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Why we can't use Patreon, and talking about donations and doing more to support mod authors


Dark0ne

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In response to post #28755519.

 

 

 

simtam wrote:
Like I said even if they're copyrighted it's trivial to make one manually.

That's, like, your opinion.

In court, the judge will rely on an opinion, too. An opinion of an expert. An expert on arts and creativity. Possibly an academic scholar, professor or someone alike. And this expert will opine that it is a manifestation of creative activity indeed. Why? Because - and here is the best part - in this jurisdiction the tax law sets reduced taxation rate on compensation for works which are creative in the sense of copyright law. And by opining otherwise, the expert would upset colleagues and fellow artists, because such opinion would threaten to hurt them financially. The expert knows this very well, because what the expert is paid for opinions is taxed at reduced rate for being creative, too, despite a lot of this opinions being trivial to make. :geek:

What I meant was that to bypass all of this nonsense, the modder can just make his own skeleton instead of importing one from skyrim nif files. It wouldn't take more than 15 minutes.

 

lol @ all that drama for 15 minutes of boring work.

 

No. There's still the point that the skeleton works in that game.

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Well, it really fascinates me how some people hate their own rights so much to the extent that they'd go to unimaginable lengths to argue against their own rights that the laws clearly grant them. It really saddens me to see that the majority of people, specially here in a supposedly creative community, are essentially brainwashed to see the corporations as their indisputable overlords ruling over their lives and are unwilling to even consider any opposing views or even facts. Not unlike other fanatics. No wonder these companies can get away with almost anything.

 

I can't be bothered to try to enlighten you lot any further, if you want to believe you have no rights over your own work despite the fact it is something laws clearly grant you, then so be it. Have fun worshiping Bethesda. I'm outta here.

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Well, it really fascinates me how some people hate their own rights so much to the extent that they'd go to unimaginable lengths to argue against their own rights that the laws clearly grant them. It really saddens me to see that the majority of people, specially here in a supposedly creative community, are essentially brainwashed to see the corporations as their indisputable overlords ruling over their lives and are unwilling to even consider any opposing views or even facts. Not unlike other fanatics. No wonder these companies can get away with almost anything.

 

I can't be bothered to try to enlighten you lot any further, if you want to believe you have no rights over your own work despite the fact it is something laws clearly grant you, then so be it. Have fun worshiping Bethesda. I'm outta here.

 

Man, you should run for president or something. No kidding.

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Well, it really fascinates me how some people hate their own rights so much to the extent that they'd go to unimaginable lengths to argue against their own rights that the laws clearly grant them. It really saddens me to see that the majority of people, specially here in a supposedly creative community, are essentially brainwashed to see the corporations as their indisputable overlords ruling over their lives and are unwilling to even consider any opposing views or even facts. Not unlike other fanatics. No wonder these companies can get away with almost anything.

 

I can't be bothered to try to enlighten you lot any further, if you want to believe you have no rights over your own work despite the fact it is something laws clearly grant you, then so be it. Have fun worshiping Bethesda. I'm outta here.

You don't read much, do you?

 

This thread is about getting money into the pockets of mod authors here. The problem seems to be surrounding the EULA we all sign.

 

Or did I miss something?

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TL; DR - How about a reasonable explanation of why donating is important on first sign-up, laid out so that it must be read, and the occasional popup window when you navigate onto the site, like wikipedia does, with a well written message with pictures because pictures to encourage donation. It's not as if users who skip through it and don't donate at all are entitled to whine about it anyway.

 

Though what I'd like to see is a donation tracking function, so you can tell which authors or files you've donated to or not. I think I've donated a handful of times but I don't remember which files I did it on so I can't tell who's been done.

 

_______________________________________________

 

And the train-of-thought version:

 

I don't know if just making donating more visible will make people donate more. The thing about donating is a state-of-mind thing. As a teen I just ignored those things. I also illegally downloaded/streamed/read games and movies and anime and manga and music in the triple digits and gave the same excuses "I don't have money" or "It's not available". It was all the same then.

 

And then I realized that if I stole video games the publishers would never know that I liked their games and would make different ones. Same with music and everything else. My outlook on paying for content has changed. I went legal.

 

I find myself donating little bits of money all over the internet now. Kids don't donate, and it's not because they're poor. This is the thing with the internet - for example, Wikipedia is a must-have site for just about anyone, but I wouldn't have used it then if it had required a paid membership. I would now, though. Yet how many people donate to wikipedia? They have a pretty simple donation system... Why don't we do that?

