Saberguy Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 24 minutes ago, dup3w4sh1ngt0n said: So, I have a serious question for everyone in this thread. If I create a model with textures that just happens to be made with a body-type in mind and sell access to that mesh and textures via Patreon donations (or directly via storefronts like ArtStation), do you have a problem with that? Like, an unweighted resource? Because, if not, why are we even having this conversation. Enderal's different because they literally made an ENTIRELY NEW GAME with many re-used MESH and SCRIPT assets (which are re-usable beyond Skyrim's engine, thus making their redistribution for profit problematic because you didn't write that code or make those meshes/textures), as well as their engine. There's no ambiguity there because Bethesda is vertically integrated, meaning they actually own their engine, unlike Devs who use Unity or UE4. Again, a skeleton and its weights are not immediately transferable like meshes, textures and code; OP is trying to conflate game-specific proprietary information and a general set of items that have boundless applications. Vtaw or Jmenaru can sell the clothing items they make on the Unity/UE4/ArtStation/TurboSquid storefronts, they just decided to import them into FO4. This should be a non-issue. Yes, if you made an unweighted mesh for a specific bodytype without any skeletons or such and made it so that if someone wanted to use them for whatever they wished they could. You'd be perfectly in your rights to sell it. I'm just saying that you should not sell something that infringes directly on an existing IP. If you want to make money from "mods" then make them in such a way that you're technically not breaking any laws is all I'm saying. If that makes any sense.
dup3w4sh1ngt0n Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 11 minutes ago, Saberguy said: Yes, if you made an unweighted mesh for a specific bodytype without any skeletons or such and made it so that if someone wanted to use them for whatever they wished they could. You'd be perfectly in your rights to sell it. I'm just saying that you should not sell something that infringes directly on an existing IP. If you want to make money from "mods" then make them in such a way that you're technically not breaking any laws is all I'm saying. If that makes any sense. No, it literally doesn't in this context. You're not infringing on someone's "IP" when selling clothing mods for the exact reason I mentioned; SKELETONS AND THEIR WEIGHTS ARE IMMEDIATELY NON-TRANSFERABLE BETWEEN ENGINES or ENGINE CONFIGURATIONS. You're "buying" the clothes or whatever service that content creator is providing. Same thing with Reactors. I'm not paying for the show I've probably already watched, I'm paying to see people I have an interest in react to it.
Saberguy Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 1 hour ago, dup3w4sh1ngt0n said: No, it literally doesn't in this context. You're not infringing on someone's "IP" when selling clothing mods for the exact reason I mentioned; SKELETONS AND THEIR WEIGHTS ARE IMMEDIATELY NON-TRANSFERABLE BETWEEN ENGINES or ENGINE CONFIGURATIONS. You're "buying" the clothes or whatever service that content creator is providing. Same thing with Reactors. I'm not paying for the show I've probably already watched, I'm paying to see people I have an interest in react to it. Except you are infringing on their IP if you say that "This is a mod for Skyrim for sale without permission from Bethesda.". Look dude, you can find a myriad of reasons why you cant legally sell mods for games by people a lot more intelligent than me with a simple google search. Asking for donations is okay though. Here is a very good answer from gamefaqs that i found. " The EULA isn't the only thing that's an issue with paid mods. If your mod uses ANY resources at ALL from the game, and you're selling that mod for money, you are directly profiting off of something someone else built and owns the copyright to. It'd be the same as photocopying a page or two from a book and then writing your own fanfic and selling it. You won't get away with that unless the publisher explicitly allows it, because you're profiting from someone else's copyrighted work. That has nothing to do with the EULA. Also, let's say you created a ground-up mod that adds a whole expansion chapter for The Witcher 3. You used no game resources directly, built your models (including Geralt) yourself, got your own voice actors, the whole shebang. You did it all with nothing pulled directly from the actual game. You still almost *certainly* will not be able to sell that legally, because you are directly mimicking someone's trademark and or copyrighted material, and you can't sell that for profit. Hell, there have been modders shut down before - legally - for making mods that were too similar to a game even though they WEREN'T going to sell it. Think charging money is going to make that less likely, or more? Just like you can't just create your own Star Wars game from scratch and legally sell it, you can't build a mod like that which relies too much on trademarked or copyrighted content - even if you "built" it yourself - and legally sell it. Again, nothing to do with the EULA. However, if you made a mod for The Witcher 3 that was more of a total conversion, and told your own story, with your own characters, all running off the Witcher 3's engine, you probably wouldn't have a problem as long as the devs were OK with that. Even then though, they could still probably sue you and win in court if they wanted to, because your mod relies directly on their game in order to run, and you didn't receive their permission to profit that way from their work. So again, the bottom line is really that it depends on several things - what your mod is, how you made it, the opinion of the devs, etc."
