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Steam workshop policing is meant to work how?

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There is no reason for a single user to make several successive posts in one day for any reason. That is why the edit function exists. 

Exactly, the forum rules are there for a reason. Please learn to follow them djotacon. I can appreciate you are reporting addons found on steam, but you could have easily have done so it one post.

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http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=564980673&searchtext=ka+weapons

Was first uploaded on Armaholic but removed from there as it contains weapon models ripped from other games without permission (like from BF3/BF4/Metro).

Models were taken from http://gamebanana.com/and,some from http://p3dm.ru/

the guy claim he is the original author of all stuff ...

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the guy claim he is the original author of all stuff ...

More precisely:

 

"The textures&models in my pack are all opening models from Gamebanana,and they are all noted “Free non-commercial usage is allowed as long as I am properly credited, no need to ask for permission. â€

For now there is no any illegality model in my pack

The reason for BI who turned off my mod download,because they doubted I am not the real author of this MOD, and I just reprinted it from VME forum to steam workshop ,because my ID in VME forum is not “KICKASSâ€

I'm sorry for the cause of inconvenience.I will active communication with BI to clear up misunderstandings."

 

But Foxhound claimed:

 

"Was first uploaded on Armaholic but removed from there as it contains weapon models ripped from other games without permission (like from BF3/BF4/Metro).

Models were taken from http://gamebanana.com and from http://p3dm.ru "

 

So either one is wrong in here. Either the models are ripped or they're not. Chance that the gamebanana or/and p3dm have ripped of stuff?

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Just noticed that they said 3 days ago that they've removed all illegal items. So there at least have been some illegal stuff couple days ago.

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the guy claim he is the original author of all stuff ...

Thats normal when they download ripped models from certain sites. They have no idea what content they use anyway.

In the credits he added on the Armaholic page he clearly stated he used models from those listed sites so how he now claims it is all his work is by itself fishy enough.

Let me quote the text he added to our page so you can read for yourself:

"I increased textuer for original weapons,and created five new weapons.

Some models from "gamebanana"(http://gamebanana.com/),some from "Pick 3D Models"(http://p3dm.ru/)

Some Parameters,Animation,Sound referenced "AA-12 CQB","RH pistol pack","RHS","AKM-jinj8401"."

I asked the author about it and waited for his response for many days, he simply ignored me, that too is a good indication.

But, dont ask me. If BI is to worried to remove content from the SWS (which is full of disputable content anyway) feel free to keep it and be happy.

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anyone claiming he did something should have at least some viewport renders of the progress. if normals are baked, a screenshot of that HP 3d model. Failing to do so = not your fucking own...

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If you wait that a re-packer that claims he has "ilegal" content show a proof of his work we need a good couch to rest and wait.

 

When 2 idiots ripped and upload VDEBUG (even with the same name) one of say to me: "the idea is yours but we capitalize it", ahem ...  steal now is capitalize (sarcasm).

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http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=569564204

 

Contains (among others)

 

Massi weapons

RHS contents

TRYK uniforms

FHQ accesories

Joint rails

Thank you for letting us know, DMCA in progress

 

After manulally checking files, content belongs to robert hammer, NOT RHS. And since i don't own IP rights for other stuff than RHS, there will be no DMCA from my part

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I've noticed over time that a large proportion of modders refrain from publishing their work on the Steam Workshop, often citing problems with the EULA.

To see what all the fuss was about I decided to give it a read, but I couldn't see anything that stood out as unusual or disagreeable; though since so many people have a problem with it, it's obvious that there is something wrong with it.

Can someone point out what this might be?

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6. USER GENERATED CONTENT

A. General Provisions

"User Generated Content" means any content you make available to other users through your use of multi-user features of Steam, or to Valve or its affiliates through your use of the Content and Services or otherwise.

You grant Valve and its affiliates the worldwide, non-exclusive, right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, transcode, translate, 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.

 

Source: http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

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Definitely check out the threads Mickyleitor linked. Most of this is blown out of proportion by people who don't speak legalese. Technically, other sites like Armaholic could have this exact same agreement. I'm not sure if Foxhound has anything like that for the premium Armaholic subscribers, but he uses the content of all authors in the same way steam would, to promote Armaholic. Nobody is up in arms at his tweets or facebook posts advertising Armaholic with the aid of all of the user content submitted to him. Another idea people get in their head is that Steam OWNS your mod. The clause in the EULA is very explicit. Nowhere does it say anything about ownership and it actually starts off by prefacing all of their rights and proclaiming them all to be "non-exclusive". This is probably the most overlooked phrase in that clause. Steam never has exclusive rights of any kind to your WS content. As time goes on, you will start to find more and more authors submitting their content to SW, eventually becoming the main source for Arma 3 mods. The only way to really negate this trend is for sites like Armaholic to streamline their submission process because SW is way easier and much less redundant. I wouldn't hold my breath for the streamlining though.

