Interesting stuff. Very interesting stuff.
From a moderation point of view, I’d like this discussion to be about creations, not what we think of individuals, as that just causes drama.
We have a thread going somewhere already discussing the mod code of ethics, and I’d like them to apply to this forum at the very least. I have no idea what gearbox think, so I’m going to start a discussion back here and see what happens, okay?
I have been able to download every iteration of complex without fail, I believe the donations thing was voluntary, if it wasn’t I’m sure Beghins received a lot of flak, or realized the folly of those actions.
I get that complex are the biggest team, and right now it’s the most talked about mod, probably the most successful mod too. Though I would have liked to see HW@ get some light. In the end it just so happened that the complex community was the most active. I believe the team from HW@ and Cnl Pepper were the ones who did some of the scripts being used by the complex team I also believe that the team from HW@ Were the most commendable. They open sourced their assets and encouraged people to use them or have fun with them, and even let anyone continue their work so long as they give credit. They were an example that I wish more people would follow.
So we have to ask ourselves this, Why is complex getting the most attention from GBX? I don’t think that it’s the quality of the mod alone that made complex get its light under the headlines and the team being active, look at it this way, they are a community outside of relic forums, compared to Tanis Shipyards, the complex forums had way more activity. There were just more people to talk to from a GBX stand point. Heck even a relic employee got on one day some years ago and began posting on their forums.
WarDax makes an interesting point on the rules here.
Those rules are rather extreme from a modding community perspective. There is no legal binding to any of the content that was created by modders ultimately if it’s related to homeworld it belonged to relic. now it belongs to GBX and they have the final say. In this case they are giving you the final say with the tools. So you can’t just “steal” someones work and the history that happened on the relic forums and complex forums will not be repeated here from what I can tell. This is a new start for the modding community, and now that modders have more power as to how they want to present their work. I encourage them to share, even if just a little. I would expect that credit is given to the authors of any of the content that was created.
The moderator seems to be in agreement with this thread here, so I have nothing further to add on the nature of this thread. I think my question to the mod authors is this. How would you implement these codes of ethics? What are your thoughts on sharing your work, why do you think it is a good or bad idea to share your work. What are your thoughts on the mod tools, do they give you enough leverage to deliver the mod in the manner you desire? Case in point, making a mod for Homeworld:R as far as models go, you import the models in one way, there is no way to export the models from the game. Therefor your models/effects are now protected by the engine itself. You now can choose to publicly share the files in your mod, or only upload the mod itself.
In my opinion, I think this more or less enforces the code of ethics, and should put an end to any of the drama that happened in the past. Really beyond that it’s honestly a matter of common sense, if you use someone elses work, give them credit for it. In this case, the main reason you would be able to use someone elses work is that they literally gave you permission when they uploaded their mod files, because of the mod system in HW:R.
@WarDax
This is absolutely perfect. I would love for this to be the standard.
It’s clear, well detailed, and I wouldn’t want any of my mods to be covered by anything less.
My big question here guys, personally, is where does the modding community stand with the Steam Subscriber Agreement? Because ultimately, while the IP belongs to Gearbox Software, Gearbox themselves answer to this agreement. (The specific section/subsection is noted above.)
From my understand, anything violating the process that WarDax posted would constitute the Steam Workshop contribution being report, and then removed with the creators on that project having breached the Steam Subscriber Agreement; with further consequences ensuing.
Appreciate the likings, need to point out those rules were not written by me but by staff of RelicForums. I do not know what individual wrote them, in a Community that does not matter much as long as the “Modmins” Team stands behind them.
The mod has been uploaded to moddb every now and then, however a lot of people have been deceived into downloading from that link I gave. Following that link, donation is forced - if you don’t know of moddb, then you can pay and get the mod, or not pay and not get the mod. Simple as that.
Had he realized the folly of those actions, the link would not lead to Paypal, would it now?
I’ve been using Moddb for years, and never had to pay for a single mod, I’ve never been “fooled” into paying into anything, I don’t know the full story on that. Regardless Complex has no right to force people to pay for their mod, why? Because they are using “Homeworld” Assets and the Homeworld engine. Unless they had permission from relic, that’s a major legal problem for them waiting to happen, not only with relic, but with the soundtracks they used in the maps. If there was a time where I had to pay for the mod, I clearly did not download it then.
Again, is this the case now? Do you have to pay for Complex? Is that what is going on now? I’ve never seen that link before. Now I don’t know the full details of what went on, on the inside of things. Naka, you were a frequent poster on the forums and probably had more involvement with their community than I did. I stopped following complex after 7.1 I think? Because I did not agree with power stations and it was getting a bit ridiculous with how it was just being complicated for the sake of complicated.
