Take-Two Kills "Essential" Grand Theft Auto V Mod

[Darren9]

19 minutes ago, FW Industries said:

Interesting, and it seems those were the rules since forever. I've certainly written plugins in violation. But to the best of my knowledge, none of that was ever enforced.

For funsies I've searched through some code on github, here's Kopernicus and FAR.

Oh, and here's NathanKell apparently giving advice on how to best violate addon rules.

The thing is, if your mod breaks any rules in the TOS you can be legally forced to stop, it's just the owners choice to turn a blind eye and allow you to continue if they feel like it, or change their mind and stop you at any point in the future.

[Mako]

6 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

The Volkswagen Audi Group could decide that from tomorrow that they won't be making Audi's anymore...  Now where's the business model in that? 

Could you explain the business model for Take2 if they choose to C&D modding of KSP?  Where's the money? 

Take2's money isn't in the current KSP, it's in the Kerbal franchise as a whole. They gain nothing in C&D'ing modding for the current game called Kerbal Space Program.  There is no comparison in the way GTAO vs KSP can or is being monetized.

 

Basing your fears on 'yeah, but they could!' is not rational, not at all...

I have no fears of Take-Two at this time. I am simply advocating that folks be informed and if they are not concerned about it then that's great. I, too, am not worried at this time.

I bring up that fact that Take-Two can decide to do something similar to KSP because some folks seem to think Squad won't let that happen. My point here is Squad is essentially powerless to stop Take-Two since Take-Two is the owner of the IP.

As for why they might choose to do something to KSP, Take-Two has said they're interested on making more money from microtransactions and other DLC. It's not outside the realm of possibility for Take-Two to reduce the availability of user-made mods that offer similar features that they are trying to sell.

Again, I'm not saying that Take-Two is going to do anything to KSP. I'm pretty confident they won't, but if they did Squad can't stop it. Take-Two probably does not desire to mess with KSP modding, but I wouldn't be shocked to see them try if they thought mods can affect their sales numbers for new products.

[Melfice]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I have no problem that this GTA mod was "killed".

You fuss with paid content, you're gonna get a cease+desist. And this was, undeniably, fussing with paid content.

In what way?
In the way that a mod, mods which were highly encouraged and often highlighted by the dev, made available free content that was locked out of a single player experience? Because all the vehicles that were made available for free for GTA Online were technically available in the single player. They were just locked behind code, just so Take Two could rake in some more cash from those "awesome" Shark Cards (microtransactions)?

Or did you mean in the way that they were modding in the first place?

This gentleman didn't provide much (any?) new information, and completely left out the actual reason (ability to unlock purchasable assets without purchasing them). Ranting as if this is about pure hatred of mods is pretty foolish, but I guess it'll attract plenty of views and "engagement."

This purchasable content was previously made available for free in the single player experience.
Only after microtransactions started raking in the big bucks (they made over half a billion dollar on a free Online mode) did they start locking out that content.

It's pettiness on behalf of Take Two. Nothing more, nothing less.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Melfice

[HvP]

8 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

The Volkswagen Audi Group could decide that from tomorrow that they won't be making Audi's anymore...  Now where's the business model in that? 

Maybe not the best example considering that Volkswagen/Audi did intentionally engineer their emission systems to cheat air pollution tests, concealing their intent to do so, effectively lying to their customers about the product they were buying, and harming not just their customers but also the general public in the process.

Businesses do unethical things to make money all the time because profit making is a strictly amoral process. Never just trust a business to "do the right thing."

[boxman]

13 hours ago, TheRagingIrishman said:

KSP PR has confirmed several times that the game will stay open for modding. Speculations like this do nothing but create neadless fear.

Rockstar also encouraged modding and even shared/promoted mods themselves and yet that did not stop take-two...

[Ringkeeper]

13 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

And since KSP is a game that is single player AND is absolutely NOT suited to an online environment we reasonably have nothing to fear about our mods. I have given my list on why mp isnt suited to ksp but i will give my short list again in no order:

 

E3 , announcement from Bethesda, paid Mods ..... yes, don't fear anything. And oh look, most of the games are singleplayer. Sure, paid mods only for new games.... for now.

 

If you are old enough and already played long enough games you would know, that you can give 0 on "PR said that" or any other "we don't have any plans at the moment" . See Blizzard f.e.

 

 

[Defenestrator47]

To all those saying 'No Squad said mods will be fine!  Stop spreading your kneejerk fear!' I say that I have seen this story play out with other devs, and other publishers.  A Dev team or company can say 'this will never happen' all they want.  The publisher will apply pressure, give bribes, offer stock options, blah blah blah.  Eventually the dev comes around and says 'despite what we said before, that thing we said will never happen, is now going to happen, and here's all the great stuff you can look forward to!'.  And then it turns to complete garbage.   YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT AGREEMENTS WERE SIGNED.  YOU DO NOT KNOW THE POWER OF THESE SOULLESS CORPORATE LEECHES TO RUIN EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH IN THE SEARCH FOR PROFIT.  You probably have loved games that were ruined by them.  Stop thinking KSP is unique in the gaming world.  Vigilance MUST be our watchword.

