Update on status of the project and our roadmap (Patreon)

It's been exactly two weeks since I last posted an update, so it's about time I explain some recent developments.

First I want to start by addressing a bit of the drama happening in the Bethesda modding community, caused mostly by my actions creating Wabbajack. I'm happy with what I put on Reddit earlier today, so here's a quick re-post:

"My goal is to provide as painless of a installation process for users who want to experience a heavily modded game. It is not a goal of mine to make piracy easier, to encourage modification of mods, nor of allowing users to "do whatever they want with the mods they download". From the first time I used the STEP guide in Skyrim LE, all I wanted was a way to setup STEP in 10 minutes instead of 5 hours.

Mod authors have concerns about creative control, piracy and well over a decade of people not caring about their concerns. Unfortunately I was one of those people, I'm realizing now that many of the actions I've taken with Wabbajack hit a sore spot with the mod authors.

I would like to point out, however, that on the surface these two sets of concerns are orthogonal, and so I do think a compromise can be found.

We also are in the fantastic situation where the Nexus hasn't set a precedent, and so by coming together as a community perhaps we can reach a consensus and be "first to market". If we wait for the Nexus we have to go with whatever they come up with, if we work together, perhaps not only can we come up with something better, but we may also influence their plans."

The solutions to these problems are still in the planning phases but I want to have some solid plans setup in the next week.

In the mean time, I'm moving Wabbajack to a design that no longer produces patched .exe files for installers. We'll be moving to some sort of packed data file that can be hosted on the Nexus. Wabbajack will also be hosted on the Nexus and be published as a signed executable. This not only allows us to provide peace of mind to users who are concerned about running arbitrary code on their computers, but also puts us in a unique place to control mod piracy with our installers. Making a bootleg modlist install that uses pirated mods doesn't do much good if it also requires the end user to use a un-signed installer.

Code signing certs aren't cheap (about $80-$300 per year) but thanks to the wonderful donations from all our sponsors I'll have just enough to be able to cover the cert, so thank you all for your wonderful support!

We also were able to implement a slideshow of mods during installation and compilation, complete with mod descriptions, thumbnails, and links to the author's site. I'll attach an example video to this post.

That's about it for this week, progress is moving forward, I'll be sure to post news about the mod rights management issues once I have more to share.


-- Halgari