Well, since Stewart seems fine talking about this out in the open....
Yes, Jack did indeed use pirated models as a basis for his plants. This was as much of a surprise to me as it is for all of you, I'm sure. Additionally, when there were concerns raised about this by some people upon the opening of the store a few months back, I asked him about this directly, and he denied at that time that they were illegitimate. I just want to make it perfectly clear that I had no knowledge about the illegal nature of Jack's models before Stewart confronted us. At Jack's request, I didn't discuss this in public until we could get everything worked out (see below); he hasn't replied to me for quite a while, though, so I no longer feel bound by that request.
All of the people currently in possession of Floraworks plants will be allowed to keep them - Stewart and I worked that out over email a while ago. People who have already purchased or received our models may continue to use them in their artwork without fear of legal repercussions, as long as they conform to the Xfrog license agreement.
The site went down because Jack stopped paying the hosting bill, and he has not responded to any of my emails in the last couple of weeks asking him to pay it, despite still being active on the forums. I don't know what's up there. Yesterday the hosting account was completely taken down, so the domain now points to the GoDaddy default park page and all of the Floraworks email is offline.
Stewart and I were discussing using the Floraworks site as the basis of a Greenworks/Xfrog store, where they would be able to sell their models individually as downloads. They already sell some of them on Turbosquid, but selling through Floraworks would both give them more control over the presentation of their models and would be much cheaper (Turbosquid takes 50% of your sales). I think that this would be a great idea, both as a Floraworks guy and as a Terragen artist on a budget. However, I still haven't heard back from Stewart about how he wants to proceed in that direction, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
Again, thanks for all of your support through this. I have to admit that I'm more than a little frustrated with the dishonesty and lack of communication during this adventure. In spite of this, regardless of where things go (if they go any farther at all), I'm still glad I had this experience and I've learned a lot from it
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