EULA changes and mod drama.

[TwilightVaramek]

4 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

 

I'll be honest, looking at the data for this mod, it could have been shut down by someone other than TFP quite easily. Especially if that "innocent mod" was using assets from a number of sources where those models are available.

if  it was taken down for that then something wrong cus vroid is built into the game craftopia  like its a function of that game vroid also has a mod for valheim  and raft i have used the mod in all of those games and its the only reason i came back to play 7 days 2 die i used my own player model i paid for as doe pretty much anyone that uses these mods if the mod doesn't come back because of what ever is happening with   mod drama i  likely wont return to the game i don't want to be a human on the internet when i am in real life  i want to play games to be my own  character with my own designs not a boring human that looks the same as every other human on the planet

[SylenThunder]

21 minutes ago, TwilightVaramek said:

if  it was taken down for that then something wrong cus vroid is built into the game craftopia  like its a function of that game vroid also has a mod for valheim  and raft i have used the mod in all of those games and its the only reason i came back to play 7 days 2 die i used my own player model i paid for as doe pretty much anyone that uses these mods if the mod doesn't come back because of what ever is happening with   mod drama i  likely wont return to the game i don't want to be a human on the internet when i am in real life  i want to play games to be my own  character with my own designs not a boring human that looks the same as every other human on the planet

 

Apples to oranges.  Craftopia got specific licensing to utilize that system in their game. The maker of the mod that got taken down would have had to procure similar licensing in order for it to be valid. If they did not acquire that license, then they would be in violation, and would be taken down as a result. 

 

And honestly, to think that TFP would have taken down a mod like that is a bit of a stretch. The mod author wasn't even selling the mod, and they were not making money off of the mod as near as I can tell. The Vroid templates were licensed though, and as are the templates that you purchase for yourself. The interface to utilize these templates is licensed and requires a paid subscription. If the mod author did not acquire the necessary rights for it, then it would be taken down. 

 

Whether you want to look like a human, or a common Vroid is your prerogative. Quitting a game just because the character interface doesn't support your decision is your loss. It is basically the equivalent of boycotting Mario Cart because you can't play it as a pecan pie.

 

In any case, your issue is completely unrelated to this thread, and does not need to be discussed here further.

[Rotor]

1 minute ago, SylenThunder said:

 

...Mario Cart because you can't play it as a pecan pie.

 

 

There go all of my dreams!

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, Rotor said:

 

There go all of my dreams!

I'd rather an apple pie, though pecan is good. 😁

[FA_Q2]

On 7/27/2023 at 9:46 AM, Arma Rex said:

You'd be better off talking to a copyright lawyer than debating the veracity of monetizing mods for video games here. I doubt many people here are going to give you a solid explanation either way.

I have a solid explanation, I already gave it.  I doubt a solid explanation even exists on the other side but I await one from anywhere.  A copyright lawyer certainly would not furnish one, they cost hundreds per hour and they get paid that to understand the law, not why a law exists.

 

I think the why is actually pretty simple, the monied interests in this field are all on the side of trying to limit the rights of customers as much as possible, the people writing these laws are utterly ignorant about what these laws mean and the voters that provide the counterbalance to the lobbyist interests don't really care and are equally ignorant.  Most people just want @%$# to work, they do not care about the details.  

 

Who do you know that has actually read an EULA?  I know exactly zero people that have read one.  The fact that it is a contract that you are functionally required to 'sign' before you even read it should turn a few heads at the onset but no one really cares.

 

Though this might be way beyond what people want to discuss on a video game board

 

[Anabella]

On 7/29/2023 at 7:35 AM, Desmoulins said:

So do i get that right.

My favorite mod, that took a year to make and pop up (VRoid Player Models) got shot down via DMCA request from the devs as part of this giant drama. An innocent mod, that was already hard to make for the dev was shot down by the very game's devs because they are after some other mod that is trying to make money off of it?

 

This mod single handedly made me reinstall and play the game again, made me actually have some fun again with the game and it may now be gone forever because the devs wildly shot DMCA's around. I have absolutely zero tolerance when it comes to shooting against the modding community, i don't care what the devs say and if they "support" mods, if they cared about their modding community they should have made sure they target the right people.

I don't think you have it right. I have heard nothing about a problem with the mod you are talking about.  Maybe you are confusing the mod name to the author of the MM mod since they are similar?

[BFT2020]

On 7/30/2023 at 1:45 AM, FA_Q2 said:

I have a solid explanation, I already gave it.  I doubt a solid explanation even exists on the other side but I await one from anywhere.  A copyright lawyer certainly would not furnish one, they cost hundreds per hour and they get paid that to understand the law, not why a law exists.

