Bioware Release Neverwinter Nights Beta Toolset

Max writes "Bioware, the company who have been working on Neverwinter Nights for many years, have recently released a beta version of the NWN toolset for all to download. The toolset is a brilliant feature of NWN, as it allows players to create and script their own custom made adventures. This beta version is limited, but designed to give players an insight in to the massive customisation available in the game. The file itself is 241mb and can be downloaded from Bioware " Update: 05/19 04:10 GMT by M : Zed Pobre submitted an important note concerning the EULA of this toolset, appended below. Update: 05/19 14:16 GMT by M : Derek French of Bioware has a response below. I respectfully disagree with him; I've just read the SDK EULA's for Starcraft and Half-life, and neither of these would permit the company to redistribute your mods for their commercial gain, while Bioware's would. Update: 05/20 05:16 GMT by M : Bioware is going to take another look at the EULA.

Zed Pobre writes "Careful review of the EULA of the Neverwinter Nights Beta Toolset reveals the following clause:

• Section 4(b):

  "By distributing or permitting the distribution of any of your Modules, you hereby grant back to INFOGRAMES and BIOWARE an irrevocable royalty-free right to use and distribute them by any means. Infogrames or BIOWARE may at any time and in its sole discretion revoke your right to make your Modules publicly available."

This is more or less the same as if a company producing a compiler wrote into the EULA that by distributing any program compiled with that compiler, the company would permanently get the rights to do whatever they wanted with that program, including reselling it for profit and then forbidding you to publish it yourself.

Derek French, the Assistant Producer for Bioware, confirmed that this section of the EULA is not going to change for the final release. Although he noted in the same message that similar clauses have been used by other companies providing tools for users to create their own content, NWN has a much greater scope than any of them by far, and it's now a profoundly bad idea for someone who wants to keep control of their writing, characters, or game ideas , or use those elements elsewhere, to make a NWN module using those elements publically available.

This kind of clause falls just short of "Bioware Owns Anything You Make", since if they want to sell a module you created themselves, the clause even allows them to forbid you from distributing your original version for any reason. The sole comfort in this is that the clause apparantly does not allow them to make a derivative work of your module, so it would have to be distributed "as is" -- but if the module contained enough "objectionable" material that they wouldn't want to take it for themselves, they could still forbid the owner from distributing it.

Once again, it seems that companies are only against piracy as long as it's their material being pirated. If they can pirate some individual's material by throwing an unreadable EULA up for a second at install time, it's perfectly fine.

The full forum thread discussing this can be found here."

Comments

Online D&D?

[wikki]

This sounds like basically an Online D&D game with a DM and such.

I don't know too many people that play traditional RPGs since everquest and UO came out. Do any folks still get around and play D&D? If not why dont' you? Is it because of time getting people together and whatnot. If so this could be the answer for you.

It sounds like a neat idea maybe it will take off.

Maybe not.

Re:Online D&D?

[flakes]

I still play D&D, if not as often as I like. I'll probably look into NWN eventually, but I can't see that sitting behind a computer will ever have the same feel as sitting at a table with pepsi, cookies and miniatures that look nothing like your character. How can you "roleplay" without having to act?

As for online D&D.. this isn't a new thing. Join an IRC network.. join #D&D or #AD&D and see if there are any games going. The sessions generally happen in a moderated channel, with the DM being the channel operator. Anything that needs to be said to the DM in private can be done in a private message or a notice. I've only played via IRC once, but it was fun. And there was no need to rely on a piece of software to interpret the rules.. it was just like a real session. The only problem with this is timezones, but you'll get that with any online game.

Re:Is there any other way to get the file?

[Anonymous Coward]

EBgames.com will send you the editor on a
seperate disc if you pre-order the game.
I assume that you're going to need the game
to try out your adventures anyway, so you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

Re:The Futility of Slashdot's Business Model.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind so much if they weren't so obviously not able to sell advertising space, and that all the ads I see are for VA* itself. It's the tedious monotony of slashdot ads that grates me.

I've considered blocking the ads. They're all so damn boring and after this long there's no been a single thing that interests me.

I should block them.

Powerful, Easy to Use

[corby]

It's hard to describe just how flexible and sophisticated this toolset is.

There's a wonderful thread here which shows what people have built in the first 24 hours after the tool was released.

However, these screenshots don't convey the depth of the scripting language that you can use to customize just about anything in the game world.

I'm still looking forward to creating modules...

