Steam Service Providers, and some how needing to clarify the Nexus stance again

[TKHBMVP]

In response to post #24679789. #24680359, #24680884 are all replies on the same post.

GhostAgent wrote:

Welewa wrote: Personally, I like this idea. I would endorse it :D and I would donate to my favorite modders as a show of support and appreciation.

bigdeano89 wrote: A "would you like to donate?" popup has already came up on my download page on a few mods today, that made me think about donating, which I did! If you put the idea into peoples heads they will do it.

I like this and I'm happy Dark0ne has already implemented the popup note to notice users about the donation feature here on Nexus.

[mALX1]

In response to post #24670644. #24670769 is also a reply to the same post.

blackwingknight wrote:

Riprock wrote: The TOA on the game and the Creation Kit will give some clues to that

Did you not see the lighted windows and smoking chimneys in Skyrim? Or notice some of Vilja's abilities as a companion in followers like Serana? The game has always absorbed the best ideas the mods has to offer, I would think it would be a source of pride for the author; and none of us but them know if there was ever a "Thank you" to the author.

I agree it would be nice if Bethesda put in their credits "idea for lighted windows was inspired by the mod Texian's Lighting System;" and that wouldn't cost them a dime - have they done it? I don't know, truthfully never looked. But it would be nice if they gave credit for the idea.

But as long as they don't actually use the author's mod; but make their own version of it - they really owe no compensation for using an idea that was posted on a public forum on the internet.

This site is full of innovative modders, and if I saw one of my ideas in a game it would thrill me to death; all you can think of is sue for compensation. We are obviously very different people basically. But that doesn't make either of us in the right, we just both have our own viewpoints.

Look, all of us really need to look at who would benefit most by all this infighting and attacking each other that is going on here. If this site implodes, we all lose. The only winner would be Valve-Steam.

By Nexus continuing to offer free mods opposite Valve trying to make money off them; it has placed Nexus on a target list for Valve-Steam to take down.

Valve is a huge organization that is cornering the gaming market; Nexus is an individual who cares about his site. If Nexus implodes; Valve gets even bigger; it will gladly crush this place and absorb the revenue.

The only real way to stop the turn of events would be a united front of blackballing Valve; Steam; and Bethesda - realistically we all know that is never going to happen; especially not with Fallout 4 possibly coming out this year.

So it is obvious we are not going to be able to stop what is happening. All we are doing with all this infighting is tearing apart this site and weakening it. Attacking the person who has freely given you this playground for decades to host your mods on at their own expense - I don't believe any of the long term members here question the business decisions made by the administration on this site.

How stupid would they be to thumb their nose at Bethesda; who is the maker of the games whose mods they are hosting? Use your heads those of you who are demanding he throw the Service Provider status back in their faces. Use your brains, because that is what this site was founded on - Bethesda games. And in turning that offer down, they would be severing themselves from Bethesda's future enterprise; which is exactly what Valve wants to happen.

So think before you attack. The only one who benefits from all this imploding of this site is Valve. We need to pull ourselves together as a community and plan how we are going to handle this situation.

The next best step would be to minimize the damages to ourselves. Everyone on here is rightfully concerned with protecting our intellectual property. All of us are afraid our work will be stolen and sold on Steam; because they have already proven they will back the one on their site over the original author's claims.

No matter where we post our mods, even if we all opened up our own web pages and posted them - they are still vulnerable to be stolen. They always have been vulnerable, but until the last few years there was very little to worry about because the people of this site have always recognized each other's right of ownership of their work and 99% of us respected it.

That percentage seems to have changed a lot in the past few years. It is a new breed of member to our modding community; whose entitlement includes usurping others hard work as their own.

These past couple years when a member stole another's work, Nexus immediately banned that member, but the member had to fight with Steam to have their work removed from under another person's name - even when they had proof via their initials in inventory or on scripts.

Immediately in the shock of this announcement Nexus's first act of business was to protect our rights by adding that option on by default to our permissions page. It may mean nothing to Steam's lawyers; but it was a proactive step toward protecting the members.

