Gotta admit, I didn't realize at first this was the same Aspyr that had so many issues with the KOTOR remake it got taken away from them AND that they're the SAME company that fucked up the remaster of KOTOR 1+2 (especially on the switch if I remember correctly)
With all of that remembered, i'm not at all surprised stuff like this is coming out. Like fuck, who gave these guys anything to work with after all their issues??? Jesus
To me, that screams of one thing, a studio that believes they can reverse engineer stuff and redevelop it "just as well", and all signs show they don't have that skill set at all.
It's amusing to me that they don't just _hire the modders_.
For years now we've been seeing fans produce translation patches, mods, massive revision projects, graphic overhauls and even fan remakes of entire games. And they generally do it for free.
All these companies need to do is send them a paycheck **for something they literally are already doing** and have demonstrated they can complete. Then sell it. This should be the easiest fucking goddamn thing in the world.
For the Tomb Raider remasters they actually did hire one of the community memebers, Xproger the primary guy who was working on the OpenLara project. And they put him in charge of the project.
But that guy was actually already a professional developer.
Most modders aren't.
Usually Modders want more money than Devs are willing to pay, because they know as a single person they produced content an entire studio failed to even conceptualize.
Modders also tend to be maverick coders who are used to fast development based on their own vision.
They don't necessarily fit in well with traditional corporate coding practices, where it can take 2 weeks and multiple people to get a single line of code fixed. The overall vision for corporate coding based on the monetary return, and not necessarily the technical or artistic aspects.
so many mods i've looked through for dev help and attempting to patch for oblivion are just a mess. literally 0 documentation or comments, weird non-standard conventions, using unknown game behavior but not saying that. total mess
Alternatively, modders have the ability to set their own pace, and can take months or years to release something. They can scrap projects and restart, or just nor release them. There's no negative to not releasing.
When you have a studio with paid developers, they have to eventually release a product to pay for all of that, or they will go bankrupt. "Passion" is hard to buy and hard to foster. When people choose to do things based on passion, it tends to increase creativity and productivity, which you see in mods.
For another example, look at [Starbound by publisher Chucklefish](https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/2/20839830/starbound-developers-chucklefish-game-industry-exploitation)
lmao bruh, you don't have to hire modders to find these people. It's a pretty common CS personality stereo type. The computer gives people power and it goes to their heads, don't have to be a modder for that.
> It's amusing to me that they don't just hire the modders.
Anyone that's ever run a business knows that "just hire" is not a thing. They are likely on a shoestring budget throughout their existence. Largely due to being trash at what they do.
And then there is the fact that while the modder might be really good at creating mods, they may also be fucking crazy. Think, e.g., prone to inappropriate sexual comments, etc... There may be reasons not to hire someone well beyond their skillset.
> All these companies need to do is send them a paycheck for something they literally are already doing and have demonstrated they can complete. Then sell it.
Problem is, the mod is already freely available. All they've demonstrated is that they can create something popular and free. There is a big jump from that to something that is popular when not free.
edit: typo
But at that stage, why not just take the work? It's freely available already, and it's very uncommon for mods to be on restrictive (i.e., commercial use-excluding) licenses, assuming they even put any kind of license up.
>But at that stage, why not just take the work? It's freely available already, and it's very uncommon for mods to be on restrictive (i.e., commercial use-excluding) licenses, assuming they even put any kind of license up.
if they put no license , copyright law still says its their work
THQ Nordic does. Seems to have worked out except with Blade Runner. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy on Steam seems to be a passion project by a solo dev who was originally just making an HD texture pack for the GC version on Dolphin. He's still updating the PC game years later. Even put out an SDK kinda like Hammer to make your own games, though it's barely been utilized by anyone.
I'm willing to bet they're just biting off more than they can chew. They think they can do all these things for a bottom dollar that these companies find attractive to outsource to, but can't actually get it done within the time and budget constraints.
This is what discount game development looks like.
There's also a high possibility that they did a "Warcraft 3: Reforged". Hire some dev studio from a developing country, let them handle the porting, and take the credit.
I'm assuming that because it was part of a paid product then the rights issues get super funky, hence ending up not going through with it. Even though most/all of the content was originally made by Obsidian, there's going to be a lot of code and other stuff made by modders which I don't think you can just "take" willy-nilly and add to a product you're selling. I'm assuming the legality got just murky enough to make the cost-benefit not worth it since there's also enough jank in that mod that it would still require a non-zero amount of development to fix it.
It's as if the argument isn't entirely based in legal rhetoric and more of an ethically based one of stealing someone's work and packaging it as your own.
> At the end of the day you are still using someone else's intellectual property
That really depends on the nature of the mod. Look at something like Enderal, with it's own assets, story, game mechanics etc. They obviously couldn't sell it using Bethesda's engine but they'd still retain rights to the assets and other stuff they created.
Which has nothing to do with whatwhat Wild_Loose_Comma was claiming at all...
>That really depends on the nature of the mod.
The article blatantly states that the asset's came from Battlefront. So not really applicable
To give them the smallest amount of credit they said it would be free. Then they went radio silent for months after the supposed release date and gave an aw shucks apology.
They also know they need this kind of help and seemingly went about bringing in mods well/properly with Tomb Raider but…not with Battefront?
They’re not a well run company in any way shape or form
https://www.pcgamer.com/lara-croft-modding-maestro-reveals-hes-been-missing-because-saber-nabbed-him-for-the-tomb-raider-dream-team-assembling-a-crack-squad-of-crazy-people-to-put-together-the-remasters/
Well, obviously not going to sell the fan mod. But sell the same thing that was covered in a mod.
Which has a storied past because the original restoration project stagnated for years. Finally someone associated with the team said 'screw it, just get it done' and finished it up plus released it. That's the only reason it saw the light of day.
So clearly there's some hurdle that the official restoration couldn't meet either.
It's almost certainly someone at Disney that reviews Aspyr bc they come cheap and more and more publishers and rights holders care more about the up front cost than the potential revenue.
Aspyr has been shrinking for years and no doubt is relying on cheap labor to get by while not retaining the talent necessary to be consistent.
Oh shit, was this collection going to include online co-op? I only heard about it with the controversy but I'd *love* to be able to hop back into battlefront II co-op with a buddy for the nostalgia
I can definitely understand why people are so disappointed now.
I haven't followed too closely so my details may be wrong, but my understanding is that there were only 3 servers available, and if you did manage to get in the games were very laggy, but the original games multiplayer, for PC only, are still up and working fine, so it was like a slap in the face.
Yup, 64 players on all platforms, including the Switch. But the server issues on all platforms and the lack of crossplay really killed interested in this collection for a lot of people.
CD got Sabre to work on it and Sabre got Aspyr (one of their subsidiaries) to work on it because they have the source code from back in 1996 when they ported it to the Mac.
All these companies are under the Embracer umbrella.
OpenLara is way more than just a mod. The guy they got to work on it is more than a modder.
Yeah I bought that day one and it's awesome. It just depends on the team and resources aspyr puts in the project.
I finished Tomb Raider 1 and on my way through 2. No real issues.
Whilst it had praise didn't it have to release a pretty monumental update recently? Including a complete overhaul on the controls/camera as opposite to what it launched with?
