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xuxo
Responsible
Known Hero
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posted June 25, 2020 09:50 PM |
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Thank you for repeating the same information 1000 times, we have understood. We will look forward to Ubisoft's complaint. Thanks again for your productive and useful contribution.
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olorin
Adventuring Hero
tophatchild.blogspot.com
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posted June 26, 2020 08:17 AM |
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xuxo said:
Thank you for repeating the same information 1000 times, we have understood. We will look forward to Ubisoft's complaint. Thanks again for your productive and useful contribution.
Actually Velote's post is indeed both extremely useful and productive. Nobody here's entitled to claim copyright for anything HoMM-related. If you spend 40.000 h. doing stuff for someone else's game MUST be out of love, otherwise invest wisely by creating your own game. That easy.
magnomagus & co. have my complete support. Keep up the amazing work, fellas!
Q. making these statements after all these long years got me curious...
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Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
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posted June 26, 2020 11:01 PM |
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It seems beyond the technical discussion that there are additional topics that need addressing in my blog:
1. What the 40,000 hours went into and what we can do with it now.
2. Why obtaining permission to use a work benefits you and everyone else. Most publishers these days recognize the value of modding for their products. I chose to obtain permission from Ubisoft for my work, but that's a general principle for me to only utilize works that their creators consented to.
3. Why an AI that is not a simplistic lookahead simulation breaks if the game mechanics and/or the state of the game are manipulated.
Besides:
Velote said:
Right now, Quantomas can legally borrow any elements or ideas from anyone else's mods without permission, and any of his Heroes-related work can be borrowed by anyone at will.
xuxo said:
Well, I'm going to give my opinion. Magnomagus, me for example, 5 years ago, I prohibited you from using my mod. But you told me it was public, that you could use it without my permission. I insisted, but you didn't give in. and I decided to disappear..
Causing a community member and creator so much anguish that he leaves for five years, is no small infringement in my book.
If this is your standard for cooperation in your community here, I go and found a new one with likeminded people. I don't agree that modding is only for hobbyists. The world moves on, you now.
3.1.22 has the AI heroes utilize all seven stacks by default now. It's available on Discord:
____________
Do you love strategy games? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/JKU6tey
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 12:08 AM |
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Quote:
If this is your standard for cooperation in your community here, I go and found a new one with likeminded people.
I can't speak for everyone but for me this is clearly manipulation. All these stiff IFs and THENs... they are only good for machines. I've seen this happen for a few times over all those long years in a number of modding communities like those of TES and The Witcher, it always ended up with everybody stopping talking to the manipulative member. No matter how immensely talented or commited the manchild in question was.
When someone releases a specialized tool for an Ubisoft game that needs the said game to function (i.e. alters the game itself), they forfeit all the rights to Ubisoft. Such submissions cannot be even legally attributed to their authors. They can't have EULAs or anything, and Ubisoft is immovable in this regard. If a tool / mod gets released, anybody owning the base game is entitled to use it while all rights stay with Ubisoft. So to keep your work in any way exclusive you will have to never share it outside of your close group of like-minded friends.
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Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 12:12 AM |
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Did it occur to you, that by obtaining Ubisoft's permission for my work, that entirely different conditions apply?
____________
Do you love strategy games? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/JKU6tey
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 12:18 AM |
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Edited by Velote at 00:21, 27 Jun 2020.
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So far, you have not published any proof you have permission from Ubisoft to enforce your own EULA.
What does Ubisoft say about 'granting TESLA MINDS a permanent, transferable right to include any feature from your mod and use it at any time and its sole discretion free of charge'?
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Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 12:22 AM |
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Well, it is in the first post since the beginning. If you suspect I edited that, just check TheGryphon's last quote of it, a few pages back.
____________
Do you love strategy games? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/JKU6tey
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 12:36 AM |
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Edited by Velote at 05:52, 27 Jun 2020.
