Mixamo Has Made Me Very Angry

E-MAIL I JUST RECEIVED FROM MIXAMO...

From: Mixamo.com Support [mailto:support@mixamo.com]
Sent: [REDACTED]
Subject: You have credits that are about to expire!

Dear [REDACTED],

This is a friendly reminder that your account on Mixamo.com contains [REDACTED] credits that are set to expire on [REDACTED].

Mixamo credits are valid for one year from date of purchase.

To browse other options for adding value to your account, please visit https://www.mixamo.com/pricing

Sincerely,

The Mixamo Team

To get unlimited auto-rigging, motions and characters upgrade to All Access


AND MY RESPONSE...

I actually was liking your service until this e-mail arrived.

What you have now ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED is that I will never again spend a single penny on your products.

I’m sure the expiry time is buried somewhere in your TOS and that your lawyers/marketing folks are mighty proud that they squeezed in a mechanism for obtaining free money from people who purchased package credits and who, like me, have neither the time nor energy to wade through a massive wall-of-text prior to buying your products.

I’m now equally certain that you don’t give a damn about indy developers like myself, trusting that the corporate buyers won’t notice/care about a few unspent dollars that they’ve already written off on last year’s taxes.

Here’s the thing – it costs you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to leave unspent credits sitting in your customer database, so there is no reasonable justification for placing a time limit on those credits other than to prod users of your service to spend-out the balance on stuff they don’t want, or just accept that they’ve been bent over a barrel and presented with another fine example of why we must all assume that the companies that claim to have our best interests at heart actually don’t.

Your expiration policy has utterly alienated me as a customer, and going forward I’ll be damned sure to tell everyone I work with that they should choose to spend a bit more to have their animation provided by the numerous inexpensive freelance animators I’ve managed to find over the past year. Your company has behaved badly, and I will no longer abide including assets from your business in projects I’m engaged with.

All that said, I honestly wish that someone at your company takes note of my frustration and that prompts you to seriously reconsider this aspect of your business model. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that it’s an ethically bankrupt policy and can only lead to a whole lot of other people silently abandoning your service.

[PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION REDACTED]

P.S. – If I receive some sort of apologist rationalization e-mail in response to this, such as “our TOS clearly explains that credits are only valid for one year YADDA YADDA YADDA” then I’m going to be REALLY PISSED OFF.

 

Thanks for the heads up - a shame they would do this. There is no reason from them to expire credits you actually paid for.

 

actually many other providers do this e.g envato. This is why I don't buy prepaid credit.

 

Response from Mixamo and my reply, proving that they're willing to grease a squeaky wheel but not willing to deal with the basic issue...

- - -

Hi [REDACTED],

I think I’ve expressed my feelings fairly clearly. I don’t want you to try and address them by making a special exception because I’ve raised a fuss. I fundamentally disagree with what I see as an exploitive policy that many companies utilize to convert previously purchased ‘credits’ into net profit without downstream obligation. It’s a policy in service of your accountants, not your customers, and I honestly think it does a disservice to the reputation of your business.

The only reason I’m engaging in this dialogue is because up until the “your credits are going to expire” e-mail arrived I actually considered your company a “partner” in my development process, and was feeling comfortable that my credit purchase was respected. That turned out to not be the case.

Other than the wholesale abandonment of the ‘expiring credits’ business practice, there’s nothing you can offer that will help. I’m not naive and don’t expect my singular objection to be taken seriously, but a similar frustration is felt by many people who are either incapable of expressing it clearly or who are unwilling to take the time to respond intelligibly. There are of course lots of folks who use the “I’m pissed” card to try and weasel freebies out of the companies they do business with. I am not one of them. I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to know that I will no longer do business with your company and I will strongly advise anyone I work with to do the same because of a business practice that I am certain is unethical, until that policy changes.

If you do anything in response to this, it should be to suggest to your management that the ‘expired credits’ cash grab is being recognized for what it is, and is alienating customers. If you do that, and management brushes it off, then I suggest you seek employment elsewhere, because eventually there probably won’t be any customers.

