UPDATED 14/06/18 - *** Rules for User Made Mods and Edits of PDS games ***

[Castellon]

The mods need to be able to have a public face where information about it can be accessed by people who don't own the game. I am not saying people who haven't bought the game should be able to download the mod, merely that people should be able to read about it. That public face is also essential for the mod to get any major media coverage which also happens to benefit Paradox.

Nothing preventing you from creating say a web page for the user mod or a blog or and Ad campaign if you wish, you just cannot have a site with user interaction, so no forum for example, even bug sites should limit the users to people actually working on your mod. example Paradox has a bug site for our games, but we do not let our players directly interact with it. Instead they post issues here and one of us enters it in our system. So as long as you do not post your download link on the web page, we do not have issue with it.

We genuinely like you guys (hey we often even hire from this great talent pool to work with us), and want your mod to succeed, even if you think all corporations are evil, Consider it is even in our interest if you succeed, since people need our game to play your mod. We do have some rules that we need you to follow but I am willing to do what I can to minimize the impact of them on you. truly we want to be your partner in this.

 

[Castellon]

Journalists will not link to a paywall. How about a subforum were modmakers can copy&paste their threads, and links are auto-erased?

If it is for marketing you are probably better with a webpage with images and arranged all nice. Plenty of free hosting of pages out there. From that page you can post a link to your thread or forum here for more details and DL info, or to the Steam Workshop page. Or create a workshop page and link to that. Can you see workshop pages if you do not own the game? Not 100% sure about that, anyone confirm?

 

[Castellon]

I thought I understood the rules for mods, but reading through the last two-three pages of conversation has made my head hurt. Castellon, as a matter of curiosity, and with no offense meant, are there any other members of Paradox who are willing to comment and clarify?

What do you need clarification on I can answer whatever you need.

 

[Castellon]

You can see any Workshop page of any game at any time , within Steam and over the Steam Website ... and to be honsest ... that you dont know this is another sign that this Rules are never ever signed by legal department.
Example Skyrim : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?appid=72850&browsesort=toprated (as you see most Top mods have links to Nexus, even Donations are allowed on Steam WS !!!)



Yes , and the MOD in a say Mediafire File is NO content of your side ... even the Workshop Mods are NO content of yours. Therefore the Steam Rules kicks in , not yours. Very simple.

You are ONLY responsible for the Content of this Forum and the Links , but there is a difference ... after your logic Google would be responsible for EVERY torrent/porn,nazi, ect etc stuff you can find with it. But as you sure know is not true.
Maybe its Time you rethink your "rules" and ask an real Lawyer.

Sorry , but all your statemenst sounds that only Paradox knows the Rules and every other "big player" is dump and acts against LAW everyday with their moddable Games... And no i dont mean this time EA.
Maybe you should read the Mod Rules from Bethesda(Zentimax) or Sega ...

And i think this questions was somehow not answered by you , too much talks here atm :ninja: ..so i quote myself :

I do not see how asking about whether Workshop mods are view able if you do not own the game is relevant to whether we sought legal advice?
I have a developer account on steam, my permissions will not be the same as regular members. Also it is a third party site and believe me when I say Steam has its own lawyers.

Intentionally or not you appear to be misunderstanding what I am saying. You seam to want to drag this conversation into some kind of legal debate and we do not engage in legal debates on the forums, So I will politely say that expressing your legal opinion is off topic for this thread as mentioned somewhere around the first page I believe.

 

[Castellon]

Well, i need a solution for Steam players that are not registered here, but can't get M&T for EUIV to work because we had to split it in several parts, and that Workshop is a pain to manage a mod the size of ours.

I know you said something about possibly a new host service or whatever… but i need a solution "now", not next year.

For now I would ask them to register their game here.

 

[Castellon]

OK, thanks for answer. There are mods that on Steam Workshop provide links to direct download on e.g. mediafire though. Is it you guys or Steam guys who look after that?

We can remove anything from the Workshop that violates our TOS.

 

[Castellon]

All I can answer is that I'm not confident you can clarify Paradox's exact rules on this matter for me. I don't understand either the purpose of the rules, or the actual nature of some of them (EX, you're not allowed to have a ModDB page, except when you are, but when you are it can't have download links or interaction with the ModDB community, except if you set up the page before a date when it wasn't allowed...what?)

Like, I understand not fracturing the community by allowing for individual discussion forums, that I get. And I get absolving yourself of blame if something you release happens to resemble something a modder has previously done, no complaints. But by both having the user mod forums restricted to registered forum users who have also registered the game (something that a good number of people will not do just because they don't want to bother registering for a forum just for the sake of trying a mod), and saying that you can't post download links anywhere but on that forum (including for mods too big to fit on the Steam workshop), you're trying to have your cake and eat it too, and it's just an odd combination of rules. It's directly cutting out a huge number of people who might otherwise be interested in mods.

