Arthmoor

You should be ok to install the patches now and upgrade to USLEEP later. If you'd rather avoid the hassle involved in uninstalling the current patches to install the new one when the time comes, you could just wait. It'll only be a matter of about 6 more weeks at most. Assuming nothing goes wrong with the upcoming public beta.

The Argonia stuff was a hoax. Renewing Redguard's trademark - that ought to be obvious now that it's up on GoG. I'd wager if people looked, they'd find Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire also got renewals recently enough that they didn't need them again yet. It's not an indication of content to come in a future title. The next TES game is still a good 2-3 years away. I wouldn't judge the content of a future Black Marsh title on the Shadowfen region from ESO. If you look at the comparison between ESO's Eastmarch region and the Eastmarch Hold from TES V, the difference in quality is staggering - in favor of TES V.

Your clickable link to the picture is invalid. static1.nexusmods.com does not resolve. It needs to change to static-1.nexusmods.com :P

In response to post #28747764. #28748164 is also a reply to the same post. People who can read the EULA properly aren't saying Bethesda has copyright over your work. They're saying what the EULA says. That they have a license to effectively do what they want with your work and you can't sue them for it. Yes, I boiled that down quite a bit, but the language of the agreement is pretty clear. The CK is a program with a specific purpose. It allows you to modify existing IP, with the company's blessing. In exchange, you've agreed to allow them to benefit from your work if they choose to. It's not that difficult to understand. Derivative works. Look it up. If someone were daft enough to challenge the EULA in court, they'd lose, and it would be a very damaging event all around. Yes, EULAs have been upheld in court cases before, despite many of us not liking that.

In response to post #28740509. Simple. Bob's Armory is still derived from Skyrim. Without Skyrim, what is the mod? A collection of random bits you can't actually do much with. Porting them to some other format means they no longer function in Skyrim. It's not exactly hard to understand how derivative works work. As for people stealing your stuff, report it. Nothing will happen if you don't and getting upset that it happens when you don't act on it isn't logical.

Heh. If there were no problems that might come up, I'd have to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't in a pocket plane of Oblivion set up by Sheogorath :P We've done as much as we can to ensure a smooth transition on our end.

That was a poll covering hundreds of users on at least 8 sites around the community. I am told that it's statistically sound and that it's reliable enough to base decisions on. As for the benefits, read the OP. It's all been laid out there and if you think this is all being done for the sake of some plugin slots, you're mistaken. You may not be aware of it, but we rarely make our decisions based on what other authors are or are not doing. That way lies madness since waiting to see what they'd do would paralyze the entire project. Do keep in mind too that attempting to run both the USKP and USLEEP in the same load order will condemn any save you do that with to Oblivion. Simple common sense should tell you that. This is not a decision that was made lightly. Everyone who is still involved with the community knew this was coming for over a year, and anyone else should be well aware of it after seeing the threads I've posted in various places.

In response to post #28722879. Now this is well said, and spot on. It's all about the choice. I'm glad at least someone gets it. :)

In response to post #28663749. #28664219, #28665004, #28665334, #28675154, #28676099, #28680064, #28683254, #28685979, #28688519, #28692194, #28693064, #28695724, #28698454, #28699009 are all replies on the same post. If you had asked me that a month ago, I'd have said no. The move to put older TES games up on GoG changes everything though and I think they may be seriously considering reopening a DRM-free pathway for their games. If so, GoG is a natural fit for that. They just need to get more recent titles up before I'm fully convinced :P

