Compo Pack TOS "Addition"

[Vedui]

2) Permission to use, once granted, cannot be revoked.

This is not entirely accurate. There is a reason assignment clauses specifically mention being "irrevocable", as where they are silent the IP holder often can change terms and can revoke assignments. While this is up to courts ultimately, from my knowledge usually courts hold that where it's silent on the issue, they are revocable at will by the licensor.

@Guppycur is concerned that we will have to add new rules regarding prefab collections that would make things more restrictive. I think as moderators (some of us modders as well) we are pretty united in wanting to keep the traditional convention of sharing prefabs without demanding express permission-- intact. Its kind of our culture. I wouldn't mind hearing from the community what you all think would be the best way to word things in order to help people resolve disputes but also to keep the sharing and building of collections of POIs open and non-restrictive. On the one hand, Stallionsden's choice is a driving force to encourage people to make new compilation packs. But on the other hand, as a community we shouldn't expect Stallionsden to do all the work of maintaining and updating hundreds of POIs for new Alpha releases and just benefit freely from his work. There has to be a balance.

I don't think TFP should be getting involved. TFP could claim that any content created within 7DTD belongs to TFP, which would be draconian. TFP could issue terms that creations made in 7DTD are freely available and shareable, which is also draconian, and simply opens up a huge headache for people as effectively it means whatever they create is no longer theirs.  Could I pop into a random server and demand to get a copy of a POI then? etc.etc.

Like any intellectual property, laws already exist. If people want to give non-exclusive, irrevocable licenses for others to use, they can. If they want to give exclusive, revocable they can. And if they want terms that whoever uses their POI credits them in the server MOTD, they can. People can freely enter into these agreements, or not as they choose.

In either case, MANY mod creators while allowing download and free use of their mods, do not allow re-distribution OR re-use of their modpacks within other modpacks. If CP wants to do the same, who are we to say that "this specific modpack" shouldn't be allowed to have such terms?

 

[Roland]

I wonder what's stopping people ripping out the prefabs and distributing via this forum to be honest.

There’s nothing stopping people from searching the forum and downloading individual POIs that people have created and posted. You could create your own “playlist”. 
 

Some of those may need to be updated to work in A20 if their authors haven’t done that themselves. You could do that work and have those prefabs in your world. 
 

Sounds to me like resolution of some kind is coming. Stallionsden has messaged me that he admittedly didn’t communicate himself well and things have blown out of proportion. 
 

Let’s give him time to communicate his intentions better and see what comes of this. Remember that the Compopack you are playing today is not the same Compopack Margoli left us. That Compopack would not be compatible with A20 and many of the people being outraged put zero effort into updating all the POIs to work with A20 other than to expect it be there for them to use. 
 

Stallionsden deserves some latitude here to clarify things if you’ve been enjoying A20 Compopack. 

This is not entirely accurate. There is a reason assignment clauses specifically mention being "irrevocable", as where they are silent the IP holder often can change terms and can revoke assignments. While this is up to courts ultimately, from my knowledge usually courts hold that where it's silent on the issue, they are revocable at will by the licensor.

You’re mixing up laws and forum guidelines. Legally, all derivative work belongs to TFP. Period. 
 

on this forum the rule you quoted stands because it results in the least number of disputes that rise to the level of moderation. We have had less than a handful of large scale disputes since our forum rules were posted and all were able to be resolved quickly and none of it had to do with the law because— as you pointed out— if we are going to involve the law then it is TFP enforcing their ownership and either enforcing free distribution or locking behind their own download guidelines. 
 

So, legally, terms may be able to be renegotiated and permission revoked for failure to comply with the new terms, but if you want to be a member of this forum and be involved in our modding community then you can’t revoke permission once granted because that used to lead to sooooooo much drama and ever since everyone accepted that forum rule it has greased the wheels of better community collaboration.  

 

[Vedui]

Had a look at the 7days EULA and any user created content already includes terms to give TFP license to them, furthermore you wave moral rights thus there's no need to even attribute peoples mods or prefabs back to anyone. I wonder what's stopping people ripping out the prefabs and distributing via this forum to be honest.

That is correct. However, granting TFP a license to the creations, doesn't mean others can also freely use. Now the grant to TFP includes the right to sub-license, so TFP would be within their rights to say "hey, we got a license to everything, so we're gonna freely sub-license to everyone too!" ... however while that looks easy on paper, there're a lot of details. Ie, how do you even distribute it? TFP doesn't have someones POI created in the game. Heck if I change 1 block, my world is now different than before. Do you have the game automatically transmit everything to TFP to store/process? That'd simply be unfeasible. You could require players to submit every creation within x days of creation. Which means we'd all have to auto-batch sending GB's of data as our worlds continually change. So not feasible.