[Babbster]

But regardless of how I feel about their quality, they won't be "distributed." This overbearing clause in their EULA guarantees that the savvy people who don't want their ideas to be stolen and then sold for profit by a company will keep their work to themselves and their friends.

For example, I have a friend who is a writer. If he decided to create and distribute a NWN module based upon a book that he had written, apparently Bioware would, according to their EULA, have the option to simply steal it and gain ownership of all the contents (characters, settings, etc.).

Further, what about modules derived from, or inspired by, popular works? If a module contains characters named Princess Leia, Wolverine or Ripley, does Bioware have the right to claim ownership of those names too?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Bioware couldn't get away with this if challenged. They can't claim the rights of copyrightable (or copyrightED) stories and trademarkable (or trademarkED) characters by EULA proclamation. I guess it continues to prove that EULAs are a joke. :)

-Aaron

No, a different section covers popular works

[CoreyGH]

They've got that part about you making modules with popular works covered in a different section of the EULA.

"(3) your Modules must not contain any libelous, defamatory or other illegal material, material that is scandalous or invades the rights of privacy or publicity of any third party, or contain any trademarks, copyright-protected work or other property of third parties"

So, basically, what this means is that if you make a module with copyrighted stuff in it you are not allowed to legally distribute it. And since Bioware only recieves control of modules you legally distribute, they wouldn't get control of Princess Leia or whatever.

By the by, it also follows that if you wanna protect your ideas, then throw a little framed picture of Calvin and Hobbes on a nightstand in some hut somewhere in your world. Sure, the clause I mention here would give Bioware the power to make you stop distributing it, but they already have that power from the clause that we're already upset about. At least they couldn't get control of it. -- Said argument relies completely on the assumption that one piece of copyrighted material makes the WHOLE module illegal.

That's terrible

[TheDanish]

I heard a lot of hype about this, but...now that they had that part of their EULA, there's NO way I'm going to write anything for them. I won't buy it, either. There's simply no way that I'm just going to hand over my rights to anyone for using their software. It's ludicrous, to say the least, even if it's NOT from Micro$oft.

Greetings from BioWare

[Derek French]

Hi all. I just wanted to jump in here and try and clear up some of the confusion.

First, read your EULAs for Quake 3, Half-Life, StarCraft, etc. (other games that allow you to create content). All of them say the same thing that we are saying. Our EULA is nothing new. They must be written this way to protect both the companies involved and the end users. I am serious. Read the EULAs of those other games.

Every time a new game comes out, someone actually reads the EULA and the spectres of corporate exploitation rears its head. Its just not happening. id, Blizzard, Valve, none of these companies have ripped off their fans. Why? Because its suicide. And we aren't doing it either.

Babbster - no, you cannot use your friend's novel nor on Star Wars, or any other existing licenced or copyrighted content for the basis of a module. This is prohibited by the EULA. Your friend can create a module based on his novel. CoreyGH has it right.

Some other comments:

Windows only. Really? Then I guess I better shut down this Neverwinter Nights Linux dedicated server that I am playing on right now...

Toolset is Windows only. Borland was supposed to have Builder for Linux done a long time ago and that was what we were going to use for Linux. We use Builder for Windows for the Toolset. The Linux Toolset is just not happening right at this moment.

The distribution statement means that you cannot charge anyone to play Neverwinter Nights. Neither for modules, nor for server access. This isn't a MMORPG.

And yes, our game is designed such that the end users do NOT need to download the modules in order to play on the server. No matter what module the server is running (well, pretty much).

Re:Greetings from BioWare

[Sheetrock]

Hello, and thank you for coming to Slashdot to address our concerns. I appreciate that you take enough interest in your work to come into the community and talk with us, and I hope that you'll take my comment to heart without offense as none is intended.

I've been quite concerned lately with the direction EULAs have been taking, and with some of the decisions being made at the leading companies in the game industry in particular. I would like to address two provisions in your EULA that could perpetuate or create new restrictions on players and hopefully persuade you to reconsider them.

One thing that troubles me is that your company is attempting to establish editorial control over the content users might wish to create and distribute. How am I or anyone else to know whether or not a package we labor over for days (to release for free to your other customers, natch) is going to meet with your company's standards? What risk does your company really incur if it permits customers generate whatever they desire with the toolset (and deal with the law themselves if they violate it)? More importantly, what liabilities has your company taken on now that it has more or less declared itself the policeman for all content generated with its tools? I know that the ISPs lobbied their asses off to avoid that kind of responsibility; are you sure you guys want it?

