Let's Be Serious Here.

Hey all.

I'm sure we are all aware of what has been happening lately in the modding community, with people ripping other's models to sell for themselves. I mean, stuff like this has been happening more and more, and making modders want to put every single mod of theirs down. Us being modders though, we need to find out a solution to this issue. We can't just let every hillbilly be able to take our hard worked models and sell it for money in their own pocket, yet we don't want to be jerks to all of the players who enjoy our mods by making them private. What can we do as a community and some of us modders to help prevent or end mod stealing?

Let's please keep this discussion as clean as possible (no bashing at a specific user.) This is a very serious topic, so the last thing we need is a circus clown joking in this post. If you have a comment to make or an idea on how to end mod stealing, please make sure that it is not in caps, and that it has correct punctuation.

Anyway, this is a severe topic that needs to once and for all be solved.

last edited by RiskyWisky

Personally, I don't see this as an issue that should be left to us modders to resolve. God knows the community has been left on the hook to fix a number of other issues relevant to this game because "the powers that be" either can't or won't (the work of LocalHost and AlexNez, for example).
Making our mods only available to a select group is our way of protecting our work because it seems to be the only viable recourse we have to do so. While I understand the perspective of those that can't make their own mods (we've all been there before we started making stuff on our own, waiting and hoping for some talented folks to release/update their mods, and hoping that the features we asked them so nicely for get added but ultimately understanding if they didn't get added) I also intimately understand the situation from the perspective of the modders who dedicated countless hours of their lives to creating that content for little or no reward.
Modders, to me, are like seasoned tradespeople; you don't "pay them" for their half-hour of actual work, you "pay them" for the years of training and practice that are the reasons why they can do that job in a half-hour.
As long as unprotected digital content exists, theft/piracy will be it's bedfellow. Cultures exist whose members apparently cannot (or simply WILL not) even comprehend that these types of practices are immoral, and either don't understand or choose to ignore (and effectively condone) the consequences of their actions. I can think of a particular instance where someone even blatantly posted "how do I pirate this game?" on the game's official FB group, and then proceeded to try to justify it when the "Seriously dude, can you even brain how stupid it is to ask THAT question HERE of all places?" comments started rolling in (including similar comments from the game/site admins).
So if the ire of the community is going to be aimed at somebody, the modders who removed their content because of a lack of better options are definitely NOT an appropriate target. The "bad apples" who, through either ignorance or malice, have been the catalyst for the actions of said modders absolutely should be the target. I have as little desire as anyone else here to start any kind of "witch hunt" because ultimately it's up to the individual to dedicate their time and energy to helping the community that has kept this game going, or to destroy that community by alienating or outright ingratiating it's members and contributors.
We can ride the fine line between hope and wishful thinking with the desire for the pirates to develop a sudden case of intelligence and morality on this issue, but I for one am not holding my breath...

i 100% agree, although there is nothing that can be done about it unless the game company decides to do something like adding coded files so once a mod is uploaded it is encrypted and only the creator has the encryption code to open the file. however this would close the possibility of users doing custom edits to things for themselves. this has been a problem for a long time, longer than St/MR has been around. will people be able to put a stop to it? most unlikely, even with encrypting and coding, there are people out there who will figure out a way around it. much like how now someone can upload to the workshop, but yet people figured out a way to get the build files anyway and still rip people off. (big yawn) back in the day with 1nsane, it was the company that did not want the users to edit the game, so they coded and encrypted it. really this was more for the fact it was a racing game with leaderboards and stuff, so they were just wanting to make sure the boards were legit, which i do not blame. still though the mod community figured out how to open and decrypt it, so people could build custom map and vehicles for it. so, really we can do stuff to help prevent stealing, but there will also be someone right there step for step counteracting it along the way.

last edited by A Former User

@8up-local
Yup, it's just an arms race; you make a stronger shield, they'll just build a bigger gun.

Making an encryption code on a zip file (which is what your mod is put in when it’s uploaded) is super easy. I don’t know why focus won’t do it, even when stealing has happened.

last edited by RiskyWisky

@RiskyWisky The .x files are encrypted once they are uploaded to the workshop but that doesn't stop someone from using a tool like Ninja Ripper to take your 3d model strait out of the game. Unfortunately there is no solution to this problem.

@Spun

True true. What are you going to do though since other people have been selling your own work?

@RiskyWisky Im guna roam the earth like Jules in Pulp Fiction.

Is there any protections the devs could put on the game to be safe from programs like ninja ripper?

@RiskyWisky If you figure out how to prevent piracy, you will be super rich soon. Many companies are dealing with this on a bit higher level than mod making and so far (AFAIK) with litle or no efect.
I can imagine that seeing somebody selling your own work that you gave for free is superfrustrating, but I don't think there is reasonable solution.
For some reason, I have that impression that all anti-piracy protection strikes hardest fair users those have to wait for verifications and other stuff - not a good deal I think...

BTW, do you know that Witcher 3 is on GOG without any protection at all? Just saying...

@RiskyWisky if they put a lock to the zip , the files wont be loaded by steam or the game, if they give the steam a way to know the code , you could find it in the steam files and get the files from the zip, the best option is to not let the editor be able to load the encripted extensionless files, wich if i recall was the main idea back when the unicorn was "released" by pavel to his russian friend, (who leaked them, same as the betaof every game pavel that does)