What?!?! That sucks. A while back I was looking for a way to manipulate gravity in timeline and SPQR actually added it to MagicAtoms for me. Very cool. Sad news.
But, the reason I ran across this post and am here now... I was making something using the SQPRDynamicText plugin in AeternumToolsPack and after a cleanup and attempted reload it no longer worked!! I started searching for alternatives but couldn't find anything similar.
As a final act though, SPQR bundled and posted everything on Patreon for free and suggests anyone who uses it just unpack and store within their own var. I don't really like this idea for a few reasons, but maybe others will repackage some of them. Except I guess the one/ones that violated the site policies, whatever those were??
On a related note, if anyone knows of a plugin that can update UIText with variable data (numbers specifically with basic math functions) please let me know. Thanks.
OR/additionally, what is the policy on repackaging a banned or removed user's vars (assuming they give permission of course)?
TLDR; Licenses on content from banned creators are still respected and upheld by the moderation team, regardless of banned status. If a creator was banned specifically for content violations, we may, under certain circumstances, ask you to kindly stop using that content as dependencies but you would not receive a warning or violation.
SPQR's resources will still download correctly as dependencies, so there's no need to repack them inside a var. Unfortunately, the removal of the account and the content was on request, so we have no control over that, but we made sure that dependencies would not be broken by the situation. We cannot discuss the reasons for a ban, but I can say that the issues were not content related. We have no complaints about SPQR's quality content, and we respect SPQR as a creator. We will also continue to protect SPQR's wishes for their content licenses.
Generally speaking, if a user was banned for content violations then we will try to limit the spread of their prohibited content. In those cases, their content may contain copyright violations, stolen work, or other types of prohibited material. It's not wise to use content from a banned creator if you don't know the reason the content was removed. We do not blacklist content, instead, we may ask a creator from time to time to stop using a particular banned user's content (usually only in cases where they are using that banned creator's content excessively or exclusively).
If you have already created scenes using content from a creator who was banned for content violations, it's not likely that we would ask you to go back and remove it unless there were extenuating circumstances, such as your account violating other policies on top of using sketchy content as dependencies.
If the content is still available on the Hub by direct link, or if the content still downloads correctly as a dependency in-game, you can assume the content itself is approved by the moderation team and therefore all license rules for that content still apply. Unless the creator was willfully breaking copyright or stealing other people's work, we still respect their licenses even if they have been banned.
If SPQR has suggested all may repack their content for free, then you may do so at your discretion.