Nice work....

[Erenar]

3rd attempt at writing this without getting too overly passionate... so I'll keep it very brief.

 

Your recent decision's fallout (pun intended) is now alienating authors. Authors are your bread and butter.

 

As a user, I now I have to visit adult sites to get an update to a mod that has been core to my load order for years.

 

Are you ok with that? What are your plans to bring back these authors, some of whom are the best authors on the site, so that we can all be friends again and move forward as a community, again?

 

I hope this situation gets sorted out. It's bloody disappointing that it has come to this.

[BigBizkit]

We're hopeful and optimistic that when the collection system is released to everyone the benefits to the whole community will become apparent and many of the concerns some people had will not actually materialise when the dust settles.

 

From your perspective, I appreciate that at this moment this is causing an annoyance for you, but we respect any one's decision if, after considering our reasoning outlined in the announcement, they ultimately think they're not on the same page.

[xrayy]

@bigbizkit - i wish i could share your optimism. but it seems to me it is still not clear what happened to mod authors here and why. from my perspective nexusmods changed the tos and cut some control for mod authors related to their mods - the party you trusted the last decade - but it seems not anymore.

no deletion option for mod authors with your new tos and no mod collection opt out option- that seems to be the part of the result and this is what mod authors do not understand. and it seems technically implemented in the meantime. you trusted mod authors 15 years as the people who supplied you with mods and they trusted you and suddenly you cancelled this partnership with a new tos to their exclusive disadvantage and to the advantage of mod pack curators (?) and who ever and you really think the dust will settle ?

i still do not know the answer to the question why you cancelled the trustful partnership with mod authors this way and why you offer the option to nuke the all mods within 5 weeks as the only option. maybe understandable for some toxic or egoistic users and the staff but not for mod authors, i'm sure. at least i am still unhappy about this sudden tos change and all other activities related to this.

cancelling a partnership from one side with a new tos with this result is quite a remakable change compared to how we treated each other so far. especially if the result is an exclusive disadvantage for mod authors and no other party of the community. so what is wrong with mod authors ?

why do they deserve this treatment ?

i read the article and understand the vision but i do not understand the consequences. a pyhical delition method still exists (but not for mod authors), and to implement an opt out option for mod authors is no technical problem at all. so what is going on here ? why this treatment for mod authors and why the tos change ?

[Erenar]

Your second paragraph clearly shows that you see this as a one sided agreement.

 

Don't get me wrong, I can see the benefit of collections. It took 2.5 months for me to put together a decent build with 500 mods with 1 crash in 160 hours. It'd be nice to do that a little easier, for sure.

 

I'll be very surprised if we don't see alternatives sprouting up in the near future... something you could have avoided with basic discussion with your content creators.

 

Imagine buying FO4 but all you got was the Creation Kit because the engine devs felt they were more important than the content team. That's what this feels like.

[BigBizkit]

@xrayy

 

I can provide some clarification on that. The ToS were not changed with the announcement. When you upload your files to our site you retain ownership but you grant us a license - this is not new and it's also fairly standard (cp. Bethesda.net's ToS).

 

No partnership is being cancelled, instead, we're being open and honest in communicating that we believe the change towards file archiving is necessary to ensure the collections feature can function as intended for one, and to stop the erosion of our database at the same time. (The latter btw. creates a dev environment that is increasingly difficult to work with for both our developers as well as external, community-developers of tools, which is ultimately bad for everyone and another reason why file deletions on a grand scale are unsustainable - with or without collections in the picture).

 

We've explained how we believe the collections feature will help in making modding accessible and that is ultimately good for everyone: users, mod authors, and curators alike.

 

Let me also highlight that "curators" are not necessarily a third group. Users can make collections, big or small, to share with their friends. Mod authors can make collections of their own mods or mods that work well with them. Not every collection will or has to be complicated.

 

Lastly the "opt out": I've just made a small collection for Valheim (with an internal testing build of Vortex). It has 11 mods "in it". But it does not actually "contain" any mods or mod files. All the collection actually is is a list with metadata (mod IDs, file IDs) that tells Vortex where it needs to go to fetch the download link for a given mod file.

 

As much as you cannot, and never have been able to, "opt out" of someone writing up a list of what they think are cool mods, providing links, you cannot opt out of collections doing the same thing. There are other considerations and I've explained it in more detail here. I hope that answers your questions.

[Zanderat]

Really. A simple opt in / opt out would solve almost all of this.

[Zanderat]

Lastly the "opt out": I've just made a small collection for Valheim (with an internal testing build of Vortex). It has 11 mods "in it". But it does not actually "contain" any mods or mod files. All the collection actually is is a list with metadata (mod IDs, file IDs) that tells Vortex where it needs to go to fetch the download link for a given mod file.

