Author Topic: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday  (Read 30072 times)

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Offline Dragon

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Is that really related to the license? As far as I know, "donation button" is completely detached for whatever else is on the page. You're not paying for anything in particular, in theory you could pay even without downloading the mod. The modder is not making money off anything SCP-related, just off being awesome. :) If SCP couldn't be used around anything tangentially related to getting money, we couldn't have the HLP donations or even ads on the front page.

 
Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Non-commercial clauses in licences are notoriously vague and getting donations for work based on the SCP would definitely be dodgy, but honestly HLP is so slapdash in general about actually following the letter of IP law that it wouldn't be a big deal if you started accepting them.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

  

Offline Spoon

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Is that really related to the license? As far as I know, "donation button" is completely detached for whatever else is on the page. You're not paying for anything in particular, in theory you could pay even without downloading the mod. The modder is not making money off anything SCP-related, just off being awesome. :) If SCP couldn't be used around anything tangentially related to getting money, we couldn't have the HLP donations or even ads on the front page.
Yeah, this.

Non-commercial clauses in licences are notoriously vague and getting donations for work based on the SCP would definitely be dodgy, but honestly HLP is so slapdash in general about actually following the letter of IP law that it wouldn't be a big deal if you started accepting them.
Would donating to a mod/tc specifically be any more 'dodgy' than donating to HLP in general?

You never put up tips jar for Wings of Dawn.
True.
I just never had anyone come up to me and go "I want to give you money for the things you've made". Is what I'm saying  :p
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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Non-commercial clauses in licences are notoriously vague and getting donations for work based on the SCP would definitely be dodgy, but honestly HLP is so slapdash in general about actually following the letter of IP law that it wouldn't be a big deal if you started accepting them.
Would donating to a mod/tc specifically be any more 'dodgy' than donating to HLP in general?

Well, exactly. HLP gets most of its traffic as a result of hosting the SCP; is it then 'commercially exploiting' the SCP by accepting donations that are coming in as a result of that traffic? It's very much a grey area, and I've seen people recommend avoiding noncommercial clauses entirely because it's so easy to potentially fall afoul of them.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
How else would you fund a site like that? HLP never actually put effort into using SCP to earn money. It's just a site which has a donation option, and which happens to be hosting a popular open-source project. You can come here for political ramblings and Russian jokes. :) That's the common sense approach, anyway. Lawyers have ways of presenting the case one way or the other, but seeing what we do here, anything SCP-related is the least of our problems if HLP was to have lawyer trouble.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Well, exactly. HLP gets most of its traffic as a result of hosting the SCP; is it then 'commercially exploiting' the SCP by accepting donations that are coming in as a result of that traffic? It's very much a grey area

I think the difference is that the money goes back into the site which supports the community (including the wiki, and all the how to do things threads, etc) rather than simply going in one person's pocket.
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Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Well, exactly. HLP gets most of its traffic as a result of hosting the SCP; is it then 'commercially exploiting' the SCP by accepting donations that are coming in as a result of that traffic? It's very much a grey area

I think the difference is that the money goes back into the site which supports the community (including the wiki, and all the how to do things threads, etc) rather than simply going in one person's pocket.
Right. If nobody actually makes money off the donations, I'm not sure how it could be even remotely described as "commercially exploiting" anything.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
You prepared to argue that in court? Are you sure the judge will be convinced, against whatever argument the prosecution are spinning? Because that's what it actually comes down to. What people on the internet think is just is essentially irrelevant.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Find me one person prepared to sue HLP for taking donations and I'll be prepared to argue that HLP isn't commercially exploiting anything.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
If Interplay decided to sue HLP it'd be over before we got anywhere near a court. That is the reality of this community and we gain nothing by lying to ourselves about it.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
If Interplay decided to sue HLP it'd be over before we got anywhere near a court. That is the reality of this community and we gain nothing by lying to ourselves about it.
I concur wholeheartedly. If they were going to sue, however, it would have already happened by now.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
And hence my point: mod authors taking donations is probably not any worse than HLP as a whole doing so.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
And hence my point: mod authors taking donations is probably not any worse than HLP as a whole doing so.
Right. Which I agree with.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline qwadtep

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
I think sites like Curse, Nexus, and ModDB would get sued long before HLP anyway.

 

Offline Vrets

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
I erased Steam ~4 months ago to focus on some projects...and never bothered to reinstall when I finished those projects. Looking back, Steam was a terrible service and it can only have been a combination of novelty and Stockholm Syndrome that kept me from erasing it, earlier. Compare Steam to a service like Good Old Games which lets you have the actual, DRM-free game files in perpetuity and free of a creepy facebook-esque "community" feature*. This "paid mods" malarky seems like a natural evolution of the mildly evil suckiness of Steam.

Be free of the mildly evil suckiness, my brothers.

