On console mods, theft and Bethesda.net

[jpsimonetti]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and teaching us things we might not know about the situation. I realize how long it must have taken you to write that all up and edit it to flow well. Thank you again.

[Gregio]

In response to post #39476840. #39478715, #39485735, #39485900 are all replies on the same post.

Namea wrote: Within hours of the trailer release for the new enhanced skyrim I saw a popular modder in the Skyrim community getting high and mighty and saying something along the lines of "Great, now all the pathetic console peasants will be flooding my pages demanding mod ports to consoles."

Let me just say that anyone who uses the term "Console Peasant" seriously and without joking intent is automatically a douchenozzel in my mind. This particular creator is usually a b&@*$, she's arrogant and clearly thinks herself better than everyone but I STILL expected more from her.

Personally I am excited for console users to get mods. I am a PC girl all the way but my husband is a console gamer. We have similar taste in games and often play them together, at the same time on our differing platforms. It's a fun way to bond as we discover new things and get to be excited together about it. To me he's not a console peasant, he's just another gamer.

My dearest hope is that mods for consoles will be a turning point in this stupid separation between console and PC gamers. Finally a way for us to meet in the middle and people to start just enjoying that we have a hobby in common.

Which brings me to mod theft and the biggest problems with it.

Yeah, stealing mods sucks, it's a horrible thing to take something someone else has worked on extensively and release it as your own. While many modders are handling this issue with arrogance and punishing the whole community for a few asshats there are those who are seeing the larger issue with this: Console gamers aren't used to modding.

What does this mean? Anyone who has extensively modded games for years knows that sometimes crap goes wrong. Sometimes a mod breaks your game or is incompatible with another mod. Sometimes you as the user have to go in and figure out what's up because a mod author is not responsible for figuring out every possible configuration and incompatibility of their mod. Console users can't do that. They have no access to the internal systems. No way to open a mod up and look, no way to manually delete it or fix it. No way to go in and completely remove every part of a mod if a mod author leaves the community and the mod doesn't get updated.

And if they could, would they know how? Now my husband is terrible with computers. He really is. I build them for a living but that man can kill one in 30 minutes if left alone with it. I know that's not typical for console gamers but on the whole most of them have less knowledge of the technology behind their consoles than PC users have about their machines. This is going to cause problems as well when inevitably mods break.

This, more even than morality, is the problem with mod theft. Making a mod stable enough to work on consoles is not as simple as ticking a checkbox in the CK. Mod authors, at least the good ones, will want to optimize their mods and actually build them to be stable for console users. There needs to be a quality control threshold here. No more shoddily built mods coded by amateurs. I can fix those on my PC but on a console? A console user will have to deal with the consequences and will be unable to fix it. There has to be a screening process in place for the protection of save games across the board so to speak.

In the end this whole situation is new, strange, and for me at least exciting. There are a lot of kinks that are going to need work and it might take a while. If everyone just pulls their heads out of their asses and starts trying to work together we might actually get somewhere towards a more peaceful gaming community.

And as for creators like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this novel of a comment? Well screw them. She may think she's the cream of the Skyrim crop just because she's released popular mods but at the end of the day she's just another person behind a screen who ports assets she didn't create into a bit of software she didn't create to put into a game she didn't create. If she wants to look down on people for their choice of gaming platform she's going to need some serious stilts because from where I'm standing it looks like better people, better authors, and a better mentality will hopefully be on the rise.

PonceMonster wrote: Ey now, she has that right considering he's in the visuals department. Unless you can do what she's doing on console, then you should know better. For one thing, you can't just take her visual mod and put it on Skyrim remastered or Fof4. And I can't say that ENB would be recommended for use on consoles either, as it may butcher performance, altogether. As people might have mentioned, Fof4 runs like shite and it is better off that you stick with the visuals it had already and only use visual mods on pc, it's simply not optimized. And no it's not that they are full of it, it's that it's not that simple and you can't just tell people one way or the other, THAT THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. And even if she were to try and explain, how do you know it will even get to everyone. 15 minutes after she posts the damn thing, she could still be getting the same bs. And people hype console games a hell of a lot more than any mod, and so put those two factors together, and she's gonna get a lot of clueless people who couldn't even be considered a part of the community yet, already asking for her work to be on console already. Please understand their perspective, they're a hell of a lot more important and valuable than you think.