Blehbreh Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 4 hours ago, dup3w4sh1ngt0n said: "bUiLt On tHe BaCkS oF DeVeLoPeR's HaRd WoRk", please spare me. Again, symbiotic relationship. Publishers sell the game and the modders keep sales going well beyond the game's natural shelf-life. You guys are blowing this way out of proportion, and none of you appear to be mod authors who have made something from scratch, which is telling I didn't come to this forum to brag about my modding and game development accomplishments. I won't entertain you with any of them either. If you're going to act like a child I'm not going to bother conversing with you.
iikagen Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 19 hours ago, minaselda said: And I believe most people must have never looked at the permission section of each mod on nexus. Most modders DON"T ALLOW THEIR MODS TO BE USED AS ASSETS OF PAID MODS, including those most essential mods like this: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/1249 I think more people should be aware of this. Wow I never knew the CBBE team never allowed paid mods with their body. That's pretty damning lol.
MaidoLover Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 10 hours ago, dup3w4sh1ngt0n said: from scratch 99% of mods are not "from scratch", dude you're getting ridiculous
MaidoLover Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 13 hours ago, JackWall said: another matter. You're right, it's not exactly the same thing, just similar (especially from a legal view) It's not "very" similar tho as there are obvious differences. And idk how much they make, I think it can be a lot tho, the way certain modders throw out (obviously unfinished but "good enough ") mods almost on a daily basis makes me think it can be pretty worthwhile (amongst other clues)
DoYourBest Posted April 18, 2020 Author Posted April 18, 2020 @MaidoLoverThink of it this way. In order to get "anything" you need to release a public mod for free, like it always has been, and that needs to be GOOD, popular with lots of hours of work. Then, as a reward of shorts, you get points INSIDE the website, that then, you can choose to spend the way you want. I think it's very legal, otherwise Nexus would be already in trouble... So, really, it's nothing like selling mods on Patreon, not a by a long shot. The purpose of Patreon was to support indie artists of any medium. Of course, leechers started pouring in and abusing the website "donation" system, selling all types of copyrighted goods. There are "artists" that even sell renders, like wtf dude. You didn't even model or textured anything that you use in your "renders", like these idiots that rip Street Fighter's, DOA's or Overwatch's models and make "premium" animations with them and sell them lol And then, the modders we are talking about in here. It has gotten way out of hand at this point...