And I guarantee this site will have its members backs should one of their mods be stolen and sold. But I don't have the same faith in Steam because they have proven otherwise.

So yes, we do have a valid reason to be concerned. See, this is exactly what is going to feed this whole issue into Valve's hands. The modder who doesn't want to have his work stolen and sold on Steam has a few choices:

1. They can pull it down like Chesko did; which zeroes out all their hard work and they become a nothing in the void - a memory of a great modder that used to be here.

2. They can keep their mod up and police the mods being sold (like Fores did) to ensure their work is not included in any of the uploaded files.

3. They can pre-empt the thieves by putting it up for sale themselves on Steam, thereby thwarting the thieves since then Steam has a reason to protect their rights. THAT is what Valve wants to happen. Believe it, that is exactly what they want to happen.

What all of us need to do is to ensure we have put our fingerprint into many places in our mods so that we can prove the mod is ours.

1. Any meshes and textures added should have some code in the middle or end of the ID that only you know belongs to you - example, your actual initials rather than your profile name. Other than that name them something similar to the vanilla similar pieces.

The reason you put the coded letters in the middle or end is that then the meshes and textures are not all in one place to be easily found; they will be hard to distinguish among the hundreds of other meshes and textures - but you will know what you put into the mod, and will be able to pinpoint them as proof the mod was stolen from you.

2. Add a coded identifier only you know to your scripts in a place it won't be readily seen by someone looking for it to delete; and make sure it compiles with the script so if it is removed from the compiled script it will throw an error message - one of the modders who gave me permission to use his script for my mod did this, and it is an awesome security feature.

3. If you take an image of your mod, place something into the set that is an identifier - Tamira does this, if you notice in her screens of the Hobbit house she has a piece from her Static dishes - because most of these thieves steal the screenshots and use them too rather than take their own.

Protect yourself; watch the paywall site to see if any of your material is being uploaded; be proactive to protect your own assets because Steam will not do that for you.

Also, if anyone on here does purchase a mod and find a known marker from another member who you don't believe has given their permission - tell them, give them a heads up.

Let us not lose our close knit community to this situation, because to let it destroy us will just place us all in Valve's hands. That is all that will come of all this infighting.

We need to pull together as a community more than ever now; or we will be destroyed by it. Let us not let that happen.

[peptin]

I'm just going to say: When you have a problem, deny that there is a problem is the worst course of action. You remain neutral in this speaks volumes about the confidence that can be placed in you.

[DaVincix]

In response to post #24677494. #24677549, #24677769, #24677774, #24680864 are all replies on the same post.

digitaltrucker wrote:

bigdeano89 wrote: Now you are just scaremongering, take the tinfoil hat off for the love of God.

sunshinenbrick wrote: If we just sit by and don't do anything I fear he will be right. Google: Nouriel Roubini

digitaltrucker wrote: Not at all, what I stated is exactly what has happened in PC gaming and software as a whole in the past decade.

Mods will be absolutely no different than any other software.

The only reason this hasn't happened in modding before now is that until the last few years modding was largely under the radar.

The only way my above scenario will not play out is if the game manufacturers themselves choose not to make it happen. The games are ultimately their product.

Psijonica wrote: Funny video but Nexus is not the good guy in this situation. But if you want to say that they Knights represent the community in general I am ok with that. At least I can still laugh ;D

I'm so happy to see this because these kids today don't understand the real world and how the corporations are just waiting to pounce. Once they see that there is money in mods the sharks will come. The consequences and ramifications of this are going to ripple and it will take a few years but eveybody in the gaming business is watching what happens.

If we don't fight to stop this, if we don't organize then the, the corporations will steal this all. Once they do that, there will be nothing left.

Forget about a free CK in FO4 or the next Elder Scrolls game. You'll have to buy it or they licence it out for a large amount of money.

It is not just free mods that are at risk... it is free modding.

Dark0ne stands to make hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not close to a million each year) if Pay-for-Mods becomes big as it looks like it will. The new bread of modders are just rolling over and accepting this. SOPA will be next once the Corporations see how easy this take over was. 3-5 years and SOPA will be law. That is my prediction now.

