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Starfield Paid DLSS Mod Creator Hits Back at Pirates, Threatens to Add 'Hidden Mines' in Future Mods

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
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good thing there's free alternatives to his little cunty tyrant attitude.
Haha, less than a week after his mod was out on the scene there were alternatives on nexus that didn't need subscriptions to get updates.

He got fucked over pretty quick and then Nvidia's announcement on DLSS support was the nail in the coffin.

He's no longer seeing $$$ everywhere and I bet his patreon subs have fallen off a cliff too. Good. Fuck him.
 
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StereoVsn

Member
Best way of preventing unauthorized use, but the downside is it doesn't really work as a deterrent - which is precisely the reason commercial games use it. There's no expectation that the DRM will last forever, just long enough to put people off from pirating during the all-important launch window.

Honestly, I support the guy for doing it. Sorry but the level of entitlement some people have is crazy. You don't have a God-given right of access to other people's work. If you don't think its worth the money, don't buy it. Its that simple.
You support this dude who is using unauthorized modification on 3rd party software to profit through subscription service and mod it with a malware payload?

Ok then. 🤡
 

Silver Wattle

Gold Member
Stealing from corpos is whatever, but stealing from individual people is kind of an asshole move imo. If the guy spent time putting in work to make the mod work, he should be able to charge for his work.

If you disagree that people shouldn't have to pay for mods, then make/commission a mod of your own and release it for free and if it's good enough, no one will need to pay for the other one.
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
You support this dude who is using unauthorized modification on 3rd party software to profit through subscription service and mod it with a malware payload?

Ok then. 🤡

As described in the OP:

"anyone subscribed [to] at any time can have access to all my mods previously made without having to pay for each, and they work after the subscription expires"

This sounds entirely reasonable to me; get access to all this dude's stuff by giving him a patreon payment. If you stick around, you'll get updated versions. If you don't, you just continue to get what you paid for.

Unless you think he's somehow not only obliged to give you his mod for free, but to keep it updated in perpetuity also for free, I don't see what the problem is? Want to explain to me why he -or anyone for that matter- simply owes you? That their time isn't valuable?

Bottom line: I wouldn't work for free! Doubly so if leechers started to expect or worse DEMAND it!

As to "malware", I highly doubt he's going to embed code that does more than make it more difficult and annoying for people to just spread his mods. I think the idea that its going to do anything seriously malicious is kinda goofy. Talk about going from zero to 100! Sure, its technically feasible he could scrape data and credentials, install a crypto-miner or whatever... but that'd be insane overkill!

Its also totally illogical when if he was out to scam people, wouldn't it make more sense to just freely distribute it so he could suck more victims into his malevolent web!?! Bwahaha!!

The reality is that he's setting up a system whereby he's working for his patrons. So keeping them happy is important seeing as its the keystone of his business model! So whatever DRM measures he takes will need to factor that in.

What twists my melon though is would you take the same attitude when dealing with any other sort of one-man business? Would you expect a tradesman, technician, an accountant or whatever to offer their labout to you for free? And would you expect them to continue to maintain their work for as long as you demand at no cost?

Coding is just a type of skilled labour. Pay the fucking guy if you think his stuff's worth using. If not, go and find someone who will do it for free, or simply go without. Its not complicated ffs!
 
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As described in the OP:

"anyone subscribed [to] at any time can have access to all my mods previously made without having to pay for each, and they work after the subscription expires"

This sounds entirely reasonable to me; get access to all this dude's stuff by giving him a patreon payment. If you stick around, you'll get updated versions. If you don't, you just continue to get what you paid for.

Unless you think he's somehow not only obliged to give you his mod for free, but to keep it updated in perpetuity also for free, I don't see what the problem is? Want to explain to me why he -or anyone for that matter- simply owes you? That their time isn't valuable?

Bottom line: I wouldn't work for free! Doubly so if leechers started to expect or worse DEMAND it!

As to "malware", I highly doubt he's going to embed code that does more than make it more difficult and annoying for people to just spread his mods. I think the idea that its going to do anything seriously malicious is kinda goofy. Talk about going from zero to 100! Sure, its technically feasible he could scrape data and credentials, install a crypto-miner or whatever... but that'd be insane overkill!

Its also totally illogical when if he was out to scam people, wouldn't it make more sense to just freely distribute it so he could suck more victims into his malevolent web!?! Bwahaha!!

The reality is that he's setting up a system whereby he's working for his patrons. So keeping them happy is important seeing as its the keystone of his business model! So whatever DRM measures he takes will need to factor that in.

What twists my melon though is would you take the same attitude when dealing with any other sort of one-man business? Would you expect a tradesman, technician, an accountant or whatever to offer their labout to you for free? And would you expect them to continue to maintain their work for as long as you demand at no cost?

Coding is just a type of skilled labour. Pay the fucking guy if you think his stuff's worth using. If not, go and find someone who will do it for free, or simply go without. Its not complicated ffs!
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Soodanim

Member
Before he hid the numbers he had something like 11k patrons.

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Everything else aside, looks like he's made a pretty penny. He could probably do a decent income cutting the DRM entirely and letting generosity/appreciation be the motivation to be a patron. Things like early access releases are commonplace and people don't get upset by that sort of thing existing.

That said, this "Bad press" probably got him more subs.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
I'm not sure his reaction to this is the best one, but I'm also not sure why so many people feel entitled to benefit from his work while giving nothing back.
 

