Bethesda's use of modders' ideas

[ThomasCovenant]

Look, I know that Skyrim and everything in it created by Bethesda belongs to Bethesda. I do get that.

 

A while ago someone made a mod called "Build Your own Home", and now ta-dah...Bethesda announces an add-on that let's you...Build You Own Home.

 

So, like so many other game producers they won't fix what's broken(please don't fixate on this opinion), but they'll take ideas that they didn't originate and call them their own.

 

And, say they were going to do it all along.

 

Bull.

 

Hey, if they gave credit to the modder, then kudos.

 

They protect their property with DRM and the like, but modders' ideas are not the property of Bethesda.

 

Just saying.

[Lachdonin]

Ugh... Bethesda DID have this idea all along... back in Morrowind, you literally got to build your own estate with the Great Houses. You also got to direct the development of an entire town, Raven Rock. All Hearthfire does is reinvent those same ideas in Skyrim's crafting system.

[sinnerman69]

Hearthfire is being created mostly for xbox and PS3 gamers and most likely be under $19 for PC or maybe even free as a gift for releasing a bugged DLC dawnguard

[stabbykitteh]

The creator of the mod in question doesn't seem to think it's theft, judging by his comments on his mod page. And as Lachdonin said, this is a 10 year old concept for Bethesda.

[xaliqen]

The modding community is always give and take. Bethesda gives us a game and the tools to work on it, and the community gives back their creativity and innovation to expand on the original.

 

If Bethesda then takes popular ideas from the mod community and puts them into DLC or future games, then Bethesda should be applauded, because it means they are paying attention and evolving their games with feedback from their userbase.

 

The 'build your own house' idea has been around for awhile (as was pointed out before), so I'm not entirely sure that's something Bethesda took from the community. In addition, most of the pieces necessary to create this DLC already exist within the game itself.

 

House mods can be some of the most incredible mod efforts, and I don't think whatever Bethesda includes in this DLC in any way detracts from the impressive mods out there. If anything, it just reinforces how the modding community has the capability to rival or exceed what Bethesda releases for some of its DLC.

Edited August 31, 2012 by xaliqen

[NoAardvarksAllowed]

I agree with the poster above me. Very few game developers support modding like Beth does, that's a fact. So I find it perfectly reasonable that they should get something back from that support, and PC users coming up with mod ideas, testing what works and what is popular, is just such a thing. I see the relationship between PC modders and Beth as symbiotic, i.e. good for everyone involved. It also gives the developer an incentive to continue supporting the modding scene.

 

As for them stealing Supernastypants' mod (or the idea), I'm not sure they did. But even if they did, it would still be fair as I see it. We can all get mods for free, so the more Beth borrows from modders for their DLC, the smaller our incentive to spend any money on it becomes.

[gsmanners]

There is nothing new under the sun, except maybe the number of well-educated people. All educated people tend to have the same ideas, because their education opens the doors to those ideas. A few egotistical people decide that they "own" those ideas. Never mind the fact that ideas are inherently worthless and can be copied infinitely with no effort. Implying that there's some inherent morality in all this is silly, to put it lightly.

 

That said, intellectual pursuits are some of the most damnably arduous of all possible pursuits, so it's no surprise that people feel like they are owed something in exchange. Just one of the fun paradoxes of life.

[Satorinu]

Snip

 

OP 1:

Any mod produced for an ES Game through use of the construction set via TOS if I recall correctly, inherently becomes property of Bethesda as part of the agreement you sign to use the software they created to let you mod the game in the first place.

 

 

If You distribute or otherwise make available New Materials, You automatically grant to Bethesda Softworks the irrevocable, perpetual, royalty free, sublicensable right and license under all applicable copyrights and intellectual property rights laws to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, perform, display, distribute and otherwise exploit and/or dispose of the New Materials (or any part of the New Materials) in any way Bethesda Softworks, or its respective designee(s), sees fit. You also waive and agree never to assert against Bethesda Softworks or its affiliates, distributors or licensors any moral rights or similar rights, however designated, that You may have in or to any of the New Materials. If You commit any breach of this Agreement, Your right to use the Editor under this Agreement shall automatically terminate, without notice.

