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ARMA III & Steam WORKSHOP

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Your more likely to get attentiion from Lawyers if you make an exact digital representation of something and brand it as something different than you are for making something from blue prints and naming it as it should be(in a non commercial environment).

The steamworkshop brings nothing new in terms of copyright infringement ,it simply exhaserbates it due to the size of the audience size , the truth is , even now the Armaholic and sticky in these forums about user content should include the section about responsibilites and warranties .

The likelyhood of action is more likely to come from something simple like a royalty free none commercial texture being used on a poular addon than the Brand name being used .

In the end the BIS tools EULA is somewhat the same where it states the end product may not ne used for commercial gain , some might say that because community sites display these addons and have advertisements that are revenue making , there is actual commercial gain there.and thats all that he steam EULA is about just on a much massive scale.

A bigger threat to 3d representations would be a side effect of the 3d printing fallout thats raising its head .

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/20/3d-printing-will-be-the-next-big-copyright-fight

Last week, HBO sent a cease-and-desist letter to Fernando Sosa asking him to stop selling a 3D printed iPhone dock he modeled after the Iron Throne chair from the popular HBO TV series Game of Thrones. Even though Sosa designed the dock himself in Autodesk Maya, HBO owns the rights to the show, its characters, and apparently the inanimate objects that appear onscreen.
Edited by Thromp

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how about Rocket using Coke and Pepsi in his mod?

I'm fairly certain that those will be long gone once it becomes a paid for game.

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There is something about nominative fair use when you draw something, say, you're allowed to identify what you drew so long as you aren't implying the company's endorsement. This issue is a little murky and seems to vary from place to place. I think, though, that if an addon maker makes an hk416 that you're allowed to identify it is an hk416. It would be unfortunate if this was not the case, because then practically no addon maker would be eligible to enter an agreement with SWS.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/liberate-b-24-liberator

http://www.blendernation.com/2008/04/30/eff-goes-to-aid-3d-modelers/

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I would not be surprised if that murkiness over "asset"/content is why for now only missions are officially supported for Steam Workshop.

The reason I took interest in the EA case with regards to gunmakers is that Warfighter specifically used branded weapons that in some cases don't have a public military designation, with the manufacturer's name at that, and in roles that already have "official military designated" weapons for those roles. i.e. I'm not sure what having a LaRue OBR 7.62 adds to your multiplayer shooter's gameplay that having a M110 SASS wouldn't, for example... ditto for it specifically being a "Daniel Defense Mk 18" in-game as opposed to an unbranded MK 18 MOD 1. In contrast, both Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 tended to stick to military designations and never used manufacturer names, and BF3 even did some name changing (i.e. "M5K", "ACW-R" and "PDW-R").

Edited by Chortles

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I would not be surprised if that murkiness over "asset"/content is why for now only missions are officially supported for Steam Workshop.

Which makes me wonder what happens when you put addons on a mission and upload it.

Anyway, someone suggested that sites like Armaholic could add a "magnet" link to download stuff from the Workshop. And the way around? Workshop featuring addons hosted elsewhere, could it work?

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Which makes me wonder what happens when you put addons on a mission and upload it.
Hopefully (?) / most likely just the same as what would happen before Steam Workshop (get the mission, then you have to get the mods as well) or they may find a way to restrict SWS upload to vanilla missions with no addons?

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We need some :icon_twisted: here.

Doubt we will get it.

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As before with other games for example Skyrim you have steam workshop and then you have a more advance Nexus, the same will be the case here, it just means that those who want to easily upload a mission will be able to.

Addons on the other hand will always be through Six, its just so much more simple than steam as its more linked in to Arma 3 (i.e. server lists), so I do not feel that this will be in anyway a loss to the community because even Foxhound im sure will be able to find a way of releasing the steam missions on armaholic.

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how about Rocket using Coke and Pepsi in his mod?

... in ArmA 1 there were petrol stations called Schnell :)

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... in ArmA 1 there were petrol stations called Schnell :)

Not to mention the "Handover Offender", YGONT, Sundat, and a few other... "creative" trademarks :)

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Some play on a trademark isn't really the same thing as an actual trademark. An actual fuel station called Schell would be treated differently than the representation of a generic fuel station in a videogame called schnell.

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"Not long after Beta release we intend to enable scenario publication to Workshop. This is a huge step forward in sharing and discovering user content. We are integrating this in stages and starting with scenarios makes sense. Add-ons are trickier and we are not sure when we can support this yet (unlikely before the initial release).

Two primary concerns have been voiced so far: how it affects existing content providers and the license terms. We can try to address this in a blog later, but briefly: we honestly do believe there will always be an important place for websites sharing content. There are many ways to differentiate, evolve and offer things Workshop itself does not. Secondly, we are discussing options with Valve regarding the license terms for Arma 3, but to manage expectations: if that does not go through - you will need to accept the existing ones to use this functionality. In any case, we'd like to point out again that we are not stripping away the old methods of saving and loading scenarios. Workshop is an optional enhancement which we do believe massively benefits the user experience.

Altis will not be part of the Beta. We want to finish it more first and it will be worth the wait! There is a chance we will stage it on Development branch ahead of main release for testing."

http://alpha.arma3.com/sitrep-00014

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an interesting spin on this:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=10843

Over the weekend we hit a new landmark, with over ten million dollars paid out to over 400 contributors and partners. And close to $250,000 of that figure will be paid out to the sixty-plus people who created the Robotic Boogaloo update.

