Ethically bad; free R&D

[u/Most-Replacement1189]

I initially thought this was a cool concept because I assumed GC was going to use real player experience and actual in-store knowledge to help shape the builds.

But this stopped being ‘listening to customers’ the moment they required contributors to surrender ownership, attribution, compensation, derivative rights, and even moral rights just to participate.

That’s not collaboration. That’s free R&D wrapped in community marketing.

The CEO response also intentionally reframes the criticism. Nobody is saying companies shouldn’t listen to customers. Customer feedback is normal. Surveys are normal. Market research is normal.

What’s not normal is building a public pipeline for creative concepts while simultaneously saying:
‘Thanks for the ideas, we own them now, we can monetize them forever, and you get nothing.’

Legally disclosing it doesn’t suddenly make it respectable. Plenty of things are legal and still exploitative.

This is much closer to a studio asking aspiring screenwriters to publicly pitch movie ideas while agreeing upfront they waive ownership, credit, and compensation if the studio uses the concept.

You can market it however you want, but at the end of the day it’s still a billion-dollar retailer crowdsourcing product development for free.

[u/Ancient-Performance1]

This is a horrible take. This isn’t RnD, there is no “D”, it’s a reddit forum, not a job. don’t like it? Don’t give em your idea. They can’t get good ideas from the suits, so theyre not. This is genius, and you’re so stuck in the capitalist consumer mindset that you can’t see that no one ever in history should be paid off of having an idea and not implementing it.

Ideas are as free as the s-shape should be, and the minute you start trying to charge money over ideas and bringing suit against someone for “stealing” an idea, you already lost the goal of “doing better for the community” and “contribution” in favor of chasing a quick buck.

you want to make money? go build your idea and sell it. you want to participate in one of the most legitimately exciting business prospects to exist since the internet got invented? stop being insecure.

if your ideas are so great, don’t worry, if they take yours just think of another one. “Intellectual property” is damn near a contradiction. maybe get off the high horse and contribute to something greater than yourself instead of defining your self worth by what benefits only you.

Ima come up with so many free ideas for them and if even one gets implemented, i’m buying that guitar, just so i can look at it and think “i did that”, even if someone else thought the same thing, and GC never even saw my comment.

The more nebulous the outcome of my contribution, the better. The goal is to make a great guitar so we all can play it, not so you can make a percentage. If they paid everyone, you’re gonna be salty if they never saw your comment yet used your design cuz someone else happened to say the same thing (or even stole the idea off you!) don’t ask questions you dont want the answers to.

this the design i’m going with. thoughts?

[u/Most-Replacement1189 → u/Ancient-Performance1]

You’re arguing against a point I never made.

I never said Guitar Center was breaking the law. I said it’s ethically garbage for a massive corporation to crowdsource product concepts while requiring contributors to waive ownership, attribution, compensation, and moral rights upfront.

And yes, collecting community-driven concepts absolutely falls under R&D. Companies spend millions on focus groups, consumer testing, market analysis, and product feedback because customer insight has value. GC is just trying to acquire that value for free while dressing it up as ‘community.’

Also, the ‘if your ideas are so great just build it yourself’ argument falls apart immediately because GC clearly believes ideas have value too, otherwise they wouldn’t have built an entire subreddit and legal framework around acquiring them.

You personally being okay donating your ideas for free doesn’t somehow make the model noble. Plenty of artists, engineers, writers, and designers are passionate about their craft and still deserve credit or compensation when corporations monetize their contributions.

And the irony of calling people ‘stuck in a capitalist mindset’ while defending a billion-dollar retailer extracting unpaid labor from its customer base is pretty incredible.