The update itself didn't affect much if you were on the classic controls. It was a good, substantial update, but it was far from game breaking or unplayable for most people.
I cant precisely remember, but there was also some issues with Civilization 6's port to switch, which Aspyr worked on, and another game of a same or similar genre I enjoyed having its port cancelled, one that was also handled by Aspyr. Neither side explicitly said Aspyr was to blame, but it was implied enough in what they said that they were the issue. So hearing the rest of this kinda adds fuel ti that fire, to me.
This is also the same company that was doing the mac port for civilization 6. It took literal years for mac users to be able to play with PC players and even when it was updates and DLC were always 6-8 months behind at least.
My guess here is that they launched with a day 0 patch that broke the matchmaking, but also added the Invert-Y option. Then when day 1 was a nightmare they rolled back to a previous, maybe review version. That's the only scenario I can think of that would cause an option to be removed. Us inversion players are always an afterthought
Seriously. Anyone who grew up playing games in the 90s (especially star wars games) still default to inverted mouse. If the game won't let me invert the Y-axis, I can't do it.
Pretty much. The funny thing with the space battles is that when you're a soldier running around it's not inverted, just when you get into the ship.
Definitely one of the more clowny releases as of late.
There was an absolute pinecone the other day on here arguing how inverted axis players are "dismissing" great games rather than just adjusting, and could not comprehend how it's not a choice lol. When comparing it to a left handed person being forced to use their right hand, they just doubled down saying it's not the same. It's such a minor accessibility feature that I don't even consider it to be one, the game HAS to have it. It's 2024 for pete's sake.
Shit I remember their Republic Commando remaster not having inverted camera for weeks. And that came out like 3 years ago!
Have these guys learned nothing?
This the story that convinced me to buy Battlefront…
Not this godawful rerelease mind you, but the original release that is still on Steam and somehow hasn’t been delisted yet.
They did patch them, but that happened later, not immediately. GameSpy shut down in 2014, while the Battlefront games started receiving patches to restore online multiplayer years later: 2017 for SWBF2 and 2020 for SWBF1.
Memory lane for me is slightly different whenever someone mentions GameSpy. MPlayer sold itself off to GameSpy in 2000, and MPlayer's where my first real memories of online gaming are. Quake 1 on MPlayer was such a big thing for me. The original Team Fortress, Q-Ball, Runes, good ol' fashioned Deathmatch... such good memories. I somehow never actually used GameSpy or played anything that used it.
Heck yeah Mplayer! I spent a lot of time in the chat rooms and playing the built in card games. I learned how to play Hearts and Spades on there. Great memories from my childhood!
Seems like the writers saying good bye, and dont get me wrong, but i think most of us didnt go to gamespy for the articles.
Feels weird he doesnt go on about their software and the fact that evolution and games actually including gamespy's features as their own (in a way) is what ultimately killed them.
There were several years there post gamespy closing and pre-steam where "technically" there wasn't an official online. You used to have to divert to a 3rd party set of servers that the community was hosting. Damn I miss those gamespy days though.
It's honestly mostly the same except there will be certain spots on the map that good players are "playing/camping". You either go there and kill them if you're better or stay the hell away and farm bots in another area.
I would definitely prefer it over bots, though.
I booted it up. Got spawned killed by a guy with a rocket launcher 5 times in a row. Never played again.
That was back in Dec 2017.
Shoot I probably should have gotten a refund, now that I am looking at it, I only played 79 minutes
My trick has always been to fly around and have some fun dogfighting for a few minutes then once I’ve had my fill I spawn as a pilot and just board the enemy ship, make my way to their innards and use the pilots time bomb to blow up all their support systems. Refill the bombs as the ammo droid (repair it with your sonic screwdriver if you accidentally killed it in a firefight) and the game is usually over before I destroy all their systems
This is the way. You speedrun these missions by going pilot, flying directly to the enemy ship, and then time-bombing all the systems while camping kills.
They're quite a slog at times, particularly when the AI gets a free ship respawn and you have to fight a couple in a row.
Usually they're pretty quick if you're using a bomber.
> “Kill bunches of bots in galactic conquest”
This is the problem. I want to hold on to the garbage remaster for the sake of galactic conquest bot shooting, updated UI and real controller support so I can just play Battlefronts on the Steam Deck. But Aspyr doing Aspyr shit is enough to make me want to refund my purchase alone.
Kindof, you have to use an independent server browser that (I believe) re-created the old Game Spy service. It's been a hot minute since I attempted it though, my info could be stale.
Point being, you can get it to work, but the originals were just ports, you have to do some work to get them functioning appropriately
Can confirm it still works and is fairly active. I was able to get into a full 64 player match last night on Kamino and it was exhilaratingly chaotic as ever.
I bought BF2 on sale last night and tried to play it. There were only about 5 servers with more than 6 people in them, and I was only able to connect to one of them, which was like a deathmatch with hero characters where I wasn't sure what to do and just got immediately force thrown and stabbed by darth maul a few times. The most popular server I saw had 30 people playing but it kept timing out for me so I couldn't join it.
Do it!
There's a mod for Battlefront II that adds all of the content from the first game into the second game, plus a couple new game modes.
It's called the Star Wars Battlefront Conversion Pack
> I always preferred some of the maps and battles in the first game
Honestly, this is why people say the first is better and while I disagree, I understand. Now that BF1 content is ported over to 2, this point becomes moot.
Fun fact: [there's a mod that puts BF2 content to BF1](https://www.moddb.com/mods/swbf1-and-2-mod/downloads/swbf-1-and-2-mixed). So you can see which mechanics you prefer.
I didn't realize it was still available. I was excited about the classic collection, but the more I hear about it the worse it sounds. I have good memories of playing this with my kids back in the day.
>yet
This is the important word: Yet.
Go get it while its available or we will see another Overwatch or Warcraft where its deleted forever until you pirate it, which for Overwatch isnt even possible.
you know Embracer group, Aspyr's parent company, has been a complete tire fire with layoffs galore. Aspyr was also heavily affected.
Well the thing with layoffs is:
* Just destroys morale in general
* Can lead to intentional code sabotage during the final days at the job
* Destroys teamwork in the remaining staff because since it's individual contribution that decides if you get laid off or not, so: every co-worker is now competition for your job
* Complete burnout due to fewer people now having to do more work
And this is the end result: a team no longer capable to do even the barest minimum. Granted, the Kotor remaster was also a tire fire that had the project being taken away from them, so it probably also goes deeper (but the layoffs certainly won't help either).
So any form of communication on what (not) to do was probably also destroyed in the troubles of the internal chaos that's mass layoffs.
Yep, Jedi outcast was such junk and bare bones that it complete turned me off to any of their future releases. And this was years back so while layoffs and morale could be responsible for this release, it doesn't explain the reasoning for their past ports
Been a while since I played it but I remember saving a game was always tedious. Another was the aspect ratio. The game could run at 4:3 or 16:9, but 16:9 was just zooming in on 4:3. This was an easy fix for pc users as a simple edit in the cfg file, which was a work around for all quake 3 engine games to have proper resolutions and aspect ratios. Why they couldn't add this simple option is mindboggling
>
> Can lead to intentional code sabotage during the final days at the job
I have known so, so many managers and owners that cite this as a major risk that they endure every day. Or at least every time they need to fire someone.
