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VoanHead

Alarming Shower Thought

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Hey fellas, so lemme cut straight to the chase: I just came back from work and had to shower, while I was showering I had this thought suddenly appear in my head that I need to have an answer to: Technically speaking, doesn’t Bethesda have the legal power to go full on Nintendo on the fanbase and start blasting cease and desists everywhere on all the stuff the community has made throughout all these 27 years? From all the community made wads, megawads, mods, weapon mods, and even source ports? I mean, Bethesda has always had a shitty streak, and since they’re owned by Zenimax, a corp full of greedy suits, it wouldn’t be surprising if Bethesda decided to pull off as something as slimy as that. Not to mention as stupid as well, since that’s technically shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, they have come out with their own source port, even if it does fall short compared with other source ports imo. I could be wrong about this, since the game has been opened sourced by the man himself, John Carmack, and there’s now way that would ever happen, and you guys may feel free to say “Man, stfu you fucking pleb. You don’t know what you are talking about, gtfo and never play DOOM again for that shite you just spat out.”

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I mean, id Software literally bundled community content in the most recent update.

 

EDIT: The source ports are one-hundred percent legal and they couldn't do anything if they tried. Nintendo wishes all emulators would disappear, but they're clean room and they can't do anything about it.

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A few years back, there was a certain standalone game that caught Zenimax's eye -- though freeware, the project very clearly used Doom's IP, with monster designs & names that are unmistakably Doom (i.e. exactly the sort of projects that Nintendo likes to shut down). Zenimax Legal contacted the authors and demanded... that the project change its name to not have "Doom" in it. That's it. The game's still there and otherwise un-meddled-with.

 

We're fine.

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7 minutes ago, Xaser said:

A few years back, there was a certain standalone game that caught Zenimax's eye -- though freeware, the project very clearly used Doom's IP, with monster designs & names that are unmistakably Doom (i.e. exactly the sort of projects that Nintendo likes to shut down). Zenimax Legal contacted the authors and demanded... that the project change its name to not have "Doom" in it. That's it. The game's still there and otherwise un-meddled-with.

 

We're fine.

I looked into it, and this actually gave me some relief. I dunno man, I still don’t really trust Bethesda, while ig it was alright of them to bundle in community content to their port, I still believe that they should’ve given those creators some royalties since Bethesda didn’t even do shit in the development of those megawads and since people still have to pay, albeit, $5 for the game. But then again, that’s another argument in of itself. Thanks man.

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3 minutes ago, Rhainfall said:

I looked into it, and this actually gave me some relief. I dunno man, I still don’t really trust Bethesda, while ig it was alright of them to bundle in community content to their port, I still believe that they should’ve given those creators some royalties since Bethesda didn’t even do shit in the development of those megawads and since people still have to pay, albeit, $5 for the game. But then again, that’s another argument in of itself. Thanks man.

None of the content was hosted without the permission of the creators. All the community members who created that content are regulars here, and even the team behind the Classic Doom ports are here. The Unity port had a rough start, no mistake, but it's been a good relationship so far.

 

Shoot, they interviewed Revae.

https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en/article/56vna8TkoUXCQkQUaHIFyT/nods-to-mods-interview-rekkr

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Bethesda have been pro mod for years and I see no evidence that's going to change. Raging paranoia and speculation online isn't evidence.

 

In the case of classic doom, to undo a quarter century of modding would cost thousands of dollars, waste hours upon hours of time, and financially gain them three fifths of fuck all.

 

And it wouldn't even work because people would work around it. Good luck sending a cease and desist to leethaxor9963 seeding a ton of wads and source ports on pirate Bay.

 

Pretty sure you have nothing to worry about.

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Bethesda has owned Id and Doom for over a decade. We would probably know by now if Bethesda was unhappy with Doom mods and the community.

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Source ports and the original code for Doom are licensed under the GPL, and one important condition of that license is that you can't go back to a private license and it must remain free and open source software forever. So it's actually illegal to try to shutdown a source port.

 

Mods and wads doesn't (usually) contain the original sounds and graphics nor pretend they are the original game, so good luck trying to shutdown those.

