Just to touch on the "approval" question, I think I have an answer there to confirm the process.  A friend of mine went for a job at 2K titled "Civilization Community Manager" a month ago.  He needed lua, xml and c++ skills.  Part of the role was to check uploaded mods to ensure no copyrights were breached, that the code was not malicious, and that no new processes were spawned.

He was going for the mod approver job.  (He didn't get it, they hired from internally).

EDIT:

The job ad: http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobseekerx/viewjobrss.asp?cjid=21432&accountno=362

Thanks for that info Dale. I see That I am going to do some major research b4 purchasing any game in the future.

Lets get all the modders to join together and start to make our own free soarce games and to hell with these companies. 

 

Wait - so you're saying people have copy/pasted the content from BTS and put it directly into the original?  If so, that's pretty nice of Firaxis, I figured copying the leaderheads and all the art styles and code that went into released content would of been copyrighted.  

 

Did Stardock let modders copy/paste all the content and code from the SINS expansions into the original?  If not - they could really learn something from Firaxis, because as you say, Firaxis lets their modders do.  

 

Otherwise, I don't know how you could of got something else out of "direct content from a paid release, and release it free to the community," aside from that - and with an added insult on top of it!     

 

Edit - 

 

Very interesting Dale. 

OOo sounds fun, hopefully gonna be sum nice dramas comin. Like dem Iphone apps ya? I can haz that jack!

Very interesting.  Thanks Dale_.

Mods will continue for the forseeable future, but will have to go thru 2K to be 'checked'.

Will there be other criteria for approval - such as not replicating or being too similar to DLC (even DLC they might someday but not currently offer)?  Will copyright prevent making mods that resemble parts of other games?  Will mods have to be DL'd from steam or 2k only, and not from sites like CivFanatics?  Will non-reviewed mods be able to be installed and/or will they break the game?  How long will approval require?

I can see mods like the HoF one being fast-tracked and having relatively little problems, but some of the others...

If all mods need to be checked and must go thru 2k, that's a big change.  After their decision to force steam even for store-bought dvd-installed single-player games played offline (that sure is a mouthful, better acronymize it - SBDISPGPO) I'm not sure how much trust to extend them.

Is this the beginning of their morphing community mods into publisher-overseen DLC -- some offered free, some for pay?

In one of the video interviews, Dennis Shirk confirmed that mods will still be able to be downloaded from sites like WePlayCiv and CivFanatics, and installed manually like in Civ4.  But they won't be "approved" by 2K or on the mod hub (until approved).  I suspect this may impact on MP so you can only use approved mods in MP, not sure.

In terms of DLC, I would imagine that anything that takes 2K paid DLC and allows free distribution to everyone (even those who didn't purchase it) will be denied.  One question I'd love answered is, for example, I make a WW2 mod and then later 2K release Stalin as a paid leader, is my mod now in breach because it would have Stalin in it?

And since (if the EULA is the same as Civ4's EULA) 2K would technically "own" any mods created, does that mean they will intercept a good mod (Combat Mod, Fall from Heaven, Rhye's) and then sell it as their DLC?

Many questions remain unanswered.

Well since I got bashed i went and started up as many of my steam games as I could from the .exe and about 60% of them launched without starting steam and the others launched steam before starting, Plenty from this decade heck Bioshock2 didn't load the steam client.

So i'll take the hit that for games tightly integrated into Steamworks you launch the client even when launching the .exe but you can go into offline mode and start the steamworks games just fine as well so there is no need to be connected to the internet the entire time your playing.

Of course their doing this to get you to look at the client and potentially use their store, are u that shocked by capitalism? Heck personally I am more of a partial socialist in my world view and on the list of capitalism run amuck this doesn't even qualify in my book. All I see is Steam getting in early on a market pretty much any idiot saw coming in 1997 and holding on to alot of the current marketshare because they have a good product. And its what 75% or so and competition is moving up namely Impulse and D2D.  And Steam is a good product, granted it has flaws namely in the patch release management area (sometimes redownloading an entire client) but its pretty darn good otherwise.

Also if this is about Civ5 having an exclusive deal for download distribution via steam then I kinda get that but why isn't everyone screaming bloody murder over all the console exclusive titles, I mean heck thats not a small change to an executable thats a hardware specific it ain't ever going to work anywhere else thing. Plus exclusive deals are signed all the time in all sorts of industries. Is Sins, EWOM, or GalCiv available on Steam? There is a little bit of hypocrisy in all this.

And you know if Steam does get too big the anti-trust suits will come from everywhere and it'll get broken up or possibly even some good will come out of it like the integration being forced into an open standard. I mean thats really the goal here to have lotsa different services and one standard for your friends list. heck with Blizzard getting in on all of this and all the facebook integration happening you might just see facebook taking over as the friend list and steamworks losing alot of, har har, steam. These things always work out in the computer world.

