Arma 3 Server monetization

[sebj 10]

As someone who maintains a mod, and am continuing development, this change has me questioning if I want to continue. So now I have to keep track of which commercial interests have permission to use my mod? In the past it's been easy; no permission for A3L because of their moneymaking schemes, and all others have permission as long as altered versions don't show up in video or screenshots. Now I have to research which servers I feel might be skirting the line and then make a decision? Can I turn around and revoke my permission?

And I think it's absolute horseshit that mod makers can't ask for a portion of the proceeds that servers generate. A server uses your mods as a way to make their servers more attractive, and therefore more profitable, and you're not allowed to profit from your work increasing their value? Ridiculous! Your work is making them more valuable and you're not allowed to share in that at all.

I don't want to make a profit from my work, but at the same time I don't want to sit by while someone else profits from my time and effort. The fact that you're singling out that content can't be monetized is just a matter of twisting words. If a server uses my mod and people are paying for access, the server owners absolutely are making a profit from my work. Why should I spend time and effort for someone else to get paid?

I'll have to think it over, but I'm leaning towards ceasing public development of any content.

+1

I'm really disappointed about this news. It's like Arma was going to be a sort a candyC... sh*t or some sort of pay to win game... We run a server and we don't count on the fact that the players have to pay to play...

Donations should be sufficient to pay a A3 server, mainly if the content/mission is well organised and people can play and have fun freely.

For my part I think this and most of the MANW selections are really not in the same spirit of the previous OFP, and Arma series...

And this is very disappointing and ruining the game.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Well this seems to be a one year test. If things go shit well only option is not allow monetizing.

I think the only option to allow monetizing is either your server runs only your made content so things don't really need approval or if there's something that is someone else work (scripts, mission, mods whatever) then you need permission to use it.

Currently you can just grap best mods, scripts and missions, make small tweaks so things work, monetize it and say big fuck you to everyone.

[dr death jm 117]

As someone who maintains a mod, and am continuing development, this change has me questioning if I want to continue. So now I have to keep track of which commercial interests have permission to use my mod? In the past it's been easy; no permission for A3L because of their moneymaking schemes, and all others have permission as long as altered versions don't show up in video or screenshots. Now I have to research which servers I feel might be skirting the line and then make a decision? Can I turn around and revoke my permission?

And I think it's absolute horseshit that mod makers can't ask for a portion of the proceeds that servers generate. A server uses your mods as a way to make their servers more attractive, and therefore more profitable, and you're not allowed to profit from your work increasing their value? Ridiculous! Your work is making them more valuable and you're not allowed to share in that at all.

I don't want to make a profit from my work, but at the same time I don't want to sit by while someone else profits from my time and effort. The fact that you're singling out that content can't be monetized is just a matter of twisting words. If a server uses my mod and people are paying for access, the server owners absolutely are making a profit from my work. Why should I spend time and effort for someone else to get paid?

I'll have to think it over, but I'm leaning towards ceasing public development of any content.

this is fully understandable .....

[BadHabitz 235]

So many holes in this...

After further thinking... let's say I make the coolest game mode/addon and I make it exclusive to my server, and charge a fee for people to access my server. What's the difference between that scenario, and just cutting out the middleman and charging a fee to download my mode/addon?

[dr death jm 117]

So many holes in this...

After further thinking... let's say I make the coolest game mode/addon and I make it exclusive to my server, and charge a fee for people to access my server. What's the difference between that scenario, and just cutting out the middleman and charging a fee to download my mode/addon?

:butbut:no don't say that .... lol.

---------- Post added at 07:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:23 AM ----------

all I can say is, Im getting allot of help .... Soon I guess the help will stop, ..... there are a few servers out there that use server side scripts/mod.

why cant that be the answer?

If moders or scripters and mission makers want payment for there work, then do what deep silver did... and maybe BIS should lock down server's selling others crap so in this way we wouldn't be having this issue. I really feel bad for anyone that has been robed or there things being used with out permission... but I don't see this coming out as any good.

this is just going to turn out as everyone wanting a piece of the pie. its all ganna go to hell in here.....

[strangere 2]

Where did he write that?

And I'm absolutely in support of mod authors having a monopoly on their work! (If they choose to)

Here: http://i.imgur.com/Cfhtokv.png

He changed it after people started pointing it out...