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Definitely check out the threads Mickyleitor linked. Most of this is blown out of proportion by people who don't speak legalese. Technically, other sites like Armaholic could have this exact same agreement. I'm not sure if Foxhound has anything like that for the premium Armaholic subscribers, but he uses the content of all authors in the same way steam would, to promote Armaholic. Nobody is up in arms at his tweets or facebook posts advertising Armaholic with the aid of all of the user content submitted to him. Another idea people get in their head is that Steam OWNS your mod. The clause in the EULA is very explicit. Nowhere does it say anything about ownership and it actually starts off by prefacing all of their rights and proclaiming them all to be "non-exclusive".

Its more about the "reproduce, modify and create derivative works" part that puts many people off - there is only one way to read that...

 

As time goes on, you will start to find more and more authors submitting their content to SW, eventually becoming the main source for Arma 3 mods.

MAY. However, I doubt it.

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Its more about the "reproduce, modify and create derivative works" part that puts many people off - there is only one way to read that...

Right, so Steam can do to your mod what everyone in the community is already doing to mods. There are countless reproductions of mods by other authors, there are mods that are modified by other authors and there are derivative works of mods by other authors. I don't really see a cause for concern here.

 

Are there any claims backed by evidence that supports this fear people have of SW? As far as I know, there have been ZERO incidents involving Steam and Arma 3 mods.

 

BTW about that prediction, I am not necessarily a proponent of it. I'm just calling it how I see it.

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Right, so Steam can do to your mod what everyone in the community is already doing to mods.

the main difference is that they already have your explicit permission since you share their rights with them indefinitely on upload. They could, at least in theory, create derivatives on your work, rather than dependency ones.

 

There are countless reproductions of mods by other authors, there are mods that are modified by other authors and there are derivative works of mods by other authors. I don't really see a cause for concern here.

the main difference is that i can create my own config for SAF, creating a dependency and using their weapons models in a mod called FLUF, and that's ok since i won't be touching the original files

 

Are there any claims backed by evidence that supports this fear people have of SW? As far as I know, there have been ZERO incidents involving Steam and Arma 3 mods.

Some people do like to read the EULAs before they agree with it. Of course steam created this agreement to cover all possible lawsuits and cover their asses. But you don't need evidence of malpractices in order NOT to agree with something in the first place.

IE: if you'd be an artist and an art gallery that displays your art would have you sign a contract that the art on display belongs to them as much as it belongs to you as long as it is on display, and they reserve the right to do whatever they please with your art (from adjusting, painting on top because of lighting conditions favor blues over oranges, make pictures and sell them online etc), would you sign it? Even though so far they haven'd done anything of sort to any of the other artists that are on display in the gallery, although it would be well within their rights?

 

And because on upload you share your IP with Valve for the content you uploaded (not for the sources of course), no one else that has no IP rights can upload it on SW either (and that's a good thing actually, although 80% of the SW content is uploaded by someone who either didn't read or doesn't give a fuck about EULAs in general).

For bigger teams, from a legal POV, there needs to be an unanimity to upload file to SW. If one doesn't agree you either pull his content out or you simply don't upload

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I wish I had your rose-tinted glasses mattastic, I truly do.

 

Right, so Steam can do to your mod what everyone in the community is already doing to mods. There are countless reproductions of mods by other authors, there are mods that are modified by other authors and there are derivative works of mods by other authors.

As PuFu said, there is a difference between an author giving permission for another person to create a re-texture/replacement config (to give units different weapons for example) or whatever and giving Valve permission to do absolutely anything with what is essentially my/your intellectual property. As to the "Valve haven't done it yet" argument, the fact that its in the EULA means there is the possibility for it and that quite rightly makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

 

If you're happy with the EULA that is all well and good, however many content authors are far from happy and it shouldn't be up to anyone else to try and desuade them of that fear - it should be up to Valve to come up with a fairer EULA towards content creators that doesn't assume control of the content.

 

Out of curiosity did you seek permission from the co-authors of the MEF Pack before uploading it to the Workshop? I'm fairly sure EricJ's addons are already up on the Workshop but the other contributors are new names to me so I'm unsure as to their stance. Hopefully you crossed your 't's and dotted your 'i's from the old 'legality' stand-point...