[Melfice]

7 minutes ago, Ringkeeper said:

If you are old enough and already played long enough games you would know, that you can give 0 on "PR said that" or any other "we don't have any plans at the moment" . See Blizzard f.e.

Just take a look at Ubisoft, to be honest.
There would be no Beyond Good and Evil 2 at E3. Absolutely not. E3 would NOT be the best place for it.

And there's Beyond Good and Evil 2 at E3.

PR people are very keen on lying. Not saying every PR person does so. Some of them are very sensible and either tell the truth when they may, or say "no comment".

Now, that's benevolent, but there are people who've been left in a bind by a lying, or dishonest, PR person. An example is Laura Kate Dale, who mentioned an example on her Twitter, and it's incredibly frustrating that I can't find it again.

[LoSBoL]

2 hours ago, Mako said:

I have no fears of Take-Two at this time. I am simply advocating that folks be informed and if they are not concerned about it then that's great. I, too, am not worried at this time.

I bring up that fact that Take-Two can decide to do something similar to KSP because some folks seem to think Squad won't let that happen. My point here is Squad is essentially powerless to stop Take-Two since Take-Two is the owner of the IP.

As for why they might choose to do something to KSP, Take-Two has said they're interested on making more money from microtransactions and other DLC. It's not outside the realm of possibility for Take-Two to reduce the availability of user-made mods that offer similar features that they are trying to sell.

Again, I'm not saying that Take-Two is going to do anything to KSP. I'm pretty confident they won't, but if they did Squad can't stop it. Take-Two probably does not desire to mess with KSP modding, but I wouldn't be shocked to see them try if they thought mods can affect their sales numbers for new products.

We keep running around in circles here, advocating that people are informed that it's not outside the realm of possibility that T2 can do whatever they want is not really helpful. It just feeds the underbelly reasoning we've already seen so much off.  
Microtransactions will never work with the current KSP, there is no business model in that when the complete basis has been modding KSP, DLC was already announced before the KSP franchise was sold to T2. 

 

1 hour ago, HvP said:

Maybe not the best example considering that Volkswagen/Audi did intentionally engineer their emission systems to cheat air pollution tests, concealing their intent to do so, effectively lying to their customers about the product they were buying, and harming not just their customers but also the general public in the process.

Businesses do unethical things to make money all the time because profit making is a strictly amoral process. Never just trust a business to "do the right thing."

  Please don't pull my example totally out of its context, it has nothing to do with cheating emissions here.

On a side note, VAG only got caught, BMW is under investigation and the French government actively stopped further investigations in the PSA (Peugeut Citroen) group, they all do it, VAG just got caught.

Edited June 15, 2017 by LoSBoL

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Melfice said:

In what way?
In the way that a mod, mods which were highly encouraged and often highlighted by the dev, made available free content that was locked out of a single player experience? Because all the vehicles that were made available for free for GTA Online were technically available in the single player. They were just locked behind code, just so Take Two could rake in some more cash from those "awesome" Shark Cards (microtransactions)?

Or did you mean in the way that they were modding in the first place?

Hmm, actually I had thought that the content that it unlocked was paid content for MP, if it isnt them Im wrong about that.

Still, it doesnt sound like TT breached anything, but the modder may have.

I wonder, how supportive of mods were TT before this happened? Did they encourage mod development? did they encourage this mods development?

Because of IP issues like this, modding can only really happen with the tacit approval of the developer. Im sure there's plenty that can be done without their approval, but you do risk breaching various things, and outcomes like this would not be surprising.

From the description, it sounds like certain things were opened up to modding, but this mod affects something not on that list. Ergo, breach. And not necessarily a minor one.

Edited June 15, 2017 by p1t1o

[HebaruSan]

9 minutes ago, LoSBoL said:

We keep running around in circles here, advocating that people are informed that it's not outside the realm of possibility that T2 can do whatever they want is not really helpful.

Quite so. Frankly, I can't imagine TTWO relying on simple code locks to control access to content when ModuleManager is so popular and the file formats for KSP assets are so well understood by so many people. But even if they did, this talk of Eternal Vigilance or what-have-you is just absurd. None of us can force TTWO to do or not do anything in relation to the intellectual property they paid for, except via a lawsuit if they violate the terms of a legal agreement they made with us (and they probably have lawyers on staff to help prevent that from happening).

