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Reisal

Not sure if this is good or bad (Sgt Mark Patreon in question)

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Not entirely sure if good or bad for the community in general..

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they want to talk so that they get to hear his reaction to how badly they're going to fuck him

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I don't know why every gets so bent out of shape over cease and desist orders. All you have to do is...cease and desist, to avoid possible further legal action. If you've adequately proven that you've stopped support and development of whatever it is their complaint is in regard to, not much else can conceivably happen. At least not anything a halfway-decent judge wouldn't throw out. That said, even if they stop Sergeant from continuing to distribute or support BD, that doesn't mean that the files can't still be circulated online. That can't be stopped, at least no more easily than warez. In fact, it'd be harder than that because technically, BD isn't warez.

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Well, I see this as bad sign. It often starts with one person and later, everything rolls like a big big stone from hill which damages and destroys everything in their path. We should be prepared as community. 

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I can see that. Still, even though the big B has a battalion of legal staff on retainer, I think even they know that litigating against the Doom community is a losing proposition. Not only is there nothing to gain from trying to monetize mod community projects (presumably), but Doom itself is worth more to them as a name or IP than the actual classic Doom yielding any money. So they'd succeed only in alienating a sizable group of people whom they would like to count as potential future consumers if they release new games within the Doom franchise. Just because they have grounds or rights to litigate, potentially, doesn't mean they necessarily will.

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Someone on reddit mentioned the Skyrim Creation Club, i.e. payed mods.

 

That sounds like a definite possibility.

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I don't know how I feel about this either. As far as I'm aware there have been issues with things like "fair use" or "transformative work" for years by now, and legislation is having a hard time keeping up with these things on a very fundamental level, but those have been issues related to monetizing content on YouTube for the most part (ad-revenue shares). When it's down to something like donations of sorts the case might be an entirely different one. I will have to agree with Haruko though, if this thing comes crushing down, then it's going to be a problem that has the potential to stick for quite a bit of time.

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Perhaps its to discuss giving him a job or to take 50% of the Patreon. Maybe they'd like to give him $500 for a job well done. Perhaps a way to make it an official release since its had the buzz that its had.

 

If a C&D happens... be happy its a C&D rather than a lawsuit in general. There are others that just get hit with a lawsuit and upon the lawsuit or losing the lawsuit they can't talk about the lawsuit.

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OMG people put away your tinfoil hats. Sergeat_Mark_IV's Patreon is dedicated to making a living off of Doom mods. This is the reason he is being targeted. The whole Doom mod community didn't come under fire when The Doom Roguelike was targeted & it's not going to be attacked after this either.

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As far as I'm aware, that Patreon exists only so he can receive support for producing modifications to an existing, presumably legally purchased copy of the game.

 

If someone is making money from anything called or connected to Doom, Bethesda has a right to investigate, but I think it's a troubling sign this is what they'd target, as would anything that's mods rather than stand-alone software.

 

Then again, when you get close to selling mods, I guess that is a massive gray area and could be argued to hurt the brand. Think D! Zone releases. And they have a vested interest in curtailing a scenario where every big new megawad comes with a price-tag attached. I doubt anyone who doesn't introduce money into their modding will ever hear a peep along these lines.

 

So my initial reaction was "bad," and I actually just talked myself into realizing a C&D, if this is where things go, could be justifiable, though I'm not wishing it on anyone.

Edited by Cipher

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7 minutes ago, Jaws In Space said:

OMG people put away your tinfoil hats. Sergeat_Mark_IV's Patreon is dedicated to making a living off of Doom mods. This is the reason he is being targeted. The whole Doom mod community didn't come under fire when The Doom Roguelike was targeted & it's not going to be attacked after this either.

What's that? Tinfoil hats? You're the one wearing a space helmet.

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11 minutes ago, Cipher said:

Then again, when you get close to selling mods, I guess that is a massive gray area and could be argued to hurt the brand. Think D! Zone releases.

So do aftermarket ricer accessories for cars... and yet when was the last time you heard anyone taking action against them? Sure, if someone put the logo "Ferrari" on a set of tacky spoilers, the real Ferrari would have every right to take legal action. But someone simply selling tacky aftermarket spoilers FOR a Ferrari...well...taste considerations aside, they wouldn't be doing anything illegal (unless they all suddenly turned Apple and you need their blessing to produce compatible/approved accessories).

 

However, in the automotive world, the general approach is that any damages or support requests generated from non-approved aftermarket accessories (which may mean 99.999% of cases), are simply not covered by warranty and that's it. They can't go after every random sweatshop in China.

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Intellectually, it's hard to argue that any moves to curtail the freedom of Doom-mapping and modding aren't bad for the community, to some extent. Personally, even if it came to a hyperbole like Ancient Aliens costing $3 and equivalent releases following suit, I wouldn't personally mind. I also feel you could take that to court and win, based on previous transformative precedent. I can see why Bethesda wouldn't want that, but ...

 

So yeah, now I've come back around. It's the middle of the night here and I probably shouldn't be trying to navigate my feelings on largely untested electronic copyright law.

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I think in the long run people are worrying about something they dont have enough information about. They could have contacted a lot of people before Sgtmark, so lets not jump to  conclusions just yet.

