Can we talk about the ToS?

[Viktoriusiii]

 

Am I the only one that feels like this is just what Adobe and Skyrim did?
Not only can you not make any money (that is fine), but they claim ownership over everything you create and can use it without permission...
And they even implemented "I waive away my right" section...
I am relatively certain that this is against EU law. You can not sign anything that takes away your rights, as far as I know.

Maybe there are better law experts here who can explain it to me.
But it seems very VERY much like those shady ToS of recent times.

[Roland]

It’s not a new TOS as far as I know. The language that they own all derivative work based on their code has always been in there.

[BFT2020]

Yeah that seems like standard TOS for any game out there.  Us modders don't really own the work we do as it is based on someone else's work (in this case 7 Days to Die made by TFP).

[warmer]

Ya know I always find it hilarious that people think they have a right making money by stripping assets from a trademarked product and creating a mod from it and selling that 

 

People that think this way have never created a product from scratch and sold it. If you had, you wouldn't feel the need to try and claim the right to profit from a derivative of anyone persons work.

 

You have to realize they don't have to give us mod tools. By giving us mod tools that alone implies ownership, because you are using their assets and tools to create something. None of the assets are yours. Any company that says sure make money using my assets and my tools would be braindead. Not a single person would allow the same of our work.

 

Again if you disagree, you haven't put thousands of hours into a product.

Edited June 25 by warmer (see edit history)

[zztong]

I'm with @warmer on this one. The things we create using TFP assets gets into derivative works. What we create cannot stand alone without involve a TFP asset.

 

I'm not a lawyer and my take on derivative works has been that I might own the expression of a new POI and anything I make might be controlled by both TFP and me, but this license let's TFP isn't bound by my interests and I'm not really all that broken up over it.

 

There are two courts and this covers TFP in the legal one. The other court is public opinion. If TFP were to scoop up my POIs and build DLC around them (this is a absurd hypothetical) entirely without my involvement, then they would have to live with the stink that might get raised and the PR of mowing over a fan. If, on the other hand, they reach out and promise a mention in the liner notes and a pack of Oreo cookies, then situation avoided.

[Viktoriusiii]

There is a difference between "we own the copyright to this" and "we can use whatever YOU create for whatever purpose we want to. Did a stream of the game? We take it and upload it on pxrnsites and you have waivered away ANY of your rights to complain!" Obviously they wont do that.
But that is explicitely what they are saying.

I take absolutely no issue with "we hold the copyright".
Only with the "we can use whatever you do without your permission for whatever" and the "I waiver away my moral(human) rights!" (which is illegal in many countries btw)

[Cr0wst0rm]

I am really curious how they are going to enforce such EULA in places such as EU, where GDPR and data privacy protections acts are in effect

Edited June 25 by Cr0wst0rm (see edit history)

[zztong]

5 minutes ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

I am really curious how they are going to enforce such EULA in places such as EU, where GDPR and data privacy protections acts are in effect

 

I'm curious how this aligns with data privacy? In what way am I or TFP embedding my personal data into the POIs I create?

 

My understanding of the GDPR suggests the copyright/trademark issues aren't relevant, but what am I missing?

Edited June 25 by zztong (see edit history)

[theFlu]

Copyright jargon at its finest, unreadable without a degree in the field, yet automatically accepted by every 12-yo.

 

"Your videos" .. "any Copyright interest" .. "Exclusive" ... doesn't that in effect exclude you from uploading your vids..? Or am I misunderstanding the "exclusive" -bit? Or is "contributions" somehow limited to game asset -type things? (and if so, the exclusive would still exclude you too, no...? )

[vedrit]

3 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Copyright jargon at its finest, unreadable without a degree in the field, yet automatically accepted by every 12-yo.

 

"Your videos" .. "any Copyright interest" .. "Exclusive" ... doesn't that in effect exclude you from uploading your vids..? Or am I misunderstanding the "exclusive" -bit? Or is "contributions" somehow limited to game asset -type things? (and if so, the exclusive would still exclude you too, no...? )

We are granting them a license to our content, just as they are granting us a license to the software. 

They own the game, we can play it. We own the content, they can use them. 
However, the "Exclusive" part means that we cannot also give someone else a license to the content

[theFlu]

30 minutes ago, vedrit said:

However, the "Exclusive" part means that we cannot also give someone else a license to the content

And we'd need to give youtube license to distribute vids, and give steam license to distribute our game assets. I'm sure TFP is fine with it, but .. copyright jargon at its finest

[vedrit]

9 hours ago, theFlu said:

And we'd need to give youtube license to distribute vids, and give steam license to distribute our game assets. I'm sure TFP is fine with it, but .. copyright jargon at its finest

Copyright is very messy

[Viktoriusiii]

11 hours ago, vedrit said:

We own the content, they can use them.