And so on. It's not a simple thing to implement.

The specific EULA referenced I believe:

USER CREATED CONTENT: The Software may allow you to create content, including but not limited to a gameplay map, screenshot or a video of your game play. In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant Licensor an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services, including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means whether now known or unknown and distribute your contributions without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind for the whole duration of protection granted to intellectual property rights by applicable laws and international conventions. You hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution with respect to Licensor’s and other players’ use and enjoyment of such assets in connection with the Software and related goods and services under applicable law. This license grant to Licensor, and the above waiver of any applicable moral rights, survives any termination of this License.

https://7daystodie.com/eula/

You’re mixing up laws and forum guidelines. Legally, all derivative work belongs to TFP. Period. 
 

on this forum the rule you quoted stands because it results in the least number of disputes that rise to the level of moderation. We have had less than a handful of large scale disputes since our forum rules were posted and all were able to be resolved quickly and none of it had to do with the law because— as you pointed out— if we are going to involve the law then it is TFP enforcing their ownership and either enforcing free distribution or locking behind their own download guidelines. 
 

So, legally, terms may be able to be renegotiated and permission revoked for failure to comply with the new terms, but if you want to be a member of this forum and be involved in our modding community then you can’t revoke permission once granted because that used to lead to sooooooo much drama and ever since everyone accepted that forum rule it has greased the wheels of better community collaboration.  

Absolutely, forum vs other places would be different. I normally never download POI's (or CP) from the forum as such, so was more speaking to it in a general sense.

Overall, I think once the game is done and we have steam workshop, things as noted will change substantially and for the benefit of everyone

 

[Roland]

In either case, MANY mod creators while allowing download and free use of their mods, do not allow re-distribution OR re-use of their modpacks within other modpacks. If CP wants to do the same, who are we to say that "this specific modpack" shouldn't be allowed to have such terms?

There is no problem and we allow that starting from the date that those terms were posted and not retroactively applied. 
 

Honestly, the thing that made this muddy was doing it in the middle of A20. The best time to have done this was when he updated the pack to A20 compatibility the first time. Then he could state that A19 Compopack is the vanilla open source compilation that everyone is free to download and use. He could have released his overhaul mod that updates the POIs to alpha 20 and rebalances them- not as the new version of Compopack- but as a separate Stallions overhaul mod featuring Margoli’s Compopack and state his terms from the get go. 
 

If others ripped out his updated POIs to use in their own overhaul mods without his permission then the outcome would be clear. Now, people have already had permission granted to use them before suddenly these versions are no longer permitted to be used. If disputes arise it is too muddy to definitively say that the POIs were taken after permission was revoked since they are the same version as the POIs that existed while permission was still granted. 
 

Muddy, and all I care about is having a nice happy modding community and not who legally gets to do what. (TFP gets to legally do everything if they want)

 

[Roland]

Absolutely, forum vs other places would be different. I normally never download POI's (or CP) from the forum as such, so was more speaking to it in a general sense.

Exactly. At the time we implemented our rules for the modding forum we stressed that they are guidelines for remaining in good standing in OUR forum alone. 
 

If someone violates the rules and refuses to comply then we ban them and hide all their content on our site and they no longer have a presence here. That doesn’t stop them from continuing to do what they want to do using a discord channel or Nexus or a FaceBook page. 
 

A couple years ago a modder blatantly ripped off 90% of the assets and code of another author and wouldn’t reply civilly to the guy much less agree to stop stealing his work. We sent messages and finally banned him and hid his content. He went to Nexus who also banned him (since our community is prolific enough to get around to other sites). I’m not sure what happened to the guy or his mod but chasing him away from our community here was the extent of what we could do. 
 

For most modders who are fans of the game, that threat is bad enough. They don’t want to be removed from this community. Plus most of our modders are good people who want their work to be appreciated and out there. 
 

So, really, it does end up all being self regulated within the community without us having to get involved at all. Only if a party is hellbent on violating a rule do we get involved and that certainly isn’t the case. We aren’t involved yet other than making sure the CP thread is uncluttered by angry rants and that this thread stays civil. 
 

And I keep hearing from key people to just stay the hell away which I’m more than happy to do.

 

[Guppycur]

See what happens when you get the man involved?  Mud.

R Dog is right, modders should police themselves. 

 

[SG1-09]

For keep Compopack alive each new alpha, I find it logical all prefabs must be updated to avoid any compatibility issues. IMO if POIs are not updated, they should no longer be part of the latest version of CP unless they have been rework by their authors. And I'm aware that would cut off the CP quite a lot of good POIs from the penultimate alpha.
There are other exceptions: when i played with CP48, I went through a lot of prefabs in order to clean up "out dated" creations even if these are compatible.

