NDAs...

nice rant. We hate "proffesional" acting mods.

hahaha @ the mod making you sign an NDA. I can understand Teams wanting to protect their ideas in the diesgn phase and not wanting people to just going to blab their mouths about all the cool features the TEAM doesn't want the public to know yet. I see where its valid in teh game industry since there is so much going on that to just tell other companies what we are working on is not going to help you keep your job. But since you aren't getting paid for mod work then an NDA seems rather pointless.

it's usually not even out of some sincere design to protect the "team." It's usually just the asshole leader wanting to retain all rights and try to sell it and keep all the money.

Oh, and unless a lawyer delivers you an NDA, anything they want you to agree to over the web has no legal standing, so really it's just bullshit in the end.

Quote from Fletch

it's usually not even out of some sincere design to protect the "team." It's usually just the asshole leader wanting to retain all rights and try to sell it and keep all the money.Oh, and unless a lawyer delivers you an NDA, anything they want you to agree to over the web has no legal standing, so really it's just bullshit in the end.

While some of what you say is true; in that MODs do not need NDAs as most of the content they have is already pretty much owned by the original game creator anyway. But I will not say that non-commercial products do not need NDAs as there is a need for internal projects or projects that could have sensitive data to be protected. While there is some merit to some projects who use modding as a tool for prototyping their ideas and those should be protected under NDAs. I do here again agree that there is just no need for mods having any sort of NDA.

Now as far as your comments in regards to agreements on the net not holding up as legally binding contracts, your are just wrong there. We have seen many cases in the court of law; that have allowed conversation on the internet to be admissible as evidence. E-mail conversation are just as usable as Phone conversation or face-to-face conversation. Along with that in many small claims court verbal agreements are upheld as legally binding contracts and the supreme court has stated in the US that internet conversations are just as admissible as verbal ones; which means that in many cases agreements on the internet could be held as a legally binding contract. While this is only true of course if your over the age of 18 or under the age of 18 and have parental consent(which in the case of a NDA a parent signing on your behalf). Just thought I would throw that in there.

Emails being admissible proof in a court of law is a US (and other countries) thing, true, but there are other countries in which the law says exactly the opposite (France for one). It's not that the law doesn't exist, it does and claims that emails can too easily be forged and can't be traced well enough to be proof.

You don't want that people who have left your Mod in anger fuck around with your stuff and ruining the project. We have a NDA at Insurgency and i'm sure it has protected our stuff and strategy a few times during the last years.

Times have changed. You should accept that. A modern mod takes much much more time to complete and contains tons of more artwork etc.

It is wrong that a mod is property of the company who made the game. Only files directly connectet to the engine are their property (scripts for example) With the internet full of idiots it has become important to protect your property. This has nothing to do with professionalism. It has to do with safety.

I'm sure you as american wouldn't agree if someone says private persons don't need guns to protect their property.

Quote from Steppenwolf

I'm sure you as american wouldn't agree if someone says private persons don't need guns to protect their property.

One can 'o worms at a time

Quote from Steppenwolf

I'm sure you as american wouldn't agree if someone says private persons don't need guns to protect their property.

Just give me a baseball bat, and I'll do fine.

I would NEVER join a mod that made me sign an NDA. I don't care if its to protect the mod or whatever bullshit reason they come up with. My work is my work and if the team doesn't trust me then there's no point of me working with them to begin with..

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you don't want that people who have left your Mod in anger fuck around with your stuff and ruining the project.

First of all, no you don't want that.. But it's really up to the individuals and its their right to do with their work whatever the hell they want. However I don't see how an NDA would help there. What are you gonna do? Take them to court over a mod? Oh ok.

lol...Klein FTW.

BTW, submdl, interesting you bring up a professional question when your sig is about as unprofessional as it gets. gg.

Mod development is so wrong these days.

First of all, it's been almost 1.5 years since Half-Life 2 was released and there are very very few mods you can actually download and play. For me this is a clear sign that something is going terribly wrong.

Do you remember what the first Counter-Strike beta looked like? It had very cheap maps and no custom content except the weapons and the player models who looked like terrorist in pajamas and yet it did work and it was fun.

Nowdays mods are trying to compete against professional games in terms of graphics and content. They try to make total conversions with custom textures, custom models, custom animations... hell, some mod teams even have concept artists. Mod leaders are more acting like some executive suits with their "recruitments" and "NDAs" and b.s. like this.

There are tons of mods being developed for HL2 and only a smaller part of them will actually ever be completed. And even if they come out sometime in the year 2007, who's gonna play them?