MaidoLover Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 2 hours ago, JackWall said: @MaidoLoverThink of it this way. In order to get "anything" you need to release a public mod for free, like it always has been, and that needs to be GOOD, popular with lots of hours of work. Then, as a reward of shorts, you get points INSIDE the website, that then, you can choose to spend the way you want. I think it's very legal, otherwise Nexus would be already in trouble... So, really, it's nothing like selling mods on Patreon, not a by a long shot. The purpose of Patreon was to support indie artists of any medium. Of course, leechers started pouring in and abusing the website "donation" system, selling all types of copyrighted goods. There are "artists" that even sell renders, like wtf dude. You didn't even model or textured anything that you use in your "renders", like these idiots that rip Street Fighter's, DOA's or Overwatch's models and make "premium" animations with them and sell them lol And then, the modders we are talking about in here. It has gotten way out of hand at this point... The similarities are, getting paid (rewards) for using other people's work (koei, namco, crystal dynamics, etc) and "possibly" not paying any *taxes* these points aren't even donations, they're just a monetary reward system simply as I understand it (by itself totally "legal" of course) as for patreon it's really similar... The system itself if used correctly, for own, legal work (like photos, music etc) is totally fine. Selling hardcore porn to anyone who has a paypal (without any further age verification) for example though... probably not! but it's also not just patreon of course, there are many similar "institutions" now because the people using those are (probably) fully aware of the thin ice they're walking on... Even on Twitter is a lot of (100%) illegal stuff, that needed to be shut down ASAP (I mean twitter therefore, not just the contents) (and yes, talking again about plain old hardcore porn, unsurprisingly) it's not that this specific issue personally bothers me (tbh) just an example of how unregulated the "world wide web" *still* is and how oblivious to such things lawmakers *still* are...
DoYourBest Posted April 18, 2020 Author Posted April 18, 2020 @MaidoLoverYou are being kind of dense right now. Nexus doesn't allow selling anything. Patreon does. It's the only difference that matters. As for the rest, totally irrelevant to this conversation since those are quite different topics. Nexus sites, just like LoversLab, use advertisments to fund the website. Nexus sites is not making a profit out of selling mods, but from people creating mods and hosting them in their sites, getting views to those ads and clicks to their web pages. Same happens in LoversLab. Nexus sites offer you a way to disable these ads by purchasing a premium account, something simillar happens in LoversLab if you support its Patreon. Nexus sites reward the best modders with points, not actual real currency. Patreon, allows you to sell. Period full stop.
ヴィヴ・ラ・フランス！ Posted April 18, 2020 Posted April 18, 2020 12 hours ago, iikagen said: Wow I never knew the CBBE team never allowed paid mods with their body. That's pretty damning lol. Like I said, patreon should be partly responsible for today's situation. They have been ignoring these infringements even after the original author has complained.
MaidoLover Posted April 19, 2020 Posted April 19, 2020 10 hours ago, JackWall said: Nexus sites is not making a profit out of selling mods No of course not, that would be illegal... Well and the rest of what you said is directly contradicting to what I'm hearing, #1000 is the magic number and there is a monetary reward system - what did you think those "points" are good for? Note that I only know this from "popular" modders themselves, directly and indirectly, I can't know for sure if they are lying their asses off or not... But there are some strong indicators that they aren't... And the rest of what I said wasn't really irrelevant (it was the exact opposite ironically), it may not have been about mods, but about the ways of distributing them for monetary gains, which are, as you know, highly questionable legally.
DoYourBest Posted April 19, 2020 Author Posted April 19, 2020 @MaidoLoverAlright dude, if you prefer to keep making off-topic, don't count me in. In the 1st page you will see that I'm a modder myself and I know what I'm talking about too. As I already told you, YES, everything you are saying is irrelevant to the conversation and straw manning at best. It doesn't add anything to this conversation. You are comparing a platform to share free mods and FORBIDS asking for monetary compensations and a platform that allows you to sell stuff. Cut the crap already.
QuackFluffy Posted April 19, 2020 Posted April 19, 2020 Just about everything when it comes to fan works is one huge legal grey area, and publishers do a good job (some more than others) reminding us of that. Nintendo has denied EVO to have Smash Bros as part of their tournament, Nintendo has shut down basically every fan game ever created, Nintendo has denied Youtubers to be able to monetize videos of their games, Square-Enix has taken down Youtube videos showcasing endings of their games, and etc... And it's not as if these specific things are against the EULA of these games (well, a few of them might be). Companies just have a lot of power when protecting their IPs. So they can use DMCA as a general excuse whenever they wanna take down virtually anything related to a video, mod, or whatever, because they own the copyrights to their games, unless it counts as fair use. I'm not a fan of modders locking their mods behind a paywall, but just about everything to do with modding can already be taken down in an instant if a publisher decides to. Thankfully, most companies are okay with modding so they let us be. I only know of two cases of a company taking down paid mods (both were Street Fighter modders, and both were able to create a new Patreon account where they temporarily locked mods behind a paywall rather than permanently). I guess we'll see how it pans out in the long run.