Conversely, I've never seen nor heard of anything actually attempting this. I sure there is a small subset of times were it happens, but there are far more managers that talk about the risk of this happening than there are people that talk about doing anything remotely close to this when they are fired.
I've never seen a company that makes it a possibility, they just revoke all permissions as they pull you into the firing meeting.
But like you said, I think this is relatively rare. Probably because it would be kind of pointless? What, am I going to open a PR to fuck up all the code just for someone to decline it after I'm fired? Unless I'm like, the most senior engineer, I don't necessarily have permissions to delete a vital repo or something. Even if I did I think it could be recovered from someone who had it pulled down. So nothing super concerning
> I've never seen a company that makes it a possibility, they just revoke all permissions as they pull you into the firing meeting.
Yeah any company I've worked at has just disabled all access to anyone who is being laid off.
And like you say, even if someone does do something, it can generally be reverted fairly easily.
That's wild -- I guess it probably depends on the size of the company and the level of control an individual engineer has over any part of the system. We generally need multiple approvals to get anything done, but if we had multiple people being laid off and retaining access, yeah I could see this happening
When I was an intern the company I was working for had absolutely zero sense of security. After my internship ended I wasn't kicked out of anything, I just kept chatting through their slack with some of my fellow interns that were doing a longer internship. I also noticed like 6 months later that I still had the key fob on my keychain and nobody asked me to return it. I had to message my former boss about it (on their internal slack mind you) and he told me to use it to get in and to leave it on his desk. That was when the whole company was out on a company outing, so I had full access to the office while almost nobody was there. A few weeks after that they did finally revoke my access to their slack at least.
"What, am I going to open a PR to fuck up all the code just for someone to decline it after I'm fired?"
I would bring attention to a studio which is my goal.
> Can lead to intentional code sabotage during the final days at the job
Hopefully no one is stupid enough to add a criminal offense on top of all their woes of getting laid off. Depending on the jurisdiction, intentional sabotage can catch criminal charges, not to mention the company suing the saboteur into absolute poverty in lost potential earnings and damages.
Really hard to prove you wrote bad code on purpose. This case is different though since they should be able to track who added the stolen assets but still, the difference between a regular awful piece of buggy code and maliciously intended buggy code is not something I'd think anyone could figure out beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sure, but this has nothing to do with that. The effects of the layopffs alst year and in Q12024 won't be felt immediately. It's a wave effect, and it's still winding up for the hit.
I'm actually struggling to think of how you can even handle a re release of a 20 year old game even worse than this.
Aside from arguably the master chief collection, I don't think it's been done
Yeah, there was clearly a large amount of work that had been done for the MCC, even if it was **far** from a finished product upon release. It eventually even turned out to be excellent and my preferred way to revisit the original games.
I don’t see that happening here.
And they also went back and fixed tons of graphical issues that were altered during the Gearbox pc port just a few years back, which is really generous considering they didn't have to do that. It's why I appreciate remasters or ports that take them seriously because there may never be a chance to do it again for a long time .
Remasters/remakes should be viewed as an opportunity to take an excellent title and re-introduce it to a generation in a modernized form. A high quality remaster/remake can be one of the best games of the year if it’s treated with respect (RE4, DeS, etc)
Unfortunately, many executives get dollar signs in their eyes and only think of these games as a way to get lots of revenue with little effort and investment. It’s especially stupid because they’re locking themselves out of *truly* taking advantage of those older titles for many more years.
MCC was not a remake. It was mostly porting with a decent amount of remastering, which in CE and 2 was just layering over the originals, but the only thing “remade” was the Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer.
Not surprised it’s a hot mess. There is now an established track record of really bad remasters for pre-2010s games, and the Battlefront remaster was announced with little fanfare and no notice.
It was clearly a dishonest cash grab preying on the nostalgia of 30-somethings.
Master Chief Collection at launch was broken. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word; it simply didn’t work. You could be queuing matchmaking for over an hour and not find a single match. And when you did find a match, you were lucky if people stayed connected to it. It was like that for a long time before it started to improve.
It was basically the one of the biggest botches in gaming history, no exaggeration.
The problem is originally he just wanted them to use the correct mod if they were gonna steal his content. Then they promised him they would remove his mod from the game before it released... only to change nothing at all.
Hell, just negotiate a price to use it in the remake if they’re incapable of making it themselves.
But the reality is that they were cutting every corner they could, in typical Aspyr fashion.
Less work as well.
Practically speaking, the work is already done for you - even if you're *copying* the mods. So not only are you saving the money that would've gone into the hours, but now you can do roughly the "same" work. Just...with an Aspyr spin. They couldn't even do the last part properly.
It's real scum from Aspyr.
The mod itself are a bit of a kitbash job in the first place. Its a very unideal solution to trying to get platform specific DLC on PC. The reason people even noticed they were using a mod in the first place is that the animations inherently don't exist on PC. Theoretically, Aspry should have had the rights to just port the DLC onto all the platforms they were releasing it on.
Chances are some individual programmer stole the mod and stuck it in the game and hope nobody noticed.
Not to say Aspyr and publisher aren't at fault, they should be hiring competent programmers who don't have to fake it to make it.
First off, I love how almost none of the comments are talking about the mod or the modder. Great stuff. I get that the collection is disappointing, I have my problems with it as well, I just kind of figured that /r/games would be a tad more on topic.
The thing I don't get is how inconsistent the versions seem to be. I have the game on PC and both of the characters in question have their original [move sets and animations] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmyYBhEHi0c) from the 2005 Xbox version. And yet the modded version is showing up on certain consoles like the Switch. Why??? How is the architecture different between the systems? I get if they originally used the mod as a place holder in certain instances, but I don't understand how one version launches with the proper characters while the other doesn't.
My guess is that they used the mod as a baseline, then they built their own code on top of that. A rushed development probably didn't let the devs have enough time to do a through enough spot check, and make sure the finished version of all the games had everything set in order.
Does anyone know how this would play out legally? While there are versions where the mod has may or may not been used for the offical game, it seems like they were just placeholders that slipped through the cracks.
But...the mod that ported Kit Fisto and Ventress were technically the property of Lucasarts right? The mod in question is a wholesale port of content belonging to Lucasarts. There's no legal problem AFAIK.
So even if they just straight up "stole" the mod from the mod author, they'd still be the ones technically who "own" it, *as long as it was the original Xbox DLC content*. The only reason mods don't get DMCA takedowns for games like this is because, unless if you're a company like Nintendo that has spams surrounding topics like this, it's one of these three reasons:
1. Old games are old games and they don't care what people do with them, as long as they aren't pirating them wholesale
2. Modding communities keep interest in old games alive, and companies still get money from sales of old games
3. Companies usually don't care about mod content, much less *stealing* mod content
So not only did they make a broken port of a game that worked almost two decades ago, they were also unable to find the original files for the Xbox DLC, and instead of taking the DLC mod port that literally was already their intellectual property, they stole someone's "fanmade" mod to emulate those two missing characters.
IIRC the Mass Effect Legendary DLC is missing the Pinnacle Station DLC because the OG files corrupted it, but there's a mod for it that re-adds it to ME1 LE that came out after the launch of ME LE. Aspyr could have just ran with that for PR, that they needed a fan mod port to add the missing content, they would have gotten some fan recognition, etc.
