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ZeniMax shutdown Doom Remake 4

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This might be an overly optimistic stance, but I see this is a good thing.

 

We've long been worried that Bethesda might cause real problems for the Doom community scene if only they started paying attention to us.

 

This event, and the recent Brutal Doom Patreon issue, tells me Bethesda are paying attention to us, but seem to be genuinely fine with 99% of everything the community makes. As long as we don't try to make money off the name or make anything standalone that uses the name, they seem ok with it.

 

I might be being naive, but this feels somehow reassuring to me. Better this than living under the constant fear that we're living on borrowed time.

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5 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

Sadly most hosters on the internet take a very questionable stance here

that is because anybody can claim that somebody else stole something. so they usually tend to believe Big Wheels, or court orders, but not random internet people.

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It's not about believing but about putting a bit of research into those claims themselves.

 

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3 hours ago, Bauul said:

This event, and the recent Brutal Doom Patreon issue, tells me Bethesda are paying attention to us

 

What happened? I'm not following Brutal Doom so I don't really know.

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4 hours ago, Bauul said:

This might be an overly optimistic stance, but I see this is a good thing.

 

We've long been worried that Bethesda might cause real problems for the Doom community scene if only they started paying attention to us.

 

This event, and the recent Brutal Doom Patreon issue, tells me Bethesda are paying attention to us, but seem to be genuinely fine with 99% of everything the community makes. As long as we don't try to make money off the name or make anything standalone that uses the name, they seem ok with it.

 

I might be being naive, but this feels somehow reassuring to me. Better this than living under the constant fear that we're living on borrowed time.


This. Always been a bit worried they would yank the GPL source agreements, and I would agree that when it becomes a point of profiting off such or trying to act as a remake is where it starts becoming an issue as it seems that's the only time where it has really stirred up the hornets nest. I was actually very worried that Sigil would cause some reaction from Zenimax, more so in regards to paid boxed editions and less about the freely released wads (though any action had the potential to affect everything as a whole). The only other thing I could think of is if the community were to begin eclipsing or berating their own efforts and new entries to the series (where they may attribute it to hanging on too much of the past and not letting them progress the series forward) or fighting amongst ourselves to the point where they say "Nope. No more of this. Time to hang it up", but luckily that has not happened. Not trying to scare, but they do hold (and own) all the cards.

The community has been very fortunate that they have not intervened more than they have and we should be very grateful. In fact, there's not too many other games out there today with under such ownership where they give the community this much freedom over their legacy IP. For that they get many thanks and thumbs up, least from myself.

Edited by Buckshot

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1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

It's not about believing but about putting a bit of research into those claims themselves.

this can quickly turn into avalanche of research work, which require more time, money, and staff. so i can see how organisations/providers may not want to invest into this. in some cases they likely to believe somebody with established reputation, and of course they should obey court orders, but they aren't obliged to invest their own resources into investigating each case. that's what i meant; it is not about "some people are better than others to believe them", or something.

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3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

It's not about believing but about putting a bit of research into those claims themselves.

 

 

Except, once the hosting website (claims it) does research into origins of uploaded materials, you cannot hide behind "not knowing" anymore. So the reasoning is: why spend money in order to become more liable to claims?

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And that's where the problem lies. The entire legal setup here makes it too easy for them to weasel around.

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2 hours ago, Buckshot said:


The community has been very fortunate that they have not intervened more than they have and we should be very grateful. In fact, there's not too many other games out there today with under such ownership where they give the community this much freedom over their legacy IP. For that they get many thanks and thumbs up, least from myself.

 

One thing to be aware of is that you cannot retroactively void a license, so whatever stood in the original Doom license still applies to buyers of the game in the 90's. So they are relatively powerless here. id granted their users quite liberal rights to create custom content and those rights are still valid and will still be valid in the future.

 

Same for the GPL the source code was released under. Once it's out you can't take back the license.

 

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1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

One thing to be aware of is that you cannot retroactively void a license, so whatever stood in the original Doom license still applies to buyers of the game in the 90's. So they are relatively powerless here. id granted their users quite liberal rights to create custom content and those rights are still valid and will still be valid in the future.