Good luck. I have nothing else to offer.

[REDACTED]



From: [REDACTED]
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 10:19 AM
To: ngray@avmdev.com
Subject: Extending credits

Hi [REDACTED]

I run sales for Mixamo. [REDACTED] forwarded your message to me and made me aware of your frustrations and concerns. I'd like to help, but I'm not entirely certain what it is that you would like. Can you please tell me what you are looking for?

Regards,

[REDACTED]

 

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, I *DID* receive an e-mail that bluntly stated that the TOS freed them from any complaint. I figured y'all knew that was inevitable. The subsequent e-mails are more interesting, so that's what I'm posting.

 

I'm sorry, but I can't side with you on this and I indeed think you must familiarize yourself with all terms and conditions before making a purchase and you are not entitled to anything outside of those terms if you never bothered to do your research. That's not even exclusive to Mixamo or Asset Store, it's 101 of purchasing things. And as far as I remember from browsing Mixamo pages on the asset store, time limit on some offerings was pretty clearly stated and not buried behind a thousand pages of legalese.

I'm not interested in Mixamo products and in time-limited offers in general, but they have every right to make products like that and enforce their conditions, I see absolutely no issue here.

P.S.: I don't think posting private e-mails is a good way of going about this.

 

i am with ironic chef
credits should not expire, there wasn't a reason in the first place to do this.
if they care about us they should change this.

 

My credits expired a while ago, I had 75 now I have none. That was it for me and I gave up with Mixamo and just got ipisoft and faceshift. No more yearly fees and I get to keep the software when my subscription expires after a year just no more updates. Mixamo used to be really cool with the unlimited rigs for models under a certain polygon limit. Hell if you buy their stand alone fuse you still get screwed with only one rig a week unless you fork out $1400 a year for unlimited. From what I gather they couldn't care less about us little guys, if they did that $400 indie special wouldn't be once in a blue moon and just a product they offer.

 

Yeah, this is a hard call.

Obviously Mixamo's TOS does cover their butt in doing this, but at the same time it costs them nothing to retain the credits. I think that in general that Mixamo has a great set of products but, makes bad decisions as to how they execute their business strategy.

Case in point:
They place such a high value on getting people to signup for their All Access plan for around $1500 a year. So much in fact that they make it almost impossible to use their platform without doing so. However, then they go and have the sale that they did a few months ago where they discount the All Access to like $400.00. (Which I did purchase). I can only imagine that if I were someone who paid the full price for the All Access package, I would be asking myself...what am I paying all this extra money for?

It just sends a very mixed message to the consumer as to what we are exactly paying for.

Yes I know, you as a consumer are always ultimately responsible for what you buy, and if you think the price of something is wrong, don't buy it...I get that. The point I'm making is that Mixamo does not seem to have a clear business strategy and are just trying to find what works, but doing so at the expense of their existing customer base.

Another case in point:
They have created a decent little character creation tool called Fuse, which works somewhat similar to DAZ Studio. The idea being that you would want to use Fuse because it's royalty free and whatever you make with it is yours do do with as you like (read use it in a game). So they have spent all this time and energy to make this rather decent application, but completely missed the boat with having an open marketplace for it. So for right now, you are stuck with using just the models and accessories they provide. Don't get me wrong fuse is a cool product, but people who use programs like DAZ (again I completely understand the difference between DAZ and Fuse in terms of game usage and licensing) use it because of the marketplace.

TLDR
Mixamo makes cool stuff, but has no idea how to run a company and treat their customers.

 

There is no reason for your "credits" to expire. They should do it like soundsnap where you pay money for x number of sounds. Companies will always try to appease the squeaky wheel, rather then changing the policy for everyone.

 

I keep looking at their stuff and wanting to use them, but every time I look closer I'm always driven away by negative word of mouth reviews and their pricing in general. The whole vibe I get from looking at their prices, policies and marketing kind of just makes me uncomfortable.

