asking for money is mmmmh but it doesn't matter.
he is using the name and the logo of the game. I am not saying that they will get into trouble, only that the company
could sue them

Doing it for free was the side effect of modding - people putting in their "free time" to make something for others to enjoy, to extend the longevity of a game. People modding asking for people to give money to do it , to me sounds like more of a job, rather than a hobby. Like the others have said, is he going to make a profit out of it?. And does he have permission from the games IP owner to have $$$ involved with the mod?.

I get what you're saying, I just don't understand why people have an issue with it. To put it simply, why does it matter whether someone is profiting or doing it for free? If two different people from opposite ends of the earth made the same exact mod, why does it matter if one charged for a service and one did it for free as their hobby? The mod was made either way and is still used the same (a bunch of pirates downloading their work for free).

My mom tailors and patches clothes as a hobby, doesn't mean that she thinks other people should be barred from doing it as their job. Just because other people charge to do the same thing doesn't prevent her from still doing it as a hobby. She also likes to make desserts as a hobby. She used to want me to take some of them to work with me to share with co-workers and they would then ask for recipes. Doesn't mean she thinks she should never be able to charge for it if someone asked her to make desserts.

I do tree work. The end result of my work (the view) is "free" to everybody. It is non-rivalrous. I'll be damned if I'm gonna do that kind of grueling work for free on my own free time though. I might just for a few close friends in the right circumstances.

an interesting mod to look at in this regard is Lost Alpha - a "mod" for Shadow of Chernobyl. Due to the reporgramming of the Xray engine and (almost) entire rebuild of the game from the ground up as far as locations, dialogue, story, characters and so on, the Dez0wave team took donations to be able to do it in more than just their free time - GSC (the IP holders for those that dont know) had no truck with this as it was agreed with them - and now to the point where the company is actively assisting them in the final stages. thus there will be a standalone stalker game to fill the gap left tby the (semi-permenant?) pause in stalker2's development.

i dont know about the mod in regards to the OP but the campaigner is asking for a lot though.

Trying to figure out why it would be a problem even if he sold the end product. A couple reasons why it might be a problem:

- the tools used to create the mod come with an agreement stating there will be no commercial sales of the resulting end products.
- the mod treads all over the original IP with regard to trademarking matters.
- the mod has, at its core, the original game code and thus installation might be akin to pirating the title.

The third part is relevant in that I imagine a mod being distributed in a couple different ways:

- the mod is distributed as the end product, meaning you're getting a complete package that includes the original game (but now modified). In this example, the dev / distributor may not be getting paid for the base game upon which the mod is based.
- the mod is distributed only as an executable whose purpose is to modify the customer's existing game installation. In this example, the dev / distributor was already paid by the customer for the core game (assuming it wasn't pirated) and the mod is only tweaking that purchased installation.

I'm leaning toward Kyle Katarn's points, and this is based on my experience as an independent technical contractor. If not allowed to work on some OEM's equipment without being sanctioned by the OEM, then I'd be out of work. Hell, a huge number of independent fix-it folks would be out of work because of this. Just because the local plumber isn't employed by Kohler, should he not be legally allowed to charge money to repair (or modify) a Kohler plumbing fixture?

In the US, at least, this is sanctioned by the government in a few ways. A notable example is that car manufacturers can not deny warranty coverage on the grounds that service was performed by a third party. Granted, coverage can be denied if the work was done incorrectly or the product was modified beyond the original performance specs. In the case of the game dev versus the mod maker, the dev would be off the hook for anything the mod maker screws up. The point is that law allows for people to earn a living modifying the works of others, including copyrighted material and intellectual works - and patented products.

What the mod maker can claim is that he's not selling the mod, but instead selling the brainpower behind the mod. He can also likely claim that the dev / distributor is not suffering a loss because the mod only affects products already sold, and that it isn't using their IP as a basis for him to take sales from the IP holder.

All that said, law can be a funny thing and maybe I'm misapplying those points.

Not really, you can mod whatever you like and distribute it however you like. Where people get into trouble are with trade mark and when they're using assets from the game. Or if it requires cracking the game.

A mod distributed as a patch isn't something that the publishers or developers have any say over, provided there aren't any of the things I listed above.

There used to be a fairly decent 3rd party expack industry for a while. AFAIK that's mostly been killed at this point. At least as far as commercial 3rd party expacks go.
That's more or less correct as far as I can tell. I remember back during the mid '90s when there were shed loads of unofficial Doom map packs and mods out there. I remember a few of them even being only available for purchase. Mostly amateur maps bundled together for the product and IIRC there weren't any lawsuits about any of them.

Usually they're distributed in such a way that you have to buy the entire game rather than just the shareware version for it to work. Which usually appeases the developer so that they don't file any lawsuits. But, it's questionable if the publisher or developer would even have a case as they don't own the rights to 3rd party content and it's the end user that's applying the patches.

Obviously, content created using an official utility may have constraints from that.

I personally am not a fan of the argument about lost sales, but I still don't think that would hold much water if someone claimed it. If anything, mods help sales in the long run. Morrowind is a game known for having a ton of mods that enhance the game. The GOTY edition was on store shelves for years after it was released while most other games were off shelves within a year. Bethesda has been pretty smart in observing and integrating what mods people like into their next games instead of trying to tell people what they can or can't do, kind of like Ford did when they observed people modding Model T's into pickups.

Neverwinter Nights is another example. It was on shelves for quite a while too. The community here will tell people that the base game isn't that great but get it for the mods. It has sold really well here.

Hell, if some people are so against used games, they should want more games to be so open to modding. It's kept a lot of people holding onto their copies of Morrowind and NWN, and kept more people wanting to buy them even years later.

edit: inserted a link

well.... he is not asking to make money out of the mod, as such, he is asking for people to support him whilst he is making the mod. I agree with StringingVelvet that this is a grey area, there is a difference here.

He is asking for money while making the mod, but he is not suggesting to make money of the mod. There is a slight difference there.

The mod is going to be free and available for everyone, it is therefore not anything he is going to be making money of. However, he is asking for money to support him while making the mod. Understand me correctly, I am not condoning this drive, but I can not find it illegal or immoral.

There do not need to be committee controlling him, as the focus is on the end product, which is a free mod. Whether people would like to give him money to make a free product, should be up to them. He do not really violate any copyrights more than any mod creators as he is not asking for money for the mod.

Edit - I do not see any legal or moral difference between this and "If you like this mod, please donate" buttons, or even ad.fly links to downloads.