Unfortunately this is getting quite rampant on Steam. Stolen mods, illegal mods etc.... I reported a child killable mod called 'Killable Children' days ago and it still is up there. Been up there since Apr 29, 2012. I know for a fact that many people have reported it.

I know of multiple modders whose mods have been stolen from Nexus and reuploaded to Steam without permission and the thieves taking full credit for the mods. In fact one such thief even states that he will steal textures because 'you can't do it right and I can'.

Steam is becoming a haven for thieves because of the lack of proper moderation. It is quite sad. At least Nexus is well moderated, here we see an example of what happens when a site is not. Rather puts to shame those complaints about Nexus being over moderated...

Nexus has also had 10 years lead time. SW isn't even 1 yet.

Yes, it's a major problem that there are thieves running amok. Valve will have to step up and act on this sooner or later but these things don't fix themselves overnight.

So far as I'm aware, GStaff is the only one minding the store there and since he's just one guy you can't expect a reported item to be gone 5 minutes later. Or even a couple of days. The volume of stuff he's seeing is probably larger than we know. And it didn't help any that Valve had yanked his ability to deal with it for several weeks.

Would really help if we all actually knew what was going on. From everyone elses perspective, they submit a report through the Steam a 'report' link and it takes an eon to get a response, if there even is one at all. We don't know, given the size of Steam a logical assumption would be that there are many staff monitoring the site.

A little more open communication would go a long way. *sigh*

Do this. If he continueously violates the SW copyright standards his account will be banned.

Albeit entertaining that isn't really a mature way to handle it.

I honestly think they need to get moderators like the ones on this forum that can deal with it. They will be given ultimate power, but it would really help clean up...

From what some of us were told, Valve has it set up so each company is responsible for policing their own section of SW. Valve only deals with the Portal and TF2 parts directly. The rest are up to the individual companies.

As I said, apparently GStaff is the only Bethesda employee manning the guns for the Skyrim section. Maybe Nick too, but that was never mentioned. Two guys simply can't handle the deluge.

Maybe Bethesda would be open to the idea of some of us helping out, but there may be contractual and legal considerations we're not aware of that prevent this.

So for now all we can do is raise awareness. Here, on Nexus, and yes, that means some of us will need to dirty ourselves by registering on Steam's forums too. Taking such a campaign directly to Valve's own turf may or may not work, but it sure won't work at all until it's been attempted.

Is it possible to put something in the mod to prevent it from working thru the Steam workshop? There was something that would NOT work on SW and that was one of the reasons some moders do not use SW.

I just do not remember off the top of my head what "things" would not work on SW.

Basically, Steam Workshop cannot support extremely data intensive mods, mods that use .esms, or mods that use multiple esps to allow user choice in features. None of these are things which cannot be easily undone by someone who wishes to.

True, but those things you mention are also not the kinds of things mod thieves even know how to undo. If they did, they'd not need to steal ours.

Does SW support .INI files?

What immediately comes to mind are large files (Over 100mb still?) and esm's. So if the armor is integrated via esp it could be made an esm to prevent it's upload on the workshop.

Though that wouldn't stop them from making their own esp to use your models/textures, but it's at least a deterrant.

I'll add though that using .esms for everything is a destructive solution. It is silly to use a master if a master isn't actually required, and can run into CTD-causing problems with ONAM records when the file modifies existing content.

Indeed, using a severely disruptive solution in general to combat the specific problems of one site seems extremely shortsighted to me. We as a community need to stick to the standards of how the game should be modded. Breaking them to thwart piracy only turns us into the very type of developer many of us hate: Those who embrace DRM techniques to protect our work.

I haven't checked yet, but so far I guess I've been lucky in that none of my stuff got stolen. Then again, I may have preempted that by uploading it myself.

The only remotely viable solution is to press the issue until Steam gets their crap together TBH.

You don't like piracy, BGS. Neither do we. Stop providing an easy conduit for it.

Ouch, I hope you are not right about that, I included the update and the skyrim master as part of my plug in on the advice of others for unrelated (unrelated to this thread) reasons. I do edit some of the vanilla perks in my mod. In fact I do not think I have EVER made a mod were I did not include at least the Oblivion master or the Skyrim master in this case in my plugin.

I have not had any Skyrim CTD issues.

Or maybe I do not understand what you mean by "use a master".