The Last Thing We Need is Developers Policing Mods
- Thread starter ffronw
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Why does that developer have control of the people's mods anyway?. I thought that mods were not policed, hence all the variety. Is this an exception with the mentioned developer?
I feel mod moderation is one of those things that haven't become mainstream enough for the details of moderation and culpability to be established. These days, players have a hard enough time to just get modding rights for a game, as devs/publishers seem to see mods as lost dlc opportunities.
Realistically, when someone gets upset about something, they look for people to blame. The biggest/easiest to target are the Devs. So while Devs shouldn't be culpable for what mod makers make, they end up being so. A lynch mob is irrational, even more so when the mob is digital.
Realistically, when someone gets upset about something, they look for people to blame. The biggest/easiest to target are the Devs. So while Devs shouldn't be culpable for what mod makers make, they end up being so. A lynch mob is irrational, even more so when the mob is digital.
How quickly people seem to forget - this is a repeat of the NWN mod days back in 2002. BioWare had a hands off policy for content and people did whatever they wanted. Heck, one of the most common jokes about mods have been that the first mods will always be nude models for the characters. Heck, one guy tried to make a mod about having a romance with your spider familiar/companion. The community might have laughed and cringed about the subject matter, but no one told him not to do it or actively prevented him from doing so.ffronw said:
Also, they didn't care if you were writing tools to hack into the game's memory, resulting in the ability for server hosts to link their persistent world to a database, further extending the life of the game into mini-MMOs with a higher focus on role-playing over just leveling up. If the devs were curating this, guaranteed the publishers would have an interest and prevent tools being made and ultimately, shut the mod support down rather than risk the 0.01% that ruins it for everyone (think: multiplayer cheats, piracy DRM circumvention).
And like you stated, a lot of people got their game dev career started thanks to tinkering with mods (including yours truly!).
Should authors start curating who gets to write fanfics/fanart and which characters get shipped with whom?
You can't keep tabs on all those modifications, not even with a seriously dedicated community doing most of the work for you in finding and reporting them.
...Yet they didn't remove the comments, they removed the mod. A generic warning on the Steam Workshop like the ESRB one for online play should be sufficient warning for the players. I hope they give this idea up right quick, for their own sake as well as the players. They're going to be making a lot of unnecessary work for themselves otherwise, not least of all in justifying their decision to take some mods down and not others.
On one hand, I get that people do whatever they want on the internet, or what they make...but on the other hand, whoever's hosting it still has the final say on whether or not they want to host it. Nexus always removes the child killing mods from their sites, after all. Mod hosting sites still have to do some degree of moderation...at the very least, because otherwise people will just upload trojans all day.
The internet, while very friendly to free speech, does not always abide by it because of the same reasons why these things are allowed in the first place: there aren't any real laws on the internet, and we can all have our opinions, but it's ultimately up to who has control of the space as to how it's used, even if they don't articulate their reasons clearly so that you get to attempt a weak claim of reverse racism (nice try, by the way). Calls to freedom are pointless when what you propose would also mean the end of freedom for content creators and hosters. Regardless of how shitty you think these individuals are, you can't tell them what to do, just as they can't tell that mod maker to stop doing whatever they're doing, because their extent of control is limited to their domain. The person who made that mod isn't being stopped from hosting it on their own on any number of free file sharing sites.
While we're slipping in attacks on each other's characters on racism, if you wanted to play a game where everybody's white, I invite you to go to any number of game stores and just sweep your arms across the aisle. You can have your pick of any title that has fallen on the floor.
The internet, while very friendly to free speech, does not always abide by it because of the same reasons why these things are allowed in the first place: there aren't any real laws on the internet, and we can all have our opinions, but it's ultimately up to who has control of the space as to how it's used, even if they don't articulate their reasons clearly so that you get to attempt a weak claim of reverse racism (nice try, by the way). Calls to freedom are pointless when what you propose would also mean the end of freedom for content creators and hosters. Regardless of how shitty you think these individuals are, you can't tell them what to do, just as they can't tell that mod maker to stop doing whatever they're doing, because their extent of control is limited to their domain. The person who made that mod isn't being stopped from hosting it on their own on any number of free file sharing sites.
While we're slipping in attacks on each other's characters on racism, if you wanted to play a game where everybody's white, I invite you to go to any number of game stores and just sweep your arms across the aisle. You can have your pick of any title that has fallen on the floor.
This is kind of the hell of Steam Workshop. Now, you've got something hosted on Steam and with a connection from the original product to the mod (instead of just vice versa). It's one thing to say this mod is none of your business, it's another thing entirely to say that we're making your product associated with this mod. Once you've done the latter, then yeah, the company should have the right to say it doesn't want that association.
A mod hosted on a private third-party server isn't the same, IMO.
A mod hosted on a private third-party server isn't the same, IMO.
Should make an update to your original bit. Paradox didn't pull the mod because of the mod's contents, as they had left the mod up for awhile before, and have been fine with other similar mods.
