Make It A Trend: More Modders Get Hired By Developers, This Time CD Projekt Red

from the mod-squad dept

You will recall that we were just discussing a cool little story about Bethesda going so far in embracing the modding communities surrounding its games that it ended up hiring one of the writers of an impressive Fallout 4 mod onto its team. Part of what made that story interesting was not how totally novel it was. After all, modders have found their way into developer roles in the past. Instead, it's that it was Bethesda that made it interesting, being a AAA title developer and the fact that the gaming industry certainly doesn't approach modding communities with unanimity.

But it would be great for this to become a trend, as a demonstration of the boon that modding communities can be for developers, rather than some kind of a threat to their control. It's probably too early to call this a full on trend at this point, but it is worth highlighting that we have yet another story of a AAA developer hiring on members of a modding community, this time with CD Projekt Red.

Since it was released last December, Cyberpunk 2077 has received intermittent mod support from the developer, resources like metadata and TweakDB file dumps. But the most helpful tools have come from the community.

The modders who will officially join CDPR are Traderain, Nightmarea, Blumster, and rfuzzo. They are best known as the folks behind WolvenKit, an open-source tool that allows modders to modify CD Projekt Red’s greatest hits, Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt In terms of Cyberpunk modding resources, WolvenKit is the gold standard, allowing you to edit any file in the game and, crucially, browse those files “without unpacking the archives.”

“We will be working on various projects related to the Cyberpunk 2077 backend and the game’s modding support,” Traderain wrote in an announcement on Cyberpunk 2077’s modding community Discord (via Reddit). “We are really excited for this and we really hope we can help to bring Cyberpunk 2077 to the next level!”

This specific move by CDPR is somewhat meta, with the modders hired not only to help with Cyberpunk's seemingly ongoing development via patches and mods, but also specifically to bridge the gap to other modding communities to make better use of their work.

Now, we're not a gaming site, so we didn't cover most aspects of CDPR's long-awaited release of Cyberpunk 2077, but the Cliff's Notes version is simply: it was an absolute shit show. The game, as released, was buggy as all hell, had console versions that didn't work or display as advertised, and there were even lawsuits from investors as a result of a crazy amount of refund requests granted by CDPR. It... wasn't great. And, frankly, there is no real excuse for the release of what is essentially an unfinished game.

But between active patching of the game and, more important for this post, an active modding ecosystem, the game has come a long way. Were CDPR to embrace a fight or flight mode of thinking, it would have been really easy for it to see these modding communities as either a threat to control over a broken product, or a point of embarrassment as the public was now fixing its game.

Instead, the developer did the smarter thing and embraced and eventually hired some of these modders. And now it's going to take this embrace of modders even further.

“We are working with Yigsoft on the development of Cyberpunk 2077 modding tools. The modding community has always been very important to us and we are happy to be working with them side by side on further expanding the tools which are available to modders,” a representative for CD Projekt Red told Kotaku in a statement.

Which will allow CDPR to continue to reap the benefits of its biggest fans, those so passionate about the game that they want to not just play it, but play within it. As a bargain in which the developer only had to give up a bit of control over its property, that's a damned good deal.

Filed Under: cyberpunk 2077, developers, modders, mods, video games
Companies: cd projekt red, cdpr

Cyberpunk 2077's Stream-Safe Setting Option For Its Music Failed To Keep Streamers Safe

from the whoops dept

In November, as we were finally coming to the day when CD Projekt Red's newest opus, Cyberpunk 2077, was going to be released to the world, we wrote about how the developer had included a setting for the game specifically to keep streamers safe from copyright strikes. Essentially, the setting was meant to strip out all licensed music from the game and replace it with music that wouldn't land streamers in copyright jail while doing let's-plays. On the one hand, it was nice to see a developer so in favor of having its games streamed do this sort of thing. On the other hand, the fact that CD Projekt Red had to do so showed both what a failure Amazon/Twitch and the like have been at supporting their streamers through music licensing deals and, more importantly, what a hellscape copyright enforcement has become that all of this was even necessary.