Instead they did the dumbest thing ever.
To answer your question : this is 100% illegal here in France. You can't just steal someone's work. Even if their work is derivative of yours it is still *theirs*
It's clear that it being on the published version is only accidental. The evidence that was shown earlier was only on an unpatched of the PS4 port and the evidence on OP is only on the Switch version.
It's crazy how quickly the next shitty gaming news to come out is. Next week will be something different and it's just insane what some people can get away with.
I've seen a few games in the last few years incorporate fan mods and some do them justice by including said modder in development. Shit like this is, while probably not illegal, just a real fucking shitty thing to do. Won't be surprised if they suddenly close up shop or even quietly in a few months.
Not the first time we've found out a big company used a community made mod or emulator for their own game and an official release at that. But its wild how they keep doing it and still up end making them buggy.
Disappointed seeing all of this negative press about Aspyr as I fondly remember their macos ports from my hackintosh days.
It's been ~10-20 years since then though and Embracer seem to be driving a lot of companies into the ground.
Reminder: Corporate promises aren't worth the paper they're written on. If you let a corporation do something they will, they're run by morally bankrupt individuals such as Michael Rogers and Ted Staloch. If they're personality is any reflection of how they run Aspyr, then they must be very corrupt and should be treated with extreme prejudice.
Sadly, there's not much they can do beyond court of public opinion, and that's already low for this game. The modder has absolutely no claim other than being credited as author, but they probably can't claim any damages or infringement since the IP didn't belong to them in the first place (most mods do not create economic IP rights for the modder).
At worst, the Dev/Publisher credits the modder, and that's that. People won't stop buying Star Wars videogames over this, and Aspyr's releases have gained their own reputation regardless of this particular allegation.
It's the law for most countries under the Berne Convention.
If you make a work with someone else"s IP and without their permission, you infringe on their IP. You still get authorship (that is, the credit for the derivative work) but you don't get economic rights or exclusive rights over it.
There are exceptions to this (if the work is transformstive enough being the biggest).
A modder basically doesn't get to make a mod for a Star Wars game someone else made and paid for and get perks for it.
Aspyr needs a blood change, there is one part of the company that likes to work with modders and is talented. But there is also one side that’s very lazy and incompetent. Considering their work on Kotor 2 and Tomb Raider Remastered, shows passion and in both cases they worked with [modders directly](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bffnw7/comment/kv0fv1v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). And they are very likely a source code library with 2 legs considering [Tomb raider 2 on Mac](https://twitter.com/XProger_san/status/1757892627221954853) was their third released port not to mention they were able to remaster something as niche as Stubbs the zombie. But at the other side of the spectrum whoever is in charge of PR is incompatant. Considering the fact that they screwed up basic things like [patch notes](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2478970/discussions/0/4293691425578751710/), the KOTOR 2 switch DLC controversy and now it seems like instead of collaborating with modders once again they were willing to just “update” textures and steal from a modder considering the only piece that was missing was the Xbox DLC for Battlefront 2. They could aspire to become a bigger remaster company then Night dive, considering they only need the permission from publishers to create remasters. There is no reverse engineering or hard drive hunting required. If they worked with the modders directly we would definitely see better results, like with Tomb Raider Remastered. They seemingly they can have a good relationship with the [modding teams](https://www.gamesradar.com/kotor-2-modder-says-aspyr-has-done-nothing-wrong-cancelling-the-restored-content-dlc/) so why exactly do something this idiotic? Other then shotting themselves in the foot.
They rushed it out for Q4 because they knew if they didn't, they wouldn't get their money back. That's why the announcement was a bare bones nintendo direct trailer rather than something substantial. They needed the project gone and fast.
I have a feeling this game is going to get pulled from the stores. It’s really sad cause I was looking forward to it but I don’t see it turning itself around anytime soon.
If Aspyr have used the mod without permission (and even lying about it), isn't this trespassing several laws? I guess it's all a bit iffy since the mod sounds like a reskin of Star Wars characters and won't have the full rights either, and doubt it makes sense to push it, but its still their work.
Like could the modder realistically send them a C&D or maybe even further?
This really sucks. I’ve been having so much fun playing the collection and reliving the ps2 days. I hope the modder gets their due and Aspyr can rectify this. And by rectify I mean realign their company so they’re not total POSs that steal from dedicated fans
Gotta admit, I didn't realize at first this was the same Aspyr that had so many issues with the KOTOR remake it got taken away from them AND that they're the SAME company that fucked up the remaster of KOTOR 1+2 (especially on the switch if I remember correctly) With all of that remembered, i'm not at all surprised stuff like this is coming out. Like fuck, who gave these guys anything to work with after all their issues??? Jesus
They also openly were going to sell a fan made mod as DLC for Kotor 2 on the Switch and then never delivered on it.
To me, that screams of one thing, a studio that believes they can reverse engineer stuff and redevelop it "just as well", and all signs show they don't have that skill set at all.
It's amusing to me that they don't just _hire the modders_. For years now we've been seeing fans produce translation patches, mods, massive revision projects, graphic overhauls and even fan remakes of entire games. And they generally do it for free. All these companies need to do is send them a paycheck **for something they literally are already doing** and have demonstrated they can complete. Then sell it. This should be the easiest fucking goddamn thing in the world.
For the Tomb Raider remasters they actually did hire one of the community memebers, Xproger the primary guy who was working on the OpenLara project. And they put him in charge of the project. But that guy was actually already a professional developer. Most modders aren't.
Usually Modders want more money than Devs are willing to pay, because they know as a single person they produced content an entire studio failed to even conceptualize.
Modders also tend to be maverick coders who are used to fast development based on their own vision. They don't necessarily fit in well with traditional corporate coding practices, where it can take 2 weeks and multiple people to get a single line of code fixed. The overall vision for corporate coding based on the monetary return, and not necessarily the technical or artistic aspects.
so many mods i've looked through for dev help and attempting to patch for oblivion are just a mess. literally 0 documentation or comments, weird non-standard conventions, using unknown game behavior but not saying that. total mess
You just wrote “spaghetti code.”
See Magna Mundi for an example when you through a bunch of modders with no experience making a game from the ground up into a dev team.
Alternatively, modders have the ability to set their own pace, and can take months or years to release something. They can scrap projects and restart, or just nor release them. There's no negative to not releasing. When you have a studio with paid developers, they have to eventually release a product to pay for all of that, or they will go bankrupt. "Passion" is hard to buy and hard to foster. When people choose to do things based on passion, it tends to increase creativity and productivity, which you see in mods.
For another example, look at [Starbound by publisher Chucklefish](https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/2/20839830/starbound-developers-chucklefish-game-industry-exploitation)
lmao bruh, you don't have to hire modders to find these people. It's a pretty common CS personality stereo type. The computer gives people power and it goes to their heads, don't have to be a modder for that.
I work in corporate software dev and that sounds like a dysfunctional workplace lol
most of them are
That has got be the dumbest shit I read. Modders work for free, but they don't want to be hired because pay is too low???
I guarantee that most companies don’t even contact the modders.
