In Defense Of The Mod Removals...

[ACLDWRLD]

https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-modders-fight-take-two-court

 

Linked Above is an article chronicling the ongoing court case between GTA modders and the parent company of WWE2K/2K Games "Take-Two".  I bring this up to hopefully take some of the heat off people like Patrick Gilmore as their seems to be some sort of hypocrisy narrative surrounding him.

From what I can tell, Patrick has a very high up position at Visual Concepts, and this Anti - Modding movement is really coming from the parent company, of the parent company that he works at. I'm pointing this out to say that everything he said about modding could've been entirely genuine and that this push to lock out modders out of TakeTwo/2K owned titles are very much above his "pay grade" for lack of a better term. 

 

After a bit of research, you'll quickly find out that as early as 2017, Take Two have been doing their damndest to hamper and impede on the various modding communities for their titles. Such as when Take Two and Rockstar tried to take down GTA Modding tool "OpenIV" before succumbing to public and media pressure, and allowing for uses outside of porting older maps, vehicles, and other copyrighted content over to newer games.

However following up TakeTwo decided in 2019 to change the agreement to include a disclaimer entailing they could override anything they please in said agreement, and even went so far as to remove the original agreement from the wayback machine

(Source: https://gtaforums.com/topic/973749-take-two-changes-the-agreement-modding-take-downs/)It

 

And while companies like Bethesda have adopted the concept of modding being an asset, so long as it's original material and not ported/copyrighted stuff. The narrative at "Take Two" (The parent company of the parent company Patrick is Executive of) seems to be an incredibly short sighted one,  believing that modding somehow eats into there share of the market, even taking down a FULLY ORIGINAL MOD NOT USING ANY CONVERRTED ASSETS in "Vice Cry". 

Furthermore, Take Two posted a DMCA notice on GitHub requesting the removal of "Re3" and "ReVC" repositories claiming copyright infringement. It should be noted this code has been restored and the case seems to be ongoing as while it's possible for reverse-engineering to be considered fair use. It would still be up to the judges

(Note: "Re3" and "ReVC" are github repositories containing the reverse engineered versions of GTA games, meaning the code is entirely original)

(Source: https://torrentfreak.com/github-restores-reverse-engineered-gta-code-following-dmca-counter-notice-210507/)

 

NOW THIS IS WHERE THINGS GOT SPICY, TAKE TWO AFTER SOME MORE BACK AND FORTH TAKE TWO FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THESE MODDERS

Now because the lawsuit (that's still ongoing between take two and the modders) doesn't really apply to much just yet to the WWE Games side, I'll simply explain why you guys should take it easy on the devs while still letting your voice be heard about this modding issue

 

People think it has to do with all the myfaction content, but understand absolutely none of that has been touched as it's original content from the developer (Visual Concepts), If anything after seeing how generous Visual Concepts has been in the past, I would ask that you afford these guys a little bit of slack (while still making you're voice heard)

 

It's take two's goal to crush modding and hope that no one makes a peep about it, that way they can ignore they're game devs who wanna bring it up in board calls and/or board meetings, SO I very much do encourage making you're voice heard everywhere possible, even tweeting to Patrick about it. And while I wish he was in a position to be more forth-coming about the current state of modding in WWE Games, all this hate and vitriol seems to be wrongfully pointed. The people making this decisions to get rid of mods aren't the same people who we're praising them previously, and that when you go at Patrick, it actually rids the parent company of any blame or responsibility despite being the actual culprits

 

In case it wasn't clear, I think modding is good and that we should keep letting our voices be heard, don't get mad at Patrick, instead get as many content creators, WWE or not, game journalists, or even WWE superstars on twitter our displeasure with the game. This is hardly a defense of the removals but instead a slight defense of Patrick and instead a push for redirection of our displeasure. I also avoided the entire conversation between owning and licensing games as I don't think it's that pertinent (at least just yet) towards getting modding back

 

TLDR: It's the parent company of the parent company for 2K Games/WWE Games that's hell bent on getting rid of modding, fight back by letting your displeasure be known in places that'll grab their attention, like the forums, subreddits, and most importantly content creators. TakeTwo very much want to get rid of modding but their not invincible against public pushback

 

 

[mattfick]

thats wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy different

[ervkannon]

Woow! Great explanation!

[ACLDWRLD]

13 hours ago, mattfick said:

thats wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy different

Wym?? I acknowledge the circumstances of the mod removals are different, I’m just tryna outline where the real motives might lie when it comes to something like anti modding sentiment. At least I hope I did that

[Twistedmisery666™]

This game is not fun without modded dlc and such, modders fix the game or put something in thats suppose to be but the developers forget to.

[Robbie686]

My own personal opinion, this is BS. They have always been open to modding and in term respected it as it gives them inspiration and challenges.

If modding is completely removed, i wont be buying another 2K game.

