Uhuru N'Uru

The other clear problem, is when authors actually withdraw mods, completely. Even when it results in breaking dependant mods. How many mods depend on TSLRCM, being available? A real case of withdrawal has just occured in Skyrim. Female Body mods are all based on Morphing the Vannila Body, where previous TES/Fallout games used technically better Replacement bodies. Only one Skyrim replacer has been made, called Lady Body v1/Demonica v2, technically it's far superior to any other Body, with an entire isolated community of dependant Mods. They are isolated because, they are mostly Russian and the mods and makers use the Russian language. One modder got the job of official english translator, for all the mods body and dependants, over a hundred mods by numerous different. It ended abruptly with this statement. No mods, no indication of reason for withdrawal, as opposed to stopping taking part. It's an unusual situation, as translations, are usually posted as a file in the original Mod, using the built in methods of Skyrim or as separate mods, not on a blog with Cloud drive links, but most Russian sites are using this method. Partly this is a legacy issue of lack of support for the Cyrrylic alphabet, in the international edition. A separate Russian version was oiriginally required, it's no longer the case, but most Russians already have that original version. The original mods are still available, a few, usually of recent non Russian origin, have English versions as well. Most are Russian only and respected BlackElf's status as official translator. Making him the sole source of english versions, mostly of other peoples mods and 1 or 2 of his own. This is where the open modding view draws the line between authors rights and communal rights, Stopping doing the translations is fine, but removing access to existing mods, often over the bad behavior of one or more individuals, claiming they are the "community as a whole". In this instance it's too soon for any sort of drastic action, I haven't fully investigated if the mods are now hosted elsewhere. I'm a hoarder of mods for these very reasons and do have them all, every singl What is the Community? When we of the open modding viewpoint, talk of community, we don't mean those who just download mods. We mean those who contribute to the modding process in some way. Mod Authors of course Utility and Tool authors (often grouped with mods, but they are not actually mods at all, but just as important, often more important) Host sites and those who run those sites as Admins and Moderators. Bug testers and reporters, both pre-release and post-release. Mod Help and Support people, guide writers and Forum question answerers (especially those that get asked all the time, despite being in the ReadMe, page description, first forum post etc.) YouTube sites showcasing mods or providing support. Even just posting a thankyou or endorsement of the mod (about 10% of Skyrim Downloads are followed by an endorsement, which is a simple button click, allowed 15 minutes after downloading) Many of these unsung heroes, put more time into a mod, than even the maker does This is certainly the case with Mod Organizer, the best Mod Manager for Skyrim. I was part of a hard core of Forum Helpers and Document writers, who all spent more time on the Mod than the author, Tannin did. Now don't assume I'm calling him lazy or anything like that, he had a full time job and the time he had available was limited. Thus a valuable resource, both we and Tannin wanted his time spent on making and bugfixing the mod. We took care of the help and support, wrote extensive guides and docs, answered those dumb questions repeatedly asked each day. Tannin could quickly read it all and would occaisonally correct us, when a new feature changed something. Mostly he just worked on making MO into the awesome mod manager it now is. That was all the reward we wanted. Though I mainly did MO support on numerous sites, I would help out with any mod where I could, many others did and still do the same without ever making a mod. Even so they are the community and roughly only 10% of the mod users, even when including those who simply endorse mods.. All this time and effort invested in all mods, relies on work done on all games using that specific engine. I'm sure KotOR 2 uses much of the work from KotOR 1 and maybe even further back. The Odyssey Engine is an evolution of the Aurora Engine, any link to the Infinity Engine, is less clearly defined, though likely. Other modded games have equivalent evolutions linking mods from game to game. Though we may disagree on if and when the communuty should overule an authors wishes, here on this site, this sites rules take precedence over all that. Yet, we can debate the issues and understand the opposing viewpoint. Attack the ideas and opinions, without ever attacking the person, who holds that opposing viewpoint. Agree to disagree and remain civil. If we were friends before the debate, we should remain friends afterwards, whatever the outcome, however passionate the debate may have been. (2nd post's just a little longer, don't want to start with the really long ones to soon)

Just signed up to post on a bug and saw this, my background is in Skyrim modding. Skyrim was the reason the Steam Workshop was created and has both suffered and benefitted from that fact, more than any other game. The good point of the Workshop can be counted on 1 finger, that point is it makes modding much more popular. The bad points are countless and varied, the highlights are. Valve/Steam by their own admission, don't understand modding at all, they never will. Valve sees mods as their property, to them it's DLC made by others. Big Popular Source Mods become Valve owned games with 3rd party DLC DOTA Mod Stagnant/Abandoned >>>becomes>>> DOTA Game by Modders>>>becomes>>> DOTA 2 Game owned solely by Valve Team Fortress Mod Stagnant/Abandoned >>>becomes>>> Team Fortress Game by Modders>>>becomes>>> Team Fortress 2 Game owned solely by Valve Counter Strike Mod Stagnant/Abandoned >>>becomes>>> Counter Strike Game by Modders>>>becomes>>> Counter Strike: GO Game owned solely by Valve Modded Games and every individual Mod are potentially broken by every single unplanned update, despite this, Steam forces Auto-Updates on both Games and Mods. As an example, the 2013 Forced Auto-Update broke many a modded game and made all existing source mods incompatible with source, many old mods will never be updated to run on Source 2013. Skyrim Nexus, the real Hub of modding (Skyrim) is where all the new modders ended up when they realise how useless the workshop is, a two-edged sword as only new users, the idiots and those banned from Nexus now use Steam. One click modding isn't viable, with Skyrim and other early Workshop games, it was simply a downloading tool, very simple mod management was done by the game, it's launcher in Skyrim's case. Now recent Workshop games use this new system applied to KotOR. So step forward it's now a mod manager, 10 steps back, it's now actually incompatible with Mods, not from Workshop. More proof, if you need it, Valve/Steam show by their actions and by their own admission, don't understand modding at all. Now to the issue at hand, rescuing mods from dying sites is a valid cause, though best served by the failing site arranging a handover of their mod archive, as a complete package, This general topic has been discussed countless times. None have put the viewpoints better than Wrye, maker of the popular TES/Fallout Mod Manager. Wrye Bash in Wrye Notes: Open Modding, indeed he gave up modding because his communal modding view was in the minority. The short version is Modding isn't isolated, few if any mods are made by a single author, without some input from others and once publicly released it becomes communal property with clear limits. Site rules are primary and decided by those paying/running the site. Authors controls their mod with limitations, the mod cannot be withdrawn once puublic and fully cited derivivatives are always allowed, but only with original author, named first and foremost. Dead mods can be rehosted, but under the authors name only, with host site credited as uploader, not an individual. Author is only obliged to have a single hosting site, of their own choice. So even under the principles of open and fair modding, what occuring on Steam is wrong, the mods are available here and that's more than enough, you want them, you come here to get them. Open source does not mean open distribution and never has. Finally and most importantly Steam is a lot better at taking down mods nowadays, but it takes a while to establish who is the true owner/author. Approching Steam as a unified site able to verify an authors claim, could help. Contacting Dark One, the owner of Nexus Mods for his knowledge, experience and most importantly, Steam contacts, is probably the best action possible to expediate the process as a hosting site.