As a keen scener, I agree with Dekkers - selling maps is just plain wrong - you shouldn't do it for the money But for the Love of Art! That also renders you less competitive, as there are still people who scene for free. It comes down to whether the extra detail the scener is motivated to put in is worth the actual cost.
How much would a scene cost, Zebaad?
The thread states how much, in the spoiler but like I said I do it mainly so I can keep my community running, not so much for personal gain, and referring back to my previous statement, it is essentially exactly like a builder, you hire a builder to make you something, and you pay them to do it as builders do not make houses for example for free, and fyi I'm only referring to the cost of labour not so much the cost of the components required. If I did it for the art I would be swamped with mapping requests I'm already under the weather atm, and having to turn some requests away, due to simply not having time to do them all. Also Dekkers, about 80% of the mappers I know who do if very often charge for their maps, and all of the ones I know who do specific maps for personal requests, but maybe you Dekkers charge for the maps because it will not help them in the long run. Also, btw I started out not charging for maps, and paying for the community stuff from my irl job, but then I had to upgrade servers for more people to use it caus of grater demand, so I decided to make maps for people. The first few maps I made for some people and servers I made for free, and unfortunately I experienced a lot of the dark side of servers who rely on free maps, so I stopped making maps for a while, and I came back when someone suggested I used it to upkeep the community, and if was just after this that I upgraded, so henceforth I charged for my maps, as many did before me.
Guys, I'm sorry but why have you chosen my thread to 'hate' about the concepts of charging for a service? Server hosters have done it for a while, yet they get little 'hate' modders get a lot of hate for mainly different reasons to mappers. Like I have said a few times now, If you want something you can rely on volunteers or you can pay for a service and a result. Generally people try volunteers to begin with, but as most volunteers don't spend long working on maps, the results are not so good, except with a few more famous mappers, like Dekkers, who make maps more generally rather than for specific requests, in some cases almost exact to every detail, It is much harder than you think keeping with what is requested, while being creative, as if we are too creative, we don't fulfill the map intentions. Basically, I charge for maps because it keeps many more people happy, than if I didn't speaking from experience, plus It is required to do so to upkeep servers for use. If you still wish to 'hate' on people doing a specific services speak to your local governmental official.