Nexus Vs Steam Workshop. A warning for Modders

[Thasic]

gird3r, Hey you don't like the mods don't download them. I also don't care for the eye candy mods. I don't use them. It doesn't inhibit my game play to know there are mods I don't like floating about the internet. But I will protect the rights of others to use them. Keep in mind, you may be a prude that is willing to deny someone else's idea of a good time, but the next mod that gets banned may be one you like. Perhaps some overly moral group finds that Skyrim uses to many weapons. Maybe there is too much violence. Maybe this very vocal group decides games like Skyrim should not be sold at all. Think it can't happen? Think again. Will a big corporate entity bow to the pressures of some mouthy puritanical group? They do it all the time. BTW, I don't have a girl friend, I have a wife. I have been married longer than you have probably been alive, junior.

[jt70ss454]

Nobody hates Steam more than I do. That being said, I don't see the problem here. At this point in time, no one is being forced to d/l their mod to Steam. If some one spends countless hours making a mod and chooses to use Steam as their venue for distribution in order to make a little money then that is their business and no one else. We don't have a God given right to use someone's intellectual property for free just because we have been fortunate enough to have Nexus for the past few years and have become used to it. I personally won't use the Steam workshop in any fashion. I understand the concerns people have as to where Steam is going with all this, and the only thing I can do about it is choose not to use the Workshop. If enough people do this then it will just fade away from lack of use.

[WOTmodsproductions]

Everyone seems to be under the impression that as soon as you save or create a mod.....steam will instantly jump on you and claim it not allowing you to do anything but upload it to steam.

 

If you actually did your research and watched the Creation Kit videos carefully you will see at one point he opens the save menu and guess what it says:

 

Save

OR

Save and Upload to steam

 

When you save it, it creates an esp file which can just be copied to a folder and then uploaded to Nexus. Unless steam is watching every single upload to nexus (which would in itself be highly illegal by spying and tracking the nexus traffic)

They would never know you created to damm mod, and even if they did, they are not going to chase down hundreds of thousands of people every day just to stop them using mods.

Check up on your facts, bethesda have said no one is forcing you to upload to steam.

Why do people get the impression you have no choice but to upload and then get paid for your mod?

The nexus will win by far, there are more that dont want to use steam than their are that want to use it.

I for one have no interest in gainng profit for mods, I would create the entire game of Skyrim from scratch on my own and for FREE if I had the skil and time and the same goes for my mods. Even if there was the slight chance I would try steam and mods for the profits, the one thing holding me back is that I know how lame steam is and how likely they are to screw me over, that alone puts me straight off not to mention the fact its run by monkeys

Edited February 5, 2012 by thelonewarrior

[xrws31]

if a mod is owned by steam it will claim copyrights and it will be fully legal. and in fact it will be called copyright infringement if it is then posted on nexus which with the avid policy of upholding copyright law they will remove it and ban you if you talk about getting the mod in other ways but steam.

 

Did you even read the agreement? In it's current form, there's no way the agreement means Steam can do that. You're all just loving the idea of a conspiracy theory.

[AJ Rimmer Bsc.Ssc.]

I think we all know what will actually happen..

 

modding at steam will consist of the amateur and bug infested messy mods altering a hairline or adding a weapon.

a whole host of graspers will flood steam with grabs at the pennies and leave it looking like a garbage dump of failed mod ideas.

 

the old guard of the skilled and practiced modders will stick to nexus and the admiration of fansbase.

because if they are getting a corporate cheque for the work,they will suddenly go from being one of us to one of them and be held to a very high standard.

 

posts will be >

 

Steam

A: the mod causes me a bsod,i PAID FOR THIS,now fix it or gimme my money back.

 

Nexus

B: the mod caused me a bsod,any chance of a fix,btw thanks for creating it.

 

 

the mere thought of steam trying to snipe wallets using a free and respected bunch of modders actually puts steam right where it belongs..at the top of the gaming manure pile.

 

 

ps..bethesda cannot dodge the bullets on this either,for years they saw how mods extended games and gave us many more hours than beth intended,at the same time ruining beths own ideas of DLC`s.

bethesda wants an end to modders,which gives them free reign to skive us all with DLC.

Edited February 5, 2012 by AJ Rimmer Bsc.Ssc.

[flobalob]

Good post! I'm guessing there are quite a few out there yet who don't realise what an intrusive, control freak, money grubbing obnoxious POS Steam is. Your observations vividly illustrate just couple facets of that entity's reason for being and mind set.

