DRM in mods

[NoImageAvailable]

Context: there has been a debate in the modding Discord about a recent incident involving a mod that shall remain unnamed. The mod-maker updated his mod with a bit of code that would deliberately freeze the game if it detected a certain unrelated mod which adds rape mechanics to the game. There was no mention of this addition anywhere in the OP and it only became known after a user of both mods found the bit of code and publicized it. The official response to this was that the mod maker was within his rights to include the crash-inducing code but should warn users prior to installation.

This sparked some criticism from several people on the Discord as they see it as problematic to allow modders to include malicious code with their mods. A potential example for this the Minecraft modding community where it is common for modders to include digital protection to prevent users from using a mod if they didn't download it from the approved location (usually adf.ly). The official counter-argument is that restricting this would limit the freedom of modders and the only means of enforcing a ban on such behavior would be removal of the entire mod from the forums and Workshop (but not other places such as 4chan).

I am legitimately curious where the community stands on this issue. Note that this poll is not meant to be some kind of petition to drum up support one way or another, but simply to gouge overall opinions on the matter.

[Wishmaster]

I would approve as long as the modder mention it.

I'm curious why did the author of unnamed mod did this ? If I understand well, that sounds like a caprice.

[Profound_Darkness]

Mostly I side against DRM and allowing it seems a slippery slope.  IMO (this whole post is IMO) DRM should be considered on a case by case rather than blanket yes/no.  As a guideline against? Sure.  I can accept intentional mod incompatibility if the author clearly states that their mod is incompatible with the other mod, much like how most mods handle known incompatibilities, and that their method of breaking compatibility doesn't attack the user no matter how passionately they might feel about a given mod pairing.  It doesn't even have to include details, just that "My mod doesn't work with <OtherMod>" is sufficient.

As for methods of breaking compatibility: I'd prefer a Log.Error, with text not unlike what I'd expect on the forum post, along with something like a quick crash of the game.  A sit and spin loop without any message strays into punitive territory for me.  When something goes wrong with Rimworld you almost always get some kind of log message that something went wrong, even if you can only find it in the output_log.txt.  It's quite rare for the game to just seize up without saying anything, at least not without lots of pretty colors.

The other concern I have about DRM type stuff is that, generally, DRM seems to encourage selfishness and division... The rarity of those qualities was the strongest draw for me to this community.

At the end of the day, IMO, as long as modders are sticking to the hosting community's rules, it's up the the modder what they do with their time on mods.  No one forces you to install a mod so if you don't like what they did, don't use nor contribute to their mod.

[Maeyanie]

Personally, I have no inherent problem with DRM, so long as it doesn't harm or cause problems for anyone using the software legitimately and properly. If the author requires a specific way for it to be used "legitimately and properly" it should be clearly stated.

Slipping in undocumented code which deliberately negatively affects anyone who merely happens to be using an entirely different piece of software by entirely different authors (another case I recall is Firefox's NoScript plugin affecting the operation of AdBlock) does not fall under that.

[Techgenius]

I'm against all types of DRM and any type of restriction that obstructs freedom, know why the internet is great? because it's free for all, you login in whatever you want for as long you want and then logout, whether you are being watched by malicious/wh hackers, gov spies or whatever is up to you, you have the option to mask your information, hide your search history, putting a lock on such things never worked, and probably never will.

But when it comes to mods. If you have not been living under a rock you probably know that there was a huge chaos in this community concerning a certain user by the name of LordZarmack who has been stealing mods and reporpusing them for his own gain, he was dealt with but he did cause quite the mess, if anyone is interested for some reason to know where he is, he's currently stalking the total war warhammer modding community pissing people off and probably getting ready for this next schemes, I only know this because I own TWW and I've seen his unbearable text walls on several mod pages on steam workshop, the magpie.

