Developer News

By signing up as a developer you are agreeing to a few rules... one of which includes that you will not, under any circumstances, violate copyright laws.

What Breaks Copyright Law?

-You cannot use any logo, character, name, or image on your products (this includes both stickers and inventory items) that does not belong to you.  The only exception is if you contact the owner of the copyrighted material and they tell you it's ok to use, or if the material is noted as "for public use".

-Names of people can be used because anyone on earth can name their kid "Kasumi" "Chi" or "Namine." However, names such as "Kryptonite" "Spiderman" and "Nike" are not O.K. as they are brand names and trademarked.  To avoid breaking copyright on names you can change letters in the name to make it no longer the same.. such as: "Kriptoquartz" "Arachnidman" or "Nikie"

-Logos, like names, can be changed to be useable... instead of the Nike swish, you can double or triple the swish or add a little cross through the end to make it different.

-Images you just Google up on the internet are NOT acceptable additions to products as most of these are copyrighted as well... as stated above, these are only useable if they are marked as "for public use"

-Under no circumstances is it ok to do the following to another IMVU developer's texture:
.....use another developer's texture unedited.
.....use copy and paste to use only a part of another developer's texture.
.....change the color on any other developer's texture or add things to make it different.

-the bottom line.. ONLY USE YOUR OWN WORK! unless you have permission from the owner of the material you wish to use that isn't yours. All textures should be made 100% by you unless your given permission to use other content.

(The following was quoted directly from IMVU post given by Jopez posted October 15th, 2007 which is the most recent update)

Reference Link: http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=165572&start=0

What are they?
Tiers will be a way to identify and reward our active CC community based on their actions. The program will be broken down into multiple levels that reflect the CC abilities and contributions.

So what will they do?
Under the old process it was pretty binary, you were either a Pro or you weren’t. Now they’ll be more levels that are calculated automagically and you’ll receive ever increasing rewards based on how high of a tier level you achieve.

How many levels will there be?
At the alpha launch there will be 0+7. Yes, I said 0+7. There will be a tier 0 which will be for all new CCs. And then 1-7 earned tier levels. In the future there will also be 1-2 paid for commercial levels for entities that don’t fit into the earned structure (but that’s a little ways off). Each level will be separated by 3 pts (more on the pts system below).

What kinds of rewards can we earn?
The final list isn’t locked down, but they range from: Discount on IMVU CC fees; special promotions; access to new features; participation in official IMVU bundles and first user experience; and more.

What happens to the old Pro system?
Essentially it is going away, but still remaining in spirit. There won’t be an official pro level anymore, but there will be more or less a Pro Zone of tier levels (5-7) that will represent ever increasing pro-like status. People who are at the current Pro requirement levels will most likely end up in this Pro Zone (I say most likely because of the way the formulas work). Who knows maybe we’ll create a way to identify and celebrate these individuals.

So how will the system work?
At a high level the system is merit based on your actions. The harder you work (or more you contribute) the better the tier and rewards. I won’t go into all of the technical specifics, but essentially this is how it will work:
Once a month everyone will receive a score ranging from 0-18. This score will be made up of your activities for the past 90 days in a range of criteria. The criteria are broken into 2 categories: Core and Unique. Everyone will have the same 3 core scores, and will be judged against the entire population of CCs, but to ensure that people are rewarded based on their unique contributions, we have the Unique bucket.

The Unique group will work by taking your 3 best scores from a pool of criteria. So everyone will end up with 3 equal compared across the population, and then 3 unique ones only comparable to others like you. Your tier level will be a total of your Core & Unique scores (9 in total). So 50% of your final score will be based on your Core (common to all) and 50% based on your unique actions.

The lowest score you can receive would be a 0, and the best is an 18. Each tier level is broken down into scores of 3. So Tier level 1 = 0-3 pts, and Tier level 7 = 18pts (best of the best).

Does this mean that my tier will change every month?
It might. Depending upon your level of activity and the communities at large, you may see your tier go up or down a level. But if you really step it up, you may jump up more than 1 level in a month, and if you forgo everything, your tier will slowly drop down in level to 1.

So how are criteria scored?
Without boring you with all of the mechanics (and to prevent some folks attempting to game the system) the scoring system does the following: Your score for either Core or Unique items are calculated using a Statistical Normalization process. What this means is, you’re actions are compared to the population and you are assigned a 0-3 value based on how close or better you are compared to the average user.

What criteria will be evaluated?
Core criteria will be: Sales in Units; Sales in Credits; and Sales in Predits.
Unique criteria will be: # of forum posts in the CC forums; Feedback review (avg of all products in your catalog); # of derivable products (of all time, this is the one exception to the 90 day limit); % of new products introduced from prior period to current.

We will be adding new Unique criteria as they come online.

So what’s an example of how this thing will work?
Let’s use two people, Bob & Jane.

Bob’s business is pretty average. He doesn’t create many new products or participate in the community much. Jane is very active, very popular, sells a lot and very involved.

Bob’s score would go something like this: Core = 3 (1 pt each for having average sales in Units, Credits & predits), and 1 pt for Unique (he got 1 pt because of avg feedback, and 0s in all the others). Total score of 4 pts.

Jane score is: Core = 9 (She’s a top seller in units, credits & predits). She also scores 6 pts in Unique (3 for feedback (she makes the best quality products); 2 for productivity (she’s above avg in creating new prods); and 1 Pt for having a lot of derivable products). Total score = 15.

