I think there is nuance, the mod in question is a suite of about 35 mods that is constantly maintained/repaired as games patch and break parts of it, and is so insanely complex and impressive that it is a 100 hour a week job for the guy. That’s not something that can be done for free or for donations, It’s well beyond “a mod”. And each of those ~35 mods is like 10-20 mods in one, the list of features added to each game beyond “just” VR support is lengthy.
And it’s such an impressive thing to use, and is only done for games that have no plans to be made for VR. So it only adds sales to the games themselves. Maybe not alot, but it certainly doesn’t take anything away. Not only does he make the games VR capable, he makes sure they play the absolute best possible in VR, not only performance-wise but play-wise as well.
While they are in the right to ask that their game not be part of it, they lose out by doing so.
Without being able to charge a fixed price, a mod of this insane level of quality, quantity, and detail just wouldn’t exist instead.
People that think he is grifting or ripping people off have not actually tried the mods. It is insanely cheap for what you get. For 10 dollars you get ~35 games not just in VR, but in better VR than any company has done with their actual VR ports, and not by a small margin, not to mention they will keep working, because he doesn’t just put in all the effort to make a perfect VR game out of them once, he goes back and fixes anything that needs fixing for every single game too. Even if you don’t want to try it yourself because 10 dollars feels like too much to charge for an amazing VR version of 35 games, at least watch videos of how much people enjoy and respect his work before assuming he is some kind of jerk.
Only 2 of the 35 games have decided to pursue dmca against it in it’s entire history, it is a choice, they don’t -have- to, they choose to. ToS can always be amended if a use is deemed exceptional and worth supporting. The law, just like everything else, is not actually black and white, there is always nuance and possibility.
For both games that asked, he immediately acquiesced and spent the week or so of work it took/takes to strip out all support for that game. It’s the only option he has, this is his full time job. A fuller-time job than most people do/have.
CDprojekt Red even said all he needed was their permission, they could have gone that route.
You don’t own a game. You own a license to use the game. You don’t own the code or the images or the files. End of story. You don’t get to use those files and images to make something else and sell it. The mod wouldn’t work without the game - there’d be nothing to display in VR. When you mod you are directly using the work produced by others and adding in top of that. Modding exists because companies allow it. Part of that allowance is not being a dick, which this modder 100% was. They didn’t even tell him to take it down, just make donations optional and he threw a hissy fit an refused.
Yeah, there’s plenty of nuance. Nuance showing that the modder is a jackass. Should I remind you this modder did THE EXACT SAME thing with Rockstar as well already.
This guy is just a tool trying to make as much money as he can before moving to another game and doing the same, rinse and repeat. He’s a scammer and a grifter.
When you say he “did the same thing” with rockstar. What do you think he did?
The mod is for 35 games, yes one other company decided to remove their game from the mod, and luke ross immediately did so… it took about a week of work to remove it while he locked down access to the mod suite at his own expense, sure he grumbled that it was a dumb move from rockstar but we all hoped maybe it meant rockstar was considering their own VR port so it made sense. But they didn’t.
What do I mean? He sold the same mod as a “Rockstar VR mod” behind his shittly little paywall and then their lawyers had to send him a cease and desist for that. And he whined like a little baby then too. He didn’t learn his lesson then and he hasn’t learned his lesson now because this is a cash grab, not an attempt to break into the industry or anything traditionally respected modders aim for.
Look, just because you’re too retarded to understand he broke laws, doesn’t mean he didn’t break laws.
Where does all that rage of yours comes from ? You pay for the time of the guy to package the shit. You don’t need to, you can yourself build the mod pack… time and convenience is a product in itself.
If missing turns into a paid industry then game companies will start cracking down on it, because then it becomes profit based on their work that they didn’t earn.
Whereas now when it’s free, it’s just passion projects by hobbyists who really like their game. It boosts their sales but it’s not like there’s extra money to be made in licensing deals.
If you allow what this guy was doing, you pervert that. It becomes an industry. It becomes competition. And it sets a legal precedent that if you let one guy get away with keeping all the money he makes, no one else needs to be held to that standard.
That’s even harder to understand than OP… how is retribution for someone’s time your problem ? Or even the game editor’s problem ?
It’s not like he’s infringing on any IP either since the editor is still selling the game to start with.
And if you are so spririted you can mod on your free time the same functionality can’t you so free it is for you…
You know that building on someone else’s work isn’t necessarily a bad thing right? Entire industries are doing « integration » work which is literally building on top of other’s work to achieve increased functionality. And that’s only in IT… and the legitimacy is very juridiction dependent as well so don’t bring legality into the debate too soon ;-)
Are you having ethical issues with the practice maybe? Do you believe you should get anything for free in software ?
The current situation is a lose-lose for both sides. The options that I can see are either an agreement for donation based payment with support from the publisher or CDPR just “buying”/“hiring” the mod and the support behind it. Other than that I don’t see any way that a precedent for a commercial product based on a game mod works.
Yeah, this would be setting precedent if it ever went to court, but it likely never will. He doesn’t want to step on any toes. If they don’t like being included in the suite, they can be removed. It’s all-around easier and less risky. This is his job/livelihood, don’t rock the boat that feeds you, or something.
Donations is not an option, this level of mod is not possible without it being his full time job. Anyone saying otherwise has not tried it. Amd any one company hiring him wojld mean all other games would need to be dropped from the suite. There is no other way for this to exist than how it does now. If he couldn’t charge, it just wouldn’t exist.
The problem mostly comes with calling it a “mod”, that is barely a word that applies here. That’s an entirely different scope from what this is.
