I’d like to suggest a small change to how Unlisted playermodels work.
Right now, Unlisted models don’t show up on the Workshop, but other players can still access them through the scoreboard when they see someone using one. This kind of defeats the purpose of having an Unlisted option, especially for people who have personal playermodels made specifically for them.
My suggestion would be to make it so Unlisted models can’t be accessed through the scoreboard menu. The owner could still use the model normally, but other players wouldn’t have an easy way to save or equip it just by finding someone who’s wearing it.
This would be especially useful for commissioned or personal models. If someone spends the time and/or money to have a model made specifically for them, it can be pretty frustrating that anyone can just grab it from the scoreboard and use it however they want.
As of right now, you can write “private”, “personal”, or “please do not use” in the description, but at the end of the day there’s nothing actually halting someone from using it. I’ve personally seen very unique personal playermodels get used to impersonate other players, or people acting inappropriately while wearing someone else’s unique personal model. This can end up giving the original owner a bad reputation or just ruin the special experience of having a model made specifically for them.
I know it is impossible to make unlisted models completely unattainable because files are cached locally, so someone who really wanted to could potentially find the Workshop ID and access the cached files even if the original upload was later deleted. However, just making it harder to get them by removing easy access would be a huge improvement.
Obviously with this concept keeping the report/flag option available is important. If someone does go out of their way to take an Unlisted model and reupload it, that upload could then be reported under the appropriate Steam Workshop rules.
Basically, I’m not expecting this change to completely stop people who are absolutely determined to get the files. I’d just like to see some extra protection against the very easy “see model → open scoreboard → save model” method that currently exists for unlisted models.
I believe this would be a nice quality-of-life change in a relatively simple way to give personal playermodel users a little more protection without needing an entirely new system.