[Tomb_stone_23]

To me imo, companies that hate modding usually hate when the community can give people better content than they can. For a much better price. They have too many hurdles to jump through and don't want to be shown up. The market can decide what we want and we can make things better in our own way when they won't. Sometimes their visions and ideas (and actions) aren't community friendly so we can take it upon ourselves. I would gladly give my money to them and 3rd party creators if we can all work together. Right now it just makes me want to give my money to the folks here instead of them. When they talk about their share, they already got their share when we purchased their game. If people mod it and extend the life it's only better for them. It would create more sales on multiple platforms as well so it's only a win for them. As far as I can tell, it also wouldn't stop us from continuing on to the next game the following year because that's what we've all mostly done until they fudged up 2k20. This is on them and I don't feel bad for them. And they're not entitled to someone else's work (or money).  Especially when most are released for free at some point.

[Darkness Muta]

The only reason 2K care about people posting stuff like Status is because the future of this game will be microtransactions.  They used to be satisfied with the game and DLC alone getting people to spend $80-100 a year but they now want people to keep spending year-round as a game as service model to try and get that new shiny attire or wrestler.  The biggest problem is the WWE games have a Create a Wrestler mode so this idea really makes zero sense because someone could just recreate the attires or wrestlers in game. 

After this year, it is pretty obvious that they will not have PC as part of the cross platform CC next year which will be kind of sad since the PC side of CC has always been lacking hence the need for mods.  If they had a 500 man CAW limit with your logo amount only limited by hard drive space and cross platform CC I do think it would make it so less people would be looking into modding.  For me seeing something like Status recent posts of 40+ alt attires that in previous games would have been there by default just shows how clueless 2K has become as I do not want to waste 40 of my 100 CAW slots on attires hence me looking to hopefully be able to mod those attires in without needing to waste slots.  

[petebaldwin]

They can do what they like - as long as 2k have the licence, this will be the last WWE game I buy. I hope the new AEW game is mod friendly - they'll be getting a lot more sales than they would have if they are clever about it.

[ACLDWRLD]

On 5/15/2022 at 12:26 PM, Tomb_stone_23 said:

To me imo, companies that hate modding usually hate when the community can give people better content than they can. For a much better price. They have too many hurdles to jump through and don't want to be shown up. The market can decide what we want and we can make things better in our own way when they won't. Sometimes their visions and ideas (and actions) aren't community friendly so we can take it upon ourselves. I would gladly give my money to them and 3rd party creators if we can all work together. Right now it just makes me want to give my money to the folks here instead of them. When they talk about their share, they already got their share when we purchased their game. If people mod it and extend the life it's only better for them. It would create more sales on multiple platforms as well so it's only a win for them. As far as I can tell, it also wouldn't stop us from continuing on to the next game the following year because that's what we've all mostly done until they fudged up 2k20. This is on them and I don't feel bad for them. And they're not entitled to someone else's work (or money).  Especially when most are released for free at some point.

I agree wholeheartedly, I’m just making the case that those making the calls to remove mods entirely are many steps above that of Patrick, who everybody seems to be going at. Again his silence on the matter is something worth criticizing, but it’s really those at Take Two (Parent Company) pushing this anti modding thing what is seemingly all of their upcoming releases 

 

On 5/15/2022 at 6:01 PM, Darkness Muta said:

The only reason 2K care about people posting stuff like Status is because the future of this game will be microtransactions.  They used to be satisfied with the game and DLC alone getting people to spend $80-100 a year but they now want people to keep spending year-round as a game as service model to try and get that new shiny attire or wrestler.  The biggest problem is the WWE games have a Create a Wrestler mode so this idea really makes zero sense because someone could just recreate the attires or wrestlers in game. 

After this year, it is pretty obvious that they will not have PC as part of the cross platform CC next year which will be kind of sad since the PC side of CC has always been lacking hence the need for mods.  If they had a 500 man CAW limit with your logo amount only limited by hard drive space and cross platform CC I do think it would make it so less people would be looking into modding.  For me seeing something like Status recent posts of 40+ alt attires that in previous games would have been there by default just shows how clueless 2K has become as I do not want to waste 40 of my 100 CAW slots on attires hence me looking to hopefully be able to mod those attires in without needing to waste slots.  

You hit the nail on the head, 2K23 is gonna be one of the worst games in terms of micro transactions, but as long as youtubers keep using the excuse “it’s content” to drum up views and young customers. This is the beginning of the end for this shit

On 4/29/2022 at 12:52 AM, Robbie686 said:

My own personal opinion, this is BS. They have always been open to modding and in term respected it as it gives them inspiration and challenges.

If modding is completely removed, i wont be buying another 2K game.

“They” is Patrick and those over at visual concepts. But if the parent company has other ideas, it’s likely mod support will dwindle away in the next release