FMs to be distributed exclusively through Eidos? (LOOK OUT! IT'S A PRANK!)

Fingernail on 2/4/2005 at 12:33

Surely the fact that Mr Lipsor has no division or title within the company, and that googling that name returns absolutely no one with the same name, either connected with Eidos or not (and it appears no one on the internet has such a surname either), would suggest to me categorically that he is nothing more than a fiendish (and not particularly convincing) creation of a diseased mind.

mopgoblin on 2/4/2005 at 12:33

Quote Posted by jermi

Even if you don't use any of the existing art, is it legal to distribute files in a proprietary file format owned by Eidos?

As far as I know, copyright can't exist in a file format. For a start, a file is ultimately just a string of bits, and all such strings will be valid as multiple types of file (there are "formats" that are just containers for random binary data, for example). And a file format is a class of things rather than an individual thing - I believe copyright tends to apply to individual things like images or programs. A patent might be another matter, but those don't exist automatically.

However, I don't know how much original data besides art and sound and so on (I'm thinking about things like whatever T3's equivalent of a gamesys is - data that defines the behaviour of things in the game) would be included in the files, and whether that can be copyrighted. If it can (and I suspect that's the case), whether we could use the file format might not make much difference.

sparhawk on 2/4/2005 at 12:56

Quote Posted by OrbWeaver

But it should be perfectly obvious that few, if any, people are going to bother going to the time and effort of making an FM if they have to get Eidos' approval to release it (and wait up to a year for them to do so). Plus, we have to believe

If their business plan is to make this as posted by GBM it still makes sense. You must lok at this form their point of view, not from yours.

Quote:

* That Eidos' new investors would notice and care about the Thief franchise, a relatively small part of Eidos' creative output.

Hmmm ... I don't know if I'm particularly fond of the "notice and care" of a investors interest. After all, their notion of "notice and care" would most likely be VERY different then than one from a Thief fan.

Quote:

* That the same investors would believe that distributing Fan Missions in some way diminishes the value of the Flesh engine (which is tantamount to Microsoft saying that sharing DOC files diminishes the value of Word).

Which obvoiusly is 1) a wrong analogy and 2) you only see this form the fan's point of view. Fomr the investors point of view it indeed make sense to assume that the value is diminished by freely available FM distribution. Why should one buy an addon for money if they can download a host of more or less quality missions? From an invenstos point of view it means competition. And you should think of an investor usually as somebody who wnat s to make money. Such an investor will likely not know what Thief is or what it means to anybody. He will see the sheets and statistics, it earned that much income in such a time and there is a potential of X% of selling an addon. "Garret? Who is Garret and why should I care for him? Crap animations? So what? People baught it nevertheless and the stats say that we earned X USD, so a patch is not really neccessary."

Quote:

* That the investors would be happy to cause massive bad will towards Eidos by reversing a decision in favour of the fan community that was already cleared with their legal department (presumably).

The question is not if it causes bad feeling in some obscure fan community, the question is how much is the percentage of sales losses in relation to the sales that can be gained by locking it down.

Quote:

* That Eidos are prepared to sue (or at least C&D) distributors of Fan Missions, when these distributors are customers who have purchased the game, and are increasing its value by making available extra content which might encourage others to buy the game.

There are precendes of other games where fan mods have been taken down because of this. Why do you think it should be different with Thief? Just because you want it this way? If the company says she will sue you, will stand up for the legal case and pay the bills for the laywer? Can you even afford it? If you are hosting 100 missions and Eidos claims that this is a loss of 100.000 USD for the initial court file, will you be prepared to put that much money on an editor without a specific licence?

New Horizon on 2/4/2005 at 13:11

I honestly don't buy into this whole charade. It was funny for the first two pages but now it's actually pretty cruel. A joke is fine but this is causing the community a LOT of undue upset. :tsktsk:

Jadon on 2/4/2005 at 13:14

I think this needs to be sent to some news sites. Let more people know about it and cry foul. On the other hand if this is a joke we should at least wait until monday (or untill it can be confirmed its not.)

Briareos H on 2/4/2005 at 13:19

Note : I consider this thread to be a joke, but it anyway raises interesting issues so let's assume this is for real.

If the editor tools output files are copyrighted and can't be distributed, then it may not be THAT difficult to develop an external tool that dictates the dev tools how to generate the FM : all that would be distributed is art and instructions for a third party program on how T3ED and such have to behave.

The resulting processes may be long and would require the editor but they can't possibly (or at least i cannot possibly see how they) lead to a legal threat.

New Horizon on 2/4/2005 at 13:20

Quote Posted by Jadon

I would say that if it's not confirmed to be either real or a hoax within a few hours we should definately send it to some news sites.

Jenesis on 2/4/2005 at 14:49

GBM, you're a cruel, cruel man :p

Maximius on 2/4/2005 at 15:07

Quote Posted by sparhawk

This is why I am inclined to believe all this. Whatever realities shaped this decision, one of them was the fact that the TTLG community represents both a dedicated market and a creative fountainhead. Problem was, they had no claim over that market or its commodity of choice, T2 FMs. Now they think they do and they want the cha-CHING, the BLING BLING. The fact that there is no specific license could be to THEIR advantage, given a hunting pack of lawyers, deep pockets ($$$), and what is possibly a lot of legal grey area as to what parts of the software belong to who or whatever.

Here is an example of a similar situation in the music world

(http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/11644.html)

True, new ways to P2P can be devised and maybe (hopefully) the recording industry is obsolete and doomed but that does not mean they arent going to TRY to keep a hold of all that filthy lucre. Eidos is just doing the same thing. The consolization of TDS indicated to anyone with eyes that the game had drifted miles from the its fan base so this should not be that surprising. I am buying Doom 3 and practicing with its editor.

jermi on 2/4/2005 at 15:26

Re-reading ...

Quote:

[...] requesting that all modifications, maps, and
resources created with the Flesh engine and its editing tools
be evaluated by Eidos[.] This is also a condition imposed by Epic Games [...]

I wonder when this condition was supposedly imposed. Before or after the editing tools were released? If before, why are we hearing about it only now? If after, what was Epic doing all this time and didn't IS/Eidos clear all this stuff with Epic before the release? And where did I leave my pants?

If you've already invested time and effort with T3Ed, you have my sympathies, but I can't help but hope that this hoax turns out to be for real. It's just too much fun to watch big companies fumble over themselves in a money-grabbing frenzy.