No you are not losing your rights you are just granting them a non-exlusive (you may grant it to others too) perpetual (it's forever), irrevocable (and can't be revoked), royalty-free (and you won't be paid for it), right to distribute your mod assets as they see fit.

Basically, even though those license terms may be void in your local law, and there won't be any disadvantages for you if you actually sell your mod (or for example allow a magazine to release it for a fee.) Bethesda is only affected by US law, and since you gave them the license to do as they see fit, they may decide to give your mod away for free when you try to sell it.

What are you guys like? You're just picking certain parts of the Steam Workshop legal agreement and ignoring other parts.
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement

• Legal fud.
  
• Valve gets the rights to mess about with the content you upload (use, copy, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, modify, and create derivative work). BUT they have to credit you as the original creator.
  
• This would never happen but if Valve decided to charge for your mod you would get money. You would get money for making something you otherwise couldn't possibly make any money on.

Point 4-8 is also legal fud. Point 9 interestingly says the whole agreement might not apply if you live in the EU.

Seems it's only the governing law language in Paragraph 9 that might not apply, not the entire agreement ("the terms of this section may not apply")

Probably worth mentioning again that the EULA can only apply to that which is generated by the CK. Custom assets cannot possibly fall under its control, even if you've attached them to the game via a mod. Your .esp file is a derivative work of the game, but your mesh + texture is not, unless you used vanilla assets as a base for them.

Ok, alongside all the good points being made about the loopholes, contradictions, a plain legal bull in the EULA, I would like to point out another problem: it is, in brief, a load of rubbish. Honestly, the global right? Perpetual? Get real. I can think of no court that would uphold that. There isn't a jurry in the world or a judge in the world who would even bother with that. What this is called is quite plainly a bluff. Valve is just trying to puff up and look big and bad so that no one gets out of line. But do you honestly think they would blow money on lawyers and legal fees and risk horrible PR over a mod? Something Bethesda could quite easily (in most cases) make all on their own without taking anyone else's work? Heck no. Valve is many things, but stupid is not one of them. This load of legal speak is just there for intimidation purposes, nothing more. And on top of that, they would never make this public. What about mods uploaded to their workshop that violate other copyrights? There will be, as always, hundreds of such mods, some of which are straight rips of models from other games! If Valve pursued one group, they would risk exposing these copyright violating mods and put themselves in a thick legal quagmire. In short, just cause the EULA says something, doesn't mean it has any legal standing. I can have some bloke sign a work contract for me that says at the end of two weeks I reserve the irrevocable, perpetual right to cut out his tongue and roast it over a fire with marshmallows and hotdogs. Doesn't mean I won't go to prison if I pull out my scalpel after two weeks.

I think the most important and most immediate reason that so few of us use it is that, frankly, it's a buggy underdeveloped mess right now. It doesn't support ESM's, and has a huge amount of issues with uploading, updating, BSA's, and other things. It only supports like 25% of mods, so 3/4 of us can't even currently use it. I wont even think about it until they make some serious improvements.

@Nuvendil: Be sure and let us know how it goes when you decided to call the bluff and you get hauled into court You don't have the money to play chicken with their legal teams.

I personally like manual installs. I will subscribe/download then back up remove subscription because I don't like auto update, too much potential for dirty mod work and destruction of my save games, in regards up uploading? TESNexus has open communication between mods and modders. they also help you if someone is "Stealing" your work. Other big reason is Steam. If steam can't sync Skyrim or CK half the time I assume it will be the same with mods and not worth it. A lot of noobs using workshop have no idea how to do a manual install, my heart goes out to the noobs that there games crash with 100 mods auto updating, trying to un susbcribe and remove them all

I couldn't give a hoot about the legalities aspect of who owns what! I am happy to share anything I create.

The reason I mod and provide mods is because I enjoy doing so.

My primary complaint is Steam Workshop doesn't provide the flexibility required to manage mod files well enough atm.

Valve? Isn't Valve the company that made Portal? I think Valve and Steam are two separate entities now...?

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement

let me know if i get this right, basicaly if you upload your work on Workshop, you shouldn't upload it on nexus?, because i already did that, should i delete my mod from nexus?

No -- you can upload it to as many sites as you want -- what is being discussed here is the fact that if you upload it to the workshop you automatically give VALVE the right to use your work in any way they want at any time in the future with no need to contact you for permission to use it and no need to pay you for using it or selling it to any other company and allowing them to use it.

You still maintain ownership and the ability to use it any way you want (you do not give Valve ownership of the content you just give them the right to use it any way they want including selling it or using it in any game they want in the future)

Funny thing about Steam...something some modders are probably grateful for now. Due to modders on Steam pandering donation links, and valve allowing it, the Nexus has added a donation button as well with Bethesda's blessing I have read.

Not something I use myself...but to each their own. Modding is time consuming. I guess if people want to give money...nothing wrong with the modders getting some compensation.

Only thing that makes me wonder is where this will head? Modders adding links in the mod itself, pandering with books and bribes for updates? That could get ugly.

Would rather avoid it entirely, but we have Steam to thank I guess....

You mean "Don't applaud..just throw money?"

