User blog:Dr. Frohman/My opinion on Modders/Hackers

Howdy, everybody. This is my first blog post, so I'll try not to muck it up or get it taken down by our eternal overlord.

Why I'm creating this Blog
Recently, I bought both Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: World at War because I wanted to "get in touch" with the older generations of Call of Duty games. As it would turn out, these were the worst video game related decisions I ever made that actually made me waste my money. (Besides the game whos name shall not be said)

Why? Because of this:



The sheer amounts of modders on both CoD4 and WaW have literally made the games almost entirely unplayable! Recently, I got into a game on WaW and there were 4 people who were invincible. So, I messaged one of them asking why they do it. Their responce? "becuz im pro". So, *I* responded: "Well how does making yourself invincible with a fully automatic bazooka make you 'pro'?" Guess what their responce was. Something very vulgar of which I cannot put here. But that's just it.

Hacking/Modding the game does NOT make the modder good at the game.

In fact, it makes the modder the direct opposite of good, bad. Why then, when questioned, does the confronted person back away from the accusation and insult you directly? I'll never figure it out.

Legality
From Wikipedia: "Modding may sometimes infringe the legal rights of the copyright owner. Some nations have laws prohibiting modding and accuse modders of attempting to overcome copy protection schemes. In the United States, the DMCA has set up stiff penalties for mods that violate the rights of intellectual property owners. In the European Union, member states have agreed the EU Copyright Directive and are transposing it into national law. A man was convicted in the United Kingdom in July 2005 for selling a modded Xbox with built in software and games."

By modifying the software, the modder violates terms layed down by the DMCA/EU Copyright Directive, therefore netting him/her with the possibility of up to 3 years in prison. Remember that when you buy a piece of software/hardware, you are not buying the software/hardware itself, but a license for you to use the technology. By breaking this license, you can land in hot water with the law or the company itself.

Developer's Stance
Treyarch has given the code of conduct for Black Ops here: http://tinyurl.com/3tv6f52

However, I cannot find the official Code of Conduct for WaW or CoD4, but I would imagine they'd be almost the same.

My Opinion
In my opinion, I think that modders are a large problem for all three groups of people.

The console developers get it bad because they need to spend hours upon hours sifting through player reports that less than half are actually true.

The game developers get it bad because they are the ones who have the job of creating and updating the code on a regular basis, just to find that more modders have come through.

And last but not least, there is the consumer, like you and I. We get hit the worst because we cannot enjoy the games to the fullest potential, and in the end, we typically just rage and give up because of them.

A message to the modders
I do know there are modders who edit this Wiki, and although this was not meant to offend you, it is supposed to be a "wake up call", because there are repercussions to your actions, and they effect all of the community and the legality of it is questionable.

Conclusion
So, there you have it. But of course, there's a reason I made this a blog post. I'd like to hear some of your opinions! Leave a comment, and don't forget to respect other users.