daphne

Yeah, have heard some rumors. .ebo encryption isn't the only security thing we did, we disabled editor, disabled menu properties, ebo dependencies and created various server-sided scripts to "unlock" content within the p3d. Someone smart will figure it out eventually. It does stop 99% of people from using our content without permission. -Kane

Simple. The wider community hate the life community, most players hate us, even we hate us. Bohemia won't go out of their way to support life mods, since that's not what the game is about (Unfortunately for them, the life community is a BIG part that cannot be neglected. Over the last few years life mods have been accountable for more than 20~30 million youtube views). BIS pay little attention to the life community. I personally rationalize it by just thinking of how sadly stupid those people must be in order to not do anything for themselves, and not even attempt to have the integrity to say "Can I use your work?". Even when these retards ask for permission, they use it regardless of your response. They are the monkeys playing with recycled garbage (which unfortunately for them I've found ways to battle this) and I'm the one who can make new shit on the spot . I can personally vouch that nothing is stolen, I would be happy to host a teamviewer meeting and let people go through my work. Stopping people from using our work is the sole reason for .ebo encryption, not to hide illegitimate or "stolen content". -Kane

Damn, shots fired! If you need a higher quality model, I gotcha back! (NSFW Link) There is an .ebo encryptor out there created by douggem, he also created a decryptor for APEX files which bohemia wasn't very happy with but we talked to B.I. and encryptors are totally fine. Anyway you can't unpack the .ebo's but nothing stops you from loading them into the eden editor and looking at the content/config files, there is also many videos on our mod out there on youtube. Let me know if you need help setting up an .ebo encryptor and get these stealers off ur back :) I agree, modders should make sure everything is legitimately used and I 100% understand your concern. However "regulating" monetization gives bohemia more "legal power" to go after communities using a modders work without their permission. Let's face it, there are over 150+ monetized communities, a big part of those communities already had some kind of "monetization" going on before these guidelines. It was a big problem in arma 2 and now we have established guidelines on monetization there are fewer communities who monetize content illegitimately thus fewer communities for bohemia interactive to proceed with legal action against. The report system (which doesn't work very well all the time) can be used to report communities for unauthorised usage, but it's better than having to go after communities yourself. I am also a big fan of encryption and protecting the content to prevent unauthorized usage to begin with, however that would prevent people from opening up content for learning purposes. It would be a better system for people to contact the modder and ask for source files that way. Bohemia is working on community encryption, but is not a priority for the moment. -Kane

There was a period in which we were not monetized, during that period we saw that we weren't making enough money to cover our developers and staff. This model does not work for us unfortunately, I am sure however that it may very well work for others! That is a legitimate concern for modders, including mine. However you are free to check out our modpack to make sure we haven't stolen anything: ftp://158.69.123.192/@A3PL/Addons/ -Kane

I was referring to our community, not the model as a whole. That's a great thing! we also have people that work on our project for free. However paying professional 3D-modellers, programmers, designers etc. opens up for our community to make more content in a shorter time span, the user commits to us, and in return we commit to them. -Kane

a) It was just a shortened defintion. ArmA as a platform already provides a third party content creator with the "basics". Realistically speaking yeah it would take a lot of effort, work and time compared to making a mod. c) Sustainable in the sense of being able to keep paying the developers and gaurantee the user constant support and updates. This might not be mandatory for a lot of other content, and may only apply to our project. d) Yeah, this is a common problem in arma. Many people don't have the courtesy to even ask a modder if they can use their work, and regardless of their answer they will do it anyways. It will always be hard for someone to shut down another community, they have their own website, their own servers. etc. I think regulating (even with the shortcomings like you mention) it is a better solution than no solution at all. -Kane

Yes, you can report monetized communities if they are using your mods without your permission on a monetized server: https://www.bistudio.com/monetization/approved/arma3 They will grant the server owner a period of time to delete the mods from their server, if they do not co-operate, they will get their monetization license revoked and bohemia will proceed with further action against said community. But keep in mind Bohemia can only do something legally if there is a violation of their EULA. -Kane

a) Yes, it just takes time and money. b) I don't know why you are saying this? I am the main developer of the mod, I lead a development team consisting of several people. I have accumulated many hours developing content for ArmA 3 over the last years c) Like I said, free and sustainable don't go together. d) I very much am a believer that there is a career for people out there to create mods. e) Server monetization was happening before on a very large scale to the point were B.I. couldn't go after all the server owners, they created a system where they can regulate the system and maintain communities so they would follow the rules and stop communities from unauthorized usage of mods (if anything this system allows B.I. to do something legally against questionable server owners by revoking their monetization license, they cannot enforce modders intellectual property) -Kane

