IMPORTANT! People that have been using Kaus's "Asteria Tileset" DO NOT USE IT!!

@Celianna And I don't like accusations without proof. I wouldn't be defending him at all if he was allowed to do it himself. Normally when someone's accused of a crime (such as copyright infringement, or charging people for art that isn't technically yours) you let them defend themselves. By not letting him do so you make things seem much more shady than I assumed they were at first, and whenever one side tries to silence the other I can only assume it's because it's afraid of what the other side will say.

You say you can't 100% prove it's stolen. Can you, say, 25% prove it? As in link to an artist who's using a very similar style so we can play connect-the-dots ourselves? Or are you just going to leave it to our imagination? Because like you're saying, there's no telling what's his and what isn't. If nobody can prove that it's stolen then, legally, it isn't. Which makes it fine to use commercially. But I don't want to work in this strange moral grey zone where it's one person's word against another's, which is why I want proof, or anything resembling proof.

There's a lot of rotten apples in every community, in every group of people, in every culture and in every city. Doesn't make everyone spoiled. That's not how it works. Just because A is bad doesn't mean its neighbour B is bad as well.

I also don't see how someone using a tileset they paid for, after the copied tiles are removed, would disrespect any author whose original work is so far apart from the tilesets being used that a connection cannot be proven. But then again I'm no artist so maybe you can enlighten me on the subject.

 

That... was long! hahaha well.. @Celianna already said that kaus admitted right? oh wait... only that googling part.. nvm my mind is  looping around with this.

 

You read that wrong.


She has proven that part of it was stolen- that proof is in the very first topic (and Kaus has already admitted that) . She just can't proove that everything was stolen.


And since he has committed art theft, and several artists said that the other parts of his work have inconsistent styles, would you believe him claiming that the rest is not stolen after it has been proven that part of it is? Especially since this is a repeat case, he did the same previously?

 

@Cel she posted a screenshot example of the proof where he ripped someone's work.  He's ADMITTED to ripping. He was caught ripping before.  He's still not being truthful about what parts he ripped, the reality is he probably doesn't even know himself since he probably just googled and stole all sorts of things and then constructed the sets based on that.   The point is, we can't trust any of the work he put out, since we don't know who the original artist is.


You didn't understand the bad apple analogy.  It means there's a barrel of 100 apples, and we know that at least 35 apples in there are poison.  This does ruin it for the other 65 apples, because we can no longer eat from this barrel, unless you don't care about getting poisoned (being disrespectful to the original artists).   In an ideal world we would be able to pick out which apples are poison and which aren't, but in the current situation, it doesn't seem like that's going to happen.


Let me just say I COMPLETELY share the pain of people who've wasted time and money on these tilesets.  I've been in situations like this before.  It just plain sucks.  

 

The proof is in first post?

 

This is really bad  and it's even worse that no matter how many pieces will get identified as someone's else's, because who knows if the remaining pieces aren't from someone unknown. Since the only one who know for sure, can't be trusted anymore everything from his is worthless now.


The worst thing is, that I became so trustworthy with all the resource delivery from the different sides, that I didn't become suspicious. A lot of his stolen crap is in my game and a lot of my scripts are build on top of his lighting script, should have known better and code it from scratch...


@Celianna thanks for the Info, would have been a disaster to learn from this in a couple of months


@Kaus believe me, when I tell you that everything comes at a price. Learn from this and stop shitting people!


Edit: and yes I am very pissed

 

Well aside from the proof I posted in the opening post, I can't find the rest because there's so many of them, and I saw them months/years ago. The reason why I noticed the cliffs was because I was looking at the artwork not too long ago.


I've already proven that some of the art is stolen. Kaus himself admitted that he googled the icy pillars for his cave set (I can confirm seeing them once myself, and have been trying to find the original artist, but it's hard to remember what keywords I used to find it before). No, not 100% of the tileset is stolen artwork. Probably not even 50% - but it doesn't matter, because Kaus has used artwork that is not his in the tileset. And since we can't tell what's his and what isn't, it's best to stop using it completely.