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As far as I know source ports are legal because of the whole GLP stuff but when you think about it Bethesda may go, as you said, full Nintendo and ban them to push their unity port, for whatever reason

 

i know doesn't make sense

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12 minutes ago, TenenteZashu said:

As far as I know source ports are legal because of the whole GLP stuff but when you think about it Bethesda may go, as you said, full Nintendo and ban them to push their unity port, for whatever reason

 

i know doesn't make sense

 

There are no ifs or buts about it. Source ports are 100% legal.

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Carmack gave the code to the community and ZeniMax has respected that. As Egg Boy pointed out, they've owned Doom for over a decade now. They would've taken action a LONG time ago if they felt like being greedy assholes with their shiny new IP. The source code was released under a legal, open-source licence to the community that has long respected said licence and ZeniMax or in this case now, Microsoft, has no legal leg to stand on should they ever change their tune. Besides, it's obvious that the opposite has occurred with the embrace of community-made projects now becoming sanctioned works bundled into the new re-releases of Classic Doom along with the Unity port. I don't blame Rhainfall for having this alarming shower thought given the behaviour of some other companies like Nintendo, but Bethesda/ZeniMax have been pro-modding for the longest time and have been doing everything they can to capitalise on the strength of the modding communities around their games.

 

There's no need to worry in the case of the creative output of the Doom community. I think it's safe to say that the stuffed-suits who own the game very much respect the community's output and wishes to work together.

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If id had been bought out by a publisher such as Activision, EA, or Ubisoft then I could see them trying something shitty; perhaps not trying to get rid of legally protected content such as GPL ports, but I wouldn't be at all surprised with take down notices being issued for anything using content from the IWADs (in EA's case they would also have tried charging us for the fan-made DLC in the official port!)

 

However, as Bethesda is one of the few publishers in the last decade or so who've actually made their own game development tool publicly available, i.e. the Creation Kit for Skyrim and Fallout 4, this would be very off-brand for them.

 

I'm surprised no-one in this thread has mentioned the fact that Bethesda's parent company Zenimax is now owned by Microsoft. Considering the XBox One is the most mod-friendly of the current console generation, I don't think there's anything to worry about there either (and I say this reluctantly as an owner of all Sony consoles from the PS2 onwards and all Nintendo consoles since the GameCube, but not a single XBox).

Edited by NiGHTMARE

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Let's say that there wasn't any evidence as to Bethesda supporting or discouraging modding, I think they would be smart enough to know that doing something like that (especially with Doom since modding kept it alive) would result in major backlash and the loss of like 70% of the current playerbase.

3 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

I think it's safe to say that the stuffed-suits who own the game very much respect the community's output and wishes to work together.

to resoooooolve this problem

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12 minutes ago, NiGHTMARE said:

I wouldn't be at all surprised with take down notices being issued for anything using content from the IWADs (in EA's case they would also have tried charging us for the fan-made DLC in the official port!)

...
So in an alternate universe, I would have probably gotten royalties from a good vanilla DOOM Megawad?

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No, because EA would have only used wads where the developers had signed an EULA with a clause that looked something like the following:

 

Quote

Some of EA´s Games allows you to create and make available to other users your own created content (“User Generated Content” or “UGC”). You hereby grant EA and its affiliates a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, publicly display and publicly perform your UGC, and derivative works of your UGC, in connection with the operation and promotion of the Game.

 

 

This is based on the actual EULA for Paradox Interactive's Crusader Kings III (all I changed was "Paradox" to "EA").

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1 hour ago, croc_rock said:

Let's say that there wasn't any evidence as to Bethesda supporting or discouraging modding, I think they would be smart enough to know that doing something like that (especially with Doom since modding kept it alive) would result in major backlash and the loss of like 70% of the current playerbase.

Except they've been adding mod support (officially titled add-ons) for the Unity ports, which should be obvious as to what that means already.

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They seem to be proud of the fanbase, and source ports cannot be targeted by legal actions unless they start being picky with the names since it's open source. They totally could, but i think i trust them to know that would be bad PR. Otherwise i don't see how they could try to shut down wads and custom original content, even more so after the new steam port started adding those in an official platform.