 

I think the why is actually pretty simple, the monied interests in this field are all on the side of trying to limit the rights of customers as much as possible, the people writing these laws are utterly ignorant about what these laws mean and the voters that provide the counterbalance to the lobbyist interests don't really care and are equally ignorant.  Most people just want @%$# to work, they do not care about the details.  

 

Who do you know that has actually read an EULA?  I know exactly zero people that have read one.  The fact that it is a contract that you are functionally required to 'sign' before you even read it should turn a few heads at the onset but no one really cares.

 

Though this might be way beyond what people want to discuss on a video game board

 

 

If you own copyright material, you don't want others to make money off of your work.  It's that simple.

 

As for the EULA, I have read it when it was first shown to me when I purchased the game and when it was updated, especially when I started modding the game and sharing those mods with others.  You are not functionally required to sign it before you read it, you are functionally required to sign it before you download / play / mod the game.  In every case that I have seen the EULA's, you are giving the chance of reading it before agreeing to it.  If you choose to not read it, that is your decision.

[pApA^LeGBa]

On 7/27/2023 at 3:54 PM, FA_Q2 said:

I see no difference between a MOD being sold and an after market scoop for my car.  They are both third party additions to a product. 

 

What am I missing?

 

Industry is the keyword here. You miss the fact that your after market scoop for your car  is a prodcut made by a company with a lot of employees, wich needs a factory, an infrastructure to be able to sell it and is not made by a single guy in his garage or workshop at home.

 

Most mod authors don´t have a lot of time to work on their mods and if they start charging money for it, you need a lot more time to justify charging money for it, wich means they would need to charge enough to be able to make a living from it or at least enough to be able to hire someone part time.

 

When fans become customers, everything changes. And if i look at some overhaul mods, i am not sure if the modders actually want to change from having patreons that pay them monthly to having customers that pay them once.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[FA_Q2]

18 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

If you own copyright material, you don't want others to make money off of your work.  It's that simple.

Tough.  The car company owns the design of the car you bought too.  They still cannot tell me I cant sell after market products for it.

18 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

As for the EULA, I have read it when it was first shown to me when I purchased the game and when it was updated, especially when I started modding the game and sharing those mods with others.  You are not functionally required to sign it before you read it, you are functionally required to sign it before you download / play / mod the game.  In every case that I have seen the EULA's, you are giving the chance of reading it before agreeing to it.  If you choose to not read it, that is your decision.

Nope, you buy the product and THEN on installation you get the EULA.  That is how things generally work.

 

And an EULA on update is worthless, I already own the product at that point and there is noting I can do about changes to the EULA in any manner shape or form.

 

[FA_Q2]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Industry is the keyword here. You miss the fact that your after market scoop for your car  is a prodcut made by a company with a lot of employees, wich needs a factory, an infrastructure to be able to sell it and is not made by a single guy in his garage or workshop at home.

Not really relevant.  That does not change the way ownership works.  Only in the example of digital media do your ownership rights get removed when you purchase a product. 

 

Not that some of these MODS do not have teams larger than TFP anyway.  There are quite a few people involved in the Skyrim Requiem and that product is easily worth more than the base game to me.  

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Most mod authors don´t have a lot of time to work on their mods and if they start charging money for it, you need a lot more time to justify charging money for it, wich means they would need to charge enough to be able to make a living from it or at least enough to be able to hire someone part time.

That is for the customer of the after market product to decide.  It has nothing to do with the originating company.  And no, they would not need to charge enough to make a living from it... what would make you say something like that?  All of these people have jobs and this is just a passion.  It would sure be nice if the best ones were able to make a living though - you would see a massive increase in the quality of such mods as the people would have the time as well as the obligation that comes with having customers.

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

When fans become customers, everything changes. And if i look at some overhaul mods, i am not sure if the modders actually want to change from having patreons that pay them monthly to having customers that pay them once.

 

 

Then they do not have to change.  I don't understand your point here.  No one has to charge for anything.  The point is that the option to charge for hard work, the exact same type of work the creators of the original product have done, has been removed for no reason whatsoever.  I still do not see a single reason other than you stating that they do not have large operations.  A point that is rather irrelevant, it is not as though TFP themselves are a large operation or that there are not single game developers out there.  Rise to Ruin has one single developer.  That has changed nothing in how that game was monetized or the rights that individuals have.  That extends to physical product as well, there are people that create their own products without employees.  Does not mean others cannot make additions to them and sell those as well.

 

[minisith]

56 minutes ago, FA_Q2 said:

Not really relevant.  That does not change the way ownership works.  Only in the example of digital media do your ownership rights get removed when you purchase a product. 

 

Not that some of these MODS do not have teams larger than TFP anyway.  There are quite a few people involved in the Skyrim Requiem and that product is easily worth more than the base game to me.  