Nope. Read that again. Nothing you create is yours. They can modify it in whatever way they please. If you made a  vedrit-church, they can make it a stipclub and call it "vedrit-nuns n' hookers", with no problem whatsoever. At least if these ToS were legal, which I am VERY certain of, they are not within the EU.

[meganoth]

They can do anything they want with the POI, but whether they can use the name "Vedrit" is a different question. They could not if it was his real name, with pseudonyms it might be again a question of copyright, and since the name was not taken from the game it may or may not fall under the clause

 

My guess is that pseudonyms are unprotected anyway, so unless you create a trademark out of a pseudonym they could call any POI VictoriousIII's hookers right now, without you having created anything in the game.

 

Edited June 26 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Viktoriusiii]

That is the point. They can't. Not with my continued existence on this forum for years.
It would be a clear infringement of defamation, depending on what angle they take, as the relation between this username and me is too obvious.
Maybe with Viktorius but...

Oh well enough of that.

How in the world does not one read what is written there?

This is not a simple "You can not make money off it" it is a "we can steal whatever you create and market it as our stuff".
This is the whole reason why ppl didnt accept Skyrims workshop and fallouts workshop was quite unsucessfull as well.
These ToS are NOT to protect copyright. Either they are maliciously giving themselves the backdoor to stealing stuff they like, OR they are maliciously incompetent at protecting their copyright.
Again: These are at least partially invalid ToS in quite a few countries. And for good reason too.

But I guess if no one else has a problem with that...
I have a great new idea for a game! It takes in credit card numbers and makes a game from it!
 

Quote

Just sign here that whatever is used in game can be used by me for "related goods and services" (like paying my food lul) including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perfom, display, publus, broadcast, transmit or otherwise use the data.
Wether that purpose is now known by me or not does not change that you waive away any moral rights of compensation.

This game will be awesome! Come in, come all! With a simple 16 digit number, I'll change your life forever! 😇

[meganoth]

19 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

This is the whole reason why ppl didnt accept Skyrims workshop and fallouts workshop was quite unsucessfull as well.

 

I thought this was because Bethesda wanted to make mods payed? With them as beneficiary of a cut.

 

[BFT2020]

FYI

 

Mods, no matter what level of work you put in them, are considered derivative works - as they are based on the original work which in this case is the game.

 

If you created a zombie model and got it copyrighted, then TFP cannot take it and put it into the game without your permission to do so.  But if you include that zombie model into a mod for the game, then TFP would have the right to distribute that zombie model for the entire player base regardless of your desires.

[doughphunghus]

20 hours ago, zztong said:

If, on the other hand, they reach out and promise a mention in the liner notes and a pack of Oreo cookies, then situation avoided.

I would love it if they incorporated the original authors name/handle into the POI name. It might spark some good POi creating challenges/push from the community to make really good "vanilla worthy" and properly themed POis. They could even run little contests, choose the top ones or have the community vote on them.  Additionally: it might make it feel a bit like "in game mini lore" (where several POis reference the same persons name or have a theme) And it might also fill the need for "just more content" or maybe they could specify: "we are needing 25 more tier 4 POis, 15 tier 5" and let the community craft for a month and who knows, maybe some are good/fun/creative enough for the base game. 

Edited June 26 by doughphunghus (see edit history)

[vedrit]

10 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Nope. Read that again. Nothing you create is yours.

No, you need to read it again.

Quote

...you hereby grant Licensor (The Fun Pimps) an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software (7 Days To Die)...

We retain ownership, but grant a very broad license to TFP that is tantamount to ownership, but is legally not ownership.

 

Whether it's legal in the EU I don't know. I'm in Canada and, at least as far as my limited knowledge goes, is fully legal. As it's been explained to me by a law student #notlegaladvice "Copyright law in North America is primarily concerned with loss of economic benefits" and in this case where there is little to no economic benefit loss caused by TFP gaining practically-but-not-legally completely ownership, the courts are likely to side with TFP should you decide to take it that far in NA.

Edited June 26 by vedrit (see edit history)

[zztong]

2 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

I would love it if they incorporated the original authors name/handle into the POI name.

 

An optional "Author" element in the POI's XML would be my choice. The game could, show that in small print in the Danger Meter or maybe instead when the POI's name is briefly displayed in larger letters. I wouldn't normally desire that, but for POI makers a little recognition is typically the only reward possible.

 

Related to the original topic, POI files are all open and freely traded between people in terms of the technologies involved. Assuming we could put a price on them, piracy would reign and I'd have to reconsider donating them to efforts such as the CompoPack.