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I don't see any pictures of signed papers or at least some screenshots of your e-mail communication with Ubisoft. Have I gone blind? Where does it say you are empowered to put forth your own EULAs and, most importantly, demand from the other modders in return to secede rights that they don't have? E.g. Magnomagus & co have no legal rights to their work on HMM5.5 so your 'EULA' is kind of... misliterate?
May I ask you to reach out to Ubisoft and ask somebody from the company to come over here and make an official statement on what you can legally demand from the other modders and what you can't?
Instead I found this gem: Quote:
community driven effort to expand Heroes 5 into a game that comes close to the vision its fans have.
The few surviving fans unanimously chose HMM5.5 and you were told so by different people for so many times, nobody's going to play vanilla any more due to balance issues. A reworked AI alone will not suffice.
Quote:
H5 can live on
Apparently as two different games, one in your head and the heads of your like-minded friends, in a permanent WIP state for decades on end, and HMM5.5 for the rest of the folks...
I mean, that sweet-lipped demagogy in the first post does not line up really well with your recent erratic statements.
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Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 12:40 AM |
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Galaad, could you do me a favour?
I normally refrain from asking for moderation, but it appears due here.
____________
Do you love strategy games? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/JKU6tey
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 12:58 AM |
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Edited by Velote at 02:52, 27 Jun 2020.
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But still, can we hear from Ubisoft or see any substantial proof? Can someone from them come in here and say Ubisoft fully endorses your EULA and gives you special powers?
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 02:50 AM |
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Based on some of the observations made by Velote and some of my own research I have to take back my previous statement that meant complying to an invalid EULA. Quantomas is currently making an invalid claim against me and others involved in the MMH55 project and threatens to take the project down without proper legal validation.
Quantomas and me seem both in violation of Ubisofts EULA, but in his case they gave him permission, in my case they clearly consented when the project was liked by their official facebook and I never received any complaints from them after it grew in popularity.
As Velote already pointed out, the 31j is heavily derivative and intertwined with Ubisoft/Nival code, Quantomas cannot claim ownership rights. He even explained a few pages back it contains H3 code for combat calculations. The 31j release provided 10 years ago or so, does not contain any license, the only document provided is READFIRST.pdf which doesn't make any reference to permissions, legal matters or terms of use.
The 31j release was advertised as 'I hope that this can be the foundation of a community effort to develop H5 into a direction its fans desire.' Quantomas also states 'we (as a community) have the opportunity to use this work as a basis to improve and implement other features we desire (redacted).'
For countless years Quantomas never had anything against the mmh55 project which was based on the old homm55 community project that never extended beyond 31j, before this we already worked together to add additional classes to the game in 318, Cepheus and Markkur were the most important secondary contributers to the original project.
Also throughout the years Quantomas has made frequent reappearences, his traces can be found far back in the MMH55 thread, he never indicated to have a problem with it.
Quantomas became more active in the community since somewhere late 2019 and in a perfectly friendly email conversation he said he 'respects my work'. (paper trail available) Based on his support many people have invested countless hours of work on the 31j platform and Quantomas is aware major harm will be inflicted on those people if the platform could somehow be pulled away from them.
As Velote pointed out, the game modding scene is only regulated by 'gentleman's agreements' and the only enforcers of such agreements are file hosting platforms, The rules for file distribution on Nexus mods state for example: 'You cannot allow other mod authors to modify or use any of your resources and then change your mind and expect them to remove your content from their work.' Based on this notion Quantomas' threats to have the MMH55 mod removed from moddb servers ring very hollow in conjunction with the above evidence.
Searching the internet, Quantomas EULA for 3.1.19+ is supplied by an Irish company 'TESLA MINDS' erected in 2016 https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/Tesla-Minds-Limited-581601
The EULA is not legally valid for releases done 10 years before it was supplied, therefore it doesn't apply to 31j. Furthermore other contributers such as Cepheus and Markkur have not agreed to the creation of the 3.1.19 EULA and are not in any way affiliated with TESLA MINDS. TESLA MINDS did not even exist when 31j was released.
