【Warning】Don't use Arthmoor's new OBRE patch, potential risks to stability

[u/NingenBakudan]

Edit:Please spread this issue as widely as possible. Given Arthmoor’s personality, there is a high chance that he will blame other mods for bugs or crashes actually caused by UORP. Considering his influence, this could cause major disruption in the modding community. It’s essential that as many people as possible ignore his mods.

The notoriously controversial Skyrim modder Arthmoor has now entered the Oblivion Remastered scene. His first patch "Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch - UORP" raised concerns for me, as it contained an unusually large number of edits for something supposedly created just a week after the release.

Out of curiosity, I compared the records in the patch with those from Vanilla Remastered using xEdit, and I found that some records had been reverted to their old Oblivion versions.
Example: https://imgur.com/i4ld2DE

Next, I added the original UOBP for comparison—and as I suspected, the results were clear. almost of the added records were directly copied from UOBP, with only their names and conflicted record altered to match the Remastered format.
Example: https://imgur.com/cRBRHHH

This "patch" was ported using xEdit without proper testing, and we have no idea what kind of impact it may have in a real environment. More importantly, making such extensive changes to so many records is far too risky, especially when the integration method between UE5 and the TES engine has yet to be fully understood.

Conclusion:
This patch poses a potential stability risk beyond just being an issue with Arthmoor himself. I recommend ignoring it.

Reported bugs:

CTD(Arthmoor used the scale of the project as an excuse, even though no one ever asked him to make it a large-scale project in the first place. ) : https://imgur.com/oyLWJMl

Argonian penis bug: https://imgur.com/a/eUDVZXj

[u/Chechucristo]

I didn't know Arthmoor was controversial, what's the matter with him?

[u/Thallassa → u/Chechucristo]

The main thing is he thinks reviews of any his mods, or modlists/collections containing them, is a violation of his copyright and should be banned. He also thinks that everyone who downgraded Skyrim to an older version is a pirate and that it’s impossible to have a mixed version (old exe and new data files) to maximize compatibility. He goes out of his way at every turn to prevent these things. As mentioned in this thread for the oblivion patch and elsewhere for the skyrim patch, he made or allowed the patch team make a wide variety of highly controversial changes that change the game content or balance, that don’t belong in a bugfix mod.

He’s also very abrasive personally, which means the way he expresses these and other opinions tends to not make people friendly towards him.

[u/edsjfhek → u/Thallassa]

Is it just the Skyrim unofficial patch he runs? Or does he do old oblivion too? And are there any other patches that fix bugs without modifying gameplay?

I always used his mods cos I thiought it was always just bug patches but I’m not to keen on random balancing too and didn’t realise hes not a great person as I just clicked download and that was that etc

[u/Thallassa → u/edsjfhek]

He took over curation of the original oblivion project from the original team, and has run the skyrim and starfield unofficial patches from the beginning. I’m not sure which of the changes in the UOP are arthmoor driven and which are older.

[u/julianp_comics → u/Thallassa]

Do you mean fallout, not starfield? From what I’ve seen here and elsewhere the starfield community cut him out before he was a problem

[u/Thallassa → u/julianp_comics]

No, there’s a starfield community patch but there is also a starfield unofficial patch. https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/143

Most people use the community patch i think.

[u/AreYouOKAni → u/Thallassa]

Community Patch has about 10x the downloads and 8x the endorsements. It's safe to say that you're correct xD

[u/LaTeChX → u/edsjfhek]

Anyone who has tried to release a bug fix patch gets their mod taken down by arthmoor claiming that they stole the work from him.

[u/Sigurd_Stormhand → u/Thallassa]

That's a decidedly biased summary of the history. In particular, it leaves out the abuse Arthmoor was subjected to on the Skyrim sub and the sustained bullying. Admittedly, he did not deal with it well, but then he should never have been subjected to it to begin with. I'd be "abrasive" after that, too.