 

That is indeed the right thing to do.

But it's not the practical thing to do.

I recently watched a documentary called "Terms and Conditions May Apply" on Netflix. It claimed that a study showed that it would take the average Internet user two months out of every year to read all those ToS agreements he or she is presented with online. Maybe they are exaggerating. Maybe it's just two weeks out of every year. But that's still 13 days too many in my book.

I'm glad you can find the time and have the legal chops to go through and understand every ToS agreement you come across, but most of us aren't so lucky.

 

Hello Dears,

Let me add a few official words from Mixamo to clarify things up:

1 - We have moved away from the credits model a while ago thus users cannot buy bulk credits anymore on Mixamo. 1 credit = $1 and that's it. All Mixamo services are now available either a la carte or through subscriptions www.mixamo.com/allaccess

2 - The 1 year expiration for the old bulk credits purchase was reported on the website, not only on the TOS. This was the exact text right below the purchase button: "Unused ProPack credits expire 1 year after date of purchase". As a general rule credits cannot last indefinitely for accounting and tax reasons/purposes.

3 - Regardless of #2, if we receive a complaint from a user about this (and this is the first one of this sort we receive) we will extend the credits expiration for another year, just for good karma.

We try to do our best to provide a great service at a reasonable price that allows us to stay in business.

All feedback is welcome and we take it in great consideration.

Thank you for helping us improve our service and for your understanding.


Stefano Corazza, CEO Mixamo

 

@Stefano Corazza
This is the perfect place to interface you target audience directly.

Yes people will moan and groan about trivial things but overall the unity forum is a great place to have an open dialog with not only existing but potential customers.

I wish more companies providing unity solutions would talk here directly.

That being said,

When can we expect to see an open marketplace for fuse?

 

I've had good support from Mixamo in vaguely similar situations. So I'd say if you have an issue come up, approach it as if they will help you out, because they might.

 

Sorry Stefano, I don't buy that. You are selling virtual item which has no tangible cost for fulfilling order, so for accounting and tax purposes, you just recorded that as a sale at point of purchase.

I run a biz for 10 years and talk to lots of accountants.

 

+1 JohnRossitter
I would really love to see having it a big marketplace where people can buy more clothes and choices for characters, but also allow to export bodyparts separated without seams. Would be great to use for player character customization I guess. Credits/Account money however should not expire on such platforms. If so it's better to avoid such a system and do payment like in Unity Assetstore.

 

Obviously their site their rules, but I don't see a defensible reason for expiring the credits except to nickle and dime customers who forgot about extra credits in their account. It feels like a pretty shoddy practice even with notice.

 

I think the 'As a general rule credits cannot last indefinitely for accounting and tax reasons/purposes.' excuse is bull.
How is 'we will extend the credits expiration for another year, just for good karma' put through the tax system then.

As stated once somebody buys credits then that is the sale and the end of the 'cash' transaction, the use of credits in a purchase is then just a download in exchange for 'points', there is no cash transfer or postage to pay for.

I agree that if it is clearly stated in the TOS then fair enough, I also agree that to have purchased credits expire after x amount of time without the purchaser getting a cash refund is very bad practice and is all about milking the cash cow so until MIXAMO moves to a purchased credits never expire model then I will never do business with them, get some ethics FFS.

 

So I talked to the comptroller of our company about the whole philosophy of deferred income and "credits" based sales systems. His opinion was that from an accounting perspective it may make it easier to manage the P&L, but there is no taxation requirement as the purchase has already been made. IE, you are not taxed at the time of the redemption of your credits, you are taxed at the time of your purchase of the credits.

Further he went on to explain spoilage to me, whereby companies intentionally use credit system (like gift cards) that have expirations set on them to discourage users from using them. Another common practice in credit based systems like seen with iStockPhoto is to sell credits in packs of 10,20,30 etc... but price your items at 9,19,29 etc... so there will be a lingering but useless credit.

I'm glad that Mixamo has moved away from that model, but to claim that it was done for "tax and accounting purposes" seems like a convenient reason.

