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If someone isn't 100% up on how the dependencies and credit chain system works, it can be very easy to get a knotted web of links between elements and scenes all over the place, making it very difficult to publish something without the entire thing ending up as remixable.

In a lot of those cases, all the owner wants to do is publish the game itself or whatever it is. Not making random scenes remixable because they happened to export something from it. And other cases where someone wants to release an asset as remixable so others can use it punishes that creator by requiring them to release a chunk of their actual project as remixable also.

This means that even if you do know how the credit system works, and you do know how to work smart with it from the beginning... you're forced to bend over backwards and work in awkward and unnatural ways and not use certain features of Dreams (particularly "save as new creation," which creates a lot of these situations) just to not be punished when it comes to releasing your hard work when it's finished.

With the credit rules as they are, this is required because to release something (eg. an element) that is a remix of something else (eg. the scene it was exported from), that "something else" must have the status of "remixable." But this is not the case while the element is uploaded as private; it's just fine sitting there being a remix of something else that is private, or containing something else that is private. Only when it's published does it enforce the rule of requiring the remix-source or contained object to be remixable.

But then, why is it enforced like that? What does it avoid? As far as I can see, it avoids the situation where you've used someone else's remixable thing in your project, or you made a remix of it and then it breaks because it was made non-remixable.

But if you own the thing you imported, or you own the thing it's a remix of... that's not a problem. Even if someone else used a remixable asset of yours that contains a private element of yours... they don't care what went into it. Sure, the imported thing is theoretically part of the released element anyway, but there may be reasons you'd want to keep it private. Maybe there's a later customised version that's in your game and to release it would cause other publishing headaches. Maybe the thing it's a remix of is part of your game and you don't want to be forced to release part of your actual game as remixable. Maybe you just wanted to export the object from a scene as its own element to release to the community for people to use out of the kindness of your heart... and now you wish you didn't want to do such a nice thing because now the entire dreamiverse can steal your scene or remix it and get at other assets you didn't want to release, etc.

If the rules were just slightly different, all of this would go away. Please only require remix-sources and and contained elements to be uploaded in some way, and not require them to be made remixable.

It would allow us to use the features freely, allow people to not have to study-up on the minutae of how the credit system works just to be safe, and release more things for the community to use without being punished for not planning their entire releasing strategy in advance to make sure they don't regret it later.