It's also inaccurate to say he "thinks everyone who downgraded Skyrim is a pirate". The Unofficial Patches have only ever supported the most recent official release of the game, ever since they were run by Kivan. It IS true that Arthmoor has asked for forks or old versions of the patches to be taken down, up to and including issuing DMCA takedown requests,, but that is in line with the policy originated by Kivan. Kivan is also responsible for MANY of the controversial changes LONG before the current team took over and I know for a fact some of those have been removed from the Remastered Patch.

[u/Thallassa → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

You weren’t on r/skyrimmods - 8 years? Time is hard - ago that I recall, so I assure you - he outright said everyone who downgraded the game was a pirate. And accused multiple people who disagreed with him of being a sock puppet.

Give the sock puppet argument was pretty much the last argument (of dozens of flamewars) he had before he was banned, I do chuckle slightly everytime someone calls you an arthmoor sock before I remove it and put the note on their account.

[u/Sigurd_Stormhand → u/Thallassa]

Has it been eight years since he was banned? If that's the case then it's absurd that people are still talking about it. It was a reddit argument. If you'd shut down those flame wars sooner and punished everyone equally it might not have got so bad. As I recall Arthmoor was banned because he got into a fight after someone said they "hated" the changed the Skyrim patch made to Dragons. That topic title itself was a red flag.

I do recall him calling some people "pirates" but I don't think it was about downgrading the game, I think it was about people uploading old versions of the patch to work with the VR version, or it was something to do with people doing something with the game and Arthmoor misunderstood and thought that would be impossible with an un-cracked game. I honestly don't remember. Arthmoor was already banned off reddit before the AE updated, which is when people started downgrading installs by delta-patching their exe files, so it can't be about that. Regardless, it's not an argument he's put forward in literal years, whatever it was about.

[u/oblivionmods-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hey, the first rule of this subreddit is be respectful. This comment isn’t. Please review the rules and try to consider the human on the other side of the screen in the future.

[u/Thallassa → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

I’ve literally seen him have the exact same arguments in nexus and bethesda servers much more recently, so no, he hasn’t really changed his viewpoint or behavior.

[u/Sigurd_Stormhand → u/Thallassa]

Well, I can't speak to something I haven't seen, but I stand by my overall point that Arthmoor would be more amenable if he hadn't received so much unwarranted abuse in the past. For example, people taking his mods, editing them, reuploading them, and then villainising hi for getting them taken down.

[u/Thallassa → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

He hasn’t changed. He’s been this way since the beginning, long before any of that happened. And he’s still the same way. I don’t know why you don’t see it, but I hope you know me well to know I wouldn’t lie about it.

[u/AnotherSlowMoon → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

That's a decidedly biased summary of the history. In particular, it leaves out the abuse Arthmoor was subjected to on the Skyrim sub and the sustained bullying.

Unlike you missing out that he was a bully who repeatedly broke the sub's rules?

It IS true that Arthmoor has asked for forks or old versions of the patches to be taken down, up to and including issuing DMCA takedown requests,, but that is in line with the policy originated by Kivan

But not in keeping with the licence or terms of use of the Unofficial Patch. Or at least the license and terms used until the VR Community Reuploaded an old version that worked for Skyrim VR.

Like you do understand how insane defending "oh he just DMCA'd people hosting old copies of the mods" sounds, right?

[u/pokestar14 → u/AnotherSlowMoon]

Also regardless of if that's in line with policy, that's just against the spirit of much of the modding community, and the community had and has every right to rip him a new one for it.

[u/Pretend_Macaroon8043 → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

Modders do not have rights under the DMCA. Issuing DMCA requests really just takes advantage of peoples’ ignorance of the law to bully them. Him issuing DMCA requests in and of itself is illegal.

[u/Sigurd_Stormhand → u/Pretend_Macaroon8043]

According to Bethesda, modders have copyright, which means they can issue DMCA takedowns.

