Some of you are probably familiar to the quest “Brain Dead” from “Far Harbor”, Fallout 4’s latest DLC. If not, be wary, [SPOILERS] ahoy!
A few weeks before Fallout 4’s release, Autumn Leaves, a Fallout : New Vegas Mod was published on Moddb and the Nexus. It featured a colorful cast of excentric robots, in charge of a forgotten Vault where a strange murder happened. Sounds familiar ?
Maybe, to those who played Far Harbor’s “Brain Dead.”
It was only recently that a nice fellow nicknamed “endolex” brought to my attention that there was several similarities between the two. Since I didn’t play “Brain Dead” myself, I did a bit of research on Let’s Plays and Youtube. AND SOON :
Wow, there, people. I knew that Bethesda was keeping an eye out on mods and taking the best ideas to integrate them in their future installments (like they did for Wasteland Defense for Fallout 4), but this!
Let’s take a look at it for ourselves.
The comparison :
First off, both quests begins with a discussion through an interphone with the caretaker of the Vault, a headwaiter robot with a rather distinguished persona. The big mandatory Vault Door opens, leaving the player up for the exploration of said vault.
Up till now, nothing unusual, as Vaults are popular locations in Fallout’s universe. Is all gud.
THEN!
The main quest itself, which consists in investigating the murder by checking the crime scene, and speaking to every robot in the Vault :
The mysterious death of the prime financier of the Vault, who - in both cases - worked alongside Vault-Tec to build the special place.
The importance of voice modulators in the plot, to distinguish the robots between themselves.
The sexytime moment.
And of course, the mandatory “Let’s discuss paintings with a robot.”
Then, there’s the Neural Interface Matrix in BD versus the Neuro Comp Matrix in AL, the presence (and relevance to the plot) of a robotic expert in the Vault, the feel of the central atrium, the quasi-exclusive robotic cast confronted to a murder, the misleading piece of evidence (Keith/Rolland), among others.
Now, now, truth be said, I honestly thought Bethesda’s staff played Autumn Leaves, had a blast with it (I hope) took some things out of it and made their own thing for Far Harbor. And I seriously think this is perfectly okay. After all, Autumn Leaves’ inspirations are countless (Asimov’s, Cluedo, Planescape : Torment, Arcanum, older Fallouts, etc.) and being influenced is a natural part of the writing process.
Of course, it raises some questions : should modders get some recognition from the industry, compensation? How could those two dynamics - paid content and free creation - should be managed? What kind of acknowledgement should a big publisher give to small creators? What is the kind of acknowledgement they can afford?
In my case, why am I making a post of it? Well, to raise some awareness of Autumn Leaves, really. Since I witnessed the interest that “Brain Dead” had raised from the players, I thought it would be cool to jump on the occasion to tell them that more of this kind of quests exists. (Though Autumn Leaves lasts around 6 hours vs 1 for BD.)
Since Autumn Leaves was out but a few weeks before Fallout 4, I always felt that people didn’t have the occasion to discover it by the time they jumped to F4. On another note, I also fear that people who played Brain Dead would stumble on Autumn Leaves and ignore it because “Oh, hey, it’s Brain Dead all over again!"
So, if you liked Brain Dead, want to play a "Whodunit”, but with entirely different themes, different writing, different plot, different music (!) different voice acting (!!) don’t hesitate to download Autumn Leaves
Feel free to drop by Hypatia, Autumn Leaves’ Library. You will be welcomed with open arms.
NB : Screencaps from Far Harbor were taken from Father’s Youtube Channel.
Well i noticed this before.
lmao, first they tried monetizing mods, that backfired.
Now they literally take content made by community and put a price tag on it, not even giving anything to the original dev. Bethesda has done this same thing before so im not surprised.
Well put together article. Man, they can't even follow one of the basic aspects of modding: giving credit for another's work.
The publishers are really giving us modders, a strong message with their DLC!
