DLC vs. Modding

[PieceOfMind]

Best guess at this point is that creating new leaders or civs will not be moddable or at least won't be easy to do. Why would even a casual player pay $10 for a single civ if he/she can download hundreds of civs for free, many of which (civs) will be basically the country they're from (and we all know how much people love to use their home civ) by clicking another button?

There are a lot of questions to be asked at this point. I hope to see them asked in this thread, and phungus has done a good job so far. Ahriman has some good questions too.

A question I have is:
When we create mods, isn't it still legally the property of the game owner - i.e. Take Two or Firaxis etc.? If that's so, could it be that DLC could involve grouping together various smaller mods into a bigger mod and selling it? In general, what exactly do modders own when it comes to the mods they've made? I understand these are not simple questions to answer but any insight on the matter is much appreciated.

 

[ori]

So, how different does something have to be until it is user-created content?

Are we banning *any* maps of the Fertile Crescent region? What if someone takes their map and tweaks it slightly? What if they use the base map but add their own scneario on top?

Can they use the Leader images of the Bablyonian leader and reskin them or change them? How large does that change have to be? There's a minefield here.

Standard policy here is adherence to the EULA, in Civ4's case that means you cannot share unmodified game files, but you can share modified game files except the .exe.
I have no idea what Civ5 will allow, but since they market it as modable I doubt it will be much different.
So to answer your question: I'd assume we'd disallow sharing the exact files as distributed. In case of the additional leaderhead I'd assume that the EULA would disallow sharing the artwork, so I'd expect that to be off-limits as well. If someone made such maps/civs from scratch or by modifying files that can be shared after modification we'd allow it. This is stabbing in the dark though since I have no idea what Take2 will decide on modding files.

 

[snowlyon]

Minefield is an accurate description. If the original reports were true, and we are getting near full exposure of source and XML (ala civ4), it will be impossible to clearly define what is and what isn't allowed. Firaxis are setting themselves up to be in direct competition with the modding community and at the same time are tempting fate and creating a de facto incentive to copy DLC works. This isn't smart from a business perspective. I can understand the decision to use Steam, I don't personally like it, but it makes good business sense. The decision to create zero day DLC, and presumably alot more DLC later, while at the same time releasing high power mod tools is, ironically, only going to lead toward alot of bad blood between the modding community and Firaxis.

agreed....interested to see how this all plays out honestly. my gut tells me there is a big stick in the future though for the modders out there. which would be a real bummer as it is the modders that give the series such long term appeal, imo~

 

[Ahriman]

Best guess at this point is that creating new leaders or civs will not be moddable or at least won't be easy to do

If creating new civs and leaders is not easy, then the modding potential of the game is pretty much dead. How can we have Fall From Heaven or Dune Wars or Planetfall if its hard to make a new civ? I can't believe they'd really go that way. I think my post #19 suggestion is more likely.
Now, I'm sure it could be tough to create animated leaders, but I would hope that we'd be able to mod new leaders in with just a static picture.

Standard policy here is adherence to the EULA, in Civ4's case that means you cannot share unmodified game files, but you can share modified game files except the .exe.

So to answer your question: I'd assume we'd disallow sharing the exact files as distributed.

So, if I hypothetically take their babylon scenario, and change 1 tile from desert to plains, and call it "Ahriman's Babylon Scenario (inspired by Firaxis bonus scenario)" then I'm good to go?

 

[ori]

A question I have is:
When we create mods, isn't it still legally the property of the game owner - i.e. Take Two or Firaxis etc.? If that's so, could it be that DLC could involve grouping together various smaller mods into a bigger mod and selling it? In general, what exactly do modders own when it comes to the mods they've made? I understand these are not simple questions to answer but any insight on the matter is much appreciated.

