Workshop thievery

Fan of Saints

Fan of Saints

Everyone knew they were coming and they finally did. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Workshop thieves!

So, here we have some serious prick called Пейн Cipher, the first and probably not the last one who started releasing mods from Saints Row Mods and claiming them as his own. Moreover, he probably gets them from Saints Row IV section on playground.ru, well-known for uploading mods without credits nor permissions - he uploaded an extremely obsolete version of my Expanded Arsenal Mod, yet when it was called New Weapons Mod (my original mod, his stolen version, playground link). So far he also stole BadMadScientist's Non-Glitching City (original, stolen, playground) and yensid's Dark Rain (original, stolen, playground). With no credits, obviously. Fun facts: these VPP_PC packages also contain some Readme files and this weather mod "of his" also includes preload_anim! Yes, a VPP_PC package within another VPP_PC package, what a great shot!

There's also one other guy releasing mods from this site on Workshop but I won't be mentioning him as he actually credited rightful creators. I highly doubt if he actually asked them for permission though.

All of this leads us to a question: What should we do to prevent people from stealing our mods and releasing them without permission or even a credit? Not everyone is able to track Workshop all the time to look for such cases to report them. And most of people who download mods from Workshop don't even know they're stolen, they haven't heard of Saints Row Mods or maybe heard of it just briefly. Also, is it right to release someone's mods without permission, even if there is a credit?
 
Report it on Steam. If it is content uploaded without permission then I'll remove it from workshop.
 
And here's another piece of shit uploading stuff from the site - no credit, no permission, obviously. A Steam user called Jenner stole Mikado's Naked & Uncensored Mod (original, stolen, playground) and ImmortalSin's First Person View (original, stolen, playground). Both mods are on playground.ru as well. Hell, this guy even took the same exact pictures from Playground for "his" Workshop release. Also, guess what - he didn't bother to change anything, he just smashed everything into VPP_PC package and actually asked people to extract it to the root folder. What a joke. He also released something called Latex and Leather - not sure if it's anything stolen from Saints Row Mods but it is available on Playground (links to Workshop releases: one, two).

And another one - someone called Exces96 stole another nude mod, this time it's BlackFireBR's Gorgeous Nude Mod (Shaved version) (original, stolen). It's not that obvious as above, considering that it's simply called "Nude Mod" on Workshop but yes, I compared files via WinMerge and they're all the same. Except 'camera_free.xtbl', which this guy apparently forgot to paste.

This will eventually get out of hand if we won't find any way to prevent this instead of reporting everything once it's already published.
 
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Copying and pasting old mods kind of defeats the purpose of having Workshop support, as they're all table file or texture modifications rather than additional content. This just leads to mod incompatibilities, whereas the modding patch's goal was to get rid of them.
Stuff like the deadpool mask reupload is particularly annoying to me since it's made to look as if it would add something while it's actually just a reskin.
I agree to what's been said above, that people should always get permission from modders before they redistribute their work on Steam, and I'd go even further and suggest introducing an 'Adds Content' mod tag, by which people can filter out mods that replace existing content. Although that doesn't fully solve the problem of mod thievery, it would at the very least give people a tool to easily list all of the legitimate mods, made after the modding patch got released.
Edit: On the other hand, there's also a bunch of legitimate content replacing mods, like Idol's Extended Rifts or Admixon's New Textures Project. There definitely should be a way to verify mods or at least content creators.
 
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flow754 said:
Copying and pasting old mods kind of defeats the purpose of having Workshop support, as they're all table file or texture modifications rather than additional content. This just leads to mod incompatibilities, whereas the modding patch's goal was to get rid of them.
Stuff like the deadpool mask reupload is particularly annoying to me since it's made to look as if it would add something while it's actually just a reskin.
I agree to what's been said above, that people should always get permission from modders before they redistribute their work on Steam, and I'd go even further and suggest introducing an 'Adds Content' mod tag, by which people can filter out mods that replace existing content. Although that doesn't fully solve the problem of mod thievery, it would at the very least give people a tool to easily list all of the legitimate mods, made after the modding patch got released.
Click to expand...
Well, most of these mod reuploads don't work anyway, these people simply smash everything from the archive into VPP_PC packages without thinking twice. The first guy mentioned in this thread packed Readme files and even another VPP_PC, duh. Right now it's more about littering Workshop than thievery, although that is the case as well.
 
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