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Thanks to everyone for pointing this out. I've been creating a terrain which I hope to publish (if I get it finished) in the next few months, and although I was planning on releasing it on the workshop, I might reconsider it now.

Also, apologies for failing to realize there was already a thread on this.

EDIT: I believe that section in the EULA is likely connected to Valve's TF2/DOTA 2/CSGO workshops, where to include custom items in these games they basically have to invoke that section.

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You guys are reading to much into this....  6.B second point:

 

 

 

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.

 

a.k.a. even though in 6.A is stated that they hold the rights they explain it more there that they do not make copies of your work to redistribute themself or anything, they only modify your workschop contribution to make it compatible with the workshop itself (not sure how you would manage to do thi but okay). those changes are steams property and are their domain but you content itself is and stays yours. the only reason steam might do anything is if it goes against copyright rules or something then they reserve the rights to delete the content.

 

in the next point in 6.B you will read that you even have full rights over your content to remove it when you please, the only thing is is that people who have allready downloaded it will keep their copy on the system (pretty much the same as with PwS and armaholic, you download it you keep it). and if the gamedevs decide to make a mod a official part of the game (this has been done with games before like ARK) so If bohemia decided to include RHS as a partof the game and RHS would be on the steam workshop they can turn it into a dlc and the RHS team will then not have the rights anymore to remove it as it has become game essential.

 

So yea. the 6.A is purely to cover themself and users of the workshop on legal aspect and 6.B describes the real meaning behind the words.

 

Oh, btw a good example of the second point of 6.B second point is that if you publish your mod with the publisher it auto creates a meta.cpp file for use with the launcher, this file is created by BIS and should be property of BIS aswel, its a modification of in-application compatibility

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Thank you PuFu for clarifying that. However, I think your example of an artist and an art gallery is not accurate because Steam isn't stating that they own my work if I hang it in their "gallery". Essentially, what they are saying is that they could hang a picture up next to mine that is a copy of my painting but with some more work done to it by steam or no extra work at all and it would be just an exact duplicate. That is, as long as my work is on SW. The second I take it off, they lose their non-exclusive rights. I completely understand this and what you are trying to say about permissions with editing a mod and the types of mods that would result from that whether it is a dependent or otherwise.

 

I want to be clear, I'm not trying to argue for Steam. I'm arguing for the less informed people out there that don't understand this which could possibly include myself.

 

I read most EULA's very carefully, minus iTunes cause they have a new EULA every 2 days, and in my opinion nothing in the Steam EULA grants Steam exclusive ownership rights to my mod. The overall narrative that you guys are perpetuating is that Steam owns your mod if you upload to SW and from what the Steam EULA says, that isn't the case. If I am wrong about this, I am happy to be enlightened by a more convincing argument. Just show me where it says Steam "owns" my mod. The idea that steam would abduct my mod and continue it's development without me and claim it as their own is complete lunacy.

 

And yes all the content of Marine Expeditionary Force, that is not my own, was given to me with the full endorsement from their authors to do whatever I want and release wherever I want as long as proper credit is given. ;)

 

Ultimately, I concede this argument, you guys are great members of the community and i'm not looking to tarnish our interaction or future interactions. However, I humbly ask one last question that is relative to my original point about Armaholic. All of the authors that submit to Armaholic do not grant Foxhound rights to use their mods to promote Armaholic through a license agreement. Why should I feel different about Steam's promotional efforts than I do Armaholics? Armaholic uses my mod and ya'lls to promote their site without getting us to agree to a license. It seems like it would be more honest for Armaholic to have a license similar to the Steam EULA informing us Authors about their possible promotional intentions. As it is right now, Armaholic uses our content to promote itself without our permission. I would be very grateful for an explanation on how one of you feel about this. BTW I retweet and like all of Armaholics stuff on social media and do not have any personal contention with their promotional methods.

 

Target_Practice, I would definitely recommend releasing on SW. You will be able to deliver your mod(s) to more people with the use of it. Your stats will be more in depth and easier to access and the process of submission is easier than ever. Both of my mods get more traffic there than anywhere else.

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You guys are reading to much into this....  6.B second point:

I actually run it by my office lawyer...

 

a.k.a. even though in 6.A is stated that they hold the rights they explain it more there that they do not make copies of your work to redistribute themself or anything, they only modify your workschop contribution to make it compatible with the workshop itself (not sure how you would manage to do thi but okay). those changes are steams property and are their domain but you content itself is and stays yours. the only reason steam might do anything is if it goes against copyright rules or something then they reserve the rights to delete the content.

