I read this on bluesnews.com its about a mod for 1942 going retail.

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War games see sales spike on CNN Money examines the impact of the war in Iraq on the sales of military-themed game titles, describing the spike in sales the conflict has inspired. Also included is an examination of the possible commercial future of the Gulf War-themed Desert Combat Mod for Battlefield 1942, offering this quote from Frank DeLise, the leader of the team behind the mod: "We've been approached by multiple publishers to try and sell it, so it's probably not going to be a mod for long. It'll be more of an expansion pack."

I think its a dumb move, the mod is still in early alpha and doesnt even have its own maps yet and so it looks like an alpha mod too. The publishers seem to just be trying to take advantage of the current war?  

From the perspective of the mod dev team, I'd say "why not"?
Have people pay you to do what you're already doing for free?  Where do I sign up?
Perhaps this would allow them to devote more time and resources to improving "the product", and they'd be more likely to get outside support once they'd attained increased "legitimacy" through a publishing deal of some sort.

As long as they don't expect to become the next Counter-Strike.  (Heck, CS's very existance serves as a hedge against anything becoming the "next CS"...since so many players are comfortable with their developed CS skillset that it takes something truely spectacular to sway them into a new product.)  They do have a considerable following already, but I'd be very interested to see how it pans out if people had to start paying for it.

well to be honest i can only agree with both of you    

Surely there's a copyright probelm with using a mod engine to make a commercial game. They'd basically have to license a new engine which would practically mean starting again unless they were awarded an expansion pack project by EA directly.

Besides, is there even an SDK for BF1942 yet? Most of the mods I've looked at seem to be working at being a conversion rather than a mod. It takes more than just swapping a few graphics to make a commercial game.

Perhaps I'm missing something but this just seems vastly too simple to be true.  

ReverendTed:

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From the perspective of the mod dev team, I'd say "why not"?

Are you on THE mod team, as in the mod team in question here or are you talking just as a modder? If you are on the DC team, I'm sure we'd all really like to hear more about what's going on.

If all they are going to do is new unit models and maps then perhaps but surely it's not very prudent to talk like this without making any sort of comment as to what EA thinks of the whole idea. It's unusual that someone would announce a possible commercial release at such an early stage. Are they trying to publically "pee-pee on the post" to try to keep others away from the Gulf War II idea? Don't commercial distrubutors like to keep quiet about this kind of a thing until they have something signed and on paper at least?

//Smells like spin to me.   If not then it seems like they are Sabotaging themselves before they start. Every idiot who thinks they can make a quick buck for minimal effort is going to jump on the Gulf War II bandwagon now.  

I was trying to place myself in the perspective of the DC team.  I'm not affiliated with it in any way.

DC already has a significant following.  It adds a lot of new models and features, and has been downloaded many many times since it began public alpha testing.
The 0.3 Alpha is currently a FilePlanet Subscriber Exclusive download.

OK, Sorry RT. I just wanted to clear that up.   I'm easily confused. :P

I've heard that the fileplanet thing is only for 3 days but I wonder how much that's going to peeve all the other possible download mirrors. We're also getting into a rights problem here surely. The team might not be making money yet but fileplanet sure are. At the moment it's a non-issue but a disturbing trend.

What if popular mod teams in the future did give exclusive access to a pay file service? Would the possibility that the team could be recouping some costs from that service break the license agreement with the original game developer/publisher? Could an exclusivity agreement legally be voided by the original game developer/publisher if it did occur? It is within their rights to withdraw our (i.e. modmakers in general) legal acces to a SDK if they feel that we're making money on the side.

In DC's case, I still haven't heard anything about DICE or EA being involved in these supposed deals and I would think that brokering for such a deal would break the license agreement for the SDK. In the case of BF1942, there is only an unofficial SDK so making a commercial game from that could possibly be prosecuted as software piracy.

We need a little more info from DC before we can work out what's going on. Without DICE and EA being involved, I can't see how any of their spin could be possible or even likely and if DICE/EA are involved, I doubt that they'd allow such an announcement so soon.

The whole thing smells bad to me. I think it's just an overzealous PR guy trying to drum up a little DC fame. I just hope that the mod team don't get their fingers burnt.

An excellent point about the profit thing.  SOMEONE was profiting from the FP exclusive download (temporary though it was), and that's probably a violation of something or other.

Err... I don't think FilePlanet are violating anything. The subscribers pay money for fast downloads anyway, not just to download Desert Combat. You're not forced to pay to download DC, you have a choice: you can wait until it's available for non-FP subscribers to download, or you can pay to download DC earlier AND other stuff as well.

I couldn't find the EULA for BF1942 (grrr...one of my pet peeves), but I understand it doesn't have a provision for mods anyway.
Instead, here's what I would consider the "relevent" components of the SoF2 License, which sound fairly standardized:

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* You agree that, as a condition to your using the Program Utilities, you will not use or allow third parties to use the Program Utilities and the New Game Materials created by you for any commercial purposes, including but not limited to selling, renting, leasing, licensing, distributing, or otherwise transferring the ownership of such New Game Materials, whether on a stand alone basis or packaged in combination with the New Game Materials created by others, through any and all distribution channels, including, without limitation, retail sales and on-line electronic distribution. You agree not to solicit, initiate or encourage any proposal or offer from any person or entity to create any New Game Materials for commercial distribution. You agree to promptly inform Activision in writing of any instances of your receipt of any such proposal or offer. * If you decide to make available the use of the New Game Materials created by you to other gamers, you agree to do so solely without charge.

Now, the thing is that if you wanted to get the 0.3 assets when they were first made available, you would have to pay for a FilePlanet Subscription to do it.
It's an interesting issue, to be sure.

Of course, looking at these items, it could be (but most likely would not be) argued that giving your assets to any file distibution service that makes a profit from their operation (via banner ads, etc) might be in violation.  Right?
I suppose the definition of "Commercial Distribution" is the pivotal question I have.