That is for the customer of the after market product to decide.  It has nothing to do with the originating company.  And no, they would not need to charge enough to make a living from it... what would make you say something like that?  All of these people have jobs and this is just a passion.  It would sure be nice if the best ones were able to make a living though - you would see a massive increase in the quality of such mods as the people would have the time as well as the obligation that comes with having customers.

Then they do not have to change.  I don't understand your point here.  No one has to charge for anything.  The point is that the option to charge for hard work, the exact same type of work the creators of the original product have done, has been removed for no reason whatsoever.  I still do not see a single reason other than you stating that they do not have large operations.  A point that is rather irrelevant, it is not as though TFP themselves are a large operation or that there are not single game developers out there.  Rise to Ruin has one single developer.  That has changed nothing in how that game was monetized or the rights that individuals have.  That extends to physical product as well, there are people that create their own products without employees.  Does not mean others cannot make additions to them and sell those as well.

 

So you think you can modify any film and resell it as your own.  Good luck buddy.

[theFlu]

7 minutes ago, minisith said:

So you think you can modify any film and resell it as your own.  Good luck buddy.

You can, it's called fair use. As long as you don't compete with the original audience, you're fine in the current law.

 

And why couldn't you? The stated purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new art, if copyright is blocking you from creating your spiderman-edit, it's going against its own purpose.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@FA_Q2 We are talking 7 days here. Skyrim doesn´t matter at all in this topic.

 

And yes they would need more time. Most people aren´t complaining about bugs, performance issues or any bugs regarding mods right now. This will change when they have to pay for it. And this will take time.

 

Also a lot of mod authors right out refuse to troubleshoot any MP problems due to a lack of time to do so, so yes, time is also an issue.

 

I do really appreciate what the modding community does and i play a lot of mods, but a lot of them are pretty janky and pretty much every overhaul has a good amount of bugs happening.

 

People will change if they are customers. If you think otherwise, you still have faith in humanity and never worked in sales or any kind of service job.  And we are in early access, a lot of people would never know any other way than paying for mods if this would become a thing now.

 

@theFlu Huh? You mean you could make your own spiderman movie with the actual spiderman in it as long as you target a different audience? I am pretty sure that´s not how this works. I mean there is a reason that "Winnie Pooh - Blood and Honey", came out after Disney lost the rights to the figure and not before even tough they surely don´t aim it at the same target audience as Disney.

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[theFlu]

14 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Huh? You mean you could make your own spiderman movie with the actual spiderman in it as long as you target a different audience?

Now, don't go getting into lawsuits against billion dollar companies based on the word of an internet randomer; you ain't got the money to see it through. But to an extent, yes. I've seen a copyright case where someone lifted an entire youtube video, slapped it on their own channel with merely a changed title, basically just making fun of the original. The originator went into court over it and got not only thrown out, but to pay the legal fees of the alleged infringer; which is kinda on the rare side for anything copyright related.

 

So yes, in principle. In practice, go against Disney and they burn so much money with legal bull@%$# that you'll be selling your grandma on a wet market before you see the inside of a courthouse. Hence, Blood and Honey.

 

And for some reason, characters do seem to get their own protection, yes (which I find rather questionable), so copying the character of spiderman might be legally problematic. But with sufficient changes, you actually Should be allowed to sell your version of No Way Home as you see fit. Under the law, just not in practice.

Edited August 1, 2023 by theFlu (see edit history)

[meganoth]

38 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Now, don't go getting into lawsuits against billion dollar companies based on the word of an internet randomer; you ain't got the money to see it through. But to an extent, yes. I've seen a copyright case where someone lifted an entire youtube video, slapped it on their own channel with merely a changed title, basically just making fun of the original. The originator went into court over it and got not only thrown out, but to pay the legal fees of the alleged infringer; which is kinda on the rare side for anything copyright related.

 

So yes, in principle. In practice, go against Disney and they burn so much money with legal bull@%$# that you'll be selling your grandma on a wet market before you see the inside of a courthouse. Hence, Blood and Honey.

 

And for some reason, characters do seem to get their own protection, yes (which I find rather questionable), so copying the character of spiderman might be legally problematic. But with sufficient changes, you actually Should be allowed to sell your version of No Way Home as you see fit. Under the law, just not in practice.

 

What your are bringing up here is one of several "fair use" excemptions in copyright law, the one about parody. But simply changing the target audience does not suffice. Wikipedia: "Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship."

Also how much of the original work is used is a big factor in deciding whether it is fair use. So using a small piece of a work is easier to be considered fair use as the whole work.

 

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use )

Edited August 1, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

What your are bringing up here is one of a few excemptions in copyright law, the one about parody. But simply changing the target audience does not suffice.

Yes, but I basically brought up two, parody has its own clause; but my original phrasing above Papa's quote was "as long as you don't compete with the original audience". I don't know how you would "just change the audience", you do need to change the nature of the work; but I was referring to the non-compete clause there.

