a worrying development in modding

[Gigantus]

Caution: this is getting a wee bit too personal. You are welcome to discuss the issue, but personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Private comment: Modders do stuff because they think it should be done and because they can. Sharing it with others has the obvious reward of bragging rights and that warm fuzzy feeling when someone posts an appreciation isn't to be scoffed at. Soliciting donations for that work is not permitted here on TWC - what happens somewhere else is a completely unrelated matter. And yes, some of the tools necessary to do the modding are fairly expensive.

[♔atthias♔]

I dont have to apologise for anything. I am the last person who should be called as someone who is destroying mods. This is very insulting when all i do past 8 years is to support and develope mods and tools everywhere i can. I helped CA on many tools they published, testing any new things related to modding and launchers etc.

With few other people around we are keeping modding alive. Its not my fault when majority of people have no clue how much work and time modding in such a scale requires. Making this entirely for free is not possible, we are monthly paying for various tools abd licenses which help us making all these mods and getting atlest something in return is totaly minimum for our work.

We do not force anyone to pay us. Its optional thing for those who spend hundrets and thousands hours with our content to support us and show some appreciation.

Every overhaul we always updating in their whole live cycle. Every patch and dlc is destroying overhauls abd always takes dozens of hours to fix them. Nobody asked for another useless Rome2 dlc and patch which fixed nothing important.

Please dont talk about screwing people or destroying modding in relation to me or our team when all we do last 10 years is making massive mods for everyone and entirely for free. Its stupidly insulting.

as far as I remember none where did I ask you to apologise did I?

insulting I am sorry for that but asking for money before updating a mod isnt?
I am thankful for all that you did for us you provided options and more are always good so thanks for that again

you do kind of however because if I want to play and updated game with radious I cant

I did soy that yes and in hindsight i was because I got kind of worked up about something that I hate a lot I apologize for that and take that back

it is still against the spirit of modding IMHO so I still dont like it

Well frankly atthias i am disgusted that you would make such allegations towards Radious who has tirelessly pumped out balancing changes and unit packs for games since shogun 2. The games he mods become quiet unplayable without his mods and your clambering for him to update is evidence of this fact.

As i said he has been working really hard with no demand of remuneration. He has made the game better and has on many occasions done what CA should have done from launch however totally for free.

Rome II was released in 2013 with its last major update in 2014 !

At this point CA announced that they were finished with the game and showed this in action by pumping out Atilla, Warhammer I and Warhammer II.

And now 3 years after CA announced they were done, they went and added in a DLC which no one asked for and many modders had gone on to do other stuff on the newer instalments.

Radious does all of this for free, if he wants us to now pay so that he can come back to a 4 year old game which by all accounts was finished in 2014 then why all this shock.

When a person who worked hard for 8 whole stinking years without asking a penny solely because of his/her passion for total war games is told that he/she is somehow destroying modding then it hurts dude.

If it was me id do what Vader did and pack it in and let you all enjoy CA's vanilla games.

If you're so bothered then read modding guides and tutorials, radious has done loads of these. Start with basic unit mods and keep working up until you can take his mods and update them yourself (with his permission). If you cant do that then donate to him and if you can't do that either then stop whining and play something else.

"Follow, lead or get out the way"

like I stated to radious I wrote that when I was kind of messed up because this hurt my weak spots
sure but why do I have to pay for an update wich I kind of have I mean
if he does his choice fine but dont force me to play on an outdated version of a game because I think that asking money for updates inst modding anymore that is becoming CA little IMHO

Caution: this is getting a wee bit too personal. You are welcome to discuss the issue, but personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Private comment: Modders do stuff because they think it should be done and because they can. Sharing it with others has the obvious reward of bragging rights and that warm fuzzy feeling when someone posts an appreciation isn't to be scoffed at. Soliciting donations for that work is not permitted here on TWC - what happens somewhere else is a completely unrelated matter. And yes, some of the tools necessary to do the modding are fairly expensive.

sure but like I said to kamikazee 786 when you start charging money for that then it isn't modding anymore it is just CA little

Unpack this thought for us and you'll probably arrive at the same conclusion as the rest of us: Why do gamers get into modding in the first place?

because they see flaws they want to fix?

