Hi im writing this to warn people about the latest smartpoly video about creating a pirate tower defense game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCf3SEOEDAo&t=9sin the video he shows a folder that you have to download to get the assets needed to do the course the thing is he locked the folder behind his patreon subscription and by doing a bit of research i found thats he’s using free unreal engine marketplce animations, free sketchfab assets, google images and ai images and reselling them with 0 credit just to get benefit he also changed his patreon link from the third link to first link so it’s easier to click and he changed his pinged comment from talking about his other courses to instead talking about his patreon and getting the assets i also tried to warn people in the comments to not buy the patreon because they can get those exact asstes for free but he kept deleting those comment again and again here are the assets he uses and locks them behind a pay wall:
Haven’t found the shipwreck model yet but im sure if you search on sketchfab or somewhere else you’ll find it same for the crosshair look it up and you’ll find one
and for the main menu images and level selector images you can use ai images like he does
i also got info that he also does this in his survival game course he uses sketchfab assets and other online assets with 0 credit for example stone pickaxe stone hatchet and other.
No the patreon is only the assets and then there’s an option for the complete project separatly at min 18 he says you have to download the file to get the animation and other assets to be able to continue but the anims are free assets from the marketplace made by epic games and then the other assets are also free from sketchfab owned by other people and he gives no credit at all even tho that is the requirement when downloading them and he’s directly profiting from others work and deleting comments who are talking about it even banning people from his paid course discord server when they ask if they need to pay to get the free assets also saying “all future channel uploads, project files will be exclusively on patreon. All unreal engine youtubers do this. Unfortunately this is the only way I can monetize my content on my channel moving forward.” which means he’s not taking responsibility.
Smartpoly is definitely a coward, and a horrible teacher. I purchased one of his classes that included membership to his private discord community. I asked for help, offered a well oriented critique and some suggestions on his insanely smooth brained teaching method and was instantly banned from his discord under the premise that “I can ban you for whatever reason I want” Which is not how consumer protection laws work. When you sell membership to a private community, and you want to revoke access to that community, the customer has to have broken a specific written rule. I brought this to his attention and after a week, he allowed me to re-join his discord server but only after he setup a discord bot in his server to spam ghost pings at me. If you dont know what this is, the bot will spam a bunch of @(YourUsername) and then delete them. Its harassment. At this point, I was sick of his childish antics so I pushed for a chargeback on the purchase. When accessing my purchase history in his school, I have a refund receipt. Initially, the receipt says the refund was issued on september 12th, 2024. But when I check it now, that date changes on the paperwork to whatever day I happen to be checking it on. No refund has hit my account.
And yes, just like OP says, SmartPoly is selling assets that he did not create. Everything he’s doing, is grimy. He’s also monetized his discord server, through his teachable classes, which is against discord terms of use. The child certainly needs taught a lesson.
