Luke Ross Mods Discussion

Games & Software Game On!
225

Another topic I know pretty well ^^
Basically, Emulators are legal, Bios are illegal. The creation/download and use of Roms/ISOS are legal ONLY if you own the original game and backup for your personal use. If you upload a Rom to share it, or download a rom from a game, that’s illegal even if you own the original game.
In reality, as I said, it’s a matter of tolerance. Exemple : Sega tolerates Rom distributors, Nintendo is more agressive (even with fan games).
And of course lucrative exploitation of Roms or Bios is totally illegal and not tolerated.

The keywords are tolerance limits from studios and commercial exploitation.

It’s the same thing with Revive. Remember Oculus decided to change their tolerance limits by blocking Revive hack, Oculus was in its right. They decided to tolerate Revive again for financial reasons (Revive adds new customers to Oculus). Btw, Revive is free !

Once again : if Ross published his “mods” for free he wouldn’t have any problems.

226

Revive being free matters very little. Mods can be charged for as they are not usable without the game. So like your Revive example game mods increase a game studio financials by encouraging ppl to buy a title they had no interest in before.

As I said folks like Luke could simply make a program that manages there VR injection and launches games much like Vorpx does and charge for there mod manager launcher.

As for Emulators one group folded and many of them went to work for Sony that had developed and released a playstation emulator for sale to play on Sega Dreamcast. A small company that could not afford to risk loosing to a corporation with very deep pockets.

Now Take Two could have been smart and simply seen if they could have come up with an agreement to make the mods official and have the mods turned into sellable dlc and split the profits.

A mod is nothing without the game to use it with.

1 Like
227

The only reason Oculus allowed Revive to live is because it’s free. Otherwise they would close Revive and include their own system inspired by Revive. That’s all.

1 Like
228

Or because Lucky was supporting & financing it.

229

Oh i did not know that ! I did also buy a game in the past and downloadet a rom for it, because i did not want to switch on the Tv …
I also do not switch on the pc often and use the oculus for internet on the couch with a keyboard.
The reasons for this are just comfort.
So i do have to create my own rom for my own game (without uploading it)
hmm i did not even know how to do that…

230

That just isn’t true. He doesn’t publish or use anyone’s copyrighted code. (Some mods do, his does not). As long as the person bought the game they can legally change it for use on their own pc.

Think of it this way - you buy a car and it is painted blue. The car and even the color likely have complete legal protections. (car companies love to protect even the colors). But you can legally paint (i.e. “mod”) your car in any way you wish. A vendor can CHARGE you to paint your car.

Selling paint that someone might use to paint their car is also not a violation. You can change anything about a car that you own, i.e. engine, steering wheel, seats whatever. You can even sell your car with the modifications legally.

Bottom line is he can sell you tools to modify your own game as long as those tools do not contain anything from the game.

Therefore Korgens examples are unrelated to this case. That said a large company can come for you easily even if you are totally in the right which is what has happened to Luke Ross.

In effect they issued a dmca to someone selling green paint for your blue car. They can cause you to spend exorbitant amounts of cash to defend an obvious right. Hopefully they realize he was causing people to buy these games and allow him to continue.

3 Likes
231

One could hope but sometimes they just don’t get that. I was getting ready to buy RDR2 when Rockstar got involved. I’m sure it’s not the only sale they have lost over this. I’m also one who is inclined to reward such behavior by not supporting such companies in the future.

1 Like
232

Indeed. Really dumb as the game would be more or less finished for the most part in terms of new sales.

Mods like Luke Ross has made renew interest in these game titles. Why a company would want to cut off new revenue.

I remember how bad a rep Rockstar had with poor ports and some games you had to download cracks and other missing files; just to be able to run the game.

They came a long way with Quality with releasing Red Dead. But now likely will boycott them as well over there gross idiocy towards community.

1 Like
233

I totally disagree …I think you’re missing the point. This has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright in this case is being used as a bullying tactic by a company with deep pockets vs a guy who dares not stand up to them.

What’s happening here is that Take Two found out ,due to certain articles being posted about some modder making 20K a month making VR mods for their games.

Upon further investigation (probably attempting to try the mods for themselves) they realized that aside from GTAV all of his mods were $13.50 :canada: a month.

Realizing they could not even try these mods with out paying is probably what started all of this.

How much does rockstar charge for RDR2 online? I bet they wish they could charge people $13.50 a month for that. My point is that they think the only people who should be making money selling features to their game is them.

So they use the simplest and vaguest method they can to bully him to stop.

When asked by Luke what he did to violate copyright they don’t respond , you know why? Because they know it’s not really copyright and they won’t ever say the truth which is…

“We just don’t like that you are making money”

Here’s the proof…how many mod sites are there using Rockstar imagery to promote their mods & modding tools. 1000’s. So it’s not the imagery or logos they have a problem with.

How many of the major overhaul mods have been issued Cease and Desists after Luke Ross?

None.

I’ve mentioned this to Luke Ross before and even before all of this , I thought it was a little weird that he was claiming that the Patreon money was for “Early Access” to his mods but to this day none of his mods have ever seen public release

I’ve been around long enough to know that when he releases a new mod it’s in its beta stage for maybe 3 months, during which time he seems to release updates regularly to fix issues that make the mod buggy. After that the mod is usually as good as it’s going to get and he basically moves on to the next game.

There is literally zero reason why Horizon or Cyberpunk mods shouldn’t be freely downloadable on his site right now.