Atthias,always keep in mind that a modder does not have to make a mod. They do it for the rest of the gaming community. They do it because they think they can make a game better. Add more flavour to it. They can do it for themselves or they can make it so that it is open to everyone.
This is indeed a hobby. And a hobby you do for fun. But when you work on a mod the size of Radious his mod. Then it all changes. He has an insane amount of followers. As soon as a new patch comes out, his mod page is overflown with: "Update" with some luck the poster add "please" to it. But most of the time the followers are demanding Radious to update his mod.

Not taking in regard the time of work Radious has to put into it. Not taking in mind that Radious does not have to update his mod. Surely not in a timespan that suits the user. As soon as the users start demanding for updates. The mod itself is not a hobby anymore. It becomes a project to satisfy the horde of leeches. The ones that take the mod for granted. Not giving a damn about the hard work it cost for Radious. Not caring that Radious has a life as well. A job, a wife and kid.

Radious definitely does not have to go back to Rome 2 and update his mod for that. Why should he? That game is over and finished. It is not his fault that CA decided to bring out something new for that game. Radious is busy with Attila, WH1 and WH2 and soon ToB. Why should he have to go back and totally redo his mod? It is an insane amount of time. He has to totally redo it as CA changed a lot in the codes. It is not just some simple copy/paste job. If he decides to go back to Rome 2 it means a lot of extra time he has to spend on something. Time he rather spend on Warhammer or his family.

It is totally fair that for spending 1000s of hours on an old game that he wants something in return. He doesn't ask for a lot. 100.000+ subs. How hard should it be to raise $1.800,00? A dollar a month is not much. It is hard for me to believe that none can miss a dollar... but owkee... there are rare cases. I donate $10,00 a month. I hardly feel this. Surely since I recently stopped smoking which costed me $ 150,00 a month. Do your math . So I can cover up for 9 others. 9 more people can leech on the mods. Hell, you can be one of those 9.

Stop being so entitled and understand that none wants to work for free. Surely not when you already have a full time job.

I understand it is hard time consuming thankless and a boring job

but I am okay with him refusing to update the mod since seeing demanding you should update is tiring and discouraging but either don't update and say I am too busy and all that [like he did] but dont charge me for an update please
that is what I am rallying against because I rely on free mods for my games since I am lucky if I can afford CA next DLC [all my TW games have been 90% gifts from others]

@ all sorry for responding late RL caught up pretty hard

and once again sory for being

Atthias,always keep in mind that a modder does not have to make a mod. They do it for the rest of the gaming community. They do it because they think they can make a game better. Add more flavour to it. They can do it for themselves or they can make it so that it is open to everyone.
This is indeed a hobby. And a hobby you do for fun. But when you work on a mod the size of Radious his mod. Then it all changes. He has an insane amount of followers. As soon as a new patch comes out, his mod page is overflown with: "Update" with some luck the poster add "please" to it. But most of the time the followers are demanding Radious to update his mod.

Not taking in regard the time of work Radious has to put into it. Not taking in mind that Radious does not have to update his mod. Surely not in a timespan that suits the user. As soon as the users start demanding for updates. The mod itself is not a hobby anymore. It becomes a project to satisfy the horde of leeches. The ones that take the mod for granted. Not giving a damn about the hard work it cost for Radious. Not caring that Radious has a life as well. A job, a wife and kid.

Radious definitely does not have to go back to Rome 2 and update his mod for that. Why should he? That game is over and finished. It is not his fault that CA decided to bring out something new for that game. Radious is busy with Attila, WH1 and WH2 and soon ToB. Why should he have to go back and totally redo his mod? It is an insane amount of time. He has to totally redo it as CA changed a lot in the codes. It is not just some simple copy/paste job. If he decides to go back to Rome 2 it means a lot of extra time he has to spend on something. Time he rather spend on Warhammer or his family.

It is totally fair that for spending 1000s of hours on an old game that he wants something in return. He doesn't ask for a lot. 100.000+ subs. How hard should it be to raise $1.800,00? A dollar a month is not much. It is hard for me to believe that none can miss a dollar... but owkee... there are rare cases. I donate $10,00 a month. I hardly feel this. Surely since I recently stopped smoking which costed me $ 150,00 a month. Do your math . So I can cover up for 9 others. 9 more people can leech on the mods. Hell, you can be one of those 9.

Stop being so entitled and understand that none wants to work for free. Surely not when you already have a full time job.

