Capcom has had enough of you modding their games for profit.
The publisher and distributor for the Street Fighter series has begun its take-down of modders who charge for their mods and skins. Two artists in particular, BrutalAce and Khaledantar666, have been issued cease-and-desist letters from Capcom for distributing their Street Figher V mods through the paid service Patreon. Since modding characters requires using copyrighted material, charging to resell that material is illegal in every sense of the word. Although BrutalAce claims to have only charged for early access to his otherwise free mods, that hasn’t stopped Capcom from throwing down the law-hammer.
BrutalAce and Khaledantar666 are the first two modders to receive DMCA letters from Capcom, which were received directly through Patreon, but their notoriety in the modding world may mean more of these letters to follow to any artist who mods for profit. Both were known particularly for their more risque mods for female characters. Each of them have had their Patreon accounts shut down and have been banned from modding forum Zetaboards. BrutalAce has promised to continue modding, but to offer his mods for free, while Khaledantar666 has claimed the same, although his DeviantArt page has a link to his PayPal (and is seriously not a cool dude to be giving money to anyway.)
The move on Capcom’s part has been lauded by the modding and gaming community, who recognize the importance of not profiting off of what is essentially stolen work. The ban of both artists from Zetaboards was followed up by a Reddit comment from the admin SSMThrowaway, in which he asserts that the site was never designated to encourage or feature paid mods:
“I do not support the idea of paid mods, not directly paid mods (like the stuff Steam tried to sell us a while back) and not this sort of Patreon-locked shit either. Mods should always be free, not just because of the legality of it, but because it’s a serious dick move to charge for them period.”
Capcom has always been kind to the mod community, so please don’t ruin it by stealing their stuff, modding it, and charging for it.
