Empire of the Iguanadons

Some of you may already be aware of this. Others may not. I don't know how many of the visitors I see coming in from various mod sites do more than run in abject horror after realizing where some of my world views lie, but this subject is something that affects us all and needs to be dealt with. Perhaps even signatured. More after the jump.

Recently it was brought to the attention of Nexus users that some illegally uploaded mods were present on the Steam Workshop (SW) for Skyrim. These mods have been lifted directly from their Nexus entries and uploaded to SW without any permission being obtained from the authors whatsoever. Discussion flowed on what to do about this problem, who to contact, how far to take things, and in general how the community was going to respond to SW in general because of this.

The root problem is absolutely NOT the fault of the victims, as at least one person in the discussion had the audacity to suggest. The fault lies with Valve, and to a lesser extent, Bethesda, for not having adequate systems in place to moderate the uploads. I will grant that SW is a new service which still needs to have some kinks worked out. That's understandable. However both of these companies are leading figures in the game modding community and they should have anticipated this problem long before launch day.

Originally, the report button on the site simply sent a flag to... who knows where. No way to tell them why you were reporting, so whoever may have been handling that would be left with no clue what the problem was. That did eventually change so that you can now describe the issue, but those reports appear to be vanishing into a black hole never to be seen again judging by how slowly they get handled when left to just that device. One can therefore see how this sort of environment is a breeding ground for illegally hosted content.

The first and probably most egregious case was a user who uploaded something in the area of 30-40 packs of weapons and armors ripped straight out of Morrowind and Oblivion. The guy didn't even bother to try and disguise it. He openly mocked those who reported it, at first, then simply resorted to deleting the posts of everyone who was pointing out the theft. Several community members rose to the occasion and used the report feature on every last entry - to no avail. Nearly two months later the entries were still up and only repeated PM's to Matt Grandstaff (GStaff), the Bethesda forum coordinator, resulted in something finally being done by it. The reason it took so long? Valve had taken away GStaff's access to the system!

The second case, more recently, was a user going by the name of Buckles. This user had appropriated for themselves a number of mesh and texture mods from someone on Nexus going by the name Jojjo. This theft was pointed out, Buckles reacted as all thieves do by covering up the evidence. Then once more, as most arrogant idiots also do, changed the mod's description entry to openly mock Jojjo's work and defiantly stating he would not be taking it down. As a result, Jojjo has now pulled up stakes and left the modding community ENTIRELY. Nearly a week later, the stolen mods were removed mysteriously. Nobody knows if it was Valve who pulled them or if Buckles panicked and realized he was about to get banned. One small victory, but at the cost of a very talented modder who will no longer be producing work for others to enjoy. Nice job Buckles, hope you're proud of yourself.

Another user by the name of Ralof (oh, the originality of it all) had some stolen work put up as well and quickly took it down after being exposed. Again, likely because he realized he was about to get banned. The same with a few other things.

So why the hell am I suddenly so invested in this? As you might guess, I am now the latest victim of this where not one, but two people have posted stolen versions of Open Cities Skyrim for no valid reason. Sure, Yo-Landi (aka Bonehenge on the official Bethesda forums) will tell you it was perfectly logical. She'll even lie to your face and tell you she asked all nice and sweet and politely if i'd remove a feature I've added to the mod's re-released update. She'll lie to your face and tell you I flew off the handle in a wild rage immediately and without provocation at the mere thought of defiling the mod. The reality is almost entirely opposite to that.

The background on this specific case isn't anything special either. I added some leftover Oblivion gates to the cities as an homage to TES4 and as a nod to lore which strongly suggests that such remnants would remain. Not only in the cities but scattered all over Tamriel. Hanaisse was kind enough to fulfill the resource request for the meshes and textures. I placed two in Whiterun, and one each in Markarth, Solitude, and Riften. Each one is fitting for the area it's in and aside from the reddish colored one in Whiterun, they don't stand out too much.

"Criticism" came swift and sure from dozens of people who came out of nowhere with scathing insults and personal attacks. "You ruined the mod", "this is a big piece of shit", "I found a bug: There's a donut hole in Whiterun", "you're an asshole for doing this", "YOU BROKE MY GAME" (yes, someone actually claimed that). The attack started not in the place you might expect, but on Nexus of all places, where such displays of insulting outrage result in insta-bans from the site. I can only confirm two who got themselves booted as a result before I asked the moderators to lock the comment thread for the mod. The rest apparently escaped punishment.