@all sorry for being late to respond
and once again sorry for being rude like I said I was and still am very!!! angry about the whole stuff
that is it I think if I forgot anything feel free to tell me and I will try to answer
if I said anything that isnt clear please tell me

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

In this case? I find it hard to have sympathy for people who want the mod for free and are riding on the dev about it.

Conceptually, I believe in free mods. That's partially my wallet talking, as there truly is no ethical responsibility for modding to be free. Modding is time spent manipulating game code for the modder's ends. It can be practice, it can be a legitimate attempt to better a community, it can be all sorts of things. There is no rule to say these people must work without compensation. There is only their desire to make things for the community and, over the years, an entitlement to their continued development. I have this 'entitlement' as well. But in this case, I say this thread is the source of excessive entitlement that fails to see the full picture and fails to try and see the side of people spending tons of time producing content for a community that is often largely ungrateful. I speak for the most part as a 'consumer' of mods, not as any sort of active creator of them.

- The mod in question has been in a complete status for years.
- The game has more or less been complete for years.
- CA comes in and s up almost every single mod, especially every overhaul mod, with gameplay updates that fail to fully compensate for the original design flaws.
- The mods are still necessary to many people, as the content given plainly does not outweigh the scale of the mods.

The mod developer must now figure out what CA changed, in an already unfriendly engine, and update it. This is while producing content for other total war games, including ones that are better updated along the main line of Total War. I do not consider it 'greedy' or 'setting a precedence' for the mod developer to look at that work and say "what's the point?". It's an old game in the modern era that doesn't, in my book, carry anywhere near the survivability of Medieval 2. It was for all intents and purposes done for. Then new changes come around. Modding really is a job where the creators just don't get much for doing it. It's naive to think that creating a good mod means you're going to get a lot of appreciative people who pay for more. It just means there will be lots more people expecting more content, acting as fans, doing the download, but not necessarily making a contribution. In this case, the mod developer made a decision. I like free mods, but I can respect the mod developer's decision, and think the thread maker is in the wrong.

Also, if you can go back to the working update, there's even less reason to . Updates at this point are a courtesy. The fact that the mod maker bothers to say "I could do it" at all is better than quite a few mod makers over the years who look at what they've made and gone "I'm done" - period.

There's no mods on this, and at the end of the day, it's his mod. It's up to him to make decisions for it, and I see it as a reasonable one. Would a free update be preferable? Sure. But I wouldn't get into a fit about it.

[Commissar Caligula_]

FYI the update didn't completely break mods, CA have made it so you can revert your game to the previous patch really easily and continue playing the mods.

[PikeStance]

Modding is a hobby. I have had many hobbies. Each and every one of them cost me money and time. Modding is fun. Modding is a hobby.
I will NEVER pay for a mod. If you want to earn a living, I suggest you earn a living designing your own game. Using someone else's work (in this case CA) and claiming you need to be compensated is ethically wrong.

I love how some modders complain that the publisher "stole" their idea when they release a new DLC with similar content. No, your mod is their property.
In the end, if you want to ask for "donations" then that is your thing. If someone is dumb enough to "donate" then that is their problem, not mine. Modders come and go, if you get tired of the hobby, demand will see to it that someone else will do it. There is literally no incentive to "donate" anything.

[Leonardo]

There is no rule to say these people must work without compensation.

In fact there is a rule stating just that and that's the EULA in which CA both can and/or restrict how their game or any game CA has created can be modefied and you as a customer must accept that.

This might explain why some modders have retired from the modding scene.

[SPARTAN VI]

because they see flaws they want to fix?

The fact that I have to point this out several posts later proves how much this is taken for granted: modders mod games that they themselves play. Some folks are demanding that Radious throw away his time on a game that he does and will not even play. Even without Patreon in the picture, there's already zero incentive to mod a game he does not play.

Modders come and go, if you get tired of the hobby, demand will see to it that someone else will do it. There is literally no incentive to "donate" anything.

Maybe one reason modders come and go is because they've stopped playing the games? Donations are a great incentive to keep a mod updated through a game's patching cycles, especially if/when the modder no longer plays the game anymore. What happens to all those abandoned mods that were made on deprecated versions of TW:WH, for instance?

As always, I don't speak for any modder other than myself. I've been modding for over a decade before Patreon entered the scene, but I also didn't have a full-time job, a wife, and kids competing for what's left of my day.