Otherwise I also think a huge job is necessary to recover the latest versions of the POIs scattered on different websites. I publish mine on NexusMods, which does not mean that everyone here have heard of the latest updates. So I cannot blame the team for correcting my POI A19 to A20 concerning missing blocks, if I don't communicate my updates outside of Nexus.

There is a lot of time involved in this compatibility process.

I think if some people want to guarantee their creations shared in CP without unauthorized modifications, they should also help and save Stallionsden and testers from spending time making their POIs compatible and playable.

 

[meganoth]

I submitted my prefab (The Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil 1) in A19. To my knowledge, they made a few "balancing" changes that I was semi ok with.
My secrets that I dotted around the mansion were intact and players who found my secrets were rewarded for it!

In A20, they completely butchered my passion project, most of my secrets are either nerfed or removed. For example, one secret you were rewarded with 2 secret stashes, now you are rewarded with concrete blocks.
The loot room is another issue, for some reason, they decided to have the loot room in my super secret location where less than 1% of players will ever find it. This super secret originally lead the player to find signs to tell the player the location of a treasure chest, which was also nerfed to a large weapons bag.......


So, here's my ToS!
You're welcome to use my mansion on the condition that any changes that are wished to be made are run by me first, and if we can't come to an agreement to the desired changes, then I don't permit use of baby.
Translation: The current butchered version of my mansion in CP48 breaks my ToS

Any overhaul modders out there that would like the Spencer Mansion in their overhaul mods are welcome to contact me.

If you want to see the completed envisioned version of the Spencer Mansion, it has its own standalone mod on the launcher called The Spencer Mansion Incident.
 

The current butchered version does not break your ToS since your ToS does not apply retroactively. A new version of your mansion could fall under a ToS though

I can see boths sides here: You want your baby to work in all its glory. And that works fine as a seperate mod where anyone downloading it could read in your description text that it has ramped up its difficulty and rewards.

But a collection of pois should be uniform in difficulty and reward. Last week my group played a mod that had a tier4 POI that was miles above in difficulty compared to other tie4 or even tier5 pois. Frustrated the hell out of my co-players. And I can remember some POIs in previous compopacks being ridicilous loot bonanzas. Sorry, that doesn't work well, such POI's either have to be balanced or removed from a collection.

 

[zztong]

I think if some people want to guarantee their creations shared in CP without unauthorized modifications, they should also help and save Stallionsden and testers from spending time making their POIs compatible and playable.

I wonder if it might be necessary for the CP to insist on Terms for a contribution. That is, by contributing a POI to the CP, the designer agrees the CP folks are able to modify a POI for any reason. To me, something like this expresses a practical impossibility of tracking down hundreds of creators each version.

I say "any reason" because coming up with an exact list that stands the tests of time would be super difficult. Various reasons I know of would include: compatibility with new game versions, loot balancing, game performance, and adjustment of building materials. (A "wooden" shack built entirely of steel blocks.)

I venture to say most folks who contribute a POI aren't aware of the changes necessary. I know the first several POIs I threw at Stallionsden had issues, and he was great at explaining to me what the issues were, and the CP Testers have been super-effective of telling me all sorts of things ... specially missing textures under doorways. Grrrrr.

 

[Roy02]

So is there a list of authors that want these restrictive terms in the cp tos which we can just remove from infinity,  from what I am reading the list of authors wishing to be restrictive is smaller than the number of non restrictive authors.  So could someone post a list or could the authors own up to what they want envision for their poi's.  

Additionally

I understand this has prompted several overhaul mod authors to rework updates instead of working on something they (and we) love.

If you make a labor of love become a labor only, people will not continue their efforts.  That would be sad.

Perhaps discussion and communications before stating TOS EULA etc with folks that may be affected.

 

[KhaineGB]

I have actually started working on an alternative. Right now i'm updating A19 prefabs to conform to A20 tile standards so they can just spawn on vanilla tiles/wilderness as required.

Also still gathering permissions from various authors and compiling a list

 

[SG1-09]

I wonder if it might be necessary for the CP to insist on Terms for a contribution. That is, by contributing a POI to the CP, the designer agrees the CP folks are able to modify a POI for any reason. To me, something like this expresses a practical impossibility of tracking down hundreds of creators each version.

I say "any reason" because coming up with an exact list that stands the tests of time would be super difficult. Various reasons I know of would include: compatibility with new game versions, loot balancing, game performance, and adjustment of building materials. (A "wooden" shack built entirely of steel blocks.)

I venture to say most folks who contribute a POI aren't aware of the changes necessary. I know the first several POIs I threw at Stallionsden had issues, and he was great at explaining to me what the issues were, and the CP Testers have been super-effective of telling me all sorts of things ... specially missing textures under doorways. Grrrrr.

