Paid Modding is gone... or is it?

[Zor2k13]

Sounds like typical board room bullshit to me no surprise there. This is what probably flies back and forth at beth when they discuss this stuff with steam or microsoft etc.

 

That whole thing sounds kind of like that reddit from gabe a while back too.

[DocClox]

 

What are they going to do? Threaten to stop buying Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax games? BIg deal, most of those whining about free content can't download off steam because they have pirated copies anyway

 

Honestly, if Bethesda are all right doing without my support and custom, I'm fine with withholding it. If I stop buying Bethesda, it won't be because I want to use my immense economic power to bring an industry giant to its knees. It'll be because I'm fed up of throwing money at a company that no longer creates software that I want to run.

[G0ldSil3nce]

in my honest opinion, im not against paid mods, BUT WHY DAFUQ IS VALVE/BETH TAKING SO MUCH PROFIT OF THE DAMN MODS?

It's like they haven't earn enough from the games and DLCs they are spewing it, at least let the modders have maybe 80% of the profit.

[Aria]

BUT WHY DAFUQ IS VALVE/BETH TAKING SO MUCH PROFIT OF THE DAMN MODS?

Because profit is the whole reason for this?

No company is going to move a finger unless there is profit to be made.

[Guest endgameaddiction]

mmmhmmmm as I said in the past. Pyramid scheme. Legit Legal one, though.

[bjornk]

Yeah, I totally support paywall for mods. That'll give me a good reason to move on and never look back. A good reason to ditch Steam for good too. Never liked that shit anyway. I'll find my entertainment elsewhere...

[rylasasin]

Ha ha ha and then I got a warning for my "paytard" comment. Calling everyone who supports freemodding a "whining little millenial" or a "kid" or "feral ghoul" is just fine apparently, but call someone a paytard and you're flamebaiting.

 

Oh, and then he marked the guy I was arguing with's answer correct, just to be spiteful.

 

Not even a month in, and Beth.net already has moderators flagrantly abusing their power. Great job, Beth. Great job. 

 

Reddit is a far superior discussion room anyway.

[DocClox]

Ha ha ha and then I got a warning for my "paytard" comment. Calling everyone who supports freemodding a "whining little millenial" or a "kid" or "feral ghoul" is just fine apparently, but call someone a paytard and you're flamebaiting.

 

Oh, and then he marked the guy I was arguing with's answer correct, just to be spiteful.

 

Not even a month in, and Beth.net already has moderators flagrantly abusing their power. Great job, Beth. Great job. 

 

Reddit is a far superior discussion room anyway.

I can't get over the fact that they make you agree to an EULA before you can use their forums to talk about their product. Amazing.

 

What have they been doing? Taking lessons in Customer Relations from Mozilla Corporation?

[LidiaSun]

Paid Mods have been gone ! The new way is let the modders make mods for us .. Again the modding community will be in the middle splitting in pieces Just because a company from the greed wants to earn every $ in others work. Too much brain essence we spend in the bad side of the capitalism huge companies who are trying to manipulate the market, the world, the people hiding behind the laws which they have payed to create. Too complicate for me sorry they can have their own way and I can stop buying anything from them, not to try to collapse a company which I don't care, but to have piece in my mind knowing at least that I don't benefit them. May the greedy walk in piece..

 

Edit 1 Although anyone can make an agreement acceptable by the law for his own benefit with almost everything to favor him in our case a company there are a lot of holes in which anyone can make a stand. What mods are really? just a replacement of textures easily found anywhere? just a quest done by anyone? or is it the idea which has made the mod? Aren't mods an Art artificial one inside an artificial world of a game for example? Ideas, Arts, Books, Programs e.tc. all are included in the area of Intellectual Property.

 

But what is Intellectual Property (IP) ? Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names and images used in commerce. IP is protected in law by, for example patents, copyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. By striking the right balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest, the IP system aims to foster an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.

http://www.wipo.int/portal/en/

 

So does mods included in this category? If yes any modder should keep his/her rights and protect the copyrights for his work and ideas. Also would be best to include in the files the list of which tools he/she used as many may use program tools which are free for non commercial use and none can benefit as a commercial product not even someone who have "stole" your idea, work e.t.c.

 

As a wish I hope in the end the modders as community will win at least their dignity of their Intellectual Property.