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

Asking for support on Patreon is neither right or wrong. I know as modder that modding is time consuming and when I would have ever the need of acquirring expensive modding tools I would may ask on Patreon too. And giving one or two EUR / $ isn't anything I can't afford which should be pretty much the same for everyone else.

On the other hand, I'm modding for fun, I just like creating all the little things which are in a mod and bring history somehow back to life. This is a hobby and I would not request any reward except for nice words.
Furthermore I'm not seeing that all the things I created during modding and which are released are belonging to the CA but that's may due a different legal conception of copyrights here in germany.

But in the end asking money in return for mods is more or less where our society is heading for. Which is sad on the one hand but on the other spending hours and hours doing something only for other people is clearly not the definition for fun.

The fact that I have to point this out several posts later proves how much this is taken for granted: modders mod games that they themselves play. Some folks are demanding that Radious throw away his time on a game that he does and will not even play. Even without Patreon in the picture, there's already zero incentive to mod a game he does not play.

Maybe one reason modders come and go is because they've stopped playing the games? Donations are a great incentive to keep a mod updated through a game's patching cycles, especially if/when the modder no longer plays the game anymore. What happens to all those abandoned mods that were made on deprecated versions of TW:WH, for instance?

As always, I don't speak for any modder other than myself. I've been modding for over a decade before Patreon entered the scene, but I also didn't have a full-time job, a wife, and kids competing for what's left of my day.

Since I'm a modder for years now (ETW) I can tell you that I haven't played the game (ETW) for years except for testing reasons. On the other hand I've played other games but not for long an nether modded them.
For me modding is about creating something new on the base of a game.

[PikeStance]

Asking for support on Patreon is neither right or wrong. I know as modder that modding is time consuming and when I would have ever the need of acquirring expensive modding tools I would may ask on Patreon too. And giving one or two EUR / $ isn't anything I can't afford which should be pretty much the same for everyone else.

On the other hand, I'm modding for fun, I just like creating all the little things which are in a mod and bring history somehow back to life. This is a hobby and I would not request any reward except for nice words.
Furthermore I'm not seeing that all the things I created during modding and which are released are belonging to the CA but that's may due a different legal conception of copyrights here in germany.
But in the end asking money in return for mods is more or less where our society is heading for. Which is sad on the one hand but on the other spending hours and hours doing something only for other people is clearly not the definition for fun.

I disagree completely! It isn't your property. You are building on a created property of someone else. If you want to be a game developer then no one is stopping you.
When you purchase the game, you agree to the licensing agreement. German law will not allow the theft of someone else's intellectual property. It wouldn't take too much effort for creative Assembly to block mods and develop their own DLC's.

Good day everyone!

I am active in modding more than 10 years and last 8 i am making overhauls for every TW game since Shogun 2. These are usually most played, subscribed and popular mods on steam workshop. All these mods and tons of submods to them always been, are and always will be entirely free. Same as all our tutorials, support to all those mods over the years and much more we did for official patch/dlc testing, bug hunting and various other tw and community projects. Nothing ever changed on that. Patreon is a popular feature for us content creators, every youtuber has it even when they "just making videos and playing", not creating anything, same as pretty much every modder in Wh1 and Wh2 has Patreon link or PayPal link. For large projects like our overhauls are it helps our small team to go on and continue working on new TW games every year. Support is entirely optional, nobody is forced to do it, but our mods take thousands of hours to do. As much as a hobby it is, we have all regular jobs, families, and duties to take care. Supporting our work financially helps us to continue and make more and better content. If they won't be interested in our mods then we won't be making them and nobody has to support us, but all we release is always free for everyone. Patreon allows us to dedicate that time on these overhauls. Yes without it it would be no longer possible to create every year one of the largest overhauls for every new TW game since Shogun 2.

But since we are 2 simple mortals who are now fully involved in newer TW games - Attila, WH1 and WH2 and preparing to go for Thrones of Britannia we simply don't have resources and time to go back to Rome 2 which as was said is considered as finished more than 3 years. I closely looked at largest changes and fixing our Rome 2 work to make it playable again for latest patch/dlc would take dozens of hours of working on all of them and fixing them. With 2 people right now involved fully in TR that is not possible, no one will put all that time into this game which we take as a bad TW game (Attila superior) and where is really no interest from our player base to support our work (not pay for mods).

