A few times it’s been brought up by people on the forum, about the concern of people creating content vs Stonehearth having the same content officially. The best example of this is @BrunoSupremo’s Archipelago mod with the fisherman class, and does this now mean Stonehearth will never have their own?
I know this is a situation for the lawyers, but at the same time, it’d be nice to have a little more insight from the developers on what is and isn’t possible. If this does mean that Stonehearth can no longer have a fisherman class for legal reasons, then should we stop modding to prevent more wanted features from not being able to be made?
Another thought to consider is how Bethesda is handling Creation Club content for Skyrim and Fallout 4, if mod content is going to be a problem. Bethesda pays a small lump sum (and I mean small) to the creator of the mod and then takes it from there to do as they please with it.
Disclaimer
Regardless of your personal views on the Creation Club, please do not turn this post into a political stand off about it. I know the subjects is more volitile than who the presidend of the US is, but just…don’t.
Actually, this is exactly covered in our EULA, which you can find in the about section of the game:
“If you make any content available in or through our Game, including (but not limited to) buildings, building templates, items, and other content, you give us permission to use, copy, modify and adapt that content for any use, including in-game, on our website, and for marketing or other purposes. Your permission is irrevocable; if you do not want to give us such permission, please do not make content available in or through the Game.”
This clause is exactly to protect us from a situation where some mean-hearted person makes a mod of something that they know we’re planning to be in the game, and then sues us for copying them. At the same time, as game creators, we respect the fact that the stuff you built has your soul-essence and creativity infused into it, so we’re careful to only put stuff into the game that we know we created. If we do ask someone from the community to add something they’ve created to the game, as in the case of @Froggy and @RepeatPan 's holiday mods, we make sure to call out who really made the stuff. Thus far, it’s just the holiday mods, and fountains and lights that @relyss made before she joined our team officially, which you can find in startermod_items.
We also ask that you not make mods of stuff you know is on the roadmap, because we think your time would be better spent on non-redundant efforts.
Wasn’t the cook class also a mod first? I got the game at a13, so I’m not sure. But the cafe mod was the first to have a cook class, right?
This remembers me of the early internet boom, where people would try to take vantage of famous business names by registering their address names first, so if the business owner wanted it, he would have to buy from them for a much higher price.
Thankfully we are all nice people here, if Radiant wants something that I made I would be happy enough with just a shout-out.
Aww, thanks! We actually did recently use your canyon biome in an internal prototype, along with Frostfeast’s winter biome. And I know @allie looked at canyon quite a lot while she was working on general terrain studies. I don’t expect we would actually ship them in our game (it takes a will save to not, though, let me tell you ) but if I make next week’s Desktop Tuesday about that prototype, I will be sure to call it out.
Glad to see the team replying with solid answers, Just shows how great the devs and the community is!
And yeah, modding is a pretty odd place i think, legally the original devs have many rights but it’s also an ethics thing right?
I’d personally feel honored if a dev put something i made into an official game, leaving a footprint in such things is just amazing to think of!
Though i do wish people were more open to paid mods, i know it was free and we now take it for granted, but it is real work, and if it’s good content people will buy it and the creator will benifit, if it’s less that good content no sales so no money lost right? But that’s for another topic
But i think Warframe did paid mods well with player-made cosmetics, no complains what so ever!
The cook was always on the roadmap and I knew that before I started the mod.
I approached the team to ask permission to start messing around with the cook class while I was learning to mod, and as their implementation was planned for release much later down the line, they were happy to grant my request.
This was waaaay before the ‘one rule’ and the ‘incident’ in the past where modders were activating unfinished developer code and passing it off as their own :sushing_face:
If you want to play in something that’s a little grey - I find the best option is just to ask permission
I love the fact that they haven’t found a replacement for the ‘edit party’ icon I created during one of @Ponder’s livestreams ;D
It all very much depends on implementation. Steam did it horrible with trying to monetize Skyrim mods.
Speaking of @SirAstrix 's question, aside from what Stephanie said, that’s what “licenses” are for. It all depends on your own tastes, but I personally currently prefer to include GPL into my mods, just to show folks that they are free to reuse my work as long as they give me credit.
Using licenses explicitly requires some basic legal knowledge, though. Still, it’s something a quick google search can fix.
We actually did recently use your canyon biome in an internal prototype, along with Frostfeast’s winter biome. And I know 