After more than a month of inaction on Bethesda’s part, the owner of the largest site for Skyrim and Fallout mods has taken matters into their own hands to prevent people stealing user creations.
Apr 20, 2018 - USB-eLicenser stopped working or got lost or stolen. If the defective/lost/stolen USB-eLicenser has been registered with a MySteinberg account. The first Nexus Mods Screenshot Community Event is here! Submit your screenshots of Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, Enderal, Fallout 4, or Fallout 76 illustrating the event theme and seize your chance to win one of three £25 Steam Gift Cards ($33 depending on exchange rates). As we announced earlier this week.
We’ve picked out what we think are the best Skyrim mods for PC.
In an impassioned blog post on Friday, Nexus Mods owner Robin “Dark0ne” Scott called out Bethesda for their lackadaisical reaction to people stealing his users’ mods and uploading them to the publisher’s own site.
Bethesda.net and the Creation Kit were released by the Skyrim and Fallout developer at the end of April to allow modders access to a set of tools that make user-created content easier to implement.
A month later, mods uploaded to the browser on Bethesda.net were now capable of being installed on Xbox One, creating an ecosystem outside of the existing PC mod community Scott had been overseeing for 14 years.
“There is no reason consoles should not be allowed to have mods, provided the PC modding community is appropriately protected and not dumbed down or negatively affected in any way,” Scott wrote in a 5,100-word epic. “However, in order for the mods to be available on consoles, PC mod authors would need to upload their mods, as a separate entry, to Bethesda.net’s system.”
This lead, unsurprisingly, to people taking the best mods from Nexus and ripping them wholesale onto Bethesda’s system with no attribution, often taunting the original creator in the description.
This is soul crushing for mod authors. To see their hard work being taken, without their permission, often times by people actually openly goading, trolling and mocking the mod authors about the theft and that nothing was being done about it,” Scott says. “It became clear, early on, that Bethesda had not planned for the eventuality of mods being stolen. They had no clear moderation system in place. No way of quickly dealing with the issue or indeed any sort of decent reporting system so that users could report stolen mods in detail to the (seemingly non-existent) moderation team.”
Despite an active moderation team and the history of the largest PC modding community, Scott claims Bethesda has never consulted Nexus on how to approach moderation. The only contact Scott has had with Bethesda community manager Matt Grandstaff was consulting during the Skyrim paid mods fiasco, and once when a Nexus Mods submission leaked an official DLC.
The Nexus Mods moderation team removed a “mod” which included the entirety of Fallout 4’s latest DLC Far Harbor more than a week before its official release, and according to Scott this was done at 3AM on a weekend morning, eight hours before Grandstaff contacted him.
Rather than wait for Bethesda to improve their response times to reporting mods stolen or implement an effective moderation strategy, Scott has decided to add an extra permissions system to his own site so stolen mods are easier to see.
“We already have an extensive permissions system for mods, but today we’ve released an addition to that system for console modding,” he says. “You can now choose from a set of options in our Fallout 4 section to express your wishes. These are:
- I have uploaded my mods to Bethesda.net and they are available for console users.
- I have not uploaded my mods to Bethesda.net for console users yet, but I will at some point.
- My mods will not be available on Bethesda.net for console users.
- My mods won’t work on consoles or would not be acceptable on Bethesda.net according to their rules.
- I give my permission for someone else to port my mods to console and for it to be uploaded to Bethesda.net by someone else. Please credit me, however.”
This system also allows console players to search the Nexus system for mods they can find via their console’s Bethesda.net browser if they like the look of them.
“Ultimately, I think the thing that disappoints me the most is that Bethesda’s influence within the community after largely staying out of it these past 14 years has had such a polarising effect,” Scott concluded. “It should not be the case that the official developer of the games you’re modding has such a negative effect right from the start with their new modding endeavour.”
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My experience with reFX has always sat horribly wrong with me, and it makes me feel a little better knowing that maybe I can prevent someone from making the same mistakes I did with my purchases. Mind you, in 2017 there are certainly more obvious options, but I still see producers using it pretty religiously. This is why I'd steer clear.
I'll start from the beginning.