Back on topic again though, I'm COMPLETELY against mods verifying whether a software is pirated or not, thats not what mods are supposed to be about and should never be, now if a mod author put a certain code to check if two instances of the "Same Mod" are running but something was clearly altered in his content was stolen by a certain magpie, perhaps it should Warn the user about the possible "theft", instead of closing the program, blowing up the computer in self-defence suicide, the moderators of this community are quite competent and you need to rely on the judgment of the people concerning mod theft, if your cause is just you have nothing to fear, it's hard to trust those you don't know, but we're all humans in here, we can rationalize, cooperate and do each other justice where it's due, put faith in your fellow human, he or she can be quite understanding.

Placing locks, building walls (deliberately trumpy), creating a sphere of fear and uneasy to ensure a small measure of "safety", ins't the way to do this, it's not the right way to do this either. PEOPLE WILL STILL FIND A WAY IN, they will break the horse no matter how savage, how difficult. Because we may be weak animals, but our willpower is indomitable.

This brings the fear of monetized mods too, if it is that easy to theft mods, imagine the chaos it could be if people stole mods and then proceeded to put price tags on it, mods should be free. Like the good things in life never has any price. It's too valuable to have any material value.

I hope I have explained my "OPINION", if anyone is confused by something I've said please tell and excuse my english.

[RawCode]

0) by stating "shall remain unnamed" you violate generic human rights as severe as mod, that does exactly same thing - conceal information that basically should be public.

i never trust random people and this thread is finger pointing and witch hunting, without information i can't verify stated information myself and have no reason to trust you.
also i do not understand reasons behind information concealment.

1) thing you are talking about is not DRM and not related to DRM.

2) you not allowed to "sell" mods, they are "property" of game developer, for this reason, DRM is implicitly forbidden for mods.

3) Personally i see no reason to restrict modders from anything.
Obfuscation, integrity checks, calling home and everything else is allowed and there are no reasons to restrict such activity.
If i posted mod and don't want random people to change defs provided with mod, kay, this is how my mod works.
If i decided to encrypt defs and obfuscate mod and set long list of hooks to prevent debugging why not?
If i have blacklist of mods that not allowed to run - so be it.

BUT such actions should be explained in mod description and should not just close game without any kind of warning.

Mod that verify other mods and notify about "pirated mods" installed and suggests to remove them and install original versions is OK.
Mod that do it automatically if that is stated in description is OK.

Mod that add new type of medicine and install other mods, remove other mods and do anything else without any notice is not OK.

Also, if people are stupid and install random trash - nothing helps.

[Thirite]

Look, I don't really care if people know it's my Children & Pregnancy mod in question. If people want to start a witch hunt go ahead. But you should be aware of the facts:
- The mod did not crash the game, it caused RimWorld to load endlessly if Children & Pregnancy and the 'other' mod were both being used. Neither did it intentionally cause a memory leak/freeze RimWorld.
- The 'other' mod was a mod which I had been informed (and been shown gifs of) that it allowed child rape when used in conjunction with my mod.

I didn't plan it to be any sort of "DRM", it was made entirely as a middle finger to people to want to simulate pederasty. So you can judge for yourself whether or not this was "problematic malicious code".

[zeidrich]

This isn't DRM. This is just essentially intentional incompatibility.

It's kind of dumb, but when you let anyone at all modify your game experience, you get dumb things happening.  Sometimes they're bugs, sometimes they're intentional, sometimes they're malicious.

The user needs to beware.  Mods might ruin your saves or whatever too.  It's a risk.

If someone wants to put DRM in their mod, and I'm not sure what "DRM" would really mean in this context, but I guess code obfuscation and a call home would be the closest thing, code can be decompiled, checks can be removed, whatever.  Rimworld mods are going to be trivially easy to crack if anyone cares (hint, not many people will).

The rest is up to Tynan.  Mods shouldn't pose a security risk or make your system unresponsive.  Similarly, it shouldn't be possible to crash or freeze the game without some kind of ability to identify the cause of the crash or freeze.

Similarly, if you use other software that runs outside of rimworld, that's on you.