CliveBarker wrote: She has the right to do anything with her mods and to state her opinion no matter if that opinion or actions doesn't fit your own narrative.

You are contradicting yourself by using Ad Hominem. Let me clarify that to you since you are clearly unfamiliar with the concept:

You said:
"anyone who uses the term "Console Peasant" seriously and without joking intent is automatically a douchenozzel in my mind"

Some people say:
"Anyone who plays in console is a console peasant and an inferior being in my mind"

Do you see any difference?

Your whole wall of text its filled with contradictions and unfair points like this one:

" Mod authors, at least the good ones, will want to optimize their mods and actually build them to be stable for console users"

So by your logic, a mod author who doesnt want to optimize their mods for consoles is "bad?

Fallacy, that's the conclusion I take after reading your post.

tartarsauce2 wrote: I'm liable to use the term console peasant myself, but rather than the feudal nobility being portrayed as "noble" and the villeins being portrayed as villains... I was thinking more that peasants are stuck living on a certain swathe of land by the mechanisms of that system

it's highly likely this meaning got lost when the term console peasant was getting popularized, but was understood by the original group/initial creative drive behind the term

@PonceMonster and @CliveBarker

Namea is perfectly right.
(slight edit) She may have insulted the author slightly, but mostly she criticized the author's attitude, seeing as it's admitted that the author is popular and very well received.
The very attitude that Dark0ne criticized in his post, name-calling console players helps no one.

The mod author has every right to ignore requests, or simply dislike consoles and choose not to port or allow her mods to be ported, calling people "pathetic console peasants" and diminishing them is never okay. Just like it isn't okay for PC players to be called "Master Race Elitist f@&#!ts" or anything of the sort.

Both sides can be assholes, so let's promote both sides having good attitudes instead of defending either's bad attitudes, yeah? Edited June 18, 2016 by Gregio

[Khaoz7]

If Bethesda's going to keep trying to monopolize the modding community, they should at least try to understand how mods even work.

[Ansler]

In response to post #39475335. #39485650, #39485850 are all replies on the same post.

icecreamassassin wrote: When I heard about all of Bethesda's forward movement into mod management with their hosting framework I immediately became a bit paranoid about what degree of control they were going to want on content and where it is posted.

This article is good because it does point out a very large ineptitude on Bethesda's part, one which was clearly illustrated in the paid modding fiasco; they have a bad case of the rose colored glasses. Meaning that everything they see is rosy and perfect. They do not plan their actions based on the lowest common denominator. As a pen and paper RPG designer myself, the one key thing of design that I always have to look at is, "How will people try and break and exploit the system within the confines of the rules". Bethesda clearly does not consider the fact that a large percentage of users are opportunistic little pricks. They need to plan for those people first and foremost and try and build towards their vision while dealing with the eventuality of people exploiting the system.

One key thing to keep in mind is that any mod which uses SKSE (and most large mods do) will probably never work on console, so implementing some SKSE can easily prevent a mod from being used on console. That said I have no problems per say with consoles getting mods; I think it's cool, but the cruz of the problem here is that Bethesda is stepping in and trying to push things that way while not doing anything to ensure it goers smoothly and that people are secure and property is represented fairly.

Bottom line, Bethesda has NEVER understood the modding community and frankly I don't think even respects it, their actions sure don't show it. It's because of the modding community that Skyrim is even still relevant. Robbin said it in his article; FO4's interest started to wane and so they rushed the CK to the rescue. They have always had a bad history of "release now fix later" mentality and frankly I think leave it to us to largely fix ourselves. It's just a bummer deal

Arthmoor wrote:

One key thing to keep in mind is that any mod which uses SKSE (and most large mods do)

I keep seeing this one tossed around very casually. I'd personally like to see some kind of solid stats to back that up since IMO it's not something that's apparent with the stuff in my own load order.

Nexus has a requirements system that lets people specify SKSE as a required component. I wonder how hard it would be to pull actual numbers from that to get some idea of what percentage of mods actually require it?