Let's take a look at Dystopia for example. It's good looking mod with fun and innovative gameplay. They were also supported by Valve and got some publicity via Steam. The first demo was released long time ago and there were several updates since then. And guess what, less than 80 people are playing it right now! (http://steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html)

Maybe the mod teams of all these countless military shooters ("no, our mod is not like CS. it has different objectives and the M4A1 looks different...") should reconsider their philosophy.

I have lots of years of modding experience and I've been watching the whole scene for almost 8 years and I can't help but feel that there is (almost) no more love in the community.

I completely agree with klein and the threadstarter. NDAs for mods are bullshit and nothing more than wannabe pro behavior.

What you going to do if someone breaks them ? The NDAs often arent legally correct + theres no way you are actualy going to sue the other person since most people are minor + it costs you a hell of a lot.

None of the mods that got released a few years ago used NDAs yet all we never experienced problems with people who tried to steal or release things. If it wasnt needed back then why would it be needed right now apart from trying to look interesting.

And its not about "more development time". For example we spend 2.5 years (thats more than most "next generation" mods you know) on a UT mod which turned out to be one of the biggest UT mods there were and we didnt had an NDA, we didnt had anything in fact (we didnt had leaks either!) apart from trust and skills and thats more important than a lame piece of paper.

Quote from wacko

Now as far as your comments in regards to agreements on the net not holding up as legally binding contracts, your are just wrong there. We have seen many cases in the court of law; that have allowed conversation on the internet to be admissible as evidence.

There is a huge difference between admissable evidence and a binding legal contract. In the U S court system, evidence is simply any outside object or testimony to support your end of the story. It can be challenged, thrown out, or proven false by any lawyer worth his salt.

Situation 1: The mod maker made people sign the NDA to get sole legal rights to the work and keep all the profits.

Result: Unless the NDA was written by a lawyer who knows what he is doing, anything you agree to online transfering the rights to your work over to somebody else will get thrown out. There are a reason real NDAs are pages long. US copyright law is very complex. You miss a little clause here or there and it's worthless. In addition, judges and juries are given a large amount of leeway in cases like this where a 'woker' feels like an 'employer' has exploited his work. If a mod developer tried to keep all of the profits without a fair distribution to the people who made the assets, they'd be taken down very quickly in civil court.

Situation 2: The mod maker made people sign an NDA to prevent leaks.

Result: Nothing. What? You're going to take somebody to court? First off you'd have to bring them to court in whatever state or country they're in. You really going to fly to Nevada to sure somebody over your mod? Secondly, it would be a civil case, not criminal case, so your burden of proof is to show they have cause monetary harm to you and the mod, which is hard to do since 99% of mods don't produce profits. You can't present theorhetical profits you would have made down the line unless you already have a contract signed with a publisher, in which case the publisher's lawyers ahve probably already sent the team real NDAs. So if you're not going to take anybody to court, the best you can do is call them a poopypants on your mods website, which will make you look like bickering 14 year olds (which might very well be the case).

The only real benefit to NDAs is they act like psychological leashes to 14 year olds on your mod team that don't know any better. Since they think it's real, they'll keep in line. But honsetly, if some mod team tried to get me to agree to one, I'd just laugh. It's just instant sign #1 that there is some bad management going on. Either they're greedy or they're inept at getting the team to behave.

I think mods always made people agree to not give out information before, it was just simple and about trust.

Like a) if you give out our content to other mods I, b) fire you.

Quote from Pericolos0

we do?

i though only the testers had to sign one, and even then it's more considered like rules you agree with rather than a legal contract. Abit like the disclaimer on a website

lol

Quote from mikezilla

I think mods always made people agree to not give out information before, it was just simple and about trust.Like a) if you give out our content to other mods I, b) fire you.

Yeah, with NW we just said "hey, don't put anything out there if we haven't officially released it," but I did make one embarrassing blunder with one pretty talented guy that I really regret looking back.

That was a little more critical being an SP project, since so much of the enjoyment could be ruined if you showed your entire hand too soon. MP you want to see all the maps, models, game types, etc. beforehand but in our case it was a lot more important that we play our hand carefully and not show some of the key locations and characters.

NS has a valid concern about PT changelogs getting out since those constantly change and can easily cause undue confusion and mayhem in the community, so they just say "hey, don't talk about anything until we announce an official changelog." But last I checked their 'NDA' that people constantly refer to is still just "hey, don't do this" and people not doing that.

But yeah, this mod NDA thing is ridiculous. Relax and have some fun, people.

I'm a part of two mods. In one of them I had to sign an 'NDA' if I were to continue because the leader got some trust issues. On the other mod they haven't even mentioned it because they are trustworthy nice guys. And its in the first mod that all the problems has happened, the second mod has just been a blast

and to Sensee, there is love out there... you just have to look at the right mods :] There will always be power hungry assholes out there though.