Retired Mod Authors and Leaving Nexus

[Fkemman11]

Does any game dev allow for third party paid mods for their games? Or do they all have similar EULA's? I'm asking because a friend brought this up to me as a way to potentially earn extra income.

 

One reason I didn't think of for mod authors to leave Nexus is so that they can offer their game mods in exchange for financial compensation. I wonder how many have done so already.

[Reneer]

Does any game dev allow for third party paid mods for their games? Or do they all have similar EULA's? I'm asking because a friend brought this up to me as a way to potentially earn extra income.

 

One reason I didn't think of for mod authors to leave Nexus is so that they can offer their game mods in exchange for financial compensation. I wonder how many have done so already.

There are plenty. Valve, for instance, allows TF2 players to create and sell weapons (I think Valve gets 30%?) and maps (not sure how much mapmakers get). Linden Labs (creators of Second Life) allow users to create and sell items on the Second Life marketplace for Linden Dollars (not sure what the tax is), which can then be converted into fiat. Some items on the SL marketplace can be up to $20, but most items sell for around 40 cents to a dollar. These are the two examples I can think of off the top of my head - there are more (I think EverQuest 2 allows users to sell created items) with varying levels of success. There's also IMVU (a poor SL competitor, in my personal opinion) that allows users to sell created content.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Reneer

[TheMastersSon]

And ownership does transfer to Bethesda upon a a CC mod finishing Quality Assurance in the program. It's roughly laid out in the Creation Club FAQ.

 

That all being said, I was being a jerk to you and I'm sorry.

Thanks and accepted. But to be honest I'm still unclear on this question. At the bottom of page 3 of this thread you quoted this:

 

"2. GAME MODS; OWNERSHIP AND LICENSE TO ZENIMAX

A. Ownership. As between You and ZeniMax, You are the owner of Your Game Mods and all intellectual property rights therein, subject to the licenses You grant to ZeniMax in this Agreement."

 

It's what started the (or at least my) entire confusion on the ownership issue. Please consider DrakeTheDragon's post on the difference between the CC and CK, these rights and limitations of them being discussed pertain to the Creation Kit not the Creation Club.

Edited February 28, 2018 by TheMastersSon

[Reneer]

Thanks and accepted. But to be honest I'm still unclear on this question. At the bottom of page 3 of this thread you quoted this:

 

"2. GAME MODS; OWNERSHIP AND LICENSE TO ZENIMAX

A. Ownership. As between You and ZeniMax, You are the owner of Your Game Mods and all intellectual property rights therein, subject to the licenses You grant to ZeniMax in this Agreement."

 

It's what started the (or at least my) entire confusion on the ownership issue. Please consider DrakeTheDragon's post on the difference between the CC and CK, these rights and limitations of them being discussed pertain to the Creation Kit not the Creation Club.

For simple clarity, that quoted portion is from the Creation Kit EULA. The whole text of the CK EULA can be found here for reference.

 

Within the CK EULA, article 1, section D says:

D. No Fees for Use. In exchange for the Editor being provided to you free of charge, You agree that You will not charge or require, directly or indirectly, a fee or other consideration for others to download, install or use Your Game Mods, including without limitation selling, licensing or other commercial distribution or commercial exploitation (e.g., by renting, licensing, sublicensing, leasing, disseminating, uploading, downloading, transmitting, whether on a pay-per-play basis or otherwise) of any Game Mods without the express prior written consent of an authorized representative of ZeniMax. This includes distributing a Game Mods as part of any compilation You and/or other users may create. You further agree not to charge, accept or solicit, directly or indirectly, fees or non-monetary contributions for developing or creating Game Mods, including without limitation fees collected through "crowd funding." However, the foregoing limitations in this Section shall not apply if and to the extent such agreement violates applicable law. You further agree that You are only permitted to distribute the Game Mods to users who have purchased the Product through authorized and legitimate distribution channels, solely for use with such users’ own authorized copies of such Product and in accordance with and subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement and all applicable laws.

Which states that we cannot sell our mods or get paid for developing them. What it also says is that if you get written approval from Bethesda you can sell your mods or get paid for developing them. This leaves the door open for a more egalitarian paid mods system than what we have with the Creation Club, though there is little expectation that Bethesda would do such a thing.