Kraynic wrote: I know that in my load order there are some that don't require it, but they lack (or have limited) configuration choices without SKSE. I don't suppose anyone playing on a console that has never experienced the mod would know what they were missing.

Well saying "most" mods require SKSE may or may not be correct. But a lot of the popular scripted mods use the MCM which is part of SkyUI which requires SKSE. So it may not be listed as a direct requirement, but SKSE is still involved. In fact, if you go to the SkyUI page on the Nexus and hit that "required" button on the actions bar you can see a massive list of mods under "Files That Require This File" and as a result all those mods also require SKSE.

[illage2]

Good post and I agree. Its nice to see mods finally come to consoles its just the few idiots that have made it bad for everyone else. Luckily though Bethesda have finally stepped up and are making it so that if you want to upload mods to BethNet you'll need to link a steam account and own Fallout 4 on PC.

 

However there's been some talk of mod authors DRMing their mods by forcing them to require script extenders which we all know won't work on consoles.

 

They are Also adding console mod support for the Remaster of Skyrim on PS4 / X1.

Edited June 18, 2016 by illage2

[illage2]

In response to post #39484505.

bluesunmerc wrote: Your thoughts are sound and your point is clear. I have nothing to add to the argument other than theft is theft people who steal can spin it anyway they want at the end of the day it is theft. I think its awesome that console have mods because it may spark a recently untapped potential in the Bethesda community that may start making their own mods because of how awesome the current mods are and they can see that they can do it to if they have the drive and determination to try it.

Hopefully Bethesda will step in and start to moderate it, because at the end of the day if mods continue to be stolen mod authors will stop making mods and then no one has mods. This is bad for the community and Bethesda seeing as how each game they come out with takes the idea of the mods from the past games (ie. fallout 4 crafting system and survival setting)

It is good to see that the nexus is behind the modders (of course I knew they would be) and are blasting down some of the idiotic statements that have been thrown around regarding the issue.

To any modders that may read this you have my support and I hope that this issue will be fixed as quickly as possible and it doesn't cause you to much headache. You are a talented set of individuals and thank you for making my elder scrolls and fallout experiences even better.

They are doing. They are making it so people who want to upload Mods to BethNet will need to link a Steam account and own Fallout 4 (eventually Skyrim remastered) on PC.

It won't stop mod theft 100% but Beth are finally taking a step in the right direction with it.

Here's the link. https://community.bethesda.net/thread/32339?tstart=0 Edited June 18, 2016 by illage2

[Jebbalon]

In response to post #39478660. #39478845, #39479305, #39484655, #39485205 are all replies on the same post.

Jebbalon wrote: Thank you Dark0ne, I for one enjoy your level-headed take on the subject. You have always had your finger on the pulse of the modding community and the Nexus reflects that.

My opinions...

- Bethesda.net is a "new wheel". It's ruff and not all that round. In comparison The Nexus is a badass Lamborghini. Given time, will Bethesda.net get better? Sure. Is the modding community and the console community patient enough to wait? Hell no!

- Bethesda's inability to punish thieves by banning them ... Can they? The CK, and ability to make mods, the in-game function to download mods and the Bethesda.net to upload mods is all provided as part of the purchase price of the game. The thief paid for all that. So can the company that provides all that really just pull the plug on them?? I think they can't and the thieves know it.

2 ideas I'd like to put out there...

1. For the Nexus - is there at all a way to add NMM into the in-game mod browsing functionality? Beth would have to release its API or whatever/however it works, but could that maybe be a possibility down the road?

2. For the community - Could there be a master file type mod released containing certain keywords or global variable that then would be required to have in order for mods to work? In my mod I'd simply add the keywords and make that file a master. The idea being that if my mod is stolen it won't work without the master file and I don't have to worry about keeping track of other sites because the master file mod is being tracked. So moderators and such only have to watch out for the master mod not all the other stolen mods. Of course bypassing that system would be too easy but it's just an idea to build on.

PonceMonster wrote: Most thieves are just careless children, if you didn't know... there's no way talking to them, so what's happening there has to do with bethesda just letting it happen. No one said anyone has to get cut off, but they certainly should get banned from uploading any mods.