I mean of all the things to fight about this is kinda crazy I have Impulse and Steam both sitting in my systray 99% of the time my computer is running and both services are great. Are people that afraid of technology? Can someone actually point out an argument that doesn't revolve around not wanting to run a 16kb process on their rigs? Or have to deal with one-time internet activation for DRM (offline mode works just fine). And personally I agree with Brad, I don't see the point in DRM beyond something fairly limited ( but would rather have it through a service because that way you don't lose cd keys 5 years down the road). But one-time internet activation being so horrible people won't buy civ5? Thats just crazy.

The second Steam requires you to be online all the time while your playing or throws ads up in games your playing I'll be glad to join the bandwagon but for now this all just sounds a bit farfetched.

Brad said once that you would find them on Steam when you could find exclusive Valve games (those like Left 4 Dead or wahtever else they develop themselves) into Impulse.

 

@jam3, I think that most folk would want to avoid getting the anti-trust stage of things, and want to make sure that no-one ever gets it into their head that constant-internet-check is an acceptable form of DRM (Hi Ubisoft!). 

I use both platforms and am generally happy with both.  However I think that, if anything, Facebook has demonstrated how quickly a company which is generally trusted can spin around and bite you in the rear unless it is actively and vocally opposed whenever it toes the line. 

For digital distribution, I think this is one of those moments where it's good to stand up and say, hey, wait just one gosh-darned second here!

As to why people are screaming bloody murder... well, here are some CIV specific reasons, which I've seen over at the civfanatics forum:

1. Requiring an Online connection for a single player game - online-check DRM isn't that onerous when you're playing online already in a FPS or some RTS or MMO.  But for a single player game, which folk are going to play on the go, or when their net goes down, it seems a rather poor choice.  Combine this with steam's... somewhat spotty offline mode (at least, in my personal experience) and people get annoyed.
2. Day 0 DLC, in the form of Babylon and their steam exclusive deluxe edition.  This is the nightmare scenario a lot of civver's discussed when DLC was first becoming popular.  It's a fun sore spot.
3. Official / Unofficial moderation of Mods through a Steam-style Hub.  No-one knows how this is going to work out in practice, and folk are worried that 2K will try to monetize mods as DLC.  Nothing has really been done to soothe these worries from 2K, and folk are getting nervous.

We need to watch out that existing services we use don't abuse the power they have like facebook.

facebook_plans_a_privacy_summit.html

The more we are forced into using this CRAP  the more info they can collect and use.

1000s are deleting there facebook accounts but what if we were forced to use it.

 

I thought you might say that. It gets even worse. If people do mod, and the mod mimics stuff that is in one of their DLC or other paid add-ons, they will be sued!

Your comparisons don't really work because of the differences between a Console and the PC Platform. 
The issue isn't exclusive Titles for Steam - or any one platform for that matter - the issue is how the Steamworks API is integrated into the game.  I have no issue with exclusives to a single platform, as all platforms have their exclusive titles.  However, as you mentioned in your test (good to see someone willing to actually invesitgate by the way, good job!) the games with Steamworks require Steam to be running when launching the game.  Again, even this isn't really an issue, just more of an annoyance.  However, the issue with the Steamworks API comes from when the game isn't sold via Steam at all.  If you buy Civilisation V from Impulse - let's pretend for a second that you can - and attempt to launch the game, it'll then actually download Steam and get the game from there.  This sends Impulse's customers to Impulse's competitor to get their game, and instead of Impulse being a Digitial Distribution platform, it makes Impulse a Steam re-seller.  Impulse's customers are now using Steam instead of their chosen program to play the game against their clear preference.  Given the option, assuming I'm aware of said option, I'll buyand play the game via Impulse.  This removes my ability to do that.

This type of misdirection and undercutting has a clear impact on the industry as a whole.  If every game used Steamworks API, and thus it's DRM software as well, then every game would require Steam and wouldn't be sold anywhere else.  The major sore point here is that it doesn't simply apply to Digitial Distribution purchases - retail customers, Impulse customers, Direct2Drive customers, etc., are now all Valve customers with no choice in the matter.  This closes the PC Platform because instead of us having options about who we buy from and how, we merely have the option of how we're going to give Valve our buisness; do we buy it at retail and save ourselves a download, or buy it digitially and save ourselves the walk to the store?
This is primarily different from the Console market in that when you buy an Xbox 360, for example, you're entering into the closed platform by choice.  I know how the platform operates and I agree to that platform's pros and cons by buying the console, if I wanted something different I'd buy a Nintendo Wii, or a Playstation.  Imagine if you purchased Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360, and instead of getting a game disc you were given a voucher for the PS3 version of the game, coupled with a shiny new catalogue of all of the titles available on the Playstation.  This is what Valve are essentially doing; they're making the PC platform a closed market.  Instead of buying a PC to play PC Games, you'll buy a PC to play Steam games.  As a PC Gamer, I have a major issue with this.

