Community Modding Wishlist

IdolNinja said:
Don't forget that Volition put in things like Boba Fett's outfit and Doc's helmet from Back to the Future. :p
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I'm talking more like a direct rip from another game, not just a new item that pays homage to another. Example being, people have ripped stuff directly from the Witcher 2 to put into Skyrim, and as far as I know CDPR is okay as long as there no charging for it.

However on a lot of russian sites you get rips from games (PC and console alike) for Fallout 3/NV, games not limited to and including Resident Evil 4, 5, and 6, Call of Duty, Battlefield games of all varieites, Star Wars games, etc, that are usually very frowned upon by the mainsteam Bethesda modding community because of obvious copyright infringement. And the publishers of those particular games wouldn't want their content ripped for any game's mods I don't think, not just Bethesda's games.

I just wanted to get an idea of an official stance of ripped content, both from you IdolNinja and your modding community, and Volition as well. But as far as what I'm hearing I guess it'll be okay for earlier SR game content to be ported in later SR games, which is definitely a good thing to see.
 
For the ripped contents, maybe we can do something like CD-Checks? The racing sim community at Nogripracing has been doing it for quite sometime now, it is meant to prove you own the game that its content got ripped from. Such as the mods for SHIFT 2 Unleashed are 99% ripped from Forza 4 but in order to install the mod, you have to link the installer to the Forza 4 disc before it start installing.
 
I remember reading about CDPR allowing the assets to be used in mods, so redistributing those, as well as older SR game assets, and any that come from games in a similar situation, is fine.

So, the question is, what do we do about a hypothetical "mod creation tool" that pulls assets from another game installed on your system, but does not contain any of the assets itself? As far as i understand, that would be legal. Whether or not you have the original installer disc for the game on hand is irrelevant, and such a check would easily be fooled anyway.

That doesn't necessarily mean we should allow it, but i am of the opinion that we should. It would be nice to have a decision on that before anybody goes through the effort of making one.
 
"Would be legal" unfortunately has less to do with what is permitted than it should. It tends to boil down to 'what does the content owner allow'. Typical use is for non-commercial non-profit fan use, but it really depends on the company. Someone like CDPR is good with their stuff. Someone like Squaresoft.. is not (to the point of shutting down anything fan-made that uses anything of theirs from art to music to story to even characters..)

Disk-checks on other content to pull out and convert are good, but vary.. even though that's part of any of the mods to convert Morrowind/Oblivion to Oblivion/Skyrim, or even FO3 to NV.. even when you HAVE to have the original because it yanks files from it to work with saving on a lot of data.. Bethesda still regularly shuts the projects down whenever they pop up (forcing them to go somewhat underground).

The biggest problem of course is this typically isn't the sort of thing Volition decides. This is the sort of thing the main rights-holders, Deep Silver and parent company, get to decide. My guess is they actually do have some legal experts taking a quick look to figure what's allowed and what isn't, for a proper legal document for the proper SDK release. Shame, because I wouldn't mind some idea now ahead of time... particularly since my ideas for a proper mod involve missions/etc from SR1 (no actual content taken, naturally, but using the mission design when played as a base)
 
Corrodias said:
So, the question is, what do we do about a hypothetical "mod creation tool" that pulls assets from another game installed on your system, but does not contain any of the assets itself? As far as i understand, that would be legal. Whether or not you have the original installer disc for the game on hand is irrelevant, and such a check would easily be fooled anyway.
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Checking the disc is useless, all it takes is a disc image and a fake drive. An even bigger problem is that no one buys discs for pc games anymore, they buy a product number and make a download, and you don't want a third party handling your product numbers for your games.

I have seen people get banned for porting content from other games but most don't have an affect on themselves, others, or anybody in the world. There is no copyright or trademark problems with mods because they are free, so it kinda boils down to "What is piracy?" since you are getting free stuff from another game. The big decision makers in these matters are the site moderators over how much liability they want to allow on their site, because their biggest fear is that some legal team with nothing better to do, from a big company like say: Bethesda (The use of Bethesda was a random choice made by pulling a name from a hat and has nothing to do with the fact they have a legal issue every month) will take notice of the site. However this can be avoided by sending a stupid email to the content owner and then including that fact with your mod's description, or just not mentioning it's origins. Since most ports are 3D models a good solution would also be to rework the model and it can technically be labeled as fan art.
 
There is no copyright or trademark problems with mods because they are free
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This is false, at least under US law. A derivative that is free does not automatically qualify as fair use, nor does a derivative of something that was free.

As for the idea that not mentioning where a mod got its models would avoid trouble, anything discovered as stolen from another artist will be banned, even if you didn't say up front that it was stolen. Please don't do it.
 
Corrodias said:
This is false, at least under US law. A derivative that is free does not automatically qualify as fair use, nor does a derivative of something that was free.

As for the idea that not mentioning where a mod got its models would avoid trouble, anything discovered as stolen from another artist will be banned, even if you didn't say up front that it was stolen. Please don't do it.
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I did not know about derivative cluase, you learn something everyday. But I meant not mentioning the origins as that is how a hosing site has deniability of the content's origins, not an example of a way to bypass stealing. Someone who openly posts they borrowed another's work would face alot more scrutiny than someone who didn't know their mistake.
 
Corrodias said:
This is false, at least under US law. A derivative that is free does not automatically qualify as fair use, nor does a derivative of something that was free.

As for the idea that not mentioning where a mod got its models would avoid trouble, anything discovered as stolen from another artist will be banned, even if you didn't say up front that it was stolen. Please don't do it.
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Personally, I don't think there should be any restrictions on porting content from other Saints Row games within the franchise, AS LONG AS the content STAYS within the franchise (e.g. Porting SR3 to SR4 is okay, but SR3 to Skyrim isn't.)

It's worth noting that Deep Silver own the rights to the WHOLE Saints Row franchise, as THQ has gone bankrupt. Using Bethesda isn't a good example as many different game studios and publishers work with them, therefore meaning there isn't anyone with full rights to the whole Fallout franchise (for example).

Also, another thing about CD checks -- Some Saints Row games are distributed through Steam, so there are no installers, and doing installation checks doesn't work as a pirate game looks identical barring any files that relate to the pirate, e.g. SKIDROW.dll , and if modding does take off, that would probably be adressed.

The best way to protect mods at the moment is by using the Steam Workshop (Unfortunately, as it doesn't work as well as the Nexus Network) as it requires an installation of the game that has been purchased (i.e. someone without the game can't download mods.).
 
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