Jebbalon wrote: I agree they should get banned - I'm just saying Beth may not be able to legally whereas Nexus is an at will relationship, you screw up and you get banned. On Bethesda.net it's not that easy I think.

Arthmoor wrote: They can legally bar anyone from uploading to their site. It might be argued that they sold the game with the promise of consoles being able to DOWNLOAD mods, but the PC version of the game and CK are required to create them, and to upload them, and there's nothing anywhere in the advertising or sales language that could possibly hold them to that staying available.

Plus, legally they can not allow the facilitation of copyright infringement, which uploading stolen mods falls under. So they have every authority imaginable to ban people from using the service.

FeralByrd wrote: And again, as Dark0ne pointed out, there is the issue of assets created outside the CK. Think of all the modders who have created custom weapons/armor. Those models and textures are definitely not owned by Bethesda, even if they are used in a mod created with their tool. To allow the distribution of those assets on their site without the permission of the copyright holder is unlawful.

Ahh, good points! So, come on Bethesda! whip out that ban hammer!!!

Another opinion I have ....

- Console vs. Pc modding is different because console can't have the CK in order to mod themselves. On the PC it has, until now, been like - I make a mod and share it. If you like it you use it, if you think it can be better you can collaborate with me or you can add to it yourself or make something better. All good and other users benefit from both our efforts. On consoles now, they can only use mods and complain (or praise) about them. There is no opportunity for collaboration or sharing only usage. Impatience and entitlement lead to piracy.

[shhfiftyfive]

In response to post #39476840. #39478715, #39485735, #39485900, #39486310 are all replies on the same post.

Namea wrote: Within hours of the trailer release for the new enhanced skyrim I saw a popular modder in the Skyrim community getting high and mighty and saying something along the lines of "Great, now all the pathetic console peasants will be flooding my pages demanding mod ports to consoles."

Let me just say that anyone who uses the term "Console Peasant" seriously and without joking intent is automatically a douchenozzel in my mind. This particular creator is usually a b&@*$, she's arrogant and clearly thinks herself better than everyone but I STILL expected more from her.

Personally I am excited for console users to get mods. I am a PC girl all the way but my husband is a console gamer. We have similar taste in games and often play them together, at the same time on our differing platforms. It's a fun way to bond as we discover new things and get to be excited together about it. To me he's not a console peasant, he's just another gamer.

My dearest hope is that mods for consoles will be a turning point in this stupid separation between console and PC gamers. Finally a way for us to meet in the middle and people to start just enjoying that we have a hobby in common.

Which brings me to mod theft and the biggest problems with it.

Yeah, stealing mods sucks, it's a horrible thing to take something someone else has worked on extensively and release it as your own. While many modders are handling this issue with arrogance and punishing the whole community for a few asshats there are those who are seeing the larger issue with this: Console gamers aren't used to modding.

What does this mean? Anyone who has extensively modded games for years knows that sometimes crap goes wrong. Sometimes a mod breaks your game or is incompatible with another mod. Sometimes you as the user have to go in and figure out what's up because a mod author is not responsible for figuring out every possible configuration and incompatibility of their mod. Console users can't do that. They have no access to the internal systems. No way to open a mod up and look, no way to manually delete it or fix it. No way to go in and completely remove every part of a mod if a mod author leaves the community and the mod doesn't get updated.

And if they could, would they know how? Now my husband is terrible with computers. He really is. I build them for a living but that man can kill one in 30 minutes if left alone with it. I know that's not typical for console gamers but on the whole most of them have less knowledge of the technology behind their consoles than PC users have about their machines. This is going to cause problems as well when inevitably mods break.

This, more even than morality, is the problem with mod theft. Making a mod stable enough to work on consoles is not as simple as ticking a checkbox in the CK. Mod authors, at least the good ones, will want to optimize their mods and actually build them to be stable for console users. There needs to be a quality control threshold here. No more shoddily built mods coded by amateurs. I can fix those on my PC but on a console? A console user will have to deal with the consequences and will be unable to fix it. There has to be a screening process in place for the protection of save games across the board so to speak.