 

[Gameplayer]

Paid Mods have been gone ! The new way is let the modders make mods for us .. Again the modding community will be in the middle splitting in pieces Just because a company from the greed wants to earn every $ in others work. Too much brain essence we spend in the bad side of the capitalism huge companies who are trying to manipulate the market, the world, the people hiding behind the laws which they have payed to create. Too complicate for me sorry they can have their own way and I can stop buying anything from them, not to try to collapse a company which I don't care, but to have piece in my mind knowing at least that I don't benefit them. May the greedy walk in piece..

 

Edit 1 Although anyone can make an agreement acceptable by the law for his own benefit with almost everything to favor him in our case a company there are a lot of holes in which anyone can make a stand. What mods are really? just a replacement of textures easily found anywhere? just a quest done by anyone? or is it the idea which has made the mod? Aren't mods an Art artificial one inside an artificial world of a game for example? Ideas, Arts, Books, Programs e.tc. all are included in the area of Intellectual Property.

 

But what is Intellectual Property (IP) ? Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names and images used in commerce. IP is protected in law by, for example patents, copyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. By striking the right balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest, the IP system aims to foster an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.

http://www.wipo.int/portal/en/

 

So does mods included in this category? If yes any modder should keep his/her rights and protect the copyrights for his work and ideas. Also would be best to include in the files the list of which tools he/she used as many may use program tools which are free for non commercial use and none can benefit as a commercial product not even someone who have "stole" your idea, work e.t.c.

 

As a wish I hope in the end the modders as community will win at least their dignity of their Intellectual Property.

 

Bethsada doesn't claim ownership of your IP...

 

They claim license to use, distribute, and sell your IP.

 

This is why there are authors that will not use their platform.

There you go.

 

 

[Ixmore]

When I first found out about this. I gave it a long thought and believed this was a way to encourage other companies to make their game more open sourced and that Valve and Bethesda approached the situation horribly. What Bethesda should of done and should do now was commission modders like Arthmoor (along with some other modders) to patch Fallout 4 While they work on expansions and other content. Plus paid mods isn't anything new. In the end, Bethesda has to work deals with modders that make really good content without the script extender while the modding community itself need to be more proactive and be willing to pitch their mods and ideas to companies.

[Kendo 2]

Bethsada doesn't claim ownership of your IP...

They claim license to use, distribute, and sell your IP.

This is why there are authors that will not use their platform.

There you go.

The easiest way to remedy this is not to publicly mod FO4.  And if they do the same licensing scheme for TES6 don't publicly mod it either.  Their lion's share of nothing is NOTHING if you don't make anything for them to take.  One way around this is to only make things they will never want or use; nude mods, armor mash-ups using existing Bethesda meshes, etc.  Uploading original meshes and textures are out of the question now that the FO4 CK has a 'nif editor' so Bethesda can imply that they own original 3d content since it's in a Bethesda compatible nif format.

 

Monetized Modding isn't a bad thing when executed properly.  What Zenimax/Bethesda is doing is just fucked up.  The artists who make content for Poser and Daz retain all of their IP rights and the software publishers don't stake claim to original content.  If Poser/Daz did what Bethesda is doing they'd go bankrupt because no one would dev using their software.  Yet some Bethesda modders stare at the facts like a calf looking at shit-stained clover.  If people are willing to be screwed out of the IP rights then by all means let them get screwed.  They deserve it for being so stupid.

[Gameplayer]

 

Bethsada doesn't claim ownership of your IP...

They claim license to use, distribute, and sell your IP.

This is why there are authors that will not use their platform.

There you go.

The easiest way to remedy this is not to publicly mod FO4.  And if they do the same licensing scheme for TES6 don't publicly mod it either.  Their lion's share of nothing is NOTHING if you don't make anything for them to take.  One way around this is to only make things they will never want or use; nude mods, armor mash-ups using existing Bethesda meshes, etc.  Uploading original meshes and textures are out of the question now that the FO4 CK has a 'nif editor' so Bethesda can imply that they own original 3d content since it's in a Bethesda compatible nif format.

 

Monetized Modding isn't a bad thing when executed properly.  What Zenimax/Bethesda is doing is just fucked up.  The artists who make content for Poser and Daz retain all of their IP rights and the software publishers don't stake claim to original content.  If Poser/Daz did what Bethesda is doing they'd go bankrupt because no one would dev using their software.  Yet some Bethesda modders stare at the facts like a calf looking at shit-stained clover.  If people are willing to be screwed out of the IP rights then by all means let them get screwed.  They deserve it for being so stupid.

 

 

I wanted to put some thought into it before making a reply.

 

That said Im not always the best with a text message so here we go.

 

 

The climate of modding for Bethsada Games is this.

 

We had a chance of actually having a price tag on our work.  This is actually a good thing for us the Mod Authors, due to the fact of what legal tender will imply for all of our works.  This is a good thing no matter how small that price tag was in fact even at 0.05 Dollars it now changes the realm of what we do and now copyright and protections of Intellectual Property become the law of the land no matter what country your from.

 

Kendo2 brought up a good point that I don't think the vast amount of mod authors and mod users understand.  The reason why we re-use assets from the base game goes all the way back to the original Bethsada games we started moddin on.   That reason is that even back then original created assets were worth money, even if it was only a few dollars creating original meshes has been out of the question the entire time for Bethsada Games.

 

Yes I understand that original meshes and textures have all been created at one point or another by mod authors but what people don't understand is that through the entire time of modding for this platform people have come at for "reasons".  Example there have been a good deal of mods created as Senior Graduation projects for college courses in the field of game design.  Example 2, a good deal of people wanted to get their teeth cut on creating outfits for a game and establishing themselves before then working on outfits for bill of sale for platforms that existed at that time such as Second Life.

What a lot and perhaps all modding enthusiasts don't understand is that right now today a person can create a DAZ 3d outfit and expect to sell it on their platform for distribution.

 

That is a major reason why we will not see an army of modders mashing out completely new outfits.  I know a lot of people reading this will think Im insane but what the reader doesn't understand is that meshes used in Fallout 4 for the outfits you genuinely love are almost always in fact either just a one off, a re-ported outfit, or just a clever re-use of meshes from the games Fo4meshes.BSA found right in your file folder.

 

I see a lot of people lick balls claiming wow your outfit is so cool but the thing I know from having made over 4,000 UUNP sliders....I know who is full of shit and whos not.  Cause I've worked on damn near every single cool and even not cool outfits...I know exactly what Im working on and where it came from and I happen to know that 99% of the mod authors that make a claim on their work as being copyright material and or closed permission's actually don't understand jack and shit about copyright process...I also happen to know that doesn't really matter cause at the end of the day it comes down to a moderator at said website's understanding of "is this mesh protected by copyright law?"

 

Example, I know that mod users reading this will know about this....Example  Witcher 3 outfits.

Every single Witcher 3 outfit on Nexus is usually locked down by permissions which in fact is a breach of TOS with the Witcher Games Series.  No outfit by Witcher that is re-purposed can be locked down like that and in fact by doing so you void your usage of said materials in mods.

 

For Modding right now...You gotta understand that anything you make that doesn't come with a price tag is pretty much open game.  That alone should make mod authors run for the hills but nope they got their blinders on.  The only thing protecting mod authors is just how Moderators will interpret the situation on their own website by their TOS which is actually going to be effected by the TOS of said Corperation that controls the platform you are modding on.  Basically Bethsada or whatever company gets a say in how the website writes its Terms of Service and if that wasn't enough...

 

You have Bethsada.net

Here they have exclusive legal rights to the everything of uploaded content including your name, your picture, and the everything of how you present said mod.  This extends to complete legal right to change, use, re-pack, or sell in future platforms.

This is the whole shebang of we done run out of intellectual capitol and now we have orchestrated the means to farm it out to unpaid specialists.

 

All the while the masses applaud saying thank you.

 

How has the modding atmosphere changed the internet and the lengths that people go too to protect their work.

 

Best Example.

 

Most of you will not understand but in fact "Textures" or rather complete Texture Packs.

Are worth around about 200,000 to 1,000,000 that's right 1 fucking million US dollars.  Companies don't make these all on their own.  They purchase it.

About 15 years ago we mod authors used to be able to just grab whatever we wanted off of major sites that would hold massive libraries of textures.

As long as the work produced was in fact free to use, and some we had to explicitly state where those textures came from...Which believe it or not some of your favorite authors neglected to mention.

 

Try looking for an original texture pack now on Fallout 4 or for that on Bethsada.Net.....I bet Xenimax would just come all over themselves if someone uploaded a decent game ready set of textures from one of those libraries.

 

The next thing that gets me...

 

Is that on the internet in any circle jerk about paid modding....A 5 year old's opinion on the topic is of the same value as a man that spent a 1,000 work hours on a mod.  A man with no background in the creation of a mod his voice matters as much as the man with 3 college degree's, 10 years of work experience in a professional career and a dozen certifications and working towards a doctorate.

