Onye I.
Worst place to sell 3d models
3D artists should avoid CGTrader like a plague because their ultimate goal presently is to use your 3d models for generative ai purposes against your wish, while at the same time slashing your royalty rate by 7-10%. Be wary of anyone giving CGTrader positive reviews after June 1 2025, for those are either paid shills, low information artists who have no idea what is going on in the marketplace or 3D artists with humiliation kink. Worst part is their laughable attempts to gaslight 3d artists with the very obvious lie that CGTrader’s clearly detrimental policies are totally for the "benefit" of the artists. I never thought there would be a 3D marketplace worse that Turbosquid but here we are. CGTrader started as a decent 3d marketplace where 3d artists can sell their models with a higher royalty payout than most marketplaces. With a baseline 70% royalty rate (before deductions like transaction fee) artists can climb up the ladder to 80% royalty rate, through a performance based rating system. For years it looked promising and many 3d artists worked very hard to climb the ranks. Many years later after 3d artists sent the 3d marketplace to the top of the line with sheer dedication and hard work, CGTrader started to show their true colours and those colours are the most unsavory. They implemented a rather needlessly complex, cumbersome and nonsensical payout system that is highly unpredictable and painfully random, depending on when you make a sale. It went downhill from there with one horrible anti-3d artist policy after another implemented in quick succession. The first sign of their nefarious intent on brazen intellectual property theft reared its ugly head when they implemented a default ai opt-in on all models with optional opt-out after the fact. Many 3d artists told them to kick rocks and opted out of that garbage. Then they came with the nifty idea of forced discounts on models with e-mail opt-out sent directly to CGTrader, otherwise they will ignore the sales and promotions opt-out option already selected by the artists in the user settings, thereby including all your models in their forever race to the bottom discounts and sales promotions, against your wish. Again many 3d artist told them to go outside, take off their shoes and kick rocks. As if those were not enough buffoonery, they decided to slash artists’ royalty rates significantly with a harebrained impossible to attain and sustain imbecilic rating system. This new system led to instant 7-10% decline in royalty rates for a very large number of the artists. While the 3d artists were already on the ground writhing in agonizing pain, these sadistic unscrupulous ghouls who have blatantly refused to take “no” for an answer decided to get in some licks with this new policy that will take effect on July 14, 2025. A very odious policy apparently geared toward forceful takeover of 3d artists’ intellectual properties for generative ai purposes against their wish, even after the models have been deleted and removed from their marketplace. I am not a lawyer but I am pretty sure that is illegal in every jurisdiction. So what’s next, because I do not think they have hit rock bottom. Perhaps 3d artists will be mandated with no opt-out option to pay CGTrader a monthly subscription fee to publish models which CGtrader will automatically own. The only viable option is for 3D artists delete all models from CGtrader before July 14, 2025 and beyond and get ready for a massive class action lawsuit against the unscrupulous marketplace because one can reasonably infer from their recent dubious actions that they are very likely to retain possession of your 3d models and use them as they please, against your wish, even after artists have deleted and removed them from CGTrader. Whatever they say cannot be trusted. Their assurances must me considered meaningless and without merit.