Here’s the deal: I want to make a mod for a game, that (the mod) contains a bunch of assets. I will buy the assets, and include them to my mod and offer the mod for download. However, the mod is designed so that other modders can mod it further, only with xml-files and dll-tweaks. As I understand the EULA of the asset store, nothing speaks against the concept, it is much like making a game and allowing it to be modded. Just that I make a mod and allow it to be modded further, and there are no financial interests, meaning, I don’t sell the mod.
Presenting the idea, some said it might be copyright infringement or border on the same. I don’t see how, since only I distribute copies of the assets with my mod, and other modders only reference them in their xml-files.
Just want to make sure I’m good before I go through with the project.
Are you saying that you want to take someone else’s work, which is presumably a paid asset or why ask, and then give it away for free as part of your work, because your work extends it?
Since, like much of the EULA, “integrated components” is unclear you could likely form the opinion that you’re legally safe in distributing the assets.
On the other hand if the assets are not obfuscated sufficiently, as in part of the build of the “electronic game and digital media” then you’re most certainly not allowed to do so.
Either way, it would be undoubtedly stupid to proceed with your current course of action.
Since I’m from the same forums as this chap, and was trying to tell him that his idea was against the EULA, I’ll fill you all in with how the modding works.
Basically we either buy assets from the unity store, or make them and import into Unity. They are then positioned and sized according to items from the actual game itself. We then use unity’s assetbundle pipeline to build them up and export them as a fie that can only be read by the game (it basically goes into a mods folder and is then called with XML within the game files).
From what we understood, this was all within scope of the EULA because we are providing a complete mod (so digital product and a complete unity project) for another unity game and the assets are suitably protected from modification and redistribution to some extent. I say to some extent because someone else CAN take your asset bundle and load it into their mod with the same XML calls… but a lot of us use EULA’s on our mods stating this is not allowed and we’ll DMCA folks doing it. The community is very self-regulating in this regard.
What the OP wanted to do is essentially create a “Master Mod” that’s a bunch of assets, packed up and built as I described, and then distributed. For the sake of argument, let’s assume they’re replacing some stuff in the game to make it look a little better… like some of the plants, guns and tree’s.
They wanted to allow other folks the ability to then build THEIR mods off this “Master Mod” and believed this was within scope of the EULA. I argued that it wasn’t because that would mean the licences to assets from the Master Mod would be used in a project not owned or controlled by the OP, but they believe that the EULA doesn’t explicitly state this is not the case.
I hope that clears up a little of the confusion. Important note: This is just for game assets, not editor extensions since we cannot modify the game in that manner.
It sounds like you want to just throw a bunch of paid art content which specifically restricts redistribution into an assetbundle and call it a mod, then redistribute it for free under the claim that it’s not really redistributed since it’s a mod. If it’s not redistributed at scale, then why does it work in this other project that the mod is targeting? If it can work in one specific game that is not itself, then it can work for every other one too - and that definitely doesn’t fly.
It may seem like there’s enough ambiguity to justify what you’re trying to do, but there’s also enough ambiguity to stop the project.
It’s more than just that. We have to patch the game to look for the asset bundles and those bundles SHOULDN’T work in another game due to the methods we’re using to bundle AND load.
So no, it’s not just “throwing a bunch of paid art content which specifically restricts redistribution into an asset bundle and calling it a mod.” It’s patching the game so it will properly look for these bundles, load them via XML (which does require more than just saying “Hey, load this” but I was trying not to complicate an already complex situation) and making sure they have colliders, they can be interacted with, they have the proper scale, etc.
There is actual work and modification involved and, as already stated, they are built with the unity pipeline for security purposes. There’s tools out there that third parties have made to open basically any unity asset bundle, so we’ve done the best we can to protect the edited and compiled assets. As stated, from what I’ve read in the EULA, that would be allowed as a digital product is being delivered. The fact people release them for free doesn’t matter since anyone could make a full unity game and release it for free if they so wished (and often do on the android and iOS stores).