Since I wrote the rules, I do not see how anyone else could clarify them better for you.
Feel free to ask any specific questions you have, that is essentially what this thread is for.

You appear to have an excellent grasp of exactly what the rules are. You can advertise your mod on sites like ModDb but if someone want to interact with you about the mod or download the mod they come here to do that or get the info to DL it. The exception is if it is hosted on the Steam Workshop obviously they can DL direct from there.

And pretty sure I had to register on most modding sites to be able to download mods.

 

[Castellon]

But that's what is trying to be communicated: there's a MASSIVE number of people who would rather not bother with the hassle of registering a new account on a new forum, and then finding their game key, and registering their game, rather than try the mod. It's directly cutting out a large number of people who otherwise would try and play the mod, and maybe even comment on the mod's Steam Workshop page.

If you tell people "Well to get any help with this mod you need to register at this forum you aren't otherwise interested in", they will go, "Oh. Well, I'm not actually that interested in this mod anymore."

I definitely do not want to minimize anything, but it is often the "vocal minority" anyone interested in actually giving the mod a chance should be will come here. Maybe we need to look at more ways to make it worth their while.

 

[Castellon]

TWCenter, ModDB, CivFanatics, Nexus (for smaller to medium sized mods -- very large mods, a gig or more IIRC, require registration), none of those require registration to download their mods, and they are fairly well known mod sites. At least two of those also utilize links to third party download sites for their mods (TWCenter and CivFanatics).

I do, however, recognize these are not official sites for the games in question.

I know Nexus would not let me DL any Skyrim mods I wanted without an account. Maybe they are tightening up the rules.

 

[Castellon]

You seem to have missed it, so I am quoting EQOOE with a kind request for a clear answer in this matter as obviously I am interested too:

If you can demonstrate that whatever you want to do that contravenes one of the rules was in place before the release of EU4 and is not related to EU4 or any Base game released after that, then you could ask me for it to be grandfathered and I would communicate that to my staff.

 

[Castellon]

2 MB, the limit was considerably smaller than I thought. You're probably right on this, since I can't think of a whole lot of worthwhile Skyrim mods less than 2MB in size, but that's neither here nor there -- Nexus only requires you to register an account, it doesn't require an added step of registering your game.

Also, I am sure that EQOOE and myzael would like an answer.

I think entering a one time code that does not personally identify you and only unlocks additional features and access on the site and is readily accessible from the steam console is not that much of additional effort. Not for the vast majority at any rate.

And Answered in the post above this one.

 

[Meneth]

TWCenter, ModDB, CivFanatics, Nexus (for smaller to medium sized mods -- very large mods, a gig or more IIRC, require registration), none of those require registration to download their mods, and they are fairly well known mod sites. At least two of those also utilize links to third party download sites for their mods (TWCenter and CivFanatics).

I do, however, recognize these are not official sites for the games in question.

Another great example of a community site that allows external mods is the official Minecraft forum. No doubt the vibrant Minecraft modding community is one of the many reasons for its enormous success, and I posit that the modding community wouldn't have been nearly as vibrant if they were trying to enforce the ridiculous rule on external downloads that the Paradox forums have.

 

[Castellon]

ähmmm , i dont get it anymore ...
Now talk straight : You said that EVERY mod before the rules came up is "Grandfathered"


Is this correct ? Yes or NO ? (13-08-2013 00:58)



Ahh , now we come to a point !
Your "legal opinion" is the problem ! Its an opinion based on what ? Sure no EU LAW , and also not on Steam WS Law..
As EU company your are bound to EU LAW , whatever your so called opinion is.

But its ok ... i dont ask any more about Law and legals here ...its a waste of time to discuss with someone who had its opinion allready set into stone.

Again you try to twist what I say into trying to provoke me or something?
What I say is consistent and has not changed. What is grandfathered is existing infrastructures example if you had a forum, if you had a mod hosted on modDB ... BEFORE EU4 was released. Not that your Mod existed before then. See the difference you also had to have those things before that time.

Your right I am not a lawyer, but clearly based on what you are saying neither are you, as such any debate would be pointless and I have already informed you that it is off-topic for this thread.

 

[Castellon]

That's a quick choice, as big as Paradox could be the rest of the internet is bigger.



That's the main thing with the workshop, I was clapping when it was announced but the system is crap in practice. That and the fact it updates automatically and breaks all past saves for people who asked nothing.

I also can't understand why gifts are prohibited, EOOQ's propositions overall where fine (also nice to see you back)

Obviously we would prefer that Modders do not do that, but a free for all essentially has the same result.
As for you guys getting some kind of revenue generation, we are looking at this.

