Other than the option they said they had, which was to give him their permission… they could have chosen that.
They didn’t, and he respected that choice. He is in the process of the week or so of hard work it’s going to take to remove the game. The mod suite is shut down in the interim while he complies.
I’m not really to to date with the situation, but just because something is written in an EULA doesn’t mean it’s legally enforceable? You might even argue that the modder isn’t an end user in this case and as such, the EULA doesn’t apply.
As long as no copyrighted work is distributed, what is the angle? I just assume that the mod did include copyrighted material, but what if it was purely a patch?
His work does indeed go against their terms, though there are plenty of options, they even cite themselves that all he would need is their permission and it would be fine, they decided not to go that route. So he is in the process of disentangling that game from the mod suite, it’s shut down while he works, it’ll be about a week, 100 hours of work or so.
Yeah, assuming they’re not redistributing any content from the game, I hope everyone cheering for this realizes that the same justification could be used to forbid emulation, or modding as a whole.
No CD said they are happy for them to make the mod and to have a link for donations to make money from it, but locking it exclusively behind a paywall is the only issue. This has pretty much always been the case in the modding scene .
CD Projekt is not the only company in the world and legal precedents affect more than just the case in which they are created. As of right now this isn’t a court case, but consider:
Currently it is completely legal to create an emulator provided you write all the code yourself and none of its parts include intellectual property (such as firmware images or copies of games).
Currently it is completely legal to make and distribute patches for, for example, NES game ROMs that contain none of the original information from the game, but merely consist of a list of locations where values should be modified by a specified amount.
To give a non-game example, it is completely legal to distribute a commentary track for a movie so long as you don’t include the movie footage within it. Even though that commentary track is essentially useless without a copy of the movie. There even exists sets of instructions for re-cutting movies to create fan edits.
Now, assuming that the mod in question doesn’t redistribute parts of Cyberpunk, and is instead a completely separate piece of software that happens to be capable of interfacing with the game, what right does CD Projekt have to tell them what to do? Possibly they use the word “Cyberpunk” in the name of their mod, which is indeed a trademarked term that CD Projekt could potentially assert control of in this case, but other than that?
Your movie commentary track works without the movie. Considering the amount of Youtube react vids, it seems legal to do that for money.
Your emulator might be legal, the ROMs for them aren’t. Because one is recreating some functionality with different means, the other is an infringement of a developer’s copyright.
As far as the ROM patch fixes go … yes, selling those is technically not allowed. You can ask for donations, but the patch itself must be freely distributed. Sometimes there is no rights holder left, or they don’t care to pursue the case, but they are in their right to challenge paid patches if they wanted to.
This mod, though, is a product that provides a new experience (Cyberpunk VR) by using someone else’s work. It doesn’t matter if it’s a $1 yearly subscription, you must pay to get it, so it’s legally a commercial product. And that product relies on other people’s work to deliver its advertised experience, which makes it illegal in the vast majority of courts in this world.
Specifically, this mod is not universal, it only works on Cyberpunk and its functionality is directly related to that game. If it worked on all games, you could call it a VR emulator, but it doesn’t, so you can’t.
Considering the amount of Youtube react vids, it seems legal to do that for money.
Actually if anything those are illegal considering they usually contain the entire video with some moron’s face in the corner. You could argue that they fall under fair use for criticism and analysis, though I don’t think you’d be able to do so successfully given the amount of original content included and the insubstantial nature of the commentary. Its more like these videos usually copy work from creators that don’t have the resources to put up a fight.
Your emulator might be legal, the ROMs for them aren’t.
Yeah, that’s what I just said.
As far as the ROM patch fixes go … yes, selling those is technically not allowed. You can ask for donations, but the patch itself must be freely distributed.
I’m really sorry to tell you this but IP law doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about whether or not you’re making money from something. It might aggravate a company’s lawyers into action more readily than if you are not, but a company is fully within their rights to shut you down whether you’re violating IP law to make money or if you’re doing it to help underprivileged kids with cancer.
And that product relies on other people’s work to deliver its advertised experience
Copyright laws, as the name suggests, govern who has the right to make copies of a particular piece of IP. If you are not making and distributing copies of something in some way then copyright law doesn’t apply.