Also as Velote pointed out in detail the EULA likely isn't even valid for the 3.1.19 release.
Now lets assume for the moment the EULA is valid for 3.1.19 on that basis, the EULA was provided by an Irish company, Ireland is an EU country, and the EU and its Member States are generally known for upholding strict consumer protection laws. For this reason EULAs in general are often invalid without the participants knowing this because their provisions cannot hold up in court (you can easily google this subject and find many examples). The following provisions for example raise many questions:
Quote:
You and TESLA MINDS may terminate this EULA, at any time, for any reason.
Is this even a legal provision for this kind of EULA?, if a user complies with an EULA for the purpose of creating content on a script platform, than you can impossibly demand that this user constantly has a hammer over his head that could make all that work be in vain because the company who provided the EULA suddenly goes rogue and decides to terminate the license for whatever weird reason that pops up in their heads.
Quote:
TESLA MINDS reserves the right to change, modify, add or delete articles in this EULA at any time, in accordance with the procedures described below in Section 9.
Quote:
TESLA MINDS reserves the right, in its sole and absolute discretion, to revise, update, change, modify, add to, supplement, or delete certain terms of this EULA for security, legal, best practice or regulatory reasons.
These provisions seem to have a similar effect as the above, keeping license holders eternally hostage by keeping the option open to force them at any moment to make major modifications to their project to remain in compliance with the license.
Quote:
You are responsible for checking this EULA periodically for changes.
This is another wild claim, holding people eternally obligated to check his website if they are still complying with his license, imagine a licenseholder being on vacation 3 years from now checking Quantomas website on his phone finding out he needs to spend 10 hours of work to remain in compliance with his license.
Quote:
If you redistribute the AI, or include it in another package, you must include this license agreement and all other files that are part of the original AI distribution.
This is a very weird claim, since as I pointed out, this was originally a community project with no license, so why need parts made by Cepheus and Markkur need to be included, while they have never been affiliated with TESLA MINDS. I have known Markkur and he would never have agreed to people being treated in a manner that is implied by the provisions pointed out above. Cepheus has also been very supportive of my work, he provided various graphical materials for it.
Now let me repeat, all these provisions DO NOT apply to 31j anyway!, since they were not supplied with it and 31j is not a product of TESLA MINDS. They only point out the manipulative nature of the EULA Quantomas intends to apply to future license holders of his recent work. Even if it is supposed to serve as blueprint for a gentleman's agreement about 31j, it is rejected, since there is nothing 'gentle' about it.
For these reasons MMH55 and its contributors will not comply with Quantomas 3.1.19 EULA and I dont see how compliance is a good idea for anyone, since as pointed out above it seems to open up possibilities for abuse of license holders.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 02:51 AM |
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It is telling that Quantomas begged for moderation when Velote tried to obtain from him any justifications for his claims, since he has none. It is not Velote who is in violation of the HC code of conduct, Quantomas is, but not here, on the H55 discord server, he has been in grave violation of art. 1 abuse, art. 4 flaming art 6 aggravation. Threatening dredknight with bogus lawsuits, trying to manipulate me by complying to an invalid EULA, taking personal conflicts to the generic chat. I will not understate the grave abuse that Quantomas has inflicted upon me, causing me intense sleep deprivation for multiple nights, causing me to stay up all night fearing he would make another ploy in my server, requiring me to spend a whole day mounting this legal defense, spending many hours investigating how a highly complex structure of files that is H55 can be converted in something that can apply to his EULA. Trying to cut it into pieces and apply licences to parts from other contributers. I desperately want this nightmare to end.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 03:38 AM |
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Edited by Velote at 06:00, 27 Jun 2020.
