Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Can you sell work made in the Divinity Engine?

Ok, let me get this straight. You are pitching a fit because people don't agree that you should be able to earn money from what is largely another person's copyright work, and you're calling other's entitled?

Also, just so you're aware, many of the people you are calling entitled whiners with their heads up their asses are modders who put out quality content for free because they enjoy it. We are long time members of the modding community. We do it for the community, because we enjoy learning, because we enjoy the challenge, because it interests us, and because it's fun.

Yes I'm pitching a fit as you can clearly see from my writing that I'm being completely hysterical and a drama queen about the whole ordeal.

Actually I'm just annoyed that people feel the need to restrict others because of their own greed, I'm just asking for more options here, I'm not saying free mods should stop all together, I'm saying we could have free and paid mods and Larian could also benefit off the paid mods and bring us even better future games.

But you are self-entitled You want to limit it to only free mod, you want to be more restrictive about it, the choice isn't yours but with so much protest I doubt it could ever be a possibility as a respect to the fan base.

If you are a Modder you can still achieve everything you mentioned and you can make a little bit of buck on the side to pay maybe your food expenses as a gratitude and appreciation from your mod fans. Geez.

People are acting like it's an outright scam. As if it isn't actually work invested and money is unfairly taken from them, it makes me giggle.

@mod sellers

Here, let me share some stuff:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,209.0.html
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=97132362
http://frontieres-nwn2.winnerbb.com/

3 major mods.
Thousands of hours in the making.
For free.
Shared code.

Yes, I know, it must hurt your little capitalist brain to see this, huh ? Making my day


And because we prize th value of Gifting. And because I myself had so much fun with amazing free mods, that I gave it back to the modding community as a tribute to nice people.

Thank you sir I really didn't know there was any truely free mods in this world you have enlightened me, I didn't know the original counter-strike was also a completely free mod that got bought out by valve and they became quite wealthy but anyway...

So heres the thing, I have no problem with you doing your thing... and for free...

So heres the other thing, Why do you have a problem with modders making money from people who actually want to buy their mod (given that Larian allows it)

You see? You want your cake and eat it. You want to restrict others.

I feel like you only read the first and last paragraphs of my post. Like I stated in the second, if you're making something that's your own (more detailed explanation of that in my previous post) I see no reason that you shouldn't be allowed to sell it. But at the point that it's something that should be sellable it also shouldn't be dependent on owning a different game unless it's pricing model is similar to DLC.

I get that the divinity engine is nice for this type of game, but with the lack of stability, features and documentation that comes with the tools I don't see this engine being something worth (at this point in time) investing the effort it would take to make such a complete work unless you are extremely passionate about it. If you're just out for profits, at what point does having 3 months worth of work bug out because the editor derped become a problem?

I'm not saying "OH NOES! SOMEONE WANTS MONIES!!" But I don't think you'll find the market you're expect asking for someone to pay for a mod. You would probably make more from making it and offering a donation button assuming you've released something that's quality. I've personally donated to modders, I always take adfly links where made available and can be very generally supportive. However if money is expected before I can even use it I'll probably scroll right passed as many others will I can assume.

I get that modding takes effort, time and resources. I've made a handful of small mods for minecraft, I recently started work on one for Kerbal Space program that won't be anywhere near ready for release for a while and I've made mods for all 3 of the most recent elder scrolls games as well as the 2 fallout games. That being said, knowing what it actually CAN take to make a mod, I agree the modder should be able to gain recompense, but that recompense should come from people that feel the modder deserves it OR it is of sufficient quality that it would be accepted as it's own game.

I'm not trying to start any kind of argument, I'm only saying that the resources Larian would have to put out to make sure "nude mod #42" isn't charging $50 for nearly 0 content is likely not going to happen. Sure you could make a painstaking process for applying for a "partnership" or whatever it would be a pain as well as strict acceptance guidelines but let's face it, there will be more people applying with little junk like that than there will be people who legitimately deserve acceptance.

I also don't mean to say ANY mod is garbage or crap, Anyone willing to put in whatever amount of effort is necessary deserves some level of respect for their work.

How would you suggest a fair pricing kind of plan work? I'll say it now, a charge what you want plan would not work out, there'd be people undervaluing their work, and people severely over valuing theirs. If you're thinking, "well I just thought like $5 a sale" wouldn't you be better off just going free, getting that extra exposure and having some people donating $5, some donating $10, and the occasional under $5 or not at all than having 1/3 as many people even bothering to read the description because it has a price tag?

Anyway, I'm gonna leave it at that. It's:
A) Not worth arguing about.
B) Not something we can actually change one way or the other, it's entirely in Larian's court what comes of it.

I did read your posts Neurotoxin, it's just hard to soak it all in and address everything.
Anyway I do agree with a lot of what you're saying.

However I personally don't feel donations (are they even allowed for divinity?) will work for story driven games, they usually do well for Multiplayer games that have a good amount of replay value.

Most people who play a story campaign will only play it once, finish it and think well that was great but meh, and move on and forget about it. They also won't come back for new updates, bug fixes and side quests so the story needs to be finished fully.