In the modder-to-player community, I agree this isn't a big deal.

Not such good news for the modder-to-modder community, though, as it may well mean more disputes and less incentive to share.

Since I'm doing this for fun, I'd rather see a hard-and-fast pro-am boundary as we have in sports, for much the same reasons - but each to their own.

So long as it's a voluntary donation, I don't see any issue at all. Like I said previously, if an appreciative audience is willing to toss you a couple o bucks on occasion as a "Thanks, that was fun!" thing, it's not the same as selling access.

True but what happens when a Modding team releases a large mod with resources made from many modders and the donations wind up going to the one modder that uploaded it to the site or one modder makes all kinds of assets for another modder to use in his mod and donations come in thanking the mod maker for all of those new assets but going to the person that released the mod using those assets made by another modder ?? -- ( eventually noone wants to work as a team or let others use their assets and the entire community suffers !! )

Weasels quickly become known as weasels. If I did a collaboration, I'd put a donation link to each contributor, citing their contributions and recommending that any donations be split equally among all participants.

In my experience, money influences everyone's behaviour.

For example, if you work for a well-motivated company, co-workers you never even met before will bust a gut to help you, but won't give the competition the time of day.

An amateur community tends to work like a single enterprise, but as soon as money is at stake, those modders / teams who choose to become traders will put the shutters up.

Competition is healthy in mainstream commercial activity, but, for some of us, the point of having a hobby is relaxation.

The sharing of rewards is also very complicated.

In my experience of a mature modding community, a new adventure generally involves dozens of components made by others. In some cases, attribution may be simple, but components may come from collections, collections of collections etc. Eventually, provenance becomes doubtful, despite everyone's best efforts. Not to mention the tools that we all use! Establishing a fair basis for payment becomes impossible.

I've worked as a commercial systems integrator, so I know that the remedy is to have Documents of Understanding (if not contracts) between all parties from day one. Obviously, that's not going to happen systematically, so what we will see is a lot of bad blood.

So, I'm not planning to ask for donations, and I'll be working strictly with the people who want to continue on a non-commercial basis.

With the mods that could be uploaded to Steam (no esm file, no options) the CK doean't allow me to upload them: I always get the "failed to write to the cloud" message

The other mods cannot be uploaded because Steam doesn't support esm files (required if a mods adds a new NPC, and you don't want to experience the face colour bug), or have several options

Pretty sure you won't have anything to worry about here. Accepting voluntary donations does not convert one into a commercial entity. That's just not how it works.

A few comments;
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First, in many countries, invalidating a part of a contract invalidates the entire thing. A family acquaintence made his fortune overturning contracts, in their entirety, based solely upon arrogant little clauses like "as far as local law permits" & "to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law".
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Second, if the contract is invalid, sometimes nobody gets any traction. So be careful of what you agree to. Most electronic contracts are not intended to survive judicial scrutiny as their primary purpose is to deceive clients into believing that they have less rights than statute dictates or into parting with property (e.g. intellectual property) on the basis of a null contract (i.e. effectively in the absence of any agreement).
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Third, modders are authors, and plug-ins are glorified manuscripts - at least, that's how I see these things. The word-processor developer might well own the fonts and clip art, but they do not own the manuscript written using their word processor. For example, Microsoft appears to own the Bookman Antiqua font used in some Taylor & Francis publications, but they do not own the word document you write in Word for Windows, even if you choose to use their Bookman Antiqua font. Just imagine, for a moment, a world where Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Adobe and Corel owned all the IP rights to everything printed in text; everything, from this comment to the bestselling novels and all their royalties. That's not how things are done, and for very good reason. e.g. imagine having to pay Adobe eu$28.oo every time you viewed a page on Bethesda's site...?
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On the subject of Valve reserving the right to deprive a signed author, or "contributor", of credit - it is just a wee bit hard to argue with the following text:
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Whether or not this is their intention, Valve have made it blindingly obvious that they reserve this right without limitation or any attempt at reassurance. I understand that there are similarities with Bethesda's licensing, but does this give anyone the slightest feeling of being passed around like a cheap
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salt shaker?
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I don't mind contributing a little to Bethesda because they are contributing to the development of computer-based RPGs. But, no-one else is contributing to the development of computer-based RPGs, so my meagre contributions to the arts stop right there, with The Elder Scrolls and perhaps, one day, a little Fallout (when nobody is looking).
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For anyone who is interested in professional authoring, there are three very important terms it will pay you to be familiar with (and I bet your English teacher "never heard such language"): http://www.writersservices.com/res/ri_subsidiary_rights.htm, http://www.barbaradoyen.com/author-rights/know-your-rights-serial-rights-and-syndication-rights and http://www.writing-world.com/rights/copyright.shtml. The reason I mention these things is because I think it better for us to remain aware of how things are done in the rest of the authoring world - given that the computer-based RPG is not meagrely a proprietary product, but a whole new medium of the arts.
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[edit]Grammar[/edit]

I'm concerned about practical outcomes. Regardless of legal definition, it's a well-established observation that any opportunity to make money changes behaviour.

Nexus is far better? Yeah.