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I must have missed a lot, but I don't see Fabrice or Xhane around any more. They were the guy and the gal through whom most of the fans' soliciting went through. So if Quantomas isn't outright lying, whatever privilege he may have acquired from Ubisoft must have been communicated through either of these two persons. Since Ubisoft mercilessly shut all the support for the Heroes franchise following the release of Trial by Fire and assumed a much more lukewarm stance towards the fanbase since then, I am suspicious that the current Ubi staff are totally different people than those back in the day. And these new people may be simply unaware of Quantomas' existence or their previous agreements that may or may not get dissolved upon Ubi's fresh look into his recent statements and behaviors... That's why I'm so adamant on hearing from Ubisoft and not merely trusting Quantomas' words even if what he is relating may have been true at some moment in the past...
Fair use permissions are widely recognized among all modding communities with no need for legal grounds. Modders do ask each other for permissions, it has been working like a charm in any modding community I'm aware of. There is ZERO law behind that and if somebody wants to, they may borrow anything from other people's mods without permission, yet somehow this barely happens.
Every time someone got triggered enough to go legal or gatekeeping, or both at the same time, this was always a huge red flag of personality issues, not a conflict of interests.
Quantomas isn't unique in his obsession with mathematically beautiful systems that self-regulate and perform equally well with fluctuating input values, like chess. I've met a lot of people like him, any irregularities (or the mere possibility of such an irregularity) in a system whose beauty (often equated with symmetry, stability, simplicity, elegance of paradigms, reproduceability of a state or a set of states, etc. etc.) they worship get such people mad, thence arrive behaviors like 'naming the executable to -noncheating.exe with renaming protection checks'.
HMM5.5 lacks a perfect inner symmetry, simplicity and heavily relies on human-controlled tunables that can skew most game mechanics towards a non-working, direly imbalanced state (if the player explicitly wishes so or starts tampering with the options that he has no intimate knowledge of). HMM5.5 is mathematically muddled, unnecessarily complex and so on. This alone, I can guess, makes Quantomas so bitter about it.
My previous encounters with Quantomas-like persons taught me that such people are firmly convinced that almost nobody around them has the necessary mental faculties to appreciate mathematical beauty so they never get open about it in public, preferring to vent their anxiety by [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man]straw-manning[/url] any alternate, allegedly inferior visions of the things they worship. I would call that a toxic perfectionism bordering on solipsism.
At the same time, the virtue of placing humans above human-invented phenomena (no matter how complex or beautiful) and the good old creed of Make-Do ('it's not perfect but I'm happy I made it better') are just as alien and complex to them as to us is algebraic topology of locally Euclidean parameterization of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifold. Sadly the only reliable way to make them start losing momentum and get to listening is mirroring their antics back at them.
I'm getting that personal exactly because this conflict is barely about game mechanics but mostly about psychology. Like someone with a bee sting allergy, every time I saw a conflict like that I grew more sensibilized to the venom. For years I've been happy knowing this kind of cancer is very rare, imagine my emotions when it struck the dying community of an almost forgotten genre that I adored since I was 11 (I still hate Heroes III for dropping the asymmetrical balance of Heroes II that gave different factions an edge at different stages of the game and replacing them with a ton of factions and creatures that were too tactically similar).magnomagus said:
For countless years Quantomas never had anything against the mmh55 project
magnomagus said:
Threatening dredknight with bogus lawsuits
Once upon a time three Jews started a fight on a tram. Half an hour later, at the police station:
J1: «I was minding my business, reading a newspaper. Out of the blue, these two rushed at me.»
J2: «I was minding my business, then this other Jew stepped on my foot and wouldn't let go. I consider myself well-mannered so I took out my watch and said to myself: if after three minutes he's still standing on my foot, I'll rough him up. A bit.»
Officer to J3: «Well, witnesses say you were standing at the other end of the tram when the fight broke out. Why the hell did you start fighting these two?»
