Fallout:76 - the coming hack attack

[zanity]

There is an aspect of Fallout:76 that really hasn't been discussed, but is likely to play a major part in the early release of the game. Firstly the ground rules.

 

Courts have (disgracefully) ruled that any and all unauthorised mods to an ONLINE game are ILLEGAL- and The Nexus will NEVER host mods for Fallout:76 unless explicitly permited by Zenimax (which will never happen).

 

On the other hand, there can never be a legal blanket ban on mods for single player offline games, so Nexus hosts such mods WITHOUT seeking explicit permission.

 

Now my argument. Nexus may be the largest host of mods for Beth games, but it does not control modders in any sense. And with Skyrim and Fallout, modders are expert at low level reverse engineering and hacking Beth code and data streams. Many of the key mods for Fallout and Skyrim are hacks in the purest sense- and could never have been built with the official tools released by Beth.

 

By making their Rust-clone a FALLOUT game rather than a RAGE game (which would have made infinitely more sense, save for the fact that Todd wanted Fallout:5 to be 'gaming as a service'), and by pretending Fallout:76 has a conventional side (it does not), every good modder on the planet is poised to rip apart the Fallout:76 codebase on day one and try to make it more gamer friendly. That the Nexus will never host their works is neither here nor there.

 

Well actually it is significant, for if the Fallout:76 mods end up being hosted on a server outside the legal regions where online modding has been declared illegal (essentially the Far East and most of the West), Nexus could end up losing a lot of its current attraction.

 

Anyway my real point is that for the first time in gaming history, a major online game will have massive amounts of unauthorised modding for reasons other than simple cheating (wall hacks, aim bots etc). The REAL game of Fallout:76 looks like being a war between very well intentioned modders, and the thoroughly rotten Bethesda.

 

The first thing hackers will want to do is disengage from Beth master servers. Beth has very third rate coders- coding has never been Beth's core strength. So the liklihood of 'clever' net-code that is hard to reverse-engineer is exactly ZERO. We do not know yet whether Fallout:76 uses PEER servers (ie., one gamer acts as server for the other 23), or true remote servers. The clueless amongst you will say "yes we do, Todd sez Beth will be running servers". NO! Beth is running MASTER servers- the progression of your character and lobby services will definitely save/run there, but the actual 'serving' of a game currently seems far more likely to happen on a USER machine (hence the VERY low player count).

 

If Fallout:76 uses peer serving, hackers will be able to offer 'isolated' 'clan' serving in a very short time indeed. If the game does indeed RUN on the master servers (very unlikely) the hackers will have a much more difficult job- but creating a reverse engineered master server will happen, and with what the hackers learn from the process, the features of the 'mod' master server will be vastly better than those offered by Beth.

 

How will Beth respond. Well we know- with vicious unlimited legal action against the modding scene. I predict Zenimax will even make the effort to have OFFLINE SINGLE-PLAYER unauthorised modding declared illegal (which, thankfully, will fail- like the fail when Nintendo tried to have EMULATORS declared illegal).

 

Beth hasn't cared much about modding up to this time since free mods MADE them money by growing and expanding interest in their key IPs. But this period of gaming history is OVER, and Fallout:76 is the period's TOMBSTONE (here lies the memory of free unrestricted modding).

 

Do I think Beth will win the war against Fallout:76 hackers? NEVER. But the war will drive modding underground. And this means far less modding in general, and certainly the end of most forms of mods (since these mods are created by people who want to believe what they do is completely 'legal' and without controversy and risk).

 

Fallout:76 is going to tear this community apart as the hardcore hackers/modders shred the codebase and protocols of Fallout:76 and rebuild them in the most amazing ways. And then Beth will scream from the rooftops "unlicensed modders are the very definition of evil, and must be stopped at all costs". You want to be a 'legal' 'respectable' modder, obviously you must ONLY work for the Creation Club (now do you see why Beth created the CC, when its been such bad joke for Skyrim and Fallout 4- it was always a strategic weapon waiting in the wings).

 

Anyway all this is happening whether we want it or not. Fallout 4 + DLCs was the end of the road for Beth re:the beloved and successful and innocent single-player RPG experience with mods. Nothing similar will ever come out of Beth again.

 

What we need is a kick-starter for an open-world engine/game built from the ground up to support mods and co-op. A NEW start for the type of game Beth once stood behind. With the power of current PCs, GPUs and coding systems, doing this has never been easier. I've said before, the Nexus management should drop their fantasy of becoming the 'Steam' service of mods (=authorised deals with publishers which ain't gonna happen), and sponsor their own free open-world system for which the mods would be hosted here.

 

Publishers are GIVING UP on this form of gaming. Even Red Dead 2 is a monetised 'gaming as a service' POS. Metro and Cyberpunk 2077 are likely to be the last of them. But as the modding community has proven here, it is more than possible to make the future of such games a 100% community effort- with no traditional publisher involvement. Nexus is perfectly positioned to begin this process, if only it would drop its naive dreams of ever reaching an accomodation with Zenimax.

[Rabbit1251]

Modding really isn't the issue. The question is is the game worth playing. Mods can make it better and prettier but you must have something to start with. As Fallout 76 appears at this point to be an online multi-player game then the game is not worth playing for me regardless of modding or not. The same goes for the new Elder Scrolls, if that is the case. I'm dearly afraid that this might be the end of my commitment to the Bethesda franchises with these two games. I've enjoyed them up til now.

 

 

The Rabbit

[mrmini]

Bah, there isn't anything wrong with Games as a service if done right, which I'll admit is rarely the case, maybe GTA V. Anyway, my take is they'll rent servers out let you mod it to your hearts content. They got Bethnet sure, but assuming they are using the same engine I doubt third party sites are going to be locked out. Anyway if this is your cup of tea, they got Starfield and ES6 right around the corner.

[sopmac45]

""Fallout:76 is going to tear this community apart as the hardcore hackers/modders shred the codebase and protocols of Fallout:76 and rebuild them in the most amazing ways. And then Beth will scream from the rooftops "unlicensed modders are the very definition of evil, and must be stopped at all costs". You want to be a 'legal' 'respectable' modder, obviously you must ONLY work for the Creation Club (now do you see why Beth created the CC, when its been such bad joke for Skyrim and Fallout 4- it was always a strategic weapon waiting in the wings)."""

 

>> I do agree with you on your above statement. I said it when the CC was created and I do believe it was created with the purpose to only allow modding thru it. I also wonder what was the reason for Nexus to implement voluntary contribution to mod authors and now I have a sense what was the purpose of all this.

 

If I was an excellent mod author which my mod has been downloaded by thousand without getting any penny at all during years, and Beth comes out of the blue to offer me a good payment to create a mod that will only be acquire thru their CC, I will probably go for it, create the mod and sell it to Beth. I think that Beth's intention by creating its CC, was precisely to start owning mods for their future upcoming games. Thinking otherwise will be very unwise.