The modding communities for games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, and other Bethesda titles are among the largest and most active around, and there are some huge projects currently in development. One of these, which recently made headlines, is Skyrim Together; an ambitious multiplayer mod for Skyrim. However, another modding team who are responsible for the creation of modding tool SKSE, the Skyrim Script Extender, has now accused the Skyrim Together team of stealing code.
SKSE’s Accusations Against the Skyrim Together Team
The Skyrim Script Extender (abbreviated as SKSE), is a popular modding tool which has existed for a long time. Its creators don’t take donations themselves, but they do provide code for SKSE for the use of other modders with a free license. Now, SKSE and Skyrim Together have something of a bad history. Skyrim Together has been in the works since 2013, and at one stage, one of the core developers is alleged to have distributed a version of SKSE themselves which they had modified; in breach of the free license terms. As a result, the SKSE creators banned them from using SKSE code.
That leads now to the recent allegations; one of the SKSE developers allegedly found SKSE code in the code for Skyrim Together. If true, this is a violation of the license terms, as the license stipulates that users must give credit for the use of SKSE. Moreover, it would also be a breach of the ban imposed by the SKSE team. Another issue is that the Skyrim Together team have been indirectly charging players for access to the mod’s closed beta by requiring that players make a donation. Whether this constitutes charging for the service is up for debate. However, the SKSE team seem to believe that it does; as such, the mod enters the realm of being a commercial project, where the re-use of licensed code is a much more serious violation.
In response to the allegations, one of the Skyrim Together developers said on Reddit that the code was merely; “leftover code from them in there that was overlooked when we removed it”. That post from the Skyrim Together attempted to give justification for the code and other issues. However, it doesn’t appear to have convinced SKSE; a member of that team responded:
“So, to be clear – you are saying that you:
- started using our code
- then asked for permission
- never got permission
- continued using it
- eventually removed part of it yet somehow left some of it in
- continued to charge for access the entire time?
- promise to totally clean up a now license-tainted project?”