Hi all,
As you all may know, we recently had some controversy regarding certain adult-themed content that was published in the Marketplace. I have had quite an *ahem* interesting time recently researching how comparable sites deal with this issue, and also some fairly amusing meetings with the team here discussing how to deal with it.
I'm here to provide you with some guidelines for publishing content that is considered to be mature or adult-themed. I'll preface this by saying that we're not here to tell you what to do with poor old Chuck or whatever other nude character you may get your hands on, but our Marketplace is a public place for users ranging from school children to older conservative folk, and we would like to respect their right to a wholesome content browsing experience.
That said, here are the 3 guidelines that we've set up for publishing adult-themed content:
No functioning sexual partsIn our CCD agreement, we state that developers must not publish any sort of pornographic material. The nude human body itself can be used for artistic purposes, etc., but any sort of sexual functionality is a bit of a stretch, and would be considered pornographic to me. So, please refrain from adding this functionality. You can inform users who purchase your content in private how they might add this if they really wanted, but please don’t include it in the published character, and don’t mention anything about it in the description.
Tasteful and non-sexual descriptionTake as an example Daz’s
Michael 6. The character does in fact include male genitalia (in the Pro version), however this is only a minimal mention in the description. I think that being overtly sexual with the description is not the sort of image we want for the Marketplace since there are lots of students, educators, and religious people shopping about as well. Therefore, if genitalia is included, just follow the template of Michael 6 when in doubt, and limit it to a 3-4 word footnote.
Non-inflammatory commercializationCommercialization that is overtly sexual, with censored boxes and such over certain areas are a little provocative and tacky. We would prefer that the characters have undergarments or bikinis, etc. as Daz does in its images. Also, the use of real-life naked male or female images is prohibited.
The main point here is that we want to maintain a clean image in the Marketplace. We have nothing against selling nude characters, however we would prefer that they not be blatantly sexualized. A little sexuality is fine with content such as lingerie, etc., but please keep it tasteful. With regards to the Marketplace under Reallusion's name, we would prefer to go in the direction of a community like Daz rather than that of Second Life. In the future, we may consider creating some sort of adult filter for the Marketplace, but as of right now there are no plans for this.
So that's all I have to say about this 'arousing' issue. What you do on your own computer is your business, but we need to keep the Marketplace free of willy... at least functional willy. You may commence groaning.
