Bethesda Softworks - Nexus prevents Mod Theft

After more than a month of inaction on Bethesda's part, the owner of the largest site for Skyrim and Fallout mods has taken matters into their own hands to prevent people stealing user creations.

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"There is no reason consoles should not be allowed to have mods, provided the PC modding community is appropriately protected and not dumbed down or negatively affected in any way," Scott wrote in a 5,100-word epic. "However, in order for the mods to be available on consoles, PC mod authors would need to upload their mods, as a separate entry, to Bethesda.net’s system."

This lead, unsurprisingly, to people taking the best mods from Nexus and ripping them wholesale onto Bethesda's system with no attribution, often taunting the original creator in the description.

This is soul crushing for mod authors. To see their hard work being taken, without their permission, often times by people actually openly goading, trolling and mocking the mod authors about the theft and that nothing was being done about it," Scott says. "It became clear, early on, that Bethesda had not planned for the eventuality of mods being stolen. They had no clear moderation system in place. No way of quickly dealing with the issue or indeed any sort of decent reporting system so that users could report stolen mods in detail to the (seemingly non-existent) moderation team."

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Rather than wait for Bethesda to improve their response times to reporting mods stolen or implement an effective moderation strategy, Scott has decided to add an extra permissions system to his own site so stolen mods are easier to see.

"We already have an extensive permissions system for mods, but today we’ve released an addition to that system for console modding," he says. "You can now choose from a set of options in our Fallout 4 section to express your wishes. These are:

• I have uploaded my mods to Bethesda.net and they are available for console users.
• I have not uploaded my mods to Bethesda.net for console users yet, but I will at some point.
• My mods will not be available on Bethesda.net for console users.
• My mods won’t work on consoles or would not be acceptable on Bethesda.net according to their rules.
• I give my permission for someone else to port my mods to console and for it to be uploaded to Bethesda.net by someone else. Please credit me, however."

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File hidden
This file has currently been set to hidden by the author of the file. You cannot look at this file page or download any files relating to this file until the author makes the file visible to the public again.

The reason given by the author is: The Seasons Project mods have been hidden for now because thieves keep taking the files, packaging them horribly, and uploading them without permission to Bethesda.net. Because these mods were made for PC, and are not optimized or packaged correctly for consoles, the stolen mods end up breaking console player games. So everyone suffers, the modders who have their work stolen, and the console users who download those mods without knowing they are stolen and may break their games. Currently the most recent stolen files from Seasons, including even a screenshot stolen from my mod page, is still up after four days of endless complaints, flagged reports, and even a DMCA filing. Until Bethesda can implement security measures to better protect the creations of modders, my files will stay hidden. And because of this blatant thievery and disregard for modders by so many people, I have no desire now to port them to console in the future, although I reserve the right to change my mind if Bethesda figures out how to fix this whole nasty mess.

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Evil Timmy said:

Wait, so Bethesda put out an interesting release with intriguing systems, that suffers from some severe flaws and odd design decisions that have to be corrected later by the player base? Stop the presses!

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that have to be corrected later by the player base?

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Kyrer said:

I'm not usually into bashing game companies, but seem odd that Bethesda hadn't anticipated that this might happen, and consider how they might try to handle it. By offering such a poorly regulated environment, they are just acting as enablers for piracy (DarkOne points out that not all mods are created using the GECK).

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Kyrer said:

I'm not sure what the solution might be however. The only way to really regulate mods would be to manually vet each one before it's made available, but since this would require manpower and money, and since Bethesda aren't charging for the service, I doubt this is realistically going to happen. A better solution might have been to work with, and better support the modding community, rather than trying to "take ownership" of modding itself (with only a half-arsed idea of how that might actually work in practice.)

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Evil Timmy said:

Wait, so Bethesda put out an interesting release with intriguing systems, that suffers from some severe flaws and odd design decisions that have to be corrected later by the player base? Stop the presses!

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Kyrer said:

By offering such a poorly regulated environment, they are just acting as enablers for piracy (DarkOne points out that not all mods are created using the GECK).

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TheMadGamer said:

Naively perhaps, Bethesda may have assumed some gamers wouldn't be the douchebags they keep proving they are.

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zahratustra said:

And why would Beth assume that? Exactly the same stuff started happening when they tried paid mods for Skyrim. What could possibly make them think that it will be different this time?

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Zloth said:

You must have a moderation system available. If you can't afford to do that then you can't afford to have this feature. Period.

If Bethesda doesn't get this cleaned up and FAST then they are going to have a big, fat mod boycott on their hands for the next Elder Scrolls game. Heck, they've already got a little one going by the looks of it.

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