QuackFluffy Posted April 19, 2020 Posted April 19, 2020 21 hours ago, JackWall said: @MaidoLoverYou are being kind of dense right now. Nexus doesn't allow selling anything. Patreon does. It's the only difference that matters. As for the rest, totally irrelevant to this conversation since those are quite different topics. Nexus sites, just like LoversLab, use advertisments to fund the website. Nexus sites is not making a profit out of selling mods, but from people creating mods and hosting them in their sites, getting views to those ads and clicks to their web pages. Same happens in LoversLab. Nexus sites offer you a way to disable these ads by purchasing a premium account, something simillar happens in LoversLab if you support its Patreon. Nexus sites reward the best modders with points, not actual real currency. Patreon, allows you to sell. Period full stop. I wish I knew more about this law-wise, but from a law perspective, is there any difference between earning money by selling mods and earning money by showing ads on a mod distribution site? I'm not asking what's "right" or "wrong" morally, but whether or not the law would consider both as a means of monetizing mods. The only thing I could find on the subject was this: https://adsense.googleblog.com/2012/08/policy-tips-avoiding-copyright.html That's a part of adsense's policy (which a lot of sites use, including nexusmods), and that says you can't use adsense on a site which is infringing on any copyrights.
DoYourBest Posted April 19, 2020 Author Posted April 19, 2020 @QuackFluffyThanks for creating Fluffy manager! If it's you actually lol I don't know what to tell you honestly, but Nexus is probably the most popular modding website as of now for the general public. I believe every gaming studio knows about that website, and many know about loverslab as well. I believe this fact is one of the major reasons why both forbid paid mods. Law-wise, like you say, there's a HUGE difference between selling and just hosting FREE mods. Both nexus and loverslab and pro-active in banning those who want to make a profit from mods, I believe. At least I know nexus bans people from asking for money or hosting paid mods and they ban people that make use of copyrighted assets. And don't see this happening in Patreon. Ads are necesary for websites to exist. It's that simple, really. That or everyone would need to pay a subscription to visit the website. Nexus nor loverslab aren't making a profit from selling mods or sharing mods, but from the visits their websites have. Legally speaking there's a HUGE difference. These websites wouldn't even exist by now if it wasn't legal, they have grown SO much after years and years. Patreon is just too new and people are abusing it until major repercusions for Patreon take place. So far there hasn't been a case in which a gaming studio asks Patreon stop hosting paid mods. but sooner or later, it will happen and Patreon will forbid this type of content, JUST like Nexus and LoversLab does. So, in a nutshell, yes, there's a big difference. P.S.: to answer the other message. Yes, as the sole owner of the copyright or something, you have the right to tell ANYONE to stop what they are doing with your creation, that can be a video on youtube as well, yes.
QuackFluffy Posted April 19, 2020 Posted April 19, 2020 I've noticed NexusMods will try to delete mods using copyrighted content, but the thing is, most of them technically contain copyrighted content anyway (as 90% of them are derivative works of content from those games). I feel we're just lucky all of this is possible, thanks to the fact most companies don't care or they like mods. I was thinking the two Street Fighter modders on Patreon was a sign companies would start cracking down on paid mods, but it's been years since that happened and I haven't heard of anything similar happening, even though we are seeing more and more modders move to Patreon. I think there's a big chance most companies just won't care enough to do anything with it. It's an interesting time as it's much easier for hobbyists to earn money on their creative work now compared to 10-15 years ago. It's easy to get ad revenue on Youtube, it's easy to get ad revenue on Twitch, it's easy to set up a Patreon, and etc. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with modders wanting monetary reward for what they're doing. A lot of modders are very talented and are spending a RIDICULOUS amount of time making these mods. And while I don't like seeing mods locked behind paywall, I'm not sure what you can do to convince people to not do it. There's been little evidence companies care that much.