[djotacon 190]

Instead make a store to sell mods or scripts or something similar now the profit goes to the server owner that can grab any previous mod and earn money with others works.

I think this is the worse scenario possible for the community.

[Johny 25]

Well this seems to be a one year test. If things go shit well only option is not allow monetizing.

I think the only option to allow monetizing is either your server runs only your made content so things don't really need approval or if there's something that is someone else work (scripts, mission, mods whatever) then you need permission to use it.

Instead make a store to sell mods or scripts or something similar now the profit goes to the server owner that can grab any previous mod and earn money with others works.

No one may use or monetize any of your mods or content without your permission. If that is happening, then you should report them on the monetization website so that we may investigate and if necessary take them down. We don't want such people to take advantage of these rules.

This in no way limits you as a copyright holder from taking other steps to protect your IP.

Also I would like to point out that every applicant has to declare that he has all necessary permissions from content creators and no application is approved automatically. I realize people might lie, but that is what the report button is for.

[tonic-_- 53]

Here: http://i.imgur.com/Cfhtokv.png

He changed it after people started pointing it out...

I changed it because I knew it was uncalled for and excessive. When I type things, I type it as I am actually thinking it not actually going wait... that might be a bad choice of words until I review it later, I don't do public relations.. I'm a guy that does mainly back-end programming (this is from a professional stand point) so I have no real public relations with sensible people. I don't care if people point it out, they should point it out because I am a person who gets blinded by anger and types random crap that is balls-to-the-wall stupid, can't accept that then it's w/e. Just wanted to tell that side of it since there seems to be a lot of one sided conversations during the night.

Regardless of my actions the focus is around this server monetization and how it's the single worst idea ever thought of publicly by Bohemia. It's not a solution to a problem, instead it's only going to promote that problem even more and since everyone knows that when Bohemia reps throw out the term "legal action" they all know it's a empty word that has no actual weight behind it and all "actions" taken by Bohemia are very slow or even non-existent. This will only re-ignite like-minded people such as A3L to do this whether it is the "legal" way or not. I'm sure there are good communities out there and this is targeted mainly to help them but there are just to many woes to weigh in to make this a workable solution, way to many moving parts that we know Bohemia can't keep up with.

My single biggest issue is Pay-to-access server, that is only going to drive a iron rod right through the community and general player base and has no actual good outcome what so ever. That's the biggest problem with this, take that with the other monetization routes combined and it's nothing but a cash grab. The community its self is to fragile right now and this will be the finishing blow that will leave a great series in the dust like all the other ones. I'm more happy with no action then this type of action. They say no one can monetize without your permission but again... Too many moving parts to regulate that and to keep regulating it for already approved servers.

Anyways, figured I'd chime in one last time or until this monetization crap is gone.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Tonic-_-

[BadHabitz 235]

No one may use or monetize any of your mods or content without your permission.

Why does it make sense to give someone permission to monetize our mods or content when we're forbidden from doing the same thing ourselves? So we make something that we're not supposed to monetize, but then it's ok to donate it to someone and let them monetize it?

The only way to not be foolish and hypocritical is to mandate that anyone charging for access to their server can only use content that is completely free and available to the entire community. Otherwise, any single scrap of content that is being offered on a pay to play server is monetized content.

[ZertyKchan 14]

My single biggest issue is Pay-to-access server, that is only going to drive a iron rod right through the community and general player base and has no actual good outcome what so ever. That's the biggest problem with this, take that with the other monetization routes combined and it's nothing but a cash grab. The community its self is to fragile right now and this will be the finishing blow that will leave a great series in the dust like all the other ones. I'm more happy with no action then this type of action. They say no one can monetize without your permission but again... Too many moving parts to regulate that and to keep regulating it for already approved servers.

I would not say that it would "drive an iron rod" in the community firstly because the requirements to be approved for monetization are so high that very few servers would be able to go through the process (most mission and contents are a results of a constant evolution, thus the full content IP is rarely owned by only one or group of peoples); secondly I have faith that most part of the server owners community is still able to part rigth from wrong.