In the end this whole situation is new, strange, and for me at least exciting. There are a lot of kinks that are going to need work and it might take a while. If everyone just pulls their heads out of their asses and starts trying to work together we might actually get somewhere towards a more peaceful gaming community.

And as for creators like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this novel of a comment? Well screw them. She may think she's the cream of the Skyrim crop just because she's released popular mods but at the end of the day she's just another person behind a screen who ports assets she didn't create into a bit of software she didn't create to put into a game she didn't create. If she wants to look down on people for their choice of gaming platform she's going to need some serious stilts because from where I'm standing it looks like better people, better authors, and a better mentality will hopefully be on the rise.

PonceMonster wrote: Ey now, she has that right considering he's in the visuals department. Unless you can do what she's doing on console, then you should know better. For one thing, you can't just take her visual mod and put it on Skyrim remastered or Fof4. And I can't say that ENB would be recommended for use on consoles either, as it may butcher performance, altogether. As people might have mentioned, Fof4 runs like shite and it is better off that you stick with the visuals it had already and only use visual mods on pc, it's simply not optimized. And no it's not that they are full of it, it's that it's not that simple and you can't just tell people one way or the other, THAT THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. And even if she were to try and explain, how do you know it will even get to everyone. 15 minutes after she posts the damn thing, she could still be getting the same bs. And people hype console games a hell of a lot more than any mod, and so put those two factors together, and she's gonna get a lot of clueless people who couldn't even be considered a part of the community yet, already asking for her work to be on console already. Please understand their perspective, they're a hell of a lot more important and valuable than you think.

CliveBarker wrote: She has the right to do anything with her mods and to state her opinion no matter if that opinion or actions doesn't fit your own narrative.

You are contradicting yourself by using Ad Hominem. Let me clarify that to you since you are clearly unfamiliar with the concept:

You said:
"anyone who uses the term "Console Peasant" seriously and without joking intent is automatically a douchenozzel in my mind"

Some people say:
"Anyone who plays in console is a console peasant and an inferior being in my mind"

Do you see any difference?

Your whole wall of text its filled with contradictions and unfair points like this one:

" Mod authors, at least the good ones, will want to optimize their mods and actually build them to be stable for console users"

So by your logic, a mod author who doesnt want to optimize their mods for consoles is "bad?

Fallacy, that's the conclusion I take after reading your post.

tartarsauce2 wrote: I'm liable to use the term console peasant myself, but rather than the feudal nobility being portrayed as "noble" and the villeins being portrayed as villains... I was thinking more that peasants are stuck living on a certain swathe of land by the mechanisms of that system

it's highly likely this meaning got lost when the term console peasant was getting popularized, but was understood by the original group/initial creative drive behind the term

Gregio wrote: @PonceMonster and @CliveBarker

Namea is perfectly right.
(slight edit) She may have insulted the author slightly, but mostly she criticized the author's attitude, seeing as it's admitted that the author is popular and very well received.
The very attitude that Dark0ne criticized in his post, name-calling console players helps no one.

The mod author has every right to ignore requests, or simply dislike consoles and choose not to port or allow her mods to be ported, calling people "pathetic console peasants" and diminishing them is never okay. Just like it isn't okay for PC players to be called "Master Race Elitist f@&#!ts" or anything of the sort.

Both sides can be assholes, so let's promote both sides having good attitudes instead of defending either's bad attitudes, yeah?

basically, since consoles won't be able to deal with load order and troubleshooting compatibility...

to me it is obvious that bethesda hasn't put any thought into this, and probably just hopes that the pc modders will be kind and generous enough to come together and make "compilations" where the modders have put their seal of approval on stability by doing all the hard work and merging several authors mods together into one package...

but of course this seems like a pipe dream. there is no incentive for mod authors to do this for console. also the consoles seem to have an unreasonable low limit on files size so there's that in the way too.

if console owners don't mind playing a massive game that takes hundreds of hours to finish... and can really only play with one mod at a time to avoid issues... i mean how many people fall into that category?

also, you can bet there will be nearly all console players will fall victim to things such as ruining their game save files, because they don't understand you can't just uninstall a mod, that it leaves a print and can harm your saves, etc.