Back when I was shopping around, looking to expand my digital synth library, Nexus2 (by reFX) was a synth that I saw coming up over and over. I had a little cash saved up so I purchased a copy. I made my way over to their website and began the process. After completing the registration and downloading the product, I realized that reFX had made my account upon purchase and randomly assigned me a password... that I was not able to change. Ever. This was horribly frustrating to me, because I would've loved for them to give me a heads up before I was assigned a completely randomly generated password. I emailed customer support and they were very short with me, and not helpful at all. With a sigh of frustration, I moved on with my life. I believe they have since changed this, but it did not prevent the frustration I felt at the time, or the fact that their customer support was lacking altogether.
I waited for my new product in the mail, because you are not able to install digitally. Pretty much everything that they could possibly make out of thin, D-grade plastic was made with thin, D-grade plastic (and if thin, D-grade plastic isn't a thing, I'm sure you can at least imagine what it would feel like). They send you a CD and an eLicenser for installation... so I thought. So I went through the grueling install process which included running the installer from a CD, then acquiring my product key from the website with my horribly inconvenient password, and finally plugging in my eLicenser to finish and run the damned synth. Little did I know, that it turns out...
You have to have the eLicenser plugged in at all times for the product to even run.
That's right - so on my laptop where I produce my music, one of three USB ports that I have available at any given time is now dedicated to this thin, plastic, dinky eLicenser. Either that, or I unplug it and have as much access to Nexus2 as someone who does not own the product (usually less actually, because most people pirate it and you do not need a license with a crack!).
Actually, what inspired me to write this blog post was the fact that my eLicenser is currently not being recognized by my PC so I cannot open any project files including Nexus2 until I restart my computer (hopefully). Neat. And mind you, it happens all the time - pretty much any time I need to free up that USB port for something else.
Okay, wait, I'm not done. Now, I have not experienced this part personally, and in their defense I believe they have since changed this policy, probably due to the insane amount of backlash they have received - but the grapevine has told me that if your eLicenser breaks, you are required to purchase another copy of Nexus2 because they will not replace it.
Even if they have changed this policy, even the fact that it was ever a thing just says something about the type of company they are trying to run.
Not to mention the stupid amount of money it costs to own their product and all expansions - coming in at a record high of $4,249 for the complete package. For a synthesizer.
I was going to jokingly say I could buy a clunker for that, but then I realized the car I'd buy with $4,249 would probably run better than the car I am currently driving.
I mean, I'll pretty much stop here. This is literally the only negative, smear review of a product that I have ever done. I am usually very easy to please, and even when I'm not fully satisfied I do not typically go through the trouble of complaining to the company, or writing bad reviews to the public. But honestly, I feel robbed by this product. ReFX should consider it a HUGE issue when pirated copies of their product function better than their legitimate ones. I'm all for anti-piracy, but when it drives your product to the point of unusability, maybe you should revamp a 'feature' or two.
Credit where credit is due, aside from all the headaches with their format and anti-piracy features, the sounds themselves are very well-made. If we're just talking about the audio, I could recommend this product - but as someone who takes user experience into account I have to advise against it.
I'll end this post with a positive note, and list a few purchases/downloads that I have been very pleased with:
- Serum (9.99 /mo): I don't have to really be an advocate for Serum - it's the essentially the new industry standard of bass music. Super good, and very progressive with their rent-to-own system. Smart.
- NI KOMPLETE ($599): Native Instruments is phenomenal. Not only do their products work great, but the variety you get with KOMPLETE is unmatched. A must-have if you can afford it.
- Sytrus (free with FL): For FL Studio users, get to know this synth. It's way more powerful than you'd think at first glance. Pretty much anything Image-Line I will advocate for until the end! Very much enjoy their products - well made and sound great.
- TAL Software(free): Look them up - they have some surprisingly cool VST's and a lot of them are free.
- Z3TA+ 2 ($99): Not exactly a powerhouse, but a super-cool little synth at an extremely affordable price. Worth the money.
All I can do is hope that this will save the next producer from buying this frustrating product. Okay, I'm off to restart my PC. Thanks Nexus2.