So Bob would be Tier Level 2 (3-6 pts), while Jane would be Tier Level 6. Bob works about avg while Jane works really hard and gets rewarded for her contributions.

Can this system be gamed?
Well I would hope that every CC is ethical and wouldn’t ever do that, however we are realists at IMVU. Due to the way a score is calculated it is going to be really hard to game the system, because of the process involved the hurdles to gain upper levels is always changing from month to month. If the entire pop moves in one direction and one person moves in the other, they’ll be singled out as an outlier and not counted in the calculation of the hurdles for the 1-3 scores. The system will flag outliers and let us look at them for clear cases of gaming. Mass gaming will also be self-defeating. Because of the way Statistical Normalization works, if everyone is the same, the score will go to 0 when it is calculated. This defeats everyone trying to do the same thing.

Finally since the values are calculated every month, a person would have to work really hard to game the system every month, which would get them noticed pretty quick. For instance if Bob was thinking he could game the system by spamming the CC forums, he’d get picked off by a moderator before that got out of control. And the system would self-regulate his score out of the calculation process and he wouldn’t be able to influence it in his favor.

I’d also like to think that if someone did go through that much hard work, they’d just invest it in developing content in a constructive way and not risk banishment.

Wait didn’t you say something about a Tier 0?
Yep. All new CCs will start out at Tier 0. Once we launch our first batch of rewards, Tier 0s will have additional requirements to “graduate” to tier 1. The first requirement we’ll implement is 10 published products. Expect this system to go online when Peer Reviews comes online.

This all sounds neat, so what’s the game plan?
We will be launching the alpha of Tiers this week. You’ll get a new Dev report that tracks your tier level and scores, and on you “My Accounts” page your Dev module will include your tier level.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be monitoring the results and making sure everything is working correctly. During this Alpha period your tier level will not have any rewards, it’ll simple be there for your own bragging rights.
Once we feel comfortable with the system will begin rolling out more criteria, rewards, and other bonuses to the tier system as we bring online other functionality and ensure stability and accuracy with the system. We know that the rewards have the potential to impact a lot of people, and want to make sure everything is calculating correctly before we touch anyone’s credit sales. Also we want to nail down the reward structure before revealing it and give time for community feedback.

So what’s the future plans?
Well as we talked about before we are building out a core infrastructure to a new CC program. Tiers will be at the center of this new structure. Many of our additional features will be centered around tiers, or have an impact on them, or gain from them. As we bring online additional features (ex. Peer Review) we will integrate them into the tiers formula (if they have a measurable quantity) or tie them to the rewards (if possible) or provide recognition where applicable.

We would also like to celebrate our CC’s tier status through stickers, titles, and badges of honor. These systems will all come on line in time and offer of CC’s even more ways to differentiate themselves.
Finally I should mention that the tiers system will in the future be closely tied to our punishment process. CS will be able to adjust tiers as a new way of dealing with flagging. This will give them more options.

That sums it up for tiers. You’ll see them going online this week (I’ll post a follow up note in this thread when they do go live).

           On February 13th, 2008, Guardian Rob announced that IMVU will now be retiring the Pro system and Pro Tags in preperation for the coming 'dark days' of Tiers. For those of you who don't know  what the Pro system  is, it enabled developers who made a ridiculously large amount of credits each month, and whose catalog met up to the listed criteria apply for pro status. Originally Pro Status meant that your items were placed in the front of the catalog, the 50,000 credit transfer cap was lifted, you did not have to pay submission fees, and you got this nifty little red pro tag arond each of your products. However with the new catalog, developers lost their placement in the front. Now the last three people to ever reach pro status were granted there bars to soon be taken away, the same day the dream and hope for Pro status was taken away from others.

           Many were understandably upset over this uncommunicated change, a lot of developers were currently working toward reaching Pro Status but suddenly found there efforts were slightly in vain. An upset developer comments, "Well, this is a challenge. I started making pro dev income by february, and with the status closed and all hopes gone, I'll have to spam the forums to get there now? Allriiiiiiiight..........." Further more the Pro system was closed when Tiers that had previously been launched October 15th of last year has yet to recieve any type of update. Now you may be asking yourself, well what exactly is Tiers? Tiers is a system ranking developers 1-7 based on certain criteria. The criteria has been argued over and debated by many developers to clarify just how this new system of ranking developers is exactly 'fair' when unethical developers such as those who produce music rings, make enough products and the credit sales of pro developers, also for the fact that spamming the forum with non helpful post will up your chances of recieving a higher tier.

           Pros are concerned that with the launch of this new Tier system, all there work that went into attaining pro status may be made void when this is launched. The perks of reaching a certain Tier level have still yet to be defined, will pros who don't make the higher tiers lose all the things they've worked to achieve? This reminds me of the Dev token fiasco but that is a completely different article. Jopez has not updated the community as to what is coming next, instead Guardian Rob has stepped in. Will he bring some clarification as to what Tiers are? That remains to be seen. Tiers have caused a massive amount of turmoil in the dev world and we anxiously wait for some sign that we will not be suffering from BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) anytime soon yet again.

Granted the incompleted system of Tiers was already a shot to Developer Spirits. We still have to deal with the new publishing system that has just been launched, and the ever looming Peer Review.