Instead, let's consider what modest preventive actions are available to those who are concerned:

1. Create a pristine backup copy of 1.3.0 plus any previous versions that you liked (i.e., don't rely on Steam to provide them as-is indefinitely)
2. Likewise for the release packages of mods you feel may later be alleged to have violated the EULA
3. Similarly, clone the Github repositories of mods that you feel may later be alleged to have violated the EULA
4. The HTML download of the publicly available API documentation is about 40 MB and unzips to about 200 MB

Even if TTWO takes down everything they can, the above steps would allow players to preserve the status quo we enjoy today, and you're perfectly within your rights to do all of it.

If that never happens (and I'm guessing that's the right bet), then all we've lost is a minimal amount of hard disk space and network bandwidth.

[FunnyBunny14]

I'm not sure what to think of this. KSP is stupidly mod-friendly in its current build, and unless there are some rather large changes made to the code base that will forever remain the case. 

If that was all, though, we wouldn't be here discussing this. First of all, there's obviously the issue with mods overlapping or being outright identical to DLC content. That would likely be taken down if they ever decided to do such a thing. Which I'm kinda fine with, but also not? Mods tend to do things differently, and not everybody has money for essential and fairly simple things like parachutes (parts shouldn't be an issue, it's mostly gameplay funcitonality and DLLs we should be concerned about).

Secondly, there's the problem where they conceivably could create multiplayer in such a way that mods would be regarded as cheats. This would easily be prevented by implementing dedicated servers in a way that mods would have to be server side too in order to be used (like in minecraft). Considering that that is by far the cheapest way to implement multiplayer, this should not be an issue... unless they want people to pay for online functionailty via subscriptions, in which case modding is most likely doomed.

The third issue would be the notion of microtransactions. I'm not sure how they would implement it, but it shouldn't be too hard for a very determined publisher to find a way (i'm mostly concerned about multiplayer).

Long story short, given the type of game KSP currently is there shouldn't be a problem. However, with enough time and dedication on their part this game could become a microtransaction loaded, mod-unfriendly hell. It kinda depends on which direction Take-Two wants to, well, take it in. And that, unfortunately, is something only they know.

I kinda want to see some details now regarding SQUAD's deal with them to see how much control they can exertmover the development.

[LoSBoL]

43 minutes ago, Defenestrator47 said:

To all those saying 'No Squad said mods will be fine!  Stop spreading your kneejerk fear!' I say that I have seen this story play out with other devs, and other publishers.  A Dev team or company can say 'this will never happen' all they want.  The publisher will apply pressure, give bribes, offer stock options, blah blah blah.  Eventually the dev comes around and says 'despite what we said before, that thing we said will never happen, is now going to happen, and here's all the great stuff you can look forward to!'.  And then it turns to complete garbage.   YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT AGREEMENTS WERE SIGNED.  YOU DO NOT KNOW THE POWER OF THESE SOULLESS CORPORATE LEECHES TO RUIN EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH IN THE SEARCH FOR PROFIT.  You probably have loved games that were ruined by them.  Stop thinking KSP is unique in the gaming world.  Vigilance MUST be our watchword.

As you raised your voice, YOU DON'T KNOW EITHER. 
You are right that T2 is in the lead, and can basically do what they want with mods. Yet nobody (as of yet) has expressed any critical succes factors for T2 to do so.

So, I have a question...

Sell it to me... How would T2 make money out of KSP? How will they leech us? Envision me a business model in which the community, which has made KSP with modding, will be prone to empty their pockets?
And don't just reap  'microtransactions!', If you think it is?  Then give it a foundation.

[RockyTV]

Honestly, I'm waiting for Valve's space program game to come out. Can't wait for it. Take2 has done a lot of damage to a big, great game that had a big modding community. There's a big chance they will kill modding for KSP as well.

[magnemoe]

32 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

This gentleman didn't provide much (any?) new information, and completely left out the actual reason (ability to unlock purchasable assets without purchasing them). Ranting as if this is about pure hatred of mods is pretty foolish, but I guess it'll attract plenty of views and "engagement."

True, however anybody who has modded know its trivial to extract content from games. 
This is done all the time, Elder scroll online an MMO I play have people posting data mined features on the official forum showing upcoming stuff like new Nord dungeons in the next update 3 months ahead
They can not do much more here than show the models so its no issue. 
Has done it myself making compilation of gear found in multiple mods for skyrim.

Also have some knowledge of the darker moding scene, for Elder scroll and Fallout this is mods who use content from other games and sex mods.
For sims up to direct piracy of EA sims store content. 

Still fails to see how this relates to KSP. I agree a bit with Jim in that they went after the main modding tool because cheating in online even if they played fair.
For KSP it would simply result in that we who use mods get an final version. 
The other options is to play ball, add hocks moders want to use, lots of housing and farming mods for Skyrim require heartfire who is the least relevant dlc for pc players. 