Sakura

Member
I thought the point of places like Patreon was for people to support your work, and you can throw them some extra content or whatever for helping you out.
Using it as a paid subscription service like a gamepass for mods seems kinda weird, but maybe I'm outta the loop.
In any case if he makes mods that hard to crack, I'm sure other modders could just release their own mods, but free, and forget about the cracking part.
 

theclaw135

Banned
I thought the point of places like Patreon was for people to support your work, and you can throw them some extra content or whatever for helping you out.
Using it as a paid subscription service like a gamepass for mods seems kinda weird, but maybe I'm outta the loop.
In any case if he makes mods that hard to crack, I'm sure other modders could just release their own mods, but free, and forget about the cracking part.

Modern games are large and complex enough, that I recognize solely relying on volunteers has its limitations.
But once money enters into the mix, we get malarkey like this.
 

UnNamed

Banned
Sorry, I thought I was on GAF but now the link redirects me to this Hanna Montana board with 11yo children complaining to their mums they can't have their favorite videogame.

Really outrageous when someone want to be paid for their work. They should work for free, fuck family, house, mortgages, taxes. Next time they want a loan from a bank they should say "But I have lot of "likes" on Neogaf".
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
What a minute. I used the frame generation mod right now...didn't have to pay a cent? I'm confused, is there more than one DLSS3 FG mod?
 

theclaw135

Banned
Sorry, I thought I was on GAF but now the link redirects me to this Hanna Montana board with 11yo children complaining to their mums they can't have their favorite videogame.

Really outrageous when someone want to be paid for their work. They should work for free, fuck family, house, mortgages, taxes. Next time they want a loan from a bank they should say "But I have lot of "likes" on Neogaf".

It's not the concept of charging for mods that upsets me, as such. Although there's not much point to it either. If you're talented enough to charge for your work, you have avenues you'll be much less demonized for partaking in.
 
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Silver Wattle

Gold Member
Sorry, I thought I was on GAF but now the link redirects me to this Hanna Montana board with 11yo children complaining to their mums they can't have their favorite videogame.

Really outrageous when someone want to be paid for their work. They should work for free, fuck family, house, mortgages, taxes. Next time they want a loan from a bank they should say "But I have lot of "likes" on Neogaf".
The entire mod scene is built on the mods being free, no one is forcing this guy to do this work, he is completely free to build zero mods and no one will give a shit.
Charging for a mod, charging for an update to that mod, implementing DRM, talking about putting in "hidden mines" in his mod are the issues.

If we normalize this behaviour we run the risk of pissing off developers/publishers who then actively put anti modding features into their games, didn't denuvo just announce some anti mod feature?, so that they can force us into microtransactions.
 

CuNi

Member
I had hopes Bethesda would come forward and forbid paid mods outside of later creator club mods.

Other games already did it. Obviously it won't stop people from doing it, but it might stop enough people from supporting it so it's not as lucrative anymore.

I hope all his future mods get cracked too.
 
What does Bethesda’s T&Cs say about this?

Pretty sure under copyright law you can’t commercialise derivative works of a product (Starfield in this case) without express consent from the derived works owner.

Bethesda could stamp this out if they wanted to.
 

Kenpachii

Member
What a minute. I used the frame generation mod right now...didn't have to pay a cent? I'm confused, is there more than one DLSS3 FG mod?

The guy has multiple DLSS 3.0 mods for multiple games that are in high demand of the feature such as the last of us 1 and red dead redemption 2. His grift halted however with starfield where he released day one DLSS 3.0 mod into, but some other guy made one for free. However he has DRM on his mod which resulted in a hacker group nuking his drm out of the mod and dropping it on the web for free. The dude asks 5 bucks patreon subscription to get access towards his mods basically.

Now he's pissed and threatens to drop spyware or other mallware into his mods to fuck with people that didn't pay. Even while there are now free mods that do the same shit he does.

Dude's a idiot.

Was actually thinking about making a nexus account an drop the hacked dlss 3.0 on there and label it as my own for free. Just to fuck with nexus and this modder but can't be arsed.
 
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Gojiira

Member
This. It's on Bethesda as well as they fail to provide the most basic things or QoL changes that could easily be implemented in their games time and time again.

Watching the weekly mods vids on YouTube and seeing all the shit modders have to fix, things that were also done in Fallout or Skyrim mods...
I don't dismiss the work being done by the devs but when modders can do a better job in a couple of days , shouldn't they let them in on the dev cycle or at least incorporate some of their ideas?

ES6 should just release as an upgraded engine with modding tools on day one and be priced accordingly.
YES! Exactly right, fixed in literal days while Bethesda can take months or years to address the same issues officially.
But yeah Bethesda holds the blame for all the shite that happened in the modding community, as soon as they announced paid mods that was it, the community fell apart and many prolific modders left completely.
No doubt Xbox will double down even more on monetisation going forward so at least they found good bedfellows 😩
 

theclaw135

Banned
The guy has multiple DLSS 3.0 mods for multiple games that are in high demand of the feature such as the last of us 1 and red dead redemption 2. His grift halted however with starfield where he released day one DLSS 3.0 mod into, but some other guy made one for free. However he has DRM on his mod which resulted in a hacker group nuking his drm out of the mod and dropping it on the web for free. The dude asks 5 bucks patreon subscription to get access towards his mods basically.

Now he's pissed and threatens to drop spyware or other mallware into his mods to fuck with people that didn't pay. Even while there are now free mods that do the same shit he does.

Dude's a idiot.

Was actually thinking about making a nexus account an drop the hacked dlss 3.0 on there and label it as my own for free. Just to fuck with nexus and this modder but can't be arsed.

I'm here for the popcorn. Upscaling continues to be a shit show on PC, when other platforms got it right years ago.
 
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