 

You can't just state something like this. You have to proof it. So. Inside your steam application go to the sytem information. Your discovery? All your software, no matter on which harddrive is displayed there and what can be displayed in steam, steam knows about. For instance, the online banking software you use for security reasons ... ROFL! In Germany, if the police wants to remotely spy on someones computer they need to get a court order! Even the gouvernment ties it's own hands for protection of it's citizens! Does Valve ty it's hands too? You bet not. Are they beyond the law? They certainly behave like that. Which makes them criminals, nothing less! Someone should send the Feds over. Megaupload certainly deserved it. Now ask yourself the same think about Valve.

 

That option in Steam is, I strongly suspect, using the exact same MS system information API that any other piece of software frequently uses for it's "System Information" button on it's Help/About screen. So its is therefore not proof that Steam is actually doing anything with this information any more than any other piece of software e.g. MS Word.

 

Oh, and just for the record I will NOT be uploading any mods I create to Steam.

[rptb1]

4. Steam can change the legal agreement at any time by posting an updated agreement. If you do not check the new agreement within 30 days (how will you know they have changed it? They wont advertise it.) you could lose what little rights you have left to your work.

That's void under English law, at least, and therefore probably under US law. It's a principle of contract law that you can't "agree to agree" to be bound by some future contract that you haven't seen. I see a lot of this in online agreements and it's totally bogus. It would never stand up in court.

 

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is what my lawyer tells me. I have not read the Steam agreement.)

Edited February 5, 2012 by rptb1

[Ulfar]

I won't use steam and will stay loyal to the Nexus, why because I don' trust companies once money becomes involved. The agreement at the moment is the first step in them trying to control the mod scene. Once control is achieved they will then try to monetise it. I think it is absolutely despicable that if you put an item up there you surrender your rights to your piece of work. If a developer wants control of someone's mod to make money then make a fair agreement with that modder or offer them a job.

 

In addition to this I like the way the Nexus site is laid out and that it supports multiple games.

[thesapien]

4. Steam can change the legal agreement at any time by posting an updated agreement. If you do not check the new agreement within 30 days (how will you know they have changed it? They wont advertise it.) you could lose what little rights you have left to your work.

That's void under English law, at least, and therefore probably under US law. It's a principle of contract law that you can't "agree to agree" to be bound by some future contract that you haven't seen. I see a lot of this in online agreements and it's totally bogus. It would never stand up in court.

 

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is what my lawyer tells me. I have not read the Steam agreement.)

 

Yeah, I just read it. It's kind of funny. They're just being careful on their part, leaving things open. Obviously, if they amend the contract in a questionable way, then it can be challenged in court. For example, if they rewrote it so that modders were being charge instead of being paid, that would not go over so well in common law meant to be based on common sense. It just makes such things slightly easier in court when one party pleads to the judge, "But, Your Honor, it says here we could amend it and they agreed so really they should give us all of their daughters and any unborn..." Yeah, right.

In the US, such amendments are common, like when a bank makes slight changes to your policy and mails you the changes without you having to do anything. It's more just formalities, but as long as your judge isn't too corrupt, common sense still applies.

Oh, but, wait. Times have changed so much lately now that the US is so rot with corruption, I suppose maybe having at least one daughter ready to give up ought be prepared for.

[Rooker75]

Nobody hates Steam more than I do.

 

I accept your challenge!

 

Anyway... Are we positive that's not just the license for TF2 and that it actually applies to Skyrim mods? It wouldn't be the first time a company had several different licenses causing confusion about which products they apply to.

 

If that license does actually apply to Skyrim and they're going to claim copyright over *our* work, then I imagine that alone will turn off the majority of modders. Some of them get outraged just at finding other sites hosting their mods without permission. I can't imagine them wanting to turn over legal ownership of their mods to Valve or Bethesda.

 

I think they're trying to do their own version of the smartphone app stores with game mods. There are some mods out there made so well that the modder really should be paid, though it would be unfortunate if that became the only way to get those mods. I don't have any fundamental issue with a modder asking for some Paypal love or something. I can't say I'd likely be a frequent customer of a Steam store where you buy mods for $.99 cents each or whatever, but that's just me. Most of the mods I use are things I make myself to alter something the game does to annoy me.

 

edit/ grammar fail

Edited February 5, 2012 by Rooker75