Actually, due to the fundamental nature of the Steamwork API/DRM, Steam isn't technically guilty of anti-trust or anti-competitive business practices; Impulse can still sell Civilisation V to Client A and make a profit off of it.  The problem is that future purchases by Client A are going to be influenced by the presence of Steam, and this itself isn't actually illegal - it's of questional ethics, though.  In the example I gave above, imagine if that Catalogue you received with the coupon for GTAIV also contained some coupons for discounts on other games on the PS3.  Kinda the same thing here; Steam using Impulse to expand it's customer base, and this will cost Impulse, and thus Stardock, money in the future.  Ensuring a healthy competition is one thing; sending your customers to your competitor against your will, who has over 70% of the market already, is something else entirely.


My basic problem is that Steamworks API/DRM turns the PC Platform into Valve's equivilent of Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's Playstation or Nintendo's Wii.  It makes my PC their gaming machine and I didn't sign up for that.  One time Activation? No problem.  Needing Steam running in the background for games I've purchased on Steam? No problem.  Needing Steam running the background for games I've purchased elsewhere? Big problem. 
Now, don't misunderstand me - I like Steam, I have Steam installed and it's actually downloading my free copy of Portal as we speak.  I also have several other titles on Steam.  It's a great platform.  I also have several titles that have Steamworks and each and everyone of them is made by Valve, and I don't have a problem with this.  Valve making it's own titles exclusive it's own platform is fine as it's their decision on their platform.  When buying a Valve game, I know that I'll need Steam.  When I'm buying a game from Steam, if it also choses to make Steam required, I'll know that and accept that if I decide to purchase - shit, I already have the platform installed and running!  However, when I buy a game from Impulse or buy a game from my local store, I'm making a clear decision not to buy it via Steam for whatever reason.  Steamworks API removes the ability to make that choice, and I clearly wanted that choice by chosing to shop elsewhere.  I bought an Xbox to play Xbox games, not Playstation games.  I bought a Playstation to play playstation games, not Nintendo games.  I bought a PC to play PC Games, not Steam's games.

Please, 16kb?

The new Steam client is often better- usually hovering between 6-12mb of ram. However, when it online mode, it can randomly (and I do mean randomly) balloon. Usually it gets into the 50mb territory, with it once going up to 100mb. This is me not playing a game (or touching it), the Steam overlay is disabled, and the friends list isn't signed in. And it's in mini-mode.

Furthermore, I shouldn't have to install/load a client to play a game when I didn't even buy it through that client.

Again, you don't understand how mods work for Civ do you?  No need to directly copy and paste from BTS at all.  Let me say this again...creating a new civ is not that hard.  Once you know what the specs of say the Korea civ is, simply create a new civ in the game with those same specs.  Maybe the leaderhead is different and maybe the special building art is a bit different/original but there you have it...Korea civ added to the game without buying a DLC or expansion.  What's Firaxis going to do about it?  They can't stop the mod.  But now they can.

One of my favorite Civ 3 mods was Rhye's of Civilization.  It added a couple dozen civs, changed various things about the default/built in civs, changed the whole tech tree, etc.  Same for Civ 4.  Assuming Civ 5 is just as moddable as they claim then the same thing can be done.  Who needs to buy a DLC for Babylon when a dozen modders will have a Babylon civ ready within a week for free?  But wait, 2K/Valve now controls what mods can be available for the game so they of course aren't going to allow the Babylon civ mod.

And what about a mod like Rhye's that say adds in a dozen civs and then a DLC comes out that has about half of them now "officially" in the game?  Ooops....sorry Rhye, your mod is no longer approved.

Understand the issue now? 

Lets remember that if you actually take content from a DLC and rerelease it as a mod, they definately will try and ban/remove/stop you since your distrobuting thier copyrighted materials without permission.

Considering that many (many!) mods have copyrighted material I can see 'false' drama being made (which my earlier failed joke post refrenced but was seriously far too vauge).

If you can still install and use manually then there wont be any problems.

 

 

As a side note: I would think elemental's offical mod distrobuting methods would have a similar "badness barrier" for mods. Lets just hope they don't try and censor sexy elf and dirty furry mods along with the "MyFirstCopyrightInfringementMod" mods.