There is no other modder or modding team who would do that, none, usually they stick with 1 or max 2 TW games and that's it for years. We don't, we work on much bigger scale due to development process we created for ourselves but that is not free for us.

So yes, mods are free and always will be free, but our work is not. We are not a charity and if we are supposed to continue on making TW mods we ask our fans to support us if they won't then simply new TW games will be without Radious mods, nothing else will change. We create optional content for these games for more than 8 years. And with your support, we will like to continue, without we will have to stop cause we can't really afford anymore to spend thousands of hours on mods.

We are known, people know what they can expect from us and all is very clear and transparent. Its now totally up to everyone to decide if our work and mods are worth few dollars per month or not. Like our article what we all did in 2017

Our Team loves TW games, we work on them many many years and our mods are simply an option of how to play them! Not the only way!


Think about it.


Team Radious

Radious comes very close to "demanding" payment for the mods. It is hobby and hobbies take both time and money. I spent 1000s of dollars as a Civil War Reenactor. I also had to spend time studying behavior and mannerisms of the 19th century soldier in order to give a good first-person impression. I never got paid one red cent. Events that hosted reenactments certainly did, but I never did. I guarantee I spend a lot more money and free time as a reenactor than any modder spent modding.

Since I'm a modder for years now (ETW) I can tell you that I haven't played the game (ETW) for years except for testing reasons. On the other hand I've played other games but not for long an nether modded them. For me modding is about creating something new on the base of a game.

True

[Leonardo]

I just want to add to what PikeStance said. The only property that belongs to a modder in a mod are the assets that's custom made from scratch nothing else.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

In fact there is a rule stating just that and that's the EULA in which CA both can and/or restrict how their game or any game CA has created can be modefied and you as a customer must accept that.

This might explain why some modders have retired from the modding scene.

I see little equivalency between my quote, your sentence and the link.

The link tells me that it's a hellova lot harder to mod than it used to be. Your sentence seems to indicate that they cannot ask for some degree of compensation, from a presumably much larger group as a whole (using compensation as the phrase) and I think it's their choice and ability to ask for something to continue to mod. They are not 'selling' anything. To me, it's "if we get a reason to update this dated game with a complex engine while we're busy developing free mods for larger and more complex games, then sure, we'll do it". I don't play Raidous. Heck, I haven't even booted up Rome 2 in a long time. For me, I could care less if they updated it, though that's besides the fact you can simply backtrack your update and proceed to play the same stuff. Just minus the (in my opinion, somewhat frivolous) latest update. Already blowing away what little they tried to stick in.

I'm not necessarily in favor or even support what the devs of that mod want, but I can see why and I think they have grounds to do what they're doing. Mod content is not a feature, it's an overlay, and in this case, an overlay you can get on another version and be well off if you liked what was there before. They're not charging everyone $5 for an unofficial expansion update...

[PikeStance]

I see little equivalency between my quote, your sentence and the link.

The link tells me that it's a hellova lot harder to mod than it used to be. Your sentence seems to indicate that they cannot ask for some degree of compensation, from a presumably much larger group as a whole (using compensation as the phrase) and I think it's their choice and ability to ask for something to continue to mod. They are not 'selling' anything. To me, it's "if we get a reason to update this dated game with a complex engine while we're busy developing free mods for larger and more complex games, then sure, we'll do it". I don't play Raidous. Heck, I haven't even booted up Rome 2 in a long time. For me, I could care less if they updated it, though that's beside the fact you can simply backtrack your update and proceed to play the same stuff. Just minus the (in my opinion, somewhat frivolous) latest update. Already blowing away what little they tried to stick in.

I'm not necessarily in favor or even support what the devs of that mod want, but I can see why and I think they have grounds to do what they're doing. Mod content is not a feature, it's an overlay, and in this case, an overlay you can get on another version and be well off if you liked what was there before. They're not charging everyone $5 for an unofficial expansion update...

Asking for compensation of any kind is a circumvention of the intellectual property right of Creative Assembly.
I have never seen anyone that ask for a donation with the expectation that you do not donate.

Modding is time-consuming, but it isn't that difficult. You have to love to do it. The game of the game is irrelevant. I mod ETW and it is much older than Rome II.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Asking for compensation of any kind is a circumvention of the intellectual property right of Creative Assembly.
I have never seen anyone that ask for a donation with the expectation that you do not donate.

