UPDATED 14/06/18 - *** Rules for User Made Mods and Edits of PDS games ***

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Castellon

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This is the discussion thread for the User Modding Rules of PDS Games. Please note that other games published by Paradox Interactive may be subject to other rules. For example the game Pillars of Eternity is owned by Obsidian Entertainment and you will need to contact Obsidian if you wish to mod that particular game.

If you want to read more about what can be done/not done with Paradox games as a whole, please visit our legal page: https://legal.paradoxplaza.com/terms-of-use

First, We at Paradox love User modding and mods for our games and want to encourage you to do so, we see benefits for everyone involved.
In the past there has been some confusion about the rules concerning user mods, in an effort to provide a clear understanding, the rules are formalized here.
These may be updated as needs and circumstances arise and through exchanges and dialog with you, our valued modders.

Below are the rules you must follow if you want to Mention/Discuss/Plan or otherwise Market your User mod on our forums and or list it in the steam Workshop.

1) Although we will no longer absolutely forbid having an external forum for the mod that is open to the general public (You have always been allowed a private one for the internal modding team), we strongly encourage you to keep your feedback discussions here to both benefit our members and to benefit from them. If you choose to have an external forum you can still use ours but normal rules against posting/direct linking/ or writing out external links without approval still apply.
2) User Mod files should be hosted on a file share site designed for use by the public (if they know the specific address) and or Steam Workshop.
3) The User Mod will not distribute the EXE file.
4) The User Mod may not include ANY kind of license or claim of copyright distributed with the mod (You may have a Credits section).
5) The User Mod should respect the work of other modders and not include any work without the consent of that modder.
6) The User Mod should not include 3rd party copyright material, without permission of the copyright holder.
7) Mods created with content owned by Paradox Interactive must be made so that they will only be usable by players who have the corresponding game or DLC installed. If this requirement is beyond the technical ability of the particular mod maker (or it is impossible due to the nature of said mod) then they cannot be used.
8) You may not charge to buy the mod or charge fees of any kind.
9) The Mod should be exclusive to the members of this forum and or Steam workshop.

Violations: If you feel that a user mod is violating one of these rules, please alert a Moderator and never bring it up publicly, leave that to the staff. Starting an argument or confronting the mod creator directly can result in unfriendly behavior and may result in both parties being warned or infracted, we do not want members getting into arguments about it Especially for Rule 5.

Once your User Mod has grown to the point where you feel you need more than one thread to discuss it, you can ask a Moderator that your main thread be stuck to the top of the forum and can use the first post of that thread to act as an index to the other related threads of your Mod.
Once you feel You have too many threads and posts to manage in that way, you can ask a Moderator to sponsor your mod and they can apply to an Administrator for your own sub forum.

It is important to note that we support modders and want you to succeed, follow the rules as outlined above and we will support you as fully as we are able.

SNEAKY EDIT:
Removed the following line: You may not solicit directly or indirectly donation in any form.
Our terms of use has been updated and you are allowed to include a link to Patreon (for example). If someone wants to donate for the time you've invested in creating your mod, that's fine, but make sure it follows rule 8 above.
 
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Yup I left it open for Discussion.
Using Steam workshop is new for us and so some issue may arise or rules added/changed as a result.
 
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I dont quite understand this:

"1) The mod may not have an external public forum, they can have one for their internal development use but not disclosed to the general membership here, nor allowing them to join."

So lets say there is a non-English community forum, does that mean i cant post my mod there?
 
I dont quite understand this:

"1) The mod may not have an external public forum, they can have one for their internal development use but not disclosed to the general membership here, nor allowing them to join."

So lets say there is a non-English community forum, does that mean i cant post my mod there?

As I mentioned in responce to your PM, Yes that is correct, if you are making a Non English based mod this is probably not the best place to market it anyway.
Except, French/German/Spanish/Swedish/ can do so in the other language forums on this site.
 
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These all seem like fair rules. No problems here.
 
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4) The Mod may not claim ANY kind of license or copyright of any kind.
Some free and open content requires including a license file for those items, specifically Creative Commons licenses for things like artwork and music, and SIL Open Font License for fonts. In order to use many of them, I need to include a file explaining the license for these. Is that okay?



Edit 29 Aug 2013: If creating static bitmap images (“embedding”), the license file is not needed for inclusion, thus, not an issue:

SIL OFL FAQ said:
Question: 1.10 Does the full OFL license text always need to accompany the font?

Answer: The only situation in which an OFL font can be distributed without the text of the OFL (either in a separate file or in font metadata), is when a font is embedded in a document or bundled within a program.



Question: 1.11 What do you mean by 'embedding'? How does that differ from other means of distribution?

Answer: By ‘embedding’ we mean inclusion of the font in a document or file in a way that makes extraction (and redistribution) difficult or clearly discouraged. In many cases the names of embedded fonts might also not be obvious to those reading the document, the font data format might be altered, and only a subset of the font — only the glyphs required for the text — might be included. Any other means of delivering a font to another person is considered ‘distribution’, and needs to be accompanied by any copyright notices and licensing information available in OFL.txt.
 
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You cannot claim any kind of license. If someone requires you to post a license then you should not use it, as then it would be third party copyright.
99% of the time I am sure there would be no issue, but it is the one percent that is the problem.
 
