Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. - Wikipedia motto
The modder
All GDT modder know that, GDT’s code is a horrible obfuscated code (even with BeautifyJS).
In fact, modders need have the source code that @PatrickKlug and other Greenheart’s staff uses. In this way, the modding will be really more interesting.
The friend
There is a lot of illegal copies of GDT. Many gamers uses it. Greenheart Games aren’t less rich because of that. This is the same for multimedia : the multimedia companies aren’t less rich because of the illegal copies of multimedia.
Maybe there are a little bit less rich, but nothing which really change their situation. It’s horrible that companies want to win a bit of more money at the expense of the person who wants to share with his family, friends, colleagues (or classmates in the case of a school), etc.
Yes, I know about Steam Family Sharing but this is very restricted : necessity to have a Steam account, accunt and devices number limitation, each is dependent of the original friend, etc.
The modder (2)
Mods will always be limitied if just an API is used. The engine will not be modifiable by a mod, and if it can, the engine code will be fulled of API and it will be horrible to read.
The solution is simply to authorize modified versions sharing.
The modder (3)
Modders have the right to be remunerated too!
They need the right to sell their mods! I feel the “They will make money on the back of greenheart!” but not at all. It’s THEIR mod. It’s simply normal to be remunerated for a work.
A last word
But this do not apply only to the game, this apply to the mods too. So, I accept (and encourage!) Greenheart Games (if they accept my proposals) to prohibit mods which do not respect this fundamentals rights.
Also, remember the public domain isn’t an exception to the copyright, this is the copyright which is a exception to the public domain.
GHG is a company, they’re not going to give away their game for free. If it was free, they would either not make any money, or the gameplay would be similar to Farmville. I know you’re talking about sharing, but surely your friends can buy the game if they are interested?
Modders can change the engine freely, and they don’t have to use the API. Just look at some of the advanced mods here.
I believe you can contact GHG and discuss it with them if you want to sell your mod. I haven’t seen a single modder on here who wants to do that though, we all just want to expand the GDT experience with our mods and not neccesarily make money from them (some modders do accept donations). And GDT is GHG’s work, we’re just people who want to mod their game; they never asked us to.
You’re free to create an open-source video game company simulator
GHG would be affected by this in fact, because take a multimedia company such as universal studios, they are a multi billion dollar company so a few dollars won’t affect them, GHG are not a multi billion dollar company, so this could affect them
Even if modders were allowed the right to be able to sell their mod, what do you expect one single mod would generate? The amount of people willing to pay for a mod is close to naught.
Modders do already great things, much more than we expected and much more than the normal API allows. I really don’t understand why of all games out there you would reason that we limit modders’ abilities. How often do games ship their source code in plain text, and how often do companies give outsiders access to unobfuscated source code?
We do invest a lot of time in modding support too. In the past months we have actively worked on Steam Workshop support to give all these great mods more exposure. Most of that work will even make it back to our open source project greenworks.
Given the previous discussions you started about ‘free software’ and your perceived right to give away other peoples’ creation I will lock this topic. There is no new insight to be gained here. Your reasoning is simply incompatible with the reality of the industry.
