It has been brought to my attention that my mod Hunting in Skyrim, along with Falskaar, Helgen Reborn, Wyrmstooth, Moonpath To Elsweyr, and several others are being sold in a "DLC" pack online. I'm pretty sure this isn't legal.

http://www.gamehunt.co.za/~rrr77/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=946

http://www.gamehunt.co.za/~rrr77/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=8&sort=20a&filter_id=25&alpha_filter_id=0


The website has a very poor contact information page - http://www.gamehunt.co.za/~rrr77/index.php?main_page=page_4, so I'm not sure how much hope there will be of the community putting a stop to this. Could Bethesda step in? Is it something they'd want to put a stop to? I suppose it might because at the bottom of the page it says "Manufactured by Bethesda".

EDIT

I have also send a PM to Matt (Gstaff) with the link to let those guys know.

I have pinged Gstaff on this.

I also let Alexander Velicky know about this, as he made Falskaar

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, this is about as illegal as it gets (selling mods and packaging mods with a game to sell them together)

I suggest that you remove the link since it might get them more traffic.

No one on the Skyrim mods forum is doing to click the link and then buy some mods .

Plus it says it requires Games For Winsows software... never heard of it.

True but the search bots might link this thread and some people might think it is legitimate and go from there.

Could http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_for_windows_live be what they're referring to? Not that it's required or anything; it's just what came to mind.

I feel so sorry for those who actually bought the pack

this is a horrible sight to behold. Really, you gotta have a really empty life to sell mods made by the community as Dlcs..

I'm guessing that the mods' makers can do something about it. (?)
I know for sure that copyright laws don't work in Italy (well, as everything else, really)
If someone sold the mod I made, I couldn't do [censored] because in Italy everything related to law doesn't work..

Good Grief! That is Outrageous!

"Manufactured by: Bethesda Software"

They should stomp on that with the biggest legal Ban Hammer they have.

The co.za domain is South Africa. Prices are 120 Rand for RSA and Namibia only. That's about €8.60, or ￡7.26.

How do they think they can get away with it?

http://www.gamehunt.co.za/~rrr77/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=835

Edit:

Just had a better idea...

Wow, what an "honor"! Seriously, if this is for PC then I have to wonder what kind of poor sod is going to pay for these free mods. I'd understand if they were somehow hacked to consoles but this is just absurd.

I think Games for Windows is done by Michaelsoft

http://i.imgur.com/BVQERyo.jpg

Wow! I'm sorry to hear you've been directly affected by this Richard. I hope Bethesda don't take this lying down. They need to throw everything they've got at them otherwise what's to dissuade other copy-cat websites popping up in the future?

Please keep us posted

- Hypno

Nope, just unscrupulous capitalism. That probably made a few bucks, perhaps even will keep making it, depending on what county the store is and if they care about enforcing copyright laws.

http://i.imgur.com/BVQERyo.jpg - haven't laughed so hard in my life!

I know Paolo, it's funny because my mod is actually pretty clearly in development, so not sure what they expect lol. I'll post anything I hear, if "they" allow it anyway. Could be a breach of some law or forum rule to even discuss it.

Maybe very few people in Namibia and RSA have a decent internet connection, so they might regard getting them on disk as a service?

How did you actually find this?

Optimistically that would be reasonable, back in the day linux distros would sometimes offer a mail order version for a few bucks in addition to the free dl since trying to get 4 cds on a 56k modem was a world of fun. This is pretty clearly a commercial operation. They are charging about $11.50 for the dlc pack and claiming its beth's dlc. The site also sells stuff that would be against the rules to post here. I doubt the site will take down the mods if you ask nice.

I'd assume Beth will go to their hosting company as its a legit business that probably doesn't want a lawsuit. Under US law the rightsholder of any of the pirated dlc should be able to do this too. I don't know south african law, and some random person on the internet is probably less likely to get noticed than Bethesda's lawyers.

A user on the Nexus sent me a pm.

http://i.imgur.com/nNcPrps.png

Who would be stupid enough to BUY mods when 99.9% of Skyrim mod users utilize the Nexus where you can plainly see that everything is free?

Like it was stated earlier not everyone in Africa has a stable internet connection or high speed internet. But this looks more like a commercial enterprise and not someone just downloading mods and placing them on a disc so people can install it on their computer.

I myself have only a bandwidth cap of 10gigs and quite a few mods out there are well over 250 megs and a few of them are well over 1 gig.

It looks more like a scam site that's selling pirated copies of games.
If charging 10 bucks for Skyrim mods that they're advertizing as official, produced-by-Bethesda DLC isn't enough of a clue. They're also offering various other games for prices that don't look right at all, with wrong box art and continuously copy-pasted system and software requirements that's wrong.

So wait, they tried to type "Lost Wonders of Mzark", and "Shroud of Jotunheim", but ended up combining them?

That's hilarious.