Funcom Modding Code of Conduct

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Code of Conduct

This Funcom Modders Code of Conduct is intended to promote responsible and ethical behavior and to create a positive and welcoming community for all players and creators.

  1. Avoid harmful content: Do not create mods or content that contain or promote harmful or offensive content, such as hate speech, discriminatory language.
  2. Be Excellent to each other: Treat others with respect, including refraining from personal attacks, harassment, or any other form of harmful behavior.
  3. Follow game and platform rules and guidelines: Adhere to the rules and guidelines set by the game or platform developers when creating mods, including not using exploits or cheats that give an unfair advantage in multiplayer games.
  4. Provide accurate and complete information: Transparently and honestly provide information about your mods in your public mod descriptions and documentations, including any potential risks or side effects that could impact the user’s and fellow modder’s experience and respect player agency to choose what mods to install and/or keep functionally active.
  5. Mindfully Interact with Other Mods: Respect others’ creativity and content authenticity. Reach out for information and consent before using fellow modders’ work, engaging with their content or creating content that can directly affect another mod.
  6. Discuss in good spirit: If there is conflict, do not assume malice and reach out instead. If you are approached, try to empathize and follow the other guidelines.
  7. Engage in constructive criticism: Engage in constructive criticism and feedback, both giving and receiving, in order to improve the quality of mods and the modding community as a whole.
  8. Support the modding community: Support the modding community by sharing your knowledge, helping others troubleshoot issues, and participating in discussions and events. Not everyone has to be friends but we need to coexist for the betterment of the modding community and players.
  9. Be transparent and honest: Be transparent and honest about your modding activities, including any conflicts of interest or financial incentives they may have.
  10. Follow the law: Follow all applicable laws and regulations when creating and distributing mods, including those related to intellectual property, privacy, and online conduct.

We encourage our community to act according to the Code and work out conflicts in good spirit. However, there may be times when an amicable resolution can not be found despite trying. If you find yourself as a party in that unfortunate rare case, you can reach out to Funcom Community Managers or send an email to creators (at) funcom (dot) com.

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Ignasi is the supreme boss of funcom? i love you funcom. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :heart:

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Support the modding community: Support the modding community by sharing your knowledge, helping others troubleshoot issues, and participating in discussions and events. Not everyone has to be friends but we need to coexist for the betterment of the modding community and players.

You know there’s a certain level of irony in posting these guidelines in general, but this one is the best.

Almost all of the drama that occurred over the past few weeks could have been avoided if Funcom adhered to this single bit and reached out to all parties involved first before pulling a mod.

Maybe you all should work on your own communication skills before you begin preaching at others.

That being said; it’s good to see you all wanting to set down a bit of a public statement towards the modding community in general.

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Now if only this applied to players abusing mod authors when features aren’t added fast enough, patches or updates happen, or in general. Modders take a ton of abuse from this community, and its only normal for some to make decisions or act in ways they normally wouldn’t in more decent conditions. If there was some way for there to be consequences for players (mod subscribers) to face repercussions for bad actions, then it would heavily mitigate such issues.

Right now this code of conduct seems innocent enough. But reading into it, it feels like too much responsibility is being put on mod authors here. They have to conduct themselves well in the devkit, in the game, on their discords, in steam, and in social media. Or face repercusions.

Meanwhile players can say whatever they wish in steam, in discord, and in social media with no repercussions that matter. If a mod author can lose access to modding because of something said in those platforms. Then so should players playing the game.

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Thank you @Taemien

That’s exactly what the first thought of a lot of us was. :slight_smile:

These rules - while they’re all positive and pretty much everybody agrees I think - they’re nothing “new” essentially as it’s just a very convoluted way of saying “Be nice!” which is already in pretty much every EULA and code of conduct for the game and servers and all social platforms etc.

As far as I’m concerned for me the above was implied and didn’t need to be specifically listed as such, but I’m glad it is :man_shrugging:

I jokingly made a passive-aggressive comment on the discord, which, while I was mostly just being silly… does still make a fair point and covers a common sentiment I noticed among many modders.

My comment pretty much says that now that we cleared up the rules, I’m eagerly awaiting the part where they list us the benefits as well, such as the designated devkit devs actually getting proper allocated devkit time and not just “when they’re not busy”, more frequent mod showcase videos and shoutouts on official channels, not just once in a blue-moon (the last mod video I believe was more than a year ago)… some form of “equal rights” to streamers since we’re content creators too, but the gap atm seems very huge… etc.

:thinking: maybe we should form a union :rofl:

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Excellent guidelines for anyone engaging in game development.

As already noted, it does seem to leave the mod author to a bit of abuse. But it also supports the rules of the platform it is on, which seems to support the ability to engage in light curation of the community.

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Oh thanks!

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in my opinion, this list consists of points that are so obvious that it is sad that they have to be listed separately or of points that are so far away from reality that they are simply pointless…

points 1 and 2 fall into the category “obvious and therefore sad that they have to be mentioned”.

