thereclusivecartographer
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Fighting Back Against Art Theft (and a Free Map for you all)
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 12:49:24 +0000 UTCHey everyone!
Some of you might have already seen this on my socials or in the Discord, but I wanted to talk about something that really pissed me off over the weekend.
I discovered that a few of my older maps—along with the work of other creators—had been stolen by one of those AI slop scam outfits. You know the ones: promising thousands of maps for pennies and delivering nothing but uncanny, unusable rubbish.
At least two of my maps from years ago were directly fed into their generator of choice, spat back out with some meaningless stylistic tweaks, and then bundled up as if they were brand new. To know they were making money by ripping off my work, (and packaging it as part of a scam) was a real kick in the teeth.
Thankfully, after some well-deserved backlash from the TTRPG community, the company has since removed the stolen art from their socials. Whether they’ve actually taken my maps out of their bundle? I can’t say, and I won’t be paying them a penny to dig through their archive of AI junk to find out.
I’m still not sure if I want to pursue the matter further, but I do know this: the best catharsis for me is to keep creating. So this morning I sat down and redrew one of the stolen maps in my current style.
And I want to share both a Day and Night version with all of you— FOR FREE
Consider it a little reminder that real human creativity and passion can’t be replicated by an algorithm, and that the TTRPG community is stronger when we support genuine creators.
Stay vigilant out there folks, these map scams are out there and if something sounds too good to be true, it almost definitely is.
Thanks, as always, for being here and supporting my work. It means a lot to me!
– The Reclusive Cartographer
Comments
George Mason
I appreciate that thank you!
Charles Town
If you do decide to go after them with lawyers I got donation money.
George Mason
thanks bud! I really appreciate the support :)
Gavin McDonald
I'm really sorry that this has hit you. Know that all of us on your Patreon and more support you and love your work BECAUSE of your creativity, talent, and professionalism. There's been so much backlash against AI in the last couple years and new lawsuits pending from huge, multimedia conglomerates that I hope it will start to curb some of this garbage. BTW, love the new versions of the maps. Way to take the high road!