"you do stand to loose a lot if BI would actually do the right thing and close this server monetization fiasco..." This is correct, thousands of hours of effort and thousands of dollars that we have put into Arma 3 as a platform would be wasted. edit: Maybe partially, if they get rid of the monetization guidelines we can transfer existing assets over to another engine like Unity/Unreal. "And anyone willing to roll 5000$ a month is most likely doing that for a profit and not for "modding" or gaming reasons" I could easily make a standalone game if I wanted to make profit, I created a mod because this is the platform that I am passionate about. This engine has way more potential than many people think, although it has it's shortcomings and limitations. Afterall this is the game that introduced me to programming and modding, and I would love to stay and keep developing content for ArmA 3 as a platform. Developers trying to make a living making mods? F*cking outrage, bring out the pitchforks! :) Money is required to cover such a project as ours, I wish this was different and that everyone would work for free. Free and sustainable don't go together. -Kane

a) You can choose not to believe these costs, our work speaks for itself. Generally assets cost us between 500$ up to 1500$ dollar. So far we have spend this during this month: b) Jonzie is one of our content creators correct, but we do not use any models that infringe anyone's copyright. I am well aware some of his steam workshop content are models created by microsoft, however his content is used under the microsoft agreement http://www.xbox.com/en-us/developers/rules, but it is up to him to deal with any problems regarding his mods on steam workshop, we do not use any of his workshop content. c) Yes, there is an incorporated business behind our communtiy to protect our intellectual property, bohemia is well aware of this, and this info is also located on our website. The petition shows there is support for content monetization, however the "core community" mainly represented in this forum seem to oppose it. Fair enough. -Kane

Yes, that would be an option. However the current arma 3 tools forbids any commercial use of mods, so doing this would currently be against the ArmA 3 Tools EULA yet I have explained in my previous post how one could bypass this easily :/

Hey guys, I have had a very lengthy conversation with Bohemia's legal department about extending the monetization program. I send a letter to Mr. Španěl (BIS CEO) several weeks ago explaining exactly the influences that the monetization system had on our community. His stance on monetization is the following (quote): "I think the next big thing could be opening up Arma 3 to paid user-made content. It’s great to see talented mod-makers pulling off amazing missions, add-ons and mods as free content, but if we manage to find some incentive for the best mod-makers to develop more content, I think we can raise the bar even higher." this was posted in an interview several years ago. The above makes clear the CEO's stance on monetization. Us, modders, put thousands of hours into creating new and intuitive content that keep the game alive. I think it's entirely fair for us modders to be able to obtain some kind of compensation. The current monetization guidelines are a good step in the right direction, but it still isn't fair. It takes thousands of hours to make a mod. It takes 10 minutes to setup a server. Yet only the server owners can make money, and with the modders permission he can even make money of the modders work, while the server owner can only pay a modder for the work he does "outside arma". Addon monetization? Our community is already doing this by creating addons that only work on our server, and charging people for access to the server. And Bohemia is entirely fine with us doing so, but with all due respect to the modding community this doesn't seem fair. Relax the ArmA 3 Tools EULA and allow modders to earn a fair share as well. Monetization allowed us to pay industry professionals, experts in coding and modeling in particular, check out some of our videos on youtube and you can see exactly the results of (addon) monetization (e.g. we turned the game into a fire simulator). Make it easier for modders to make a living making mods and you will see more and more quality mods make their way into the arma universe. -Kane arma3projectlife.com

Not really, it is quite easy to de-obfuscate if you know what you're doing. It prevents 99% of skids from uploading it to steam workshop or onto their own server without permission and claiming that they created it. That isn't the only protection there though to prevent usage without permission. Like someone else said being successful means there is some other spiteful jealous kids who try and snatch everything they can from your successful mod for their own benefits or profit. Players decide to play on the stolen version instead making it look like stealing is okay hence the dozens of knock off servers. The fact that ALT has recently stolen over 30+ server files (sa-matra,asylum, etc) in the past few days doesn't help this cause either. People who put lots of work into their server or mod just to have it stolen are moving on onto other things. Obfuscation is a good thing, and we need more of it. I'm fine with Bohemia monitoring our files as it is, but leaving non-obfuscated pbo's publically gives us many other problems. On our forums we always post W.I.P work of almost all of our content so you can make sure that we have not taken any content from another modder or content creator. -Kane arma3projectlife.com

Yeah, correct. The thing is though over at A3PL we pay modders for their work, but have to work around said limitations because we can't pay for content created with the ArmA 3 Tools since that would fall under 'commercial usage' forbidden inside the arma 3 tools EULA. But if we get permission to use an already existing mod for our server we are legally not even allowed to pay the mod creator or work around said limitations because the EULA doesn't allow it. We do make people aware of this and that they allow us to use the content on a monetized server. We don't use a lot of community addons (with permission) though, we would rather make the content ourselves to prevent any issues. -Kane arma3projectlife.com

Yeah, I agree. Many life servers began as a small community where some small time developers/modders put forward their time here and there, the owners of these communities often accepted donations for unfair perks. And most often then not very little of that money made it into the pockets of anyone but the owners. And still today modders can't use any of the tools commercially or get paid for any of their work while owners are freely allowed to sell cosmetic items made by these same developers (or other content as long as it doesn't provide a gameplay advantage). Isn't that strange? We pay our developers at A3PL for their work, but we have to work around license limitations e.g. we'll pay a modder for their models and have them import it into object builder for free. But opening up the tools for commercial use, whether you are against it or not, will open up the community to better quality content for the game. Apparently it's totally okay if Bohemia releases a new expansion (essentially a mod) and you never hear anyone complaining but paid mods are somehow very controversial because people want them for free. Players have increasingly expected larger and larger conversion mods, for free. It is not sustainable. This engine has a lot more potential than people think and I hope they make the engine more open to the public in the future. Both for modders who wish to create commercial content or those that would rather make them for free, right now most of the money is reeled in by the server owners rather than those that create the content for their game. -Kane arma3projectlife.com