My idea was to advertise it through screen shots, story line, and videos and then maybe charge like $5 for a whole campaign.

Donations are great way for multiplayer games where people are constantly reminded and come back and engage in a community, It also works well with Twitch gamers, the popular channels that advertise their donations live make a lot of money from playing copyrighted games.

@Blazedwhatever
You don't get it, do you, that if you sell a mod, and if in doing this mod, you borrow anything from someone, you will owe him something (unless he is dumb enough to give it to you for free, and you get paid, and him not...).
So if you start selling mods, people won't share with you, because then, the gifters would be the fools, and the sellers rip the benefit of it. This is morally wrong, understand?
So if you start selling mods, it would be the end of the sharing modding community.
I for me don't want that, so yes, I would restrict you in doing so.

'nuff said.
However, seeing the morality of Larian, or the lack of it, I am a little fearfull about this :-(

Actually no I don't get you at all.

I don't want to use anyone's mod or whatever in my own game, I will be doing it myself + anyone else that I can recruit who will get a split share, the only people I would be taking from is Larian and that's why they need to allow it, maybe with a 50/50 revenue share or something for using their content to reinvent new content.

I'm not slightest interested in stealing content from other modders, that would be illegal.

Of course you are not.
So your gonna do your mod, never ask a question that would be answered for free by sharing people, not watching a free tut video, not reading a free piece of advice, not copying a single line of code ?
Good luck with your project.
I for myself will stick to
honesty: Rigale credits;
sharing: Random treasure hunt code + all Rigale code is available anyways;
and gifting.

Oh my god I just facepalm myself so hard...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
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Holy shit, seriously?

So any educational video or article you've read you don't think you're entitled to use it in your career.

Wait so all those FREE 3D tutorials I watched means I can't charge for my services as a 3D Artist?

I can't argue with such a moronic person, I'm done with you Cromcrom, no more replies to you.

That was funny though nice one, Thanks.

Good riddance.
edit:


In YOUR world, you would have had to pay for all this stuff...

You do raise a good point, especially considering the state documentation on the editor is currently. If Paid mods were implemented, nobody would want to share how they figured out how to do x thing because now they have a leg up on everyone else.



I still to this day play Fallout 3, fallout:NV, (Admitedly rarely ->) Oblivion, Skyrim, I even recently just reinstalled the first 2 fallout games. The first thing I do after a hiatus from playing any of these games I so love, is go look at mods. One of my main bookmarks is the mod release section of the Kerbal Space Program forum which is not a multiplayer game. Sure, donations and such are viable in multiplayer games, but I feel they are more so in single player. What's better than finding a new mod for a game you love, SP or MP? I prefer modding single player games over multiplayer because it's a pain for MP. Gotta have the right version for the game, the game itself has to be the right version, then everyone needs to make sure they're on the exact same version of (I've been on servers with 50+ mods without a modpack) all their mods, then one mod screws up so you have some running at newest some running at 3 versions ago and some that will never be updated and you have to abandon to even play with your friends because OMG! LEASHES ARE AMAZING WE HAVE TO UPDATE NAO! I've run a MC server before and because it took 4 days for bukkit to update we lost 75% of our playerbase because EMERALDS!

I'm just saying that Donations, referral links and even making your own videos of tutorials or features of you mods (with ads enabled) can be viable no matter whether it's singleplayer or multi.

The second point I quoted there goes back to a point from my previous post. By having a price tag you'll be losing tons of people that are going to go, Oh a new mod named "SUPER AMAZING BEST MOD EVER!", oh a pricetag? meh no thanks, without even reading the description. There are TONS of people out there that are willing to donate to a free mod. I've seen people so happy with mods that they've begged the author for a donate button. I'll relate to fishing, Sure with a price tag you'll get a fish of a specific size, but at a much lower rate and NO chance of catching a lunker (someone willing to donate more than the $5 price tag you would have set.)

I know I rebutted the multiplayer argument earlier but back to my MC server days. The server I ran had none of the pay to win crap a lot of them do/did at the time, like buying diamonds or gear or w/e. The only thing we offered for donations was a nametag color change. I had been talking to a friend that ran another server with the pay to win stuff and he said in the long run they had just about everybody donate $5-$10. I had a guy, he'd been with us for a few weeks. He told me he loved how we didn't charge for in game items and other things like that. He donated $75, which paid for the server for 3 more months. He brought friends with, who also donated, who brought friends.. etc.

It's just food for thought. I just strongly feel that keeping it free is a better choice for both the community and you. People can be very generous. On that note, no offense intended, but if you're modding to make money, you're doing it for the wrong reason.

I got ripped off I had to Pay for an Education... All I wanted was to learn...

My teachers taught me things they learned for free from their experiences and their own works, why couldn't they just teach me for free?

They also thought me things that was available for free on the internet, but when I asked for a refund they told me to go **** off.

Oh and life is unfair...

Everything should be free, I'm starving, I'm dying but the supermarket won't give me free bread... even the stale ones that they are going to throw away...

oh life is so unfair...

Ha.

You might think of cromcrom as moronic, yet he actually delivered something in his life. I haven't seen any examples in any of your "how can I suck money from people and into my own pockets posts" of what you have achieved in your "career".