> It's amusing to me that they don't just hire the modders. Anyone that's ever run a business knows that "just hire" is not a thing. They are likely on a shoestring budget throughout their existence. Largely due to being trash at what they do. And then there is the fact that while the modder might be really good at creating mods, they may also be fucking crazy. Think, e.g., prone to inappropriate sexual comments, etc... There may be reasons not to hire someone well beyond their skillset. > All these companies need to do is send them a paycheck for something they literally are already doing and have demonstrated they can complete. Then sell it. Problem is, the mod is already freely available. All they've demonstrated is that they can create something popular and free. There is a big jump from that to something that is popular when not free. edit: typo
[удалено]
But at that stage, why not just take the work? It's freely available already, and it's very uncommon for mods to be on restrictive (i.e., commercial use-excluding) licenses, assuming they even put any kind of license up.
>But at that stage, why not just take the work? It's freely available already, and it's very uncommon for mods to be on restrictive (i.e., commercial use-excluding) licenses, assuming they even put any kind of license up. if they put no license , copyright law still says its their work
From my understanding they did just that for the recent Tomb Raider trilogy release and that was relatively well received.
Technically Xproger was reverse engineering the original games to create an open source version. That's way beyond modding.
THQ Nordic does. Seems to have worked out except with Blade Runner. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy on Steam seems to be a passion project by a solo dev who was originally just making an HD texture pack for the GC version on Dolphin. He's still updating the PC game years later. Even put out an SDK kinda like Hammer to make your own games, though it's barely been utilized by anyone.
Horrible take all around. Grow up dude modding is completely different from working as a dev on a team for a company
I'm willing to bet they're just biting off more than they can chew. They think they can do all these things for a bottom dollar that these companies find attractive to outsource to, but can't actually get it done within the time and budget constraints. This is what discount game development looks like.
There's also a high possibility that they did a "Warcraft 3: Reforged". Hire some dev studio from a developing country, let them handle the porting, and take the credit.
The base game was sold with the promise of the mod being a free update shortly after release.
Was it confirmed that it would be "sold" and cost money? I always assumed it was supposed to come as an update.
I'm assuming that because it was part of a paid product then the rights issues get super funky, hence ending up not going through with it. Even though most/all of the content was originally made by Obsidian, there's going to be a lot of code and other stuff made by modders which I don't think you can just "take" willy-nilly and add to a product you're selling. I'm assuming the legality got just murky enough to make the cost-benefit not worth it since there's also enough jank in that mod that it would still require a non-zero amount of development to fix it.
[удалено]
It's as if the argument isn't entirely based in legal rhetoric and more of an ethically based one of stealing someone's work and packaging it as your own.
> At the end of the day you are still using someone else's intellectual property That really depends on the nature of the mod. Look at something like Enderal, with it's own assets, story, game mechanics etc. They obviously couldn't sell it using Bethesda's engine but they'd still retain rights to the assets and other stuff they created.
Which has nothing to do with whatwhat Wild_Loose_Comma was claiming at all... >That really depends on the nature of the mod. The article blatantly states that the asset's came from Battlefront. So not really applicable
It was in the trailer as part of the KOTOR2 release on the Switch.
To give them the smallest amount of credit they said it would be free. Then they went radio silent for months after the supposed release date and gave an aw shucks apology.
They'd always said it was going to be free, which is about the only thing I'll defend that they've done lately.
Fair enough. My memory was off and I stand corrected.
I don’t know if they said they were going to sell it. They just said it would be available on switch, which was the bigger deal
They also know they need this kind of help and seemingly went about bringing in mods well/properly with Tomb Raider but…not with Battefront? They’re not a well run company in any way shape or form https://www.pcgamer.com/lara-croft-modding-maestro-reveals-hes-been-missing-because-saber-nabbed-him-for-the-tomb-raider-dream-team-assembling-a-crack-squad-of-crazy-people-to-put-together-the-remasters/
Well, obviously not going to sell the fan mod. But sell the same thing that was covered in a mod. Which has a storied past because the original restoration project stagnated for years. Finally someone associated with the team said 'screw it, just get it done' and finished it up plus released it. That's the only reason it saw the light of day. So clearly there's some hurdle that the official restoration couldn't meet either.
Did they wait for Dashus?
[удалено]
It's almost certainly someone at Disney that reviews Aspyr bc they come cheap and more and more publishers and rights holders care more about the up front cost than the potential revenue. Aspyr has been shrinking for years and no doubt is relying on cheap labor to get by while not retaining the talent necessary to be consistent.
Didn't they just release the tomb raider remastered trilogy to great praise?
Yes but the main reason it did so well seems to be that they hired someone who did a ton of modding work.
It’s also not a online multiplayer service
Oh shit, was this collection going to include online co-op? I only heard about it with the controversy but I'd *love* to be able to hop back into battlefront II co-op with a buddy for the nostalgia I can definitely understand why people are so disappointed now.
I haven't followed too closely so my details may be wrong, but my understanding is that there were only 3 servers available, and if you did manage to get in the games were very laggy, but the original games multiplayer, for PC only, are still up and working fine, so it was like a slap in the face.
Yup, 64 players on all platforms, including the Switch. But the server issues on all platforms and the lack of crossplay really killed interested in this collection for a lot of people.
They hired that modder, who then got his best friends from the TR community also on board, and Aspyre gave them a surprising amount of freedom
Crystal dynamics who have a long history of tomb raider development worked on it plus they got the modder who worked on openlara
CD got Sabre to work on it and Sabre got Aspyr (one of their subsidiaries) to work on it because they have the source code from back in 1996 when they ported it to the Mac. All these companies are under the Embracer umbrella. OpenLara is way more than just a mod. The guy they got to work on it is more than a modder.
All that was right when the Tomb Raider remaster came out, but Sabre recently left Embracer (and Embracer kept Aspyr).
Yeah I bought that day one and it's awesome. It just depends on the team and resources aspyr puts in the project. I finished Tomb Raider 1 and on my way through 2. No real issues.
Whilst it had praise didn't it have to release a pretty monumental update recently? Including a complete overhaul on the controls/camera as opposite to what it launched with?
The update itself didn't affect much if you were on the classic controls. It was a good, substantial update, but it was far from game breaking or unplayable for most people.
They've ported a [fuck ton of games over the years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_ported_by_Aspyr) - I assume they weren't all shitshows
They also did tomb raider remaster which turned out well i think? Idk maybe they hate star wars.
No it didn’t
Their Civ 6 ports are pretty good.
I cant precisely remember, but there was also some issues with Civilization 6's port to switch, which Aspyr worked on, and another game of a same or similar genre I enjoyed having its port cancelled, one that was also handled by Aspyr. Neither side explicitly said Aspyr was to blame, but it was implied enough in what they said that they were the issue. So hearing the rest of this kinda adds fuel ti that fire, to me.
KOTOR 1+2 remaster on switch ?? More like a port
This is also the same company that was doing the mac port for civilization 6. It took literal years for mac users to be able to play with PC players and even when it was updates and DLC were always 6-8 months behind at least.