 

As for the Creation Club itself, developers / creators who are accepted must sign a NDA, so they can't discuss a whole lot about the process. But since Bethesda / ZeniMax is the company that created the CK EULA that we all agreed to, they can also create an amendment / rider for CC creators that says that developers / creators are free to be paid by Bethesda to develop mods. Or create an entirely new agreement explicitly for the CC. You'd have to ask someone who is in the Creation Club (Elianora, trainwiz, fadingsignal, etc) for what more information they could give.

Edited March 1, 2018 by Reneer

[Arthmoor]

Arthmoor, give us a break. We're still waiting to hear why it was claimed mod ownership "transfers to Bethesda" in the CC terms in the first place.

How much cleared did it need to be that the CC is based on contract work? One joins the CC, pitches an idea, gets it accepted, and a contract with a payment schedule is laid out. Milestone development contracts are pretty common throughout he software industry.

 

Again my confusion was a direct result of that imo at least possibly intentional misinformation from Reneer. The rest is unrelated character assassination toward me personally, par for the course when one cannot answer actual debate points.

Reneer did not provide misinformation of any sort. You chose to interpret it that way because you have a clear agenda to push. It's not he or I who are unable to respond to factual counterpoints to our arguments.

 

The CC is a blatant attempt by Bethesda to financially benefit from and otherwise leverage free labor, in many cases over ten years of programming labor, and to facilitate and justify this practical if not legal theft with the entirely subjective and bogus requirement that mods be "rewritten from scratch" -- whatever that might actually mean, because 100 different people will have something close to 100 different opinions about the exact difference between "rewritten from scratch" and a few minutes spent with a simple search/replace function. Etc.

See this? YOU said this. Not me. Not Reneer. YOU. You are the one attempting to claim that Bethesda is stealing from a free labor pool. That is factually incorrect. You have no argument to make other than this, and your argument is a bald faced lie. You should expect to get challenged on that.

 

I invite you to return to this thread a year or two at most from now and you're excused in advance. The entire CC scheme is half-baked imo and only time will prove that claim. Personally I'm hoping at least one legal challenge results in a court allowing mod authors to sue Bethesda for every hour of programming time they've spent on Bethesda products for the last 10+ years. Heh. Welcome to America.

Oh, I'll be here, if only to see you have to eat crow for being so wrong. No court challenge will result because the CC is standard contract work. All completely legal, above board, and well established in labor law. They'd have no case. Welcome to reality.

 

According to the CK EULA you grant Bethesda a non-exclusive license to use your work and not sell it. So, as long as you're selling your work outside of the mod (that is, the mod has a NIF file and you're selling the OBJ file on something like TurboSquid) I -think- everything would be copacetic. But IANAL and all that.

For models, yes, I suppose if you put enough distance between what's being sold and what's being converted for use in a mod, you'd be fine.

 

Bethesda has established though that they won't always tolerate work being sold outside of mods since they filed a takedown against the guy who made that one vampire mod for Oblivion and then tried to sell the voice acting files as a separate download. I can never remember the name of the mod but it was a case that fits this scenario.

[TheMastersSon]

Reneer did not provide misinformation of any sort.

That's as far as I got in your post. Reneer first posted terms language that said mod authors own their work and its underlying IP, then said the work "transfers to Bethesda" (he's still claiming this), then was corrected (?) by others who said mod authors retain ownership, and that was again refuted by Reneer just a few posts ago. And after eight pages of discussion we still have no clue what the actual answer is. As mentioned, imo you will need to explain to any judge or jury in our country why it should be legal for Bethesda to financially benefit from programming work (forget the "rewritten from scratch" subjective hogwash, I'm talking about the countless thousands of mod ideas, concepts, game augmentations and other limitation workarounds etc etc), that was done with zero financial compensation to any of its authors. Personally I would love to be a fly on the wall when the issue of what "rewritten from scratch" might mean exactly or even objectively, but it's not even the issue. Bethesda are still stealing the mod concepts, functionalities etc.

Edited March 4, 2018 by TheMastersSon

[Fkemman11]

