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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ace" data-source="post: 6213829" data-attributes="member: 944">Unless your product is free or at cost isn't ethical or a good practice. As noted it drives wages down for professionals and in a broader sense, hurts the market.Wages are consumption and poorly paid people buy and can pay less for what they do buy. In the end it might help your bottom line now but in the long run it makes everyone in the art community poorer. It may also dry up the pool for professional too.I do think a serious decline in artists wages  was inevitable. Speaking only for the US  had we stuck to the original 28 year, well 14 years with one extension for art as we were supposed to (pre Disney corporate  meddling)  we would have had an enormous commons dating back to 1985 or so and todays publishers would have larded up the products with art from the 1980's instead of the 1880's . Since the art is mostly very good , it would have been plenty good for most works.Also with the Internet and places like Deviant Art its very easy to find an artist and with wage differentials or just the desire for a hobbyist to make a few bucks even decent quality art can be had cheaply if not free. There are a lot more people with talent than gigs for them. This means the quirky homemade art of the 1970' say (like the old Dragons or DMG) is more  an aesthetic choice than one born of necessity.As unfortunate as it is for all artists, including writers like myself  in any but the most physical media, there is so much art its virtually post scarcity. This means wages for most are a lot lower. Alas food and shelter cannot be CTRL-C, CTRL-P and that leaves a lot of talent hurting.In the long run I have no idea where this will lead but in the sort run, its good for everyone to be generous if they can or at least ethical.</blockquote>

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