STEAMing Pile...

ToTTenTranz said:
Already posted in this thread, but here it goes again at point 6, "User Generated Content".:


And if this is "misreading of conditions", then I guess Valve's own lawyers were misreading them too:
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This is merely a right to distribute, nothing more nothing else. The derived work is the packaged product sold by steam. This is quite literally the EXACT SAME THING that any other developer signs with Valve, from EA to Rockstar. Its basically what's required by any digital distribution contract offering content for sale. Its what allows them to ensure continuing availability for purchased content.





If the option to pay for mods had been there from the moment the game was released, the shitstorm would've been about Bethesda's 45% take, which would still be ridiculous given the conditions.
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Actually, its quite generous within the media industry to the developer. In the area of derived content, most developers/writers are lucky to get 5-10%. While these numbers may seem bad, the 25% is actually quite excellent within the overall media industry.
 
The idea was sound, threre's no reason people shouldn't get paid for their work.
If people want free mods, they can make them themselves :p
 
Rodéric said:
The idea was sound, threre's no reason people shouldn't get paid for their work.
If people want free mods, they can make them themselves :p
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While I do agree that there's a place for paid mods in the PC scene, I don't agree with the general "people should always get paid for any kind of work anywhere" idea.

What would happen to Wikipedia if they decided to give money in exchange for edits and/or article entries?
If you think it'd level up the quality of contributions in the wiki, you're probably wrong.
It would destroy the website overnight, with the massive amount of (even more) non-factual entries and utter crap edits that opportunists would submit to it.




Davros said:
except devs get paid a wage while they are devolving
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And pay deductible taxes, social security, health insurance and in many countries it would contribute to their pensions as that's enforced by law.
 
Xmas said:
"Valve is the sole owner of the derivative works created by Valve from your Content"

This is not at all equal to "losing legal ownership of any assets present in the mods" and it certainly does not prevent anyone from reusing their assets wherever they wish.
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Why is everyone forgetting the second part of the sentence, and why not underline the rest of the first part?
"Valve is the sole owner of the derivative works created by Valve from your Content and is therefore entitled to grant licenses on these derivative works."

The way I see it, they can take your texture, change a pixel's value and claim it as their own.
Regardless, why that answer from Valve's lawyer when the modder tried to take the mod away from the Workshop?
 
Of course there's a place for modding and there's nothing wrong with making money off it either, but the way the modding community currently works, means you can't transition into a paid model overnight. I think if they want to do this, they will have to limit it to new games initially. Existing games have a lot of content that builds off of the work of other people, and in many cases there's no clear ownership of property that has so far been free and now becomes paid. It gets complicated very quickly.

A fresh start with a new game can explore this model better, and see whether it can work.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Why is everyone forgetting the second part of the sentence, and why not underline the rest of the first part?
"Valve is the sole owner of the derivative works created by Valve from your Content and is therefore entitled to grant licenses on these derivative works."

The way I see it, they can take your texture, change a pixel's value and claim it as their own.
Regardless, why that answer from Valve's lawyer when the modder tried to take the mod away from the Workshop?
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Um, because as stated multiple times, that's the language required in order for valve to ever be able to distribute the content. Its literally somewhere in every contract for everything distributed on Steam, or Google Play, or itunes/app store. AKA it is the right of distribution.

The modder was trying to remove the content completely from steam. Steam was perfectly willing and did make new purchases disabled for that mod, but they won't remove something completely that they've sold. That in effect would require them to revoke sold content from users. AKA, what the modder wanted would of required steam to violate their contract with users who had already purchased the mod.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Why is everyone forgetting the second part of the sentence, and why not underline the rest of the first part?
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Because I was specifically responding to the claim that devs would be "losing legal ownership of any assets present in the mods", when in fact they retain the rights to their assets.
 
aaronspink said:
This is merely a right to distribute, nothing more nothing else. The derived work is the packaged product sold by steam. This is quite literally the EXACT SAME THING that any other developer signs with Valve, from EA to Rockstar. Its basically what's required by any digital distribution contract offering content for sale. Its what allows them to ensure continuing availability for purchased content.
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What defines a derived work in this context?

Does it mean: we can package it in ways we want it. Similar to Amazon being allowed to sell a book either in paper or electronic form.
Or does it mean: we can do anything we please, as in the example of Totz, where Valve can rip the thing apart, reuse it in their own games etc.

If, as you claim, they only meant the right to redistribute it, then the language certainly isn't clear about that. And they never made that clear to their non-lawyer audience. And if they didn't intend it to be the second interpretation, they were stupid to assume that everyone would have the legal chops to understand it correctly. (I certainly don't have those skills.)
 
silent_guy said:
If, as you claim, they only meant the right to redistribute it, then the language certainly isn't clear about that. And they never made that clear to their non-lawyer audience. And if they didn't intend it to be the second interpretation, they were stupid to assume that everyone would have the legal chops to understand it correctly. (I certainly don't have those skills.)
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You'll see this corporate lawyerism everywhere.
They make it vague so that the optimists and innocent assume they're somehow protected and lower their guard. Once things get ugly (as seen from the fishing mod case), the lawyers get in and subdue everyone with "it's obvious to me that this turns in our favor" statements. Only those with the time/money to get themselves other lawyers will be able to counterattack... which isn't a lot of people.
 
