Something I have noticed recently is a lot of freelancing groups. As a developer, I only post in the plugin development forum, though I imagine this problem exists in other forums as well. There is an overwhelming number of freelancing groups, and they are often pushing out individual freelancers and taking business. The problem with this is that they sign freelancers onto their team, with a set of strict conditions. I had joined several at one point, and all of them were the same:
- You may not DM customers. This is absolute. Freelancers who DM'd customers would be demoted and banned. This is because the freelancing group must get money from the deals you complete.
- A 10-20% commission will be taken for any jobs you complete.
- Code you write for the freelancing group belongs to the group.
These 3 rules are very bad for the freelancers, as they mean that we're losing a significant portion of money for the work that we are doing. It's especially important to note that you can't DM customers ever, even if you have dealt with them in the past. This prevents you from establishing connections with the customer in favor of getting more money from the managers/owners. The groups themselves always have the same bots that do the same things: React to create an order, send messages with the details. It's not a service actively provided by a human, and the staff in charge do virtually nothing to earn the money they gain. They essentially are just taking money from the freelancers who are doing all the work. The one thing that they should be doing - ensuring the skills of developers and the validity of the clients - is something that is already done by MC-Market. There is little to no benefit to customer or freelancer to using a freelancing group; the only benefit is to the people running it, who skim off the top of every deal completed.
The other important thing is that they are given the rights to the code you write for customers under their management. This, again, is very bad for the developer. In my ToS, I specify that, even after selling a plugin, I retain at least partial rights to the code. These freelancing groups would be free to resell your code for money, further making money for your work as a developer, artist, or whatever other commission-based work you may do.
What gets very annoying about these groups is the sheer number of them. Scroll through the plugin development forum and you'll see exactly what I mean; there are no less than SIX distinct freelancing groups on that forum just on the first page. They often go onto every request post and respond with a boilerplate message, which usually looks something like this: "We believe we could help you at Whatever Studios. Please join the discord at https://discord/whatever and make a request in the orders channel." They all have the exact same structure, and all exploit the system in the same way. Their responses are so robotic. I have seen other devs complain about the same issue, so I figured I should make a suggestion to do something about it.
While I would be in support of outright banning them, I don't think that's going to happen. So here are what I consider to be realistic options:
- Limit how often freelancing groups can up their threads, and disallow them from stickying threads. This would allow individual developers to stay at the top rather than being blotted out by these groups.
- Ban them from creating "requesting" threads for recruiting developers (because these are not asking for actual jobs, just more people on their team so they can skim more money). These threads double the number of threads that the freelancing groups have, and further block out not only individual developers, but also genuine threads requesting development.
- Make freelancing groups prove that they are actually helping the developer in some way. Getting commissions doesn't count, since that's what MCM is for, and they are taking business that the developers would have been getting on their own if the groups didn't exist.
The more of these we can enforce, the better, though I don't know how realistic it would be. To be frank, I'm sick and tired of these groups stealing business, taking money from developers for *our* work, and clogging up the forums. So let's do something about it.
- You may not DM customers. This is absolute. Freelancers who DM'd customers would be demoted and banned. This is because the freelancing group must get money from the deals you complete.
- A 10-20% commission will be taken for any jobs you complete.
- Code you write for the freelancing group belongs to the group.
These 3 rules are very bad for the freelancers, as they mean that we're losing a significant portion of money for the work that we are doing. It's especially important to note that you can't DM customers ever, even if you have dealt with them in the past. This prevents you from establishing connections with the customer in favor of getting more money from the managers/owners. The groups themselves always have the same bots that do the same things: React to create an order, send messages with the details. It's not a service actively provided by a human, and the staff in charge do virtually nothing to earn the money they gain. They essentially are just taking money from the freelancers who are doing all the work. The one thing that they should be doing - ensuring the skills of developers and the validity of the clients - is something that is already done by MC-Market. There is little to no benefit to customer or freelancer to using a freelancing group; the only benefit is to the people running it, who skim off the top of every deal completed.
The other important thing is that they are given the rights to the code you write for customers under their management. This, again, is very bad for the developer. In my ToS, I specify that, even after selling a plugin, I retain at least partial rights to the code. These freelancing groups would be free to resell your code for money, further making money for your work as a developer, artist, or whatever other commission-based work you may do.
What gets very annoying about these groups is the sheer number of them. Scroll through the plugin development forum and you'll see exactly what I mean; there are no less than SIX distinct freelancing groups on that forum just on the first page. They often go onto every request post and respond with a boilerplate message, which usually looks something like this: "We believe we could help you at Whatever Studios. Please join the discord at https://discord/whatever and make a request in the orders channel." They all have the exact same structure, and all exploit the system in the same way. Their responses are so robotic. I have seen other devs complain about the same issue, so I figured I should make a suggestion to do something about it.
While I would be in support of outright banning them, I don't think that's going to happen. So here are what I consider to be realistic options:
- Limit how often freelancing groups can up their threads, and disallow them from stickying threads. This would allow individual developers to stay at the top rather than being blotted out by these groups.
- Ban them from creating "requesting" threads for recruiting developers (because these are not asking for actual jobs, just more people on their team so they can skim more money). These threads double the number of threads that the freelancing groups have, and further block out not only individual developers, but also genuine threads requesting development.
- Make freelancing groups prove that they are actually helping the developer in some way. Getting commissions doesn't count, since that's what MCM is for, and they are taking business that the developers would have been getting on their own if the groups didn't exist.
The more of these we can enforce, the better, though I don't know how realistic it would be. To be frank, I'm sick and tired of these groups stealing business, taking money from developers for *our* work, and clogging up the forums. So let's do something about it.
- Type
- Suggestion
- Status
- Denied
Last edited:
