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OMG the Hypocrisy


Shadowhawk827

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I saw this tonight on the Bethesda forums and I almost died of hypocrisy poisoning.  This from Jleavey; their Community manager.

 

 

Recently we’ve received an influx of queries related to the ability to receive funding for mod projects, including crowd sourced sites like KickStarter and Patreon. Per the language defined in the our EULA for the Creation Kit, this practice is not allowed.

 

In section 1 of the EULA, the following details are outline:

 

B. No Fees for Use. In exchange for the Editor being provided to you free of charge, You agree that You will not charge or require, directly or indirectly, a fee or other consideration for others to download, install or use Your Game Mods, including without limitation selling, licensing or other commercial distribution or commercial exploitation (e.g., by renting, licensing, sublicensing, leasing, disseminating, uploading, downloading, transmitting, whether on a pay-per-play basis or otherwise) of any Game Mods without the express prior written consent of an authorized representative of ZeniMax. This includes distributing a Game Mods as part of any compilation You and/or other users may create. You further agree not to charge, accept or solicit, directly or indirectly, fees or non-monetary contributions for developing or creating Game Mods, including without limitation fees collected through “crowd funding.” However, the foregoing limitations in this Section shall not apply if and to the extent such agreement violates applicable law. You further agree that You are only permitted to distribute the Game Mods to users who have purchased the Product through authorized and legitimate distribution channels, solely for use with such users’ own authorized copies of such Product and in accordance with and subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement and all applicable laws

 

 

So bottom line, their own TOS for the CK says mods have to be free...  At least unless there's a buck in it for them.

 

Just.....  WOW.

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How the hell is a person suppose to know if someone downloading your mod actually has a legit game or not? Background check? Go to their house and knock on their door and ask to see their game? That part right there is just fucking stupid.

 

Glad I stopped buying their shit.

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Actually, proving you knowingly distributed the mod to people with pirated copies is exceptionally simple.

 

Any mod shared publicly can be considered "knowingly distributed to people with pirated copies" because when you hit that upload button, you *KNOW* that people with pirated copies can use it.

By putting it on a public domain (and not a private one where you can check each and every person to ensure he did not commit piracy) you are distributing it to everyone, and among those people are the pirates.

 

Even if you claim you didn't know pirated copies can use very literally any mod, they can probably force you to take down all of your mods or at the very least prohibit you from sharing any new ones.

 

The best thing is, mods have literally no defense against this.

Even if you threw in a line of code that tried to access the steam_api.dll of Skyrim (for example) and check if it was pirated or not, players could remove it.

Even if they couldn't, you still *DISTRIBUTED* it to them, even if they can't use it, thus you broke the ToS.

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6 minutes ago, Vaelorian said:

Actually, proving you knowingly distributed the mod to people with pirated copies is exceptionally simple.

 

Any mod shared publicly can be considered "knowingly distributed to people with pirated copies" because when you hit that upload button, you *KNOW* that people with pirated copies can use it.

By putting it on a public domain (and not a private one where you can check each and every person to ensure he did not commit piracy) you are distributing it to everyone, and among those people are the pirates.

 

Even if you claim you didn't know pirated copies can use very literally any mod, they can probably force you to take down all of your mods or at the very least prohibit you from sharing any new ones.

 

The best thing is, mods have literally no defense against this.

Even if you threw in a line of code that tried to access the steam_api.dll of Skyrim (for example) and check if it was pirated or not, players could remove it.

Even if they couldn't, you still *DISTRIBUTED* it to them, even if they can't use it, thus you broke the ToS.

 

Splitting hairs there.  Can and would a company like Bethesda use logic like that to abuse their own TOS if they felt like excluding a user?  Absolutely.

 

From a legal standpoint however, trying to convict somebody of piracy or pursue any sort of "damages" for distributing copies to people using bootleggged copies is going to take a higher standard of proof.

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No native speaker, but to possibly split more hairs: does "charge or require, directly or indirectly" include donations voluntarily given? As far as i understand that, putting your mod behind a paywall would be a violation, getting money although not required isn't. In the end, that's a merely theoretical point because without paywall, you can still put on a patreon site and say "that's for me, tip if you like me". 

And as long as it includes paywalls only... i honestly don't have a problem with that in general, the hypocrisy remains ofc.

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1 hour ago, Nazzzgul666 said:

No native speaker, but to possibly split more hairs: does "charge or require, directly or indirectly" include donations voluntarily given? As far as i understand that, putting your mod behind a paywall would be a violation, getting money although not required isn't. In the end, that's a merely theoretical point because without paywall, you can still put on a patreon site and say "that's for me, tip if you like me". 

And as long as it includes paywalls only... i honestly don't have a problem with that in general, the hypocrisy remains ofc.

No, donations that people give voluntarily are not "required".

 

I am not sure, however, if this prohibits people from accepting money to create mods. That could possibly be argued to be a form of indirect charge or requirement.

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11 minutes ago, Vaelorian said:

No, donations that people give voluntarily are not "required".

 

I am not sure, however, if this prohibits people from accepting money to create mods. That may be a form of indirect charge or requirement.

In case of doubt/court that's pretty hard to prove... imagine some modder has a patreon page, and he gets money for making mods. Then he gets ill, or on vacation, or just loses his mood to make mods. Or moves to another game. Would patreons get their money back if he doesn't make more mods?

I could imagine if this would really go to court the lawyers would split a lot of hairs. The difference might be between "With your money i can make mods" and "With your money, i don't have to work that much and can spend my free time with making mods" which is essentially the same, but... one might say, in one case they get money for making mods, in the other he gets money for making a living. And occasionally spends some free time to make mods.

