Careful, Modding Mass Effect 3 Gets You Banned From Origin

[dazzerfong]

I have learned something very grim just reading this thread: people care more about video games than their mortgages. Goodbye to my sympathies to those who suffer from 'overdue' mortgages. It's either that, or gamers are a very emotional bunch of people. It saddens me to see this, being a gamer myself.

 

@ those complaining of EA's takeover of Bioware ruining the company:

 

Well, if Bioware didn't sell themselves to EA, this would all be over in your mind, right? Problem is, it's Bioware in the end who wanted to sell themselves to EA, so I don't blame EA for this. Think about it, which one's worse, the fool, or the fool who followed the fool?

 

BioWare, according to contracts with EA have EXCLUSIVE creativity rights, EA basically just publishes the game. EA does not interfere with ANY of the game creation, BioWare pretty much does anything they want within the company. How does EA destroy a company like BioWare when no one was fired and their creative element untouched? Game studios push the games out to make more money…. EA will make the money no matter how delayed it gets. You are pointing the finger at the wrong person.

Edited April 12, 2012 by dazzerfong

[Stemin]

Wow. Am I the only one willing to realize that these games are someone's intellectual property? I mean if you were to take a Papa Roach song and start singing it on youtube, they'd be well within their rights to have you taken off the server. The same if you were to start editing a movie and posting it online or changing a painting.

 

Bethesda has you guys spoiled.

 

Modding is basically taking someone's creation and changing it because there was something about it you didn't like or thought you could do better. Even if it's just in the sake of fun and even if you're right, it's still someone's creation you're changing and we have laws like that to protect people.

 

There's a reason Bethesda puts that legal jargon in the Steam ToS that all your mods belong to them. It's to protect themselves.

[rellf]

wow EA is at the moment a sinking ship i can see how and why not allowing people to make mods is a move that can be done but allowing people to make mods is in my opinion the better option it improves the life of the game and people will get others to play EX Morrowind very old but still people still play because of the mods and others that make those mods

[Vindekarr]

Wow. Am I the only one willing to realize that these games are someone's intellectual property? I mean if you were to take a Papa Roach song and start singing it on youtube, they'd be well within their rights to have you taken off the server. The same if you were to start editing a movie and posting it online or changing a painting.

 

Bethesda has you guys spoiled.

 

Modding is basically taking someone's creation and changing it because there was something about it you didn't like or thought you could do better. Even if it's just in the sake of fun and even if you're right, it's still someone's creation you're changing and we have laws like that to protect people.

 

There's a reason Bethesda puts that legal jargon in the Steam ToS that all your mods belong to them. It's to protect themselves.

 

I totally agree. As an author, if someone wrote fan art in the universe I spent five years creating-I'd want to smash their head in with the desk I wrote it on. Even beyond the legal respects, what most people don't seem to understand is just how deeply many creative people care about their work. Writers, painters, poets, and nowadays musicians, directors, game developers, their projects really matter to them, and for a lot of them, it's very distressing when someone comes along with what they clearly see is a better version of the creater's original vision. Creation of a universe is the act of taking a vision and making it into a real space which others can explore, for some, this can take decades, and almost all storytellers feel very attached to their work. I have absolutely no trouble seeing Bioware's side of this argument, and while I enjoy mods, I'd always rather play a game that doesn't need them. For this reason, I've always had a small, now growing disdain for Bethesda, who create flawed, unfinished work and rely the players to fix it. Just imagine if Bethesda's games had neither mods nor patches, how abysmal some of them would be.

 

I'm not anti-mod, let me make this very clear, but both sides of the argument have strong cases, and for me, personally, I find it completely understandable if a studio says "please don't touch this, we put a lot of work into making it how it is", I feel the same about my own work. I would also add that there's a great deal of militancy in the gaming community at the moment. Gamers are making demands, taking to the internet, a place they see as their sovreign territory, to vent their anger over DRM, costs, and the industry's decisions. But for me there's an element of futility to complaining about the industry, I mean, what are you going to do about it? not buy their games? They know you'll be back. All they have to do is offer you a tasty enough proverbial cookie and you'll come running back, no matter how much you hate the studio, you'll always be a gamer, they know that full well. There's nothing you can do about companies making descisions you don't like. If they mess up badly enough, IE with DRM or Capcom's corruption, there is a legal system to smack them down, but complaining about endings and DRM such as origin is just futile, origin is not only here to stay, it may be the future, we have to accept that and move on.

