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And therein lies the issue. Bethesda notice their own content being stolen almost instantly (even at weekends) and will go to great steps to protect their work, but when it comes to creating a proper system to protect their own user’s interests, or indeed on actioning stolen content reports, they go missing for days or even weeks at a time. Seems a little...wrong, right?
I expect Matt emailed me out of courtesy, rather than letting Zenimax/Bethesda go straight for the DMCA route which is largely harsh and full of alienating legalese, but the point remains. Mod authors shouldn’t need to use a legal system to have their work removed, there should be a built in moderation system to handle all this stuff in-house. And it should have been created before they released Bethesda.net to the public.
And I think that’s quite telling. Nexus Mods is a site that grew from within the Bethesda community. It’s run on a shoestring budget by someone (ahem, me) running several different businesses and projects and largely moderated by volunteers who aren’t paid a dime (our community manager, SirSalami, is paid however, as it’s a full-time job). At the moment we have 9 active moderators plus SirSalami, making 10. If we can do it, Bethesda sure as hell can.
I expect the inherent problem was that the release of the Creation Kit was delayed specifically so they could finish their work on Bethesda.net. From the looks of the site and how barebones it is, I expect that the site wasn’t the cause of the delay, but rather, the integration of the mod browser into the game itself coupled with the integration with the XBox and Playstation platforms is what caused the delay to the CK. Since the game came out in November and player numbers were beginning to fall off, I assume they realised that they couldn’t wait any longer to release the CK and get their modding platform out with E3 around the corner.
Indeed, everything about the Bethesda.net launch has stunk of “release now, fix later”.
Now, my tone and the way I talk of them might suggest to you that I dislike Bethesda. I wouldn’t say I dislike Bethesda. I think they make great games and we obviously wouldn’t all be here if it wasn’t for the fact they made them with modding in mind. And we shouldn’t lose sight of that fact. But unfortunately, because Bethesda have not been particularly active within their modding community these past 14 years, in fact, they’ve been very hands off, this is all very...odd.
Bethesda are like a father who left you at birth with all the tools you need to survive. They weren’t there for you, they haven’t looked after you or protected you when you needed it, but they did leave you to fend for yourself with some pretty good tools. Sure, without them you wouldn’t have ever existed and the tools they provided were invaluable in staying alive, but ultimately it was you, the person with the tools that made you the person you are today.
And now, after 14 years of looking after yourself, and doing extremely well, your father has suddenly come back. You’re left with a lot of questions; why did they leave in the first place? Why are they back now? What are their motives? Are they only here because I’ve become popular and successful? Do they actually care about me or do they only care about their own interests?
And, ultimately, this is the real crux of the issue. The father figure is back after 14 years of absence and people are naturally skeptical about whether Bethesda have their best intentions at heart, or just their own. Yes, Bethesda have done really well to release their games with good modding tools. No, they haven’t been involved in the community or really looked after it at all.
Because this issue has been going on for a few weeks now it’s been debated to death both within the Nexus community and on the Bethesda forums (as well as being covered in the press extensively). From this debate there have been a lot of recurring questions and statements that I feel need to be cleared up or argued against. So I’m going to do a little Q&A style thing now where I list the commonly said things and my responses to them.
“Hey, it’s early days and this is their first site, go easy on them”
This would make sense if Bethesda were creating a community site for their first majorly modded game, Morrowind, 14 years ago. Back then, the modding community was an unknown and they’d have been justified in making glaring mistakes and then learning from them, like most sites did at the time. However, it’s not a site for Morrowind 14 years ago, it’s a site for Fallout 4, now. There’s already 14 years of precedents set within their very own community from which they themselves could have learnt from but have seemingly chosen not to. There’s no excuse for it.
“Bethesda are a big company, you need to give them time to respond to these issues”
If the inner workings of your company are so horrifically bureaucratic that you can’t respond to legitimate, major complaints in your very own community (for which you have a dedicated Community Manager) within two weeks then something is seriously wrong. Irrespective, the bureaucracy that makes them slow is not our fault. That is their fault. My idea of “giving people enough time” on something as serious as mod theft is a few days, not 2 weeks.
Anyone can steal a mod and upload it to a torrent site or a Russian site and it’ll never be taken down. What’s the big deal?
