Mon Oct 06, 2003 6:04 pm
Reynen.
Hello Reynen.
Relax, this isnt a *****ing session, its also posted here so others can read the end of the message and see what areas mod makers are generally allowed to make money on. Usually anything that is not related to the mod. Though you should still check it out first. Different devs, different rules.
Anyway about my posts, Im just annoyed to see my name mentioned in an MS legal doc. Its not exactly a nice thing to wake up too and you didnt write to tell me or warn me about it. I heard through a third party.
So I was annoyed. Very annoyed.
You do not seem see this point or even care about the effect on the rest of the community and that made things worse.
Im sorry for kicking off but I am still annoyed by it. The extra info thats been posted since is helping but until my name is no longer on the MS legal hit list I will probably remain annoyed.
You have to realise, neither me, nor anybody else whos not on the TNG team have do anything to deserve such attention so its only natural for us to get annoyed by it.
If you can see that then you will go a long way to settling the tempers around here.
It is a little worse for me because I make a lot of mods for different games and have had a lot of contact with microsoft Dev teams for various games. This is not exactly helping me get useful info for my mechwarrior team out of them.
In fact it may sink one mod we started working on so im waiting to see about that and thats annoying too. The mod in question is a free mod which should be ok but its for a none MS game and MS hold the copyrights for the materials we want to use.
This business has complicated things a great deal for me. Its likely that legal issues will delay or stop the mod being produced as a result. MS are happy to ignore free mods unless the team get some bad press and this is what id call bad press.
You probably do not know Microsoft (from a modders point of view) as well as I do but they even copyrighted a raw file because it allowed footstep sounds on mw4 maps. We had to fight for months to get them to agree to even let us use it as a hack on our missions. They are very tight that way and very protective of their copyrighted materials. They even copyrighted the AI commands used in our scripts. So we cannot even sell AI scripts we made even though they are totally original.
In fact, id say they act almost like friends, if your friendly group and willing to cooperate with them, they tend to turn a blind eye or send a polite email telling you its best not to go down a road or produce an item, if your unknown or hostile they go for the throat with legal stuff. The legal department are not paid to be friendly with mod makers. They are paid to protect MS interests.
My advice would be to write to them, ask if you reverted TNG to a none profit mod would that ok and would they allow you to continue working on it on that basis. Making sure you clearly state that if they say no, you will halt production on the mod. That way you show willing and they may cut you and there for the rest of us some slack.
If you need to raise funds, do it via the site for the site and dont mention your mod name anywhere in the donation side of the site. As soon as the mod name is mentioned on a product people can buy, MS will kick off. They cannot kick off if the site is making the money not the mod. Atleast providing its a none profit site. Eg recovering costs.
MS actually let people sell mod CDs at the price of a blank CD + P&P but if you put it 1 dollar over that they will have something to say about it.
All this is known to me, its been checked out with the mw4 devs and we got our answer. Though I should say the cost of CD and P&P often disputed so it is still risky.
Giskard
Edited by - giskard on 06-10-2003 19:08:02
Relax, this isnt a *****ing session, its also posted here so others can read the end of the message and see what areas mod makers are generally allowed to make money on. Usually anything that is not related to the mod. Though you should still check it out first. Different devs, different rules.
Anyway about my posts, Im just annoyed to see my name mentioned in an MS legal doc. Its not exactly a nice thing to wake up too and you didnt write to tell me or warn me about it. I heard through a third party.
So I was annoyed. Very annoyed.
You do not seem see this point or even care about the effect on the rest of the community and that made things worse.
Im sorry for kicking off but I am still annoyed by it. The extra info thats been posted since is helping but until my name is no longer on the MS legal hit list I will probably remain annoyed.
You have to realise, neither me, nor anybody else whos not on the TNG team have do anything to deserve such attention so its only natural for us to get annoyed by it.
If you can see that then you will go a long way to settling the tempers around here.
It is a little worse for me because I make a lot of mods for different games and have had a lot of contact with microsoft Dev teams for various games. This is not exactly helping me get useful info for my mechwarrior team out of them.
In fact it may sink one mod we started working on so im waiting to see about that and thats annoying too. The mod in question is a free mod which should be ok but its for a none MS game and MS hold the copyrights for the materials we want to use.
This business has complicated things a great deal for me. Its likely that legal issues will delay or stop the mod being produced as a result. MS are happy to ignore free mods unless the team get some bad press and this is what id call bad press.
You probably do not know Microsoft (from a modders point of view) as well as I do but they even copyrighted a raw file because it allowed footstep sounds on mw4 maps. We had to fight for months to get them to agree to even let us use it as a hack on our missions. They are very tight that way and very protective of their copyrighted materials. They even copyrighted the AI commands used in our scripts. So we cannot even sell AI scripts we made even though they are totally original.
In fact, id say they act almost like friends, if your friendly group and willing to cooperate with them, they tend to turn a blind eye or send a polite email telling you its best not to go down a road or produce an item, if your unknown or hostile they go for the throat with legal stuff. The legal department are not paid to be friendly with mod makers. They are paid to protect MS interests.
My advice would be to write to them, ask if you reverted TNG to a none profit mod would that ok and would they allow you to continue working on it on that basis. Making sure you clearly state that if they say no, you will halt production on the mod. That way you show willing and they may cut you and there for the rest of us some slack.
If you need to raise funds, do it via the site for the site and dont mention your mod name anywhere in the donation side of the site. As soon as the mod name is mentioned on a product people can buy, MS will kick off. They cannot kick off if the site is making the money not the mod. Atleast providing its a none profit site. Eg recovering costs.
MS actually let people sell mod CDs at the price of a blank CD + P&P but if you put it 1 dollar over that they will have something to say about it.
All this is known to me, its been checked out with the mw4 devs and we got our answer. Though I should say the cost of CD and P&P often disputed so it is still risky.
Giskard
Edited by - giskard on 06-10-2003 19:08:02