 

In legal practicality, none of the tests used to check for fair use are neither sufficient nor necessary conditions to meet the criteria, in the end it's all left to the discretion of the judge. Non-compete alone Can suffice, but I wouldn't bet my grandma on it.

[meganoth]

4 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Yes, but I basically brought up two, parody has its own clause; but my original phrasing above Papa's quote was "as long as you don't compete with the original audience". I don't know how you would "just change the audience", you do need to change the nature of the work; but I was referring to the non-compete clause there.

 

In legal practicality, none of the tests used to check for fair use are neither sufficient nor necessary conditions to meet the criteria, in the end it's all left to the discretion of the judge. Non-compete alone Can suffice, but I wouldn't bet my grandma on it.

 

Isn't "not competing with the original audience" the same as "changing the audience" ? EDIT: Ah, I see I probably should have written **target** audience

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

Isn't "not competing with the original audience" the same as "changing the audience" ?

No. There's plenty a nuance between the two. You can't even choose the audience, you can have a Target Audience, but that's just a target.

 

But mainly, first one has two solutions; "Don't compete" and "have a different audience". For the latter, only one of those applies.

[Jihh]

While I'm on the side of "if TFP says you can't money with mods, then you can't", simply because they have legally (at least in many countries) the upper hand and it's industry standard anyway (so it's not like they are THE evil company we should take down), I feel like most arguments on why after market products in that market have different laws than in many other markets aren't really convincing so far. But I also don't think we need to provide good arguments. If the law gives them the upper hand in that market than that's how it is, plain and simple. Of course you don't have to like it and you can campaign against it, boycott companies which use those laws, tell developers your opinion and so on and maybe in the long term it will change. But until then they still have the upper hand and can just issue a DMCA takedown, wether you like it or not.

I guess my point is: If you keep coming up with unconvincing and irrelevant arguments (like the number of employees), you just make the argument of the other side look strong, even though they are as irrelevant, because differences between different industries can be adjusted in one or the other direction.

[Rotor]

12 hours ago, theFlu said:

Now, don't go getting into lawsuits against billion dollar companies based on the word of an internet randomer; you ain't got the money to see it through.

 

Twice in one topic my dreams have been derailed.

I am going to have to buy a gaming laptop so I can stay away from you guys while travelling.

[Riamus]

13 hours ago, theFlu said:

You can, it's called fair use. As long as you don't compete with the original audience, you're fine in the current law.

 

And why couldn't you? The stated purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new art, if copyright is blocking you from creating your spiderman-edit, it's going against its own purpose.

I think this is a grossly over-simplified statement that would not hold up in court except in very clearly specific situations.  You would really need a lawyer to make sure you were completely within the law if trying this as it isn't just a matter of saying it's a different audience or that there isn't any overlap in audience whatsoever.  It's very complicated.  Also, IPs are very well-protected.  Using Spiderman to make money without permission would be extremely difficult to do without losing in court.

 

It is not a good idea to suggest to people that they can do whatever they want with copyrighted material and get away with it.  There are exceptions to the law and if they follow those exceptions exactly, they can do what they want.  But doing so and staying within the legal exceptions is not something most people are going to be able to do without at least having a lawyer familiar with copyright law to guide them.  It isn't a simple thing to get around copyright laws legally.  It's better to just state that there are ways to bypass copyright law, such as through parody, but that you the copyright holder normally will win in any copyright case.  Otherwise, you're just telling people they can get away with something that will just land them in hot water.

[FA_Q2]

18 hours ago, minisith said:

So you think you can modify any film and resell it as your own.  Good luck buddy.

Nope.  And the fact that you have to change the argument in order to make a statement against it is one of the reasons I do not think you guys have any actual reasoning here.  

 

In order for someone to use a MOD you are REQUIRED to purchase the original.  Your example is wrong because if I modified the movie and then sold it then the original would not be necessary.  I certainly could sell you something that goes along with the movie.  Indeed, people do that now.

 

[theFlu]

7 hours ago, Riamus said:

I think this is a grossly over-simplified statement that would not hold up in court except in very clearly specific situations.

All perfectly true; I might go as far as drop the exception part: it would not hold in court. But who would expect it to, I'm merely talking about the law, and it's purpose; not courts.

 

7 hours ago, Riamus said:

It is not a good idea to suggest to people that they can do whatever they want with copyrighted material

I never did... but if anyone is using 7dtd/general-chat as legal advice, boy do they have bigger problems than a random internet troll such as myself. Beyond my help, I would bet.

[Rotor]

15 hours ago, theFlu said:

... but if anyone is using 7dtd/general-chat as legal advice, boy do they have bigger problems than a random internet troll such as myself. Beyond my help, I would bet.

 

 

/Erases