ヴィヴ・ラ・フランス！ Posted April 20, 2020 Posted April 20, 2020 14 hours ago, QuackFluffy said: I've noticed NexusMods will try to delete mods using copyrighted content, but the thing is, most of them technically contain copyrighted content anyway (as 90% of them are derivative works of content from those games). I feel we're just lucky all of this is possible, thanks to the fact most companies don't care or they like mods. I was thinking the two Street Fighter modders on Patreon was a sign companies would start cracking down on paid mods, but it's been years since that happened and I haven't heard of anything similar happening, even though we are seeing more and more modders move to Patreon. I think there's a big chance most companies just won't care enough to do anything with it. It's an interesting time as it's much easier for hobbyists to earn money on their creative work now compared to 10-15 years ago. It's easy to get ad revenue on Youtube, it's easy to get ad revenue on Twitch, it's easy to set up a Patreon, and etc. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with modders wanting monetary reward for what they're doing. A lot of modders are very talented and are spending a RIDICULOUS amount of time making these mods. And while I don't like seeing mods locked behind paywall, I'm not sure what you can do to convince people to not do it. There's been little evidence companies care that much. Well, to say the least, even if we put aside the copyright dispute, the price is also a question. It is admitted that most paid modders don't charge for a very high price at least now, but when you find some guys charge each of their outfit packs for $100 or saves for $400 (you can even heard of people talking about these things just in this forum!), or you need to pay for dozens of dollars each month which is much higher than the price of official DLC(while the quality is much lower), you can hardly associate them with getting a fair revenue, but a bunch of greedy men. You may argue that we can ignore them, but the truth is no matter how radiculus the price is, there are still someones willing to pay for it. They are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for pretty clothes or good looking characters. So those "modders" are never lack of customers. From what I have learned about is things are getting worse in some regional websites where the copyright consciousness is very weak. They share the free mods from other sites without any authorization (sometimes they even offer these packed mods with the pirated game together to people!) and sell their own mods with absurd prices. And some of them also have posted their mods on nexus and loverslab, posing themselves as a "normal modder", but who knows how disgusting these guys actually are! You know what will happen when the modding of a game is dominated by these guys? Just look at the modding situation of Illusion games. What I want to tell you is, there really are some modders these days do treat their mods as commodities, and their intention of asking for payment is never for better modding, but for getting more profit. And one more truth is, as I know even the most popular paid modder of skyrim still has around 700 patreons, which means if no one shares it to the public, each of his mod is probably below 1000 downloads. And this number of other paid modders will be far less. I browsed around nexus just now, and I found even a mod uploaded yesterday and only with 35 endorsements has nearly 800 UNIQUE downloads! So it is obvious that paid mods will make the comminty to be isolated and less cooperative. And the mod sharing will be very limited. But do these guys care about it? Do you belive what they are doing is promoting the development of community rather than defending their own profit? For example, if someone proposes to a modder that he will pay $10000 every month for the modder in exchange for making mods only for himself. Do you think how many guys will accept this?
