UPDATE: New Statement on Modding Rules

"CarpeNocheSims;c-18165779" wrote:
@haneul (hmmm.... the @ isn't working....) Who has a license? The content creator? I doubt that any content creator went through the hassle of filing a business license.

@CarpeNoctemSims No. The content creators grant EA a license to use the parts of the CC/mods that belong to the content creators.

It is Section 5 of what you linked actually. Here:

ⓘ You allow EA and our players to use anything you upload or create (UGC) for free within our games and services. You are responsible for your UGC, it must be your own content or content you’re allowed to use.


When you contribute UGC, you grant to EA, its licensors and licensees a non-exclusive, perpetual, transferable, worldwide, sublicensable license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, publicly perform, publicly display or otherwise transmit and communicate the UGC, or any portion of it, in any manner or form and in any medium or forum, whether now known or later devised, without notice, payment or attribution of any kind to you or any third party. You also grant to all other users who can access and use your UGC on an EA Service the right to use, copy, modify, display, perform, create derivative works from, and otherwise communicate and distribute your UGC on or through the relevant EA Service without further notice, attribution or compensation to you.

So I just want to be clear that content creators still have ownership rights to their CC as I said above. EA does not become the owner of everything that a content creator has made just because it's turned into a package file. There is a lot of confusion around this issue already so I just think it's important that to the extent possible we're clear.

Since CC/mods are derivative works, that means that EA doesn't own all of it. The transformative/derivative part (e.g., to keep it very simple, the mesh that they created) belongs to the content creator.

What you quoted also says that:

A modification needs to run on the original work in order for the mod itself to work. As a game modder, you own some limited copyrights in what you created but what you created is likely copyright infringement.

The easiest way to think about how game mods fit into the copyright scene is to think about an art gallery. Creating a game mod is similar to going into an art gallery, pulling a painting off the wall, and putting a painting inside of the painting. You own what you created but your creation is infringing on the original artist’s copyright to do it unless they’ve given you the right to do it.

ETA (example): So it matters a bit if a mesh is created from scratch or not. If it honestly is from scratch then that mesh itself is likely non-infringing and also belongs to the content creator (because the content creator would be the "original artist"), but the part added to transform the original file into a package file is EA's. On the other hand, if the mesh is also based on EA's mesh, then the copyrightable part owned by the content creator is maybe pretty small.


Again, I just think it's important to be clear and to recognize it's not as simple as EA owning everything.

"CarpeNocheSims;c-18165672" wrote:
They don't own the content, it belongs to EA. I don't want to get into it about "how hard it is to create a mod" or how "I created the mesh from scratch". That's all fine and dandy but once you put it into the game? You are using EA's resources and therefore, it belongs to EA.