
Fallout 3 in Fallout 4 mod cancelled due to voice acting copyright - ChrisSD
https://capitalwasteland.com/#cancellation-announcement-section
======
arielweisberg
I saw this go by and was a bit confused. Normally the way this is done they
don't supply the content from the original game you have to provide your own
copy which you then mod to use the newer version of the engine. You might need
a copy of both the old game and new game to legally have everything you need
to produce the modified version.

I don't see what claim a copyright holder has against either the user of the
mod or developer of the mod. I thought this was one of those first sale
doctrine things where once you buy it's yours to use modulo restrictions
against redistribution and EULA related things with questionable legality.

~~~
jerf
"I don't see what claim a copyright holder has against either the user of the
mod or developer of the mod."

I've examined this problem and been keeping track of it for nearly two decades
now, keeping an eye out for legal resolution of it, and to the best of my
knowledge there is still bupkis on this front legally. Even before we consider
EULAs, it is legally quite clear that they could not take the two copyrighted
products Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 and _distribute_ the resulting new work. (And
what EULA have you ever seen for a AAA game that would explicitly permit
that?) It is completely legally unclear whether it is OK to release a tool
that the end-user nominally uses to do the work themselves. On the one hand,
there are certain arguments that this should be OK; I'm sure in the next few
hours a few dozen of these will pour in. (Though I will say the most obvious
error they make in general is to _grossly_ overstate the degree of ownership
the end-user has over the content, and, again, that's even before considering
EULA clauses.)

On the other hand, if these arguments are accepted, then it allows a clear
path to completely circumvent the aforementioned clear legal result that the
end product could not be distributed. This is generally frowned on by the
common law legal system, cynical comments to the contrary. It is also in a
very real sense arguable that the user, who is putatively putting these two
works together, can't really be said to be doing so when the sum total of
their contribution is "the user clicked a button"; how can they be said to be
responsible? It's pretty obvious that button-clicker can't be said to hold any
copyright rights over the result, because "clicked a button" certainly doesn't
raise to the level of creative input. It can be easily argued that in a legal
sense the program is still the responsibility of the original combinind
developer, and that the developer is still as responsible for the output as if
they were directly distributing the output, what with the end results being
(potentially at least) literally bit-for-bit identical.

I remain unaware of even the slightest hint of legal guidance in this area.
And please note I'm not in this message trying to advocate either way; I'm
simply discussing the situation. (I have opinions, but they are
incomprehensible until you first understand that there is a problem _at all_.)

~~~
ng12
> distribute the resulting new work

There are several mods of this sort in the Elder Scrolls community that work
because they explicitly do not do this. You basically take an open-source
engine and point it at an existing install of the game. It knows how to read
all the original data files but does not do any modification or redistribution
of them. AFAIK Bethesda explicitly gave them a blessing for this approach.

~~~
jcurbo
In this case it's the OpenMW reimplementation of the Morrowind engine, which
is fantastic and rapidly maturing (and capable of playing the game right now,
they just continue to add features). [http://openmw.org](http://openmw.org)

The Bethesda thing as far as I know was about Morrowind on non-PC devices and
they talk about it here:
[https://openmw.org/faq/#bethesda_legal](https://openmw.org/faq/#bethesda_legal)

------
cypher543
Could they not have required the user to own a copy of Fallout 3 and then
extract the needed sound files from the original installation on first launch?
Then the copyrighted works wouldn't need to be distributed with the mod
itself.

~~~
monocasa
Apparently that was their original idea, which was rejected by Bethesda's
legal team.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/844t22/some_of_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/844t22/some_of_the_misconceptions_regarding_the_the/)

At this point I'm fairly convinced that Bethesda is going to announce a 10th
anniversary release of Fallout 3 at E3 and don't want the competition.

~~~
drb91
I really wish they provided details on why they had to go to the legal team in
the first place and on what grounds they were rejected. Among other things, I
would imagine the developers would not be liable for end-users violating the
EULA, so it's kind of head scratching why they would interact with bethesda at
all.

~~~
simion314
I think the mod developers don't want to spend their time,energy and money in
a legal battle, Bethesda could drag this in courts and who knows with the
current copyright laws may even win, would you risk it if you were living in
US or such a country? I would give up and work on an open source game instead
or a game more friendly to this kind of modding.

