A Suggestion to Prevent Mod Theft

[TimeLadyKatie]

 

 

There are things in life that matter more than money.

 

Would only that bit of wisdom reach any business office ever in the history of capitalism.

[zanity]

There is NO WAY to prevent theft. To discourage it is a different issue.

 

Beth should ban uploaders who upload someone else's mod- but Zenimax won't allow this. Zenimax already thinks they OWN all Beth game mods (see Zenimax's obscene legal action over John Carmack and the Oculus Rift for an example of how this awful company operates).

 

However, Beth will eventually take-down purloined mods, slowly enough to allow another two to take their place.

 

An obvious assistance would be if all mods announced themselves in a credit screen at the game start- and maybe mods could be coded to do this. Such a credit would remind the user who made the mod, and the only authorised locations for downloading it. Since most mod stealers are lazy and untalented, coding out the credit would be unlikely- forcing Beth to face the humiliation of illegal Xbone mods delcaring their illegality when the Xbone gamer started FO4. And MS would NOT like this at all- given that MS likes to protect its own IP.

 

Unfortunately, for mods to credit themselves, they'd all have to use a generic framework requiring scripts and/or an .esp - but more mods are being made this way anyway for maximum game compatibility. However, have a mod credit page at the beginning of a game session (as part of the title sequence) would elevate the importance of mods to other game content- and this would be a VERY good thing.

[DoctaSax]

All that can be done is pressuring Beth into policing their site better.

Every other proposal I've seen so far, here & elsewhere (adding F4SE dependency, adding nudity, adding credits, whatever else people think they oughta add) amounts to nothing but bloat, at the expense of honest mod users, and will never be effective anyway.

[ThexThird]

f4se does not cause bloats

[DoctaSax]

f4se does not cause bloats

 

Making a mod actually dependent on F4SE or it doesn't work requires some scripting to make it so, which means code will run that the mod otherwise doesn't need = bloat.

[Reneer]

 

f4se does not cause bloats

Making a mod actually dependent on F4SE or it doesn't work requires some scripting to make it so, which means code will run that the mod otherwise doesn't need = bloat.

lol. Seriously? 5 extra lines of code is not bloat. :P

[MasterMagnus]

What five lines would that be?

 

Wait don't show it, the thieves would know.

 

And so here we are.

[DoctaSax]

I admit I'm quite fussy about unneeded code. I can't tell how often I've revised scripts to weed out the unnecessary or generally optimize the flow of code - I think it's good practice. :thumbsup: And if people run multiple mods with unnecessary code, well, it adds up. Question: doesn't it take having F4SE to begin with in order for its version check functions to return anything? (I'm not sure - more familiar with NVSE.)

[Reneer]

What five lines would that be?

 

Wait don't show it, the thieves would know.

 

And so here we are.

Any line that uses an F4SE call would do the job.

[MasterMagnus]

All that can be done is pressuring Beth into policing their site better.

Every other proposal I've seen so far, here & elsewhere (adding F4SE dependency, adding nudity, adding credits, whatever else people think they oughta add) amounts to nothing but bloat, at the expense of honest mod users, and will never be effective anyway.

I think you're completely right.

 

If all it is five lines of code, how long will it take for the pirate to see it doesn't work, re-open the files and look closer? "Oh here it is, delete those five lines, and remove the loose F4SE file, DONE."