The second thing that concerns me is that with this EULA your company is attempting to create rights for itself to its customers' work. It's suspicious even if you only intend to use it to create a 'best-of' pack to distribute with Neverwinter Nights when sales of the original slow down (and, hey, I personally think that it'd be pretty cool to have happen with my work, but I'd at least appreciate an e-mail -- the Linux folk aren't demanding a copy of your software just because you're running it on their server, are they?) I'm comfortable with the idea that you don't want me or anyone else to sell modules I create for a profit, as I understand you'd probably prefer to license your engine for such things, but the statements in the EULA are excessively broad if this is all your company really wants to accomplish.

Whether or not you actually intend to exert this control, the perceived threat in this clause is enough that I wouldn't risk creating content for your game, and given the impact I believe it will have on the amount of quality content available for download I'd probably have second thoughts about buying it to begin with. I certainly don't think that any of you are out to screw us, but then again I never thought that Blizzard would punish their loyal fans either. I recognize that overbroad EULAs have become one of the hallmarks of the game industry from the big players, but I sincerely hope that, as an expression of goodwill to those of us who plan to line up at the stores to spend our hard-earned money on your game the minute it leaves the truck, you will have the courage to break with that way of thinking enough to rewrite the EULA to protect our interests with the same enthusiasm as you have protected your own.

Re:Greetings from BioWare

[SignalFreq]

What it comes down to is anything created with the BioWare NWN toolset and then distributed is considered property of BioWare. So all I really have to do is create my *own* toolset for editing and then I can distribute modules as my property or public domain.

Do you have a way to distinguish modules created by your toolset from modules created by a third party toolset?

With the vast majority of tech geeks that play BioWare games, it is only a matter of time before an editor gets released that has no restrictions on the content created.

Or are you going to restrict the creation of third party toolsets as well?

Re:Greetings from BioWare

[Babbster]

Well, Derek, it certainly is nice of you to come here and talk about this, but you're dead wrong, and I might just (along with friends) make a mod based on a friend's *copyrighted* work and distribute it, waiting eagerly for your cease and desist letter to challenge it.

As someone else here has already had, you need to get new lawyers if this is your counsel-advised legal opinion. Copyright exists in order to give copyright holders the right to make a reasonable profit from their creations for the duration of the copyright (which is too long right now but that's an entirely different subject). That means that my "friend" has the unalterable right to say to me (and put such in writing), "Sure, Aaron, you are welcome to use Moe, Investigator of the Odd; Robin the Clown; etc. in your role-playing module! Go to town!"

You have no more right to restrict my ability to do this than (as yet another poster pointed out) Microsoft has the right to restrict my ability (having been given permission) to use C++ to create an entirely new video game based on those characters.

I understand that game publishers think (and have apparently been told by their lawyers) that if something is in the EULA, it must be true, but if this type of restriction is pressed I think you are going to find out that you're wrong.

-Aaron

Re:Protect from what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple.. Guess whose textures you'll be using to make the walls of your module? Whose room layouts, etc .. Whose code to connect it all? It's all Biowares. While *you* made the creative part of the story, it is still built entirely with Biowares tools and artwork. id-software ran into problems when someone made a module and sold it off .. Guess what? The textures and everything were all the ones shipped with the game. In effect, they pirated id-softwares artwork for their own module. They expect people to use *everything* from scratch, and while this MIGHT be possible (I didnt write NWN and I havent used their toolset), it would be too hard to enforce and review each module "for sale" and it would get out of hand like the Doom expansions we all saw.. 90% of those were all illegal using id-softwares artwork, music, and monsters .. id-software didn't see a penny from those people reselling their mindshare.

Re:Massive Multiplayer?

[Mathness]

NWN will support 64 players per server. It is possible to travel to different servers via portals, this will enable the possibility of huge worlds. But it will not be a massive MP game, since the amount of players per server is severely limited.

It lools more like a small community playing together on a single server or exploring servers.

Solution: write an Open Source toolset

[Telcontar]

Since the toolset is Windows only, this seems to be the obvious way to go. Reverse engineer the file format(s), write an editor, use that editor to create the mods.
I am sure this is eventually going to happen anyway, bad EULA or not.

Re:Legally enforcable contract without considerati

[Alsee]

Legally enforcable contract without consideration?

You *are* recieving consideration, you just didn't notice :)

They are letting you use the toolkit.

Note: Do not interpret this clarifacation as support for Bioware. I hope some judge gets to look at this piece of crap and uses it as an excuse to rule all EULA's void.

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