Legal?

[Copperknickers II]

Is there information somewhere on the legal aspects of public modding? I presume for example that we are not allowed to sell mods for a a profit without CA's permission etc.

[Dick]

Anything is probably in the end user agreement that needs accepting when installing the games. As far as I know the only restrictions (or at least the most likely to be broken) are that you can't sell mods and you can't fiddle with the .exe.

[makanyane]

^ what he said

also for Empires you can't mod in the bits that CA are trying to sell separately - ie. the special units.

don't distribute the .exe file with your mod, or a huge chunk of vanilla files...

[MasterOfNone]

Licence to Use The Games Software (back of manual)

Section 3, clause (f) seems particularly relevant, where it states that you SHALL NOT:

reverse engineer, derive source code, modify, adapt, translate, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works of the Game Software or any part of it (save as the applicable law expressly permits whereupon all and any modification, adaptations, improvements etc. shall belong to, vest in and be the exclusive property of Sega on creation in any event)

clause (g) mentions about not removing labels/notices which I believe means keeping the credits on the splash screen intact for one thing (I know some mods remove them).

clause (a) mentions about not using the Software for commercial use.

There were some other points mentioned somewhere - possibly before SEGA took over - whereby modders were asked to provide a means for users of the mod to contact them (by putting an email or web address on the splash screen or somewhere) and also to note that Activision/SEGA was not responsible for the modification and therefore not liable for support of the same.

You should see this if you check out any of my mods.


EDIT: Just found the original License Agreement (Activision) when RTW came out, which explains things better. There's a whole section on "Program Utilities" which is well worth a read. Too long to type up here. It's at the back of the original RTW manual.

EDIT2: I cannot see a Licence agreement in my M2 manual

[alpaca]

Modding is mostly a legal grey zone I'd say. As long as you don't do anything the company would crack down on you can release your stuff. What they will crack down on is modifying/releasing the executable and selling your mod. You should also not provide too many vanilla files in your mod (which is not necessary anyways).

I wouldn't try to legally claim copyrights to your mod if I were you but this question is very much debatable, especially because the legality of EULAs is debatable in itself (at least in my country) because you can not see the terms before you buy the game and therefore cannot in my opinion be part of the contract entered when buying it. I would argue that the terms of this contract can not be altered by one side alone and the EULA is not part of the contract since you can't agree to something you don't know, and therefore the EULA is void. CA might still have a case when they claim copyright to your work since you're jsut modifying what is obviously theirs but it'd be public relations suicide to do so and I'm pretty sure they'll steer clear of that