I'll just cite the civ4 EULA:

All Customized Game Materials created by you are exclusively owned by LICENSOR and/or its licensors (as the case may be) and you hereby transfer, assign and convey to LICENSOR all right, title and interest in and to the Customized Game Materials and LICENSOR and its permitted licensors may use any Customized Game Materials made publicly available to you for any purpose whatsoever, including but not limited to for purposes of advertising and promoting the Software;

I'll expect the Civ5 EULA to read pretty much the same and they could go out and try to offer any publicly available mod as DLC and conceivably even as paid content. I doubt they would, since it would put them in a position of having answer the legal question of a binding EULA in all countries in which the game is published and to answer all sorts of copyright questions regarding artwork used by modmakers, open them up to a rather severe PR problem with regards to fans like the ones on this site which I would expect would be a tad less welcoming than the current debate about their DLC and DRM decision and would probably offer a lot less commercial value than just using the extreme modability as a marketing tool.

 

[Ahriman]

This sounds about right; they claim that they retain the rights to any user-generated mod, but they never exercise this right in practice. So it never becomes an issue.

 

[ori]

So, if I hypothetically take their babylon scenario, and change 1 tile from desert to plains, and call it "Ahriman's Babylon Scenario (inspired by Firaxis bonus scenario)" then I'm good to go?

Not going to answer that one - mostly because I don't know. Policy here is set by Thunderfall. I just reiterated what the current policy is. At some point it becomes a rather murky judgment though and I'd defer on that one.
I don't think straight copies would be acceptable, on the other hand I doubt we'd ban all posting of a Babylon civilization mod. The closes I can think of are adaptations of scenarios that shipped with Warlords for BtS (obviously requiring a lot more reworking than just one tile changes) which were allowed.

 

[Ahriman]

Thanks Ori. Perhaps after release where we know where we stand better (and what the specific EULAs say) then we can get Thunderfall to make a definitive policy statement, maybe "close copies of Firaxis IP are not acceptable, but adaptations with significant new content will be accepted". And then judge on a case by case basis if needed.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

DRM, Digital Rights Management is a way for publishers to retrict how users use their digital products. The wary from disk checks/copy protection/cd-keys to limited activations and requiring constant internet connection. There are also medhods to prevent resale of retail games (only applies to retail games bought from stores, you can't sell games bought from digital distribution services like steam) or restrict their resale value (this usally involves one time use only registration keys to specific services like DLC, Forums etc.). While there are reports of DRM causing various hardware and software problems it seems problems are very hardware specific (my only experience is downgrading of my DVD drive speed. This was starforge from years ago) so you are not very likely to encounter them unless you use old games as some of old DRM may not be compatible with latest OS's or hardware. Most of the software issues are probably mostly related to incompatibility with newer programs and drivers but they may intentionally interfere with the operations of specific programs (The most serious I've experienced is starforge included in Space Rangers II (same as above) refusing to allow running of game while there were image mounting programs present (Alcohol 120%/Daemon Tools)). I may have been lucky or it's due to fact that I crack the games I buy or maybe problems are excacerated, hard to tell. Limited activations may also cause problems if you install often as depending of the publisher, the activations may not be renewable and once spend you may have to actually rebuy the game to reinstall.

You do know your stuff.

Some retail disk games even has limited amount of time you can reinstall your disk. It has been confirmed that a dude reinstalled his Grand Theft Auto 4 game about 15 times and could not do it again. He was clearly upset with reason.

With Steam, you can reinstall as many times you want.

 

[MqsTout]

It just means those people can't pirate the game.

DRM has almost nothing to do with preventing piracy.

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm has the long answer about what DRM is and means.

 

[Ahriman]

DRM has almost nothing to do with preventing piracy.

Really... so you think that if no-one ever pirated games, that game companies would still invest millions of dollars in developing DRM software?

They do it because they want to protect their product. Yeah, its unfortunate that there isn't an obvious way to effectively reduce piracy without inconviencing legitimate users.

But there isn't.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I post this here too just to take back the conversation to the modding concerns

Releasing paid-for content one bit at a time will be a terrible blow for the mod community. Currently you just have mods for vanillas/warlords/bts. So there are just three groups of users - those who have vanilla, those who have warlords, and those who have BTS. If you make a mod or a scenario, you can target one of these groups, and use the appropriate content as base material for your own mod.