The next most unlikely source was from Yo-Landi, the thief who stole the mod. Going by the name Bonehenge on the official forums, she had the audacity to post directly in my official support thread for the mod that the gates were shitty and that she was taking it upon herself to "fix the bug" and proceeded to throw up a link to a warez site she found to store it on. Fortunately the reaction there was swift and sure - from a heap of supportive modders who torched her for the flagrant violation of rights on display. The forum moderators had to be brought in to clean up the mess.

Unable to sustain the assaults on Nexus and BGS anymore, Yo-Landi has taken her fight to the Steam Workshop, which is where my rather direct involvement in this started in earnest. She has posted a blatant rip off of the mod, doing only one thing. Removing the gates. No regard for copyright, modders' etiquette, or even the rules that both Bethesda and Valve have in place governing the Steam Workshop. This was pointed out to her of course, but she has steadfastly refused to acknowledge directly violating the site rules and the EULA governing the CK. She'll go on about how *I* am the unhinged arrogant slob and how *I* ruined everything and *SHE* is coming to everyone's rescue to provide a *PROPER* version of the mod that doesn't violate lore. This person wouldn't know the lore if it walked up and bit her on the ass.

She's been reported. GStaff has been told, a number of her supporters who are not surprisingly all Nexus users who got shut out when the thread was locked showed up to defend her. I can tell that they all know what they did is wrong and they're just puffing up to look tough on the internet, but that's not going to save them when the hammer falls after the entry is removed - and it will be - the only question is how long I'll have to wait to see it happen. The outcome of this is going to determine where I stand on continuing to use (or not use) the Steam Workshop in the future.

Now, as if this entire long-winded dramafest wasn't already strange enough, the most unlikely of unlikely people has risen to stand WITH me on the subject of stolen mods. Have a seat, you probably won't believe it. Giskard. Yes, someone most of us consider an enemy of the community. Someone whose own actions have met or exceeded some of the very same theatrics of the day. Giskard has not only stood in support of my situation but in support of all the modders who are being ripped off on SW. The two of us clearly do not agree on a lot of things, but I'll say openly that I am glad to have his support on this. He's even offered a contact inside Valve to utilize to try and expidite the removal of my stolen content. Unfortuately I can't yet contact that person because whoever is running the show on their discussion forums is asleep at the wheel and hasn't cleared my account to use the PM system.

So what's to be done about it? Well, one of the only suggestions to be brought forth so far involves the appointment of some trusted community members to act as a line of first defense. Someone to act on initial reports of stolen content or whatever else. These people would be given the ability to flag an entry as hidden for further review by either Valve or Bethesda for final disposition. In no way would I ever advocate that community members alone have the power to wipe out an entry without oversight.

Aside from this, awareness needs to be raised. The issue is more widespread that it appears right now because investigating SW for stolen content only just got to a coordinated level, and has only had limited success thus far. Valve and Bethesda both need to be told the Workshop is in disarray and needs more strict oversight. Not just to protect us as modders, but to protect them as well since people are also uploading nude mods and child killer mods, both of which are expressly forbidden by Bethesda.

Some further reading material for the subject:

EULA for the CK/GECK/CS
Copyright Myths
More Copyright Myths
Bethesda's official stance on assets ported from other games, including their own.
Bethesda's instructions on how to report stolen content

Want to help raise awareness of the issue? Have an account on a mod hosting site that lets you put URLs in signatures? Attach this to it to show your solidarity:

*** Support the rights of modders to publish as they see fit ***
*** Sign our wall to show support and help bring change ***
*** http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=79477629 ***

.........................
RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

I don't like either the democratic or the republican party. At this point I agree with Jesse Ventura, they are both gangs. And I don't agree with him very often, but then I don't agree with Arthmoor all the time either.

Well I'm sorry to say but your chosen forum is known to be heavily infested with pirates. Despite what your forum admins say publicly.

Much as this blog is in fact populated by more democrats than it is republicans despite what it says up top.