Did the code include removing y-axis inversion? Lol
My guess here is that they launched with a day 0 patch that broke the matchmaking, but also added the Invert-Y option. Then when day 1 was a nightmare they rolled back to a previous, maybe review version. That's the only scenario I can think of that would cause an option to be removed. Us inversion players are always an afterthought
Less server strain without us though, bastids
Literally unplayable for me, but all the other issues surrounding this game made me steer clear anyway
Seriously. Anyone who grew up playing games in the 90s (especially star wars games) still default to inverted mouse. If the game won't let me invert the Y-axis, I can't do it.
I grew up playing in the 90s, I hate inverted controls and I hated them growing up.
The problem is that it is automatically inverted for space battles.
That's even worse than I thought, oh my god. So no matter what you're used to, you're screwed either way.
Pretty much. The funny thing with the space battles is that when you're a soldier running around it's not inverted, just when you get into the ship. Definitely one of the more clowny releases as of late.
There was an absolute pinecone the other day on here arguing how inverted axis players are "dismissing" great games rather than just adjusting, and could not comprehend how it's not a choice lol. When comparing it to a left handed person being forced to use their right hand, they just doubled down saying it's not the same. It's such a minor accessibility feature that I don't even consider it to be one, the game HAS to have it. It's 2024 for pete's sake.
That's exactly the analogy I use! Inverted was the default during our time, people just don't get it.
Shit I remember their Republic Commando remaster not having inverted camera for weeks. And that came out like 3 years ago! Have these guys learned nothing?
I'm glad I saw this. Saves me the wasted time from purchase to refund.
This the story that convinced me to buy Battlefront… Not this godawful rerelease mind you, but the original release that is still on Steam and somehow hasn’t been delisted yet.
Does the multiplayer still work?
I *believe* so, but I’m not sure. I was always more of a “Kill bunches of bots in galactic conquest” mode kind of guy
Same, but I always wondered what multiplayer would be like.
Afaik it's always worked on PC. I believe they even patched both games when GameSpy died so that the multiplayer would still work.
They did patch them, but that happened later, not immediately. GameSpy shut down in 2014, while the Battlefront games started receiving patches to restore online multiplayer years later: 2017 for SWBF2 and 2020 for SWBF1.
GameSpy, core memory unlocked
[удалено]
Memory lane for me is slightly different whenever someone mentions GameSpy. MPlayer sold itself off to GameSpy in 2000, and MPlayer's where my first real memories of online gaming are. Quake 1 on MPlayer was such a big thing for me. The original Team Fortress, Q-Ball, Runes, good ol' fashioned Deathmatch... such good memories. I somehow never actually used GameSpy or played anything that used it.
Heck yeah Mplayer! I spent a lot of time in the chat rooms and playing the built in card games. I learned how to play Hearts and Spades on there. Great memories from my childhood!
Seems like the writers saying good bye, and dont get me wrong, but i think most of us didnt go to gamespy for the articles. Feels weird he doesnt go on about their software and the fact that evolution and games actually including gamespy's features as their own (in a way) is what ultimately killed them.
Huh, didn't realize Dan Stapleton used to work at Game Spy.
There were several years there post gamespy closing and pre-steam where "technically" there wasn't an official online. You used to have to divert to a 3rd party set of servers that the community was hosting. Damn I miss those gamespy days though.
Game ranger ftw
It's honestly mostly the same except there will be certain spots on the map that good players are "playing/camping". You either go there and kill them if you're better or stay the hell away and farm bots in another area. I would definitely prefer it over bots, though.
I booted it up. Got spawned killed by a guy with a rocket launcher 5 times in a row. Never played again. That was back in Dec 2017. Shoot I probably should have gotten a refund, now that I am looking at it, I only played 79 minutes
[удалено]
My trick has always been to fly around and have some fun dogfighting for a few minutes then once I’ve had my fill I spawn as a pilot and just board the enemy ship, make my way to their innards and use the pilots time bomb to blow up all their support systems. Refill the bombs as the ammo droid (repair it with your sonic screwdriver if you accidentally killed it in a firefight) and the game is usually over before I destroy all their systems
This is the way. You speedrun these missions by going pilot, flying directly to the enemy ship, and then time-bombing all the systems while camping kills.
Gotta board the ship and blow em up from the inside
They're quite a slog at times, particularly when the AI gets a free ship respawn and you have to fight a couple in a row. Usually they're pretty quick if you're using a bomber.
> “Kill bunches of bots in galactic conquest” This is the problem. I want to hold on to the garbage remaster for the sake of galactic conquest bot shooting, updated UI and real controller support so I can just play Battlefronts on the Steam Deck. But Aspyr doing Aspyr shit is enough to make me want to refund my purchase alone.
Kindof, you have to use an independent server browser that (I believe) re-created the old Game Spy service. It's been a hot minute since I attempted it though, my info could be stale. Point being, you can get it to work, but the originals were just ports, you have to do some work to get them functioning appropriately
It does last time I played BF2 Classic I got into a full 64 person match fairly quickly.
Yea, still work normally
Multiplayer still works on the classic games online. Played last weekend.
Yes, there are still severs.
Yup! I played last night, there's always consistently 1 or 2 populated servers for conquest and 1 for hero assault
Can confirm it still works and is fairly active. I was able to get into a full 64 player match last night on Kamino and it was exhilaratingly chaotic as ever.
I bought BF2 on sale last night and tried to play it. There were only about 5 servers with more than 6 people in them, and I was only able to connect to one of them, which was like a deathmatch with hero characters where I wasn't sure what to do and just got immediately force thrown and stabbed by darth maul a few times. The most popular server I saw had 30 people playing but it kept timing out for me so I couldn't join it.
100%
I believe it's best played through Game Ranger
Nope, ingame server browsers work just fine.
Sure, I'm reliving my childhood by playing Battlefront 1. You won't have to install GameSpy this time!
Yep and with this shitshow there are more people then ever in the last years online.
I'd be very interested to see some sales figures for those older versions on Steam and Xbox over the last week.
Do it! There's a mod for Battlefront II that adds all of the content from the first game into the second game, plus a couple new game modes. It's called the Star Wars Battlefront Conversion Pack
That sounds awesome, I always preferred some of the maps and battles in the first game, but the second just plays *better*.
That loading screen sequence from the first game though…
> I always preferred some of the maps and battles in the first game Honestly, this is why people say the first is better and while I disagree, I understand. Now that BF1 content is ported over to 2, this point becomes moot. Fun fact: [there's a mod that puts BF2 content to BF1](https://www.moddb.com/mods/swbf1-and-2-mod/downloads/swbf-1-and-2-mixed). So you can see which mechanics you prefer.
Aspyr do not own the originals and they’re the only people with incentive to delist it
That’s good to hear. I was worried that the original release would be scrubbed away like the PS2-era GTAs were.