However assume now you have 5 different small DLCs, each one is offering either a new civ or a new unit, or new terrain, whatever. Now there will be people who have all of them, or a certain combination of these DLCs or none of them. In fact there will be 32 different combinations.

Now if you are a mod maker and want to use something from a DLC, this immediately limits your target audience. So to be more inclusive, you don't use any DLC content in your mod. This however limits what you can do. Moreover this puts DLCs and mod makers in direct competition with each other.

So the question is how is it possible the handle both DLC and free modding for Civ V?

 

[player1 fanatic]

Let's look example of popular Bioware's RPG, Drgaon Age, with both DLCs system and modding tools.

Base games resources are free for modding.

But DLC content is encrypted. And as such, can't be used to make derivative works from it.
Unofficially, it can be decrypted with "warez" tools, and modded afterward, but something done like that could never be posted at respectable fan made site.

.

So if it gets done in Civ5 like that, expect never to be able to make reskin of Babylonian leader or new unit with Bowman animation (legally). Even if you own Deluxe edition.

I so hope that I'm wrong with this.

 

[Ahriman]

So the question is how is it possible the handle both DLC and free modding for Civ V?

As I said above; most likely by relying on the fact that most users are NOT tech-savvy and do not download and install fan-made mods.
So they're selling content that is easy to add and install, without any issues of worrying about unzipping to the right folder or not, or worrying if that mod executable is really a virus. Most users don't ever go to sites like civfanatics, so might still buy their DLC even if there is better/free stuff here.

What will be more interesting is; does this mean they'll commit to updating DLC scenarios as they patch the main game?

But DLC content is encrypted.

For most games, yes. But I'd be very surprised if they did that for Civ.

 

[evrett37]

What if they set up a "appstore" like apple does for the iphone but with mods where Steam getting a percentage of the profit off any creation. Turn all our volunteer modders into DLC providers. A back door way of controlling content that likely the majority of modders would welcome.

 

[Iceciro]

As a light modder and a heavy user of mods, I am somewhat concerned. I'm leaning on Firaxis to do the right thing, because they're possibly my favorite game company at current, but there's also Take Two and their greed between us and Firaxis. And it really does depend on what the EULA says. The best analouge I can come up with is Empire: Total War, where there were units that came with a similar deluxe edition. The rest of the game was relatively open for modding, but the deluxe edition units were pretty much effectively untouchable, meaning most of the modding community just bought the core game and put in units with different art assets and the same statistics.

Civ V being another XML based game, I can't imagine coding a "babylon" civ to be a difficult endeavor, given how much time it takes to code one in Civ IV - even if you tripled that you could still crank one out in an hour, as long as you knew what codes to mark. The real issue is going to be those art assets... which is the same issue we have in modding Civ IV, actually - where to pull art assets from, and talented art modders.

Of a lot more import is going to be people who like to play online - the base "Babylon" civ that comes with the deluxe edition, and any DLC civs, are going to presumably be allowed in multiplayer games whether everyone involved has the DLC or not, but with a mod, everyone will need the data. Things get messier when you have to make sure things don't overlap with the DLC.

 

[deanej]

This is a major issue. Let's say you're making a mod that should include Babylon. Do you not include Babylon, even though your mod should have it? Or do you make your own Babylon from scratch, using an unofficial version even though an official version exists? Or do you tell the people that bought the retail version "no mod for you!"?

 

[Iceciro]

You (or at least I) would make my own Babylon version and tell people who bought the Digital Deluxe edition to deal with having two Babylon civs in the list.

 

[deanej]

Well, I would probably just not make the mod because of the issue. All of the options make the mod more unprofessional and unpolished in at least some form.

 

[Iceciro]

Assuming it works like Civ IV does (which admittedly is a big assumption) you just get some overwrite tags in for 'official' Babylon to playable=0 and then its hidden and you're good to go.