And the risk of continuing to use it commercially is all yours. If the original artist notices their own artwork in a game they knew nothing about, you'll be the one that has to face the legal consequences.

 

@Andar @Tuomo L Yes, she's proven part of it, and he's admitted to those same parts, and some others, being not 100% his/RTP edits. He's also apologised and said he'll revise the stuff to remove those "bad apples" from the batch.

@jonthefox I understood it well enough but it doesn't really apply here as there's no deadly danger involved with using tiles that might maybe who knows have been based on someone else's work. There's just the danger of commercial use leading to a lawsuit or something similar, which would suck. Which is why I'd like to see proof of these "poison apples" being more common than just the ones he admitted to. Because I can survive on 90 apples, but having to collect 100 new ones would take forever.

I'm not trying to start more drama here but you have to know that accusing someone of a crime comes with the burden of proof, and you can't sentence someone for poisoning 100 apples if you can only prove 10 of them are poisoned. I'm looking for replacement tilesets myself as I'd rather not deal with all this crap (though the amount of interesting MV-sized tilesets out there is depressing), but I still think the way this is being handled is wrong, and as long as the discussion is this one-sided I'll at least try to provide counter points as I believe everyone deserves to defend themselves.

 

The biggest question still stays though...


What about the people who paid for a "license"? What if they won't be able to get a refund?


Maybe or at least you could've just let him return the money he received before banning him


in the forums... well that's what I think. Feel free to shoot *gunfire!* me if you think I'm being too one sided xD

 

Is there a link to Kaus tileset topic anywhere? I searched the forums but it seems to be deleted but I need it for reference purposes if I have to contact Paypal directly in future about this.

 

You should also remove his logo on your signature. Because that means you still support his sheep with it

 

@Cel the deadliness is irrelevant, the point of the analogy is to show that because some items in his tilesets are "poisoned", the entire set is poisoned since we have no way of knowing which are rips and which are not.   The only way we way we could know is if Kaus tells us but he's repeatedly proven himself a liar, so we can't trust him.  Plus he might not have even kept track which tiles he used ripped parts in making.  

 

Uhm, proving 10% that he's stolen artwork means yes, he's an art thief.


Look Cel, you can argue all you want about wanting to continue to use his tiles. That's your decision. You like them and it's a lot of work having to replace them. You also know he's stolen a lot of artwork from artists you don't even know about, and you don't know which parts are his and which aren't. But it's your decision to want to continue using these tiles, no one's stopping you.


We're just side eyeing you real hard.


@Tuomo L: I'm sorry, the thread will stay hidden. You can PM me if you need to refer to something though.

 

You can use celianna's post(this post) AAAND the tilesets you received or the one you have on you at least.

 

So his tilesets contained Stolen Graphics, What does that say about his other resources he posted on this site? 


what about the Overlay Plug-in, was he actually the one to code it or was it ripped as well?

 

well IDK if this can be useful since I am not a victim but this question will be asked for the victims. but can some admin/mods from this forums can provide a carbon copy (maybe in a picture or PDF format) of the topic in question with links removed (And also comments and other personals info removed, but maybe kept link going to paypal for verification purposes) for refunds purposes for paypal and other credit card companies who is looking for proof for fraud. it kinda nice to have a proper evidence that any victims to use to proved that something bad have actually happened but since the topic is down and no one can filed a fraud claims to paypal without proper proof and source.

 

Its very simple, you will never know, the only thing you usually trust on is the integrity of a person. Well, and his integrity isn't good anymore.


I will put my MV version of my game on hold for now until I've recoded the parts I used from him.

 

I think the proof in the first post should suffice, no? Either way, if you need anything from his thread, just PM me.

 

@felsenstern I 100% agree with you, I just hope someone who is proficient with Javascript can look into the coding and see if there are rips from other parallax overlay plugins


I want to believe the plugin was fully his work, but now we need reconfirmation on the integrity of even that plugin.

 

You will never know, who knows he also ripped it. The best way you can do is not to use it as well. Find another one that serves the same function. There are tons of it out there.