this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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I don't get why modders shouldn't be allowed to ask for money. Do players just want people to work for free? Why should the game developers get to set the rules when mods often contain no content/IP from the game devs?
Because in most cases they can only do the thing they do, because another company invested millions in order to make, release, promote and support the game. Without their work, the modders would have nothing to mod. Because working out a licensing deal with every modder to split the revenue is a lot of work and most mods won't get played much anyways, it isn't worth the hassle. So in order to accommodate the community and keep their game active for longer, the terms are modding is allowed and even encouraged. But the other side of the bargain is that the mods can't be sold. And usually the company reserves the right to outright ban mods using legal means. For example when people mod in far right extremism the company doesn't want to get associated with.
Now there is a gray area where people donate to modders or even pay outright for modders to build certain things. This is usually just fine, as long as the mod is also available for free. People aren't paying for the mod, they are paying for the dev time, which is totally fine.
But this modder specifically put access to his mods behind his Patreon. Sure technically you could subscribe for a month, get the mod and then stop the subscription. But that's legally still a pay wall and in practice the mod needs to be updated often to keep working.
So it's pretty simple in this case, the modder was asked to stop putting the mods behind a pay wall, he didn't, so he got a cease and desist. Usually I'm all for the little man and against the large companies, but in this case the terms were pretty clear and the modder violated them.
Now we could have a more general discussion about how and if modders should be compensated for their time. But I feel that's a bit beyond this single case.
So computer games in general should not exist, because they rely on an OS that other people invested millions into?
The licence involves with the os, the tooling, the development environments explictedly allow for these things.
You can not be this fucking stupid can you?
If you make something you get to dictate how others use it, if you choose to have it be free and open that's your choice. Just as it is if you wish for it to be restricted. It's common fucking courtesy to not steal.
Modders cant make what they make with out the assets and game. They are using someone else's property.
For example thats the entire fucking crux of things like say OpenMW vs Tamriel rebuilt. One is a standalone product that doesn't reuse assets or has any dependencies on Bethesda assets. While the other reuses them all over the place.
OpenMW could charge for their product. It's worthless with out the game, but still is entirely a functional standalone thing. The other literally can't function with out someone else's assets.
You should be able to separate the general idea and whether we're talking just law or morals here. Sure, copyright law gives ridiculously broad control to the copyright holder. They can just outright go after mods in general and disallow them free or not too. I guess if your position is that modding should just not be allowed in general then that's at least consistent. Personally I think regardless of law things like reverse engineering and mods should exist at least in some form though.
Where is this theft you’re talking about?
And you can make mods that include 0 code from the original game. It’s actually not difficult. The fact that they modify the game in memory has no bearing on copyright.
Binary patching has been a thing in the emulator/rom scene for as long as I can remember precisely because it's a means to distribute mods without distributing IP the modder doesn't own. Some of the takes here are absolutely wacko.
Yeah, I’m not gonna lie this almost feels like astroturfing. Straight up piracy is seen as more favorable than a mod creator getting paid for their work, it’s nuts.