Well, I already said most of what can be said here:
http://aq2zone.action-web.ca/phpBB2/vie ... php?t=1342
But for the lazy ones, there are two basic issues. Respect and intent of the original creators.
I'm not up to snuff on the various copyright laws in Europe and I know most Europeans don't like to hear about that kind of stuff, so I won't bother.
But on one hand you have players who "love" Action and Reaction, etc., and think they are doing us a favor or something by trying to spread the content as much as possible. While it's a nice rationalization, the problem is that those who think in that kind of way 99% of the time don't bother to ASK PERMISSION FIRST. It's common decency.
All our content is created from the ground up. All our ported maps were ported with the original mappers' permissions and in some cases, active involvement. We didn't just run some maps or models through a conversion program, slap on a new texture or two, and call it done. A ton of time and work (and performance optimization) went into all of the content.
Part of the intent of the original content creators was that this would be enticing to potential players of Reaction. They didn't create a buffed-up version of TEQUILA or URBAN2 or new models just so that some blokes could slap them into an AQ2 client and ignore Reaction.
I know, I know, "omg why r u whining rq3's dead and u cant stop us anyway" etc. Those are the fellas who I know we can't really reason with or talk with. Made up their minds, don't give a crap about anyone else, want to do what they want to do. Very ego-centric. It's ok. There are people like that in the world and life goes on, we can handle that. Those are the people who started to read and then skipped the rest of the post and got ready to write a flame or just go on with their lives.
Now Reaction would love to get more content. Always. But we sure as hell wouldn't rip off Flunx's or Vermin's work, bundle it or repackage it with Reaction, and throw a "shout out" to them in a random text file. We'd work with them, help them if possible, and make sure their contributions to Reaction were exactly how THEY wanted them.
When people rip out our models and repackage them randomly, we have no control over how they are optimized or presented. The sentiments of Gary Larson, creator of the comic The Far Side, kind of echo our feelings:
http://www.creators.com/index2_anotefromgarylarson.html
It's not about whether or not we're making money. You know that "online store" we have linked at
http://www.rq3.com/ where you can buy shirts and cups with the Reaction logo on it? All those items are sold at cost. That means, the company who produces them (CafePress, is it?) gets all the money. If we set the price higher, yes, we could get money for that stuff. But we set the price as low as possible mainly because we thought it would be neat for people to be able to get Reaction-logoed stuff if they were fans of the mod. We don't work for money; we work for a sense of self-accomplishment. That's ALL we have. You're not "stealing" our money or potential profits, you're stealing our desire to continue work and enjoyment of the work we've done.
Most of us are "old" and work fulltime. Many of us have family as well. The work we've put into Reaction has come at the expense of work or family time. If anything, you could say that many of the contributors and team members have lost either time or money by working on Reaction.
We do it purely from the love of the game and seeing our finished product.
When people rip out our work and use it without permission, it's like a slap in the face. And a demotivator. It's hard to keep working on something if you feel like people are just going to take your work and do whatever they want with it. You spent 4 hours on a Saturday and ignored your family just to get r_speeds on your map low enough so that players can have a great gaming experience, then later on you find out that someone's distributing it in some repackaged AQ2 client that can load Q3 maps? How do you think that makes someone feel? How would that make YOU feel?
See what I mean?
This has gotten long and I did not intend it to be so. I am also sorry if it's gotten too preachy. Most of the time with things like this, if anyone had bothered to ask in the first place, we'd probably have been cool with it. It's finding out about this stuff way AFTER the fact that gets people bitter about the whole situation.
For those who understand, I thank you. It's not like this will make us suddenly stop working on Reaction, but it's still a slap in the face.
For those who think we're full of crap, I must address that with the traditional internet response: SCREW YOU YOU ASSCLOWNS WE HAET UU!!@#