------
Raphmedia
I don't understand why they don't simply have those parts of the game be
without any voice acting. Plenty of games don't have voice acting. There's
nothing wrong with a mod not having it.

~~~
bighi
I agree. Particularly because the voice acting is usually just distracting you
from what you're reading. There you are, reading the fifth sentence, and the
voice is still slowly speaking the beginning of the second one.

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ransom1538
If you ever get the urge to go into gaming, take a rock and thrust it into
your eye. When games are canceled hundreds of people have wasted thousands of
hours on: programming, ai, economy adjusting, art (raster + vector). Games are
canceled all the _time_ for frivolous reasons. Wasting your 20s at a game
company re-writing madden football 19 with low pay and harsh hours isn't
'cool' \-- it is just wasting your 20s'.

~~~
mpd
> When games are canceled hundreds of people have wasted thousands of hours
> on: games, ai, art (raster + vector).

I don't think this is any different than the risk of working for a startup.
I've worked for a number of companies in my career that no longer exist. It's
really the same as far as I am seeing.

~~~
ransom1538
Yes. But you can prove "uber for cats" doesn't work with 5 people. Not 100
people, 3 years later. Canceling a game is more like a funeral.

~~~
mpd
This comes off as very dismissive of startups.

Do you honestly believe they are all 5 person companies doing frivolous
things?

------
michaelmrose
Because its challenging to discuss the merits of different thought processes
regarding IP and fair use with people without boring them to death I recommend
responding by just telling people that Bethesda makes buggy games and not to
buy them.

~~~
erikb
If there would be an alternative to the Fallout series I would buy it. But
there aren't. The closest I can think of is the newer Shadowrun series, but
that is not open world enough to be played more than 2 times.

------
jMyles
Increasingly, I'm wanting to live in a place where there is no IP law
whatsoever. Is there such a place on earth at the moment?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
_Experts and activists are raising concern over the lack of proper
intellectual property laws in South Sudan, as the world’s newest nation’s
admission into the East Africa Community (EAC) spurs anticipation of increased
investment._

[https://www.ip-watch.org/2016/03/08/as-south-sudan-joins-
eas...](https://www.ip-watch.org/2016/03/08/as-south-sudan-joins-east-african-
community-some-experts-worry-over-its-ip-laws/)

#1 on this list is South Sudan:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index)

South Sudan also happens to be #14 on this list:
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/galleries/The-worlds-
most...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/galleries/The-worlds-most-
dangerous-places/south-sudan/)

~~~
pluma
Putting it this way creates the impression that a lack of IP laws directly
results in political instability and danger to people's lives. That's
incredibly disingenious.

The reason South Sudan is such a horrible place is that it only recently
gained independence and has been caught up in its own civil wars pretty much
constantly. The reason its IP laws are practically non-existent is probably
that it just hasn't been a practical concern for the young nation yet.

~~~
wetmore
I did not read it that way; I read the comment as saying "here's a place you
could move that has no IP laws, but you probably don't want to move there for
this other reason".

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tzakrajs
How about they release it without the voice acting?

~~~
madaxe_again
Or even just redo it. I can't imagine it would be that onerous a task to
crowdsource it out to like-minded enthusiasts - and some of the VA in FO3 was
hilariously bad (I'm thinking of do-over lines, mispronunciations, monotonous
delivery of some dialogue), so what's the worst that can happen? I'd happily
sit there and crank out a few thousand lines of dialogue.

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squarefoot
Looks like the perfect use for this software.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxDBlZu__Xk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxDBlZu__Xk)
Surely it needs some good work to make it more realistic, but we're not that
far. Should they use it without advertising whose celebrity is being imitated,
could they still be sued?

------
kevlar1818
Why are some words capitalized? Is there a hidden message here or something?

------
bg4
Why can't I just configure the location of my Fallout 3 installation?

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Feniks
Its why dual audio is often missing and why undubs are illegal.

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averagemodder
It happens a lot in the modding scene, that the project team is strong in
landscaping, but not so much in everything else that needs to be ported.

Often they don't have software guys to code the custom tool for that, and they
end up doing a lot of it manually.

In case of porting F3 to F4, you have to deal with a different scripting
language.

So blaming it all on copyright of voice acting is a convenient excuse to
sunset the project.