 

Same for the GPL the source code was released under. Once it's out you can't take back the license.

 



I'd like to believe the same, and one would think that's how it is... but money and lawyers are capable of some pretty interesting things and they love finding loopholes.

 

Of course, I don't think any one disagrees it's a bad idea to push buttons to the point of making them flex their legal muscles. And for the most part, everyone stays within the boundaries of those terms set all that time ago and follows the rules. And we've seen what happens to projects that infringe on their IP's namesake or profiting from it (even by crowdsourcing and donations).

 

That's all the proof that they aren't after anyone but those who violate that term, and it's a good thing to see those terms very rarely exploited or broken by the community projects. Should aim to keep it that way and discourage projects that don't.

Edited by Buckshot

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10 hours ago, Buckshot said:



I'd like to believe the same, and one would think that's how it is... but money and lawyers are capable of some pretty interesting things and they love finding loopholes.

 

Yes, but software licenses - in particular the GPL - have already been found to be legally binding contracts by BOTH PARTIES by courts in many countries.

So the only "loophole" would be to find code in there they own a copyright to and which wasn't released under the respective license to begin with and would be illegal to use. Good luck with that.

Same with previously granted rights under a commercial license. Let's say if someone wanted to complain about KDiZD building on Doom's original maps, we could just dig out the original license from the 1993 release of the game which granted the rights to do what this mod did, and the game would be over for them - they'd actually have to prove that some content in there was taken from an inappropriate source.

 

Also, if you look around, none of the game companies have ever tried to shut down an old source release - they always went after the same thing - clueless modders who have no concept of copyright and trademarks and think they can use whatever comes across without a second thought. And we can consider ourselves lucky that they haven't been that thorough here, there's a lot of stuff on /idgames, and most likely even more on ModDB that is copyright infringing that they could just have these sites shut down if they wanted.

Most of the time they went after trademark violations, not borrowed content (like putting DN3D graphics in Doom.), or projects that tried to monetize the copyrighted work.

The fearmongering some people engage in here comes mainly from fundamentally not understanding what kind of infringement was committed in those cases.

 

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19 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Very unlikely when many people are starting to like this mod and praise it as "the premiere way to play Doom on modern days".

So it's the new brutal doom... great

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i) The project cannot be considered as being a modification for the original game for the usage of third-party game engine and any usage of Doom IP (including characters and artwork) in third-party game engine-based projects is infringing ZeniMax Media Inc Intellectual Property Rights.

And then there's also this.

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44 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Please give me the address of the lawyer writing this bullshit so I can spit him in the face an tell him he's a fucking liar.

For the record, the executable contains no graphics, no logos and nothing else aside from the name "Doom", which it needs to operate in the first place.

 

5 minutes ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

What the fuck? They can target source ports now? Shouldn't those be protected under the GPL license?

 

To me this sounds like classic scaremongering tactics to shut down a product they don't like (namely his mod.) Best attack as broadly as possible, and make sure that he sees no chance to fight this. The Ion Maiden lawsuit employed somilar things.

 

Isn't it a telling sign that they do not come after those "infringing" game engines? They know perfectly well they don't have anything in their hands here.

 

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35 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

I actually just registered to post this link here. Been lurking on Doomworld for years, this is my first post here. So... hi?

 

I've just seen this info on Zenimax not being happy with GZDoom all of a sudden. I don't care about Doom Remake 4, but I very much care about GZDoom, so this worries me quite much. I really hope this shit blows over soon, because any kind of potential crackdown on our source ports, or even mods for that matter, would suck a big one. Not to mention it would be bullshit.

 

I'm glad Graf is here, hope this gets sorted out soon.

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I uh... doubt that's the case honestly, but someone please explain if that's true.

 

I mean, it's impossible ZeniMax have not heard about GZDoom a lot by this point since they know about Brutal Doom which needs it to run. If they were concerned about it they would've probably given Graf & co. a C&D long ago.

 

6 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

To me this sounds like classic scaremongering tactics to shut down a product they don't like (namely his mod.)

 

Same here, but maybe someone else who's better versed in legalese can enlighten us if needed.

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I think it is the inclusion of "Doom" term in the "GZDoom" name, but I am not a lawyer.

