Everyone can critique!...Goddammit. :P

So dA now allows everyone to submit critique!  heidi.deviantart.com/journal/A…

The stupid part?  You can only REQUEST critique if you're subscribed.

I'm just raging over here that the average Joe Deviant is not allowed to receive critiques without getting a subscription. This is now an issue for me of how money-grubbing is dA gonna be?  Do they even care about allowing artists who can't pay them money to improve their art through the site, or are they just going to use this fantastic tool as another method of begging their members for money?

Premium memberships ought be about making the dA experience cooler and allowing it to look nicer, not about keeping important tools from those who could really benefit from using them.  I want critiques available for all, and if they actually gave a shit about the people who devote their time and energy to the site but can't necessarily afford to throw money into anything nonessential, they would too.

People complained when I commented the above on Heidi's announcement journal that they've removed all of the perks for people to have subscriptions, whichis, admittedly a load of crock.  Polls, journal skins, special widgets for profile pages are still exclusively offered to those with memberships, so there IS still something there for subscribers, and people will still continue to purchase them for the luxury.  I just ran out of a subscription at the beginning of the month, and those really are the biggest differences between subscription and non-subscription.  The critiques, on the other hand, are a different style of add-on that don't fit with the others.  The main benefits of premium memberships are and should be appearance enhancements for the site's users, not taking away valuable content from those who could grow and benefit from that content.

This is another huge part of the reason why I've more or less left dA.  Not only do a large chunk members not give a shit about their fellow deviants, the people in charge care more about marketing the site as a business than using the site as a school to help their members learn and improve themselves.