 

-scumbag Vindey, the evil EA sympathiser.

[kibblesticks]

Wow. Am I the only one willing to realize that these games are someone's intellectual property? I mean if you were to take a Papa Roach song and start singing it on youtube, they'd be well within their rights to have you taken off the server. The same if you were to start editing a movie and posting it online or changing a painting.

 

Bethesda has you guys spoiled.

 

Modding is basically taking someone's creation and changing it because there was something about it you didn't like or thought you could do better. Even if it's just in the sake of fun and even if you're right, it's still someone's creation you're changing and we have laws like that to protect people.

 

There's a reason Bethesda puts that legal jargon in the Steam ToS that all your mods belong to them. It's to protect themselves.

 

I totally agree. As an author, if someone wrote fan art in the universe I spent five years creating-I'd want to smash their head in with the desk I wrote it on. Even beyond the legal respects, what most people don't seem to understand is just how deeply many creative people care about their work. Writers, painters, poets, and nowadays musicians, directors, game developers, their projects really matter to them, and for a lot of them, it's very distressing when someone comes along with what they clearly see is a better version of the creater's original vision.

 

Gonna have to disagree with you both there. I do amateur digital art and I'm always happy when people take the time to suggest improvements for my work. In fact I don't think anyone who is talented enough to have achieved a job on a game like ME3 would be distressed if someone pointed out flaws in their work. They got to where they were by hard work and practice, but also by being critiqued by others and taking that on board to come up with new ideas. Yes it might be midly frustrating on a personal level, but I think everyone realises that the majority of gamers make/use mods because they love the game and want to tweak the experience to their own particular play style to get the very most out of it. Changing rex's armour to be green instead of red, or changing the UI around to fit better on your screen isn't devaluing the work of the devs at all. It's simply saying "I love this game, but this is how it could be better for me".

 

Also, I think you're forgetting that mods are voluntary. If I made a well written, well researched wikipedia page and some other guy changed it to a load of gibberish I'd be understandably knarked. But mods only ever add to the effort of the original author, even if it's by taking something away. The original product is still available and is still uncorruptable. Saying no-one should change your work for their own benefit is saying you think your work is flawless, which can never be true of a product that's seen by millions, as perfection is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

I believe some of the negative aspects of modding stem from player entitlement. I see it on the Nexus all the time, comments like "This mod is a hundred times better than anything Bethesda came up with" or "This mod fixes a glitch where X item wouldn't spawn properly. Good going Bethesda!". These comments irk me no end, as most mods are made using the game's original assets and some people act as if modders are the saviours of games that would otherwise be terrible. This isn't true of course, modders wouldn't put the time in if the original product wasn't something spectacular to begin with and many of the "better" modders recognize the effort of the devs by crediting them in their descriptions.

 

So yes, while I agree people shouldn't take the work of the developers for granted, I don't think modding is in any way, shape or form an insult. At worst it's a series of mundane tweaks that don't really change anything. At best it's a form of artistic expression that uses the original work as a springboard to reach creative heights that even the developers may not have anticipated.

 

This concludes my rambling essay.

[Vagrant0]

I would disagree. Fanfiction has always existed, and has existed solely because people like the universe so much that they want to try their hand at having some part in developing it further, or exploring aspects of that universe that the author/creator wasn't able to, didn't consider, or simply couldn't.

 

The reality of any medium is that once you release it into the world, you cannot control how it will be used, ever. This reality is just as present now as it was in the time of Socrates, and became more prevalent after the invention of the printing press. The intent was not always to copy the work and claim it as your own, but occasionally to mirror the ideas expressed in the original work combined with the ideas of the second writer. Plagiarism only works when the audience isn't aware of the original source, or that source has been kept from them. The intent of these additive works is not to plagiarize, but to build upon what is already established or take them in different directions as a means of familiarizing others with the ideas, worlds, or characters expressed in the original work.