J3: «I was looking around and noticed another Jew glancing nervously at his watch. Then he threw himself at that other Jew and started pounding him with his fists. IT MUST BE THE TIME, I told myself, IT HAS BEGUN!»
magnomagus said:
Before this we already worked together to add additional classes to the game in 318
 magnomagus said:
causing me intense sleep deprivation for multiple nights, causing me to stay up all night fearing he would make another ploy in my server, requiring me to spend a whole day mounting this legal defense, spending many hours investigating how a highly complex structure of files that is H55 can be converted in something that can apply to his EULA.
Quantomas said:
MMH55 is its own thing, I can respect that.
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting[/url]
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Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 09:15 AM |
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magnomagus said:
It is telling that Quantomas begged for moderation when Velote tried to obtain from him any justifications for his claims, since he has none. It is not Velote who is in violation of the HC code of conduct, Quantomas is, but not here, on the H55 discord server, he has been in grave violation of art. 1 abuse, art. 4 flaming art 6 aggravation. Threatening dredknight with bogus lawsuits, trying to manipulate me by complying to an invalid EULA, taking personal conflicts to the generic chat. I will not understate the grave abuse that Quantomas has inflicted upon me, causing me intense sleep deprivation for multiple nights, causing me to stay up all night fearing he would make another ploy in my server, requiring me to spend a whole day mounting this legal defense, spending many hours investigating how a highly complex structure of files that is H55 can be converted in something that can apply to his EULA. Trying to cut it into pieces and apply licences to parts from other contributers. I desperately want this nightmare to end.
As I mentioned above, I don't mind the work done by MMH55.
What I object to is that you run foul of established fair use principles, like claiming that the AI always cheats and not telling the users how you have modified how it works. This was established recently, yes, and it is the issue here. I expect you to rectify this, license or not. In a civil society people are expected to respect established rules.
If you treat me explaining this basic fact to the users of my AI on your Discord as inflammatory, this speaks for itself.
____________
Do you love strategy games? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/JKU6tey
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 09:21 AM |
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Where's proof of Ubisoft endorsement, bub?
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted June 27, 2020 09:38 AM |
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Quote:
What I object to is that you run foul of established fair use principles, like claiming that the AI always cheats and not telling the users how you have modified how it works. This was established recently, yes, and it is the issue here. I expect you to rectify this, license or not. In a civil society people are expected to respect established rules.
If you treat me explaining this basic fact to the users of my AI on your Discord as inflammatory, this speaks for itself.
I have collected all screenshot evidence of me addressing you constantly in a gentle manner to come to a mutual agreement that included changing the ingame messaging to your wish and split in peace, instead you kept forcing the EULA on me addressing me with authoritarian demeanor and start a spamfest in my server.
This also includes screenshots of you harassing dredknight with EULA threads and legal action, that can be sent to HC staff, moddb staff and others on request.
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 10:35 AM |
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Edited by Velote at 10:55, 27 Jun 2020.
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There has to be a legal contract signed between Ubisoft and Quantomas bestowing upon the latter certain rights and privileges on the former's behalf. An informal approval won't do. Neither will an NDA granting access to certain source material. Quantomas claims licensure powers; this needs a contract outlining exactly that (established or renewed after the formation of Tesla Minds in 2016 since Quantomas' EULA specifies the binding party as Tesla Minds). Otherwise all rights to the AI in its prêt à porter, binary plugin form ('the tool') are STILL held by Ubisoft as per their EULA's ruling on Derived UGC, and Quantomas' claims are unlawful even if there was some informal approval by an Ubi manager who would never have thought Quantomas would get to using their word as grounds for harassing people after all these years.
I can imagine the faces of Ubi's current management when they learn someone is scaring their beloved customers and buyers of H5 in Ubisoft's own name to claim Ubisoft's rights as their own. If they learn it from a court of law, this is bloody sure going to hit The Guardian's front page.
magnomagus said:
that can be sent to HC staff, moddb staff and others on request.