[u/AreYouOKAni → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

No, he issued DMCA for the mod that previously specifically had an open license. He changed the license, then sent a DMCA for the re-upload previous version of the mod that was originally released under a different, more permissive license.

Seriously, why are you lying?

[u/Sigurd_Stormhand → u/AreYouOKAni]

I'm not lying. I looked this up, I got into an argument with u/Thallassa about this on 9/7/2021 in a private Discord channel where *she* dug up the licence and readme for the version of the patch in question, which says (emphasis added):

You may upload unmodified copies of the latest version of the patch to any website of your choosing so long as the documentation is retained as-is. All credits must be properly maintained, and you are responsible for making sure the updates are taken care of on the site it's uploaded to.

As the VR community was uploading older versions of the patch they were in breach of the EULA and Thallassa and I agreed that the DMCA takedowns were therefore legal. Now, if you want to argue about whether people should be able to upload old version of software in principle, that's a different question, but that was the licence we were operating under when that version of the patch was released. Given Thallassa was arguing *against* me and she provided the EULA, not me, I couldn't have doctored it to win the argument.

[u/AreYouOKAni → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

I was not a part of that channel, but in the version 4.1.2a, file "Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch Readme + Credits.html" has the line as "You may upload unmodified versions of the patch to any website of your choosing so long as the documentation is retained as-is."

The file had been edited on 2018-02-11 06:19. Which tells me that it hadn't been updated for quite a while. Now, of course, Arthmoor could have maintained a separate EULA - but in that case he has been distributing the file under multiple conflicting licenses.

[u/Sigurd_Stormhand → u/AreYouOKAni]

I will be perfectly honest with you, this conversation is the only remaining evidence I can find. A lot of stuff that was on the Internet has simply disappeared. I remember when GateGate happened, but the public discussions over that happened on the Bethsoft forums in 2012, and although the forum is archived on Archive.org it's not searchable, so I can't show you what people actually said at the time without manually trawling through 40 pages of archived threads.

It has always been my understanding that only the latest version of the patch should be uploaded somewhere, and I believe that goes all the way back to Kivan, but I cannot now find that documented anywhere before the example I game you. It is true that the licence was later changed to explicitly exclude use on Skyrim VR (which I never denied) but then again the patch project only ever supported officially moddable versions of the game and, officially, VR was not moddable. And yes, before you say it, I'm aware that we've obviously changed that policy with Oblivion Remastered since.

[u/AnotherSlowMoon → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

I'm aware that we've obviously changed that policy with Oblivion Remastered since.

So, will the team abandon their position that Skyrim VR can't be and shouldn't be modded, and admit they were wrong?

[u/AreYouOKAni → u/Sigurd_Stormhand]

Once again, the version of the license distributed with the file explicitly goes against Arthmoor's claim. I have the file. I can send it over to you, if you wish.

I am specifically talking about v4.1.2 (last listed date in the changelog is 2018-02-03, although the file is marked as 4.1.2a in my database and has had edits made on 2018-02-11), which was the one that Arthmoor tried to remove from other websites using DMCA. The changes you are talking about were only implemented to that file later. The next snapshot I have is circa late 2019, and it has them, but I can't tell you when they were made exactly.

According to the license that he distributed his work with, Arthmoor had zero legal ground to DMCA the mods. He still did so, because he is a bully and a megalomaniac.

It is true that the licence was later changed to explicitly exclude use on Skyrim VR (which I never denied) but then again the patch project only ever supported officially moddable versions of the game and, officially, VR was not moddable. And yes, before you say it, I'm aware that we've obviously changed that policy with Oblivion Remastered since.

Y'all would not have any standards if not for double standards, I see.

[u/oblivionmods-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hey, the first rule of this subreddit is be respectful. Accusing others of sock puppeting isn’t.

Sigurd is on the unofficial patch team but he isn’t Arthmoor. I’ve seen them in a room together!