The issue was that the mod was popular enough to be highly visible, and after a time they had started adding a lot to the mod description that the developers didn't care for. Nazism I think was pretty blatant there. So the combination of it being on the front page of the modding bit and thus highly visible, along with some wacky stuff that they did not want associated with their game so early lead them to pull it.
Can go find sources if you really want to, but it was for the stuff added to the description, not the mod itself, that lead to its pulling.
The issue was that the mod was popular enough to be highly visible, and after a time they had started adding a lot to the mod description that the developers didn't care for. Nazism I think was pretty blatant there. So the combination of it being on the front page of the modding bit and thus highly visible, along with some wacky stuff that they did not want associated with their game so early lead them to pull it.
Can go find sources if you really want to, but it was for the stuff added to the description, not the mod itself, that lead to its pulling.
Nice article. I find the statement Eurogamer made to be completely off base. I don't know why everything, this day and age, somehow reverts to everyone thinking everyone else should be treated like children. This is just another way communities have become toxic towards creativity all the while applauding the most creative minds in a given community. It's community sanctioned creativity, and if it falls outside what a few vocal people think, then we have places like Eurogamer declaring that policing must be done. The worst part is if this sentiment spreads, it may well be the end of all modding. It will simply become easier if modding is not allowed, which is not what Eurogamer (or anyone) really wants, but that would be a likely outcome to a company trying to police 75k mods. Or one small company trying to police only a few thousand. It would be several completely pointless full-time jobs where people just install mods to see what they do.
I don't think developers should police mods, but I can understand why they would, expecially on Steam workshop. Somewhere like Nexus, you have to actually seeks it out, so people going to it can be expected to know what to expect. Steam though... that's the storefront, there's not much separation between "official" and "fan" content. Alot of negative press could seep from one to the other.
Plus, I'm sure many developers still remember GTA's "Hot Coffee" incident.
Plus, I'm sure many developers still remember GTA's "Hot Coffee" incident.
The magic of mods is that anyone can make anything that comes to their mind within the confines the game provides.
Developers stiffing mod creativity for any reason is against this basic concept, if mod policing gets traction we will see (sooner rather than later) mods taken out simply because they 'fix' fundamentally broken aspects of the game because the ego of certain 'primadona' developers got hurt or even because they intend to simply steal the idea for a paid for DLC.
Developers stiffing mod creativity for any reason is against this basic concept, if mod policing gets traction we will see (sooner rather than later) mods taken out simply because they 'fix' fundamentally broken aspects of the game because the ego of certain 'primadona' developers got hurt or even because they intend to simply steal the idea for a paid for DLC.
You don't have an unlimited right to host things on Steam's workshop. If this is what people think harms the modding scene...
...I got nothing. I mean, this sounds like another thinly-wrapped "freeze peach" argument. At the point that "white people only" mods are now vital to the community, it should be a sign that it's time for self-reflection.
...I got nothing. I mean, this sounds like another thinly-wrapped "freeze peach" argument. At the point that "white people only" mods are now vital to the community, it should be a sign that it's time for self-reflection.
Policing all mods available from all sources is completely unrealistic. The only real way developers might be able to do this is by disabling all mods except ones submitted to them they officially allow which would completely cripple the modding community.
Steam can remove any particular mod that it wants from being allowed on it's service (and its generally in their interest to go with developer's requests to do so) since it doesn't stop it being available somewhere else. Unfortunately for the Devs (since it isn't their fault at all) their work could easily end up being associated with a particularly egregious mod.
Mods that target particular individuals or promote child porn or whatever are probably worth removing but otherwise you can easily get into a "Hatred" where criticism just causes a backlash.
I can't for the life of me think why anyone would want this mod other than their racism but pulling the mod seems disproportionate when they could have just flagged it as potentially offensive and made it not show up on regular searches.
Steam can remove any particular mod that it wants from being allowed on it's service (and its generally in their interest to go with developer's requests to do so) since it doesn't stop it being available somewhere else. Unfortunately for the Devs (since it isn't their fault at all) their work could easily end up being associated with a particularly egregious mod.
Mods that target particular individuals or promote child porn or whatever are probably worth removing but otherwise you can easily get into a "Hatred" where criticism just causes a backlash.
I can't for the life of me think why anyone would want this mod other than their racism but pulling the mod seems disproportionate when they could have just flagged it as potentially offensive and made it not show up on regular searches.
Because it's blatantly hypocritical.
This is the problem with taking on the role of being the master curator of all your mods. If you take a hands off approach you are not responsible for what other people make. If you decide to start saying some things are okay and others are not, you now invite your curation policies to be criticized and tested - and people are going to use that to cast moral judgement about your company. The issue is, any mod left up and running is going to now be seen as actually sanctioned by your company as it has presumably been reviewed and allowed to remain up (regardless of if this is true or not).
People are always going to find a reason to try and catch you out on some double standard, or try to force in content through grey areas. What if you let a mod that's basically space nazis exist? Some people would find it offensive, others might not. If you take it upon yourself to be the curator and remove it people are going to call you too sensitive; if you keep it people are going to call you too callous. If, instead, you do no curation at all - people can't blame you for anything. It's better to just let the mods be what they are and tell people to direct complaints to whoever actually made it.