 

Then again, I heard the colour "Brown" was trademarked in the US (haven't actually confirmed this though) so I also have no idea.

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I don't give a rats ass about the mod, but the lawyer can go to hell for trying to frame GZdoom as "infringing".

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That lawyer (and Zenimax with him) should be sued for slander. Too bad that they are too far away. That'd be fun... :D

 

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10 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

Yes, but software licenses - in particular the GPL - have already been found to be legally binding contracts by BOTH PARTIES by courts in many countries.

So the only "loophole" would be to find code in there they own a copyright to and which wasn't released under the respective license to begin with and would be illegal to use. Good luck with that.

 

 


They unfortunately do add stipulations in most EULA's and license agreements that the license is "subject to change without notice" or "can be modified/terminated/etc". Now, I don't know if that was ever mentioned in the EULA for DOOM, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's there. I think you're right though, it's probably nothing to be concerned about and I shouldn't worry about it. Don't know why I am, actually.

But here's some common stipulations they toss into EULA's and what the potential outcomes of are of each if they reneg the license.


https://www.eff.org/wp/dangerous-terms-users-guide-eulas
 

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2 minutes ago, Buckshot said:

 


They unfortunately do add stipulations in most EULA's and license agreements that the license is "subject to change without notice" or "can be modified/terminated/etc".

 

 

The problem with this is that you are not allowed to unilaterally alter a contract to the other party's disadvantage. That's plain and simply illegal in most jurisdictions. You have to coerce the other party into agreeing to your changes to make them effective.

 

So, I bought the original Doom games coming with this specific license. I never bought some of the re-releases or Doom 3 or any other game from id or Zenimax, I never agreed to any later license that might void the original one so that original license is still what I am bound to.

 

With modern games that require an internet connection this is different. They just need to pop up a license window with an update and make you agree to some hogwash of legalese and from that moment on the orignal license has lost all value.

 

Apple is particularly nasty here. They alter their developer license all 3 or 4 months and block all access to their resources unless you agree. This grinds my employer's operations to a halt each time because each time a lawyer has to review the license change to make sure they have not added some poisonous clause like signing over all property to Apple by agreeing.

 

 

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The fact the lawyer referred to GZDoom as a "third-party engine" tells me that he has misidentified a Doom engine sourceport as a genuinely separate engine. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a clue GPL protected sourceports were a thing, has simply seen the word "doom" in the .exe name and presumed it's IP infringement, rather than the original game's own engine.

 

Edit: Here's a question: in the GPL licence provided along with the source code release, does it stipulate that ports of the source either necessarily could or necessarily could not be named anything with "Doom" in the title?  Or is that a moot point because from a legal point of view it's all the same piece of software anyway?  So really it should continue to be called "Doom.exe"?

Edited by Bauul

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Even if it did, it wouldn't mean anything to the GPL source because it doesn't use that license.

On the other hand that code was released as "Doom source code", so it'd be a bit difficult to use it without referring to the trademark.

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It appears(?) the project was taken down again because it's a modified EXE (i.e it's not the normal GZDoom) misusing Doom's logos. So not any reason specific to GZDoom.

Edited by Edward850

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Well, it was taken down because a Zenimax lawyer found out about it and went on a fishing expedition to find a specific reason to send a C&D letter. If Doom Remake 4 had not used a single shred of copyrighted artwork would it still have been C&D'd? Is the name "Doom Remake 4" itself a reason to threaten to sue? It would be nice to talk to Zenimax Legal about their position on e.g. nominative fair use, and exactly what sort of things are the things they are looking out for.

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6 hours ago, Linguica said:

Well, it was taken down because a Zenimax lawyer found out about it and went on a fishing expedition to find a specific reason to send a C&D letter. If Doom Remake 4 had not used a single shred of copyrighted artwork would it still have been C&D'd? Is the name "Doom Remake 4" itself a reason to threaten to sue? It would be nice to talk to Zenimax Legal about their position on e.g. nominative fair use, and exactly what sort of things are the things they are looking out for.

 

It would be great if we could ask some of the Id developers. They seem quite approachable.

Edited by DooM_RO

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