 

The other reality of any medium is that creating new works is not always practical for everyone due to either time, skills, or cost. In ancient times, it didn't matter what ideas you had, if you were not educated you would have had to either memorize those ideas and shout them from the streets, or have to visit a scribe to get them recorded. With the printing press, generally the only ones who had works published were those who were wealthy enough to afford the printing costs. With computers, it is just not practical for every single person interested in telling some sort of story to learn how to program, assemble a team of artists, and make their own game, just as it is not practical for every single person who would like to see some game mechanic work differently to start over from scratch in their own game and universe to see how well it pans out. So we modify what is already there.

 

 

The issue here is that you have two things happening. You have a group of players who want to have an extreme advantage when playing with other players, so modify the game to give them that advantage. You also have a game company who can't tell the difference between what is and is not a benign modification, tends to always pick an extreme measure when trying to resolve anything, and who believes that the best way to longevity is in selling an inferior product and trying to prevent others from doing anything better.

 

There is greed, then there is greed which is so blindingly horrible that people no longer want anything to do with you. EA often falls into the later group.

[Stemin]

I'm not going to quote the two above posts word for word, but both of you seem to be missing the point that just because something does happen doesn't mean it has to.

 

I never said fan fiction or derivatives didn't exist, but that doesn't change the fact that you should be grateful that they do. Bethesda would be well within their legal rights to shut it down for the most part.

 

As a matter of fact, J.K. Rowling made the news for winning a lawsuit over the issue and in the past, Anne McCaffrey had an online mud shut down for similar reasons.

[Vagrant0]

I never said fan fiction or derivatives didn't exist, but that doesn't change the fact that you should be grateful that they do. Bethesda would be well within their legal rights to shut it down for the most part.

Sure, they could. But the difference here is that atleast for the moment Bethesda acknowledges modders as being part of the reason why their games have as much following as they do, or continue to sell years after their initial release. EA's business model on the otherhand relies on players getting bored with one game and just buying another one, or playing a game and buying lots or DLC until the next game in the series is released, at which point they just want people to buy the new game. With EA's model, modders are really just delaying the time between the point where a sale is made, and where the buyer gets bored and wants something else, so maintaining more than a minimum level of support for a modding community is only done in those instances where their DLC cycle is longer (Sims, Dragon Age) since they can use the community to tide players over until the next DLC is released.

 

To put it simply, EA's business model is like that of a drug dealer. Release as many games as they can, not caring about quality because there will always be someone else to buy their latest game, and keeping people content with the game they just bought is really just preventing them from making another sale. And with the sweatshop programming they practice, they can maintain that rate. Bethesda on the other hand seems more concerned about maintaining their brand and fan following at the moment, so the longer their games are played, the more likely fans will buy their next game, even if it happens to be another Brink.

[dawg1982]

This is exactly why Sony had problems with Anonymous. It is ludicrous to think that after you buy a product that the company still owns it. They only own the rights. If I wanted to convert my PS3 to a stove, I bought the thing, it is mine and I have every right. As long as I am not changing it to a stove to make money off of it everything should be good. So if I buy ME3, that is my game. If I want to make more armors, retexture it to higher quality and even more quests to the single player campaign I should have every right as long as I'm not selling the material. I love mass effect games, I love dragon age. I have already made the decision to boycott EA and origin as I have done the same thing to Wal Mart. The consumers have the true power if the consumers would work together. These big companies consumed with corporate greed need to have the consumers let them know they have the power and we will not loose our rights by buying their products. This is the same effect of buying a PC from HP, DELL or any other company and being told you cannot add more hardware to it and only download their software. (I build my own PC's, that is just to make a point.)

[brokenergy]

Have you considered the case that EA doesn't want to go into legal trouble where people mod the games and have their computers ruined by viruses and/or file damage? That's why they don't want modding in the first place and besides the last time BioWare ever encouraged modding was with DA and NWN series. The whole multiplayer thing is secondary.