meraxes1982

That's my understanding as well and, while it lacks the force of law, I feel the modding community has always been just that, and it has thrived, not only on the basis of open sharing, but also, due to mutual respect. I do still hope the law one day catches up with the realities of modern gaming, but I strongly suspect that will not happen while most of the judicial branch is composed of people who simply have never experienced any of these games. I'm not asking them to become hard-core gamers, but a bit of experience with modding and what it adds to games would go a long way towards a new legal understanding of the relationship between mods and the games on which they are based. There has not been a significant federal court decision on video game mods since the 1998 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision regarding Duke Nuke'em (Microstar v. Formgen, Inc.). That one was based on the license agreement for the map making utility, and the fact they pretty much just made some maps, using the map utility alone, and then sold the package, or at least, that was the interpretation of the Court. The fact that half of all gamers alive probably have never heard of Duke Nuke'em is telling enough. Just confirming, but I'm assuming the one hosted by Baka Factory is also tainted by unsavory origins? Is there a version of SAM Light that has bodyslides, or is that just the dumbest question? I actually did not originally get it (never actually played with it, still setting up and ran into issues), from Schaken. I only figured out it was there and saw the justification posted when it was mentioned here and I re-read everything on the site from whence I had obtained it (believing it was legit). It made it all connect at that point. I would lose my shit on people asking me to support my stolen product. Judging from most troubleshooting requests, 50-65% of modders just sweep things off the virtual shelves and throw them into their game cart without much thought, which is annoying enough I'm sure without adding insult to injury by not bothering to understand if the uploader has rights to the thing. I swear to the gods, cannot remember where, but it was either here or LL, but it was clearly addressed to someone who is a regular and upstanding member of the community here (basically, someone who would be offended by the thievery), and they were asking about SMMB support for something, followed by several others asking the same. I was like "Wow, that's bold..." I've been working for a few months on trying to create a stable load, and it hasn't helped that I haven't seriously played since 2015 or so (basically when LE was still infinitely superior because NO SKSE or SkyUI for SE). I'm playing catch-up on learning about new tools and animations, best body models and skins, best immersive mods and patches that can all play together, city and quest additions, etc... Anyhow, appreciate your work, and thank you! The game wouldn't be worth playing without the contributions from you and other modders.

I've gathered that I might be one of the 7 (exaggeration...?) straight men on this forum so maybe my tastes aren't in line with everyone elses'. Fair. I'm big into trying to craft as realistic a game as possible, while also enjoying some artistic liberties (it's my story I DO WHAT I WAAAAAAAANT!). So I want a super godly, but realistic body for my PC hero. I'm really liking the realism of this skin, and I have basically settled on the HIMBO body because, *sigh* compatible and bodyslides (need the latter for autobody so I can make sure there's a nice distribution of skinny>muscular>fatty dudes running around). Am I missing something? Is there a way to evenly distribute a range of SAM bodies around Skyrim, and a fuckin' decent skin to use with SAM? It's such a superior body type it kills me to use a lesser cousin...

@ DarnexxThe crazy thing is all the licensing statements and everything else most modders put up are paper tigers. I went down a DEEP rabbit hole based purely on this post. It made me (law nerd that I am) ask: "Wait, what exactly ARE modders' rights to their creations?" Short answer: F*****' ZERO. Which is 100% in line with current U.S. IP law (for reasons) but also, is reflective of a legal community that generally fails to understand the nature of both gaming and modding. The US courts (the only ones that matter for MOST of our games) are operating off of rulings from the mid and late 90s, and haven't really changed their understanding of games or the nature of modders' contributions. As such, the only thing that really protects modders' intellectual control and ownership of their creations is the benevolence of the base game IP holders. They have (rightly) calculated that letting modding thrive without interference is most profitable, even if modders may skim some dollars off by modding their IP. They bring in so many dollars (it's a sales point) that it's worth giving up trying to pinch them. You can understand the frustration among younger lawyers and legal scholars who grew up gaming (and perhaps still do ) when we see this and the legal system just DOES NOT UNDERSTAND that most mods, for top-selling games these days, fundamentally add value to those games in such a significant way that current IP law does not account for. You cannot tell me that people would still be buying or playing Skyrim if there was not a way to load 1500 mods and turn it into your personal 4-8k fantasy land, a feat that could never remotely be accomplished under either vanilla version of the game+dlcs. I wouldn't play this game if I couldn't mod it. I strongly suspect 2/3 of players (minimum) would quit, en masse, if it was prohibited. The law just isn't currently able to comprehend this kind of collaborative creation of media, so as to properly protect it and reward its contributors.

my understanding is the SAM light has no Bodyslides, that's why you don't see them. Moreover, the reason for that, best I understand it (I'm a competent implementer of mods, not a creator), is that creating Bodyslides for an updated SAM body (which is the reason SAM light exists - the old one is effectively useless in most SE, and all AE, iterations) would involve treading on the original creators' project without their explicit permission to do so. This is why there are controversial versions out there, created by those who've essentially said "Eff it..." and they've gone ahead and just worked on SAM anyway and created physics and Bodyslide SAM bodies based on SAM light and the new hi-poly SAM light. It's all a mess. I've spent inordinately more time (say, 5x), personally, trying to nail down the optimal body and skin in my game for male characters than I have for the female characters (not hard, there's two choices and both have decent support, one more than others, easy choice there) and I'M A F*****G STRAIGHT MAN!!!!!! ............Soooooooo, I share your frustration, if for possibly different reasons. I've been trying to find a good male body and skin so I can use Autobody, and populate the world with a variety of male and female characters, while having my own character look like a badass god, but to do so, I need a base body that has Bodyslides. I prefer the shape of the SAM body over everything out there by a mile, but it seems tragically lost to the void of unobtainable permissions. I hope I'm wrong and missing something. Was a longtime heavy modder of LE, and only briefly played SE in 2017 before coming back to the game recently. If there is a way to make SAM work with some of the best skins out there (something up there with Bits and Pieces or Skysight), AND have Bodyslides, and I've missed it, someone please bang me over the head with the links...Also, and not the SAM Light rip offs, I'm aware of those, but 1) it seems they do not have permissions to use the resources, and 2) there's not much support for them skin-wise either. I realize permissions are more of a website-website rule and operate under the locus of etiquette, not law, but I like to be a respectable member of the community, so, I don't require it to be legally enforceable to respect it.

The one I tried (I don't use it now for mod compatibility reasons) was presented such that I thought it was expanding with permission of the original author. For the record, as a user, not a modder, I'm not entirely clear on the consensus over when a mod that expands significantly on another becomes more of its own work than a copy of another's. Though, I understand this to be more a matter of agreed etiquette in the community, since legally, all mods are the property of Bethesda anyhow. That said, I just double-checked, and it is still available on one site as Sam Lite + SMP and Bodyslides. Schaken Mods did have it, but can't access their site atm to see if it is still there, and I don't recall when last I saw it there.