 

Next thing,

 

With this move towards bringing mods to the consoles before millions more people that play games in number than us modders or even our mod users....Well see that's the thing, we know better than they do what is going to happen or at least I thought that people that modded would know.

 

The demand is so great for the constant creation of new material for consumption that eventually.  Every game that wants to turn a real buck is going to have to get on this band wagon.  That is in direct conflict with the status que of selling an outfit retexture for 5 dollars.

 

More than that the demand will be too great to hold back the tide.

 

Eventually they will have to lure mod authors to create content for their game platform...Or in fact some other Corporation will just step up to the plate.

 

Before long, perhaps 5 to 10 years and possibly sooner if players on consoles can just download free costumes off of Xbox one well pssshhht there is no way that the other companies are going to stand by and watch their own costume sales go down.  They will pressure the Console Companies to put a price tag on all or certain content to prevent players jumping over to Bethsada.   I mean come on, Bethsada right now is a huge fucking gaint now...Developers like XCOM's Jake Soloman went on record saying that he himself knew about the longevity and extreme popularity of Skyrim due massively in part to Mods.  Jake Soloman you guys know of him right...He played Xcom Long War...Met with the developer of the LW mod made a big splash in the news about helping JohnyLump and his team get their legs...

 

The thing that a lot of the people screaming about paid mods don't understand is that before long its going to be in the best interests of Microsoft and Sony Playstation to control the flow of content to keep game developers on their platform at all.  They will have to do so just to create enough revenue stream to just host the mods and also every game will have to feature work of mod artists.

 

This will also mean that countries notably the United States and the European Nations will have to begin regulating.

 

Something that a lot of end-users don't understand is that since the platforming of computers has gotten easier due to Microsoft Windows there are whole big swathes of the population that don't have the essentials for creating mods for platforms in the first place.   In colleges today I know for fact since Im working on requisites for going after a Masters, there are Professors who have to pound stuff that was pretty darn basic into the heads of the current college students.  That stuff I knew when I was 5, had to know just to get the programs to even turn on.

So whats that really mean..........Whats all of this mean.

Its just going to get harder for up coming future mod authors to get there start.  The skills needed are falling away and to top it off it will be regulated and that part....I don't think people really understand I mean there are some regulations now and that stuff that's going get in the way of free content.

 

Which uh I don't mind.  Like I said putting a price on a mod says its mine.  Price means Goverments have to regulate.  Regulation means I have a mod and its got a price on it...I can show sales, that'll just mean that people that are not with it due to age have a better understanding of what it is that I have made.

 

Cause a price means I have a product which means Im not a low life.

 

The population in this world wow just wow they don't actually know what mods are or understand the great amount of critical thinking across several different fronts that would require according to Ivory Towers a great deal of education that costs a crap ton of money in todays climate.  We're not just talking about using MudBox 3D which is a whole education your going to burn real serious money to get taught for if you want a real job.

We're talking also, customer support, tech support, play testing, service relations, updates, trouble shooting the customers tech, advertising across not just picture and text media but also taking full advantage of full motion picture livestreaming on platforms like YouTube, and I could just go on and on there are so many requisite skills and our end-users never stop demanding that we understand and Master them all.

 

Mod Authors today that bring in the numbers are an altogether different species than most will ever recognize.

 

That's something that should have those game job holders shaking in their boots.

 

[afa]

I don't get it...so the barrier of entry to modding is getting higher, ok that's fine, normal even, but then putting a price tag on it will keep it even elevated and that's a good reason?

 

Also what does this mean? Or does this mean what I think it means...and how enforceable is it?

"Every single Witcher 3 outfit on Nexus is usually locked down by permissions which in fact is a breach of TOS with the Witcher Games Series.  No outfit by Witcher that is re-purposed can be locked down like that and in fact by doing so you void your usage of said materials in mods."

[Gameplayer]

I got a friend who checks out as being the guy that first made a lucrative living off of the Bullitene Board System.

So good in fact he left his day job running a companies computers way back.

 

You know no one he ever talked too understood the gravity of what he accomplished while he was in the trenches doing it.

In the end the world claimed that the inventor of the internet was Vice President of the United States Al Gore...But I think it was the guy that was making millions of dollars in revenue and not the guy that simply put regulations on the man that made the money.

 

What he tells me is this.

In the end with modding regulations will catch up.

 

And some people know more about it than others.