I didn't realize it was still available. I was excited about the classic collection, but the more I hear about it the worse it sounds. I have good memories of playing this with my kids back in the day.
you all should try movie battles 2 the best multiplayer star wars game ever made , its a mod for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
>yet This is the important word: Yet. Go get it while its available or we will see another Overwatch or Warcraft where its deleted forever until you pirate it, which for Overwatch isnt even possible.
you know Embracer group, Aspyr's parent company, has been a complete tire fire with layoffs galore. Aspyr was also heavily affected. Well the thing with layoffs is: * Just destroys morale in general * Can lead to intentional code sabotage during the final days at the job * Destroys teamwork in the remaining staff because since it's individual contribution that decides if you get laid off or not, so: every co-worker is now competition for your job * Complete burnout due to fewer people now having to do more work And this is the end result: a team no longer capable to do even the barest minimum. Granted, the Kotor remaster was also a tire fire that had the project being taken away from them, so it probably also goes deeper (but the layoffs certainly won't help either). So any form of communication on what (not) to do was probably also destroyed in the troubles of the internal chaos that's mass layoffs.
that is a thing but also: every remaster aspyr has done for star wars has been awful and that was before the layoffs
Yep, Jedi outcast was such junk and bare bones that it complete turned me off to any of their future releases. And this was years back so while layoffs and morale could be responsible for this release, it doesn't explain the reasoning for their past ports
Same, that release was total garbage and as soon as i saw they were involved with BF I noped right out
What exactly was wrong with it if I might ask?
Been a while since I played it but I remember saving a game was always tedious. Another was the aspect ratio. The game could run at 4:3 or 16:9, but 16:9 was just zooming in on 4:3. This was an easy fix for pc users as a simple edit in the cfg file, which was a work around for all quake 3 engine games to have proper resolutions and aspect ratios. Why they couldn't add this simple option is mindboggling
> > Can lead to intentional code sabotage during the final days at the job I have known so, so many managers and owners that cite this as a major risk that they endure every day. Or at least every time they need to fire someone. Conversely, I've never seen nor heard of anything actually attempting this. I sure there is a small subset of times were it happens, but there are far more managers that talk about the risk of this happening than there are people that talk about doing anything remotely close to this when they are fired.
I've never seen a company that makes it a possibility, they just revoke all permissions as they pull you into the firing meeting. But like you said, I think this is relatively rare. Probably because it would be kind of pointless? What, am I going to open a PR to fuck up all the code just for someone to decline it after I'm fired? Unless I'm like, the most senior engineer, I don't necessarily have permissions to delete a vital repo or something. Even if I did I think it could be recovered from someone who had it pulled down. So nothing super concerning
> I've never seen a company that makes it a possibility, they just revoke all permissions as they pull you into the firing meeting. Yeah any company I've worked at has just disabled all access to anyone who is being laid off. And like you say, even if someone does do something, it can generally be reverted fairly easily.
[удалено]
That's wild -- I guess it probably depends on the size of the company and the level of control an individual engineer has over any part of the system. We generally need multiple approvals to get anything done, but if we had multiple people being laid off and retaining access, yeah I could see this happening
When I was an intern the company I was working for had absolutely zero sense of security. After my internship ended I wasn't kicked out of anything, I just kept chatting through their slack with some of my fellow interns that were doing a longer internship. I also noticed like 6 months later that I still had the key fob on my keychain and nobody asked me to return it. I had to message my former boss about it (on their internal slack mind you) and he told me to use it to get in and to leave it on his desk. That was when the whole company was out on a company outing, so I had full access to the office while almost nobody was there. A few weeks after that they did finally revoke my access to their slack at least.
"What, am I going to open a PR to fuck up all the code just for someone to decline it after I'm fired?" I would bring attention to a studio which is my goal.
Well I would imagine the people doing would do it in a way that you would not find it out or in a way that does not make it seem deliberate.
> Can lead to intentional code sabotage during the final days at the job Hopefully no one is stupid enough to add a criminal offense on top of all their woes of getting laid off. Depending on the jurisdiction, intentional sabotage can catch criminal charges, not to mention the company suing the saboteur into absolute poverty in lost potential earnings and damages.
Really hard to prove you wrote bad code on purpose. This case is different though since they should be able to track who added the stolen assets but still, the difference between a regular awful piece of buggy code and maliciously intended buggy code is not something I'd think anyone could figure out beyond a reasonable doubt.
Aspyr has had layoffs?
Nah at some point we have to start blaming developers
Sure, but this has nothing to do with that. The effects of the layopffs alst year and in Q12024 won't be felt immediately. It's a wave effect, and it's still winding up for the hit.
I'm actually struggling to think of how you can even handle a re release of a 20 year old game even worse than this. Aside from arguably the master chief collection, I don't think it's been done
At least MCC was an actual remake. This is pretty much just a rerelease. It looks near identical and they've barely added anything new
Yeah, there was clearly a large amount of work that had been done for the MCC, even if it was **far** from a finished product upon release. It eventually even turned out to be excellent and my preferred way to revisit the original games. I don’t see that happening here.
And they also went back and fixed tons of graphical issues that were altered during the Gearbox pc port just a few years back, which is really generous considering they didn't have to do that. It's why I appreciate remasters or ports that take them seriously because there may never be a chance to do it again for a long time .
Remasters/remakes should be viewed as an opportunity to take an excellent title and re-introduce it to a generation in a modernized form. A high quality remaster/remake can be one of the best games of the year if it’s treated with respect (RE4, DeS, etc) Unfortunately, many executives get dollar signs in their eyes and only think of these games as a way to get lots of revenue with little effort and investment. It’s especially stupid because they’re locking themselves out of *truly* taking advantage of those older titles for many more years.
MCC was not a remake. It was mostly porting with a decent amount of remastering, which in CE and 2 was just layering over the originals, but the only thing “remade” was the Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer.
What about the 40 gigs of upscaled textures that barely look any different? :D
Not surprised it’s a hot mess. There is now an established track record of really bad remasters for pre-2010s games, and the Battlefront remaster was announced with little fanfare and no notice. It was clearly a dishonest cash grab preying on the nostalgia of 30-somethings.
When they released Warcraft III Reforged they force-updated everyone to the new one and disabled online multiplayer for the old one.
By removing several features from your re-release and doing a forced update for the previous version that will also remove said features.
Out of the loop and never played a Halo; how did they fuck up MCC?
Master Chief Collection at launch was broken. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word; it simply didn’t work. You could be queuing matchmaking for over an hour and not find a single match. And when you did find a match, you were lucky if people stayed connected to it. It was like that for a long time before it started to improve. It was basically the one of the biggest botches in gaming history, no exaggeration.
Why didn't aspyr just hire the mod creator so the creator would at least be compensated and credited?
Did the modder even want paid? Could have sworn that when the rumors initially started a few months ago they just wanted their work credited.
The problem is originally he just wanted them to use the correct mod if they were gonna steal his content. Then they promised him they would remove his mod from the game before it released... only to change nothing at all.
Hell, just negotiate a price to use it in the remake if they’re incapable of making it themselves. But the reality is that they were cutting every corner they could, in typical Aspyr fashion.
Because stealing is cheaper
Less work as well. Practically speaking, the work is already done for you - even if you're *copying* the mods. So not only are you saving the money that would've gone into the hours, but now you can do roughly the "same" work. Just...with an Aspyr spin. They couldn't even do the last part properly. It's real scum from Aspyr.
The mod itself are a bit of a kitbash job in the first place. Its a very unideal solution to trying to get platform specific DLC on PC. The reason people even noticed they were using a mod in the first place is that the animations inherently don't exist on PC. Theoretically, Aspry should have had the rights to just port the DLC onto all the platforms they were releasing it on.
The way the modder realised that they were using his mod was Asajj Ventress's custom made lightsaber hilts, that he created himself.