As much as it frustrates me seeing this going on with Bethesda and Autumn Leaves; this is not the first time I have heard of this and unfortunately I feel like Bethesda is getting more flack then it needs to.
I remember hearing about Frozen copying the Snowman from a smaller indie move where most of the staff attended, and recently a game was DMCA'd from Steam by Activision over having "similar guns." I am worried that situations like this will be come more common; however not because of laziness, but because we are beginning to more broadly apply things such as plagiarism and DMCA to so many things.
What I mean by this is how the term plagiarism and copyright infringement have gone from stealing a whole work and selling it when it is not yours; however now just having a simmer idea, concept, word, clip, or lyric is no considered stealing.
I know this seems like a huge jump or it is unreal ted, but Frozen and the game are in trouble not because they stole the entirety of the work taking took inspiration from, but by having a "similar concept" or two to what they took inspiration from; which I don't feel is right.
I still feel like the developer should receive some acknowledgement or credit such as "Inspired by Autumn Leaves by________" but as the article says "...Autumn Leaves’ inspirations are countless (Asimov’s, Cluedo, Planescape : Torment, Arcanum, older Fallouts, etc.) and being influenced is a natural part of the writing process." So since Bethesda took inspiration from Autumn Leaves, which took inspiration form others; I don't feel like Bethesda was in the wrong BUT they should give acknowledgement.
The thing is, you can be inspired by something and not mention what inspired it. People fail to understand that is not stealing. Every work in existence in the modern age is inspired by something without needing to specify what inspired you. I loved this mod, but I'm not so shallow to think such a thing is plagiarism or theft. It just shows how big the blinders are on people who just want to get angry over something. Then people bitch when they get a cease and desist from the company of the IP. All I see are people flocking to someone who is accessible to them. When it's a big company, they act like they are some big monster.
Nothing but hypocrisy.
and this is not the first time =)
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Did Bethesda ever apologise to you? Did they ever remove the stolen content? Did you receive any monetary compensation?
I think the only response that ever happened was Pete Hines replying to someone on twitter to say that the devs had never played Autumn Leaves, in fact they never even heard of it! Obviously that's bs, they copied this quest closely enough that it's fair to call it stolen as opposed to inspired. That tweet could easily have blown up in their faces and this whole incident could have been a small blow to their reputation for a decade, but the mod dev basically gave them a free pass to never own up to it and never talk about it again when he wrote this:
"Now, now, truth be said, I honestly thought Bethesda’s staff played Autumn Leaves, had a blast with it (I hope) took some things out of it and made their own thing for Far Harbor. And I seriously think this is perfectly okay. After all, Autumn Leaves’ inspirations are countless (Asimov’s, Cluedo, Planescape : Torment, Arcanum, older Fallouts, etc.) and being influenced is a natural part of the writing process."
That's not what you put after your wall of text and pictures that perfectly shows how your quest was copied as opposed to inspired. I don't know what compelled him to make an excuse for them like that, but I can imagine. Maybe he thought the drama would blow up regardless and that because he was such a good sport Bethesda would be more likely to right their wrongs by giving him a credit, maybe even a job, but the drama died in its tracks since he pretended it was a non-issue. Maybe he just wanted to work for Bethesda in the future and didn't want to be on their sh!tlist. That might sound silly but if you're applying to Bethesda and you've made a mod like Autumn Leaves, that's a notable part of your resume and you can't afford to not put it on, and there's no way in hell he gets hired if he had called them out. Letting Bethesda get away squeaky clean sets a bad precedent. This shows that be it fan-fiction or a well-written quest mod, you wouldn't want to write anything around this franchise if you're not okay with them taking your work. They've gotten away with it once why not again? They sold at least 20 million copies, and this is still in the minds of what, maybe a couple hundred people? You can't find a thread online talking about what happened without most of the comments pretty much saying "lol bethesda also makes a vault full of protectrons so that means it's stolen?? that's so dumb, in fact didn't the mod dev himself say it wasn't stolen?". If the mod dev isn't working for Bethesda right now, and never got quietly paid, then he took a big L.