[Gameplayer]

I don't get it...so the barrier of entry to modding is getting higher, ok that's fine, normal even, but then putting a price tag on it will keep it even elevated and that's a good reason?

 

Also what does this mean? Or does this mean what I think it means...and how enforceable is it?

"Every single Witcher 3 outfit on Nexus is usually locked down by permissions which in fact is a breach of TOS with the Witcher Games Series.  No outfit by Witcher that is re-purposed can be locked down like that and in fact by doing so you void your usage of said materials in mods."

 

The Witcher Outfits is only as enforceable as the Moderator for said Website is willing to enforce....

 

But basically the answer of what you can do is in the TOS for the Witcher stuff.  Basically you see a mod with a custom you want converted sure you can convert that and should be able to put it up but the way I see it its not worth posting on  said site cause then there is hassle.

 

Because then you have to weigh the Witcher TOS and the Site Tos and then it all has to be approved by moderator who might be fed up or just bust down on the lowest common denominator which IDK is just human nature or a bad day either way.

Those outfits with perm locks are out there.

 

It was just an example to use.

 

There are a lot of altered Skyrim Meshes that are also perm locked.

 

I worked on an outfit conversion it was perm locked by 3 leg straps and 6 spikes on a set of guantlets.

The Spikes amounted to being plan ordinary cones ported from blender.

The straps are well all of what 10 verts each strap and painfully easy to produce.

Those are just examples of idiocy and well whatever.

I may as well upload each shape from blender and tell everyone these shapes are permission locked.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

The last thing I want to make clear.

 

I have no control over the outcome of Paid Mods...I don't.

 

But, the thing is that

 

End Users demand high quality products which we tend to deliver.

The nature of modding has demanded that one man or woman has a lot of talent for a diverse amount of skills that people normally go to school to specialize in just one skill.

Lastly, the more the end-user demands and the more they specifically demand more content and scream free....

 

Well that just feeds back into an unwritten law....

The Law of Supply and Demand.

[Kendo 2]

There is one reason why I permission block most of the stuff I make; that's because of the self-entitled douches who takes things they didn't work on, spend 10 or 15 minutes in OutfitStudio and then pretend they reinvented the fucking wheel when they upload something that I spent days or weeks working on.  They don't ask, they don't give proper credit.  They take with a derp-duh-derp TL;DR wormy attitude.  The ONLY way to stop that is to state 'no conversions whatsoever' and hope the site backs me up.  They have so far so no complaints there.

 

I tried explaining to people here when FO4 first came out that the EULA clearly states Bethesda thinks they own anything made to work with their stupid game.  By simply installing FO4 you agree to the terms by default.  I was told 'you're full of shit' and 'modders own their mods'.  It didn't matter that what I stated was in back and white in the EULA.  And now the Bethesda.net TOS reinforces that license.  But I'm still full of shit because the facts contradict what a bunch game forum douches want to be true.

 

Even as the truth finally starts to sink in people are willing to mod FO4 with the delusion that the EULA and business reality don't apply to them.  Look at what's happening on Nexus and people stealing mods from there and then uploading them to Bethesda.net as their own original content.  The Nexus staff are a bunch of eunuchs with their 'Bethesda owns anything uploaded to Bethesda.net...but please don't stop uploading mods to Nexus...even though we're not going to protect your work'.  That is the atmosphere of FO4 modding and people are still participating in it.  There's no way to fix stupid so let FO4 modders get fucked by the sites and fan base they're making mods for.  They deserve it.

[Gameplayer]

There is one reason why I permission block most of the stuff I make; that's because of the self-entitled douches who takes things they didn't work on, spend 10 or 15 minutes in OutfitStudio and then pretend they reinvented the fucking wheel when they upload something that I spent days or weeks working on.  They don't ask, they don't give proper credit.  They take with a derp-duh-derp TL;DR wormy attitude.  The ONLY way to stop that is to state 'no conversions whatsoever' and hope the site backs me up.  They have so far so no complaints there.

 

I tried explaining to people here when FO4 first came out that the EULA clearly states Bethesda thinks they own anything made to work with their stupid game.  By simply installing FO4 you agree to the terms by default.  I was told 'you're full of shit' and 'modders own their mods'.  It didn't matter that what I stated was in back and white in the EULA.  And now the Bethesda.net TOS reinforces that license.  But I'm still full of shit because the facts contradict what a bunch game forum douches want to be true.

