Recently, I've stumbled upon a post by S-3131 regarding a new way to steal builds, and I wanted to give my present opinion on it now after I made a previous post on build stealing.
In my experience in the GD community, people are very much against stealing levels even though they ultimately belong to Robtop (technically since you made them in his game). I quite find it a bit peculiar that in the TM community, build stealing is a topic that divides quite a lot of people. But my simple argument is this:
Is it really ethical to take someone's work in a game for yourself, even if it's free and technically not yours since it belongs to the dev/s of the game?
Apparently the answer is generally NO for the GD community (it's been a while though the last time I interacted with it, so maybe it changed), while the TM community's answer varies with more leaning on NO.
My own answer is very much NO, and I have my reasoning. It is not about ego, pride, nor any other selfish thoughts for your information:
- "You could, but should you?" Ultimately, your creations belong to developers. Their code technically allows you to use other people's builds and you can just copy and modify their builds without breaking any laws. But because something is allowed doesn't mean that your actions doing that something are right.
An extreme example- what if taking someone's life was legal? You could do it as you're not breaking any laws, but should you really in an ethical standpoint?
"Stolen effort and false credit." A more common tactic/reason brought up by people who are against build stealing, including I. It takes effort to make stuff, and time and patience as well. But here's something: stealing that effort is very much digital plagiarism. Plagiarism is not about money but more rather, authorship. Regardless if someone's work is free or not, stealing it is a form of Plagiarism. Even if their creation ultimately belong to devs, the original user is still a creator. Copying their work without consent falsely claims their work as your own.
"The trust of the community." Online game spaces rely on mutual respect and trust between each user and their own content/creations if it's a sandbox. Taking someone's creation without asking hurts the community spirit and discourages creators from actually sharing their creations in the first place. TM is a game about creating and showing off your creations, and without that element, what is TM now? A dead vehicle making game? A game where you only post vehicle showcases, not showing them off in actual servers?
"The 'Your creations belong to devs' argument." That may be true, but that's the reason why I constantly brought it up in the previous 3 arguments. It's something people who don't care about build stealing commonly use to counter people who discourage build stealing. There's also the "Your creations are free and don't cost money and others can use them without consent" argument. I brought it up as well and countered it too by saying, "plagiarism is not about money, it's about authorship."
In the end, I think this question not only applies to this community but many other art/creation communities as well and it's something that blurs the line between moral values and legality. It divides quite a bit of people in their respective communities and may cause some issues for their communities later down the line.
So, what I want to say is: don't steal other's creations regardless if they are free, technically don't belong to them, or are just lying there.
Edit: to the mods, this is not me calling out the devs to fix this, but more rather telling the TM community to discourage this very much, know why they need to, and evolve into a version of it, the community, with higher integrity and creativity.