See, what'd I tell ya? They're everywhere. Sad fact.

Nice strawman, though.

What strawman? You're the one who said to Google you and so I did. What came back is utterly unsurprising to me given your numerous comments in support of a software pirate. What was I supposed to take away from the fact that you're a regular on SA?

You also raised the point about repubs vs dems as a demographic of this blog, and I pointed out to you that there are in fact more of them here than there are Republicans.

So....

Clearly what you should've taken away from that is that I'm somehow in favor of stealing from the game industry and depriving them of dollars I'm not anonymous.

Then why are you arguing in favor of exactly the same thing just because it's a mod?

Because nobody's really being harmed and you're blowing this way out of proportion?

Same argument I hear all the time when people talk about pirating games. How is yours any different?

This has not cost you money. :|

I fail to see the difference there either, because piracy advocates insist piracy of actual commercial products doesn't cost the publishers any money either.

Legally speaking it matters not, piracy can still occur with no monetary exchange. Copyright has no specification that the work have any monetary value at all.

I've never advocated commercial piracy, nor do I don't share their philosophies or justifications for the act thereof. You've asked what the difference is, I replied, and there you have it.

Hello, erroneous don't.

Arthmoor, you don't "own" anything in this situation. You can't physically hand me a copy of your mod and say "This is my mod, look what I made!".

You shared an idea, ideas are expanded upon over time. Ideas change and grow. Ideas can not be held back by "ownership" because it resonates with everyone on the planet. You have an idea, someone may disagree with it. Some may agree. Some may have no opinion. But the fact of the matter is that the idea grew and spread, it wasn't limited to you. You can't stop people from forming an opinion. People came up with their own interpretations and a new idea budded.

That's what modding is Arthmoor. An idea. It can't be held back by ownership.

Hey, Arthmoor

I'm not going to get too involved here on your blog, I just want to state that not once have I ever told anybody, nor encouraged anybody, to troll you or your various accounts. That is 100% false.

Fair enough Yo-Landi. I apologize for making the accusation blindly. (Sorry, anonymous responses are disabled temporarily so you won't be able to reply to this - thank the piracy advocates from SA for that)

@The Truth - Well it's pretty clear that when it comes to laws about intellectual property, including copyright, you do not understand anything. You are also, plain and simply, wrong. While ideas may be free, the way they are expressed are subject to copyright, trademark and or patent law (collectively known as intellectual property law), depending on how those ideas are expressed.

And with that, vindication. All 7 stolen mod entries have been removed by GStaff.

Let that be a lesson to all the trolls: we are right, you are wrong. Enjoy watching your campaign of disinformation and lies collapse under your feet.

So yeah. Looks like the troll campaign originated over at SA and they collectively decided to victimize me for it. There are a few members of the mainstream community hanging around there who very clearly know better than to have pulled what they pull, but that website is famous for it's piracy and its raids on other websites.

So it was an entirely orchestrated event and when they finally determined I wasn't going to play along, the porn spam storm was their solution to the problem. Not much of a solution if all I have to do is cut off the comments and the mess is gone 5 minutes later.

I'm not familiar with SA. Glad those got pulled.

SA = Something Awful. You'd be better off just not bothering. It's a known haven for software pirates among other things, and they resort to porn spam when they don't get things done their way. They're about half a step away from being as bad as 4Chan.

Once new modding tools have been released, it will be easy for anybody to create a patch, an ESP which edits the contents of another ESP. This would allow for the creation of an ESP Which ONLY removes the Oblivion gates from the cities, and would not be an ESP containing the entire original mod, and the upload would not contain any custom resources. It would just be a patch ESP requiring the original mod be downloaded and installed to work, and it would ensure that any future updates the original mod author makes to their mod will be available to all, instead of some users being stuck with an outdated version just to have a few gates removed.

Now how come people not wanting these gates didn't simply use the console to disable them? That's what I would have done if I'd been using Open Cities, as I know I wouldn't want to have these Oblivion gates.

Because their real agenda here isn't just to provide users with a choice. It's to break the concept of modders' rights to control the publication of their mods. These guys basically want it to be a free for all anyone can edit anything mess just because you put it on the internet. In other words, self-entitled teenage brats of the modern generation.