 

I mean, a well written encouragement from the Nexus staff to explain why donating to show their support for mods they use is important might go somewhere. It's not that donations allow the mods to be created, but a modder who can make a little money for his time may be willing to make better mods, more thorough mods, and keep up tech support better. If we want GOOD mods, it shouldn't be a problem to donate from time to time. Besides, if everyone donated 1$ for every mod in their permanent load order, this would be enough. There are mods I couldn't play without. Taking them off my load order detracts from the quality of the game so much that it bothers me. Donating to use them seems almost mandatory. I need those mods to work with each other. I need them to be updated. I need the author to provide support. Making everyone realize this, and that users aren't entitled to anything may be the way to go. Too many users post up and down the comments page about how a mod is great but i actually don't like it and please change it. Mod authors don't owe us anything. It's we, who owe them.

 

It's too easy to not notice the donation button in the corner, and say "endorsing it is generous enough. My understanding of the endorse function is like saying, to other users "This mod is worth downloading". The donate option allows us to tell the mod author "This mod is worth making, now make more, or make it better". And of course thanking the mod author is great, but going out of our way for that extra step to give them something for their efforts speaks to how much we appreciate their work. It's not really about the money anyway. 1$, or 5$, that's nothing. A bag of doritos or a fancy chocolate bar. And yeah I have 100 or so MUST HAVE mods, but I didn't get them all in one day. 20 bags of potato chips, spread out over several months/years? Still nothing. It's the going out of your way part that gets people.

 

As far as Bethesda is concerned, it sounds as if they're going to clamp down on free distribution of mods for their new games. I mean, if all the mods are new and Bethesda makes us acknowledge that by playing their game they have the right to distribute, or not distribute mods for it, then they'll just create a site, charge for membership, hook up mod access to the membership and done. Download as many mods as you want and some formula will be used to give mod authors a cut, but modders and mod authors are still responsible for making their mods work. Bethesda will manage the site and probably impose some rules on adult content. And honsetly, I think it's within their rights to do this, because it's their game in the first place. We all have to agree to their terms - asking and insisting will be our only option, and no mod author will get anywhere by pulling their mods because there won't be anywhere else to publish them from.

 

Honestly they could just do it through the Nexus. We're all here already.

Edited by aradjha
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There needs to be room for both platforms, for two reasons:

1. A dollar is not the same the world over and economies are different. This would create exclusivity and limit the entries to market which would affect the overall appeal of the market. It changes the relationship within the fanbase too, where monetary value is the measurement used for everything.

2. Leading on from the above, it would eventually stifle the creativity, experimentation and freedom that remains special and somewhat unique to the modding world.

Choice is important. Having the best of both worlds where young, inexperienced or less advantaged (but equally creative) people are not isolated but can gradually move into the market. A paid system could run alongside and the two can interact and gain a more insightful and fulfilling relationship.

It's a market structure that already exists, it is just expanding. But I think removing the avenues for free modding altogether would be unhealthy for the franchise and business in general.

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In response to post #28756709.


MotoSxorpio wrote:

Well, it really fascinates me how some people hate their own rights so much to the extent that they'd go to unimaginable lengths to argue against their own rights that the laws clearly grant them. It really saddens me to see that the majority of people, specially here in a supposedly creative community, are essentially brainwashed to see the corporations as their indisputable overlords ruling over their lives and are unwilling to even consider any opposing views or even facts. Not unlike other fanatics. No wonder these companies can get away with almost anything.

I can't be bothered to try to enlighten you lot any further, if you want to believe you have no rights over your own work despite the fact it is something laws clearly grant you, then so be it. Have fun worshiping Bethesda. I'm outta here.

You don't read much, do you?

 

This thread is about getting money into the pockets of mod authors here. The problem seems to be surrounding the EULA we all sign.

 

Or did I miss something?


He doesn't understand that:

1) You don't actually own any of the rights to mods created using Bethesda's software. When you run Creation Kit you have to agree to a TOS which says as much..

and

2) If Dark0ne makes even one wrong move, Bethesda can and will sue him and the Nexus into non existence.

I'd say there's some idiocy there stemming from entitlement and a gross misunderstanding of what kinds of "rights" we actually have, but, eh.
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