An EU court has recently ruled that third party add-ons don’t infringe upon the EU copyright laws. The ruling comes as a huge hit to PlayStation and a massive victory for the company Datel who sold infinite boost add-ons in a racing game named MotorStorm and allowed users to control their console with motion controls. The judge stated that:
The Directive on the legal protection of computer programs does not allow the holder of that protection to prohibit the marketing by a third party of software which merely changes variables transferred temporarily
The EU high court’s ruling comes as a major win for the modding in the gaming community. They went on to say:
The directive protects only the intellectual creation as it is reflected in the text of the computer program’s source code and object code.
Sony inquired whether or not the 2009 EU copyright laws on games had been infringed upon as Datel’s add-ons don’t alter the source code, but instead change variables already running in the working memory of the game, claiming the Datel’s software “latches…like a parasite.” However, an advocate for Datel said:
The author of a detective novel cannot prevent the reader from skipping to the end of the novel to find out who the killer is, even if that would spoil the pleasure of reading and ruin the author’s efforts to maintain suspense
Another modding activist by the name of Ross Scott, claims altering or modding PlayStation games is like highlighting lines in a book and added that players cheating in a one player game is a “victimless crime.” Many have gone on to say that PlayStation are seeking to control how others mod their games.
Both Sony and the UK based Datel have refused to comment after the ruling from the EU high court.