 

As much as you cannot, and never have been able to, "opt out" of someone writing up a list of what they think are cool mods, providing links, you cannot opt out of collections doing the same thing. There are other considerations and I've explained it in more detail here. I hope that answers your questions.

The problem with this is abuse. Say I made a cute NPC follower mod and someone adds it to a porno mod collection. I should have the right to have my mod removed from the offending collection.

[HeyYou]

@xrayy

 

I can provide some clarification on that. The ToS were not changed with the announcement. When you upload your files to our site you retain ownership but you grant us a license - this is not new and it's also fairly standard (cp. Bethesda.net's ToS).

 

No partnership is being cancelled, instead, we're being open and honest in communicating that we believe the change towards file archiving is necessary to ensure the collections feature can function as intended for one, and to stop the erosion of our database at the same time. (The latter btw. creates a dev environment that is increasingly difficult to work with for both our developers as well as external, community-developers of tools, which is ultimately bad for everyone and another reason why file deletions on a grand scale are unsustainable - with or without collections in the picture).

 

We've explained how we believe the collections feature will help in making modding accessible and that is ultimately good for everyone: users, mod authors, and curators alike.

 

Let me also highlight that "curators" are not necessarily a third group. Users can make collections, big or small, to share with their friends. Mod authors can make collections of their own mods or mods that work well with them. Not every collection will or has to be complicated.

 

Lastly the "opt out": I've just made a small collection for Valheim (with an internal testing build of Vortex). It has 11 mods "in it". But it does not actually "contain" any mods or mod files. All the collection actually is is a list with metadata (mod IDs, file IDs) that tells Vortex where it needs to go to fetch the download link for a given mod file.

 

As much as you cannot, and never have been able to, "opt out" of someone writing up a list of what they think are cool mods, providing links, you cannot opt out of collections doing the same thing. There are other considerations and I've explained it in more detail here. I hope that answers your questions.

Open and honest?? Really? This is why mod authors found out about these changes by accident? They were never informed this was coming, they were never consulted. The mod pack tool devs were though.

 

That doesn't seem very open, or honest to me. It looks more like a deliberate act to possibly prevent some authors from removing their work before it was implemented. While that may not have been your *real* reason behind it, it sure has that appearance......

 

Basically, Nexus just took a dump on the very people they need to supply content. Shooting yourself in the foot doesn't strike me as a good business decision......

[xrayy]

@xrayy

 

I can provide some clarification on that. The ToS were not changed with the announcement. When you upload your files to our site you retain ownership but you grant us a license - this is not new and it's also fairly standard (cp. Bethesda.net's ToS).

 

No partnership is being cancelled, instead, we're being open and honest in communicating that we believe the change towards file archiving is necessary to ensure the collections feature can function as intended for one, and to stop the erosion of our database at the same time. (The latter btw. creates a dev environment that is increasingly difficult to work with for both our developers as well as external, community-developers of tools, which is ultimately bad for everyone and another reason why file deletions on a grand scale are unsustainable - with or without collections in the picture).

 

We've explained how we believe the collections feature will help in making modding accessible and that is ultimately good for everyone: users, mod authors, and curators alike.

 

Let me also highlight that "curators" are not necessarily a third group. Users can make collections, big or small, to share with their friends. Mod authors can make collections of their own mods or mods that work well with them. Not every collection will or has to be complicated.

 

Lastly the "opt out": I've just made a small collection for Valheim (with an internal testing build of Vortex). It has 11 mods "in it". But it does not actually "contain" any mods or mod files. All the collection actually is is a list with metadata (mod IDs, file IDs) that tells Vortex where it needs to go to fetch the download link for a given mod file.

 

As much as you cannot, and never have been able to, "opt out" of someone writing up a list of what they think are cool mods, providing links, you cannot opt out of collections doing the same thing. There are other considerations and I've explained it in more detail here. I hope that answers your questions.

 

thank you for the try to clarify!

my focus is not on the exact time scale of any action of the staff. i'm more focused on the result for the mod authors and the realtionship between staff and mod authors and how it developed. so the role of any mod curator is completely irrelevant to me.

 

what i try to understand is, why are you unable to implement standard functions which guarantee mod authors the same options as before the tos change and the mod list fever. i do not get it and i'm sure we will see this in the future - if not on this site - than we have to wait for a new site offering this. this is definitely not an "unsolveable" technical problem at all. make your homework and implement physical file delition and opt out option for mod authors and you will see not even one complain from any mod author. it is so simple and im sure ignorance is not always the best solution, especially if the other side did nothing wrong over the last 15 years and instead even trusted you and your actions. so my recommendation deal what you have to deal with mod pack curators but do it without destroying the trustful relationship between mod authors and nexusmods.

[Zanderat]

I agree. If a mod author deletes a file than the mod collection curator needs to update accordingly. Simple.