DoYourBest Posted April 20, 2020 Author Posted April 20, 2020 @QuackFluffyI'll quote CD Projekt: 9 USER GENERATED CONTENT 9.1 This section is about content (e.g. text, photos or links), which you make available either to us or to other CD PROJEKT RED users (for example through forum messages to other CD PROJEKT RED users) or any other content which you create using CD PROJEKT RED content. We'll call this "User Generated Content". Please remember that CD PROJEKT RED game or service may have additional separate legal Rules specifying your rights and obligations with respect to relevant User Generated Content. You own the User Generated Content, created by you. Please make sure it doesn’t breach any third party rights. 9.2 As far as we and you are concerned, you own any User Generated Content you created but we need you to give us certain rights over it so that we can actually transmit it through CD PROJEKT RED games and services. So, when you make your User Generated Content available through any of CD PROJEKT RED games or services you give us a non-exclusive, irrevocable licence to use, modify, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, communicate and publicly display/perform your User Generated Content in connection with CD PROJEKT RED games and services. 9.3 It is your responsibility to make sure that you have all necessary legal rights before you use User Generated Content and for checking they are safe to use. We can't know that ourselves, and we can't check it for you, so we rely on you. 9.4 If you create your User Generated Content using any graphics, audio, video, text, gameplay, features, characters, settings or any other content from CD PROJEKT RED games or services (e.g you create fan mods using CD PROJEKT RED tools) – you may use and share it for personal enjoyment, but we do not allow: (i) any use or distribution of it for money or any commercial purpose; or (ii) for that User Generated Content to be placed in third party games or services or standalone products of any kind, without our prior approval (which you can request at legal@cdprojektred.com). Please note we reserve the right to review each request and accept or reject it if necessary. You may use CD PROJEKT RED content to create the User Generated Content for your personal enjoyment, but not to make money or other commercial purposes. If you want to use your User Generated Content in third party products or to make part of our content a standalone product, please first ask us for permission. What you believe, it's irrelevant. What you think it's right, it's irrelevant. Here you have one of the most lax company in the world, telling PLAIN AND SIMPLE that you can't sell mods. Period. Edit: and CD Projekt has the official modding tools! So THEY allow you to mod, it's inside their EULA. They do NOT allow you to sell. Not that hard to understand.
MaidoLover Posted April 20, 2020 Posted April 20, 2020 8 hours ago, JackWall said: @MaidoLoverAlright dude, if you prefer to keep making off-topic, don't count me in. In the 1st page you will see that I'm a modder myself and I know what I'm talking about too. As I already told you, YES, everything you are saying is irrelevant to the conversation and straw manning at best. It doesn't add anything to this conversation. You are comparing a platform to share free mods and FORBIDS asking for monetary compensations and a platform that allows you to sell stuff. Cut the crap already. Oh so it's all true lol, I see. (funny how you immediately got hostile as soon I mentioned nexus rewards, and your further reactions make any other conversation about that indeed mood) That you think comparing platforms and their contents is "irrelevant" also doesn't make much sense btw... 44 minutes ago, JackWall said: Patreon Needs to be shut down ASAP for distributing illegal content for monetary gains. "Indie artists" my ass. They need to choose a less questionable platform if they don't want to be thrown in the same camp like everyone else asking for "donations" You cannot say donations are ok for some content but not for other, it's either or (hint it's never "ok" if you offer any kind of content or benefits in exchange of money and declare it as "donation") donation /də(ʊ)ˈneɪʃ(ə)n/ noun something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money. "please send your donation of £20 to the Disaster Appeal"
MaidoLover Posted April 20, 2020 Posted April 20, 2020 18 hours ago, QuackFluffy said: from a law perspective, is there any difference between earning money by selling mods and earning money by showing ads on a mod distribution site? Obviously not, I can imagine the severity of the infringement may differ tho.
DoYourBest Posted April 20, 2020 Author Posted April 20, 2020 @MaidoLoverAt this point in the conversation I don't know if you are just a troll or dense. When you block access to a content unless you PAY a "donation", it stops being a fucking donation. It's a sale. Get-that-in-to-your-skull.
MaidoLover Posted April 21, 2020 Posted April 21, 2020 On 4/18/2020 at 6:06 PM, JackWall said: Nexus sites reward the best modders with points, https://m.imgur.com/a/Qci89uc "Donation points" How dense are *you* exactly?
DoYourBest Posted April 21, 2020 Author Posted April 21, 2020 @MaidoLoverIs it locked behind a paywall? HoW DeNSE R "yOu"?
MaidoLover Posted April 21, 2020 Posted April 21, 2020 Where did I say it is lmao. Well good job torpedoing your own topic, contradicting yourself constantly and not answering *any* of my question, except the last one, I guess, I mean that post couldn't be much clearer lol.
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