 

Even as the truth finally starts to sink in people are willing to mod FO4 with the delusion that the EULA and business reality don't apply to them.  Look at what's happening on Nexus and people stealing mods from there and then uploading them to Bethesda.net as their own original content.  The Nexus staff are a bunch of eunuchs with their 'Bethesda owns anything uploaded to Bethesda.net...but please don't stop uploading mods to Nexus...even though we're not going to protect your work'.  That is the atmosphere of FO4 modding and people are still participating in it.  There's no way to fix stupid so let FO4 modders get fucked by the sites and fan base they're making mods for.  They deserve it.

 

Its funny cause I was thinking today about asking you if you would like me to include your boots into a massive pack for Skyrim that puts the items into the leveled lists.

 

Of course I thought all the way back to what was it 12 months ago when you posted those and you said no Bodyslide Converiosn lol.

I've been building like mad after I get done with studying at the library.  The mod is too big to just explain on a simple page so I thought I'd ask you after release what you thought of it and then ask if I can put your boots in and put you in the credits....

 

Of course my next thought was Kendo2 would shudder and scream hell no we no longer friends that website can burn.

 

So I was building the mod and thinking about damn this mod is a hella lotta work compared to a lot of things I've done and this time well this time I understand completely exactly what Im doing to put it together each step of the way.  I don't stop and think how is this done now....Go bug some busy mod author...Ok and this step whattamIsupposed to do...

 

Nope I just build, but the thing is uh....I get like 20 messages a day from people asking me for my work, asking me to make something else, people saying I'll trade this for that.....And these guys act like I'm cranky old asshole what they don't get is they are the hundredth person to ask lolz.

 

><

 

So I didn't put it in just so we're clear....what you just said sparked off that I had thought about asking but thought of all the things that would probably make you say no.

 

[DixiePig]

There is one reason why I permission block most of the stuff I make; that's because of the self-entitled douches who takes things they didn't work on, spend 10 or 15 minutes in OutfitStudio and then pretend they reinvented the fucking wheel when they upload something that I spent days or weeks working on.  They don't ask, they don't give proper credit.  They take with a derp-duh-derp TL;DR wormy attitude.  The ONLY way to stop that is to state 'no conversions whatsoever' and hope the site backs me up.  They have so far so no complaints there.

 

I tried explaining to people here when FO4 first came out that the EULA clearly states Bethesda thinks they own anything made to work with their stupid game.  By simply installing FO4 you agree to the terms by default.  I was told 'you're full of shit' and 'modders own their mods'.  It didn't matter that what I stated was in back and white in the EULA.  And now the Bethesda.net TOS reinforces that license.  But I'm still full of shit because the facts contradict what a bunch game forum douches want to be true.

 

Even as the truth finally starts to sink in people are willing to mod FO4 with the delusion that the EULA and business reality don't apply to them.  Look at what's happening on Nexus and people stealing mods from there and then uploading them to Bethesda.net as their own original content.  The Nexus staff are a bunch of eunuchs with their 'Bethesda owns anything uploaded to Bethesda.net...but please don't stop uploading mods to Nexus...even though we're not going to protect your work'.  That is the atmosphere of FO4 modding and people are still participating in it.  There's no way to fix stupid so let FO4 modders get fucked by the sites and fan base they're making mods for.  They deserve it.

 

Consider modders who are not attached to their work, such that they:

• Feel like once released, their work belongs to the community
• What they get out of making it is that other people use it
• Like it when their work is adapted, remixed, and built upon
• Open to the idea that people will use their work in ways that contradict their original vision
• Don't really care about being credited

I think this is the attitude is best served by the current state of modding. If the idea of other people adapting your work upsets you, maybe try asking yourself why that is? And, if you could choose, would you feel that way, or some other way? We feel totally fine modding BGS games into pornography, which I imagine the devs at BGS don't agree with.

One reason I wouldn't want FO4 modders to "get fucked" is that the community is able to create works that can't sustainably exist in either indie or AAA development. Look at the base-building in FO4: that certainly couldn't have existed if it hadn't been proven in a modder's experiment which would have been too radical for AAA, and too expensive for indies.  Like the entire MOBA genre.

Or, also, the entirety of LoversLab.

 

When you release your work with the intention that it be appropriated by other modders, You are contributing to a library of assets that will be drawn from to create ideas that will change the state of the art of gaming. It's just like Sting said: "If you love your work, set it free, since you're not getting paid either way".