That link could easily be something he forgot to change or whatever. Obviously you and I both agree that it is wrong if he is indeed trying to trick people into paying for his mod. That far crosses the line, all I’m saying is that I’ve never been tricked into it, and I downloaded Complex from their forums or mod db. I tried complex 9 but again power stations, just didn’t bother playing it again after that.
Okay, let me clarify.
For every major release there was a moddb upload. These are free, naturally, as that’s how moddb works (you cannot turn the buttons into off-site links on your mod page).
However on the Complex forums, often only the link I gave earlier was provided, which leads to the Complex website. The download there forces you to pay. After a delay(usually up to a week) the free moddb link or off-site link would be provided.
So, no, you don’t HAVE TO pay for Complex. If you know about moddb/steam workshop, then you’re fine. However if you only know about the website… Like I said, it’s forced payment on the basis of misinformation or lack of awareness.
EatThePath/Siber here, cofounder of Homeworld:@/HWAT. Thank you for your kind words. As far as I’m aware, Complex only uses two ships and a set of explosion effects from HWAT. While there were some issues with attribution when they were first added, I believe they are now properly credited. If there’s anything else of ours in there, I’m unaware of it.
In fact early on we wanted to get Complex’s help implementing certain features, but were never able to make that happen. But that’s largely tangential.
You’re welcome, I hope to see more of your mod in the homeworld Remastered engine, those vaygr designs are awesome. As well as that B5 Warlock inspired cruiser you implemented. I really enjoyed toying around with some of the assets, hell I even wanted to get into homeworld 2 modding, but it was so much more difficult than homeworld 1 or cataclysm. I hope the mod tools for the new engine will be easier to use, I am learning with 3ds max, but I don’t know texturing at all. I hope the new tools will help you get what you’re looking for as far as scripts going, if nothing else, even with the current flaws of the homeworld 1 behaviour, the GBX team seems very motivated to help the modding community with this stuff. That’s cool.
Fair enough, that is still shady on their part. I hope that they do change their practice. Only time will tell.
in my opinion, if you’re afraid of your work being stolen, you shouldn’t be involved in modding.
i want to explain my reasoning first because knee jerk reaction, so please bear with me.
modding to me is a community effort, NO ONE can claim credit for ANYTHING they produce. neither should they need to. this requires a modification of one’s ego and perceptions, not an easy thing, i know.
when people steal my work, i don’t care. the important thing is the improvement and modification of the game. maybe he does something better with my work and calls it his own. good for him.
people need to stop losing sight of what matters. your name doesn’t matter. only the game and improving it and making it more fun.
thank you
the dev misspoke. selling items over steam has always been looked down upon in most modding communities. it defies the very concept of modding. i feel he was just drumming up excitement for the plebian steam hat purchasers.
The game does matter a lot to me, that’s why I claimed my models to be free to use by anyone couple years ago, simply to enrich the game as a whole, to make sure I’m doing something for my beloved Homeworld. It was a decade old game, no Remastered in sight, so Homeworld itself became my priority over the mod. I saw above it all, the bigger picture.
But let me tell you it’s realy f*cking hard to adopt this attitude at first when you’re starting. You have your own vision, you dedicade a significant portion of your life to it, you’re building something that makes you happy and then someone bigger comes, takes your stuff, doesn’t credit you and even leads people to believe it’s their own proud work, when he gladly accepts all the praise under the pictures of your ships stamped with the other mod’s name.
That’s kick in the teeth and no amount of selflessness is going to heal it.
Hi there,
As one of the moderators / staff over at Relic News we definitely take theft of content seriously be it copyrighted material or user generated content. While it has been probably over a decade since we created those rules that @WarDax reference, I would like to say that they worked fairly well and are still applied as a global rule to our Mods section for all games and are going to be implemented for our HWR mod section.
With the Relicforums we had large threads for dozens hundreds of mods for all Relic’s games. With it being locally to our forums, we had moderation control over such things and could easily follow up with what was posted. If someone flagged a mod claiming theft we could move quickly to investigate based on their claims. Now with mods being hosted on Steam, I’m not sure what Valve’s policy with flagging an item in the workshop results in or how contesting the claim works. The discussion area on the Steam Workshop isn’t the best thing in the world to navigate either.
