Mods and assets from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[Offkorn]

I suppose this is the reason lawyers make so much money.

 

Even when they state something in a straight-forward manner, no one understands it until they hire their own lawyers to translate.

Edited April 1, 2011 by Offkorn

[bben46]

Does Google translate work for 'Lawyerese" to English?

 

Actually, I read that as saying we can use Stalker assets for mods in any game that will allow them. Which is what GSC has been saying all along. This was just to make it official and legal.

[fireundubh]

"Our company allows non-commercial use of mods for our computer games. If you want to use mods developed for our games (such as from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series) with another game, you have to turn to that game's developers for permission."

 

GSC Game World is a developer, not a publisher. Also, remember, not all games can be legally modded.

 

Here's a breakdown of what GSC has said:

 

a) Use of GSC assets for noncommercial purposes is allowed.

 

b) Use of GSC assets for creating mods for GSC games is allowed.

 

c) Use of GSC assets for creating mods for non-GSC games is allowed, BUT only if the developers of non-GSC games permit mods to those specific games.

 

If GSC were a publisher that had published games which were developed by other companies, then the quoted passage could be interpreted as applying only to GSC games. However, that is not the case. GSC is strictly a developer.

 

With regard to the third point, explicit permission (from another company unrelated to GSC) to use GSC assets in non-GSC games is not required. Companies that provide mod tools for their games typically provide blanket permission to mod creators, except, however, they usually state that their assets can only be used in their games.

 

(Disclosure: I work in the game industry with a lot of lawyers and legal experts. I can parse the thickest contracts and aced all of my business law courses. In my industry, intellectual property law is a big deal, so I'm very familiar with the issues.)

Edited April 2, 2011 by fireundubh

[Thandal]

Thx, fireundubh! Appreciate someone "in the industry" who might be more familiar with the nuances of the topic chiming in. ('Course nothing here carries much weight "in court", or with anyone who in determined to see things otherwise, but can't help that! :laugh: ) Kudos given. :thumbsup:

[Naky]

Not that anyone on this site has been able to properly port those art assets without serious mesh related problems like inverted faces, overlapping and/or missing polygons, smoothing errors, incorrect animation calls, and terrible iron sighting... but good news none-the-less, I suppose.

[jaysus]

a) Use of GSC assets for noncommercial purposes is allowed.

 

b) Use of GSC assets for creating mods for GSC games is allowed.

 

c) Use of GSC assets for creating mods for non-GSC games is allowed, BUT only if the developers of non-GSC games permit mods to those specific games.

 

a) sry i dont see that... for me it still looks as if you still need the permission of the rights holder of the asset in question which might or might not be GSC or the individual artist or even the publisher of those games as was mentioned in the original summary as "third party"

 

b) agreed, but only if you have permission from the right holders of those assets which as you can see in a) is not that easy to point out who that actually is without reading a whole lot in legal documents concerning the rights of the game in question which obviously is a bit out of scope for the purpose of modding

 

c) agreed if Dark0ne's interpretation is right and not mine (hopefully)

 

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@Naky

heroinzero did some fine ports for FO3,

adjusting iron sights and flipping normals however seems to be a job thats simply too much a hazzle for most people who actually port since the common person to port somin is somebody who does not necessarily, usually doesnt, know how to model themselves and hence can not fix those errors

 

--------------------

 

nevertheless,

personally i totally object porting for public use in any way wether allowed or not, it only reduces the creative output those people spend on porting instead of creating, and it makes me sad everyday to see so many mods ranking high which simply dont show any creativity or artistic input but are simple copies of yet existing ideas and assets, usually not even improved upon but degraded

sure there might be valid reasons to port like it simply being faster than recreating lets say the starcraft 2 armor, but mind that this way there would never be a thicker, iller, nastier looking suit than the original which as was pointed out might also have its fair share of problems from skinning over textures to holes in the model which in turn still require an experienced modeller/animator to fix it who could otherwise spend their time helping out in creating somin new

 

 

[RealmEleven]

.. and GSC have now posted up an official response on their forums regarding this issue:

 

It is done! GSC made its official lawyer-vetted statement:

...The author of the mod retains authorship and exclusive rights on the mod. However, the resources used for development of the given mod belong to another person. As such, the mod does not wholly belong to the author of the modification, who does not have full control over it (such as for commercial use).

...

 

While the ownership of a patent or a copyright on a tool entitles said owner to a cut of any sale of the tool itself, I seriously doubt that it entitles the copyright/patent owner to anything produced by that tool - which is a totally different matter altogether. Word for Windows and the many attached resources (inc. clipart, fonts, etc.) belongs to Microsoft - and yet this does not entitle Microsoft to any part of the many novels and works of literature that Microsoft's Word for Windows was used to develop. If Microsoft could get a cut of publishing royalites from material produced by their office tools, do you really think they'd neglect to make it a condition of use?

[RealmEleven]

On the subject of porting existing material from one game to another, I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with doing this myself - for a number of reasons.

 

First and foremost is the issue of lore and graphic compatibility. The nice clean vault door from Fallout 3, for example, simply does not fit convincingly into the "Mojave Wasteland" environment of Fallout: New Vegas. It's like porting hunting rifles and six-shooters to Oblivion or Morrowind. A similar gaff is the flat-screen monitor in some Fallout series mod environments. Yet, as the story goes (and the graphics confirm), technology took quite a different path, and still revolves around valve amplifiers, vacuum gate processors and mainframes (which were obsolete with the advent of semiconductors and mini-computers). In any ongoing war with a nuclear element to it, valve technology would take over from semi-conductor technology because only valve technology can recover from a nuclear EMP (while any semiconductor technology gets turned into silicon fries). So Bethesda's Fallout lore, as it ships from Fallout 3, makes a lot of sense. For these reasons, I think that one has to be careful of introducing elements that alter or dilute the character of the gaming environment - and porting is the easiest and fastest way to introduce this kind of error.

