This happens WAY more often than it should, and I really want to discuss this.
With the creativity and freedom for anyone to create a closed species, it is only natural that people are going to have a few similarities between not only a CS, but one-off characters too. Some people are going to have more original traits than others, but regardless, you should never harass or threaten anyone who has a character that have traits of your species. You do not and never will own the concept of a trait. You only own the species and lore of characters that have the trait. It is a totally different story if someone flat out copy every aspect of your character to a tee, but otherwise, leave the person alone! When you sell MYOs, you are selling the right to create the character in the context of your species's lore, along with entry to your species's Community. You are not selling rights to a trait. You do not own doll joint kemonomimis, jelly horns, or water limbs. You do not own angel wings or randomly placed eyes either.
Even if a person has a character with your exact species traits, as long as they are not ripping off a specific character, please leave them alone. Chances are, they don't even know you exist. Either that, or they like a trait or two, but do not feel invested enough to join your community. It is completely natural to take inspiration from other artists and do your own thing with it. There is even a chance you took inspiration from another person to make your own species or characters. They are not claiming to own one of your species, nor are they replicating your lore, so why does it matter?
To conclude, if someone has a trait on a character that you make a species that happened to have that exact trait, please leave them alone. They are not hurting anyone, nor are they claiming that the character is part of your species. You do not own traits, and asking someone to change their character just because they have a fish tail on their head or something is very self centered. If you do this, please stop. They are not hurting anyone. They are just an artist that want to have fun, like anyone else.
If you want to discuss this further, please leave a comment below! I am always open to new view points!
Otter_under_water
Thanks. Ive been playing with the idea of restoring him to his glory now that dainties are waaay less popular then the were, And if people start to fuss ill block them haha
Im sorry youve had similar experiences! And the design copies, that stinks. Im at the level of I dont care if people get "inspired" by my characters cause they wont be able to copy the stories writen for them nor their role plays haha
as a semi-closed CS co owner, I can fully agree with this. Very often due to our CS being rather simple we find very similar species- or moreso that our users find them! The amount of times we've had to reassure the users that we don't mind that there's people with similar species/characters out there is A Lot, especially when it gets a bit out of hand and they were about to go on a witch hunt. Its strange! We never condoned this! The only time we had an issue with another CS was many years back, where they practically copied the species ref sheet almost completely which miffed the owner a lot as it made it seem like they were affiliated, and the only reason that went out of hand was due to the other person for whatever reason deciding to blatantly lie to us instead of dealing with it normally |D
Don’t think this was mentioned but a slight pet peave of mine for CS is when certain traits are rare but either the example character or NPCs are all made up of rare traits. As a visual person this makes it hard for me to grow attached because I can’t imagine what the large population would be. Double the trouble if you get a common MYO slot and find out the trait you wanted from the flagship character isn’t common. Luckily, there’s usually a trait guide to help my imagination but I still feel it doesn’t really rep the CS well. In addition, when a bunch of the adopts for sale have rare/uncommon/super rare traits the traits begin to all feel common. Though this is just my opinion and what personally erks me.
Yeah, I own a somewhat small cs, (all though it has gained a ton of traction, and is developing very fast) I love this species with my entire heart, and I put tons of effort into it. I designed my own traits and lore. But I could not care less if i saw a species that's similar to mine. I would be a little huffy if someone made an offbrand of my species, considering the myo slot price is literally 200 points, but i'd leave them be. they aren't hurting me, or my species. I understand if someone makes a character similar to some extremely popular ones, because a lot of them are super basic, and the one trait they have, is shared among hundreds of other species. There's no need to hound on someone for something so small.