Since Ubi used to be aware of your Facebook page, maybe they still have a community manager or someone who could validate Q.'s claims should you reach out to their FB account? A few years ago it was Xhane who'd pay modders attention on Ubi's behalf. She would have loved to see the Discord screenshots... Man I'm missing her.
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xuxo
Responsible
Known Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 11:30 AM |
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Do you know why Quantomas has had to perform an EULA? Because you, Magnomagus, are absolutely incapable of not plagiarizing. You are discussing a legal issue, when the real problem is your lack of morality. Supporting Velote, who has written to Ubisoft to destroy Quantomas' work, is truly degrading. This time, if I am going to publicly prohibit the use of my work again in the installation of your mod, without having to create any EULA to verify, really ... that you are not able to respect it. And I do not intend to disappear, on the contrary, I plan to work together with Quantomas. It is a tremendous pity that you are such a bad leader, hopefully one day I will take the reins of 5.5 Dredkight and / or theGryphon and be able to talk again. You can continue using our work without permission, we prefer to create a solid and democratic team. Good luck.
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Velote
Hired Hero
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posted June 27, 2020 12:06 PM |
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Edited by Velote at 12:19, 27 Jun 2020.
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How can Ubisoft destroy Quantomas' work if they endorsed it from the very beginning? For if they haven't, you are appealing to morality while knowingly siding with a liar.
I shouted out to Ubisoft so that they send someone to clarify the legal status of Quantomas' work and put an end to this conflict.
If I guessed right, any future releases ('compiled binaries' not the entirety of source code) of his AI for the H5 platform will forever remain the rightful property of Ubisoft, and everyone will be able to use them in any mod for all eternity as Derived UGC.
If I guessed wrong, nobody's going to honor his EULA anyway until we are undeceived by a Ubi representative.
P.S. I'd bet my money on Ubisoft totally ignoring this situation and anything related to HoMM (since the 2016 change in wind) unless summoned to court where they'd blast the ass off whoever had soiled their reputation by false claims of legal association and alleged agency (that amounted among other things to threats and harassment of customers) on Ubisoft's behalf.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted June 27, 2020 12:19 PM |
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Edited by Galaad at 12:24, 27 Jun 2020.
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Quantomas said:
Galaad, could you do me a favour?
I normally refrain from asking for moderation, but it appears due here.
As unpleasant as the ongoing discussion is, I do not see any infringement to the CoC. If you think a specific sentence or paragraph indeed violates it, please send it to me via HCM and I will look more deeply into it, or even bring it up the Mod Squad if I feel the need to.
That said... What the **** is wrong with all of you people?
Imo, Quantomas, Xuxo, Magnomagus and all the people contributing to the H5 modding scene has BLESSED us players with absolutely outstanding contributions. I cannot play 55 without Quantomas AI, altered or not, be it only because the original Ubisoft AI takes years between turns rendering any large maps unplayable. I also cannot return to H5 without Xuxo's textures, because I find the original textures very ugly! I also don't like to play vanilla ToE when there is 55 with so many options available to further enhance the game experience.
Each and everyone of the people spending their free time into modding made the game infinitely better, on all aspects, and I think it is invaluable.
I am not qualified to speak about the legal issues, but I do believe modders can find solutions in good intelligence.
To me the solution is quite simple, specify credits from borrowed work where it's due, specify alterations from an original author work (a pop up in main menu, a note in mod's documentation), just a general disclaimer, ie "Even though we use X mod from X author we have altered it in our mod". When disagreements happen, please think of the greater good (aka the playerbase) and find a way to make it work between yourselves so that everyone can find satisfaction. You all make that out of love for this game, please do not destroy everything with quibbles, it's not worth it.
It really saddens me the current conversation is coming down to hypothetical legal issues when each work on their own has been I repeat it a blessing for the playerbase. I genuinely hope every one can take a step back and a huge breath, and do their best to use one of the strongest perks there is in these series : Diplomacy.
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This thread is pages long: 
