ARMA III & Steam WORKSHOP

[bardosy 158]

Thanks. It means wait days? I cannot upload/download since monday.

EDIT: Thank you! Today - after a week - I could upload my mission to Workshop. My only guess what happened, I usually got home earlier, but we have a big project, so I got home later and USA internet traffic was higher.

Unfortunately I lost my Take On Mars saves because of reinstall Steam :(

Edited May 24, 2014 by bardosy

[dunedain 48]

Absolutely not. At least until the Steam Workshop Contribution Agreement is changed or expanded on.

As RKSL-Rock pointed out over on the Armaholic forum, it will cause too many issues if one uploads another developers work without permission. Especially if the theft of work is discrete (ie models, scripts and textures).

6. USER GENERATED CONTENT

A. General Provisions

You grant Valve and its affiliates the non-exclusive, irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and publicly perform, your User Generated Content, and derivative works of your User Generated Content, in connection with the operation and promotion of the Steam site. If you use Valve cloud storage, you grant us a license to store your information as part of that service. We may place limits on the amount of storage you may use.

The ToS also says this specifically regarding the Workshop...

• Notwithstanding the license described in Section 6.A., Valve will only have the right to modify or create derivative works from your Workshop Contribution in the following cases: (a) Valve may make modifications necessary to make your Contribution compatible with Steam and the Workshop functionality or user interface, and (b) Valve or the applicable developer may make modifications to Workshop Contributions that are accepted for in-Application distribution as it deems necessary or desirable to enhance gameplay.
  
• You may, in your sole discretion, choose to remove a Workshop Contribution from the applicable Workshop pages. If you do so, Valve will no longer have the right to use, distribute, transmit, communicate, publicly display or publicly perform the Workshop Contribution, except that (a) Valve may continue to exercise these rights for any Workshop Contribution that is accepted for distribution in-game or distributed in a manner that allows it to be used in-game, and (b) your removal will not affect the rights of any Subscriber who has already obtained access to a copy of the Workshop Contribution.
  

Doesn't look nearly as scary when you read the whole thing, does it? I suspect the general provisions are mostly, if not solely, aimed at the user made paid content like the skins and maps on CSGO or hats and weapons on TF2.

Edited July 15, 2014 by dunedain

[rksl-rock 1301]

The ToS also says this specifically regarding the Workshop...

Doesn't look nearly as scary when you read the whole thing, does it? I suspect the general provisions are mostly, if not solely, aimed at the user made paid content like the skins and maps on CSGO or hats and weapons on TF2.

Those changes to that agreement were made a long time after that first post. And none of the clauses you quote were present in that version. And the changes that were made still leave loop holes. Or at least questions that still remain unanswered.

Latest topic on the issue

[Mickyleitor 183]

Hi guys,

Once Bohemia Interactive have allowed Steam Workshop for modifications (large file size and multiple pbos), Have Bohemia Interactive take this more in consideration regarding to the Steam Workshop EULA (rights we are granting to Valve, etc...)?

I say this because if that's the price we will have to pay for a content we are developing during YEARS then not, I'll not grant all these rights to Valve.

So, again, Bohemia Interactive have you a clear App-Specific Terms for us?

With this misunderstanding a lot of us (See RHS, FFAA MOD and a lot of Big/popular mods) are deciding to NOT upload anything until we can assure and analyze point by point what are the rights we are giving to Valve.

[Johny 25]

Hey Mickyleitor,

prior to the workshop support release we have discussed the issue both internally and with Valve. We were quite aware that the original workshop rules were not very modder-friendly, but before steam workshop support was added to Arma 3 (in summer 2013), Valve has changed the original WS policies and integrated everything into the SSA. At that time they have added the following section:

Notwithstanding the license described in Section 6.A., Valve will only have the right to modify or create derivative works from your Workshop Contribution in the following cases: (a) Valve may make modifications necessary to make your Contribution compatible with Steam and the Workshop functionality or user interface, and (b) Valve or the applicable developer may make modifications to Workshop Contributions that are accepted for in-Application distribution as it deems necessary or desirable to enhance gameplay.

Part (b) of this clause does not really apply to Arma 3 workshop, as we are not accepting any workshop contribution for in-app distribution (like TF2 or CSGO do), which leaves Valve with license for derivative works only in situations described in (a). This limits scope of the license and rights assigned to Valve quite a lot.

With the "App-Specific Terms", I am afraid that those are for amending changing parts section 6B, which does not really help with the licenses assigned to Valve in 6A. Also these terms are also mainly aimed at governing the workshop items monetization.

Maybe if you could sum up the specific points, which you are worried about, then I could try and help. (feel free to send me an PM.)