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I'm a bit curious about clause 4 as well - according to the Berne convention, whatever you produce is automatically protected by copyright (although an EU4 mod is obviously derived work from Paradox's copyright), and as I understand it, the legislation of many countries don't even allow you to disavow said copyright. I assume clause 4 really means that we cannot restrict the distribution of our work (which mostly manifests as being a jerk on the forums anyway)?

While I'm very much in favour of rules that reduce forum modder (I cannot fathom why some modders seem so much more ego-obsessed than the open-source community I normally work with), I agree with ancestral that it's a shame that it also means we cannot use content used under a license that requires attribution, as with most Creative Commons licenses.
 
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The no creative commons presents an issue as that is most of the free stuff modders could use.
 
The only thing is the Steam Workshop isn’t the Paradox forums.

For anything that is published to Steam Workshop, I don’t think it can be governed by these rules. Users submitting content must agree to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, plus any supplemental “app-specific terms.” I don’t think forum rules count here — I believe it’s referring to the End User License Agreement for the product (at very end of the manual, and I don’t see anything regarding submitted content to Steam Workshop).

From the Steam Subscriber Agreement:

Steam Subscriber Agreement said:
Content Uploaded to the Steam Workshop, §6.B.¶3.:
Specific Workshop-Enabled Apps or Workshop web pages may contain special terms (“App-Specific Terms”) that supplement or change the terms set out in this Section. In particular, where Workshop Contributions are distributed for a fee, App-Specific Terms will address how revenue may be shared. Unless otherwise specified in App-Specific Terms (if any), the following general rules apply to Workshop Contributions.

Valve IP and game art is OK to use (TF2, Portal, L4D, etc.) For anything else, users must have permission to use content submitted to the Steam Workshop.

Steam Subscriber Agreement said:
License to Use Valve Game IP in Fan Art, §2.D.¶2.:
If you incorporate any third-party content in any Fan Art, you must be sure to obtain all necessary rights from the owner of that content.

Steam Subscriber Agreement" said:
Representations and Warranties, §6.C.¶1.:
You represent and warrant to us that you have sufficient rights in all User Generated Content to grant Valve and other affected parties the licenses described under A. and B. above or in any license terms specific to the applicable Workshop-Enabled App or Workshop page. This includes, without limitation, any kind of intellectual property rights or other proprietary or personal rights affected by or included in the User Generated Content. In particular, with respect to Workshop Contributions, you represent and warrant that the Workshop Contribution was originally created by you (or, with respect to a Workshop Contribution to which others contributed besides you, by you and the other contributors, and in such case that you have the right to submit such Workshop Contribution on behalf of those other contributors).

Nowhere does it say content mustn’t have licenses. You just need to have proper rights to the content. That may mean declaring which parts of the content may be licensed under a Creative Commons license, SIL OFL, BSD, GNU GPL, etc.

I’m totally okay if Paradox wants to add additional rules to their forums. It is their forums and they can do it. I just don’t see how anything submitted to Steam Workshop can be inclusive of these forum terms.
 
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Paradox IP is not "Valve Game IP"
To be clear we can remove mods from Steam workshop.
 
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Wait so with #6 we can't have mods that are made based on other games IE: Elder Scrolls Mod, Fallout Mod, Bioshock etc at all?!?!
Technically No, you cannot include material specifically trademarked, but most stuff is not, Copyright is tricky, I do not think most people would go after you for it if they see it a benefiting them and their brand in someway, or they just do not care enough one way or the other, but we need this rule in place to cover ourselves if they do.
I cannot really elaborate, as it is A) not my place, and B) I am not an International Copyright lawyer, to know what I can and cannot say regarding it.
Hey one company even went after youtube videos of their games that were like a decade old, you just never know.
 
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Technically a TES or Fallout or Bioshock or GoT mod would probably be an unauthorised derivative work... But, it is not criminal and if you aren't making money off it (which you shouldn't according to these rules) then I doubt anyone would so much as send you a cease and desist letter. It's arguably fairplay and/or transformative work since none of those were strategy games to begin with.

My 2 cents from what I still remember from uni.
 
That would most likely be my thought, but again I am no expert.
 
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As I mentioned in responce to your PM, Yes that is correct, if you are making a Non English based mod this is probably not the best place to market it anyway.
I do not understand the quoted sentence. What is the "this" refering to? Is it this Paradox-Forum? But then if it is not the best place you still have to use it, anyway?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Castellon means this specific sub-forum, ie the EUIV User modifications forum. Rather, you should use one of the "other language" forums available on this same site.

I had a question of my own: would we be allowed to post mod files generated by the CK2-EUIV converter? I asked BjornB for permission to start this thread, which he thought was an excellent idea and gave me the go-ahead to start it, but I only asked about posting the actual CK2 save file, not the converted .mod file. The thread would probably get more traffic if the mod files were allowed, but since they require a DLC to generate I wasn't sure if that is allowed.


Doesn't matter to me either way; I'm happy with just posting save files, but if mod files are allowed then I think the thread would be a lot more useful. Thanks in advance!
 
As I mentioned in responce to your PM, Yes that is correct, if you are making a Non English based mod this is probably not the best place to market it anyway.
Except, French/German/Spanish/Swedish/ can do so in the other language forums on this site.

Isn't that going to kill any modding community that isn't English/French/German/Spanish/Swedish? There is a small but thriving modding community in Italy, for example - if you forbid them from distributing mods, they are gone. Poof. Vanished. Or at least completely excised from the main public, other Italians that come here but not in other forums included.