Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

I'm going on what jables stated (look at the daily three questions thread).

I run a business myself and I think legal reasons (specifically issue of a modder using copyright material in a mod and uber getting sued over it) is very plausible given my own expertise with ip (I do new product development and have designed a number of patented products- ownership and scope of ip is a sticky subject. One of my customers was even sued for a patent breach for a product they distributed for another firm, totally bs but sadly legal).

I'm quite certain it's pure fantasy to speculate one could bring the blame on uber and be taken seriously in a court.

on the other hand use steam mod hub and where's the excuse?

there it can LEGITIMATELY not be put on Uber before they've finished sorting it out with steam! so there's no risks involved! plus if the mod is paying it's on the modder alone for certain.

I'm finding your argument hard to buy.

Oh I am not saying that you should not use free energy. You absolutely should if you think it gives you an advantage (not quire sure on that so far). It is a mod that is abusing questionable gameplay mechanics that should be fixed, but until they are fixed why not fix them yourself?
Mered is half right here: It is visible in repalys that FreeEnergy is used. Same with cover the line. But mods like the ubermap are invisible to anybody else. Easy to hide them. Without substantial DRM work there won't be any way to prevent their usage or even make it visible that they are in use. So all this "should we ban it" talk is
a) based on the crazy assumption that there are mods comparable to wallhacks or steroids. An assumption that is utterly false and probably is the reason why some people are concerned: They dont really know what UI mods could do.
b) highly nonconstructive, because for us it is impossible and for Uber it is unreasonable. You're asking them to put in a substantial amount of to kill of UI modding. Not gonna happen. UI mods are a part of PA and if you want to stay competitive than you either need to look into them or simply be good enough to win without them. So far if you're really good I am pretty sure you can still win without any mods at all easily.

Really 99% of what I see in this thread is people making up fantasies about what mods could do and then trying to act on them. Those fantasies are pretty far away from reality.

Uh, I think you'll find, changing the colour of metal spots can make them easier to see and thus requires less attention, and talking to people about the game will give you an advantage because you'll have more knowledge which others like, totally won't.


Ok but you get my point, that is how this argument seems to me.

It can happen (and does regularly happen) as the party suffering a loss (in this case the IP owner) can show that the company being sued is *complicit* with the infringements of it's rights, even if they didn't directly do it.

This is how grooveshark was taken down by the music industry. Whilst they themselves *didn't* infringe the music companies copyright, they provided a framework and were shown to actively encourage their users to do so.

Integrating a mod manager directly into PA itself means anything held within can be viewed as being 'endorsed' by Uber. That would require them to moderate it carefully (which would be expensive) or face getting into trouble if a published mod breached someones IP (e.g. the original TA assets anyone?).

I don't know how this works with Steam Workshop, maybe Valve become responsible? The point is Uber providing a mod framework for the community to use is fine, and anything we do outside of PA is out of their control so they're safe. I can understand their reluctance on this one.

Maybe more people would play ranked if they thought it was fare

But there is nothing Uber can do about youre screen size, they can however stop mod's in ranked matches. I really don't think that is argument is valid.

Case in point I played pa for a long time before I came across the mod's section.

I do take CDRFK's point that mod's cannot be implemented into the client by uber so the only choice's that seem realistic to me are.

1 total ban on mod's in ranked games.

2 Make it very clear to people when they buy the game "they will probably want to use pamm in ranked matches" and make pamm more visable on steam and uber forums.

I prefer idea 2 to 1 but I'd be wary esp on steam as something like this may well give the hater's more ammo.

I wouldn't avoid doing something due to the haters on steam- Uber could end all suffering around the world and they would still hate on them

I think banning mods removes too many essential tools due to a few 'dodgy' ones. I mean I'm sure for example you have no issue playing someone who has access to global chat, or a fancier background? What your worried about are a few very specific mods that could impact the game.

Your choice 2 sounds, yet again, like you seem to think mods are on the level of wallhacks.
Again: Far from it.

Isn't that all on the basis of "First you'll get a take down request (DMCA?) and only if you don't comply with it (or prove it is wrong) you get into trouble? Pretty sure that there would not really be issues and Uber is mainly using this as the "main" argument while the real reasons they dont do it are elsewhere, just they do not look that good to the outside as a "the laws dont allow it"-argument. The legal issues certainly are not made up, but they're by far not as unsolveable as some make them out to be.
I mean GrooveShark clearly had real issues, but their whole business model was based on piracy. You can't say that about an ingame mod system. 99,9% of mods are without issue as of now. The few that do use 3rd party content use content from games whose owners are unlikely to do any attacks. The worst thing I can think of are SupCom icons in some mods.

I mean.. there's a really obvious option here, appoint a few community moderators. Just like we have on the forums and PAchat.

I do agree completely that Pa would be awesome with mod's directly integrated but I can see the problems this will present for uber also..

It's possible. I'm not an expert on IP in the context of games and such. I would say that I think the DMCA was done specifically for music / video and was pushed through thanks to Google (essentially to protect YouTube). It may not be directly applicable in the case of game assets? I mean you are correct Uber may have other motives, although they are quite supportive of mods so it's not an 'anti mod' policy per se- I think legal worries (and they may just be that) are probably part of it at the very least.

From the cases I've seen this is generally how it goes. They send out a cease and desist before taking action.

There have been quite a few mods that have been shut down because of things like this, they don't ever go to court, just cease and desist. If there was such a big issue over it and it worked like your Grooveshark example, I doubt places like ModDB would even exist.

I'm no expert either, but even if uber was sued and won, it could still be bad for the company costing then legal fee's and man hour's. If we were talking about EA things might be different but as a small independent I think Uber has to be very carefull....

The DMCA is based on laws from before 2000 and is very general about copyright.

the point is uber don't have a mod hub on steam and there is no justifiable reason that even you can think of

This is true, I shouldn't let them wind me up and you're right you shouldn't not do something just because a few people may not understand.

I don't care about graphical changes that are purely cosmetic. I just think ranked play should be made as fair as it can be within the bounds of what is possible..

what you're describing is exactly what we currently have.

Ok fair enough it's not as severe as a wallhack, but as long as it's not vanilla implemented it is roughly in the same class or atleast related.

I mean, if you played a system with alot of planets, or even just 2 tbh. The player who has the mod has undeniably significant advantage.

You are talking specifically about the uber map. What about other ui mods? A blanket ban would effect any ui mod, including staples like system sharing, pa:stats, pa chat, hot build and many others.

Are we really saying all these should be disabled for ranked play just in case someone doesn't know about it?

The definition of what makes the game easier is arbitrary. And to all saying "Why do you use them if you don't think they give an advantage" well I ask you this, why don't _you_ use them if you feel they give an advantage.

An example on my part, I despise the 2D minimap, don't find it useful whatsoever for me. PIP and just paying attention is easier, it's somewhat difficult to see where everything is on the 2D representation. The minimap gives me no edge over others and so I don't use it- but at the same time.. I legitimately do not care if someone uses it or not, they're not hacking in more info and anything they see- I could see with PiP. (Okay except unit ghosts, but that needs to be implemented anyway)

Also anyone mind explaining what Free energy does to me? =o