[EnaiSiaion]

You seem to think thieves are not punished because Bethesda doesn't know what they are doing.

 

I believe Bethesda knows very well what they are doing. They know that console mods will increase sales by XYZ%. The hardship to mod creators is an externality and they didn't give any thought to accomodating them.

 

The players don't give a damn if a mod is stolen. The players see a mod and download it. This benefits Bethesda. So why would Bethesda give two shits that the author didn't want the mod there?

 

See also: requiring a DMCA takedown notice to discourage authors from filing complaints.

[shhfiftyfive]

In response to post #39478660. #39478845, #39479305, #39484655, #39485205, #39486720 are all replies on the same post.

Jebbalon wrote: Thank you Dark0ne, I for one enjoy your level-headed take on the subject. You have always had your finger on the pulse of the modding community and the Nexus reflects that.

My opinions...

- Bethesda.net is a "new wheel". It's ruff and not all that round. In comparison The Nexus is a badass Lamborghini. Given time, will Bethesda.net get better? Sure. Is the modding community and the console community patient enough to wait? Hell no!

- Bethesda's inability to punish thieves by banning them ... Can they? The CK, and ability to make mods, the in-game function to download mods and the Bethesda.net to upload mods is all provided as part of the purchase price of the game. The thief paid for all that. So can the company that provides all that really just pull the plug on them?? I think they can't and the thieves know it.

2 ideas I'd like to put out there...

1. For the Nexus - is there at all a way to add NMM into the in-game mod browsing functionality? Beth would have to release its API or whatever/however it works, but could that maybe be a possibility down the road?

2. For the community - Could there be a master file type mod released containing certain keywords or global variable that then would be required to have in order for mods to work? In my mod I'd simply add the keywords and make that file a master. The idea being that if my mod is stolen it won't work without the master file and I don't have to worry about keeping track of other sites because the master file mod is being tracked. So moderators and such only have to watch out for the master mod not all the other stolen mods. Of course bypassing that system would be too easy but it's just an idea to build on.

PonceMonster wrote: Most thieves are just careless children, if you didn't know... there's no way talking to them, so what's happening there has to do with bethesda just letting it happen. No one said anyone has to get cut off, but they certainly should get banned from uploading any mods.

Jebbalon wrote: I agree they should get banned - I'm just saying Beth may not be able to legally whereas Nexus is an at will relationship, you screw up and you get banned. On Bethesda.net it's not that easy I think.

Arthmoor wrote: They can legally bar anyone from uploading to their site. It might be argued that they sold the game with the promise of consoles being able to DOWNLOAD mods, but the PC version of the game and CK are required to create them, and to upload them, and there's nothing anywhere in the advertising or sales language that could possibly hold them to that staying available.

Plus, legally they can not allow the facilitation of copyright infringement, which uploading stolen mods falls under. So they have every authority imaginable to ban people from using the service.

FeralByrd wrote: And again, as Dark0ne pointed out, there is the issue of assets created outside the CK. Think of all the modders who have created custom weapons/armor. Those models and textures are definitely not owned by Bethesda, even if they are used in a mod created with their tool. To allow the distribution of those assets on their site without the permission of the copyright holder is unlawful.

Jebbalon wrote: Ahh, good points! So, come on Bethesda! whip out that ban hammer!!!

Another opinion I have ....

- Console vs. Pc modding is different because console can't have the CK in order to mod themselves. On the PC it has, until now, been like - I make a mod and share it. If you like it you use it, if you think it can be better you can collaborate with me or you can add to it yourself or make something better. All good and other users benefit from both our efforts. On consoles now, they can only use mods and complain (or praise) about them. There is no opportunity for collaboration or sharing only usage. Impatience and entitlement lead to piracy.

@ idea #1. even if nexus got the api for in game downloads...

there is the issue of load order. personally i'd LOVE LOVE LOVE for bethesda to add functionality so that you can auto sort and debug load order all from in game (like loot/boss), and simply require an "apply" button instead of having to reboot the game to take effect, etc...

but i don't see bethesda all that committed to delivering such things. and so what would be the point of an in-game option to download nexus mods? since you'd still have to exit to install them properly. Edited June 18, 2016 by shhfiftyfive