Sillmarilion

[Taqwus]

Pratputajao said:
Wow that is kind of a trip actually. I have seen dozens of differant star wars and star trek mods for many differnat games,(Stardock's site comes to mind) I highly doubt they all had permission from the powers that be... This is the first time I have encountered talk of copy right taken so seriously when talking of players making mods? So basically we can only post our own mod based on a story we created, we cant access the many great worlds and ideas already out there? Hmmm... First for me. Oh well I guess I will try and just Mod it for myself.

There's issues of copyright (derivative work) and trademark dilution. For one fairly infamous case in point, 20th Century Fox threatened legal action over the 'Aliens TC' mod for Doom, and quite probably would have won had it gone to court. In the case of a -game- where it is entirely plausible that the holder of the original IP has an economic interest in authorizing computer games and benefiting from the licensing terms -- doing the mod yourself an distributing it can be rather problematic.

Hence, it's unsurprising if Shrapnel prefers to hedge its bets and not be seen to facilitate such, particularly in a moderated forum where they do exercise some editorial control over what posts get removed.