The “big deal” is that Bethesda is being touted as the official mod hosting platform for Bethesda’s games. It’s going to be a highly trafficked site, unlike a torrent site or a Russian modding site rife with stolen content, which is not going to be particularly active for modding. Do you really want to hold Bethesda to the same standards as The Pirate Bay or a Russian site rife with piracy, or do you expect more from the people you pay your money towards?
Bethesda own the rights to mods so it’s not actually stealing if you upload it to their site
First of all, you and I are NOT BETHESDA. As such, saying “Bethesda own the mod so I can do with it what I want” is like saying “My mate has made a piece of software, therefore I can upload it to another site”. It makes NO SENSE. Bethesda having a right to something doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want with it.
Secondly, Bethesda don’t own mods made with the Creation Kit. By using the Creation Kit to create a mod, you grant Bethesda a license to pretty much do anything with your work, but that doesn’t mean they own it. Indeed, the license agreement specifically states “Ownership. As between You and ZeniMax, You are the owner of Your Game Mods and all intellectual property rights therein, subject to the licenses You grant to ZeniMax in this Agreement.”. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Mod authors own their mods, but Zenimax are granted licenses within the agreement to do a number of things with it. Once again, Zenimax are granted licenses, NOT YOU.
Lastly, the Creation Kit license agreement only covers content made within the Creation Kit itself. It would not include things made with software outside of the Creation Kit including, but not limited to, models, textures, animations, sound effects and so on and so forth. Zenimax/Bethesda are not granted licenses to that content unless authors specifically upload said content to Bethesda.net.
What we take from this is that mods are owned by mod authors, irrespective of what they contain. And as a result, the work is automatically copyrighted (as is all unique work you create) and authors can protect their work like anyone else on the internet who has made unique work themselves.
Why should mod authors care about others taking their work? Surely they release mods so that as many people as possible can enjoy them?
*facepalm*
Let’s start off with the most important and most valid response to this statement: Mod authors can do whatever the ♥♥♥♥ they want with their own mods (within the licenses mentioned above), and that’s their prerogative, not yours. They do not need to justify why they will or will not upload their mods to another service or port them for use on consoles.
Saying “I believe active mod authors should want their mods being spread uncontrollably around the internet, therefore it’s OK to share their work on other sites against their express wishes” is stupid, wrong, and unjustifiable. Just because mod authors motives or reasons for not wanting their work shared doesn’t align with yours doesn’t mean it’s OK for you to share their work against their permission.
But since people tend to want a bit more reasoning than “because I don’t want to and because I can do whatever I want and you have no right to tell me what to do” even though that’s the best reason of the lot, I’ll list a few of the common and reasonable reasons for not wanting to share their work either on other sites, or specifically for console users.
The mod author is aware the mod will not work on consoles or could even potentially harm a console, therefore will not port the mod to consoles.
The mod author was actively working on porting their mod to consoles, but it actually required some work to do as they needed to make changes to their mod to accommodate the limits on mods and ensure it was as efficient as possible for console users.
The author prides themselves on being able to tell their users it’s been optimised as much as possible, but sadly doesn’t own a console and doesn’t want to buy a console to ensure that same quality is also evident on consoles.
In the same vein, it’s hard to fix bugs specific to console mods if you don’t actually own the console and can’t test it yourself. The author doesn’t want to release a mod they can’t actively support.
The mod wouldn’t actually be allowed on Bethesda.net due to the content of the mod conflicting with their mod uploading rules.
The author doesn’t want to manage their mods in multiple locations on multiple sites and prefers to keep everything in one place, on one site.
The author has made use of other user’s assets, with legal permission to do so, and therefore cannot grant others the right to share that work without first getting permission from the original creator of the work that may or may not be possible.
The author doesn’t like Bethesda.net/Nexus Mods/whatever site we’re talking about so refuses to use it.
Mod authors make mods for themselves first, and you second. If the second part, you, becomes too much of a problem for them, they’ll simply not want to share them with you at all.
That list is by no means exhaustive, and there’s lots of other justifiable reasons for not wanting to share their mods on other sites. At the end of the day, we, the mod users, have absolutely no rights whatsoever in demanding mod authors do or do not do something with their mods. Nor do we have any right to take a mod and upload it somewhere else, just because other people want it.
And finally, let's not forget the other elephant in the room; paid modding.
Lets face it, it’s highly likely this ugly subject is going to be cropping up again in the not too distant future.