 

Note: 

• There are a lot of advantages to proper practice around accreditation, so that should always be encouraged.
• I agree that the EULA is bad, no good can come of it, it's basically a sword of Damocles over the entirety of modding and I hope it never falls on us. We should encourage Bethesda to change it, never use it, and never do it again.

[Gameplayer]

The issue with other modders coming in is well............

 

Hell, I had a guy message me that he wanted a Sotteta Huntress UUNP Bodyslide made by me for use in his mod and an esp with the HDT Heels removed with Nio-Override used in its place.

 

He of course was saying his mod would make the armors that "no one plays with anymore cause buried under mountain" and forgotten...Well his mod would balance these outfits for player usage and also supposedly shine a light on the mod authors old works....But he wanted all the works included in his mod which kinda really only serves as a minor rebalance ESP and really the only point to re-packing the armor into the mod is so that his downloaders don't have to download all its masters.

 

Sounds real cool right?

 

Thing is it didn't sit well with me.

 

So I told him that I was building a mod (which uh it does in fact exist haha) that was using the assets from the UUNP Packs that I had made under full permissions which is true....

 

The mod adds 44 mashup chest pieces 30 glove/boot/helmets/gorgets and many of the armors are in fact total mashup creations with brand new GND/GO objects.........But that's not all!!!!

Here's a link to an advertisement I made for the mod,

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/611942/?

 

Yes in fact that's an ad for a free mod that's nearing completion.  That stuff takes time and time isn't free.  A street performer comes too my mind when I think of the topic of paid modding and the response its gotten.

 

If your looking through my Progress Reports on the mod, if you have extensive modding experience and know your mods by heart....You'd realize that Im going the extra mile. When I make my next design pass of the Outfits and yes Im talking how these actually look in the game they wont be just direct ports of the original author material which the guy who's saying he's making cool armor mod is basically using direct ports and only just balancing the outfit for a suggested group of levels.....So basically he does nothing and gets awesome points for it and in fact what Im getting at was he was asking me to do all the work other than him inputting some new value integers into the appropriate fields.

 

Well that seems kinda off to me.

 

My mod does exactly what his mod does plus 10 times more as its fully integrated with the Vanilla Game, meaning its entirely game balanced outta the shute...All the items are available for use for quest rewards, NPC's, Loot, venders, and well everywhere.

 

In fact in its current state a person might not see the same set of Steel Armor being used by female NPC's.....Cause I put in 20 versions of that armor...

I'm not even certain if the new modders know what a mash-up is...Im guessing the answer is no.

 

But the only thing he took away from that message was that it made NPC's look different.  He didn't get that I'm going miles beyond where his will be.

And he's coming to me to ask for stuff that I worked on for quite a while and that took time....Plenty of people tried before I came along to build the slider sets.  Bodyslide wasn't nearly as good as it is now, of course I say this an I am the guy that converted a metric shit ton of them so take that with a grain of salt...I guess it still gives people trouble.

 

But not only that he didn't have enough of a clue to understand to find it all he had to do was type in UUNP Bodyslide in a Search box.

He didn't even know I had already built it a full year ago.

He never looked through my profile and examine every mod I authored or re-authored.  Heck, the crazy thing is the original mod author has the direct link for the UUNP conversion on his mod page, in fact a great deal of Nsk13's stuff has every link for stuff related to the work.

How are we supposed to feel about glory seekers that don't even know what we have done and they come up and ask us to build shit for their mod.

 

 

Edit:

 

IF you don't understand Kendo2....

Its because you don't have enough time in producing content.   You haven't been far enough along in it yet to understand how far the rabbit hole goes.

 

Edit:

 

People don't get its just Volume 1 of a series.

 

I already have Volume 2 planned.

 

When I get far enough along...well.

[DocClox]

I tried explaining to people here when FO4 first came out that the EULA clearly states Bethesda thinks they own anything made to work with their stupid game.  By simply installing FO4 you agree to the terms by default.  I was told 'you're full of shit' and 'modders own their mods'.  It didn't matter that what I stated was in back and white in the EULA.  And now the Bethesda.net TOS reinforces that license.  But I'm still full of shit because the facts contradict what a bunch game forum douches want to be true.

I got into an argument on the old Beth forums about this sort of thing a while back. Someone had made a mod that moved some stuff around in one of Arthmoor's mods. Arthmoor objected to this. The trouble was that the modders in question didn't include any of Arthmoor's code or assets, just an script that soft-loaded the esp and ran some moveto commands.