I don't care whether people use DRM.  People can still steal from you.  People shouldn't steal, but DRM is unlikely to stop them.  Malicious actions in mods are bad. Stealing from people and repackaging them as your own is bad.  There are moderation and legal avenues to pursue these sorts of things.

If Tynan had a way to allow perfect DRM on mods, for instance, to host them on some server and treat them as some black-box and just let clients see the output, I think it would do a disservice to the mod community as you wouldn't be able to see what goes on under the hood. Similarly, I think people who obfuscate or otherwise impede the ability to decompile their code also do a disservice.  But at the same time, the mod community isn't "owed" access to your code, you're just being selfish, but it's your right. 

Consider the fact that Tynan doesn't obfuscate or put DRM on the entire game, and he's selling it for money.

[junchan]

Yes, a majority of people would find the potential interactions caused by running these two mods side by side to be disturbing and distasteful, and I understand Thirite's motivation for wanting to prevent the player for using the two mods together, but there are some major problems here.

Thirite's method of doing so is essentially meaningless to the majority of players since they'll just see the game freeze and not know what's causing the freeze.

Thirite's method of doing so is obtrusive and a violation of the player's privacy.  Some random person from the internet is dictating what the player can and cannot do.

There's also the issue of Thirite introducing this code into his mod without informing people who use his mod that it exists.  Certain cracks for pirated games did this kind of thing with introducing bitcoin miners into their code without telling anyone.  Also, remember the ESEA thing from a few years ago?

tl;dr - Thirite's motivations were understandable but his method was bad.

Now I want to talk about another case where modders from another game tried to control the interactions of their mod with other mods and what happened.
Skyrim.  There's a certain other forum out there which produces a certain framework and extension mods for skyrim that involve.... shall we call it Lovin'.
If you google a bit, you can also find mods that modify the ingame children and also enable the player to play as a child.
The modders on that certain other forum modified their mods so that these interactions didn't work when the target was a child, or in the presence of children.  Their motivations were understandable, but, once again, their methods were intrusive.
Certain other modders disabled these blocks and reenabled the non desirable interactions anyway rendering the blocks introduced to the framework and its extension mods totally pointless anyway.

These are just my thoughts though, feel free to ignore them at will.

[Techgenius]

One thing I've always liked about some mods are those that include changelogs, I kinda like reading those, they let me keep control of what I'm installing in my games, it's kinda weird using a mod without a updated log of changes, mod authors should always include a informative changelog.

Also, mod users need to know in the very least basic modding, you need to know what mods you're using and what they will add in the game, you can't simply add a bunch of random mods and EXPECT it to function, the game won't simply work that's not how modding works, also why you shouldn't trust certain modpacks either unless you've seen what each of the mods included do in the game yourself.

I remember how afraid I was about modding Dragon Age inquisition, it all seemed so complicated. But truthfully, modding isn't all that hard, it takes work, I used to mod GTA San Andreas making changes in the script and animations putting swat or police officers in gangs changing weapon animations, it takes a bit o passion for what you are doing and you get involved with it, see? you do all that work, then someone comes and swipes it.
Not that it happens everytime, still if you are putting a mod online you are subjecting it to the community approval, many people don't get this it will receive all sorts of comments, constructing criticism, trolling, endorsement and still think no one has the right to judge their creation... if thats the case, why put it online at all? that said when someone else comes and steal all the work you've been days putting effort and time and just rebrand it as their "own work" sometimes the plagiarist doesn't bother to change relevant information and just take it because they can, because it's shared to all, but putting such rash security measures in mods will never be the awsner to this, it limits our capabilities, what if mod authors are allowed to select which type of people should play their mod and lock it and then proceed to put a price tag on it? I've seen this happen before for a Vampire Mod for The Elder Scrolls Oblivion where the author removed all the main features of his mod and sold them separately. Was he right? it was his mod after all, but modding communities share freely. Mod theft is serious, but it can dealt easily in the internet, in real life however thats a very serious crime, and one that often lands someone in jail

Whats going on here currently isn't anyone fault, do you blame a Murder on the weapon manufactorer? the bullet? the person who sold the gun? or the murderer? it's a human crisis whether people like it or not. The Skyrim playable children and prostitution mods intertwine a terrible crime, that unfortunately exists, are we somewhat condoning such behavior by allowing both mods to coexist? there is rape and torture in GTA V, by playing the game, are somewhat sympathetic to such behavior?

