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Legality of selling total-conversion mod to non-KAG players.

Discussion in 'Modding Help' started by -Q, Mar 30, 2015.

  1. -Q

    -Q   Donator

    Messages:
    153
    Has Geti / MM said any words on the legality of selling total-conversion mods under a new label, completely separate from KAG? In effect, is the underlying engine available for commercial usage, while the KAG scripts/data themselves are proprietary, a la Half Life 2 and GMod?

    This seems like the intended direction, what with the extreme scripting flexibility and generality.
     
    -Q, Mar 30, 2015
    #1
  2. Verrazano

    Verrazano Flat Chested Haggy Old Souless Witchy Witch Witch THD Team Global Moderator Forum Moderator Tester
    1. Practitioners of War Extreme Revolution - POWER

    Messages:
    477
    The extreme script flexibility of the crimson engine is intended for internal use for things such as (Shiprekt, TR). I don't think there are any plans current or future to release it commercially as of yet..
     
    Verrazano, Mar 30, 2015
    #2
  3. Geti

    Geti Please avoid PMing me (poke a mod instead) THD Team Administrator Global Moderator

    Messages:
    3,730
    We're planning on doing this with Trench Run, which is based on the same engine.

    You're welcome to try to make something commercial with it, but it's going to be hard to do as a 3rd party, because:
    • We offer no official support for this.
      This is the big kicker, we're not going to make concessions, additions, whatever for you just because you've undertaken some venture. We might in the future but at least for me, it is very unlikely - I'm very tired of working with this engine and supporting it as a product for people to use commercially would be a nightmare for me.
    • They need a THD account with whatever game you make it as a "mod" for to play online - otherwise the engine will rebuke them. So you can't sell it to people without KAG or TR without hacking the binary (which is among other things, against the ToS).
    So, your options are:
    • Single player only TC, autostart right into the game or into a custom menu system.
    • Multiplayer TC as a mod.
    That said, I would not be surprised if you could at least cover hosting costs for a Total Conversion server with VIP/paid entry/whatever if it was good enough, and prices were reasonable. Your barrier would be the player count on KAG currently, but I think it would be easier to do that than to put up VIP on some vanilla server.

    If you find yourself with a million dollars or so we'll be happy to negotiate licensing the source to you of course :)
     
    Geti, Mar 30, 2015
    #3
    BearKnight and -Q like this.