More generally, i would not say that the monetization problem is just BiS problem, because part of the process which consist in reporting server would likely be driven by people of the community. Either way, a strict definition of all rules that are applied in the application process needs to be written somewhere. BiS first needs to say once and for all "Those are the rules", gather all the legal tools that they can use to make sure that they can actually enforce the defined monetization rules correctly without exception.

Currently, the defined set of rules would never have allowed A3L to get donations.

Edited January 30, 2015 by ZertyKchan
typo

[Mokomoko 10]

Most Server owners won't bother to apply for that list. Why should they? They don't care about BI, they won't do anything anyways. They didn't stop A3Life, why should they look for servers NOT on their monetization list just to ask them to stop monetization? They could have done that all along, but they didn't. Tonic is right - this isn't a real solution. If they really start to punish people vilolating their TOS, everything will make sense, but until then: Not happening.

[dscha 147]

Pre-Info : Didn't read the whole Thread

I am into this Series since the Demo of Operation Flashpoint in 2001, worked, many years ago, as part of the Advanced Editing Forum Team on the Train Addon for OFP with Lester, Dschulle (some might know them) and later with many others, seen so many nice Addons, Scripts, textures etc. ...

But one thing, never came into my mind:

"Pay money for something the Community made"

Paying money for something, someone else made for free.

The OFP/Arma Community was once the greatest, i have ever seen... but now? Since DayZ those "Donation Stores" were everywhere. It's sad. Just sad.

It was once - lets call it - "a real Community" once... sadly, that this changed.

Now, i read that (sry for my words) bullshit about "how it's legal to monetize stuff". Sry, no. That's just not right.

Example:

How will you react, when somebody is reporting a server, who is using (for example) some of my Scripts (isn't there something like intellectual property?), running a Pay2Play and/or a Donation store, but the rest is from someone else who made it free for monetizing?

What will happen: Change the name of the script, write the own name on it, free to go. You can't track that back...

I don't know what happened to BIS, but they start to become a "MicroTransactionWh**e" like the guys behind CS:GO/CandyCrush/AnyFacebookCrapGame/etc. ...

I am just extremely disappointed by that decision.

Greetz D41 Dscha

Since my english isn't perfect: There might be some grammarerrors :P

Edited January 30, 2015 by Eggi

[anthariel 165]

@MattLightfoot, no worries :) I guess you was busy with the MANW Contest.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Anthariel

[terox 316]

The world we now live in is becoming increasingly less moral as the years go by and its all caused by greed.

B.I need to nip this is the bud now, restrict the EULA to voluntary donations only and get these parasites out of our community before the more subtle and long term effects that I expect to occur come to light.

The folks who run some (Not all RPG server hosts are bad) of these RPG servers dont give a hoots for the community its just a money making scam for them.

The idiots that pay into this aren't helping.

I've run a community server for over 12 years, It has been paid for totally either of my own back or by the members of the community who appreciate what I and others do. The expenses can be quite high, £2500 to buy a server and recently £1000 for an upgrade. However even though the costs can be high, there has never been a dime charged for anything we do and there never will. People donate because they appreciate what we do. Without that, we wouldnt have survived for as long as we have.

So if we can do that for 12 years these rpg servers don't need to charge for anything no matter how subtle the billing. Thats my opinion anyway

Over those years the amount of addons and fancy scripting systems that have been released is phenominal and apart from the odd anal content developer, all of this has been provided with the best will in the world.

THAT IS WHAT MADE THIS COMMUNITY GREAT

It makes me personally angry when I see some (Expect a minority of) folks who run mainly RPG servers cashing in on this good will that has been so prevalent over the years.

My fear is, if I think this way, what do the big addon making studio devs and the island makers think and how will that effect their continued efforts to bring us free third party content.

Its already bad enough for them with the broken modding tools (One of the reasons we arent seeing any A3 islands yet)

So please B.I sort this out asap, and show us you have so our glorious 3rd party content makers stay interested in Arma

Edited January 30, 2015 by Terox

[Johny 25]

Pre-Info : Didn't read the whole Thread

Example:

How will you react, when somebody is reporting a server, who is using (for example) some of my Scripts (isn't there something like intellectual property?), running a Pay2Play and/or a Donation store, but the rest is from someone else who made it free for monetizing?

What will happen: Change the name of the script, write the own name on it, free to go. You can't track that back...

