Notch Requiring Licenses for Minecraft Mod Developers

[Keltzar]

People really need to take the whole, "mods may be sold" thing with a grain of salt. Remember when torches were supposed to go out after some time and lanterns would be the new permanent light fixture? This is all subject to change but at its core it isn't about making money off of mods it's allowing modders to be able to not have their mods get screwy and go down for a week or more every time a new update comes out.

 

[Neonit]

o ho ho ho, that will be interesting! im looking forward to see minecraft-crusaders trying to defend THIS!

 

[Mr Thin]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is everyone whining about?

All the man is doing is attempting to increase the compatibility of his game with modders.

The license doesn't cost anything, so why not? Get yourself an official Mojang modder license. Sounds like a pretty awesome thing to have, in my opinion.

As for selling the best mods... as has been said, Valve does that. And people love them for it.

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

If I'm understanding this correctly, your overracting a bit zoopony. He's only entertaining the idea of selling mods, and only after he has bought them from the mod dev. In addition, this is mostly a legal security measure, to ensure that anyone that has the source code and does something stupid like, say, try to make minecraft TEH RIPOFF with it, will be in a position to be seriouslly shat upon in courts. You'll still be allowed to make mods by yourself, this is simply a legal measure.

The problem is the source code has been out for some time now and no one has done anything with it but make mods better, only shitty modders ***** about patches breaking their mods, the good ones expect it. This is just another layer bullshit of Notch actually trying to control mods which goes against the whole modding community.

 

[Wicky_42]

Bad move to have even suggested charging people to mod his game, very bad move and disappointing to see. Thank god he redacted it sharpish, lol!

Free licensing of mods is an interesting idea as a way of controlling his ip whilst aiming to make it as mod-friendly as possible - that's a problem many mod teams face; trying to do more than the code can support, but being unable to change the code as the developer needs to protect it. Heck, this way dedicated fans could even clean his code up for him XD

 

[clypog]

Take elder scrolls or most other games on pc as an exacmple. Elder scrolls have a lot of FREE NON OFFICIAL mods available. There are communities out there for Fallout 3 that have hundreds of mods to fix the game or make you a god. So having official api won't change anything. Unofficial mods will still be there to be used.

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

Bad move to have even suggested charging people to mod his game, very bad move and disappointing to see. Thank god he redacted it sharpish, lol!

Free licensing of mods is an interesting idea as a way of controlling his ip whilst aiming to make it as mod-friendly as possible - that's a problem many mod teams face; trying to do more than the code can support, but being unable to change the code as the developer needs to protect it. Heck, this way dedicated fans could even clean his code up for him XD

They already have been without the license, the game is already mod friendly, the license makes it less so. The Mod community is fickle and will jump ship a lot already are.

 

[shintakie10]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is everyone whining about?

All the man is doing is attempting to increase the compatibility of his game with modders.

The license doesn't cost anything, so why not? Get yourself an official Mojang modder license. Sounds like a pretty awesome thing to have, in my opinion.

As for selling the best mods... as has been said, Valve does that. And people love them for it.

Lots of people on the internet read either just the tag line, or the tag line and a couple sentences in a news post like this before commentin. Sometimes its the Escapists fault for makin really terrible headlines that dont actually match what is said in the article (That one from way back where Obama was said to be "Attackin video games" then if you actually read the article all he says is he wanted kids to get out more often and barely mentioned video games). Other times its just people jumpin the gun and bein well...yeah.

Really theres absolutely nothin wrong with this plan. Its free and it automatically sends you source code updates without needin to figure out what changed on your own. Plus if someone has a great mod idea that Notch likes you can get some actually money for it. Whats not to like?

 

[Galaxy613]

This thread should just get locked because Notch has already agreed to let everyone see his damn source code for his million dollar game for free. But this news thread will immortalize the time that he was DARING to think about putting a cost on seeing the source code obfuscated. How DARE Notch do that. How DARE Notch put a barrier between 12 year old script kiddies and getting the full un-censored code of Notch's breakout game?

Is the code really worth nothing to people?!

As a licensed mod developer, users will be able to download Minecraft's source code direct from Mojang, and it'll be updated anytime a change is made...

sounds like pulling a kotick

How the HELL does THAT sound like Kotick to you? Notch has even made the license FREE. Notch will provide Mojang's personal SVN server to everyone who has registered to get the very latest minute code changes. FOR FREE. To ensure Mods won't break from version to version. This isn't anything like Kotick.