 

So yea. the 6.A is purely to cover themself and users of the workshop on legal aspect and 6.B describes the real meaning behind the words.

while weird, from a legal pov (or so i have been told), this paragraph has no real legal value. They are self limiting themselves only after you grant them unlimited rights (again, for covering their asses - and i would do the same)

 

in the next point in 6.B you will read that you even have full rights over your content to remove it when you please, the only thing is is that people who have allready downloaded it will keep their copy on the system (pretty much the same as with PwS and armaholic, you download it you keep it). and if the gamedevs decide to make a mod a official part of the game (this has been done with games before like ARK) so If bohemia decided to include RHS as a partof the game and RHS would be on the steam workshop they can turn it into a dlc and the RHS team will then not have the rights anymore to remove it as it has become game essential.

in any case, you grant them license for the binarized content (as uploaded). Any sort of reverse engineering does not fall under "modify" clause btw.

 

Oh, btw a good example of the second point of 6.B second point is that if you publish your mod with the publisher it auto creates a meta.cpp file for use with the launcher, this file is created by BIS and should be property of BIS aswel, its a modification of in-application compatibility

BI's own eula take priority here anyways.

 

Don't get me wrong, i personally don't mind the EULA as it is (when A3 was released, before the size limit on SW was removed, the 6B self-imposed limits Valve put up was not there). But you can see that some might have an issue with it. And as i said, when it comes to content created by multiple people a single guy can actually stop everyone else from putting it up. That's why this thread is here for, to partially clarify some of the "legal mumbo jumbo"

 

Thank you PuFu for clarifying that. However, I think your example of an artist and an art gallery is not accurate because Steam isn't stating that they own my work if I hang it in their "gallery". Essentially, what they are saying is that they could hang a picture up next to mine that is a copy of my painting but with some more work done to it by steam or no extra work at all and it would be just an exact duplicate. That is, as long as my work is on SW. The second I take it off, they lose their non-exclusive rights. I completely understand this and what you are trying to say about permissions with editing a mod and the types of mods that would result from that whether it is a dependent or otherwise.

not really, because the part about making it compatible with Steam and the Workshop functionality or user interface is vague enough to allow them to do pretty much anything (see my comparison to orange versus blue). Of course, as i said above, reverse engineering is NOT "modify", because it is not modifiable in any case.

 

I want to be clear, I'm not trying to argue for Steam. I'm arguing for the less informed people out there that don't understand this which could possibly include myself.

 

I read most EULA's very carefully, minus iTunes cause they have a new EULA every 2 days, and in my opinion nothing in the Steam EULA grants Steam exclusive ownership rights to my mod. The overall narrative that you guys are perpetuating is that Steam owns your mod if you upload to SW and from what the Steam EULA says, that isn't the case. If I am wrong about this, I am happy to be enlightened by a more convincing argument. Just show me where it says Steam "owns" my mod. The idea that steam would abduct my mod and continue it's development without me and claim it as their own is complete lunacy.

And i wanna be just as clear that i don't argue against Steam. I understand their license and their position. The current Agreement is almost as forgiving as it can be without leaving them pants down.

 

I wasn't talking about someone in particular when i said "people don't read EULAs", but as a general rule, very few actually do (i should know, no one actually reads the EULA that comes with RHS).

Very few people actually say that Steam owns your mod (mostly the people who don't read eulas), but that you share your rights with them, which still stands..

 

I am sure just some very tinfoil hats do believe Steam is up to extorting people out of their free distributed mods (i know a couple myself).

 

Ultimately, I concede this argument, you guys are great members of the community and i'm not looking to tarnish our interaction or future interactions. However, I humbly ask one last question that is relative to my original point about Armaholic. All of the authors that submit to Armaholic do not grant Foxhound rights to use their mods to promote Armaholic through a license agreement. Why should I feel different about Steam's promotional efforts than I do Armaholics? Armaholic uses my mod and ya'lls to promote their site without getting us to agree to a license. It seems like it would be more honest for Armaholic to have a license similar to the Steam EULA informing us Authors about their possible promotional intentions. As it is right now, Armaholic uses our content to promote itself without our permission. I would be very grateful for an explanation on how one of you feel about this. BTW I retweet and like all of Armaholics stuff on social media and do not have any personal contention with their promotional methods.

yeah it is pretty much the same, and i cannot comment on other people decisions, but it is easier to deal with a person than a company. Besides i am biased since i've known, talked and played quite a few games with Foxhound back in the day right at the start of Aholic, way before Steam was by any means the mod platform it is today. I also know he actually has no commercial gain out of all this, and he has paid a lot along the way from his very own pocket

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