In response to post #28663749. #28664219, #28665004, #28665334, #28675154, #28676099, #28680064, #28683254, #28685979, #28688519, #28692194, #28693064 are all replies on the same post. Console modding only being available via bethesda.net is likely to be a restriction insisted upon by the consoles themselves rather than something Bethesda decided on their own. If Microsoft and Sony let people download from arbitrary websites, then I guarantee you Bethesda wouldn't mind one bit if you got your console mods for free from Nexus or anywhere else. As far as it being a "first step" toward paid modding, I say good. It would indicate Bethesda is being more cautious about it and planning things in smaller steps. Whatever they're up to, it's obvious they're building an infrastructure to handle file hosting and by the very nature of doing so they can integrate it with their own storefront to construct a pay site if they want to. At the same time, keep in mind they're beginning to loosen their exclusivity arrangements on distribution of their older games with the move toward putting every TES game from Arena up to Morrowind on GoG. So they're broadening their horizons in what looks like an effort to at least partly break away from Steam. I have no doubt this was accelerated by Valve's careless attitude toward the paid mods site.

In response to post #28655914. #28656504, #28662504 are all replies on the same post. Actually, the users HAVE shown interest. $25K worth in 2 days even. Expand that out to a monthly thing, and you can see that this isn't going to go away, and the minority (vocal as they may be) opposed to this simply aren't going to stop it in the end. People whined about DLC when Bethesda first dropped that bomb on the market. Barely anyone makes a peep now. People whined about microtransactions in MMOs. It's the norm now. People whined about the hat market in TF2. Clearly that settled down, and is making serious money according to Valve. The same will hold true for paid mods. Some people are whining. Given enough time, it will be the norm. The silent majority who pay for these things will just do so and ignore pretty much everything said about it. I'd wager most of them aren't even aware there was a debate about any of the things I mentioned. They number in the millions. They are the target audience. In the immortal words of Agent Smith:

In response to post #28661979. #28662279, #28663669 are all replies on the same post. The market will decide in cases like this. If a paid mod is of mediocre quality, and the author refuses to fix bugs or provide even minimal support, people will stop buying it once word spreads. I would draw the line at demanding mod authors maintain wide compatibility. That just isn't possible in a lot of cases and people will simply need to choose which mods they use. It honestly isn't anyone's duty, paid or otherwise, to assure that one mod is compatible with every other. So if this is truly THAT important, reward those authors who try to keep it in mind with what they write, and don't expect them to bend too far if what they wrote is fundamentally incompatible. IE: Don't get upset with people if you want 2 city mods and you can't have them because they both do the same things in different ways and neither author wants to deal with making patches etc. Have sense enough to know you simply can't use them both. Even the developers don't generally pay heed to this. DLC is well known to stomp on stuff, and while it's apparent Bethesda did TRY not to stomp on everyone, they made some changes that clearly don't get along with a few older mods.

In response to post #28622159. #28626849, #28637379, #28637439 are all replies on the same post. The only system we had up, for all of 2 days, made it entirely possible to split the share you received with other "resource providers" or with "contributors" as determined by the author. Your question appears to be rooted in an assumption we have already dealt with in the USKP's FAQ though, which I'd suggest reading. Also, you are incorrect. We do not demand anyone use it as a master file for their work. We merely make it clear that they can if they choose to, but the terms of use for the USKP are also crystal clear in the readme for that as well. Having an option to pay for mods does not logically lead to "all mods will now be pay forever". Whoever told people that was flat out lying to drum up support. When one side of the argument has to lie to make it sound good, that argument is already lost and nobody should listen to them anymore.

In response to post #28622159. #28626849 is also a reply to the same post. Yet nothing is stopping someone from providing a free version of that in such a game. The ability is still there. If nobody is actually providing it, that would tell me the market for that game has moved on and accepted that pay mods are fine. Clearly nobody has a problem with it when it's Valve's own stuff, cause they're doing it on all sorts of games. God forbid someone dare think to offer TES and/or Fallout modders the same opportunity. If you want to know where the whole "entitlement syndrome" thing comes from, you need only look at all the people who demand that all mods for TES/Fallout always remain free. The irony being these same people will lie to your face about wanting choice, when their entire argument is about denying choice to one segment of the community that they aren't even required to participate in. If one does not like paid mods, one simply need not buy any. Just don't be an unethical douchebag about it and turn to piracy and try to justify it using the same tired arguments that don't work for pirating the games either.