What a PERFECT first post for this thread! Q.E.D., this thread will never STOP being filled with whiners. Because of that first post and the thread title.

 

[Zeekar]

Can someone explain to me how this is a bad thing?

I mean with actual facts, not completely pulled-out-of the ass conclusions you've jumped to.

From what I can tell, he's just giving people the opportunity to make their mods more "official". Also from what I can tell, this wont affect anyone who is already making mods freely. This is only to prevent people from making money from their mods without a licensing agreement.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but both the blog and this thread seem to imply the same thing and I'm not sure where all these complaints are coming from.

 

[NLS]

This really goes against the spirit of modifications. They are done for free for the community.

Mods will still be free. He's just making sure nobody out there is triyng to profit from mods or making mods that can fuck up the game.

This really goes against the spirit of modifications. They are done for free for the community.

And this right here is the problem. All notch is doing is trying to keep the cash flow coming in but I make mods for fun if your a modder in it for money your not a modder your a Dev so go get a fucking job in the industry.

This really goes against the spirit of modifications. They are done for free for the community.

And this right here is the problem. All notch is doing is trying to keep the cash flow coming in but I make mods for fun if your a modder in it for money your not a modder your a Dev so go get a fucking job in the industry.

This is mainly to prevent people from selling mods or making mods that fuck up your game. Assuring a certain level of quality.
You're still free to mod as much and for free as much as you want to, you're only required to register and accept the terms for free.
What effect does this have on people who mod for fun? No effect.
Prevents malicious mods? Yes.
Prevents sale/theft of the source code? Yes.
Makes it easier to implement great mods into the core game? Yes.

 

[Megacherv]

...

Fair enough.

Before, people moaned that the mods would break on an update. Now, he tries to fix that, and everyone calls him a fucking twat (essentially). Right then.

Remember Woodsey, we're all idiots, we can never make our mind up

 

[Dana22]

A grim news indeed...

 

[V8 Ninja]

Isn't the point of mods to extend the life-time of a game for no price at all? And besides, it's extremely easy extract the game files and edit them already, so why would you need to lock the game only for modders? Unless Notch makes an extremely easy-to-use dev kit, I don't see the point of any of this. =\

 

[Wicky_42]

Bad move to have even suggested charging people to mod his game, very bad move and disappointing to see. Thank god he redacted it sharpish, lol!

Free licensing of mods is an interesting idea as a way of controlling his ip whilst aiming to make it as mod-friendly as possible - that's a problem many mod teams face; trying to do more than the code can support, but being unable to change the code as the developer needs to protect it. Heck, this way dedicated fans could even clean his code up for him XD

They already have been without the license, the game is already mod friendly, the license makes it less so. The Mod community is fickle and will jump ship a lot already are.

Only, apart from needing a registration (no idea on the process involved there, granted), it sounds like this does everything to aid mod development - after all, if they have early access to the next release of the code then they can fix compatibility before the release, and if they have an account with the dev then they can presumably give better feedback on what they would like to see implemented to help their mods work. On top of that, by bringing them together in an official capacity, it makes it easier for mods to co-ordinate and avoid using the same block IDs and all that jazz.

There seems to be quite a lot going for this idea - I think modders jumping ship now may be making a mistake.

 

[ForsakenUK]

I would have been happy to pay for a licence to have access to the source code to make a major modification.
Those of you out there that play and run Minecraft servers will already know that there is a plethora of mods out there to use right now.
All Mojang and Notch are trying to do is protect their IP and to legitimately find a way to increase playtime after Minecraft is finished so that their audience (us) have a reason to keep playing for years to come.

Which is fair enough really.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

EDIT: Foolishly, I didn't read the OP and only read the title. Sadly, I read the title wrong too. Today is not going well.

OT: I don't mod the game, but I was outraged when I found out. I was ready to charge at Notch with the very diamond sword he created, until I read that he'd changed the cost to nothing. I like how he claimed he didn't want to make money even though he was charging, I fail to see how charging for a mod licence would mean that that there is quality control.

 

[pyroghast]

heres a quote from notchs blog "We want to buy
and/or license good mods and/or total conversions and sell them
ourselves"

what i get from it is that he only wants to sell new games made within the minecraft engine like valve did with counterstrike i am sure that if there is a mod like the piston mod he would just implement it

 

[n03s]

money makes people douchebags? Nothing new here..
move along..