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I thought this was going to be something about a reverse IMPSE of sorts....

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32 minutes ago, Maes said:

I thought this was going to be something about a reverse IMPSE of sorts....


That wouldn't be alarming, just standard fare

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12 minutes ago, magicsofa said:


That wouldn't be alarming, just standard fare

Unless said Imp forgot the lube this time.

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Let's say that Doom's source code wasn't released in any capacity, people would just see it as a cool fps with historical value that got a weird reboot in 2004 and a few fan-made maps, but that it's not really interesting nowadays aside of being a curiosity.

 

Fan-made modifications and ports are what has keep Doom relevant all these years, people are surprised that this old game is still getting content and that it can run on anything, even before doom 2016 this was the case, Bethesda would fuck it up immensely if one day they decided to shut down all of it for no reason.

 

Besides, Bethesda loves mods, just look at Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, i don't know why Doom would be an exception.

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For Nintendo, it is important to remember that the SMW ROM hacking scene seems to remain mostly unaffected.

 

Heck, Nintendo didn't completely abandon the idea of a level editor featuring content from multiple games. Even after Redigit was forced to take down his Mario fangame (SMBX) due to him putting ads on the webpage (obviously a no), the multiple content idea of its level editor continued to live with Super Mario Maker.

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It's funny that people are still convinced that Bethesda, the people behind Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4, is a company that hates modders and wants to C&D all game mods ever made.

 

Just you wait. It's gonna happen any day now.

 

 

Look at this: https://bethesda.net/en/game/doom-widescreen-mods

 

Releasing modding assets, the first step to banning mods!

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The two things I can think of that they would have legal standing on are trademark disputes regarding the usage of the trademark “Doom” in a way that threatens their ownership of it and also the very laid back usage of derivative works and copyrighted content (bringing textures from Doom into your Doom II mod, modifying an imp sprite).

 

With regards to the second, I don’t believe there is any burden to defend your copyright lest you lose it. So the reality is, those potential copyright violations have likely zero negative impact on revenue. Rather, the good will with the modding community as a whole through avoiding petty copyright lawsuits is probably more financially beneficial as the community essentially provides free promotional labor for Doom by keeping things alive in between official releases. Also, culturally speaking, the issue of derivative works is a very modern, youth-oriented phenomenon going back to maybe Gen X and the 80s when “sampling” in music became a huge thing. Some people fought against it, and they certainly had the legal right to do so, but it’s a losing battle culturally. Only those embracing it would really succeed (if a track that samples something gets popular and financially successful, figure out how to divide royalties, versus trying to stamp it out entirely). This sampling culture also exists with memes who’s copyright is pretty nebulous most of the time due to anonymity anyway, and video content such as YouTube and TikTok. Creating some new derivative work based on an imp from a 25+ year old game is in the same vein; it’s not legal under copyright law, but it’s culturally normalized to the point that the “machine” isn’t necessarily just going to order a cease and desist but look at the bigger picture. In Doom’s case, it’s safe to say the decision to not care unless it’s something super-egregious has been made. But it is of course a non-legal decision and instead a corporate legal teams choice of what to worry about, which is never guaranteed.

 

The first point involves trademark law and trademarks must be defended or else you could lose your trademark claim. This means that no matter how much of a “good guy” a company wants to be, they have to send lawyers out to defend trademark violations. So trademark law is also complicated but basically, anyone using “Doom” to imply a generic shooter or using “Doom” to imply some endorsement or affiliation could get in trouble. The most obvious potential issues would be with source ports that have Doom in the name. However, the lawyers in charge obviously determined that’s not a threat or they’d have had to change their names long ago. I don’t know enough about trademark law to say why but if we assume the lawyers don’t want to bring about a suit but would have to if they thought it threatened their right to the trademark, then it means at the very least a lawyer who’s goal isn’t to sue the community can come up with some reason as to why naming a source port after Doom is an acceptable use that doesn’t step on anyone’s toes.

 

The source code of Doom is open sourced and that cannot be put back in the bottle.

