99 Cent Mods anyone?

[Deadweasel]

If somebody wanted to distribute and charge for a mod for KSP, I don't think that they would be breaking any laws by doing so, as long as they didn't include a copy of KSP along with it.

Copyright does not give you god-like powers over what people do with THEIR copy of the product that you SOLD to them.

Copyright gives the author sole discretion over decisions of how it can be used for personal enrichment (profit). That means that game licenses themselves cannot be re-sold to others for profit. In fact, they specifically deny distribution of any form, as you mentioned. No, it does not prevent people from modifying their own copy of the game at all, and in fact, SQUAD have been very cool about actively encouraging it.

However, they CAN legally take exception to somebody making a profit from code that was written specifically to work with their licensed game. It's hard to know for certain if they'd actually act on such a case, but the fact is that copyright law does back their case if they chose to deny that capability to a third party. I mean, try looking for a third-party vendor for a physical kerbal model. You'll find one, and only one. Shapeways is offering them up, because SQUAD went out and set up a store with them for it. They entered a legal agreement to allow Shapeways to make a profit from the kerbal likenesses, but try setting up your own business doing the same, and watch how quickly somebody delivers a Cease & Desist order.

Because SQUAD are actively encouraging the modding community as it currently stands, they'd have a very difficult time shutting it down at this point (because of the legal precedent they've already established with that encouragement), but they'd have every legal right to shut down a third party developer who was personally profiting from code that was created expressly for the purpose of modifying or extending their game.

Look at it from this perspective: if I created a massive mod that added, say, complete colonization capability to the game, and chose to sell it as an add-on pack, similar to the add-ons EA sells for The Sims, I'd potentially be heading SQUAD off at the pass. I'd be profiting from something they might already have been working on designing themselves. Whether they distributed it as part of the vanilla game, or as a paid add-on, the fact remains that I would already be collecting a profit for something they have every right to reserve for themselves in the first place.

[Red Iron Crown]

And created their own game engine out of it. Unless you're suggesting that you can re-engineer a few text files like you can with KSP, and boom, rocket simulator with your own customisations?

Squad have a lot of their own tech in this project. It's not like they just loaded a couple of meshes and textures into Unity3D and hit the "compile" button. Why shouldn't they then license KSP out to 3rd parties who want to make their own spacecraft-based games?

I'm not saying that what Squad has developed is insignificant or easy, but it's not a game engine. Squad wrote a game, a very good and complex game, but not a game engine. KSP's game engine is Unity. KSP could only be developed as quickly and by so few developers because they didn't need to write their own engine from scratch. Game engines take many thousands of programmer-hours to develop; that's the whole reason they get reused and licensed.

[Red Iron Crown]

Copyright gives the author sole discretion over decisions of how it can be used for personal enrichment (profit). That means that game licenses themselves cannot be re-sold to others for profit. In fact, they specifically deny distribution of any form, as you mentioned. No, it does not prevent people from modifying their own copy of the game at all, and in fact, SQUAD have been very cool about actively encouraging it.

This is far from being as cut and dried as you make out. EULAs haven't been rigorously tested in court, and it is thought by some lawyers that the doctrine of first sale applies to software licenses and they can be resold. Software companies are sidestepping the legalities by using DRM to make resale difficult rather than roll the dice on whether EULAs are enforcable.

However, they CAN legally take exception to somebody making a profit from code that was written specifically to work with their licensed game. It's hard to know for certain if they'd actually act on such a case, but the fact is that copyright law does back their case if they chose to deny that capability to a third party. I mean, try looking for a third-party vendor for a physical kerbal model. You'll find one, and only one. Shapeways is offering them up, because SQUAD went out and set up a store with them for it. They entered a legal agreement to allow Shapeways to make a profit from the kerbal likenesses, but try setting up your own business doing the same, and watch how quickly somebody delivers a Cease & Desist order.

No, they can't really. A mod is the mod writer's work; it presumably contains none of Squad's code and none of their art assets. That it is meant to interoperate with KSP does not make it a derivative work controlled by the original copyright holder. Shapeways' case is different because it uses Squad's artwork and is clearly a derivative.

Because SQUAD are actively encouraging the modding community as it currently stands, they'd have a very difficult time shutting it down at this point (because of the legal precedent they've already established with that encouragement), but they'd have every legal right to shut down a third party developer who was personally profiting from code that was created expressly for the purpose of modifying or extending their game.

No, they wouldn't. As long as the mod contains none of Squad's code it is not a derivative work. Their only recourse would be to break its compatibility in an update.

Look at it from this perspective: if I created a massive mod that added, say, complete colonization capability to the game, and chose to sell it as an add-on pack, similar to the add-ons EA sells for The Sims, I'd potentially be heading SQUAD off at the pass. I'd be profiting from something they might already have been working on designing themselves. Whether they distributed it as part of the vanilla game, or as a paid add-on, the fact remains that I would already be collecting a profit for something they have every right to reserve for themselves in the first place.

It doesn't work this way. There is a huge market in software that extends and builds upon the software of others. Think management tools for databases like Oracle, administration tools for Windows, etc. As long as the software doesn't contain any of the original software's code and doesn't decrypt anything to work (thanks DMCA!), it's legally in the clear.

[Skyler4856]

We don't serve your kind here EA...

[LaydeeDem]

A majority of modders (myself included) had this discussion with the dev team a while ago. It's not happening.