"D. License to ZeniMax. Whether or not You provide a copy of one or more of Your Game Mods to ZeniMax for download from the ZeniMax Platform and in exchange for ZeniMax making the Editor available to You free of charge, You hereby grant to ZeniMax an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, worldwide, non-exclusive right and license, with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers of distribution, to use, reproduce, modify and create derivative works from (including without limitation (a) modifications necessary to make Your Game Mods compatible with the Services (as defined in the Terms of Service); (b) modifications as ZeniMax deems necessary or desirable to enhance gameplay; and © where ZeniMax in its sole discretion deems modification necessary for security, statutory or other regulatory consideration), distribute, transmit, transcode, translate, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, publicly display and publicly perform and otherwise exploit and/or dispose of such Your Game Mods (or an part or element of a Game Mods), including without limitation in connection with the operation and promotion of the Services. For clarity, the foregoing license includes, but is not limited to, ZeniMax including Your Game Mods (or elements or portions of a Game Mods) and modifications and derivative works of Your Game Mods in other Games and Services. This license is granted to ZeniMax for the entire duration of the intellectual property rights in or protecting the Game Mods. To the fullest extent permitted by law You also waive and agree never to assert against ZeniMax or its distributors or licensors any moral rights or similar rights, however designated, that You may have in or to any of Game Mods. Subject to Your ownership of the original of Your Game Mods, ZeniMax will be the sole owner of the modifications and derivative works created by ZeniMax of Your Game Mods. For clarity, You agree that You are not entitled to any rights or compensation in connection with the rights granted to ZeniMax in this Agreement, including without limitation the use of Your Game Mods by others." - End User License Agreement ("EULA")

 

By this they can do what they want with any mod made for their games. How can they be stealing what you have already given to them freely? By the terms of this agreement, they could do much, much more if they wanted to.

[Reneer]

 

Reneer did not provide misinformation of any sort.

That's as far as I got in your post. Reneer first posted terms language that said mod authors own their work and its underlying IP, then said the work "transfers to Bethesda" (he's still claiming this), then was corrected (?) by others who said mod authors retain ownership, and that was again refuted by Reneer just a few posts ago. And after eight pages of discussion we still have no clue what the actual answer is. As mentioned, imo you will need to explain to any judge or jury in our country why it should be legal for Bethesda to financially benefit from programming work (forget the "rewritten from scratch" subjective hogwash, I'm talking about the countless thousands of mod ideas, concepts, game augmentations and other limitation workarounds etc etc), that was done with zero financial compensation to any of its authors. Personally I would love to be a fly on the wall when the issue of what "rewritten from scratch" might mean exactly or even objectively, but it's not even the issue. Bethesda are still stealing the mod concepts, functionalities etc.

What thread have you been reading?

 

1. Mod authors own their work created within the Creation Kit. That is what the CK EULA clearly spells out.

2. Mod authors who create mods in the Creation Kit give a license to Bethesda to use their mods (distribution, modifications, derivative works, etc). This is also within the CK EULA.

3. If mod authors are creating stuff for the Creation Club, then they give ownership to Bethesda when the creation finishes Quality Assurance (which is part of the contract they sign with Bethesda when joining the Creation Club).

4. Bethesda is stealing nothing. People willingly signed up for the Creation Club. They get paid during the development process. And, at the end of the development process, they give ownership to Bethesda. It's simple contract work, like any other person doing external contract work for a game developer.

Edited March 4, 2018 by Reneer

[Arthmoor]

That's as far as I got in your post. Reneer first posted terms language that said mod authors own their work and its underlying IP, then said the work "transfers to Bethesda" (he's still claiming this), then was corrected (?) by others who said mod authors retain ownership, and that was again refuted by Reneer just a few posts ago. And after eight pages of discussion we still have no clue what the actual answer is. As mentioned, imo you will need to explain to any judge or jury in our country why it should be legal for Bethesda to financially benefit from programming work (forget the "rewritten from scratch" subjective hogwash, I'm talking about the countless thousands of mod ideas, concepts, game augmentations and other limitation workarounds etc etc), that was done with zero financial compensation to any of its authors. Personally I would love to be a fly on the wall when the issue of what "rewritten from scratch" might mean exactly or even objectively, but it's not even the issue. Bethesda are still stealing the mod concepts, functionalities etc.

Are you for real? At this point, you are either demonstrating a profound lack of comprehension skills or you're a troll. I can't tell which.

 

No judge on this planet is going to find that consensual contract work agreed to by both parties is theft. You're engaging in delusional thinking if you believe this.

 

If you think the CC is outright stealing mods from the free pool, you have a severe misunderstanding of what the program is even about and how it works. Which means you should just stop talking about it.

[TheMastersSon]

No judge on this planet is going to find that consensual contract work agreed to by both parties is theft. You're engaging in delusional thinking if you believe this.

Talk about delusional? In our country one does not become employed simply by buying a video game. Regardless of what is written in the game's EULA.

 

Also delusional is Bethesda's insistence that any substantive difference exists between paid mods and "creation club content". It's corporate greed taken to the next level, practical theft and virtual enslavement.

Edited March 4, 2018 by TheMastersSon