If the Patreon were really not just a paywall for his mods he would only charge for his mods for the first 3 months of early development and then release them for free.

Therefore his Patreon would truly be just for people who love what he does and want to “support his efforts”

To point out some great examples of creators who do this. Latest look at Preydog. He is doing the same thing and he also has a Patreon . I can download each of his mods for free , (and arguably his mods have even more reason for Capcom to come down on him seeing as he’s adding legit full VR to all of the games that they probably stand to make millions off of creating exclusively for Sony and Meta.)

There’s no question that he is not charging for his mods because the Patreon is purely optional.

Raicuparta makes all of those Unity mods and he has the early access model where you get the early access for a few months before he releases or outright gives the source code

My point is that there’s no way to look at Luke’s pay model and pretend it’s not just a dude charging for mods. Claiming it’s just to support him is “just words” unless the mods are eventually given out for free

Now I’m not saying that charging for mods violates any law, he can do what he wants. But in this case so can 2K games.

I feel if 2K had looked at what he was doing and realized they could get these mods without having to pay him anything they wouldn’t have had any grounds to attack him. as plenty of other mods are out there for free that they could easily go after as well and haven’t.

Luke Ross isn’t doing anything I haven’t seen others do to their games In terms of hacking their engine to make modding possible.

Why not go after these guys

I bet you if an article came out tomorrow that lcpdfr devs were forcing people to pay a 13.50 per month subscription fee to play and that they were taking in 20K per month doing it. They would be C&D’ed tomorrow.

Sorry for the long post.

We can only hope that all of the other IP holders on Luke Ross’s List (Square, CDPR, From soft, etc…) don’t become as petty as 2K did. But if they do we will know why.

2 Likes
234

they took down plenty of free mods i just had to literally torrent that free vice city gta V mod to try it in VR recently because it was taken down by 2k long ago,the mod was completely free in fact they even tried to take down open iv i remember,there is no pattern like “free vs paid”,most popular gaming patreon creators are people literally selling graphics overhauls like naturalvision quantV and many others for gta V using literally gta V assets and they dont release anything for free,i got one of those and i cant access the latest version exactly as if i was getting red dead 2 VR mod,but even worse since Luke was just selling his own damn code he can ask whatever he wants for his work,whatever 2k comes across sends a dcma,those articles were proly the reason 2k noticed it but the fact that the mods were behind a paywall wasnt relevant.

2 Likes
235

That is indeed a bizarre rant. The TLDR of it is you and presumably Take 2 don’t like people making money for their efforts. (even though Take2 does indeed make money from LR mods, btw.)

My answer to that is Take 2 could have easily offered this functionality on their own and CHOSE NOT TO DO SO. They could have asked him to make it free and chose not to do so. They could have charged for those features and chose not to do so. These are features they do not offer and do not plan to offer.

Once again a 3rd party can sell you paint for your car. They can also charge you to mix the paint you would use on your car. I could even design a paint brush for you to use to paint your car and charge you for it.

There is nothing at all ethical or legal preventing any of this. That is the bottom line. It comes down to bullying tactics very likely originating from an attorney that does not realize they do indeed make money from this mod and that the mod does not use any of their software.

3 Likes
236

Untrue, I willingly (and currently) give any reasonable amount I can to any creator who makes awesome things. Luke Ross included. What I don’t like is being told something is early access and then it never coming out of it.

…that reminds me, after that “Universal Unreal Engine 4 VR mod” reveal, I need to donate a sizeable sum to Preydog even though I don’t have to.

We can at least agree on this.

At the end of the day this is NOT about copyright it’s just a Big company doing this Ona whim.

I literally bought 3 mafia games and RDR2 specifically because of these mods and now I have to jump through hoops to play them.

1 Like
237

How long Mods have been free is irrelevant. Is there another alternate mods to the titles Luke make? Yes, go use those. No, then you pay if you find value to it. Don’t value to it, then don’t get it. You cant force people labors to be given for free.

6 Likes
238

im soo glad 2k is getting leaked soo hard rn with gta 6,they already throwing the dmcas and this time wont do anything lol

239

We PC gamers have certainly been spoiled over the decades. When people have remarked at the money I have spent on the hobby, I point out that, dollars per hour spent, it is the cheapest form of entertainment I engage in. Free mods have contributed greatly to this.
This is not to say I won’t pay for something of value or donate to an effort, only to say how spoiled we are by creators who can do it for just the love of it.

3 Likes
240

Maybe you can in your country or in your state. In mine you can’t change your car’s color as you wish. On our registration certificate, the color is specified. Even insurance companies calculate your contribution according to the color of the vehicle.
You can’t do what you want just because it belongs to you, otherwise everyone would have rocket engines in the back of their car.

1 Like
241

If you like being the pigeon, have fun and spend all your money.
I’m tired of repeating the same things, so go read my comments and we’ll talk again !

242

I presume you can simply by updating the registration. Though a car’s colour is a very poor example. Your insurance companies still use colour for your rate? That is terrible; am glad they seemed to do away with that nonsense.

A better example would be adding an accessory or after market stereo. A mod that does not use protected code or copyrighted materials like models etc… Is not breaking copyright.

Hi res textures and model packs can be said to be breaking copyright as it uses original artwork that is protected.

Much like in WINE you can use MS dll files providing you have a licensed copy of Windows.

243

You do know he is a DeV? So hardly a pigeon.

244

Depends on the country. I can put a rocket engine on my car here. Just can’t drive it on public roads if it’s not within specification. Honda has no say in it.