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[Zangi]

Waiting till when steam sales are applied.

[Graknorke]

That ass is glorious.

Also, I immediately thought 'Putt putt in the butt'. I may need some mental sanitation at some point...

You meant what what, right?

[Tellemurius]

So I think we better get this out of the way now cause people will bitch about in the future.

Since Bethesda had that blotched paid workshop attempt with Skyrim it should be on everyone's mind about what's going on with paid mods now.

If you looked into the released EULA, Bethesda has now stated that all mods must be distributed as free. So for the most part there will not be paid mods on steam or shady modders cannot sell their mods for profit.

HOWEVER its time for catch-22. Bethesda states that all custom content created for the game is wholly owned by the LICENSOR (ie. Bethesda) and not by the authors, that they can use custom content for promotions and advertising.

[miauw62]

It's going to cause a major shitstorm a couple months from now, probably.

[Shadowlord]

Virtually everyone has a clause like that these days.

[BigD145]

Encouraging modding but keeping control of their own IP. I await Mickey Mouse as a playable character so Bethesda can go to Disney and say "Hey! This is mine!"

[Flying Dice]

Here's your daily reminder about the "enforce it or lose it" aspect of trademarks.

This is pretty much the closest we'll get to ideal: it's an implicit statement of "no paid mods" while also allowing user-generated content to exist without legal uncertainty (albeit by claiming rights over it). It would be nice for Bethesda to allow modders to retain ownership over their work, but that's not going to happen outside of bizarro-world, and the theoretical loss of ownership to Bethesda in some convoluted future event is preferable to the literal theft of your work by shameless profit-seekers in the present.

Of course, theoretically, it also means that lawsuits over stuff copied from other properties into Skyrim mods would be directed at Bethesda rather than the modder.

[KingofstarrySkies]

...Did Bethesda just basically preemptively take the legal bullet for mods/modders?

[Shadowlord]

"But what if I was going to make the next DayZ or Team Fortress or Dota?"

Not that this would be the game to do that in.

[Rolan7]

This was already the case for Skyrim and presumably Fallout 3 and New Vegas.  It's in the EULA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/3fis0s/why_specifically_is_it_not_legal_to_sell_mods_for/
Specific section: http://pastebin.com/q4LVsAnr
Entire EULA: http://store.steampowered.com/eula/eula_202480

Essentially (assuming the EULA would hold up in your local court, not necessarily true especially in Europe), the modder cannot sell mods themselves.  And Bethesda has the right to distribute them as they see fit.

Technically this only applies if the modder used the official tools...  But it's probably against the license to backwards-engineer the ESM files.  So that's not an out.

Asking for donations is fine, and participating in Bethesda/Steam's marketplace was fine.  But yeah...  Bethesda does essentially own the mods, or specifically, has the rights to do whatever they want with them.

This isn't new though...
It's also not *bad*, it's not like Bethesda is going to steal mods and sell them themselves.  As we saw, they offered a system for people to sell mods... or keep offering them for free, whatever the mod author preferred.  They only ever offered mod authors an optional system.

Technically Bethesda could have just put all the mods up for sale and taken 100% of the profits (split with Steam I guess).  But to be fair to their detractors, that would have been a terribly short-sighted decision.

[Neonivek]

assuming the EULA would hold up in your local court, not necessarily true especially in Europe

And completely not legal in Canada.

And while technically "legal" in the USA, the tendency for EULAs to fail in court... Doesn't make it rather strong.

[Shadowlord]

If they have a binding arbitration clause, so far those have proven to be bulletproof in US courts.

[Gabeux]

I wonder if there will be a sidequest in which you must be the lawyer for someone who modded one of the game tapes, but the developer is still alive and wants all the caps the modder made.

I wonder if you could hire them and make a development studio on your settlement and then distribute your original games and modded games throughout the wasteland, bringing entertainment and psychological need satisfaction to the whole race, therefore saving mankind from extinction by simply reminding them that the future is still something to look forward to.

[Rolan7]

No way...
It'll be a mod(s) though

[Neonivek]

If they have a binding arbitration clause, so far those have proven to be bulletproof in US courts.

Well EULAs have a bit more of a... iffy legality.

Mostly because you have to buy the product before you get the contract... the contract which if you do not sign disallows you to use said product.

The EULAs are used MOSTLY as a way to strengthen court cases for businesses in the USA then it is to be used with true legal authority.

And whether or not private arbitration laws should be legal has been up for debate for a long time.