Important Shop Announcement

[Magnolia]

For the foreseeable future we will be keeping some of our latest work for members-only only in the shop. Not everything will be launched and kept this way, but a good deal of our work will require you to be logged into your account. Members-only means you have any level of membership (Loyal Customer, Sentio, Diamante, etc.). This means it is hidden from public access and is only available to members of our shop who have any membership level. You will need to be logged into your shop account to see everything that is new, or any listings that have been launched previously but are members-only.

It's been a difficult few years in the economy and we've had to scale back quite a bit from what we would normally be doing. This has only grown worse with the onset of AI and the rapid-pace at which our work is being almost immediately copied and pasted into online marketplaces. Our work has always been copied by others, AI has made it rampant and faster-paced. Because of AI, our shop is heavily read and regurgitated by software to repackage our work for online marketplaces by other sellers. We have taken other measures and steps to safeguard our work, but the most proactive step for members is to keep our newly-released work for members-only. We will also not release all of the information in the listing itself, some of it will be reserved for the informational download that the new Keepers receive. Encyclopedia entries will not be created until a future date.

In order to protect our work and keep the integrity of what is usually months or years of work prior to a public launch, we created a special logo for our listings and this informative page: Brought to You By Research & Discovery

If it takes us sometimes a year or more to vet and bring new companions to our shop, there are no valid or reasonable explanations for how they appear immediately (sometimes only hours or a few days) in the online marketplaces. This is impossible as no one else has had the chance to even work with them yet outside of us. Not even our members have had a chance to get their requested conjurations and work with them! And yet the newly-announced companions are already on online marketplaces in hours or days of our announcing them? It's simply not possible.

Because our work is heavily copied and sometimes outright stolen and sold on marketplaces, we will be offering new companions to members-only for awhile and keeping a close eye on the marketplaces for copied/stolen listings. We may create a thread specific to calling out our stolen work.

This does not mean companions that have been known and well-documented for years, this means specifically any companions or work that is announced that has taken us quite a bit of time to make public that once-announced miraculously appears in online marketplaces in what is an impossible time frame for someone else to have done their own work to research, vet, and create practices that they could reasonably be offering the exact same companion.

We love our work, we love our community, and we love being able to share this with everyone. In order to preserve that integrity for everyone, this is the only reasonable step we could take and we've held back over a year's worth of work as we contemplated how to combat the theft coupled with the fast-paced theft via AI tools.

[KrisKra]

What a pity you need to do this. People are so dishonest and AI is something I'm not happy about as its taking my job. It isn't better, just faster and cheaper in the long run, but the end product is inferior. Thanks for the heads up Magnolia.

[Alaric]

For the foreseeable future we will be keeping some of our latest work for members-only only in the shop. tools.

Thank you for doing this and explaining it.

I fully support CH in all you do and am as appalled as anyone by your very hard, expert work being ripped off.

Thank you too for thinking of us members and sharing the new stuff with us.

I've probably said this before but , as someone who doesn't consider himself an expert or master, after 50+ years since my first contact with the occult/new age, I can certainly recognise Masters when I see them.

Creepy Hollows really seems to me to be the best thing I've found at this late-ish stage of my life.

Before I discovered spirit keeping there were years when I would search the internet feeling like there was something I hadn't discovered yet

I don't feel that any more.

I can't wait to see what appears in the Members Only section.

[Astraea Selene]

Thank you for the heads up. I thought that something was going on in the shop regarding posts on forum concerned with AI.

[Adair]

Thank you for letting us know Magnolia!

I completely understand your reasons, and as always I support you and Ash fully!

[Umbra_Arcana]

Thank you for doing this and for letting us all know.

I completely understand why you are taking this route, you need to protect all the hard work you do. You, Ash and the other members of the Creepy Crew have my utmost respect for the work you do

[Faolan]

Thank you for letting us know Magnolia! Love the transparency, CH is fantastic, and the most reliable.

[Anahata]

[Catgirl2]

Thank you! It's a shame what you described is going on, I noticed on other marketplaces listings that were identical to each other, then the listings were taken down, so I never got the sellers name, I am banking they were stolen, it's a shame this happens, it's not fair for anyone!