Boring legal questions

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Plop,

I used to be a heavy Minecraft player and a very engaged Stack Overflow user. Both of these products have seen their owning company do some questionable things in the past, such as changing the ownership of community projects or generally mishandling their community and abusing their rights.

For example, Mojang re-used part of a development toolkit without prior approval from the developers who created the kit. This created a fairly public catastrophe, which essentially rendered the kit unusable until it could be released without any of the infringing code. In a way this story could have been that of Viking's Conquest: Taleworlds just taking any code it wants without telling the devs and releasing the extension to everyone's surprise. It's not what happened (I think, no idea how Viking Conquest happened actually) but Mojang showed that it is a plausible scenario.

One day, the company behind StackOverflow fired a community moderator for no apparent reason. Despite literal months of community outreach (and outcry), nothing from the company's management but cold legalese silence and public smearing of the fired mod. Before this, the company unilaterally decided to change the license behind all of the content produced on StackOverflow, without consulting the community and seemingly passing a mistake as an actual change. This later issue has since been solved in a very satisfying way, yet it comes to show that mishandling of community's property can and does happen.

I spent thousands of hours on Warband and I'm loving Bannerlord so far. I am extremely eager to sink my teeth into its core, but I want to know what I am getting into.

I would like to find some documentation as per my rights and their limits as a Bannerlord modder or, in general, a community member who generates content (videos, texts, code, assets, etc...). For example, who owns the material I produce? Do I forfeit any rights by publishing my mod on the forums? What can the company do with my material? Is there any limit on what I can do? Under which jurisdiction are the forums? And so on.

Please do not answer any of the questions above individually, I'm really just looking for the legalese I probably agreed to when buying the games / registering on the forums.
This could be done via the "Contact us" form, but seeing as most likely everyone reading this text is subject to the agreement one way or the other it seemed fit to ask here.

I have found the Terms and rules of the forum but I don't know how it applies here.

Thanks,
Kyll
 
Generally mods are derivative works meaning that you infringe on the copyright of the original product. Afterall, your mod requires the original work to function and you build on top of it.

Nothing you produce for bannerlord is entirely your own, assuming you're using TW API. It's like if you took a painting and painted some more on it.

IANAL but such things tend to be covered by EULA of the game itself. Since there is no official modding support and no official modkit this is probably all up in the air.

My guess is TW can take your code and do whatever they want with it considering that it is derivative work, but they're unlikely to do so. You are most likely free to reuse your code and ideas too, as long as you unplug them from their API.

Can they take your work? Probably. Are they likely to? No. There is no history of them doing something like that, and to my understanding they preferred to work with the community keeping up good relations.

Personally, sorry about the jab, but I think it's laughable how protective people get over their mods. If they took my code and plugged it into the game I'd be honored.
 
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I doubt this is hardly the right place.

I assumed since it kind of concerns everyone then a public place would be a good way to ask. I'll try by email soon too.

Generally mods are derivative works meaning that you infringe on the copyright of the original product.

... this highly depends on the jurisdiction, but in Europe or the US this is simply completely wrong. Information is widely available on this, look it up.

Things tend to be covered by EULA of the game itself. Since there is no official modding support and no official modkit this is probably all up in the air.

The EULA is a great point! I've tried to get it from the Steam UI to no avail, I sent a message to their support. I'm fairly sure I signed it when I bought the game. It's very possible that this is all a grey area indeed.

My guess is TW can take your code and do whatever they want with it considering that it is derivative work, but they're unlikely to do so.

Again, in many jurisdictions this is completely wrong. I suggest you take a look at what happened between Minecraft and Bukkit.

Personally, sorry about the jab, but I think it's laughable how protective people get over their mods. If they took my code and plugged it into the game I'd be honored.

Jabs are fine, but you're alone on this one. This isn't just about mods but about everything produced around M&B. AARs, videos (be they gameplay, critics, stories, a mixture of all), code, assets, music, spin-off games why not, etc...
This isn't about people being protective. You are the one who brought this and ridiculed it (look up straw man argument). This is simply about avoiding outright abuse and in general knowing what the relationship between the community and the company is.
This is irrelevant but it may help you understand my point: If Taleworlds' position is "Yep, everything you do is ours if we wanna" then by all means fine. As long as everyone involved understands their rights and the limits of their rights, it's alright. I'm trying to find those.
 
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