 

As much as I hate the 'your credits will expire' crap that so many companies do, he's correct that it creates an accounting nightmare. They have to account for every owed credit every year, and it adds up. The simple solution is to expire them yearly and then not have to worry about inactive people.

A slightly better solution is to expire them for accounts that weren't used in the last year, and give the user plenty of warning that they need to log in and use the account or the credits will expire.

But it seems that they've dropped the system altogether now, and simply don't have credits. This is a much better solution, but (obviously) still has the problem of the old credits.

The fact that they always extend the expiration when asked is a good answer, IMO. It would have been nice if their email stated this, but since they do it gladly and don't give any hassle at all, I'm perfectly satisfied with this answer.

For the record, I remember this credit-expiration being one of the reasons I never bought anything from Mixamo. (Among various other companies.) I'm glad they've dropped this horrible system.

 

It may sound like a convenient reason but it's really not. It's a pain in my ass. Is it really worth a few extra bucks to us at the cost of alienating users? No way, not by a long shot, it just makes no sense. That's why it's more in our interest to, going back to what Stef said, "if we receive a complaint from a user about this (and this is the first one of this sort we receive) we will extend the credits expiration for another year, just for good karma." We also don't believe in spoilage, it's a crap practice that makes me grumpy, our prices are derived from clip length and motion complexity.


But on to another topic that has popped up...

A Fuse marketplace!

We've actually been gauging interest on this one! Do you think there would be an audience for it? Are there particular aspects of a marketplace you would be interested in?

Agreed! We're dreaming up a framework that supports user generated content so artists have an opportunity to sell their own assets which could work for any character imported into Fuse.

For any feedback or ideas for a Fuse marketplace, feel free to drop me a line at tylerg (at) mixamo (dot) com, I would love to hear them!

Thanks again everybody for being open to dialog, if you have any issues, just reach out to us. We're not some cabal of dickensian scrooges, we're just working towards a business model that makes everybody happy.

Cheers!

Tyler Georgeson, Mixamo Product Manager

 

Not my intention to bore you all out with financial/business arguments as this can go on forever. Bottom line is that we tried credits and it did not work for us. As a business we have the right to change policies. Now we have only subscriptions, more straightforward and easier to manage for a small startup. We are happy to refund/extend credits anytime to take care of our users/customers who still have them and for all the people who did not see the 12 pt text disclaimer below the buy credits button. For the records we had a handful of requests in over a year with over 200,000 users that we resolved with an extension.

Thank you for bringing up the Fuse Marketplace! Much more exciting topic. Maybe we should start a new thread for that and let this one go.

Cheers!

Stefano

 

For an old job I used to deal with this kind of thing in medium sized businesses and at least the state of California forces you to extend these types of store credit indefinitely (or at least some extremely long period of time). We had clients who had ten year old gift card and store credit programs they had long discontinued but they had to keep tracking the credit still out there in case those customers ever showed back up.

It's annoying but not the end of the world to keep tracking it either on accounting or for customer sales systems.

 

Hi Tyler,

Unless it's just better to email you, I would prefer to have the discussion about it here.

So, I have been thinking about it a lot lately, as I really enjoy working with Fuse as well as DAZ/Poser.
The advantage that DAZ has is obviously its marketplace, which has a massive following of users as well as content providers. I would be shocked if you could not flip many of those providers and customers.

I personally know MANY game developers who have tried to use DAZ/Poser, but just gave up because of the licensing restrictions. So, yes there is an audience.

Here are some of the downsides to the DAZ/Poser way of doing things:
1) The licensing is completely prohibitive. They really really really don't want you to use the content in games.
2) The Models are super high poly, thus without extreme decimation, they are useless in games.
3) The UI is very cumbersome.

I think that you could take all of these points and make Fuse even more awesome.

I was also thinking about how you could get a marketplace setup rather easily.
Since you guys already have a great (I assume anyhow) relationship with Unity, why not find a way to use the Asset Store as a means to publish the content for Fuse. You are already selling the software there anyhow. I'm sure there are some finer points that would need to be worked out, but it might be a viable way to do it.