 

2 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

And it might also fill the need for "just more content" or maybe they could specify: "we are needing 25 more tier 4 POis, 15 tier 5" and let the community craft for a month and who knows, maybe some are good/fun/creative enough for the base game. 

 

Perhaps. I don't want to derail the conversation from the original subject. To TFP's process, community work might be more work than doing it themselves. What I mean is I'm pretty sure TFP has an internal review system where their efforts standup to intra-team critique. They make each other better with their ideas. They also have design goals and approaches that sometimes leak out, such as the A21 developer streams where they talked about room design.

 

The result from a community effort would be they might get some contributed POIs that were maybe 50% of what they want, have no way to do the intra-team critique, and would have had to write and distribute their design goals, which probably involve a healthy amount of verbal discussion from team meetings and weren't otherwise captured. Then there's all the time they'd have to spend sifting through the contributions just to find the few they might use.

 

To me, the only viable thing they could probably do is pick a dozen community designers who each have a number of POIs available and pick one POI from each. Have a conversation between a member of the TFP team and the designers to capture what the community designer hoped to accomplish, and then have the TFP person bring it up to snuff. While this would be a neat gesture to the community, it doesn't solve your goal of getting more Tier 4 and 5 POIs.

Edited June 26 by zztong (see edit history)

[vedrit]

6 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

These ToS are NOT to protect copyright.

You bring up a good point. It's not about protecting their copyright. It's to protect them from your copyright.

There's so many cool mods and user-created POIs that yeah, if they wanted to include how great their modding community is in marketing material, any use of those mods, without the granted license, would put them at risk of being sued.

[Obsessive Compulsive]

This does get a little messy when you get into the realm of custom programming. Using an 'asset' as a library for development of another product, is NOT under copyright of redistribution provided the original product is not what is being sold or distributed and they have provided it without restriction. In this case they provided the tools to modify the original using harmony injections. Injections are normally seen as forced manipulations but in this case, they have provided it. Derivative works is often opinion based. Taking an existing model and changing it slightly is still under copyright unless changing enough. What is enough? Depends where you live.

 

Reusing a base model they provide for you as an example and give you the tools to do it, does not become theirs. That is like saying works made in photoshop are theirs because it uses the core program of photoshop to develop it. In this case, 7 days and the assets are being used like photoshop to create a separate project or work.

 

The assets created by the programmer are not copyrighted through extension. That is a goofy thing for the Pimps to try. They own the original works, not products made using tools they provided. That would be considered entrapment in many countries. Stealing mods under IP grabs will normally get you lawsuits and a third party development that avoids things like official steam workshop. Not really sure why they specified items cant be sold for in game currency either. That means their own traders need to removed from the IP. Whomever wrote this was on drugs

[Obsessive Compulsive]

Generally speaking a TOS is telling people that the pimps don't endorse you or anyone using their IP for anything they don't give specific permissions to. Does not mean they will act on it or even really care. It is a protection for you and from you as they can't really tell what you intend to use it for. Once they know your intension, well its up to them to enforce what they feel is worth it. Normally with cease and desist letters, then lawsuits.

 

Another tricky part of this TOS is where they state you are allowed to accept donations but the reasons are specific to hosting a server. For the modders that dont host servers, instead they program mods, well this TOS might shut them down since donations had a defined purpose in the TOS. Awkward

[meganoth]

I don't know what is awkward about this, are you talking about the legal situation? Most modders believe mods should be free and open source and sharing (often with attribution) should be a thing. If others would take money for mods they would not share anymore. Remember that Bethesda gets flak every time for trying to push paid mods into the market, especially from modders.

 

So TFP is fully in line with most modders (AFAIK).

 

Edited June 27 by meganoth (see edit history)

[khzmusik]

What is interesting is the section on moral rights. In countries that have them, they can't be waived at all. (Not even voluntarily.) The U.S. doesn't have moral rights though, so it's understandable why their lawyers might be confused.

 

Also, that section includes not just things like mods, but gameplay videos as well. So basically TFP could take almost the entirety of JaWoodle's content from YouTube, put it on their own channel, and monetize it, even license it for a movie or something, without either compensating or crediting JaWoodle.

 

But, there is other language that I think is far more problematic. It basically says that no user-generated content can portray nudity or drug use. That's going to be a big problem for a lot of modders - including me.

 

I would point you to the language of the EULA, but I can't read it any more. Once you read it in game you can't re-read it in game, it's not in Steam, and AFAICT it isn't available online anywhere. I did read it, but I have to go by memory to remember what I agreed to. That's not good.