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to be fair they say " without the express prior written consent of an authorized representative of ZeniMax "
but about the crowdfunding, mods like skyrim together which contacted them directly are receiving donations basically with zenimax knowledge, but they are not doing anything to the team... this line is there just for cases where people abuse the system and start selling pieces of the game like "mods" or possible fake mods being sold

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3 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

Wait, so does that mean donations are in violation with the TOS? 

(I'll just preface this by saying I'm no copyright lawyer, and am not speaking for LL in this post, just as me.)

 

If you donate to somebody for doing what they do, then they're not charging for something. This is why we can't have paywalling of mods. They do, however, accept contributions, and having a link to a patreon account can be seen as soliciting contributions, and if they're making mods, then it's hard to argue the contributions are not for continuing to make mods. Which, for some reason, people agree not to do by once accepting a eula that seems to change occasionally, of a creation kit that may or may not be used to make "a Game Mods" (which isn't English). Nevertheless, 'this' eula is to be respected for all Beth modding by all modders, except when it's in violation of "applicable law", whichever that's supposed to be.

 

So, eh... I dunno. Let's not stress too much over something this ill-conceived. Both Nexus and LL have allowed voluntary donations if there's no paywalling for a while now, and there doesn't seem to be much of a problem being made of it by Beth. It's well known they have lawyers that need to earn their paycheck, so if it was that big of a deal what we allow here, we would've heard something. I'll also point out that apparently non-monetary contributions to a mod are also not ok, so for some reason people aren't allowed to donate assets to a mod project anymore either. ;)

 

Glad I'm still modding FNV though, and never accept a penny for it. That keeps things simple.

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This bit of hypocrisy is not news for the cynics among us. It's basic business practice: one standard for us, another for our customers. How many posters here have already posited the existence of this legal loophole? Too many to count.

 

Boycotting their crap is about the only thing we can do to protest. "Money talks, shit walk."

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The way the original post was written at Bethesda, which was posted in it's entirety by me, Bethesda is trying to leave itself wiggle room but is implying by including Patreon that tipping and voluntary donations are frowned upon.  They didn't outright say it because they're testing the waters like they did with the Steam Workshop paid mods.  That was mafioso level clever ruthless business there; letting Steam take the flack for Bethesda's idea. 

 

Funny...  There's a person or two at the Nexus arguing it's not hypocrisy, just their TOS.  Their TOS existed for ages as stated above though; ever since the Morrowind CK was released at least.  NOW they see the mods are more popular than the crap base content they release and push paid mods on us.  The real hypocrisy to me is that nobody really even thought of getting paid voluntarily or otherwise for mods until Bethesda itself pushed the idea on us.

 

As for Ernest's comment...  Been there, done that.  First EA and now with Bethesda too.  Kind of a shame really.  Wolfenstein 2 looked promising in the trailers.  I won't even buy it in the bargain bin now.

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3 minutes ago, Shadowhawk827 said:

As for Ernest's comment...  Been there, done that.  First EA and now with Bethesda too.  Kind of a shame really.  Wolfenstein 2 looked promising in the trailers.  I won't even buy it in the bargain bin now.

What's irritating is we won't hear a thing about whether or not boycotts are having an effect on Bethesda by watching the NASDAQ. Zenimax is privately traded so their finances don't have to be shared with anyone who isn't an investor. Unlike EA, which is publicly traded. And yeah, I kind of wanted to get Wolf 2 too, but after everything Beth has pulled over the last two years? Forget it. I even passed up buying a copy of DOOM, which had gone from $60 a month ago to $20. If I find it in the bargain bin after the New Year, I'll take that as a sign.

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4 minutes ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

What's irritating is we won't hear a thing about whether or not boycotts are having an effect on Bethesda by watching the NASDAQ. Zenimax is privately traded so their finances don't have to be shared with anyone who isn't an investor. Unlike EA, which is publicly traded. And yeah, I kind of wanted to get Wolf 2 too, but after everything Beth has pulled over the last two years? Forget it. I even passed up buying a copy of DOOM, which had gone from $60 a month ago to $20. If I find it in the bargain bin after the New Year, I'll take that as a sign.

Look at the bright side...  Bethesda games always look good in the trailers, LOL.   Reality is all we're probably missing is more aggravation along the lines that the CK SE gives users.

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That's because they spend all their money on their trailers and then when they get to the actual game they have no more money left so they then just shove out a half assed game with more broken parts then a China shop that just had a bull run through it and hope some people will glue all the shit back together for them for FREE.

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14 hours ago, D_ManXX2 said:

maybe they are planning something even more intrusive this time. this is even a step further then creation club. so by putting your mods on nexus or other sites you violate their toss ??

If they do, they may well finish what things like BethNet and the CC have started: kill their (newer) games' modding communities. It feels like Bethesda doesn't understand or appreciate what modders have done for their games. They need an object lesson in why it's such a bad idea to alienate the modding community. Or they could act as such to other companies who might repeat their mistakes.

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  • 1 month later...

Stop fixing their CC crap for them and stop making mods for platforms other than PC. Most all of the money they make from the CC comes from console players and if there are no mods or a steady stream of CC content for them (most all of which comes from PC modders) then they will get bored soon enough and move on. Anything that uses quests and basic scripting can use game.getplatformName() and it will return what platform it is being run on.

 

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"making players into payers..."

 

*Maximum Kek ensues*

 

I wouldn't lose sleep so much with this TOS... hypocritical or not it may be...that's just legal corporate speak for "I wash my hands off the blood of this person...until I decide to shed said blood otherwise, this is kinda, sorta, a bad thing to do...savvy?"

 

 

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