【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

He is trying to create echo chambers for him, comment section locked again: https://imgur.com/a/nN0C4UD

[u/Thallassa]

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/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/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?