As far as Dark0ne is concerned, I don't trust him at all. He pretends to try and pin Gaber down on the reddit thread but he himself refuses to make his own opinions clear.

I have to say that everyone should read the LEGENDARY MODDER "Emma's" post on Bethesda forum or you can read it on her website here;

http://emmates.proboards.com/thread/1705/regards-charging-mods?page=1#scrollTo=42265

"The games are ultimately their product."

Exactly. I bet many gamers still believe they own a game.
What they pay for is the right to use a software-copy.

I a developer-company or the overall owner/decider of a game-product is going to disable any modding-option for a respective game, they can, legally.

The "only" issue for them is the reaction of the by them known modding-scene/game-community, which are part of their customers.

This said, i'm, rather was, a highly active public modder for many years (another game genre), and i'm pro free modding and free distribution, of course. Nonetheless, realities cannot be ignored.

[sunshinenbrick]

In response to post #24670644. #24670769, #24681019 are all replies on the same post.

blackwingknight wrote:

Riprock wrote: The TOA on the game and the Creation Kit will give some clues to that

mALX1 wrote:
Did you not see the lighted windows and smoking chimneys in Skyrim? Or notice some of Vilja's abilities as a companion in followers like Serana? The game has always absorbed the best ideas the mods has to offer, I would think it would be a source of pride for the author; and none of us but them know if there was ever a "Thank you" to the author.

I agree it would be nice if Bethesda put in their credits "idea for lighted windows was inspired by the mod Texian's Lighting System;" and that wouldn't cost them a dime - have they done it? I don't know, truthfully never looked. But it would be nice if they gave credit for the idea.

But as long as they don't actually use the author's mod; but make their own version of it - they really owe no compensation for using an idea that was posted on a public forum on the internet.

This site is full of innovative modders, and if I saw one of my ideas in a game it would thrill me to death; all you can think of is sue for compensation. We are obviously very different people basically. But that doesn't make either of us in the right, we just both have our own viewpoints.

Look, all of us really need to look at who would benefit most by all this infighting and attacking each other that is going on here. If this site implodes, we all lose. The only winner would be Valve-Steam.

By Nexus continuing to offer free mods opposite Valve trying to make money off them; it has placed Nexus on a target list for Valve-Steam to take down.

Valve is a huge organization that is cornering the gaming market; Nexus is an individual who cares about his site. If Nexus implodes; Valve gets even bigger; it will gladly crush this place and absorb the revenue.

The only real way to stop the turn of events would be a united front of blackballing Valve; Steam; and Bethesda - realistically we all know that is never going to happen; especially not with Fallout 4 possibly coming out this year.

So it is obvious we are not going to be able to stop what is happening. All we are doing with all this infighting is tearing apart this site and weakening it. Attacking the person who has freely given you this playground for decades to host your mods on at their own expense - I don't believe any of the long term members here question the business decisions made by the administration on this site.

How stupid would they be to thumb their nose at Bethesda; who is the maker of the games whose mods they are hosting? Use your heads those of you who are demanding he throw the Service Provider status back in their faces. Use your brains, because that is what this site was founded on - Bethesda games. And in turning that offer down, they would be severing themselves from Bethesda's future enterprise; which is exactly what Valve wants to happen.

So think before you attack. The only one who benefits from all this imploding of this site is Valve. We need to pull ourselves together as a community and plan how we are going to handle this situation.

The next best step would be to minimize the damages to ourselves. Everyone on here is rightfully concerned with protecting our intellectual property. All of us are afraid our work will be stolen and sold on Steam; because they have already proven they will back the one on their site over the original author's claims.

No matter where we post our mods, even if we all opened up our own web pages and posted them - they are still vulnerable to be stolen. They always have been vulnerable, but until the last few years there was very little to worry about because the people of this site have always recognized each other's right of ownership of their work and 99% of us respected it.

That percentage seems to have changed a lot in the past few years. It is a new breed of member to our modding community; whose entitlement includes usurping others hard work as their own.

