Bethesda.net Mods is revising its port rules, we would like your feedback.

[Cartogriffi]

Hello, I’m Andrew, and I help oversee our modding initiatives at Bethesda Game Studios. When it comes to community interaction I mainly keep to 1-on-1 or small group discussions, although some of you may know me from the official BGS Discord, or previously on the official Bethesda forums (as Cartogriffi or, for the oldies, Hungry Donner.)

I'm posting today because we’re working with the Bethesda.net Mods team to revise the rules for 3rd party ports to that service.

Since most ports come from Nexus, we’d love to get input from Nexus authors. We are also very aware that porting was an acute issue when Bethesda.net Mods launched, and while these problems are largely behind us, an open dialogue here still felt prudent.

So, we are looking for any general feedback to improve or clarify our existing rules.

We are also looking to solve a particular issue with closed permissions:

When someone receives permission to port a mod, this is usually done via Nexus PM or Discord, and demonstrated via screenshot. Unfortunately, if these screenshots are called into question there is no easy way to confirm. The moderators’ only option is to have me, or a CM, manually reach out to the author.

We need to simplify this process, and remove all of the uncertainty these screenshots cause.

One proposed solution:

We could require that approvals be made in a public, linkable space, on the mod host itself. For Nexus, this would mean someone approving a port would need to state this in the (original) mod description, mod comments, or forum. (I suspect mod comments are the easiest of these three.)

We’d love to hear what mod authors feel about this, or if they have alternative solutions. When testing the waters, some authors have raised concerns, feeling this would be onerous or at least inconvenient. Others don’t check Nexus frequently, and worry requests will get missed.

I'll be tracking this thread, and have also started a temporary channel on the official BGS Discord for discussion.

Thank you so much.

[Adventurer1111]

I am not sure how often a mod is contested but I think linking to another system with author permission would be a logistical mess and cause less mods to be uploaded.

 

I know that often times just getting a Nexus reply is difficult but if the original Author has to go into Bethesda.net and login and give permission it might be a deal breaker OR I'll get around to it when I do and then they never do...

 

If the rate of mods that needs to be researched/checked is less than a handful every month then IMHO leave it as is. The juice is not worth the squeeze :)

 

Also hope you can remove the mod 1ae0bfb8 is referring to.

[Cartogriffi]

To help keep this on topic, any general discussion of the Bethesda.net Mods platform is better suited to the official BGS Discord. For this specific example, I'll reach out via PM to get more information on this mod, both to take appropriate action and investigate how it was missed.

[Cartogriffi]

I am not sure how often a mod is contested but I think linking to another system with author permission would be a logistical mess and cause less mods to be uploaded.

 

I know that often times just getting a Nexus reply is difficult but if the original Author has to go into Bethesda.net and login and give permission it might be a deal breaker OR I'll get around to it when I do and then they never do...

 

If the rate of mods that needs to be researched/checked is less than a handful every month then IMHO leave it as is. The juice is not worth the squeeze :smile:

 

Also hope you can remove the mod 1ae0bfb8 is referring to.

 

Ah! I've edited the post to clarify. We are not asking Nexus authors to go elsewhere to provide permission, but to list permissions here on Nexus.

 

Basically, rather than a Nexus author getting PMed here asking for permission, they'd get pinged in the mod comments for their mod.

[myztikrice]

I don't feel the, frankly very low, possibility of abuse (I'm currently unaware of any PMed or screenshotted permissions being faked) outweighs the increase in inconvenience with moving the process to comment sections. Many mod authors do not even have comment sections enabled, many ignore their comment sections, and many don't even have notifications of new comments but they do for PMs.

[Idrinth]

 

I am not sure how often a mod is contested but I think linking to another system with author permission would be a logistical mess and cause less mods to be uploaded.

 

I know that often times just getting a Nexus reply is difficult but if the original Author has to go into Bethesda.net and login and give permission it might be a deal breaker OR I'll get around to it when I do and then they never do...

 

If the rate of mods that needs to be researched/checked is less than a handful every month then IMHO leave it as is. The juice is not worth the squeeze :smile:

 

Also hope you can remove the mod 1ae0bfb8 is referring to.

 

Ah! I've edited the post to clarify. We are not asking Nexus authors to go elsewhere to provide permission, but to list permissions here on Nexus.

 

Basically, rather than a Nexus author getting PMed here asking for permission, they'd get pinged in the mod comments for their mod.

 

This sounds reasonable to me. Maybe Nexus can add a way to list bethesda and nexus accounts with porting permissions to handle that in an easy to manage way?

Required Info:

Accountname, Plattform, Conditions

 

And that as an expandable list?

[jss2a98aj]

If the original dev of a mod cannot access the account said mod was uploaded under it may become impossible to meet the purposed requirements even with permission having been granted.

EDIT: Even in my own case there are mods I uploaded years ago that I am unable to access to edit the description. I still want to be able to give others permission to port or edit them though.

Edited October 17, 2022 by jss2a98aj

[BellCube]

I'd say that requiring newly-uploaded ports to have publicly-available permission would be ideal. I'm perfectly open to stating my permissions upfront (come to think about it, I already do that!) or otherwise stating that a specific port is explicitly allowed. I'd argue that the biggest problem with a change like this would be requiring people to know about it. Imagine passing a law that required all taxis to have a little yellow flag in that spot where we used to put radio antennas - the problem probably wouldn't be one of insubordination but rather one of ignorance. I'm not too familiar with the Bethesda.net ecosystem on the authors' side (though I do intend to change that at some point), but assuming you have control over the upload interface, I propose a banner making the policy change apparent.

[KaptainCnucklz]

Wasn't aware fake DM screenshots were such a prominent issue among Bethesda site uploads. Yeah, a verifiable and public reply as proof of permission does sound nice, for the sake of evidence. I'm not sure how else you'd prove it was them, and not a case of inspect element and HTML editing.

[Mentha]

Some of us mod authors have been harassed by users of illegal ports and have turned off comments here on Nexus and DM's because of it. I, myself, have quite a few mods. It's too much of a hassle to allow others to port my mods. I'm sure there are other mod authors who also have a tight rein on their permissions also. Other mod authors only have older versions of their mods on Nexus and have moved on to either other sites or other games. How will a person downloading a port know that they have the most recent version of a mod?