Arwin said:
I think if they want to do this, they will have to limit it to new games initially
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I think that is their plan, I don't think they've abandoned the idea of paid mods they are just waiting for a new game to be released with no existing community

years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating
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Rodéric said:
The idea was sound
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Apparently not, judging by the community response.

It has yet to be been explained as to why a vibrant growing community of content creators operating without issue for well over a decade suddenly should be compensated for their hobby as if they were somehow slaves forced to work on mods against their will during their free time. Like I have previously stated, after Bethesda's last patch back in 2013 both the game's binary and Creation Kit were left dead to rights, bugs, limitations and all. It has been up to the community out of their own free time and will to create the tools and frameworks necessary to extend modding beyond Bethesda's software bugs and limitations. These efforts have continued to keep the game popular and selling LONG past its release date, for Skyrim and previous titles (The game's Director has said as much time and time again). The FREE sharing of resources, time and ideas are the foundation that has allowed the community to continue to be prosperous more than any modding community ever before it.

Where is the proof that all of a sudden walled off paid mods for the TES games suddenly become better than the free counterparts? Better for whom? Smaller mods? That was debunked. Bigger Expansion sized mods? The biggest TES/Fallout content creators from SureAI have stated that mods for money doesn't help them. Since paid workshop mods would be cut off from most if not all community resource/tools/frameworks because of DMCA reasons, anything other than quick ROI mods would be profitable @ 25%.

This (admitted) half assed attempt at curating has done jack shit for anyone other than cause a rift in the community and instill fear and doubt. The NDA and behind the scenes bullshit absolutely reeks of rent-seeking from the corporate parties involved and if that sounds harsh then why couldn't they have asked the community for feedback first to avoid this PR blunder? I personally think the answer to that is pretty clear.


From a well known and now less liked modder Arthmoor after the deletion of the workshop:
Ride out the storm they told us.

Stick with it they told us.

Everything will be fine in a few weeks they told us.

It's just the typical reaction to a change they told us.

What they didn't tell us about was the bus they sent hurtling down the highway that just rolled us: http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

Way to go. Fracture the community permanently and then piss off the very group of people you're likely to invite back for another attempt. Fat chance. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I am HIGHLY unlikely to accept an invite back under any circumstances unless it's for far more favorable conditions and a written promise not to chicken out over a bunch of trolls on the internet.
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Now, whether the huge group of modders and mod users against this were just a "bunch of trolls" is a matter of opinion.... I guess :rolleyes:
 
Just heard about this story. Only exception I take is how much of a cut Valve was taking. Modders should be able to charge for their work. If you make a quality mod and want to charge $20 for it, good on you if people will pay for it. If you want to make a mod that's simple and think people will pay $1 for it, then great. If anything, it will lead to more and higher-quality mods. THey just need to get the revenue sharing right.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Already posted in this thread, but here it goes again at point 6, "User Generated Content".:


And if this is "misreading of conditions", then I guess Valve's own lawyers were misreading them too:
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And you keep missing the point. They HAVE to do that to legally continue to provide users with the content they already purchased.

Just because a mod author or game maker wants their mod/game removed from Steam for sale, Valve MUST retain the legal right to continue to provide that game to current owners of the game.

Without that wording, when a mod author/developer/publisher removes their game from Steam, Valve would also be legally required to remove it from the library of all owners of that game as the game is being provided to them through the Steam service.

I'm fairly sure people would have been quite angry with Valve had they removed Crysis 2 from everyone's libraries when EA had Steam remove Crysis 2 from Steam, for example. Yes, Crysis 2 is again available from Steam, but there was a period of time when Steam was forced to remove it from Steam by order of EA.

There are lots more examples of games that people own but are no longer available on Steam. Without the legal protection that you quoted, Steam would have had to remove those from people's Steam Library.

It's quite likely all other online stores have similar verbiage. Otherwise if a developer/publisher removed their game from the storefront the store would no longer be able to legally allow the download of that game by people who own the game. So, for example, GoG doesn't have DRM. You can download the game and play it forever. But you can always redownload the game (I'm assuming) if you deleted it or otherwise lost it. Without similar legal verbiage to what you quoted from Steam, that would no longer be possible of a deveoper/publisher removed their game from GoG. If you lose or deleted your game. Tough shit, you can't download it again from the place you purchased it because they have no rights to the game in any form, without that legal protection.

Regards,
SB
 
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