These past couple years when a member stole another's work, Nexus immediately banned that member, but the member had to fight with Steam to have their work removed from under another person's name - even when they had proof via their initials in inventory or on scripts.

Immediately in the shock of this announcement Nexus's first act of business was to protect our rights by adding that option on by default to our permissions page. It may mean nothing to Steam's lawyers; but it was a proactive step toward protecting the members.

And I guarantee this site will have its members backs should one of their mods be stolen and sold. But I don't have the same faith in Steam because they have proven otherwise.

So yes, we do have a valid reason to be concerned. See, this is exactly what is going to feed this whole issue into Valve's hands. The modder who doesn't want to have his work stolen and sold on Steam has a few choices:

1. They can pull it down like Chesko did; which zeroes out all their hard work and they become a nothing in the void - a memory of a great modder that used to be here.

2. They can keep their mod up and police the mods being sold (like Fores did) to ensure their work is not included in any of the uploaded files.

3. They can pre-empt the thieves by putting it up for sale themselves on Steam, thereby thwarting the thieves since then Steam has a reason to protect their rights. THAT is what Valve wants to happen. Believe it, that is exactly what they want to happen.

What all of us need to do is to ensure we have put our fingerprint into many places in our mods so that we can prove the mod is ours.

1. Any meshes and textures added should have some code in the middle or end of the ID that only you know belongs to you - example, your actual initials rather than your profile name. Other than that name them something similar to the vanilla similar pieces.

The reason you put the coded letters in the middle or end is that then the meshes and textures are not all in one place to be easily found; they will be hard to distinguish among the hundreds of other meshes and textures - but you will know what you put into the mod, and will be able to pinpoint them as proof the mod was stolen from you.

2. Add a coded identifier only you know to your scripts in a place it won't be readily seen by someone looking for it to delete; and make sure it compiles with the script so if it is removed from the compiled script it will throw an error message - one of the modders who gave me permission to use his script for my mod did this, and it is an awesome security feature.

3. If you take an image of your mod, place something into the set that is an identifier - Tamira does this, if you notice in her screens of the Hobbit house she has a piece from her Static dishes - because most of these thieves steal the screenshots and use them too rather than take their own.

Protect yourself; watch the paywall site to see if any of your material is being uploaded; be proactive to protect your own assets because Steam will not do that for you.

Also, if anyone on here does purchase a mod and find a known marker from another member who you don't believe has given their permission - tell them, give them a heads up.

Let us not lose our close knit community to this situation, because to let it destroy us will just place us all in Valve's hands. That is all that will come of all this infighting.

We need to pull together as a community more than ever now; or we will be destroyed by it. Let us not let that happen.

I was not there in the early early days but how was the idea of modding Beth games originally conveyed way back when? Was it a case of:

A) um... we have for some reason released this sdk for our games, I wonder if anyone will use it?

B) Hey guys you like our games? Would you like our sdk to try out some cool sh*t?

C) Whoa! How the hell did they get hols of our sdk?? We'll make you pay... oh yes we will make you pay...

I ask as I genuinely don't know. Edited April 26, 2015 by sunshinenbrick

[WightMage]

I wish Emma would have posted here at some point but here's her thoughts on the matter: http://emmates.proboards.com/thread/1705/regards-charging-mods?page=1#scrollTo=42265

 

For those of you who don't know, Emma is a modder that's been around since before most of us even started. She is best known for her companion mod "Vilja," credited as probably one of the most worked on "Smart" companions in Oblivion and Skyrim, having thousands of custom scripts and dialogue, completely voice acted, and in the case of Oblivion, can even go on adventures in Cyrodil on her own- where YOU are HER companion.

 

Here's her opinion in brief: "The spirit of modding is sharing.

 

In order to grow in quality rather than in quantity, modding has to be a labour of love, not a labour for money."

 

I myself believe that modders should be compensated in some way for their work, but if they didn't build the mod with passion, it probably isn't worth a penny anyway.