 

Bethesda have always encouraged people to mod for their games, no matter what. even with this creation club nonsense, they still are happy with people modding for fallout 4 and skyrim, I cant see that changing. I dont think we're in any danger to be honest, theres no profit in releasing a creation club for doom 1 and 2, so they probably just want to ask questions. But hey, lets wait and see. It could be catastrophically bad, or it could be no harm at all. No point in guessing or thinking one way or another until we see how it progresses.

 

Edit: At the same time, Sgtmark is a bit of a moron. He is whether he likes it or not trying to profit off a game Bethesda owns the rights to. They're going to take notice. the community is safe as long as people dont try to profit from the work they do, which honestly they shouldn't be doing. People should do stuff for doom 1 and doom 2 for a passion, its such an old game, profiting from it is pointless.

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1 hour ago, Phade102 said:

I think in the long run people are worrying about something they dont have enough information about. They could have contacted a lot of people before Sgtmark, so lets not jump to  conclusions just yet.

To be fair, if you just look at how much attention SGT mark gets in general by certain outlets he was basically the most likely one to get targetted.

 

1 hour ago, Phade102 said:

Bethesda have always encouraged people to mod for their games, no matter what. even with this creation club nonsense, they still are happy with people modding for fallout 4 and skyrim, I cant see that changing.

Modding isn't necessarily the problem. Making money off of modding a copyrighted product is a different beast entirely.

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To be honest if this is a C&D then it would just look like "Bethesda is just being mardy at the fact that the Creation Club is a miserable mess that nobody liked that pretty much flopped instantly", it would be a big old bad PR move to do that.

 

Bethesda is making a fair few mistakes recently, I hope this is just being blown out of proportion and they're playing nice and they are simply inquisitive into Mark's monetary success.

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This makes me feel genuinely frustrated. I have had a lot of hope in Bethesda lately, practically, they revived 3 incredible sagas that were frozen for a long time. However, I have witnessed recent sad and greedy mistakes they have been making, the first being the remastering of Skyrim. And reading this, I worry that they will be able to completely disable any kind of activity outside of their '' Creation Club ''.

 

I hope that nothing more than this is part of my imagination, but I have lost incredible games by greedy companies, companies that at first looked incredible and passionate, but with time and power, change of bench.

 

I will not reach conclusions until I have more information, Bethesda has always been very involved among its fans, I hope it continues like this.

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4 hours ago, Job said:

I don't know why every gets so bent out of shape over cease and desist orders. All you have to do is...cease and desist, to avoid possible further legal action.

You've answered your own question - the fact that people have to stop doing something they and thousands of others love is why they get bent out of shape. Sometimes C & D's are justified but in the case of donations for Doom modding/Brutal Doom, I'm of the mind that it really isn't.

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1 hour ago, Nevander said:

I didn't know you could get a C&D for donations for a hobby.

Are they still donations for a hobby if, say, patrons start getting early or extra content, or is it selling game mods at that point?

 

I've landed at the point where I don't think it should matter either way (though I'm pretty sure it's legally untested), but that's your explanation for "Why attention on Brutal Doom Patreon and not x other mod/wad?"

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4 hours ago, Cipher said:

As far as I'm aware, that Patreon exists only so he can receive support for producing modifications to an existing, presumably legally purchased copy of the game.

Didn't he make a "Brutal Doom Starter Kit" based off Freedoom so he had an IWAD to bundle with BD, but BD was still using the edited Doom sprites rather than sprites based on Freedoom's assets so the whole thing was questionable?

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I think on whether or not legal action would be warranted would depend on how the Patron account is presented. If it were worded as such that monetary compensation is desired for work directly related to a mod,  then there could be a case.  We all know who SgtMarkIV is and what he does and why anyone would consider donating to his Patron account,  but a Patron account can be opened for completely arbitrary reasons not directly related to modding or anything else for that matter.  

 

I don't think that Mark is making money hand over fist from his Patron account.  Best case scenario, just enough to make up for the loss of revenue doing something more lucrative, like a running lemonade stand.  Now, if Doomworld or another gaming site were to pursue advertisement revenue not to make a profit but to make up for operating costs, could Bethesda issue a C&D in that scenario?  

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5 minutes ago, Gez said:

Didn't he make a "Brutal Doom Starter Kit" based off Freedoom so he had an IWAD to bundle with BD, but BD was still using the edited Doom sprites rather than sprites based on Freedoom's assets so the whole thing was questionable?

Dang, did he? I don't follow BD at all. That's asking for a C&D right off the bat if so, and I'd be totally behind any request to stop distributing that, but if that's accurate, it seems like a separate thing from the Patreon.

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4 hours ago, Manuel-K said:

Someone on reddit mentioned the Skyrim Creation Club, i.e. payed mods.

 

That sounds like a definite possibility.

I don't think so, since Brutal Doom is a mod for GZDoom, which isn't something that Bethesda is distributing/selling. 

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Pillar of Salt gave me permission to repost this image from Brutal Doom's Discord:

 

Screenshot_20171004-154545.png.9b611981c6ce873a1845d7e8f71cded5.png

 

I personally do not have access to this page.

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