 

Maps for Doom cannot be legally targeted either, AFAIK. It’s just data that represents an original work. I don’t think there is any IP law that would cover original work in a certain format. Maybe if somehow the file format was encumbered by patents that were being violated (like with GIF in the old days). But that’s not the case. And I don’t even know if that would actually apply, GIF was an issue with browsers implementing decoders, I have no idea if people encoding GIFs were liable as well (assuming they used non-Compuserve software to do so).

 

So in short, it’s unlikely based on what’s unfolded so far and some things are straight up impossible as far as I can tell to even begin any sort of case against.

 

I’m not a lawyer, I’ve just read up on a lot of this stuff through my work as a software developer who had to work with lawyers in the past and understand open source licensing, etc.

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9 hours ago, Rhainfall said:

I mean, Bethesda has always had a shitty streak, and since they’re owned by Zenimax, a corp full of greedy suits, it wouldn’t be surprising if Bethesda decided to pull off as something as slimy as that.

I'll expand a bit on my previous reply.

 

Yes, corporate greed is real. It is, after all, both how a corporation is supposed to work (they are created to earn money) and how a corporation survives (a corp that stops making money is a corp that goes bankrupt and folds). Now let's examine how this greed is expressed in the case of Shitty Streak Slimy Bethesda and their interaction with mods:

Now what can be concluded from this? To me it looks like the takeaway is "Bethesda financially benefits from having a large modding community for their games because not only does it serve as a selling point for their games that there are so many mods for them, but they also directly profit from selling some of these mods, and they even benefit in a third way because they can hire modders who've already trained themselves how to use the modding tools which means Beth doesn't need to spend time and money training their new hires before they can be productive."

Like, that's already three separate financial incentives to keep modders around. Three ways having mods for their games allows them to gain -- or save -- money.

 

Now let's look at what they've done with their game. With Skyrim they've introduced mods on the consoles. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas only allowed mods on the PC, but with Skyrim they started setting up a system so that people can upload mods on Bethesda's own servers and then people who play on a Xbox or PlayStation can download and install them!

 

But how about Doom? After all we're on Doomworld, not Skyrimworld, so we care about Doom here. Well. It seems like a selection of Doom mods created by Doom modders are getting an official release allowing people to play them on consoles. It's as if the existence of a large modding community for Doom was getting turned into a selling point for the latest official re-release of Doom on consoles.

 

 

Now let's speculate about what would happen if your fears were justified after all and they started Ceasing-and-Desisting everything under the Sun. Besides the PR disaster and how it wouldn't even work because how do you cease-and-desist thousands upon thousands of projects that were already completed decades ago and whose creators were identified only by an online nickname and a long-dead email address one some long-dead server, but nevermind that. Remember, the corporation is greedy. How do they financially benefit from ruining their public image, drying up their source of cheap talent, and destroying their games' selling point?

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Wouldn't be able to happen. They would have to try and take town billions of doom wads making it an impossible task. It's like emulation, Emulators are legal. Roms are legal. Dumping your own roms to play is legal but downloading a rom whether you own the game or not is illegal. Of course downloading roms wont get you into legal trouble. Think about it like this. Gzdoom is the emulator and doom2 is the rom. The emulator is legal anyway and as long as you own the rom then you are in the clear. So there isn't much Bethesda can do. I'm pretty sure they can take down wads that use their IP's like fallout or skyrim but thats so unlikely i wouldn't even consider it a possibility.

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13 minutes ago, Doom Factory said:

but downloading a rom whether you own the game or not is illegal.

Depends on the jurisdiction. Some make it legal to download the ROM of the game if you own that said game.

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Demons shower in blood, except for Arch-Viles.   They prefer golden showers.   Hell actually has a sophisticated sprinkler system with knobs for one or the other instead of hot or cold.

 

Also, a bunch of people here, some of them demonsexuals, are probably picturing you in the shower now.   Sweet dreams.

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16 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

My alarming shower thoughts involve a baron of hell noclipping ghost-style through the tile while my eyes are closed shampooing 

Matt, this is why you always keep a rocket launcher beside the soap in case of such contingencies.

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