[irishred]

Originally Posted by Beery

Maybe it's just my experience then. After doing a little mod work for Red Baron (the original - hehe, that dates me, LOL) I did my first serious mod work on the Battleground series of games by Talonsoft. That was a very bad situation because the developers regarded mod-makers as a definite threat - I was even threatened with legal action by Talonsoft merely for producing free unofficial mods. I then worked on Red Baron 3D, which, after a promising start, became very much a house divided against itself due to mod-makers being very concerned with keeping what they learned to themselves (and that was because some of them wanted to make some money from it - which eventually happened for the 'Full Metal Jacket' mod - another case of stolen mods and copyrighted material getting into a for-profit mod). Then I went on to work on B-17 II, where all mod activity was compromised by the official forum moderators who were very much 'anti-mod' and very politically motivated. Then I went on to try modding IL-2, which was a non-starter, since the owner of Maddox Games is philosophically opposed to the very concept of mods, and wants to keep total control over the post-release development of the product. After those experiences, SH3 was a breath of fresh air - the developers are positively mod-friendly, and the community is both welcoming and generous.

I remember all of this with Talonsoft, quite a while ago, incidents like this resulted in a lot of their devs looking to greener pastures.