Yesterday I wrote an application to load an L3DT heightfile and generate a DOS terrain from it. L3DT being a paying application. I'm in contact with the author of that program cause a while back I had to write libraries to load his lisensed file types into memory data. He had no problem letting me open source that code. I worked about 3 weeks on that in my spare time, lets say about 3 hours a day so that would be 9 days of work at my wages 1020 € or around 1200 $. So according to you anyone should now pay me because I worked on something I enjoyed doing in my free time. Which means I should also pay taxes on it. That in turn means I would have to register myself as a self employed person, which costs money. Again this would mean I'm an official institution that has to formally agree with Larian that I will use their engine.

Then again if you want to bypass all the legal obligations, to make yourself rich and cheat your government out of revenue to help society, I guess that is your preogrative, just makes you a bad person to the community , but well that's fine now isn't it. The world needs more greedy persons that only look after themselfes not enough of them yet.

I'm really happy for you, that you are willing to do things for free in your life. Now let’s close that case.

Thanks for hinting that I'm a greedy person, actually I don't consider myself greedy as I only barely make a living as a freelance 3D artist, and the I spend the rest of my time doing thing I enjoy.

Maybe you should go talk about greed in CEO and Business forums.

On a side note I have contributed to real charities before, I've worked 3 months for a charity for free, I've worked in an animal shelter too.

Games and gamers are not worthy of charity though so sorry I don't feel I need to contribute free efforts here. Thanks.

I didn't know modding was a get rich quick scheme, and that everyone would be throwing money at my mod, I actually thought I'd barely make sales but anyway.

I am a moron. I should have charged Zukumani for that:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=525019#Post525019

However, Seeing the thousands of hours I spent into modding as a hobby, the sleepless nights bug hunting, I must admit I sometimes wished I could have made some money out of it.
I was mentally raped to release Rigale code, because at that time, I was a "keep it to myself" coder. But oh the joy when I released the ton of works/code for free (well, not really free actually, just asking for credits out of it...), the relief.
Modding should stay about sharing and gifting.
Then, if great mods catch Larian 's attention, their call to make them stand alone, DLC's and stuff. But it should be a "prove yourself", not a "deal before I deliver" system.


Mods sellers are not worthy of charity though so sorry I don't feel I need to contribute free efforts here. Thanks.

Cromcrom, I said I won't reply to you but I guess I did. As a respect to you, so that I never use your help I have now clicked on your user name and clicked on "Ignore this User". Now you will not contribute anything towards me, not that I care.

You seem to think making a short forum information post about something you know off the top of your head is the same as releasing a game content out. I guess all game developers should release their games for free because they all learnt and copied things from other game developers and professionals.

If you seriously think gaming communities need charity then you are sadly ****ing mistaken, I would much rather you all get off your back sides and exit the nerd rooms to never create a mod in your life ever again and help people in real charities houses instead.

First world problems.

Priorities all wrong.

People trying to make a living, I could understand that.

Modders have this stereotype of being nerds in their parents basements, it's probably true, because I can't see how someone who works full time comes home to his g/f, wife, kids whatever then wants to spend the last few hours of his day trying to make a mod whilst neglecting and ignoring everyone and everything else.

If you want to release a really good mod worthy of anything then you will need to sink in many hours and if you are sinking that many hours you clearly don't have a job and the only thing you are contributing to society is a free mod for a game, whilst leeching off your parents or government benefits. Not a great inspiration at all...

It's all about passion, not trade, so no, you obviously can't get it.

I would like to add that:

We stop derailing the forum post on purposely and the general trolling.

The original post was asking for some specific questions if you don't want to contribute and answer then don't.

Some people felt the need to include their strong negative views on the whole outlook, I'm sorry I didn't ask for your opinion about the matter and it's not a thread for such discussion take it elsewhere, I'm only interested in answers not opinions on the matter, a lot people have opinions about everything we don't need to hear it.

Some people have made decent attempts to answer and I thank them, so currently the conclusion is that:

No official statement has been given out about the use of the Engine but currently paid projects are not allowed.

And personally I am with those who hope it stays this way.

Your position is that doing this would generate positive growth in the modding community, and generate revenue for Larian?

While there are games where players are allowed to design things and make monetary gain, the only ones I know of must show that all the art for it is original work. I know of no standing game where modding generates profit in this manner and is successful.

There are however several games that saw LONG life spans from deep rooted modding communities, and current ones that will see the same. Diablo 2, Quake, Minecraft, Terraria, and Space Engineers just to name a few.

For the record your first reply "No offence but it seems people are stomping their feet and demanding free stuff.", was a pretty toxic first response seeing as how Gotcha didn't say he was demanding free stuff and even showed passive support for donations towards modders. So any arguments you get you brought on yourself.

The modding community for this game is in its earliest stages possible, not even all the tutorials are out yet. So much still has yet to be cracked, and slapping $$ on that right out the gate can destroy just as easily build a community further. There already seem to be plenty of dedicated modders who are working on everything from simple to extensive projects knowing the only thing they will gain in the end is giving to the community.