In real life such monstrosities exist and some are quite frequent but people will rather shun it as a "unfortunate accident" "Glad it was not me", than to think on their actions or how this impact the ambience or the mind, either we remove all references of it and control it or we learn to tolerate it in a way it does not change your life, toleration is not condonation,  no other way around it unfortunately, it's the middle ground that's a breeding spot for the hypocrisy and there is more than ENOUGH "social justice warriors" around to cause trouble and teach us how to be "politically correct".

I do think there is a reason children isn't in vanilla Rimworld, it's a fucking brutal and bloody world. It's a violent and bleak existence, you get attached to your bounded pets only to see them die in front of you in a RAID, and not only your pawn gets a bad mood, but it also bothers some people so much they often savescum back the to the state they felt comfortable in, but children in it could be a interesting mod, however there many EVIL things you can do to them, and I won't mention them as they highly disturb me.

It's all very cute and dandy innit? something like that never happens on our world, right?
There. That's the lie, it happens very frequently but we rather ignore it because it's uncomfortable, it messes our minds and ruin our day because we won't be able to do our duties and responsabilities with such terrible thoughts swimming in our minds.. violence is brutal and not completely understood, it may be tempting to those who have no experience with it, but when you get to see how cruel people can be, the twisted things our minds are capable, you should begin to question whether that is right or not and if you feel comfortable with it, IMO I can't understand you, but maybe you have your reasons and maybe you should question them.

But videogames... Oh, that's acceptable is it not? we play GTA, we play crusader kings and we mass genocide some poor nations populations. Kill some random npc just because it was idling around and it offended us, we such computer Gods, wow, as gamer I do entertain such notions of power, being able to rid me of my rivals, get rich and get what I want when I want (after much grinding), learn arts and crafts and marvelous science fiction, robotics and magic, because it's a simulation, similar to a thought, you don't have to do something just because you thought of it right? the world be a bloody mess if everyone did the first thing they thought.

As stated above feel free to ignore this text wall, or expound your thoughts.

[AngleWyrm]

The code base should remain open source

The purpose is to learn from, derive and improve upon each others efforts.
Any kind of veiling creates opportunities for covert hostility to express grief and abuse.
Such a process would reduce the ability to learn from each other, and serve as excuse to mask inferior work.

Stick with licensing for ownership issues.

[Thirite]

The thing is, decompiling C# is hardly difficult- if someone really wanted to and had the know-how they could obfuscate their mod's code to decompilers, but why bother? To misquote a line from BioShock, "Sure they can make uncrackable code. But that doesn't mean we're not going to crack it."

[RawCode]

as long as code runs on physical hardware of user, user can "crack" it one way or another and there is no way to prevent it, still, complicated obfuscation will delay process, from minutes to multiple month (hello denuvo) or ever years (if developer need to develop specific skills first).

still, it does not mean, that every coding effort should be shared "for free" with everyone and all code should come with booklong comments included.

[RemingtonRyder]

Personally, I tried to have one of my mods turn off some of its functions if it detected an incompatible mod. The result was logic spaghetti.

Before adding anything, ask yourself, 'Is this really making things better?'

[skullywag]

The thing to keep in mind here is that the "other" mod existed before Thirites mod, Thirites mod opened up this possibility in that mod due to it adding something the base game does not have, therefore I dont agree with what Thirite did, how many times do we get unknown interactions between 2 different mods, some give game breaking exploits when used together, this is a similar interaction. YOU the modder have no right to make a decision for someone else on how they play their game. Im not gonna get into it but thats my opinion on this matter. I voted "No" to any and all code added to mods that does stuff like this.