design, make changes, swap the gender, your choice since this character is all yours now! Have fun."
This doesn't state that the lineart won't be reused. Unless that was specifically stated, I don't think the artist is in the wrong.
If they sold the exact same design-that is a huge problem and grounds for a beware. But if they re-sold just the lineart with a different design, then I don't see the problem with that. Sorry if I misread something in your post. I just wanted to make sure I understood what was going on.
Edited at 2017-05-02 10:14 pm (UTC)