A lot of the mod authors are going to have an eye to the future in the knowledge that paid modding is going to be coming back. It’s practically inevitable. As a result, they’re going to want to maintain a tighter control over their mods and ensure their mods aren’t being maintained on Bethesda.net by anyone other than themselves.
Can the Nexus do anything to stop mod thieves?
There’s not much we can do to prevent the stealing of mods on our end. What we can do is raise awareness of the issue and provide mod authors with some tools that can help them to express their wishes in regards to how they want their mods to be shared. The hope is this will help any future moderation team at Bethesda to more quickly and easily establish whether a mod has been used without permission or not.
We already have an extensive permissions system for mods, but today we’ve released an addition to that system for console modding. You can now choose from a set of options in our Fallout 4 section to express your wishes. These are:
I have uploaded my mods to Bethesda.net and they are available for console users.
I have not uploaded my mods to Bethesda.net for console users yet, but I will at some point.
My mods will not be available on Bethesda.net for console users.
My mods won’t work on consoles or would not be acceptable on Bethesda.net according to their rules.
I give my permission for someone else to port my mods to console and for it to be uploaded to Bethesda.net by someone else. Please credit me, however.
If you select the top option saying you’ve uploaded your mod to Bethesda.net then you’ll be provided with two text fields where you can provide a link to those mod pages on Bethesda.net. These will create mirrors on your file pages from which users can see and navigate to your mods on Bethesda.net and also tag the files with the “XBone version available” and “PS4 version available” tags.
Coincidentally, such a system can be used by console users to browse the Nexus for their favourite Nexus Mods and see if they’re also available on Bethesda.net using our tag searching system.
And so ends the Q&A for now.
Ultimately, I think the thing that disappoints me the most is that Bethesda’s influence within the community after largely staying out of it these past 14 years has had such a polarising effect. It should not be the case that the official developer of the games you’re modding has such a negative effect right from the start with their new modding endeavour.
I’m certain that they’ll finally get around to plugging the holes in their system and making some of the stuff they’ve done wrong, right. But the very fact this has been such a major issue these past few weeks speaks volumes.
5,100 words. I’m done.
Modders shouldn't need a legal system, just a moderation team to handle stolen mods
Raise Wareness
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That's about it
Secondly, these mod thefts is bad, and I'm glad a lot of people, including Bethesda, are working to fix this and counter it. But you really don't need to type up this very long post about it... It's pretty useless for the most part since this ordeal can be summarized easily.
Lastly, I got nothing else to say.
This is just the last straw in a long series of, let us say, injuries inflicted on PC users for the sake of console users. The main problem is trying to make a "one size fits all" game that can be fully cross-platform. To do that you need to dumb-down the game, so it will fit consoles, and therefore PC users miss all the potential that the game could have.
It is understandable that companies want to cater to console users since it is a good chunk of the market, but they should understand that consoles are limited, and therefore they should use different, dumbed-downed versions of games, while keeping the full potential for the PC version. They should in fact release two versions of games, not cross-platform, i.e. totally independent. Each version would have its own code, its own patches, its own mods, and in fact its own Bethesda.net!
Damn consoles forever to Molag Bal's plane of Oblivion...
The "dumb down" argument is pathetic and very wrong in many ways.
Plus, what you're suggesting is a terrible idea as it will just ruin the community, not help it.
although i don't see consoles as the "pure evil", the trend of cross platform development hurts everyone.
PCs are more flexible and more powerful in some aspects. PC users get hurt by the UI suited for consoles and compromizes suited to the consoles.
Consoles have a predictible hardware that is easy to optimize a game for... which doesn't happen because of PCs.
That is what multi platform support is about: finding the lowest common denominator.
It's just cheaper to make it that way instead of developing the same game tree times.
This won't change in the future.
No.
no?
to what exactly?
who the hell will read all this and actually care... summarize people jesus
Of course, this is too little too late, but Bethesda.net now requires that people who upload mods, whether they be for PC or console, must prove they own the PC version of the game by linking their Steam account to their Bethesda account. That way, if they are caught stealing mods, the only way they could keep stealing them again is to buy a new copy of the game. No mod is worth that, a bunch of loonies on here argue the game itself isn't worth that. Is the problem solved with this? No. Not quite. But it's a step in the right direction.