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Currently the versioning system works such that online versions are permanent and unremovable. This isn't so bad for private versions, but for public ones this can be a problem.

If the creation was released publicly accidentally because of a misunderstanding of how the credit system works, etc. then forevermore that creation is public for anyone to use/see/play/remix with no recourse for the owner.

And it can make them hesitant to even make new things using their own assets because now it links to these other public things, any attention their work gets invites the risk of people working through the genealogy maze and finding a remixable asset and using it to make their own things or republishing it as their own--against the wishes of the creator.

If the creation has been updated to fix bugs/exploits, people can still go back and play old playable versions, making the game look bad. Or if they did so accidentally, they may find at the end of a play session that their score did not post.

The reason for making these versions permanent, as I understand it, is to ensure that if others use it in their creations that link cannot break. But what it also removes is the wishes of the creator, which I feel like for a platform all about creation should probably be pretty up-there in terms of importance to design decisions.

If this was allowed, the credit system could disintegrate and cause all sorts of problems. Here I'll go through a few such situations and discuss possible risks there may be:

• Creation linked to from a collection: If the version no longer exists, it does know where to go. But the mechanism for asking if the player wants to play the latest version is already in place, so as long as there's at least one public version remaining this wouldn't cause too much of an issue. And if there are no public versions remaining, there is already a mechanism in place to show it as "private" which could be used for this, or a variant of that.
• Element contained within a scene/element: If the version no longer exists, the creation would be unusable (we used to be able to cause this problem which was a nightmare, and I appreciate that things were put in place to make this impossible). If it ignored the fact that there's nothing left to link to, and allowed the scene to function as before... it would function as before. But after it's already been imported, the only reason that link exists is so that others can find out through the genealogy that the asset was used (which its creator doesn't want) and to update it if the creator publishes a new version (which would still work, or the creator may not want to do anyway if they've deleted all versions, and also most people don't do that for elements they don't own, and in fact it's advisable not to do that because the change may not be what you want for your game).
• A scene contained within a dream owned by someone else: (the scene was originally remixable.) If the version no longer exists, the dream won't be able to send the player to it. But then, the creator has clearly indicated that they want no one to play that version of the scene... so that's spot on for their wishes. If they removed the version just to mess with people using it in their dream, then people will just stop using their remixable scenes in their dreams, can complain etc. if they wish to. But more likely is the original creator simply does not want people to play that version, and I feel like that should be respected as their decision.

The way things currently work make mistakes irreversible, and they're stuck with anything they regret releasing even if they leave the entire platform. This is something very few platforms enforce. As I say, I think I understand the reasons behind such a decision. But also, it seems to me there are some fairly simple ways of adjusting the design to honour and empower the creators that will make them feel a lot safer publishing things in Dreams, without breaking the whole of the dreamiverse.

Please consider these tweaks; I think it would really help people who get into a spot of bother with their published creations.