I was standing up for this guy recently, arguing that having a donation page is fine. However, this goes way beyond donations and feels more like a sale.
Eh, it's his code, his work. I believe he's within his rights to decide how he's compensated.
I personally think this method is a bad idea but then again I don't pay this game and don't even know what the mod does. Maybe it's the second coming or whatever and he knows his business more than I though. Either way, it's his right.
Not really. Modding is allowed, but as soon as you start making money over a game you don't own I expect Rocktar is gonna cease an desist him into oblivion. Yeah, it's his code... but without the game is useless.
Donations are a thing, selling something you don't own the right to is another.
Be aware, I don't want anything to do with that mod and I don't even know whst it is tbh
That has to be illegal right? Like building a mod for a game is fine but if you charge people for the mod for that game its illegal in most cases. This is effectively that.
Heavily depends on how the mod interacts with the game. If it does not use anything that's from the game, selling stuff becomes against ToS at the best and illegal at the worst
Unfortuantly his code doesn't act independently of its own accord or through software that has permission either. Unless he has a deal with Rockstar (doubtful) they can claim this as a violation.
I totally understand this. But I feel like there are better ways to monetize work than this.
I absolutely respect modders that link sites like patreon or buymeacoffee and I have previously given money to modders who's mods I enjoyed (because they deserve it).
Modding should work as a community effort. By paywalling a mod or tool, you are separating the community into people that can throw out money every day and the ones that can't.
I probably see it this way because I come from the modding community around the Bethesda games, where it is forbidden to paywall mods.
In the end, I agree with you that People that put in a lot of work into great modifications deserve to get payed. But they should ask, not force the users to pay.
I agree overall. Modders can and should be compensated for their work if they want. But I would personally much prefer if they offer it for free and allow for donations. That's a much better way to build a community. Especially since they are building sometimes small modifications on games they had no part in creating. And I especially am not a fan when they require you to subscribe to a patreon, with the idea essentially being that it could become a subscription.
I also checked out the mod patreon page. The author kinda sucks. People are voicing their frustration that he essentially added drm to a mod and his response is either that he doesn't care or...
So you didn't read. The authentication doesn't affect subscribers, if you have ever subscribed you can always pass the authentication. Only the people who want to pirate it should get pissed
Ratlobber created a video on a Gmod mod that when pirated would leak your IP address. Kind of reminds me a bit of that.
I would link his video explaining and going over it I knew which one it was but his titles and actual descriptions are not very descriptive so I don't know which one it was.
The mod requires online authentication before it starts to function and won't run unless it can successfully do that. That's pretty much the textbook definition of online DRM.