If you just read that last paragraph and are kicking yourself for not making that beard of bees sketch a reality, here's the good news: We've also done a bunch of work improving the item submission tool, so it's never been easier to submit. The tool now automatically tests new creations against a set of standards, meaning anything you create is now significantly more likely to be game-ready.

You can now also see how your items will render on TF2 characters within the tool, making the creation process itself even quicker. Plus, every item submitted through the tool will now be tagged with a gold star, showing everyone that it's been vetted. FYI, our next update is going to ship exclusively with "gold star" items, and there's going to be no limit on how many we'll include. (Check out the Workshop FAQ for more info.)

In short, there's never been an easier, faster or more rewarding time to submit to the Workshop. If you're not making that beard of bees dream a reality, let's face it, at this point it's probably a motivational problem on your end.

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Unfortunately, mod makers can't profit from anything made with the BI tools without a commercial license at this point.

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Here is the funny thing of course, in America at least, IP is set by The Berne_Conventions it doesn't matter if there is a "contract" that you "agreed" to by creating something in the game. You can claim all day that we have a contract that we "agreed" to, but it would never hold up under the Supreme Court... as from a recent case where the judge stated "“Providing too much information defeats the purpose of disclosure, since no one reads it,†from this.

At the end of the day, if your stuff is good and used, they are going to try to hire you and if they don't... sue the s$%^ out of them. Odds are you'll win.

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I'd imagine that if BI and Steam wished to have a productive business relationship, they would accept each others' terms and conditions.

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Max, I fully agree with that, but no company wants to lose face with the consumers by trying to "steal" IP under legal terms, it's bad good will (actual business commodity) at least to economists... anyone who follows EA should know about that.

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Right. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

This is how the conversation went from my perspective:

daze was saying that people who make content for steamworkshop have a chance to profit on it. I said that's not the case for addon makers the way the tools license works right now. You said noone needs to respect the tools license... I said Valve probably would if they value the business relationship... Then you said something about companies stealing stuff, which I don't understand.

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Sorry, I probably wasn't being clear about that. There are 3 parties, the modder, BIS, and Valve. A modder is less likely to have read and understood the agreement than a company would as 1. they probably didn't and were just excited to use the product 2. don't have a lawyer reading every end-user agreement that comes along and 3. Are statically unlikely to profit from the tool anyway. Basically, companies are held to a higher standard than a modder as it is in the interest to use the tool for profit.

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Sorry, I probably wasn't being clear about that. There are 3 parties, the modder, BIS, and Valve. A modder is less likely to have read and understood the agreement than a company would as 1. they probably didn't and were just excited to use the product 2. don't have a lawyer reading every end-user agreement that comes along and 3. Are statically unlikely to profit from the tool anyway. Basically, companies are held to a higher standard than a modder as it is in the interest to use the tool for profit.

Okay... but profiting from steam workshop is still a company based thing and Valve is still liable. The idea behind the article daze posted is that profiting from the use of the tools is actually quite likely, or rather, quite possible. I'm not sure where the statistical likelihood comes from either. You're saying that the law doesn't require you to read EULA because they are 'too long'. However, I'd imagine that there is little excuse for Lawyers not to read long licenses since they wrote them.

Edited by Max Power

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Hello to all you here, I bring you news and will not bother to link the source as I am at my work place but lets just say I heard it from IGN on a video from E3.

Steam workshop will be supported,

You will be able to download scenarios people have made with the editor without having to even restart the game.

Other features tba...

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Hello to all you here, I bring you news and will not bother to link the source as I am at my work place but lets just say I heard it from IGN on a video from E3.

Steam workshop will be supported,

You will be able to download scenarios people have made with the editor without having to even restart the game.

Other features tba...

couldnt we already do that?

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The only part that I didn't already 'hear' from the pre-E3 livestreams was the part about being able to download missions from Steam Workshop through the game client, DnA mentioned it in the IGN video (him talking while RiE played "Combined Arms").

Edited by Chortles

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I highly doubt that workshop would earn add-on makers any revenue because lets be honest how many stupid hats does the community really want, let alone pay for when we already have two hat makers. (TF2 anyone?)

Right now people are making money off of Arma, either by releasing content then asking for donations or monetizing their you-tube streams.

anyone that accept donations is basically making money off of Arma even if 100% of that goes to pay server costs, since that is money you don't have to spend and still basically spend it on your self.

Edited by xyberviri

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I highly doubt that workshop would earn add-on makers any revenue because lets be honest how many stupid hats does the community really want, let alone pay for when we already have two hat makers. (TF2 anyone?)

Right now people are making money off of Arma, either by releasing content then asking for donations or monetizing their you-tube streams.

anyone that accept donations is basically making money off of Arma even if 100% of that goes to pay server costs, since that is money you don't have to spend and still basically spend it on your self.

Obviously it won't. Bear in mind that TF2 is a completely different thing

I haven't seen anyone releasing content and then asking for donation tbh. I have seen the donation button myself, but never seen an addon maker asking for donation.

Donations are a paid thank youin my books, not a commercial contract between two parties (contractor and producer or buyer and seller).

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