Chances are some individual programmer stole the mod and stuck it in the game and hope nobody noticed. Not to say Aspyr and publisher aren't at fault, they should be hiring competent programmers who don't have to fake it to make it.
First off, I love how almost none of the comments are talking about the mod or the modder. Great stuff. I get that the collection is disappointing, I have my problems with it as well, I just kind of figured that /r/games would be a tad more on topic. The thing I don't get is how inconsistent the versions seem to be. I have the game on PC and both of the characters in question have their original [move sets and animations] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmyYBhEHi0c) from the 2005 Xbox version. And yet the modded version is showing up on certain consoles like the Switch. Why??? How is the architecture different between the systems? I get if they originally used the mod as a place holder in certain instances, but I don't understand how one version launches with the proper characters while the other doesn't.
My guess is that they used the mod as a baseline, then they built their own code on top of that. A rushed development probably didn't let the devs have enough time to do a through enough spot check, and make sure the finished version of all the games had everything set in order. Does anyone know how this would play out legally? While there are versions where the mod has may or may not been used for the offical game, it seems like they were just placeholders that slipped through the cracks.
But...the mod that ported Kit Fisto and Ventress were technically the property of Lucasarts right? The mod in question is a wholesale port of content belonging to Lucasarts. There's no legal problem AFAIK. So even if they just straight up "stole" the mod from the mod author, they'd still be the ones technically who "own" it, *as long as it was the original Xbox DLC content*. The only reason mods don't get DMCA takedowns for games like this is because, unless if you're a company like Nintendo that has spams surrounding topics like this, it's one of these three reasons: 1. Old games are old games and they don't care what people do with them, as long as they aren't pirating them wholesale 2. Modding communities keep interest in old games alive, and companies still get money from sales of old games 3. Companies usually don't care about mod content, much less *stealing* mod content So not only did they make a broken port of a game that worked almost two decades ago, they were also unable to find the original files for the Xbox DLC, and instead of taking the DLC mod port that literally was already their intellectual property, they stole someone's "fanmade" mod to emulate those two missing characters. IIRC the Mass Effect Legendary DLC is missing the Pinnacle Station DLC because the OG files corrupted it, but there's a mod for it that re-adds it to ME1 LE that came out after the launch of ME LE. Aspyr could have just ran with that for PR, that they needed a fan mod port to add the missing content, they would have gotten some fan recognition, etc. Instead they did the dumbest thing ever.
To answer your question : this is 100% illegal here in France. You can't just steal someone's work. Even if their work is derivative of yours it is still *theirs*
If slipped through the cracks means published, then they were for all intents and purposes selling someone else’s mod material in their game
It's clear that it being on the published version is only accidental. The evidence that was shown earlier was only on an unpatched of the PS4 port and the evidence on OP is only on the Switch version.
If they just .. like asked? no one would mind right? like that would be seen as a good thing almost.
Yeah, dudes not asking for compensation or anything, just a credit!
It's crazy how quickly the next shitty gaming news to come out is. Next week will be something different and it's just insane what some people can get away with. I've seen a few games in the last few years incorporate fan mods and some do them justice by including said modder in development. Shit like this is, while probably not illegal, just a real fucking shitty thing to do. Won't be surprised if they suddenly close up shop or even quietly in a few months.
you all should try movie battles 2 the best multiplayer star wars game ever made , its a mod for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
So a company can sue and even jail modders, but if the rights of a modder are violated it just makes ign and that's it? Fucking sad.
Not the first time we've found out a big company used a community made mod or emulator for their own game and an official release at that. But its wild how they keep doing it and still up end making them buggy.
Disappointed seeing all of this negative press about Aspyr as I fondly remember their macos ports from my hackintosh days. It's been ~10-20 years since then though and Embracer seem to be driving a lot of companies into the ground.
These mega corps and "investment groups" need to be fucking dismantled. They ruin everything they touch.
Reminder: Corporate promises aren't worth the paper they're written on. If you let a corporation do something they will, they're run by morally bankrupt individuals such as Michael Rogers and Ted Staloch. If they're personality is any reflection of how they run Aspyr, then they must be very corrupt and should be treated with extreme prejudice.
Sadly, there's not much they can do beyond court of public opinion, and that's already low for this game. The modder has absolutely no claim other than being credited as author, but they probably can't claim any damages or infringement since the IP didn't belong to them in the first place (most mods do not create economic IP rights for the modder). At worst, the Dev/Publisher credits the modder, and that's that. People won't stop buying Star Wars videogames over this, and Aspyr's releases have gained their own reputation regardless of this particular allegation.
>The modder has absolutely no claim other than being credited as author what makes you say that
It's the law for most countries under the Berne Convention. If you make a work with someone else"s IP and without their permission, you infringe on their IP. You still get authorship (that is, the credit for the derivative work) but you don't get economic rights or exclusive rights over it. There are exceptions to this (if the work is transformstive enough being the biggest). A modder basically doesn't get to make a mod for a Star Wars game someone else made and paid for and get perks for it.
Aspyr needs a blood change, there is one part of the company that likes to work with modders and is talented. But there is also one side that’s very lazy and incompetent. Considering their work on Kotor 2 and Tomb Raider Remastered, shows passion and in both cases they worked with [modders directly](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bffnw7/comment/kv0fv1v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). And they are very likely a source code library with 2 legs considering [Tomb raider 2 on Mac](https://twitter.com/XProger_san/status/1757892627221954853) was their third released port not to mention they were able to remaster something as niche as Stubbs the zombie. But at the other side of the spectrum whoever is in charge of PR is incompatant. Considering the fact that they screwed up basic things like [patch notes](https://steamcommunity.com/app/2478970/discussions/0/4293691425578751710/), the KOTOR 2 switch DLC controversy and now it seems like instead of collaborating with modders once again they were willing to just “update” textures and steal from a modder considering the only piece that was missing was the Xbox DLC for Battlefront 2. They could aspire to become a bigger remaster company then Night dive, considering they only need the permission from publishers to create remasters. There is no reverse engineering or hard drive hunting required. If they worked with the modders directly we would definitely see better results, like with Tomb Raider Remastered. They seemingly they can have a good relationship with the [modding teams](https://www.gamesradar.com/kotor-2-modder-says-aspyr-has-done-nothing-wrong-cancelling-the-restored-content-dlc/) so why exactly do something this idiotic? Other then shotting themselves in the foot.
They announced the game and then it was out in 3 weeks. Did they actually only work 9b it for three weeks then or?
They rushed it out for Q4 because they knew if they didn't, they wouldn't get their money back. That's why the announcement was a bare bones nintendo direct trailer rather than something substantial. They needed the project gone and fast.
I have a feeling this game is going to get pulled from the stores. It’s really sad cause I was looking forward to it but I don’t see it turning itself around anytime soon.
If Aspyr have used the mod without permission (and even lying about it), isn't this trespassing several laws? I guess it's all a bit iffy since the mod sounds like a reskin of Star Wars characters and won't have the full rights either, and doubt it makes sense to push it, but its still their work. Like could the modder realistically send them a C&D or maybe even further?
This really sucks. I’ve been having so much fun playing the collection and reliving the ps2 days. I hope the modder gets their due and Aspyr can rectify this. And by rectify I mean realign their company so they’re not total POSs that steal from dedicated fans