Modding is time-consuming, but it isn't that difficult. You have to love to do it. The game of the game is irrelevant. I mod ETW and it is much older than Rome II.

If it's a circumvention of intellectual property and if the company legitimately cares, CA will probably bring its face in and tell the team to stop it, and all will be well. If it was a serious issue, I would have thought they would have stepped in by now.

I don't get your second sentence. Mind failure on my part, perhaps.

The issue, perhaps, may well lie in the 'love'. Obviously, the age of the game does not necessarily matter. Medieval 2 modders are still kicking and I consider those mods better than anything empire and beyond could possibly offer but they may not necessarily be making highly popular mods for multiple games. Modders all have different levels of competence, passion, time and other variables that make it difficult to compare. Your focus is on Empire. Raidous's focus was on Rome 2. The focus has since shifted, and by and large, Rome 2 was considered done from a development standpoint. They already moved on to new projects (still free) that they have a drive to develop for. Then, CA releases an update and buggers it up.

By that point, there's a few options. They can slow down their current projects/tell people to wait and go back to a game they don't particularly care about anymore. They can tell people "sorry, you just have to back up and go to the last version" (still an option). Or they gun for something in the middle - if people give them a reason to return to Rome 2, something in place of the fact their drive is no longer in the game, then they will go back and make the update.

[Quintus Hortensius Hortalus]

I just want to add to what PikeStance said. The only property that belongs to a modder in a mod are the assets that's custom made from scratch nothing else.

To add some more issues... As I'm living in Germany and bought ETW in Germany the applicable law is german copyright law. Following this everything I create (as example new building models for the campaign map for ETW) are my intellectual property and only mine. If I incorporate it into a mod it might be through contract that the CA has some right to use those 3D models or whatever I create. But due EU regulations they can not aquirre the intellectual property through contract and if they would try it would be a circumvention of my rights and the clause in the contract would be invalid. All of this is naturally not valid for any other country.

Asking for compensation of any kind is a circumvention of the intellectual property right of Creative Assembly.
I have never seen anyone that ask for a donation with the expectation that you do not donate.

Modding is time-consuming, but it isn't that difficult. You have to love to do it. The game of the game is irrelevant. I mod ETW and it is much older than Rome II.

If it's a circumvention of intellectual property and if the company legitimately cares, CA will probably bring its face in and tell the team to stop it, and all will be well. If it was a serious issue, I would have thought they would have stepped in by now.

I don't get your second sentence. Mind failure on my part, perhaps.

The issue, perhaps, may well lie in the 'love'. Obviously, the age of the game does not necessarily matter. Medieval 2 modders are still kicking and I consider those mods better than anything empire and beyond could possibly offer but they may not necessarily be making highly popular mods for multiple games. Modders all have different levels of competence, passion, time and other variables that make it difficult to compare. Your focus is on Empire. Raidous's focus was on Rome 2. The focus has since shifted, and by and large, Rome 2 was considered done from a development standpoint. They already moved on to new projects (still free) that they have a drive to develop for. Then, CA releases an update and buggers it up.

By that point, there's a few options. They can slow down their current projects/tell people to wait and go back to a game they don't particularly care about anymore. They can tell people "sorry, you just have to back up and go to the last version" (still an option). Or they gun for something in the middle - if people give them a reason to return to Rome 2, something in place of the fact their drive is no longer in the game, then they will go back and make the update.

Ask for donnations to create an update is not necessarily forbidden by the EULA. But it's obviously in a grey zone as they are not demanding money for the mod but money to come back to modding.

Fimally I understand the motivation of the Radious mod team but this doesn't mean I personally like them. As I already stated modding is a hobby and it's partly about giving people something they like and like to play (apart from creating the mod for myself and my own pleasure). Asking money for modding is something I personally wouldn't do just because I find that this has nothing to do with my motivation behind it.

[zoner16]

I believe the grey zone that modders are in in regards to Patreon and donations is that they're not technically selling the mods. They're selling their time, energy, and expertise, which they do own.

Once the mods are released, they're not locked behind any kind of paywall. They're out in the wild with all the other mods that didn't solicit patronage or donations. The only differentiation is that people other than the devs spent money to develop it, which I don't believe is illegal under most IP laws.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

I believe the grey zone that modders are in in regards to Patreon and donations is that they're not technically selling the mods. They're selling their time, energy, and expertise, which they do own.