In response to post #28634659. #28634974, #28635349 are all replies on the same post. Confirming in IE, not logged on, only the "Continue with Download" prompt comes up when the SKSE requirement is presented. No donation information at all shows up. Switching to my Pale Moon session while logged in, the donations window pops up after the file requirements menu is done.

In response to post #28614939. #28616054 is also a reply to the same post. I don't see any modders sitting around demanding payment for their time. Just those of us who would like to have that option being called evil greedy capitalist pigs for wanting an option that you aren't even required to spend money on. Yes, companies exist to make money. That's kind of basic common knowledge and, well, I don't know why anyone thinks otherwise. There's no such thing as a company who isn't out to make money in some way. There is NOTHING evil about wanting to make money, or for the most part in being "aggressive" or "pushy" about trying to get people to spend money on your product vs some other company's product. Hell, even changing the nature of how games work isn't evil. I remember perfectly well how everyone complained that the dawn of DLC (ironically, largely Bethesda's fault) was going to be the death of gaming. Guess what didn't happen? Paid mods are being targeted by exactly the same kind of entitlement minded people who think it'll ruin gaming forever. 10 years from now we'll all be sitting back thinking it's perfectly normal and the only real discussion will be about whether or not some mods are worth buying - just like we do now with what DLCs we all want. This demonizing of people who want to make a bit of side money (or, yes, maybe even turn it into a job) needs to stop.

In response to post #28594279. While that may be true, what I was responding to seemed to be focusing pretty clearly on modders who skirt the ToS by linking out to a site that heavily promotes taking donations and/or flat out charging for the work. THIS is what I was commenting that I hadn't seen here yet.

In response to post #28563909. I would imagine that this is bad, not just from a Nexus perspective. People doing this are risking getting shut down by Bethesda directly. Not sure who specifically you're saying does this, but it's not something I've seen happening.

In response to post #28567949. #28568274, #28568494, #28571489, #28572304, #28575029, #28575269 are all replies on the same post. So tell me something. Are you saying that everyone who has a job necessarily must hate doing that job? Cause that's what it sounds like to me. That you shouldn't get paid to do something you love doing. Though... that could explain why everyone is so miserable looking at their jobs. Maybe nobody really does like what they do for a living. Maybe it's these people who hate that they have to suffer and demand everyone else suffer along with them or it's not a valid way to make money. But no, that would be terribly cynical. tl;dr: Thinks that give you pleasure can ALSO be sources of revenue.

In response to post #28578629. They're probably flying under the radar right now until enough people prod Bethesda about it. That may have already happened and it could just be that the wheels of legal take a long time to get moving for stuff like this.

In response to post #28554799. #28586009 is also a reply to the same post. If only we held the game developers to the same standards rather than unrealistically expecting this of modders :P

In response to post #28556534. #28557359 is also a reply to the same post. You don't "own" your copy of anything bought in the last 15 years since pretty much everyone uses the same boilerplate EULAs :P

In response to post #28556529. #28558864 is also a reply to the same post. I would certainly support something like this.

In response to post #28559499. Actually those pop-ups are directly responsible for the clearly visible rise in donations vs not having them at all where people ignored the green button to the upper right. There was a verifiable dip in these when something got tweaked in how those were displayed, which appears to have been reversed now that the pop-ups during downloads are working properly again. If people were as pissed off about it as you say, they'd vent their frustration by not donating any money and possibly by filling the comments with nasty notes. This obviously hasn't happened, so I think for the most part the majority of users are OK with it.

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434, #28559484, #28559684, #28559819, #28560459, #28560764 are all replies on the same post. @icecreamassassin: I suspect the recurring part is mostly what Bethesda has issue with because that converts from a "donation" to a "subscription" which is substantially different in legal terms. Once you get into recurring payments, whether it be a "recurring donation" or something more concrete like Patreon or Flattr, they may view that as crossing into commercialization. Commercializing your mods is currently against their EULA for the various CKs.