 Yes of course it's difficult to track and request to any authors for each update.

I can understand that for other people it's better to be clear from the beginning and what you suggest is possible, i guess. Indeed because that unlikely that all creators come on their own to deliver a creation compatible for each alpha. And the work for CP become progressively huge and time-consumming.

Personaly i can accept without any problem, i'm not a very prolific creator so I won't allow myself to demand special attention for my content

 

[LordCorellon]

I submitted my prefab (The Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil 1) in A19. To my knowledge, they made a few "balancing" changes that I was semi ok with.
My secrets that I dotted around the mansion were intact and players who found my secrets were rewarded for it!

In A20, they completely butchered my passion project, most of my secrets are either nerfed or removed. For example, one secret you were rewarded with 2 secret stashes, now you are rewarded with concrete blocks.
The loot room is another issue, for some reason, they decided to have the loot room in my super secret location where less than 1% of players will ever find it. This super secret originally lead the player to find signs to tell the player the location of a treasure chest, which was also nerfed to a large weapons bag.......


So, here's my ToS!
You're welcome to use my mansion on the condition that any changes that are wished to be made are run by me first, and if we can't come to an agreement to the desired changes, then I don't permit use of baby.
Translation: The current butchered version of my mansion in CP48 breaks my ToS

Any overhaul modders out there that would like the Spencer Mansion in their overhaul mods are welcome to contact me.

If you want to see the completed envisioned version of the Spencer Mansion, it has its own standalone mod on the launcher called The Spencer Mansion Incident.
 

Change a loot "block" in your POI and resubmit it with your TOS.

Then they cant claim that it doesnt apply.


Also, Remember what kicked this all off.

"all permissions for overhauls are removed and The Compopack Team will do a Download to work alongside the overhauls."

If you want to be forgiving, thats up to you. I personally wont be and will use what Kahine and the people he works with put out.

CP is dead to me.


 

 

[Ancientwolf]

I have actually started working on an alternative. Right now i'm updating A19 prefabs to conform to A20 tile standards so they can just spawn on vanilla tiles/wilderness as required.

Also still gathering permissions from various authors and compiling a list

I get it. I honestly think that this is the best approach as far as the tile spawning goes.

People can handle their things the way they want, the only advice I can give anybody is once you start deviating from the spirit of the modding community in the first place, you're asking for trouble.

I'm good enough at process to have dealt with the cp48 tile set thing, but I honestly have to say I didn't find researching it and working with it enjoyable. I started looking at doing pretty much the same thing and just cutting out the stuff I didn't want to deal with. I've got a lot of hours in the work that I do and the little things here and there that I've thrown out for the community Ive never expected any return on it except my own enjoyment of doing the work itself and the fun I have playing it, but thats me. Something gets lost in there with some people sometimes and that part, I'll never understand. I don't need to make money, I wouldn't be involved in gaming as escapism if I was needing to.

I also concur with the sentiment that you certainly do not want big brother to step in.

 

[KhaineGB]

I submitted my prefab (The Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil 1) in A19. To my knowledge, they made a few "balancing" changes that I was semi ok with.
My secrets that I dotted around the mansion were intact and players who found my secrets were rewarded for it!

In A20, they completely butchered my passion project, most of my secrets are either nerfed or removed. For example, one secret you were rewarded with 2 secret stashes, now you are rewarded with concrete blocks.
The loot room is another issue, for some reason, they decided to have the loot room in my super secret location where less than 1% of players will ever find it. This super secret originally lead the player to find signs to tell the player the location of a treasure chest, which was also nerfed to a large weapons bag.......


So, here's my ToS!
You're welcome to use my mansion on the condition that any changes that are wished to be made are run by me first, and if we can't come to an agreement to the desired changes, then I don't permit use of baby.
Translation: The current butchered version of my mansion in CP48 breaks my ToS

Any overhaul modders out there that would like the Spencer Mansion in their overhaul mods are welcome to contact me.

If you want to see the completed envisioned version of the Spencer Mansion, it has its own standalone mod on the launcher called The Spencer Mansion Incident.
 

I'd actually love to include this in the pack I'm building, if you don't mind.

The only thing I'd probably do is change where it spawns to wilderness only (if it's not already) as I feel that fits better since it's RE1 and all... and the mansion was in the middle of the woods.

God I love that game and it's cheesy voice acting

 

[Guppycur]

Seems settled, check the compo thread.  He's gonna do what Roland suggested and revisit it on a21, the original tos stands.

...so let's get back to making and sharing things and maybe leave the snipping for the removal of jars.

 

[Roland]

Closing this thread now. If you still have questions, I suggest PMing a member of the CompoPack team and asking directly.