Once the mods are released, they're not locked behind any kind of paywall. They're out in the wild with all the other mods that didn't solicit patronage or donations. The only differentiation is that people other than the devs spent money to develop it, which I don't believe is illegal under most IP laws.

I agree, I think if a modder wants to ask for donations to complete a mod it's well within his rights to do so, however it's also well within the rights of everyone else to not like this practice and not support the modder.

I personally don't use Radious mods as I prefered more historically accurate mods such as DeI when I used to play Rome 2.

The thing is I am not that well off financially to even consider donating to anyone at the moment, but I would probably consider supporting a modder that I like if the situation was different, but I would never support paying for a mod in order to use it.

[PikeStance]

I believe the grey zone that modders are in in regards to Patreon and donations is that they're not technically selling the mods. They're selling their time, energy, and expertise, which they do own.

Once the mods are released, they're not locked behind any kind of paywall. They're out in the wild with all the other mods that didn't solicit patronage or donations. The only differentiation is that people other than the devs spent money to develop it, which I don't believe is illegal under most IP laws.

This is called labor and it is exactly what Creative Assembly (Sega) charges for. The difference is capital in which Creative Assembly (Sega) as a great deal of. Another huge difference is the risk. Creative Assembly (Sega) is creating something that may not earn the amount capital and labor put into the development of a good.

Note: Creative Assembly is subsidiary of Sega.

To add some more issues... As I'm living in Germany and bought ETW in Germany the applicable law is german copyright law. Following this everything I create (as example new building models for the campaign map for ETW) are my intellectual property and only mine. If I incorporate it into a mod it might be through contract that the CA has some right to use those 3D models or whatever I create. But due EU regulations they can not aquirre the intellectual property through contract and if they would try it would be a circumvention of my rights and the clause in the contract would be invalid. All of this is naturally not valid for any other country.
Ask for donnations to create an update is not necessarily forbidden by the EULA. But it's obviously in a grey zone as they are not demanding money for the mod but money to come back to modding.

This is my understanding of how licensing agreement and intellectual property rights work. If you produce a good and it uses their platform then they can sue for financial compensation. Your good could not exist without their base game thus you are profiting off of their work. This is why I stated that asking for a donation is a circumvention of the law. You are cheating Creative Assembly (Sega) of just compensation. The only ethical way around the issue if you would "donate" a % of your earnings from donation back the Creative Assembly (Sega).

[Leonardo]

This is my understanding of how licensing agreement and intellectual property rights work. If you produce a good and it uses their platform then they can sue for financial compensation. Your good could not exist without their base game thus you are profiting off of their work. This is why I stated that asking for a donation is a circumvention of the law. You are cheating Creative Assembly (Sega) of just compensation. The only ethical way around the issue if you would "donate" a % of your earnings from donation back the Creative Assembly (Sega).

That's my opinion why money doesn't belong or should not even be considered in the modding community.

[Aexodus]

As someone who hasn't made a mod in their life, I feel that if we start paying modders for the modding itself, and if that leads to compensation for/donating to Creative Assembly, that's far to close to the path of eventual paid mods that Bethesda are already doing. And once Sega control that, they have a stranglehold over the entire modding scene.

At the moment it's modders like you guys that allow mods to played by schmucks like me for free, and it's up to you if you want to change that. I think we all know how Sega would want it to be.

https://kotaku.com/skyrim-and-fallou...new-1796028360

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

“Credits are available for purchase on PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam,” Bethesda wrote in the Creation Club FAQ. “Your Credits are transferable and can be used in both games on the same platform.”
Technically, players won’t pay for mods directly, but everything is still worth money. Despite this, Bethesda maintains this is not paid mods, because players will still be able to make mods outside of the program.

[EoNightcore]

I mean, Radious has already done so much work towards modding for the community.

What right do we have to force him to update his mods for the current content?

After all, a player can't live off just playing Total War games (no matter what they may wish) unless they somehow became a big youtube gaming personality.

So the way I see it, if Radious wants to ask for Donations in exchange for creating or updating more mods, he's perfectly fine in doing so. It's nothing like paid mods, we're just paying Radious to have more time to make more mods. : D

Now, if he starts demanding money for current content, that's where I start to get a little iffy about all this. Cause at that point, monetizing currently released content is like paid mods. Unless he releases it for free later, than it's just like what artists do on Patreon, in which case it should also be okay....