You are effectively arguing that I shouldn’t be able to make and distribute lists of songs I think are good to listen to together unless I get the permission of all the song creators. That is ridiculous.
If companies are able to exert legal control over anything that relies on their IP to function, not just copies of their IP, the implications would be far reaching and disastrous. For one, custom phone ROMs, even completely original ones, are usually specific to specific models of phone because they rely on interfacing with firmware that is different from phone to phone. Currently it is legal for consumers to modify phones they own (which is something that had to be fought for, by the way), but under that standard a manufacturer could DMCA ROM developers. Nvidia would be able to DMCA the developers of the Nouveau driver since it relies on their GPU firmware in order to function.
Something everyone here needs to understand is that law in general, but IP law especially, is not a set of platonic ideals handed down by god. It’s very very fuzzy and what flies and what doesn’t relies heavily on precedent. There are things that were common practice in the 1960s that would get you sued now even though the law hasn’t changed. Companies constantly try to push to expand the scope of their control while consumers try to push back. Yes I know “I like free mods, I like wholesome CD Projekt because they ran GOG, I think this is a good thing”, but you need to think of the broader implications of things like this. I don’t give a shit about this specific developer or whether they “deserve” to charge for their mod or whatever, the precedent that game companies are able to exert legal control over, and set standards for, mods of their game is very very bad. Even if you think daddy CD Projekt would be a good steward I can assure you other companies would not be.
Who is CDPR that can decide if the modder puts it under exclusive paywall? We may not like it, but that should be the power of the mod creator, not a corporation that decides how or if it is monetized.
no, this is super toxic to the entire modding ecosystem.
if even a single modder starts charging for access to mods, the entire system becomes utter shit over night.
this isn’t theoretical: it has already happened multiple times.
the most famous example, i think, is skyrim.
bethesda tried to create a modding economy with paid mods, and immediately the entire store was filled with extremely low quality bullshit, with little information as to what the mod actually does, with the sole intention to rip users off for basically no effort. quality content got buried, bots were rampant and pushing slop to the top. a complete mess.
this is the guaranteed outcome of any such monetization scheme.
random people can be just as shitty as corporations, if they are financially incentivized to be.
that’s why most modding communities are extremely opposed to paid mods, not because they like corporations.
I mean, that’s pretty much fair game at that point. It’s literally in the EULA. They really had no other option.
Other than the option they said they had, which was to give him their permission… they could have chosen that.
They didn’t, and he respected that choice. He is in the process of the week or so of hard work it’s going to take to remove the game. The mod suite is shut down in the interim while he complies.
I’m not really to to date with the situation, but just because something is written in an EULA doesn’t mean it’s legally enforceable? You might even argue that the modder isn’t an end user in this case and as such, the EULA doesn’t apply.
As long as no copyrighted work is distributed, what is the angle? I just assume that the mod did include copyrighted material, but what if it was purely a patch?
His work does indeed go against their terms, though there are plenty of options, they even cite themselves that all he would need is their permission and it would be fine, they decided not to go that route. So he is in the process of disentangling that game from the mod suite, it’s shut down while he works, it’ll be about a week, 100 hours of work or so.
Yeah, assuming they’re not redistributing any content from the game, I hope everyone cheering for this realizes that the same justification could be used to forbid emulation, or modding as a whole.
No CD said they are happy for them to make the mod and to have a link for donations to make money from it, but locking it exclusively behind a paywall is the only issue. This has pretty much always been the case in the modding scene .
You are not comprehending my comment at all.
CD Projekt is not the only company in the world and legal precedents affect more than just the case in which they are created. As of right now this isn’t a court case, but consider:
Currently it is completely legal to create an emulator provided you write all the code yourself and none of its parts include intellectual property (such as firmware images or copies of games).
Currently it is completely legal to make and distribute patches for, for example, NES game ROMs that contain none of the original information from the game, but merely consist of a list of locations where values should be modified by a specified amount.
To give a non-game example, it is completely legal to distribute a commentary track for a movie so long as you don’t include the movie footage within it. Even though that commentary track is essentially useless without a copy of the movie. There even exists sets of instructions for re-cutting movies to create fan edits.