 

 

OP 2:

They did have this in the works from week one, they showed videos of the butler service via a skeleton as a placeholder and such. They basically have wanted to do this since Morrowind .. actually they have wanted to do far more than this since morrowind, but time constraints ect ect. Regardless, Bethesda is one of the few company's that support modders, thereby support them when they take a concept even if they didn't originally think of it or think it worth the effort. If they took the scripting code from Build Your Own Home mod and just rereleased it, I'd agree, they owe some kudo's to the creator, but they didn't (or we'll know about it swiftly upon release of the source)

 

Even if the last point comes to light they outright took the scripting from BYOH through lazyness, they still had the right to.

 

OP 3: -- A long winded rant, that this whole post was updated to include with version 2.0 of fuming anger :teehee: OK so I just felt like writing and feel strongly about the absurd lengths we go claiming stole this and stole that.. psh' we apparently owe royalty to the stone age out the wazu if that's the case.

 

 

There haven't been (many) new ideas for a very very long time, so any of these stolen idea threads cause me to want to rant and so I'm just going to rant :ohdear: skew it! It's not directed at anyone in particular, not even the OP; it's just in general this whole concept of stealing ideas which isn't just with Bethesda but most games everywhere is mind boggling.

 

First FPS : Stone Age, Rock Thowers and Spear Throwers.

First Build Your Own Home : Stone Age, tents and caves.. very minor customization options, gawd how far we've come!

First Strategy concept : Stone Age, Seers and Leaders commanding from over the shoulder of their underlings telling.. err .. yelling and pointing them where to go, what to do, and when to throw rocks! Later in military drills of nations staring over the battlefield commanding their forces in practice and in war.

First Racing : Do I need to say it? Yes, the stone age :P or ever since the invention of the wheel if racing requires wheels, someone then did it.

First Survival : Stone Age.. need I say.

First Horror : Stone Age .. Those cats mon, those cats. Day Eatz ju.

First Spaceship concepts : Well we know the Mayan's were awful dear to the stars, and the pyramids certainly depict similar but couldn't make it (read the link below, and goodluck with the mind boggling.)

First Magic concept : Most any religion's sacred texts.

First Relationship concept : Stone age....

First Flight concept : Wax wings involving the sun anyone? or the link below, certainly looks like we wanted to fly.. actually claims they came up with the CPU but hey.. that's uh.. I'd rather not think about it, hurts my head to think even the computer is actually idea from THAT long ago. Ugh..

First Open World Concept : Beginning of Time.

First Monster Concepts : Unable to pinpoint, but likely Stone Age as well. Some new ideas spring up every so often to some degree, actual, new ideas, so yay!

First Supernatural Concepts : Vampires, Werewolves, Elves, Orcs, oh comon, Bethesda is straight ripping Lord of the Rings.. errr.. scratch that.. yeah you know where this is going by this point. Though some actual new ideas have sprung up even in recent times, so yay!

 

Actual place of advancing new ideas : Storylines, including characters and their backgrounds. That's about it in regards to gaming; everything else is just an innovation on ooooold ideas.

 

http://therev67.tripod.com/edfu_cpu/edfu-cpu.htm

 

- Just to state the obvious : No just because it's pixels and 'gaming' doesn't suddenly make it a new idea or concept, I was around five years old when I started wishing that gaming was just as realistic as RL and had all the same options but let you be a super hero :P I mean really, that's a dream worth dreaming and with that, the Matrix totally ripped off my childhood idea and innovated it, damn them! :tongue: Well more like damn them for semi-skewing up the last two, so rude.

 

Regardless, I actually wished for and thought deeply on most everything we see in games since I was tiny! If a child can think of these things instinctively.. and I know I'm not the only one.. really, where does anyone get off saying it's a stolen idea and at the end of every game I'm left sitting here wishing 90% of it all was fleshed out a hell of a lot more.. such as a Skyrim that lets me freaking cook my food in the sense of actually watching it cook, stiring the soup, flipping the deer burgers and adding seasonin---- now I'm hungry.. ugh, you get the point; but I'm not about to call them thieves of the dozens of cooking simulators that are out there, anymore than I call them thieves of .. you know, RL cooking.

 

I will bet you the first big name game to come out with a cooking simulation in it and then suddenly another game has it in; will be called rips offs rather than just having had the resources and desire to do it, maybe even inspired by and innovated upon due to the first release but regardless: it's just a rip off of real life and nobody owes anyone jack.

