14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedowns issued for some Dying Light mods over the weekend were made in error.
The Entertainment Software Association has apologized for mistakenly issuing DMCA takedown notices for some mod files shared on MediaFire this weekend, resulting in some innocuous files being taken down.
In the meantime, developer Techland has reached out to media outlets and has explained that it actively encourages modders to fully express their creativity with Dying Light, just as they did with the company's previous title, Dead Island, which still enjoys a pretty active community due to its wide array of gameplay-altering mods.
Both Techland and publisher Warner Bros. denied being responsible for the DMCA takedowns. The requests were apparently issued by a third-party vendor on the ESA's behalf and claimed that the Dying Light mod files had violated the file sharing site's Terms of Service, namely through copyright infringement.
The files merely modified the game's visuals, removing the film grain filter that Dying Light has, and the takedowns resulted in quite an uproar. Fortunately, things are all better now and the spirits have calmed down.
A perfect storm
The whole incident was sparked by a patch issued by Techland on Friday, which was meant to prevent players from cheating when engaging in the game's competitive multiplayer mode, Be the Zombie, where a team of four players has to survive an onslaught from a fifth gamer taking control of a deadly, overpowered night walker.
The patch, however, had an unintended consequence, making life harder for modders, and together with the erroneous takedowns from the file sharing site, led many to speculate that Techland might not be as friendly towards modders as everyone had hoped.
The developer has since clarified its stance, welcoming the modding community's enthusiasm and expressing excitement towards what the future holds in terms of its members expressing their creativity with Dying Light.
Not only that, but interesting videos are already starting to pop up as a result of people messing with the game files, and we're bound to see a lot more fan-made content enriching the experience for owners of the PC edition of Dying Light in the future.