Thanks for listening!

 

+1 on everything John said except his last paragraph.

I was using Fuse during beta and the last time I even bothered to download the beta I deleted Fuse literally less than 10 minutes later. There was such a lack of content that the entire product felt less than worthless and I felt like sending you a bill for wasting my time.

I hear the kit is supposedly better now but no way in hell that I am going to spend money on the most worthless tool in history just to find out if it really has become useful or not.

I keep forgetting the name of the program they made but n-Sided made a tool similar to fuse a few years ago but their pricing was bloody insane with something like $800 discounted price ffor indies with license restrictions and what not...and the models wern't even that great... After my disappointment with Fuse I went back to see if they had improved over the years but found they had closed down instead. No surprise.

So that left me with Daz and their stupidly restrictive game use policy and Fuse. So I decided to go with option 3: nothing.

Fuse is easy to use but lacks content. That is a game changer for sure! Any chance of getting a trial version of the current Fuse, by the way?

As a whole, I find Mixamo to provide a very valuabe service but they do it very poorly. Which is why I am seriously pissed when I see they get preferential treatment in the asset store.

For instance, their pricing of animations... They have a handful of free animations and if you come across thise same animations while browsing the site then the exact same animation costs you money just because you happen to come across it via a search, not fia a filter... Then there was that "dead" animation I came across the other day. The actor was breathing so the "dead" animation was like a thousand frames long and cost something like $50... Hell man, dead animations should be 1 frame long and be free...

Then there is this one kit on the store that I absolutely love and I want it for the model and the animations both but thenI look at the preview and this ninja's jump animation lifts her about 3 inches of the floor and looks more like an epileptic seisure than a jump animation... Completely worthless... This is the type of quality control they do? And they are the ones Unity chooses to put on the front page every other week and run dedicated specials for ? Seriously?

So I decided to email them about this ninja who has a 3 inch high epileptic seisure when you press the jump button and their response was to ignore me. Great customer care there, I must say...

I really longed for their product and still do but their customer care and lack of interest in their own product just puts me off investing my time or effort into their product. The one thing that swayed me and made them a dedicated part of my character creation pipeline and made me decide I could maybe give them another chance and just get SOME animations from them (surely there are some good ones also ) was their free character rigging service. That made them the coolest company next to Unity and Simplygon... But then they decided that a script that runs has to incur at least a $90 charge and I went "Ahhhh.... There is the Mixamo I have come to know and loathe. welcome back. nice to see you again, good bye"

Seriously, people, Mixamo has a habit of dangling the most amazing things in front your nose then saying F-you with their implementation of it... Like face tracking... i was willing to actually buy that kit... Just tell me where and how much... But no... i have to spend $1500 on a bunch of other stuff I dont want in order to get that ... And get Windows and run an entirely different OS just for that... Carrot. Nose. Poking. Laughing. This is the overall perception I have of Mixamo

I seriously long to use them but they just fail me at every tirn

 

Ironic chef, you mentioned some cheap animators...? There are 4 animations I want and Mixamo's solution to this has left me waanting...

imagine this scenario: you are a ninja crouching in the bushes, observing your target, and he spots you...or thinks he spotted you so he comes closer to investigate... so you decide to duck behind the tree to your side...so you stand up, turn to the side, bend over, swing your arms a bit and jump forward, roll a bit, get back up, turn to face the enemy and get back to hiding... i think not... i need rolling animations which do not involve standing up to roll... Or turning, then rolling then turning back... Just rolling. If mixamo has this then i have not been looking in the right place...even when I emailed them and asked them for these animations about a year ago...

also, Mixamo has some animations where you can take cover behind a wall when standing up but by using Root motion like I always do, taking cover and coming out from cover also turns your character about 30 degrees.

i am looking for an animator that actually gives a damn about his animations and not someone who will do anything in their power to get $1500 from me in exchange for thousands of un-quality controlled animations.