 

I'm looking at the useless weapon and armor textures already flooding SW at 1.00-1.99 a pop.

[mALX1]

In response to post #24679789. #24680359, #24680884, #24680909 are all replies on the same post.

GhostAgent wrote:

Welewa wrote: Personally, I like this idea. I would endorse it :D and I would donate to my favorite modders as a show of support and appreciation.

bigdeano89 wrote: A "would you like to donate?" popup has already came up on my download page on a few mods today, that made me think about donating, which I did! If you put the idea into peoples heads they will do it.

TKHBMVP wrote: I like this and I'm happy Dark0ne has already implemented the popup note to notice users about the donation feature here on Nexus.

These are some fantastic ideas. I would also like to see a donate button on that row of buttons for the Endorsements and Votes - so the person who comes back to endorse sees the donate option then; while they are endorsing and commenting the mod.

(To me, it is a better option than the one popping up on download before you even know if you like the mod or if it works).

[xxomegafactorxx]

and this is where the good old modding days end....

[Deleted3507349User]

Sincere apologies to Mary Hopkin (just be glad you don't actually have to listen to me 'sing').

 

 

Once upon a time there was a tavern,

Where we used to make a mod or two.

Remember how we gamed away the hours?

Think of all the great things we would do!

 

Those were the days my friend!

We thought they'd never end.

We'd mod and game forever and a day.

We'd make the mod we choose,

We'd play and never lose!

For we were young and sure to have our way.

La la la la...

 

Then the greedy suits came rushing at us.

We lost our modding ethics on the way.

If by chance I'd see you in the tavern,

We'd smile at one another and we'd say:

 

Those were the days my friend!

We thought they'd never end.

We'd mod and game forever and a day.

We'd make the mod we choose,

We'd play and never lose!

Those were the days, oh yes those were the days...

La la la la...

 

Just tonight I stood before the tavern.

Nothing seemed the way it used to be.

In the glass I saw a strange reflection.

Was that lonely modder really me?

 

Those were the days my friend!

We thought they'd never end.

We'd mod and game forever and a day.

We'd make the mod we choose,

We'd play and never lose!

Those were the days, oh yes those were the days...

La la la la...

 

Through the door there came familiar laughter.

I saw your face and heard you call my name.

Oh my friend we're older but no wiser.

For in our hearts the dreams are still the same.

 

Those were the days my friend!

We thought they'd never end.

We'd mod and game forever and a day.

We'd make the mod we choose,

We'd play and never lose!

Those were the days, oh yes those were the days...

La la la la...

[EnigManic]

 

I fully agree with digitaltrucker. I would also like to share my two cents. I am deeply concerned and outright enraged by a certain aspect of this "pay for mods" deal..

 

Why the hell is Bethesda getting a cut? They are a greedy and lazy company.

 

The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises have become so popular that Bethesda knows everytime they simply announce they're making a new FO or ES games, tons of people around the world immediately decide they're going to buy it. Therefore, Bethesda knows their games will always achieve huge commercial success and dozens of GOTY awards. So they act like a typical greedy capitalist and maximize profits by minimizing their expenses..

 

HERE'S WHAT MY RANT HAS TO DO WITH THE NEXUS MODDERS -

 

.. They rush their games through development doing a lazy, half-ass job and release a broken, buggy game. Then, it is up to Bethesda's fans and CUSTOMERS to fix and improve the game. Awesome people like Arthmoor have to make unofficial patches to fix thousands of bugs that Beth couldn't be bothered with in favor of their profit margins. The modders of the Nexus community fix problems, improve and build upon existing features, add new features and generally keep these games relevant for years after their initial launch.

 

And after Bethesda made their millions, and after the Nexus modders fix everything, then Beth wants to profit from their hard work. All these wonderful modders made their content for free, for various reasons, and then Beth finds a way to profit from it. It disgusts me.

 

While we wait for the second coming of Jesus before another game developer gets the guts to make a serious competitor to TES, wouldn't it be nice for Bethesda to do their job right in the first place instead of releasing their buggy crap for their customers to fix?