Well from what I've read, they're bummed that according to the EULA the mod becomes part of CA's/SEGA's property when it's shared(not sure how legal that is, but that's what it says). That's there to protect CA/SEGA from someone selling the mod. And they don't like that, which is understandable. Not that CA/SEGA has ever done anything with any modded stuff.
And then they've also talked about how other modders can steal their work without crediting them, because of not being able to copyright, without repercussions. Which is true legally, they can't stop people from modding their game. However TWC Terms of Service bans plagiarists, so that effectively punishes them pretty severely. This applies for most of the larger modding sites. Some of the stuff they've been saying:
No Creative Assembly is saying that you have no legal rights to stop someone using or adapting your mod work. So next time you see a post from a skinner or modeller saying 'permission granted with credits' or anything similar remind them that Creative Assembly owns it all and they have no rights whatsoever.
Again no, it is not just that. Otherwise CA wouldn't have told us to remove our intellectual copyright claim. No modder has any right over his work
It isn't about Creative Assembly, it is the fact that according to Creative Assembly no modder can claim any protection over his work. All the times a submodder has taken skins or textures from another modder without permission and gotten into trouble- all of that is false. Go tell King Kong that you don't need his permission to use his Third Age units or buildings or code, because hey- he doesn't own it.
Dominion doesn't assume that Creative Assembly are going to steal anything from us, we just wanted the right to decide who uses our material that we have spent years making.
He doesn't seem to understand, that legally modders have never been able to do anything when people steal stuff without credit. Only thing that happens is that the thieves get banned from a bunch of forums if they try to share their stuff. However, if someone tries to sell the mod, regardless of who does it, SEGA legal department will drop a hammer on them.
Here's what Creative Assembly said about this:
I will start by saying that I'm more than happy to speak to any of the creation team directly to help clarify this.
To quote message sent to the Dominion of the Sword team:
"As with most if not all games that allow modification, the copyright for all modifications to Total War games belong to the publisher (SEGA); anyone creating a mod warrants that they have the right to, and do, transfer any copyrights used in creation of the mod to SEGA as specified in the EULA they agree to on installation of the original game.
Therefore it is not possible to claim copyright on any mod or any asset used in the creation of a mod, as these are transferred automatically by the creator to SEGA. Additionally, mods are likely for the most part to contain original Total War code and/or assets, which of course remains copyright of SEGA and cannot be copyrighted by another party. "
And this from the Creative Commons license:
"Work licensed under a Creative Commons License is governed by applicable copyright law.[10] This allows Creative Commons licenses to be applied to all work falling under copyright, including: books, plays, movies, music, articles, photographs, blogs, and websites. Creative Commons does not recommend the use of Creative Commons licenses for software.[11]
However, application of a Creative Commons license may not modify the rights allowed by fair use or fair dealing or exert restrictions which violate copyright exceptions. Furthermore, Creative Commons Licenses are non-exclusive and non-revocable. Any work or copies of the work obtained under a Creative Commons license may continue to be used under that license "
As you can see, the creative commons license does not apply in this case, Medieval 2 is not an open source platform. The claim made in this thread cannot be applied to Dominion of the Sword mod, that is all.
No one is shutting anything down and if this mod isn’t released, that will be a huge loss to the community. If the team would like help protecting their mod, both myself and Craig are active here on the forums, along with a squad of TWC moderators, just let us know.
That line in the EULA is very much standard for most games and only applies once it is modded into the game.
Would we ever take anything from the modding community? No, that is there to protect us from anyone who would resell our games as their own. So if there is an iconic original non-copyright infringing character or symbol form the Dominion of the Sword mod which the team wished to put on a t-shirt or mouse pad and sell, they are free to go right ahead.
I will buy one, if it’s in red.
However, if the team tried to sell the mod (using Medieval 2 components of any sort, including any of the game code), then it would become a legal matter.
The copyright text they put up doesn't apply to DotS, which is why is was requested to be removed.
I understand the text was put there to stop people changing their mod, but it simply does not apply. I will go to bat for the DotS mod in the event that other teams try to highjack their project (assuming it will be released).
It's all a bit convoluted..
