13 réponses à ce sujet

[SuperDyu]

 Anyone happen to have any links to SDK agreements or anything that either states games made off the DA Toolset (for example a custom campaign) can or can't be sold?

My intuition says no way in the world BioWare would be kosher with that, but I'd like to see for myself.

[FalloutBoy]

Mods cannot be sold. Sorry, I don't have the link. Don't need it because I know it is a fact.

[nedlbin]

In my experience basics of entertainment industry (and gaming industry is part of that) are simple.



You cannot sell the ideas and products of others without their permission. Bioware agrees to let you use their product DA.O as long as you share it with the community for FREE.



If you intend to make profit with their product, you will have to ASK them for permission. I'm sure they will give that permission to you - but in most cases for a price.



You should keep in mind that the tools we all use in the toolset are licenced (and paid) from other third-party companies for our FREE use. Bioware pays for them.



So if you intend to set your modding on a commercial basis, you will have to meet these economical and commecial necessities. US copyright laws can be quite brutal.

[SuperDyu]

Assumed that was the case, thanks for verifying. One could hope they'd try to go for a AppStore style of Mod store, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Vae_Victis]

SuperDyu wrote...

Assumed that was the case, thanks for verifying. One could hope they'd try to go for a AppStore style of Mod store, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'd be interested to see how well it went over considering the amount grief on these forums from people complaining about paying a few bucks for official Bioware content much less third-party stuff. And what happens if someone puts a mod up for sale full of models from someone elses's IP? Or that uses characters or concepts from another IP? What if someone decides to put up a respec mod for $2 and I decide I just like making mods as a hobby so put one up for free?

I'm interested too see how it goes with Blizzard considering the can 'o' worms it's opening.

[FollowTheGourd]

I think Bryan Derksen mentioned that one reason for the prohibition is the industry-norm third party components in the toolset (and probably the game). If they were to license those so mods could use them commercially, then it'd probably cost an arm and a leg. It'd be more economical to only do it for mods that could bring in some commercial success for BioWare, like their NWN premium modules.

Besides, Blizzard's premium maps idea is helping to rapidly kill my interest in StarCraft II. Seems like a great way to fragment players based on what map they have (even if it could temporarily "unlock" the map if another person has it, which I don't know - I'm just making that last part up).

Modifié par FollowTheGourd, 03 janvier 2010 - 12:05 .

[ChewyGumball]

Blizzard is not giving free reign to map makers to sell their maps. You basically have to do a full conversion to be able to sell a map. They said even DOTA would not qualify for this.



I would think the same would go for dao if it ever happens. There would have to be a review of everything that went into the mod, making sure there was no plagiarism and that the quality was up to snuff.

[FalloutBoy]

Money screws everything up. We are all better off with a totally free community.



Unless you are trying to convince your parents that you can make money with DA instead of finding a real job.

[BFBHLC]

nedlbin wrote...

In my experience basics of entertainment industry (and gaming industry is part of that) are simple.

You cannot sell the ideas and products of others without their permission. Bioware agrees to let you use their product DA.O as long as you share it with the community for FREE.

If you intend to make profit with their product, you will have to ASK them for permission. I'm sure they will give that permission to you - but in most cases for a price.

You should keep in mind that the tools we all use in the toolset are licenced (and paid) from other third-party companies for our FREE use. Bioware pays for them.

So if you intend to set your modding on a commercial basis, you will have to meet these economical and commecial necessities. US copyright laws can be quite brutal.

Wrong. EA has complete control of this. If you use the toolset to make anything, regardless of having a patent on it, you sacrifice your rights to it. Entirely. They can recreate it, re-release it, sell it, etc. without so much as even mentioning you made it. There was a class in an old NWN1 Premium Module that someone from NWVault had made, and BioWare took it right from underneath him.

[Proleric]

The toolset isn't for commercial use - for the full picture, see the Toolset EULA, the game EULA in your docs folder and the Terms of Service for this site.

[FollowTheGourd]

Edit: OK, I guess the Dragon Age *game* (but not toolset with its own) EULA has a transfer of ownership clause in section 1G, which I don't think has to apply to anything you didn't make with the the game itself. How much of that EULA applies to the toolset, I don't know, since the toolset makes use of game assets, so I suppose they'd interesect. The game EULA didn't mention the toolset, and you can't really argue that it extends to all future EA software.

So my non-lawyerly interpretation is this: EA owns anything you make that has to use the game and/or its assets for its production. Anything else can't be proven to have come from the use of the game or its assets so it would be on shaky ground. If you made your own models completely from scratch, I don't see how they could claim any ownership over them. I'd also argue anything you made using the toolset alone (that doesn't have corresponding game assets) shouldn't belong to EA either. In specific, let's say your writing that you have to eventually plug into the dialogue editor.

Again, my interpretation is that it isn't evil compared to other SDK EULAs that I'm used to, but I could be wrong.

Let's just forget the social site EULA for the moment, which basically says "If you upload it, then it's ours and everybody's now."

Modifié par FollowTheGourd, 03 janvier 2010 - 08:17 .

[nedlbin]

FalloutBoy wrote...

Money screws everything up. We are all better off with a totally free community.

I absolutely agree to that. Getting many downloads on a free mod is one thing, but really selling such a mod for money is completely different.

I have my doubts that many people will pay for simple maps. Maybe they will buy a useful tool. But a map? What is this compared to the hundreds of hours it takes to make a playable mod for NWN/NWN2/DA:O.

I have my doubts that you will get rich with that ...

[deadrockstar]

No chance on selling your work for money, but we have been shown a better way!



Product placement à la campside salesman.



Want to make money? Provide ingame links to products. Maybe even contact Coke and see about some kind of reward payment per download in exchange for some product placement.

[nedlbin]

What about an iPhone app, that lets you keep track of the social site here?



I'm sure you could sell this one with no legal issues.