Monetizators need to have a permission for all 3rd party work, not just part.

If they change the script name, rewrite it, etc. then it might be rather hard to prove you are the author. On the other hand we can take away the approval to monetize on a suspicion.

[terox 316]

Monetizators need to have a permission for all 3rd party work, not just part.

If they change the script name, rewrite it, etc. then it might be rather hard to prove you are the author. On the other hand we can take away the approval to monetize on a suspicion.

How on earth do you intend to police this ?

Liken this to the speed limit.

if the national speed limit on a motorway is say 120kmh, then folks will drive at 130 and the police will leave them alone

What you have just done is bumped the speed limit up to 130kmh and are expecting everyone to still drive at 130

Those who have no moral foundations will just take the mickey

and i think I can speak for most of the members who have posted in this thread. You aren't giving us any confidence that you are going to actually police it.

This is going to have a negative effect on the third party content makers who create their work for the love of it. These are the guys you need to be considering herez. Without them, you dont have anything but an engine.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Terox

[dscha 147]

And then?

Will they be forced to remove it?

I am just disappointed from that decision...

[torndeco 128]

Got to love the map / model makers aren't allowed to make money of thier hardwork.

But server hosters are allowed to generate money ???

Can map makers add in advertisments to thier content now as a source of revenue ?

I mean Server Admins can plaster advertisement in.

Atm its in addon makers best interests are not to release server keys for their content.

That way they can restrict server files to GSPs

Setup up a-few public servers + bunch of private servers (requiring payment to access).

--------------------

Also last i looked Arma3 has more empty Servers than it needs, granted alot of them are Life / Wasteland Missions

Do we really need these new rules to fund more empty servers.

Alot of 3rd Party Content is getting Non-Commerical Clauses in their license.

Not even Arma Licenses for Content Makers to use

https://www.bistudio.com/community/licenses

Not one has a allowance for Commerical Usage

--------------------

Also you examples are weird i.e buying a Red Apache Heli

Do you mean people will be allowed micro transactions to buy Weapons / Vehicles, or just the ability to choose a different colour.

Because these are 2 different things with drastically different effects on Gameplay.

[das attorney 857]

How on earth do you intend to police this ?

They can't/won't.

If we're going off recent history, they will wheel out a junior member of staff (sorry Matt but that's how it looks) to tell us they have given them a slap on the wrist, and then ask us to go and find proof/do their job for them.

So now we have to not only build the mod but be fucking Colombo as well.

[dscha 147]

True Words Torn!

Atm its in addon makers best interests are not to release server keys for their content.

But the sad thing is: Re-sign the .pbo's is still possible and pretty easy!

[Aeriyn 10]

The world we now live in is becoming increasingly less moral as the years go by and its all caused by greed.

B.I need to nip this is the bud now, restrict the EULA to voluntary donations only and get these parasites out of our community before the more subtle and long term effects that I expect to occur come to light.

The folks who run some (Not all RPG server hosts are bad) of these RPG servers dont give a hoots for the community its just a money making scam for them.

The idiots that pay into this aren't helping.

I've run a community server for over 12 years, It has been paid for totally either of my own back or by the members of the community who appreciate what I and others do. The expenses can be quite high, £2500 to buy a server and recently £1000 for an upgrade. However even though the costs can be high, there has never been a dime charged for anything we do and there never will. People donate because they appreciate what we do. Without that, we wouldnt have survived for as long as we have.

So if we can do that for 12 years these rpg servers don't need to charge for anything no matter how subtle the billing. Thats my opinion anyway

Over those years the amount of addons and fancy scripting systems that have been released is phenominal and apart from the odd anal content developer, all of this has been provided with the best will in the world.

THAT IS WHAT MADE THIS COMMUNITY GREAT

It makes me personally angry when I see some (Expect a minority of) folks who run mainly RPG servers cashing in on this good will that has been so prevalent over the years.

My fear is, if I think this way, what do the big addon making studio devs and the island makers think and how will that effect their continued efforts to bring us free third party content.

Its already bad enough for them with the broken modding tools (One of the reasons we arent seeing any A3 islands yet)

So please B.I sort this out asap, and show us you have so our glorious 3rd party content makers stay interested in Arma

This. This is the exact kind of thinking we need to solve this problem. Watching people walk all over modmakers who basically perform their roles for next to nothing can be really depressing.

