I'm not going to argue with the wide variance between skill sets, as I agree with your point. But I would argue that the vast majority of those who are currently doing the mod stealing do not even have the capability or the wherewithal or the patience for even the simpler DRM cracking you have described. And for most that do, some will decide it's not worth the effort. The bottom line is that pirating FO4 mods has been made far, far too easy right now. The barriers to entry are far too minimal, and the potential consequences are... inconsequential. For one, the CK, for all its warts, makes ripping another's work all too easy. And with nary the effort put into curating the resulting content, it's no wonder pirating is so rampant. Even a weak, easily breakable DRM would thwart 90% of them. But Beth doesn't even tie the upload account to a verifiable real world identity, and doesn't even bother with IP tracking either, thereby allowing the miscreants full anonymity and no means to perma-ban them. I am just flummoxed by how they could have not taken two seconds to consider any of this prior to opening the flood gates. The bottom line is that pirating FO4 mods has been made far, far too easy right now. The barriers to entry are far too minimal, and the potential consequences are... inconsequential. For one, the CK, for all its warts, makes ripping another's work all too easy. And with nary the effort put into curating the resulting content, it's no wonder pirating is so rampant. Even a weak, easily breakable DRM would thwart 90% of them. But Beth doesn't even tie the upload account to a verifiable real world identity, and doesn't even bother with IP tracking either, thereby allowing the miscreants full anonymity and no means to perma-ban them. I am just flummoxed by how they could have not taken two seconds to consider any of this prior to opening the flood gates.

I don't actually disagree that it will reduce the volume of mod theft significantly. I just don't think it will get as close to solving the problem as you may think. I don't doubt that if modders start sticking "mod DRM" into their stuff it'll cut down numbers significantly, but it doesn't take a wide community to do this sort of thing. It takes a handful of people willing to keep doing it ad nauseam. Since I've kept my personal opinions to a minimum and seem to be coming across as supporting both sides, I guess the next post is appropriate...

Hey people - It is NOT the console players that are pirating mods . It actually requires a PC that can run the CK in order to pirate a mod. It is your own PC master race faction that is stealing not the console players. The typical console player does not even know about this mess. They see that Bethsoft has FO4 mods for Xbox now and download. Most have no clue that some of those mods are even stolen. After all they downloaded from Bethnet, and Beth is a reputable company aren't they? They wouldn't allow pirated mods or mods that they haven't even tested to be sure they work on their site would they? Please don't get upset with console players. Save your butt hurt 12 year old attitude for the real pirates - the PC people who knew where to go and what mods to take. If you think, very few console players even know about Nexus. Why should they come here? The PC mods here won't work on a console without first being ported to Bethnet. And you can blame Beth for failing completely to do the first thing to secure their Bethnet site from malware, pirates uploading stolen content and butt hurt Mod authors hell bent on revenge against anybody and everybody whether they were involved in the problem or not. For years you have ranted against DRM, and now at the first hint that YOUR precious mod might be pirated you demand DRM? How ironic is that? DRM is not the solution. Educating Bethesda on how to run a mod site may be the solution. For some reason they seem to have ASSUMED that mods will only be accessed and uploaded during their 9 to 5 and Monday through Friday working time. And that no one would be smart enough to wait until they go home for the day to upload a mod they know is in violation of the rules set by Bethsoft for their mod site. And they ASSUMED that not much money needed to be budgeted for moderating their site because the few moderators they already had on their forums could take care of moderating the mods in their spare time.

This is close to my personal opinion. The real problem is that Bethesda is the developer of Fallout 4 and as a result they owe it to the community to have been more responsible with their launch of Bethesda.net. Since one popular talking point is legalities, I'll clarify: they don't legally owe it to us, no, but if they only ever pay attention to their legal obligations they'll quickly end up with a disillusioned and greatly diminished consumer base. It's not an unreasonable expectation that a reputable company like Bethesda would run a reputable website, and if there's one thing about this whole fiasco that upsets me it's this:

Console mods are a good thing for the modding PC gaming community because it means the chances of developers and publishers supporting mods is greatly increased. The chances of getting a bad PC port are diminished because suddenly PCs and PC gamers are the ones generating new content that helps sell their game on consoles, and thus alienating the PC community becomes unproductive (even moreso). Let's be honest: there is a smaller market for PC titles, but suddenly PC titles become valuable and even give console players an incentive to get a nice PC that can run their favorite moddable game so they can make mods. The advantage for consoles is equally obvious: suddenly you have content that can keep a single game interesting for years. It was (and still is) something that could really make things better for both sides of the community and even the developers/publishers, but...

Bethesda decided to be the first company to leap, which is great, but they decided to do so with their eyes shut. Bethesda has been dealing with the modding community for nearly two decades now (maybe longer?) and were fully equipped to add features to their site to prevent this. Not just fully equipped, but entirely capable of being aware of the pitfalls they could run into. Making a reporting system is disgustingly easy from the standpoint of web development and getting an active moderation staff could not possibly have been that financially straining to Bethesda compared to the possible advantages. Instead what we got was a giant mess that's needlessly stirred up a sentiment of "PC vs. console, come at me bro" when in reality mod theft has been pandemic for a very long time. It's also inspired people to genuinely feel the need to have these DRM systems -- I do totally understand why they're upset -- that won't really help make mods better (and will probably make them worse if commercial DRM is any metric).

And that's the problem: instead of this being a really cool thing all around, Bethesda's lack of foresight has made it a huge debate with a lot of dissent towards the idea. Instead of its introduction showing us all of the cool benefits it could have on both ends, it's just showing us all of the disadvantages and few if any of the advantages.

This. and it'll become more obvious now since you need to own a legal, steam verified copy of Fallout 4 in order to upload mods.

https://community.be...et/thread/32339

At least this, to me, seems like a step forward for taking responsibility.

Edit: Do the forums really hate when you copy+paste quotes or am I just going crazy?

Edited by NorthWolf, 15 June 2016 - 10:18 PM.