Well, as it turns out, that hellscape is so complete that even the game's stream-safe setting failed to keep streamers safe.

The developer first warned potential streamers on Wednesday, before Cyberpunk 2077 officially launched in all regions, that a certain song (CDPR didn’t say which one) during the game’s “Braindance” sequences might trigger a Digital Millennium Copyright Act strike. That’s even if you’re using the specific in-game setting designed to toggle off copyrighted music for this exact reason.

But now CDPR says that the issue may be larger than it first realized, and it’s now advising streamers turn off in-game music entirely due to “additional instances in the game which might put a DMCA strike on your channel.” CDPR says a fix is on the way, but it’s not an ideal situation to have to disable all music (both copyrighted and original tracks) when streaming the game just to avoid tripping the automated detection systems that protect copyrighted works.

This is all immensely stupid. I'm sure some out there will want to blame the developer for this, with suggestions that it didn't roll out its stream-safe music setting well enough. But that's dumb. CD Projekt Red is trying to navigate this idiotic minefield, but because of the failings of streaming platforms combined with the absurdly strict culture of the music industry, it's very, very difficult to pull off.

Wouldn't it be easier if we all just admitted that hearing music, licensed or otherwise, playing in the soundtrack of a game being streamed isn't a damned threat or replacement for the actual original music? Nobody was going to out to buy "Track X" from iTunes only to hear it on a let's-play and decide instead not to. That isn't a thing.

Instead, we have this absurd reality to deal with.

Filed Under: copyright, cyberpunk 2077, dmca, stream safe
Companies: cd projekt red

Ridiculous: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Will Ship With A Mode Just To Help Streamers Avoid DMCA Notices

from the thanks-twitch dept

You will likely have been following along with us as we have steadily commented on the ongoing controversy at Twitch. But if you're not read up on the topic, Twitch suddenly nuked zillions of hours of recorded content made by Twitch streamers in response to RIAA and game publisher DMCA notices, all without warning and all without a way to counternotice or get any of that content back. As the community went into revolt, Twitch continued taking down content, at times for sound effects within the games streamers were streaming. All the while, Twitch has issued a steady stream of apologies, while the streamer community has basically just shouted "Well then do something!" in response.

But Twitch hasn't done anything. Not a damned thing. Which means it's been left to the forward-thinking game publishers that actually realize how beneficial these streamers are to their own success to do something instead. To that end, it's both great that CD Projekt Red has announced the forthcoming blockbuster Cyberpunk 2077 will have a game mode dedicated to using stream-safe music for streamers... and completely ridiculous that the publisher even has to do something like this.

During the latest installment of long-form Cyberpunk commercial series “Night City Wire,” UK head of communications Hollie Bennett explained that the game will have a mode that will not only remove licensed music from the in-game rotation but replace it with music that won’t get creators’ channels zapped out of existence. Handy!

“If you’re planning on livestreaming Cyberpunk, or if you just want to make videos, we want to introduce you to a new mode that will allow you to disable certain copyrighted tracks,” Bennett said. “We know that for content creators, licensed music can sometimes be problematic. So with this new mode, you’ll be able to disable a small number of selected tracks which could cause some issues, replacing them with a different song—helping to avoid any problems.”

So because Amazon-owned Twitch couldn't be bothered to simply license the music in games in some sort of blanket manner, and because the music industry is so cartoonishly impermissive with its content, a game publisher has to step in to help. This comes as part of CD Projekt Red's long history of being fan and public friendly, but it really shouldn't have had to take such measures. Somebody somewhere along the way should have been on the side of the streamers who make these game products more popular, leading to more sales.

It’s still far from an ideal solution—nothing short of Amazon and Twitch striking a licensing deal with the music industry would be—but for now, it will have to do.

For now it will indeed have to do. But it sure would be nice if streaming platforms generally, and Twitch in particular, could get their collective heads out of their asses long enough to get their shit together and support their communities.

Filed Under: copyright, cyberpunk 2077, dmca, licensing, streaming, streaming safe mode, takedowns, video games
Companies: amazon, cd projekt red, riaa, twitch