[Noname117]

35 minutes ago, LoSBoL said:

As you raised your voice, YOU DON'T KNOW EITHER. 
You are right that T2 is in the lead, and can basically do what they want with mods. Yet nobody (as of yet) has expressed any critical succes factors for T2 to do so.

So, I have a question...

Sell it to me... How would T2 make money out of KSP? How will they leech us? Envision me a business model in which the community, which has made KSP with modding, will be prone to empty their pockets?
And don't just reap  'microtransactions!', If you think it is?  Then give it a foundation.

Build KSP 2? Build more games involving kerbals? And DLC content (which could mean they kill off mods but does not necessarily mean they will).But yeah, a KSP 2 could be highly profitable and small kerbal-related games could make them some money.

 

EDIT: I'd argue that we should not be worried about them screwing with KSP modders unless they begin to screw with Civilization and X-COM modders. If that happens be very worried. If that doesn't happen then I think KSP will be fine (although a KSP 2 might have some issues).

Edited June 15, 2017 by Noname117
Added the civilization franchise to the post.

[LoSBoL]

2 minutes ago, Noname117 said:

Build KSP 2? Build more games involving kerbals? And DLC content (which could mean they kill off mods but does not necessarily mean they will).But yeah, a KSP 2 could be highly profitable and small kerbal-related games could make them some money.

That's a very good answer, You've just made very perfectly clear where the money is within the Kerbal franchise. And it's not within the current KSP, DLC could kill of mods, but is pretty unlikely to monetize.

A KSP2 makes perfect sense as they can make the game much more accessible and broaden the viable buyerbase by making it 'simpler', the same goes for making more games involving Kerbals.  SQUAD doesn't even have to deal with this, T2 can go to any developer they please to further develop any Kerbal game they want. 

So where does that leave KSP(1?), right where we are right now, mod friendly and DRM'less, 
KSP2? could be a completely different beast, but that doesn't have to do anything with what we already got. And you can always decide not to buy that for whatever reason. Not moddable? Microtransactions? Just vote with your wallet when that time comes, and keep enjoying what you have within KSP.

[SchwinnTropius]

The biggest and most important difference between KSP and GTAV is multiplayer. GTAO has a need to strongly balance against the strangely-dressed Trevor Phillips's that roam the online servers, and any mod that has the potential to give a player an unfair advantage and bypass the need to pay for content creates problems for the very large amount of players that want to play fair (by GTA standards) as well as for Rockstar and Take-Two. KSP multiplayer relies on a mod that (from the looks of it; please correct and fill in my partial information) is less stable than GTAO, and the community around it is no where near as large as the "community" of GTAO. The need to shut down mods that effectively unbalance multiplayer is greater in the GTA case than in KSP.

As others have said, Take-Two have the power to do as they please with KSP, and I do carry a bit of pessimism about what may happen to KSP in the future. However, all I will do is simply watch carefully and hope for the best.

[linuxgurugamer]

6 hours ago, FW Industries said:

 

Oh, and here's NathanKell apparently giving advice on how to best violate addon rules.

Actually, he was telling me how to write some code which would work on Linux and OSX as well as windows.

[StupidAndy]

luckily I hate GTA

but TT owns KSP

it seems I have reached a conundrum....

I'll get back to you

[Kerbital]

TakeTwo literally said "modding games is an illegal activity".

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/grand-theft-auto-modding-project-folds-following-take-twos-demands

[UomoCapra]

We have no plans to make any changes to KSP modding. We know and value the importance of the modding community in KSP

[FW Industries]

52 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Actually, he was telling me how to write some code which would work on Linux and OSX as well as windows.

Some code that violates the addon rules. The extend to which Squad turned a blind eye is somewhat staggering. I just hope TT understands the arrangement that goes on here.

[Galileo]

45 minutes ago, Kerbital said:

TakeTwo literally said "modding games is an illegal activity".

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/grand-theft-auto-modding-project-folds-following-take-twos-demands

When it has to do with players in single player stealing online exclusive add-ons, yes it's illegal. Context is key.

with even more confirmation above by Uomocapra, how is there still skepticism? He under/with TT now. There shouldn't be such pessimism.

What is it now a days with this "end is nigh" mentality? 

Edited June 16, 2017 by Galileo

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Kerbital said:

TakeTwo literally said "modding games is an illegal activity".

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/grand-theft-auto-modding-project-folds-following-take-twos-demands

That "quote" is garbage.

Quote

Take-Two said modding games is "an illegal activity and demands from us to discontinue the project."

No, they didn't. If they had, Ars would have fully quoted them. Because that's what you do when you have a great quote that shows how evil the people you're trying to convince me are evil, actually are.