For mods like Complex which have massive amounts of changes and assets within in or any other mod that comes out, the biggest thing that will complicate matters is proving who actually created owns the asset in question. The one caveat is that follow up and enforcement does have a bit of leg work involved to ensure that the people making the claims are valid. Not that I ever recall this happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me of people with a vendetta against someone or trying to get another mod shutdown in favor of theirs by filing a false claim against them.
Ideally the situation should be beneficial to all to help spur the growth of the community, but ensuring that credit is given to those that put the work in first is paramount. If the people making these claims against Complex have proper reasoning to do so, prove the point and make your case. Otherwise its going to be a he-said / she-said mud sling which is not going to be helpful at all or something the community needs right now.
The problem with this, is you’re taking respect out of the equation of improving the game, you’re encouraging theft of art. A great game/community or mod community or community of ANY kind begins with RESPECT. If you take someones work and make an improvement on it, then claim you did ALL of it, that is HIGHLY disrespectful and HIGHLY ignorant. This is the kind of thing you should NOT do.
Even gearbox credits the original Homeworld team for the work they did on the game. Because they respect the work they did, which shows in their effort to bring the game to a modern stand point.
I myself encourage modders to share their work, I also would expect credit being given where it’s due, as was stated here
You remove the idea of respecting someones work and giving credit, You will then have a very toxic and terrible atmosphere. Communities are based on trust, and respect for one another. When you sign up to a forums you agree to their terms and conditions and thus are obligated to respect that. Morally it is the correct thing to do, to give someone credit for the work they did, EVEN if you change all of it, it wasn’t yours to change to begin with, and you have to respect that.
I never once put anything into HWU without permission, i actually got lucky and was able to track down all of the mod authors for the stuff i wanted added in and mind u i practically worked without a viable team for over 7 years and HWU is among the top 5. Thou with that said the mod was only possible thanks to scripting done by people before i came along on namely, mikali for his special fleet mod which chris adopted and modified to expand to created the unlimited race script. Getting permission to use assets is a must, no one has the right to just up and take something without consent.
Nobody is making any money off of your work, not being credited should be the least of your concerns. You uploaded it for free, now it’s public domain.
From a personal standpoint, I agree that not giving proper credit is rude, but you should man up and keep this stuff to e-mails between you and the one doing the “stealing”.
I think you may need to change that first sentence to a comma my friend (i almost read it entirely different 
).
But exactly like you said, respecting the community and encouraging growth of it means that if someone creates a tool or asset that has wide reaching implications across the community they need to be credited as being the person(s) that made it even if they are fine with everyone using. This is ESPECIALLY TRUE if you have modified it in such at way to fit your own personal mod you intend to release. Delphy, Corsix, and dozens of others that created the first Homeworld series mod tools are very well known and respected for what they did. They still to this day are credited with what they did and even Gearbox has mentioned that explicitly as it allowed them to get a headstart on digging into the game.
Look at movies, music and other forms of media in in the United States, credit is given to original works that inspired or allowed derivative works to be created. Look at Weird Al’s career for instance. His musical career is based off the entirely of parody singing other musicians songs and he always goes to them first to get permission to do it and does a respectful and most of the time hilarious parody of their work.
Now there are going to be two types of people I’ve seen that will use and not credit mod assets in their own creations. The first type will be “that one jackass” who will not given two fraks one way or another of assets that someone else created and will include it in their mod anyway. Those are the people that do not care beyond promoting their own creations.
The second is typically people that are of non-english speaking or who are familiar with western approach on copyright laws and just honestly do not understand or know that it is proper in our side of the world.
This seems like mostly BS to me. I was a member of the PDS team for quite a while, and I remember the guy in charge of it, Tel Quessir, conspiring with a Relic forums mod to try to get the entire Complex team banned just because someone gave permission to both Complex and to PDS to use the same ship model (a modified corvette) and he felt like throwing a temper tantrum about it.
News flash: none of you have copyright on jack ■■■■. It’s a game mod, you’re already modding someone else’s intellectual property.
If you don’t like how Complex does things, make your own mod and compete with them. The players will vote which one is best by downloading.
And what about concepts posted by artists on DeviantArt?
Are they public domain just because they’ve been posted online?
What about indie games that are free? Do they not own the assets and IP for that game?
What makes mod assets different, if any of the above are in the negative?
Are you disagreeing with the interpretation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement?
As well as the T&Cs on ModDB, Desura, and other online distribution platforms?
I think you’re miss understanding the intent here. Everybody knows that Complex is a fantastic mod with a great deal many of accomplishment and feats; what we’re talking about here is the practices behind the gameplay and development.