 

Same with the next game that actually lets you build your own car as in actually welding the parts on bit by bit in a design you want and drive it around in the next open world driving game, or the next game that lets you take apart your gun bit by bit and clean it and redesign it - but god forbid it's COD or BF3 and some other game does it cause they'll get reamed for it and called thieves with death threats stacking up: well heard stories the COD/BF3 fan bases can be a bit fanatical.

 

In truth, it amounts to this: Not this or much else in gaming is a new idea, just an innovation and at times a rather clever innovation but that's all it is and the creator doesn't need to be ashamed of that because that is EXACTLY what we've done for countless ages, any outright new ideas will be had in scientific labs, and in a writers pages; games get all it's content second-hand and that's not a terrible thing. Theres a reason we're just now getting to the point of having real open worlds and it's not because Grand Theft Auto came up with it, hell, any Zelda game out there had the same open world it just couldn't make it 3D until the n64 :P and .. you know, certain a bunch of other game creators would have loved to do it.. oh they did, some of the first games ever designed for the very first home computers were "go north? go west? go east?" with a very open world design, all text based, but hey, by saying Bethesda stole a "BYOH idea" logic Zelda/GTA/Elder Scrolls stole the open world concept from the very first PC games ever, nevermind the Sims or those build your own home simulators for RL house construction purposes that came out long before the sims.

 

It's all about resources: If unlimited funding was given to dev's, and then were told to make the largest game possible, they would have one choice and one choice alone.. The Matrix. A craptastic world in terms of graphics because even unlimited funding wouldn't suddenly advance computers to the point of having the processing power to do this : where everything you can do in RL can be done in the simulation, and everything you can think of can be created just by thinking it, every book can become a reality, every past game, every point in known history recreated and still, it'd just be "stealing" every idea from the dawn of time from the perspective people seem to have, but when you stop and think about it, no, it didn't steal anything, just innovated "RL" into a virtual experience which would (take) countless (really) countless hours of coding and scripting to accomplish and THAT is why not a thing is stolen; it all comes down to did the devoloper team code/script it themselves, create/pay for the textures and meshes they use, for the voice actors and the story they're using, if yes : they didn't steal anything.

 

So the final verdict for this particular rant: The only remote way Bethesda owes any credit to anyone is if they lazily take the scripts and coding from someone elses work and put it in their own rather than writing it from scratch, as no other game, no modder, not bethesda either : had it as a new idea; they just looked outside into RL and went, well we have the time and ability let's add this feature or perhaps were inspired from thousands of other sources. The only real 'new' ideas that can be called theft or totally uncalled for to 'take' stim from storylines and characters generally only found in books, with only a few fairly rare exceptions; everything else is just a innovation on old ideas, sometimes rather spectacular innovations, sometimes rather craptastic ones; but just innovations and innovations are alright.

 

<Dons Shield and backs away slow. Cause everyone's got their own opinion and some are going to conflict, heavily.>

 

Edited August 31, 2012 by Satorinu

[shadow56]

I found two other enhancements provided in Dawnguard that have been out in mods released much earlier. Auto equip arrow quivers when the bow is selected or crossbow is now a new feature in Dawnguard and a head decapitation 3rd person combat move that has been available in a mod on Nexus for some time prior to Dawnguards release. I had been looking at getting the auto equip arrows but since it is now in Dawnguard don't need the mod. The head decapitation is a nice enhancement to the Skyrim Vanilla combat moves so downloading the mod that provided that is not needed. Sure there are many more, just haven't run across them yet. This also brings me to the next question geared to those having a lot of CTD' s with Dawnguard. Some may have mods installed that do the same thing as the new features in Dawnguard and now their might be a conflict. Worth looking into.

[Blu02]

Meh, is there anything that the mod-community haven't done already, in one way or another? It's getting hard to present original ideas in these games tbh. In the end actually it's less about the concept, and more about how well it's implemented. Bethesda kinda has a upper hand here when it comes to functionality since they have full access to the games mechanics, which modders do not. Modders are however usually better at fixing bugs and compatibility-issues. So even if these DLC's are old ideas, they often come with some new unlocked functionality for us to play around with in our mods. So it's really a give and take relationship between us and Bethesda.

 

Also, both building houses and adoption was presented in Skyrim over a half year ago on Bethesdas internal "Game Jam". Check at 2.30;