Could you maybe post a few recommendations for cheap animators worth their salt ? Those 4 rolling animations are becoming a priority for me, as are the ducking for cover animations but my budget is already shot and the thousands of animations available for $1500 does not offer a valid solution to either nor did my post on the collaboration forum yield any useful assistance.

An animator who won't charge me $hundreds or thousands for this would be greatly appreciated. Mixamo was, of course, the perfect solition... If only this company who's sole business is animations took the time to do some quality control on their animations, that would have been great...

Again... I long to use Mixamo but they fail me at every turn... example... Go to the animation window and add the animation to press your back against the wall. Notice how you are NOT facing away from the wall but standing at an angle? Now add the animation to move along the wall and notice how you are actually moving into the wall instead, based in the character's current direction, relative to starting position...then add in the animation to stop pressing up against the wall and notice what direction the character is facing. Compare that with the starting direction... So this suggests to me that in order to use these three animations I will have to change my entire charactercontroller script to stop using root motion and manually control my character instead... Change everything for the sake of 3 animations? I think not

Your recommendations are way welcome...

Thanks

 

@MrDude
I experienced the same feelings with the first version of Fuse that came out a while ago, which had virtually no content.
The new version (1.1) offers a lot more content than before, but to get access to it all you have to have an All Access subscription.

 

You can actually purchase it right in the UAS, and it's currently half off

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/18466

There definitely is! You can download the trial version with all 280 body modification shapes for a few characters.
https://www.mixamo.com/fuse

 

Maybe it's time to give this version it's day in court then. Thanks.

 

Fuse is actually 80% off for the next 5 hours. Anyone who wants it should hurry over to Steam!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/257400/

 

I had some qualms with the way the Mixamo business model worked after getting heavily into it back in about 2011 for a game I was working on. I ended up buying about 150$ worth of animations for a character that eventually had to be swapped out. So I started doing some math to see what the cost would be do have other characters I needed done. After I did that I stopped. I realized that this would quickly become a sinkhole for my wallet and the budget I had put towards the animation side of the project. I was satisfied with the animations but I quickly realized they really pushed hard to squeeze out every penny you have got. Fast forward to now, It seems like they changed things and now have an All access package to help with doing something like this. In my opinion though, it is much better to invest in getting some mocap data that you can easily re target it to the models you desire in no time at all.

After being amazed by Allegorithmics software and seeing Mixamo also putting a product out with the new Apps section sale, I actually considered getting it and seeing if Mixamo had changed their policies or the way things were done. It seemed like the program was a GREAT asset for any game developer's arsenal. After some quick research it seemed this wasn't the case at all and it was yet another ploy to penny squeeze the customer. I immediately dropped the notion of purchasing it.

Up until now every time I check the asset store I am blinded by the glaring words of S-A-L-E on Fuse and it keeps tempting the frugality in me. A quick look at @wccrawford 's link was even MORE tempting than before. I said 'wait, don't go throwing your money at it just because it's on sale for such a large percentage - think about what you read before'. So I did. I just read the first five "Most Helpful Reviews' that steam gives you and needless to say: my same research and suspicions were confirmed. All negative and what do you know, they are mainly complaining about the same issue I stated here, the ones I had in the past the the ones I read not but a week ago.

I agree with many things said here on the negative aspects of this practice. I can understand the business standpoint of doing things this way, but just know you will upset and drive a lot of customers away in doing so. Like me.

 

Its worth mentioning that the Version if Fuse you can just buy, it not the same content as what is included in the All Access version.

 

faceshift ( real time face animation, markerless), "cheap" body mocap suit (salto, neuron) , body scanner, kinect, primesens, realsense camera are showing the way.
very soon you will be able to make any kind of animation in your living room from a simple smartphone.

 

Good grief... 18 months late to the conversation.

I wish there were an option to auto-unsubscribe to threads so I don't get notifications of messages posted 18 months after the thread died off...

At least I can unwatch this one now...