I simply don’t understand point 3. what does it mean? what does modding have to do with exploit using or cheating? or is the point trying to tell me that I can’t put a weapon with 5000 damage in my mod? I don’t think so, but then what is the point trying to tell me? so without further explanation, let’s put it in the category “unrealistic and/or pointless”.

point 4… unrealistic. plain and simple. that’s all you can say. apart from the fact that nobody reads any mod description either way. no matter how detailed it is written. i have proof of that… daily, on my discord server…

point 5… tot! custom sends its regards… i think a lot of the bad blood is based on this point, but do we really need it? apparently yes and this is one of the few points from the list i can halfway accept.

point 6 and 7 fall again into the category “obvious and therefore sad that they have to be mentioned”.

point 8… difficult. i help when i can and want to help. if i don’t feel like it then i don’t feel like it. point 8 doesn’t change that. so the point goes into the “unrealistic and/or pointless” category.

I don’t understand point 9. actually we are not allowed to make money with mods, are we? I don’t think so, but what does this point want to tell me then? tell everyone that you make money with the mod so that we can ban you directly? hm… interesting approach but i don’t think anyone is that stupid :wink:

my favorite point. point 10… I’m going to take a break from modding for a few years and start studying law. this point is really so far from reality that it almost hurts. “follow the law”… which one? in which country?

thankfully these aren’t real rules or anything that has any real value. lots of obvious points and some that are completely off base. nice… just read over it and carry on as before.

and then my 5 cents to this drama from which this “great” list was created. talk to each other and above all: funcom, talk to us. communication has never been funcoms strength and it still isn’t today. they want us to talk to each other, but they seem to have simply made a decision based on one-sided informations without consulting the other side. especially from this point of view, some of the well-intentioned points up there are actually really cheeky and you could almost be offended if you take the whole thing too seriously.

edit: yes there was a bit of drama between some modders. from what I can tell, that’s the exception and not the rule. based on this, all modders will now be “punished” with a code of conduct. sorry, but I’m not a fan of being punished because others have arguments. this is completely unnecessary and just spreads frustration to everyone.

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Laws in game code? There is a foundation for it. This is needed for creators that can’t escape the DMCA because of international bits. So… who needs guidance?

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  1. Would basically cober using the access the devkit gives you to create a mod that can be ised officials. Although very unlikely, 3rd party hacks may be avle to use hownthe devkit works to inject code into an api etc while playing on officials.

Making direct money from a mod is not allowed as far as i know. But if someone wanted me to make a model in blender and then sell it to a them to use in thier mod, then that could be a one time charge that is not directly the mod itself.

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The unreal marketplace is precedent for that already. Making a model in Blender that you sell is not involving the devkit. You could just as easily sell it on the unreal marketplace without involving CE at all.

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I am surprises funcom didn’t lock this thread.

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My list is one necessary and sufficient condition; we receive the devkit. I ask no more and am grateful for that alone.

Tongue in cheek set aside for a moment… my one necessary benefit is already met and cared for to my satisfaction.

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Thank you. I am not good enough at blender to make money. TBH modders would probably pay me to NOT make models lol.

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I see a lot of people treating this code of conduct as something that it most likely isn’t. I think people need to take a step back and remember how Official Servers Terms of Conduct are being put in practice.

Let’s be blunt: Funcom Modding Code of Conduct is a document that Funcom can now point at if they ever decide to pull another mod from the workshop.

What we’re looking at is yet another way of trying to keep the cost down. Until you see the community managers engaging more actively with the community, the way they used to, don’t expect any positive changes from documents like this one.

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Good point. You could effectively say everyone is in violation of this. Just following the laws in my country breaks laws in another. Including countries that still have access to the Steam Workshop.

Being an American allows me for example to create content that is outlawed in a great many places. And I think I’ll just stick with my native country’s laws anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve given interpol issues.

Many of these rules should be on the subscriber to decide. If they find something they don’t like, they can unsubscribe.

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You aren’t breaking a law if it doesn’t apply to you. It’s definitional. It also doesn’t take a law degree to know that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Just because I can’t state the statute that says it’s against the law to steal, I know it is the law. Even if I didn’t know it was against the law… I’d still go to jail.

The code of conduct is fine.

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Honestly a “Modders Code of Conduct” leaves a sour taste behind it. I can understand the sentiment, but speaking very, very broadly for a moment, it’s none of their business how people choose to mod their copy of the game.

Still, within the context of a mod hosting platform like the Steam workshop, it is a good idea to have some basic guidelines. Both to encourage a positive community atmosphere and to protect the company somewhat when issues arise. Of course that only works if the rules are enforced clearly and consistently, which is a whole other can of worms all on it’s own. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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15 minutes after this was posted, AndyB (community manager) was engaging with modders on the Modding Discord about this very code of conduct post.

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It is when you realize they spend quite a bit of development on the devkit and hand it out for free. The devkit and mods need to remain a positive for the game. I can’t find it (maybe it’s in the modder’s discord) but there is a Ts&Cs for the devkit that has been around for ages that explains in more specific terms what is allowed and not allowed. Basically, don’t use anything you don’t have the rights to, etc. It becomes their business if say, I included music under copyright in my mod without the permission of the creator/a license and the musician in question decided to sue. FC would have some liability in that instance so if I was caught doing it, my rights to the devkit should be revoked as I am not being responsible and it exposes FC to financial risk. So while yeah, largely a mod is whatever you want to do to the game to make it different, it’s not carte blanche. There is one rule in particular that I won’t state here that while it is not illegal per se, it is non grata for inclusion in mods. There are bounds as in all things that basically boil down to, “be a good caretaker” and in this case of the devkit and the game.

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