I think there is nuance, the mod in question is a suite of about 35 mods that is constantly maintained/repaired as games patch and break parts of it, and is so insanely complex and impressive that it is a 100 hour a week job for the guy. That’s not something that can be done for free or for donations, It’s well beyond “a mod”. And each of those ~35 mods is like 10-20 mods in one, the list of features added to each game beyond “just” VR support is lengthy.
And it’s such an impressive thing to use, and is only done for games that have no plans to be made for VR. So it only adds sales to the games themselves. Maybe not alot, but it certainly doesn’t take anything away. Not only does he make the games VR capable, he makes sure they play the absolute best possible in VR, not only performance-wise but play-wise as well.
While they are in the right to ask that their game not be part of it, they lose out by doing so.
Without being able to charge a fixed price, a mod of this insane level of quality, quantity, and detail just wouldn’t exist instead.
People that think he is grifting or ripping people off have not actually tried the mods. It is insanely cheap for what you get. For 10 dollars you get ~35 games not just in VR, but in better VR than any company has done with their actual VR ports, and not by a small margin, not to mention they will keep working, because he doesn’t just put in all the effort to make a perfect VR game out of them once, he goes back and fixes anything that needs fixing for every single game too. Even if you don’t want to try it yourself because 10 dollars feels like too much to charge for an amazing VR version of 35 games, at least watch videos of how much people enjoy and respect his work before assuming he is some kind of jerk.
Only 2 of the 35 games have decided to pursue dmca against it in it’s entire history, it is a choice, they don’t -have- to, they choose to. ToS can always be amended if a use is deemed exceptional and worth supporting. The law, just like everything else, is not actually black and white, there is always nuance and possibility.
For both games that asked, he immediately acquiesced and spent the week or so of work it took/takes to strip out all support for that game. It’s the only option he has, this is his full time job. A fuller-time job than most people do/have.
CDprojekt Red even said all he needed was their permission, they could have gone that route.
You don’t own a game. You own a license to use the game. You don’t own the code or the images or the files. End of story. You don’t get to use those files and images to make something else and sell it. The mod wouldn’t work without the game - there’d be nothing to display in VR. When you mod you are directly using the work produced by others and adding in top of that. Modding exists because companies allow it. Part of that allowance is not being a dick, which this modder 100% was. They didn’t even tell him to take it down, just make donations optional and he threw a hissy fit an refused.
Yeah, there’s plenty of nuance. Nuance showing that the modder is a jackass. Should I remind you this modder did THE EXACT SAME thing with Rockstar as well already.
This guy is just a tool trying to make as much money as he can before moving to another game and doing the same, rinse and repeat. He’s a scammer and a grifter.
Fuck him.
When you say he “did the same thing” with rockstar. What do you think he did?
The mod is for 35 games, yes one other company decided to remove their game from the mod, and luke ross immediately did so… it took about a week of work to remove it while he locked down access to the mod suite at his own expense, sure he grumbled that it was a dumb move from rockstar but we all hoped maybe it meant rockstar was considering their own VR port so it made sense. But they didn’t.
Is that what a jerk does?
I think you have no idea what luke ross does.
What do I mean? He sold the same mod as a “Rockstar VR mod” behind his shittly little paywall and then their lawyers had to send him a cease and desist for that. And he whined like a little baby then too. He didn’t learn his lesson then and he hasn’t learned his lesson now because this is a cash grab, not an attempt to break into the industry or anything traditionally respected modders aim for.
Look, just because you’re too retarded to understand he broke laws, doesn’t mean he didn’t break laws.
Confirmed, you have no idea what luke ross does. You read one uninformed headline, and then read another uninformed headline.
Pretty harsh, and pretty correct.
Where does all that rage of yours comes from ? You pay for the time of the guy to package the shit. You don’t need to, you can yourself build the mod pack… time and convenience is a product in itself.
If missing turns into a paid industry then game companies will start cracking down on it, because then it becomes profit based on their work that they didn’t earn.
Whereas now when it’s free, it’s just passion projects by hobbyists who really like their game. It boosts their sales but it’s not like there’s extra money to be made in licensing deals.
If you allow what this guy was doing, you pervert that. It becomes an industry. It becomes competition. And it sets a legal precedent that if you let one guy get away with keeping all the money he makes, no one else needs to be held to that standard.
That’s even harder to understand than OP… how is retribution for someone’s time your problem ? Or even the game editor’s problem ?
It’s not like he’s infringing on any IP either since the editor is still selling the game to start with.
And if you are so spririted you can mod on your free time the same functionality can’t you so free it is for you…
You know that building on someone else’s work isn’t necessarily a bad thing right? Entire industries are doing « integration » work which is literally building on top of other’s work to achieve increased functionality. And that’s only in IT… and the legitimacy is very juridiction dependent as well so don’t bring legality into the debate too soon ;-)
Are you having ethical issues with the practice maybe? Do you believe you should get anything for free in software ?
The current situation is a lose-lose for both sides. The options that I can see are either an agreement for donation based payment with support from the publisher or CDPR just “buying”/“hiring” the mod and the support behind it. Other than that I don’t see any way that a precedent for a commercial product based on a game mod works.
Yeah, this would be setting precedent if it ever went to court, but it likely never will. He doesn’t want to step on any toes. If they don’t like being included in the suite, they can be removed. It’s all-around easier and less risky. This is his job/livelihood, don’t rock the boat that feeds you, or something.
Donations is not an option, this level of mod is not possible without it being his full time job. Anyone saying otherwise has not tried it. Amd any one company hiring him wojld mean all other games would need to be dropped from the suite. There is no other way for this to exist than how it does now. If he couldn’t charge, it just wouldn’t exist.
The problem mostly comes with calling it a “mod”, that is barely a word that applies here. That’s an entirely different scope from what this is.