 

Second and quite importantly (but still a distant second - because material can always be [re]developed to suit, and usually in less time than it takes most people to decipher, read and understand the legal-ese) is whether there is consent to port original art from the game that licenses it, to games that don't license it. Say, for example, I port one of those sqeaky clean vault doors from Fallout 3 to Fallout: New Vegas. It's fine so long as I'm licensed for both and the mod remains exclusively in my possession. However, if the mod is published, this makes the artwork intended for those licensed for Fallout 3 available to Fallout: New Vegas users even if they do not have a Fallout 3 license. The art might be part of my mod (if my mod does the port), but that art still belongs to Bethesda, and so it is up to Bethesda whether or not to allow such a port. The way that this kind of redistribution is normally handled (and the distinction between authors and users) can be seen in the Visual Studio EULA.

 

In this case, it would seem that GSC have officially released some of their art for redistribution. I think that it's just plain good promotional strategy when something clearly recognisable from your own stable turns up in someone-else's game. I'm just not so sure as to the kind of restrictions that can be made. Placing commercial restrictions, for example, may be considered a violation of the Sherman Act in any U.S. jurisdiction (just as the limitation of liability, warranty, or any other statutory rights is considered a violation of the Trade Practices Act in any Australian jurisdiction).

Edited April 10, 2011 by RealmEleven

[RealmEleven]

The point is that the entity with the rights over the materials has given permission for their use.

 

Bethesda has no say over the use of GSC's assets.

I could not agree more.

 

 

Bethesda can say that modders can't make changes to Bethesda's games.

Yes and no. Copyright is not the only issue here.

 

Bethesda's games are platforms in their own right (like Internet Explorer or Firefox). In this sense, restricting the modification of the platform itself is considered acceptable in some circles, but this only creates more serious legal problems when merchantability issues are involved (e.g. Trade Practices Act, Australia) or restrictions on trade (e.g. Sherman Act, U.S.). Moreover, there is still is a strong but disorganised political tribe in favour of banning these kinds of restriction. That means companies who sell on the basis of these kinds of restrictions may be on the wrong end of a total product recall or face Trade Practices prosecution if the folks who oppose this ever get organised.

 

On the other hand, I don't believe Bethesda has the legal right to any say, whatsoever, in what can and can't be developed to run on their various gaming platforms (regardless of what goes in the agreement, because there are restrictions on what is allowed to be present in an agreement as well). Moreover, it would be utterly insane for them to attempt to do so, because anything developed independently (whether for a profit or not) that cannot run without one of Bethesda's gaming platforms requires the user to purchase a license and installation package for said gaming platform if the user does not already have one - and this only puts more money in Bethesda's pocket. This raises the question of what, exactly, could prompt any company or corporation to deliberately take actions that restrict their markets and reduce profits?

 

Of course, this does nothing to stop Bethesda from updating their gaming platform so that it is no longer compatible with any style of modding they are reluctant to indulge, and who knows? Maybe the white body bug is Bethesda's answer to nude mods. Microsoft did precisely this kind of thing by leaving out all consideration for independent software vendors when moving from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET platforms. In a practical sense, all it would take to wipe out the modding community (and a major share of Bethesda's market) would be a little bit shift in the reading and writing of ESP files. It would take a programmer less time to implement than it would take a lawyer to concoct a convincing-sounding clause that probably still wouldn't be enough to trick some judges.

 

However, the only thing that interests me (and, apparently, more than 2 million Bethesda customers) is the fact that Bethesda's games are first person role playing games that allow us to use modifications developed by people with more talent than any corporation could ever afford to buy. It is this fact, and this fact alone, that gives Bethesda first priority on my gaming budget.

Edited April 10, 2011 by RealmEleven

[jaysus]

@Realm Even & the use of assets entiteling the rights holder to all created products by using said asset

 

you are right that bethesda for example would never hold full rights to a mod created using some of its assets, thats simply misunderstood EULA chitchat which is overturned by most civil laws in most countries,

there still is the intellectual property of the person creating that mod and using bethesdas assets to realize their ideas, they might even add models, new textures etc which could be the property of somebody else totally, nevertheless the GSC text is quite right here, the person creating the mod and using assets of other people still has to pay tribute and respect (depends on the kind of liscence aquired for those assets) to the original rights holder of those assets and if no permission for their use was granted has to remove those assets from his mod/creation, if monetary gain was achieved by using those assets he has to redistribute a fair share of those gainings to the individual right holders of the assets he used.

 

but back ontopic, STALKER, all that i can see from the text so far is:

 

1. you may mod STALKER, you may use STALKER assets in mods for STALKER

 

2. if you want to use assets from STALKER you have to gain permission from the right holder of those assets which could be ivan from ukraine for that ak47 or alexeij from vladiwostok for that nice camo suit or it could, if youre lucky, be GSC which yet gave permission to use it for their games and depending on interpretation other games too

 

the text basicly frees GSC of a final say about their assets, as it should be if they dont hold all rights to all assets in their games, and gives us the basic rights we should be holding if we buy a piece of software, namely to mod it, which is just as it should be as noone can object me to mod my piaggio bike either not even mr. piaggio himself.