Game mods

David,

I'm an avid fan. I have bought the ship combat board game, though my dad and I haven't had a chance to really play.

I'm also a fan of Homeworld 1 & 2 as well as Sins of a Solar Empire. Both games have very heavy mod communities. As I was digging for a SOASE Honor Harrington mod, it came up that there were cease and desist orders on the Homeworld 2 mod from about ten years ago. Because of that mod being ordered shut down, nobody else has even attempted it with another game.

SOASE is the picture perfect platform for walls of battle and long range missile warfare.

I contacted Baen and asked about the cease and desist order. They responded, stating that they had never issued a cease and desist order.

There are other reports coming from you that it was not you that issued the cease and desist.

So if you didn't.... and Baen didn't... who did, and does that mean that modders can make a mod of a game in honor of Honor?

Thanks

This doesn't directly concern game mods, but in the "general FAQ" linked under FAQ at the top RFC posted an answer about the problems with fanfiction.
And I think that similiar problems arise with game mods made by fans, especially if they are more than simple grafics but contain scenarios and story parts.

working on a world created by someone else is always problematical for all parties involved, unless there are clear contracts signed...

Last I checked, problems only arise if there's profit off of another's work.

A game mod is done for free by fans of the books and then the finished 'product' given freely to other fans.

I don't see anything negative coming out of a mod. Even people having never heard of the HH universe would be interested in reading the books once they played the mod.

Halcyon wrote:Last I checked, problems only arise if there's profit off of another's work.

No, that is wrong - that's why I referred you to the (long) explanation in the FAQ.
Even a non-profit fanfiction can void DW's copyright to his own works in some cases, as he explained in the FAQ.

It is true that many authors try to ignore non-profit violations (as he also said in that answer), but that doesn't mean that non-profit-violations are without their own problems.
It just means that you can be lucky and be ignored as long as you're non-profit, while profit-oriented violations will be shot down with FTL-weapons...

Therein lies the question to David then.

Can he simply let it pass?

I doubt he's going to personally pool his resources to a game company in order to create something akin to what Horace Harkness helped the Peeps do with their simulation tanks before he snapped necks and got Honor to the surface of Hades.

Creating a game is expensive, especially if it is from scratch. But there are thousands of fans who want to PLAY the Honorverse and can't.

Perhaps you need an incorporated game company that gives RFC a majority of the stock and profits, and that actually handles rights issues the legal way.

Halcyon wrote:Therein lies the question to David then.

Can he simply let it pass?

I doubt he's going to personally pool his resources to a game company in order to create something akin to what Horace Harkness helped the Peeps do with their simulation tanks before he snapped necks and got Honor to the surface of Hades.

Creating a game is expensive, especially if it is from scratch. But there are thousands of fans who want to PLAY the Honorverse and can't.

The biggest problem with fanfiction is if Weber knows about it. If he doesn't, or if it's in a place he doesn't ever visit -- and ideally can't control (like fanfiction.net) -- it's a bit of a different story.

Fair use also comes into play. Anybody who wants to make the mod can make it, and Weber can't really do jack squat about it. (Not like he'd really care, either.) Where the problem (potentially) comes is distributing the mod. If you take care to keep it completely off of this site and distribute only through completely unofficial channels: word of mouth, friend-of-a-friend, email/PM/etc... well Weber probably won't ever even know it exists, and even if he does he probably won't care because it's not being publicly distributed.

And, of course, it would be a very VERY good idea to give copious praise and credit to Weber in the NFO files... preferably with a URL to the Baen Free Library copy of OBS as well... and that you suggest people get the books and buy them if they like your mod.

There was a reason why I tried to get Halcyon to read the FAQ instead of explaining it here...

How can RFC legally claim ignorance of a fan project, if he is required to answer a question about it on his very personal forum? Or if it's discussed here?

Why do you think no one official even answered to this despite RFC being known to lurk here regularly?

By even mentioning the project here you have almost guaranteed that RFC has to shoot it down as soon as he gets a link or reference to it, otherwise he would risk his own copyright (as he explained in the FAQ about fanfiction)

@FriarBob: You're wrong, the association of the name "Honor Harrington" as a copyrighted entity with the fanproject is enough to open a big bag of worms. The only way to prevent that would be to give it an entirely different name and only write in the description "inspired by..."

But since this has now become a discussion about the very problems that should never have been posted publically here, I think the only way for halcyon to salvage anything would be to report his own posts, asking for a deletion of this discussion and keep everything about it in private messages and emails from now on.

DirkF wrote:There was a reason why I tried to get Halcyon to read the FAQ instead of explaining it here...

How can RFC legally claim ignorance of a fan project, if he is required to answer a question about it on his very personal forum? Or if it's discussed here?

Why do you think no one official even answered to this despite RFC being known to lurk here regularly?

By even mentioning the project here you have almost guaranteed that RFC has to shoot it down as soon as he gets a link or reference to it, otherwise he would risk his own copyright (as he explained in the FAQ about fanfiction)

@FriarBob: You're wrong, the association of the name "Honor Harrington" as a copyrighted entity with the fanproject is enough to open a big bag of worms. The only way to prevent that would be to give it an entirely different name and only write in the description "inspired by..."

But since this has now become a discussion about the very problems that should never have been posted publically here, I think the only way for halcyon to salvage anything would be to report his own posts, asking for a deletion of this discussion and keep everything about it in private messages and emails from now on.

And did it ever occur to you that the MWW might simply refuse to read this thread?

DUH!

As long as he can legitimately claim he didn't know about it -- and ALL that requires is for the mod itself to not be linked to on this forum -- his legal rights are still safe and the mod-creator doesn't have to get shot.

Unless, of course, you were so rude as to PM this thread to him and force him to take cognizance of it.

FriarBob wrote:And did it ever occur to you that the MWW might simply refuse to read this thread?

DUH!

As long as he can legitimately claim he didn't know about it -- and ALL that requires is for the mod itself to not be linked to on this forum -- his legal rights are still safe and the mod-creator doesn't have to get shot.

Unless, of course, you were so rude as to PM this thread to him and force him to take cognizance of it.

If you had read the FAQ about FanFiction then you would have read that RFC himself stated that the only way to legally claim ignorance would be to never again visit any forum (entire site, not singular discussion) where the fanfiction has been posted. Do you think he could do that with his own forum?
And you're forgetting that he is legally required as owner of a forum about his own copyrighted materials to check posts for illegal content. The custom that a forum owner has to take aktion only after he has been noted about a post comes from large forums with unrelated contents, as a copyright holder his requirements are higher than that of a general forum admin/owner.

To answer your last question:
No I didn't report this post, what ever gave you that assumption? I even stated that Halcyon has to report this post himself because that would be one way for him to tell He's sorry about this.

Please do not jump to unbased assumption but try to inform yourself about something before posting, especially if you are referred to a text where the RFC's thoughts on the discussed theme have been clearly stated.