[m1lkm8n 410]

A3L better not get approved. If that happens all my faith in BIS and Humanity will be lost forever

btw my content they use is not permitted for use on monetized servers

Edited January 30, 2015 by M1lkm8n

[mobile_medic 43]

So, there was a massive thread that started b/c people were pissed off that a server was essentially charging for access (and, in addition, profiting off of the work of others).

Bohemia's response has been to:

a) make it "ok" for them to charge for access, and allow server admins options to legally monetize their servers and seek profit.

and,

b) allows server owners to make a profit off of other people's work (with permission), but those other people (content creators) are not allowed to make a profit, or even receive a kickback from any of those servers.

RECIPE FOR DISASTER.

And, yet another fine example of Bohemia having (in my opinion) some really f'd up priorities.

The single biggest reason for Bohemia's record sales is b/c of 3rd party content creators, modders/scripters, and mission makers. They make popular game modes that drive sales for Bohemia, and sometimes turn into games that sell 3 million copies without even having a release date.

They make missions that dominate the server list, and that (now) server owners can profit off of (provided a modder/mission maker would actually be willing to sit back and watch someone else make potentially large sums of money, while they are prohibited from even receiving a commission on those gains).

Yet, at every turn, Bohemia seems to (in my opinion) show that 3rd party content providers are not anywhere near a priority for them.

-modders / mission makers frustrated by the whole A3L situation and unauthorized use of their content get a response from Bohemia that officially authorizes the profiteering of server admins.

-modders / mission makers who are becoming increasingly frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of support from Bohemia in order to tackle the task of porting old content which is meant to benefit Bohemia by filling the content void left by them with the release of A3.

-modders / mission makers increasingly used as a scapegoat for long-standing performance issues with this engine.

-modders / mission makers frustrated by a poorly executed contest offering hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes. A contest which was logistically impossible for some of these folks due to the large number (and years-long development) of people contributing to a given project that made distributing potential prize money impractical for them.

The list could go on...

In a nutshell, they've basically said... "You know that A3L debacle that pissed a lot of you off? Well, we say it's ok for them to do it. We say it's ok for them to make a profit off of your work. Technically, they have to have your permission. If you give it, you can't have any of the money though, b/c it is only legal for *other* people to make a profit off of your work. *You* are not allowed to make a profit for granting them that permission, though. p.s. fuck you. We're going to go count some money now. Thanks!"

I don't see how mod makers are going to agree to this in any large numbers. I anticipate that a lot of very popular servers are going to find themselves faced with the daunting task of writing all their own code from scratch. Undoubtedly, there will be some who "borrow" code from existing mods in order to accomplish this task, and that will create a whole other issue where accusations are levied but no one can really prove anything.

Either mod makers will mostly refuse use of their mods on servers, or they will stop making stuff for the community altogether after feeling increasingly disenfranchised and under-appreciated by Bohemia's chosen path.

I wonder if Bohemia would be willing to give their game away for free and allow other people to sell access to it (commission free)? Of course not. But, that is basically what they are requiring modders to do (of course, you can all say "NO", and I encourage you to. Hopefully, the loss in active player numbers, new purchasers, etc will begin to finally hit them where it hurts... in their pocket book.)

Bohemia owes their success to 3rd party content creators, mission makers, and modders. Plain and simple. I don't know where their priorities are, but it certainly doesn't seem like they have placed much stock in a desire to create a more robust foundation for modders and players. Nor, does it seem like they have much of a desire to encourage the very demographic that has ultimately led to a multi-million selling (no release date) standalone game, mp game modes that absolutely dominate the server list (and, undoubtedly drive sales as well), and includes people who do much work to improve playability of a game that still has 10 year old issues.

Not only does Bohemia want you to work for free, but they also want you to give it away for free so that *other* people can make money off it (Bohemia included, of course).

(The only, and I mean, only, thing that seems somewhat positive out of this, is that the language is worded in such a way that Bohemia reserves the right to actually lift a finger to shut down a server using a modder's work without their permission).

[Tankbuster 1733]

A3L better not get approved. If that happens all my faith in BIS and Humanity will be lost forever

_this