 

[Castellon]

Wait, so first you say that every mod started before the rules were defined is automatically grandfathered and next that one needs to apply for it. I am sure you see why such statements could introduce confusion. And its not a matter of what would a mod benefit from it, but a matter of principle. I don't imagine that anyone wishes to make mods in an environment where some mods are favored, for whatever reason it might be.

Note that I personally have no interest in acquiring special privileges for M&T. I am bothered by the details of these rules, not the general idea, with which I almost completely agree. As I said before, I believe that we deserve explanation of the reasons that each controversive rule. And saying "I wrote these rules" is definitely not a worthy explanation.

Thank-you for your response, I believe I have explained the rational for grandfathering existing channels that were in use.
You may disagree, but I have explained the reasoning and why we felt it was fairer to go that way.

The reason why you would apply is that we would need to verify that the channel was in use before the EU4 release, and also so that I could let my staff know and avoid any misunderstandings. We have in the past been accused of acting precipitously when complaints are issued, I have heard that and am working to avoid an similar issues in the future. Codifying the rules, and interacting directly with the modders in this thread for example.

I get that everyone do not like every rule, I doubt there is a set of rules for anything that have unanimous agreement. I do very much listen to what is said here and try and find ways we can help out within our operating guidelines.

 

[Castellon]

Moreover, why shouldn't we discuss legal issues here? All the mentioned are definitely on topic, as rules concern license matters, which is definitely a legal issue. You said:



You reference you legal counsel frequently yet whenever someone raises a legitimate legal question you more or less ignore it. I admit I am not fluent in EU IP laws, but that you can forbid people from protecting their own work from lawless copying is beyond me. If I am not correct on this, please refer me to appropriate documents, or even better answer why I am wrong here.

I fully understand you wanting to have a shield against copyright claims from third parties. I also understand the desire of a similar shield against theoretical modder's claims for features that you release and might be similar to that introduced by mods. Yet blindly forbidding people from protecting their artistic work (music, graphics) simply doesn't sound fair - in my simple, not law-educated mind. Isn't some kind of a compromise possible, where both parties have their interests protected? Please, enlighten me.

I don't engage in legal debates because I am not a lawyer either, what use is it or what purpose does it serve to have 2 non lawyers debate the issue. We are not willing to have our legal department surf the forum to engage in these debates either.

 

[Castellon]

Maybe you should also better read what you are allowed !!

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/english/

6B :


And dont come up now with : Yaya we know this , we do not "edit" your files , but we can edit your Mod description...
NO , only Valve is allowed to do this in terms of the "general" Agreement for things like Porn/Nazi Stuff/Harassment in Mod description or Forum/Posts etc etc

I assure you we have control over content on our game workshops and have removed items when needed or reported to us.

 

[Castellon]

Why would you be interested in a game you do not own? And so Paradox cuts its advertising budget and spirals into bankruptcy...

AKA that's a weak-sauce argument. What relevance is it WHY someone may be interested in a mod? And for that matter, even if they DON'T have the game, there's no harm to PI if they get the mod. If the game's pirated, it's pirated. The mod itself is irrelevant to discussions of piracy.

I do appreciate the first part of this argument, I tend to play games vanilla and then move to mods, but I can allow that a mod someone hears about could lead them to a game. As for the later point I never mentioned Pirated games, I used "own" in the sense of "have in your possession", but I could see how it is read that way, presumably if you pirate a game you also have illegal means to get mods as well.

 

[Castellon]

Its ok, you won, i give up ...makes no sense to discuss any further with you as im to dump to read your sayings correct :


No word of "existing infrastructures" ... but ok , if you think i provoke you with simple questions you bring up ...:wacko:

I am sorry if I do not give a complete and exhaustive responses every time I answer a post, I deal with a lot of issues in a day and try to get to as many as I can. my apologies for any misunderstandings.

 

[Castellon]

Thanks for response, sounds fair enough for me. Though I'd like to have this explanation at the very beginning of this case (preferably the moment grandfathering issue was raised)

I'd suggest that you expand the rule to contain a clear definition of grandfathering and explanation what granfathered stuff is entitled to. That would cut off such discussions in the future. I feel most of the arguing here comes from the fact that the rules can be interpreted differently by various people. Rewriting them to be unambiguous would solve the vast majority of complaints I think.

I am eagerly waiting for your responses on the other matters I've raised.

Edit:



I suppose when you state legal matters in the rules you should be prepared to consult your legal department. If you do not wish to discuss this issue here, please provide an alternative place to do so.

The rules were kind of posted to CK2 forums when I was away, I do not want to shift blame, but I think some misunderstandings happened for example the thread had been going on for a while in EU4 sub-forum before it was moved, I feel it could have been handled better and disseminated that these were going to be applied as written For all mods going forward. Better communication would have been, well, better. I except responsibility for that.

I will review that text for CK2 over the next couple of days and see if I can expand on it.