Now, assuming that the mod in question doesn’t redistribute parts of Cyberpunk, and is instead a completely separate piece of software that happens to be capable of interfacing with the game, what right does CD Projekt have to tell them what to do? Possibly they use the word “Cyberpunk” in the name of their mod, which is indeed a trademarked term that CD Projekt could potentially assert control of in this case, but other than that?
Arguably …
Your movie commentary track works without the movie. Considering the amount of Youtube react vids, it seems legal to do that for money.
Your emulator might be legal, the ROMs for them aren’t. Because one is recreating some functionality with different means, the other is an infringement of a developer’s copyright.
As far as the ROM patch fixes go … yes, selling those is technically not allowed. You can ask for donations, but the patch itself must be freely distributed. Sometimes there is no rights holder left, or they don’t care to pursue the case, but they are in their right to challenge paid patches if they wanted to.
This mod, though, is a product that provides a new experience (Cyberpunk VR) by using someone else’s work. It doesn’t matter if it’s a $1 yearly subscription, you must pay to get it, so it’s legally a commercial product. And that product relies on other people’s work to deliver its advertised experience, which makes it illegal in the vast majority of courts in this world.
Specifically, this mod is not universal, it only works on Cyberpunk and its functionality is directly related to that game. If it worked on all games, you could call it a VR emulator, but it doesn’t, so you can’t.
Actually if anything those are illegal considering they usually contain the entire video with some moron’s face in the corner. You could argue that they fall under fair use for criticism and analysis, though I don’t think you’d be able to do so successfully given the amount of original content included and the insubstantial nature of the commentary. Its more like these videos usually copy work from creators that don’t have the resources to put up a fight.
Yeah, that’s what I just said.
I’m really sorry to tell you this but IP law doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about whether or not you’re making money from something. It might aggravate a company’s lawyers into action more readily than if you are not, but a company is fully within their rights to shut you down whether you’re violating IP law to make money or if you’re doing it to help underprivileged kids with cancer.
Copyright laws, as the name suggests, govern who has the right to make copies of a particular piece of IP. If you are not making and distributing copies of something in some way then copyright law doesn’t apply.
You are effectively arguing that I shouldn’t be able to make and distribute lists of songs I think are good to listen to together unless I get the permission of all the song creators. That is ridiculous.
If companies are able to exert legal control over anything that relies on their IP to function, not just copies of their IP, the implications would be far reaching and disastrous. For one, custom phone ROMs, even completely original ones, are usually specific to specific models of phone because they rely on interfacing with firmware that is different from phone to phone. Currently it is legal for consumers to modify phones they own (which is something that had to be fought for, by the way), but under that standard a manufacturer could DMCA ROM developers. Nvidia would be able to DMCA the developers of the Nouveau driver since it relies on their GPU firmware in order to function.
Something everyone here needs to understand is that law in general, but IP law especially, is not a set of platonic ideals handed down by god. It’s very very fuzzy and what flies and what doesn’t relies heavily on precedent. There are things that were common practice in the 1960s that would get you sued now even though the law hasn’t changed. Companies constantly try to push to expand the scope of their control while consumers try to push back. Yes I know “I like free mods, I like wholesome CD Projekt because they ran GOG, I think this is a good thing”, but you need to think of the broader implications of things like this. I don’t give a shit about this specific developer or whether they “deserve” to charge for their mod or whatever, the precedent that game companies are able to exert legal control over, and set standards for, mods of their game is very very bad. Even if you think daddy CD Projekt would be a good steward I can assure you other companies would not be.
deleted by creator
Who is CDPR that can decide if the modder puts it under exclusive paywall? We may not like it, but that should be the power of the mod creator, not a corporation that decides how or if it is monetized.
no, this is super toxic to the entire modding ecosystem.
if even a single modder starts charging for access to mods, the entire system becomes utter shit over night.
this isn’t theoretical: it has already happened multiple times.
the most famous example, i think, is skyrim.
bethesda tried to create a modding economy with paid mods, and immediately the entire store was filled with extremely low quality bullshit, with little information as to what the mod actually does, with the sole intention to rip users off for basically no effort. quality content got buried, bots were rampant and pushing slop to the top. a complete mess.
this is the guaranteed outcome of any such monetization scheme.
random people can be just as shitty as corporations, if they are financially incentivized to be.
that’s why most modding communities are extremely opposed to paid mods, not because they like corporations.