 

So, in the middle of this, I posed a wikipedia link about derivative works. What these guys had done was rude, and their intent seems to have been to troll Arthmoor (which seems an exercise on a par with trying to soak water) but for all that, they hadn't used his resources and so weren't in violation of copyright.

 

As a result, I had this one chap tear a strip off me for (among other things) trying to introduce irrelevancies into the debate. Which seemed odd really; in so far as we have any legal rights at all over our creations, those rights are the rights granted to us by copyright law. So whether or not the law considers a work to be derivative would seem to be astonishingly relevant. But this guy wouldn't have it: he "ownded" his works and that was all there was to it and what was I some filthy pirate or something?

 

I think the problem is that amateur creators have spent so long listening to bullshit reasons why copyright shouldn't apply in some circumstance or other, that they've got it into their heads that "ownership" is absolute. They forget that legally ownership is a function of copyright, and that copyright cuts both ways.

 

According to the Berne Convention, you automatically have copyright on all your created works. You don't need to register them, mark them as copyright or have a commercial use for them. The only way copyright doesn't apply is if you specifically assign it either to the public domain, or to another party.

 

The assigning ownership to another party is what you agree to in the FO4 EULA when you grant title to Bethesda for all work that could plausibly be derived from FO4 assets or created using Bethesda tools.

 

TL;DR: Kendo is absolutely right. That EULA is toxic for modders.

[Kendo 2]

Well, reading and drafting licenses is major part of my RL job.  I can look at a license and know what I'm reading and I understand what the unsaid implications are.  That said, I've given up on trying to explain things to people when they already have their minds made up.  If they want to be stupid and wrong I'm cool with it.  I won't suffer from it because I'm not modding FO4 or allowing anything I've ever made to be converted for use with that game.  I'm not a fan of the game to begin with and I know it needs serious fucking help, but not at my expense and certainly not for the sake of some hokey concept like 'community'.

I'm to the point now where I'm not doing any original mesh or texture work unless it's for my Poser storefront.  No way in Hell I'd publicly share original game content the way things are now.  I can barely stomach OutfitStudio losers leeching and poaching everything they can get there no-talent hands on, but imagine some asshole taking someone else's original mesh and texture work and goddamn GIVING them to Bethesda.net without any thought.  That's what FO4 'modding' is.

 

Even if Bethesda.net starts up paid modding I won't participate.  Their licensing and TOS are totally fucked from a vendor's standpoint.

 

'If you use our software we own what you've made.  If you upload it to Bethesda.net then we really own it since we'll control it.  Oh, and here's your 5 cents on the dollar from every copy we sell...because you were stupid enough to make something and then surrender it to us.'

 

Oh yeah, man.  That's a winning proposition right there.      What's sad is people are going to be dumb enough to do it.   lmfao

[afa]

I am seeing diverging arguments here.

We have people spending countless time and effort creating mesh and textures, but also have people spending countless time and effort repackaging and arranging assets to serve end user, and both are vying for control over their work...and both are pointing at some, allegedly, "lazy" modders who should not be entitle to the same.

 

This is...not unexpected, but quite troublesome indeed.

[Gameplayer]

I am seeing diverging arguments here.

We have people spending countless time and effort creating mesh and textures, but also have people spending countless time and effort repackaging and arranging assets to serve end user, and both are vying for control over their work...and both are pointing at some, allegedly, "lazy" modders who should not be entitle to the same.

 

This is...not unexpected, but quite troublesome indeed.

 

Well right

Since Im the king of bodyslide assholes.

But here's the thing, if a guy like Kendo2 wants to earn money for his original work well I say he should.

I get that people don't think that I know my way around a render box but that's because people don't check my profiles and look at my mods Ive done cause if they really did they'd know that I know how to use those.

Cause I have an original completely not Bethsada's property mesh up on Nexus....Its totally mine, no one elses.

So whats likely confused a lot of people is they think that I only know Bodyslide.

What I know is this.

I'm repurposing assets that other authors repurposed from Skyrim.

The next mod is a clever mashup mod.

But all the crap is repurposed repurposed Skyrimmeshes.BSA

 

Cause Im not about to give away work I did in Blender.

[afa]

Don't get me wrong I love your work. Bodyslide or not to be honest means little to me as end user. Ultimately it all boils down to does it work and will I use it or not. Rather it is completely original or a repackage or a conversion quite frankly doesn't matter.

Which of course I am guessing it is something creator takes issue with, which then lead to whose metric we use to judge a mod and its relevancy.