If you are here to learn all about the Skyrim Romance mod incident that happened six years ago, stay tuned because I have all the details that you have been looking for!
If you’ve been using mods in Skyrim, then you would know all about the Skyrim Romance mod incident. But if you are new to it, I have all the details for you about what went down with this mod creator and why this entire situation became such a massive fiasco.
So let’s get to it, shall we?
What Is Skyrim Romance Mod?
Skyrim Romance mod was created by Mara in 2015. This romance mod was created to add the missing element of romance from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The mod introduced new quests and characters, inspired (plagiarized, actually) from Neverwinter Nights 2 and one of its mods. This mod has two versions, one for Oldrim and another one called Skyrim Romance mod Special Edition. Check this Skyrim Romance mod guide to install the mod.
Soon enough, this romance mod caught a lot of attention over the internet and the Nexus Mods community. But what really started all of this controversy that resulted in heated discussions? Let’s find out!
What Really Happened With The Skyrim Romance Mod Incident?
According to Mara, the main character in Skyrim Romance mod, Bishop, was inspired from the game Neverwinter Nights 2.
Plagiarized Character, Dialogues and Textures
But turns out that this was rather plagiarism, than “inspiration”. Apparently, the mod had plagiarized entire textures, character descriptions and tons of dialogues from Bishop’s character in Neverwinter Nights 2. It was also plagiarized from a NWN2 Bishop romance mod by Gibberlings3. In fact, the entire character of Skyrim Romance mod was a rip-off of Bishop from NWN2. This fact was kept hidden from the team who created this mod with Mara.
Since this mod was posted on Nexus, many gamers recognized the similarities and pointed it out to the Nexus team. It came to their attention that the mod had plagiarized the stuff from other mods without the authors’ permission.
The mod was put into moderation mode and Mara was contacted by the Nexus community. The issue was soon resolved as Mara then took the original author’s permission to use their textures. The Skyrim Romance mod was up again on Nexus.
The Kickstarter Campaign
However, the mod’s description was edited later to ask for donations of $50,000 for another mod that Mara was creating. Now this act was a serious offense and even illegal to start a Kickstarter campaign. As soon as Nexus users saw this, they pointed it out in the comments section of the mod.
It is important to note here that the Nexus platform has big bold disclaimer messages saying that donations of any kind are not allowed and that people can only post their original work. However, the mod creator did not read these disclaimers somehow.
Things got really heated and people even posted some hateful comments as this act was a serious breach of Nexus’s, Bethesda’s and Kickstarter’s Terms of Service. Moreover, tonnes of mod creators have done tremendous amounts of work to create some amazing mods for absolutely no money!
Mara deleted some of these comments for God knows what reason. Even if these comments were malicious, Mara could have reported it to Nexus.
Nexus’s Response
After a while, Nexus removed the mod and banned Mara from the platform. She did send an unban request the same day as well as created a new account. This was another violation of Nexus’s TOS which says:
“If you make a new account to try and circumvent your ban then it’s extremely like that we’ll (1) find out about it and (2) enforce your ban with an IP ban as well.”
Nexus Terms of Service
Apparently, Mara still had not read the platform’s terms of service and went ahead breaching another one. As a result, the moderators denied her unban request.
Mara’s Apology
A few days later, Mara posted a long apology letter on her website stating that she had not read the terms or service and that she wasn’t aware that her actions were a breach of TOS or even illegal. She corrected her mistakes by taking the original modder’s permission to use their work as well as changing some of the dialogues that were directly plagiarized.
Conclusion
Mara’s Skyrim Romance mod is up and running on her website, along with a few others mods that she created with her team over the years. Things settled down after the long apology and even the people who posted hateful comments about Skyrim romance mod on reddit later apologized for their words.