*I remember when VALVe hid the link to the Steam Forums to encourage use of the hideous "Steam Community". They made no announcement and never actually deleted the Steam Forums...they just quietly bricked-up the entrance by re-directing individual game forums to the associated "Steam Community Page" and by taking the Steam Forums link off the main page. You could still find the forums with a google search. VALVe have always been ineffectual, self-loathing dictatorial hipsters.

TLDR: VALVe are sneaky, incompetently dictatorial, ineffectual hipster scumlords

TLDR: irrespective of doing any research into this specific incident, I want to quickly state that Steam is a POS; moreover, it is my view that the non-game-development wing of VALVe are scumlords

« Last Edit: May 01, 2015, 10:32:36 pm by Vrets »

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Alakabeth, is that you? Why are you posting as Vrets?
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Offline AtomicClucker

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
I already unleashed a bit of an angry tirade at entitlement - not from gamers, but from Modders and Devs of at few places. I've been working with a few newbie devs I hooked up with at a local game jam and were working on a small mod (and they want to keep it under wraps till everything is planned out) when this monster popped.

Call gamers entitled, call them childish, but get it though everyone's heads: gamers download, play, and drive the mods. Entitlement at its finest? Oh I don't work for free. As a creator, that's not only dishonest, it's bull****. Gamers are entitled to a level of actual working content if they pay for it. Seeing as how the mods were not only buggy and a few had stolen content... you can probably understand why I'm not pleased.

My axe to grind? When you have paid content, there needs to be a level of quality control and technical support (echoing the conversation Totalbiscuit had with a steam workshop modder and the admin of the Nexus). Skyrim mods are free, and it's up to the user how to figure out the hell to make it work. And from my time making Skyrim mods work, it doesn't take long to understand why I almost hit my head on a desk when Bethesda and Valve thought it was a good idea.

Selling buggy stuff that doesn't work? Well good job Valve. And I actually thought monetizing mods could be a good thing: instead, we literally got the worst of it.

Throw money on that, congrats, you got a bonfire. In this case, Valve and Bethesda were smart to take it down. By its nature, Skyrim modding is not only chaotic, prone to breaking, and dear God pointless mod conflicts, there's a damn reason throwing money into this equation ended so badly.
Blame Blue Planet for my Freespace2 addiction.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
I erased Steam ~4 months ago to focus on some projects...and never bothered to reinstall when I finished those projects. Looking back, Steam was a terrible service and it can only have been a combination of novelty and Stockholm Syndrome that kept me from erasing it, earlier. Compare Steam to a service like Good Old Games which lets you have the actual, DRM-free game files in perpetuity and free of a creepy facebook-esque "community" feature*. This "paid mods" malarky seems like a natural evolution of the mildly evil suckiness of Steam.
That "creepy community feature" is one of the main reasons why I enjoy using Steam; I have multiple gamer buddies whom I only really communicate with out-of-game via Steam chat or community pages.  There's also the massive convenience of having all of the installation and updating duties handled via a single client, which has all but eliminated the patch-file hell of PC gaming past.  Note that GOG is currently working on their Galaxy client, which will act very similar to Steam in most respects; it wouldn't surprise me at all to see social functions added to it too, if they aren't planned already.  Now obviously there's a major difference in that GOG will always still offer the separate individual installer downloads, but it's clearly something that a big chunk of their userbase (myself included) wants to see happen.

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
I would much rather have the "patch file hell" than be forced to update games like Steam does. Many people have talked about the mod payment providing incentives for mod creators to keep supporting their mods when they get broken by game updates (common with Bethesda games), but this problem is artificially created by Steam itself as far as singleplayer games go.

 

Offline Vrets

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Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
As to the single client handling "all of the installation and updating duties"...sounds great! Convenience is always good...as long as I can have some reasonable amount of control. I remember that Steam had a so-called "disable automatic updates" toggle, but that certain 'high priority' updates would still be allowed through. This alone should have been enough for me to despise Steam.

Example: It takes me a long time to play through games. My off-and-on-again Crusader Kings II campaigns would continually be ruined by save-game-breaking updates that would be installed against my will when I wasn't looking, even when I disabled auto-updates. I had to hide the game files on my desktop to stop Steam from updating them.

I would much rather have the "patch file hell" than be forced to update games like Steam does.

For me, "Patch file hell" is rarely so bad because I don't usually have interest in more than 2-3 games at any time. It is not as if I'm simultaneously playing and updating all ~100 games that I own. Patch hell might be like a few patches a month; and sure, when I pick up an old game I might want to see if there have been any updates (if I feel like it!). I can accept that if it means avoiding the hassle of a content delivery service that thinks it knows better than me...maybe sometimes it does, but I want a say in what happens to my games instead of "BOOM: YOUR GAME HAS BEEN UPDATED. BOOM: YOU WILL NOW PAY FOR MODS."

Oh, go away Steam. I don't miss you or need you...
« Last Edit: May 02, 2015, 06:01:48 pm by Vrets »