Generally, you're being granted a license to operate software in exchange for money. The deliverables are not your property, which could make unauthorized modifications to said software a liability.

I would probably have recommended contacting Bethesda directly, but as nothing has been released, it probably wouldn't result in any sort of legal action outside of a C&D.

You've paid for the product at that point, which is the point where you "signed a contract". And most stores don't accept returned software, for obvious reasons, so there's no use disagreeing with the terms at that point, or you'll be 50€ poorer, and stuck with an useless DVD.

Right, you (or anyone) can do whatever to the game and its code, so long as it stays on your computer and your computer alone. Once you go public about it, as pjskelington is borderline doing, you're violating the contract and Bethesda can take legal action against you.

You haven't been granted any rights. A right, or interest, and a license, are very different.

A license is revokable by the grantor at any time.

In a sense they can. While it is true they can't demand the physical copy back, you can be barred from using it through Steam or any other online features by breaking the EULA.

You can even be sued for breach of contract, which is especially dangerous with DRM's like Steam that aggregate data.

I'll go search for some cases for precedent when I get a break, had this argument a few years back on the CS forums.

Which, as I stated, I'm okay with, since I can still use the build, but in the interest of community fairness, I would probably just send it to backup and not use something other people can't have. I'm all for paying for software, I'm no commie or socialist, but I think that the opportunity to legally buy something should always exist, and if it doesn't, then it's morally wrong for an elitest or singular entitled person to have it only for themselves. I'd move on to porting something else, and make sure I have 100% developer support before even embarking on that quest, so to speak.

98% functionnal? hey that's more than the official versions!

I'm not saying you're trying anything untoward, in fact I'm impressed by the possibilities you present.

I also don't want to see your efforts turn to ash because of a premature release prompted by naysayers.

Right, borderline doing. If you were thinking through your own statements perfectly, you'd see that it's a deliberate move on my part to not explain to people exactly how to do it, which makes people like you butthurt but makes people like me relatively safe from being hammered. Going public would be posting a step by step how to, which would be illegal, however, letting Bethesda know in the most obvious of manners that I can and do have a working port, and would like to cooperate with them directly, and am also totally willing to entirely back down if they tell me to, pretty much keeps me in that grey area where it could go either direction, but will end up being a neutral situation.

This joke's been done like five times now, and yet, it still gets me every time.

Going public means announcing that you've altered the code to work on another platform. It shows Bethesda that you've bypassed their anti-piracy features and are capable of duplicating the code.

Then how are you going to sway us into believing you? I'll bet you $100,000 Bethesda won't bat an eye at you let alone take your idea seriously.

Oh, believe me, I'm not showing these jerks how to do it, or giving them a copy, just showing that it exists and is as I described it; a Mac native port of Skyrim at near perfect functionality for the majority of potential users. I've tested it across a half dozen of my Macs and it works just dandy when I try it on anything, so, I'm very confident in the strength of my work. Again, videos will come soon showing the Macbook Pro (my main testing platform since it's a good average baseline) turning on, booting to OS X, opening the application in native environment, and playing Skyrim fluently and beautifully.

I lol'd at butthurt.

Damn those terrible jerk trolls.

You'd be better served taking this to mail, phone or PM's... because this is heading towards being locked at an exponential rate.

Oh please otaku, as if you have anything close to $100k. Maybe you do in another world like Skyrim though, it's probably the only world in which you get married, either. Now, I really do have to be going, I'll be back tonight if I haven't crashed from sleep deprivation, hopefully the trolls will have retreated to their bridges and the more rational of us can carry on a useful Q&A session, obviously, without going into too much detail, but a basic overview should be acceptable.

That seems to be the version given by the software industry now. And why wouldn't they say that? Selling the same product to a same customer multiple times in different formats is a common habit of music industry, and the software industry is happy to follow. This however restricts consumer rights from what they were say, 25 years ago. When you bought a product, you owned that particular copy, and could do whatever the hell you wanted with it.

Since the Internet loves car anologies, imagine that you've bought a new car, say a BMW. And after you walk out from the store, there's a booklet on the driver's seat explaining that the company doesn't want you carrying any pets in the car or it'll take the car back and keep the money you paid for it. And they'll want to send a guy unannounced to check the car for dog-hair every week. Now, you've already paid for the car, so do you expect this booklet to be legally binding? Furthermore, none of your previous cars had these booklets, but suddenly every car seller has one, so if you want a car, you'll have to submit to the dog hair checks.

Do you perhaps feel like you've lost rights at some point?

Yeah it runs in wine.

Yea, go study for those SATs, kiddo, while you work on nuclear fusion.

I guess 'rational' means not providing any evidence of your findings. Good job!

This is not up for discussion on these forums.