Hello Everyone,
Recently there has been a lot of problems involving this mod. I would like to explain to everyone what really happened so that people stop making their own theories.
The honest truth is that about a year ago I decided to play never winter nights 2 and I downloaded the romance mod. After I finished playing I was extremely inspired by it and I decided to make a mod for a game that I absolutely love: Skyrim. My initial idea was to make a romance mod for skyrim based solely in Bishop from NWN2.
I begin by learning how to mod and I started to solicit voice actors. I received many responses and auditions. Eventually I found Jonah Scott. He was exactly was I was looking for and so the whole project began. As time went by people started to contact me about getting involved with my project and before I knew it, I had around 30 people working on my Skyrim Romance Mod (Voice actors, writers, and audio editors).
What had started as a small mod with only one character (Bishop), turned into an elaborate mod with around a hundred new characters. This mod took me 10 months to complete. I uploaded the mod to nexus on December 25, 2014, but because I did not ask for permission to use some of the textures on my mod, it got taken off. Several days later I got permission to use the textures from other modders. I re-upload the mod and it became very popular very fast.
It got so popular that I got inspired to make another mod, but this time something double or triple the size. I was so amazed of the fact that my mod exceeded my expectation in regards to how many people liked it. I got so ambitious about making my next mod, that I realize that I was going to need a bigger team anywhere from 50-80 people. Even though the people that had worked on my mod never asked for money, I figured that because this project was going to take such a long time and it was going to be so large, some people might have bailed out in the middle of the project.
I was mostly concerned about the voice actors, it was going to be extremely time consuming because of all the lines they needed to record. I figured that if I could give them an incentive I could get them to commit to this large project. And so I decided to start a kickstarter campaign for $50,000 . None of my team member knew about this. I decided to keep it a secret so that they would not expect anything in case it did not get founded, nor did I want to get their hopes up. While I began the kickstarter campaign my team was already working on an update to the mod.
I want to let everyone know that I was not being greedy when I decided to start the kickstarter campaign nor was I aware that it was illegal. I jumped on to this mod and I honestly never read none of the terms and conditions of Bethesda creation kit, nexus mods, or kickstarter. I was not aware that I could not add a paypal link to nexus and ask for donations, I figured that because they offered the Paypal donate button on the mod’s page, it would not be an issue.I actually tried to use Nexus’s paypal donate button but I was unable to figure it out.
The day after my kickstarter got up and running I started to receive hate messages on nexus about it being illegal and that it was against nexus rules. When I read the messages I was at work. After quickly searching online I realized that I was in fact doing something that was not allowed. I decided to cancel my kickstarter when I got home later on that day. By the time I got home, which was around 6:00pm pacific time , I went on kickstarter and canceled the funding for my project. I then tried to log in to nexus but I found that my mod had been banned. The reasons for it were the following: Paypal link on the description of my mod on nexus, kickstarter, deleted comments that warned me about kickstarter.
To everyone that thinks I did this knowing about the rules, I will like to say that I absolutely did not. I had my doubts about using NWN 2 characters but I figured since it was distributing the mod for free that it would not be a problem. About the messages that I deleted from nexus, the truth is that I had been deleting messages for a while. I deleted all the hateful messages I got (and I got a lot). Since this mod was up and running there was so many people just bashing it, that I decided to ignore those people and just allow comments from people that actually liked the mod.
Edit 1/29/2015: I also had my doubt about using lines from Gibberlings3 Mod. Because indeed I copied lines from this mod without asking for permission.
Edit 2/06/2015: I have removed all 4 flirts descriptions I had taken from Gibberlings3 Mod. I still want to credit this old mod because it inspired me to make Skyrim Romance Mod.
After I got banned from nexus, I messaged Vampire Dante (Nexus Admin) who banned me, and I apologized and asked how I could fix my problem. He did not reply to me so I went in the chat room to try to speak to him but my account did not had permission to be on the chat room (He had blocked me). Since this mod is so important to me, I made a new account, not to deceive anyone but just to chat with Vampire Dante, I even used my name (Mara Lightfeather) so that he would know who I was. Instead of being able to chat with him, he immediately blocked my account and even my ip address. I understand that I made a very bad mistake almost inexcusable but Vampire Dante was a total Jerk. He did not even allowed me to explain myself. He even went on my website and started to leave really hateful messages and even calling people that liked my mod: Psychopaths.I know it was him because he posted a comment on my website, calling me dumb for trying to make a new account (Only he new about this since he had not made the public announcement on nexus yet). I found this extremely disrespectful and unprofessional.
Edit 2/29/2015: After following closely with a reddit blog, I could be wrong about Vampire Dante (Nexus Admin). I believed it was him, because I got a message from someone that knew about my attempt to make a new account. This was like 5-10 minutes after I had try to do so. I was not aware that Vampire Dante had made the announcement so quickly. Because I am unsure at this point of who actually wrote the messages that I was blaming Vampire Dante for doing, I will like to apologize to Vampire Dante and to Nexus for my assumption.
One last thing that I want to clear up is my profile picture and my name. Yes I used a fake picture and a fake name. Since my announcement of this mod, there was a lot of people that were very excited but also people that were extremely hateful. I chose to use a fake picture and name, and after the mod was released I was planning to reveal my true identity. The problem was that there was too many hateful people even after I released my mod, so I just decided to stay anonymous. I did not want people finding my facebook, where I live, my phone number and where I work.
I apologize to all the people that believe that I had some sort of deceitful agenda. All I wanted to do is to create a mod like no other. I apologize for being naive and not fully reading the rules for Bethesda, nexus, and kickstarter. I now realize that I was very wrong for doing what I did. I want to apologize to the people that send me warning and deleted their comments, but I do want to let you guys know that I followed your advice but by the time I did, it was too late (All happened in a span of 6 hours). I know now the rules for the use of the creation kit from Bethesda. I will start working on a new mod, as of now my plan is to make a mod based off of Cael and a couple new characters. I will keep it 100% original. I learned my lesson and I will not make these mistakes again.
Some of you know but for the people that do not, I will like to inform you that several of the new writers, and Jonah Scott (Voice of Bishop) , which were going to work on the update for the mod, left the team since they also found it deceitful that I did not inform them of the Kickstarter Campaign and the characters that I used on the mod that were created based on NWN2. The rest of my team that worked on the past romance mod have stayed.
Edit 1/29/2015: There was about 12 new people that were going to work on the update to my mod. 3 people from this group had helped on the last mod. When my whole new team found about the mod being banned, they wanted to get an explanation so I chatted with them through Skype. All but one of these team members were questioning me on why I had done what I did and why they though it was very wrong. They kept pointing out that I had plagiarized copyrighted work and that it was very wrong. I was very hurt by everything that had happened that day and on top of that I realized that the even though I thought of all this people as friends they started to slowly turn on me. I do not blame them for doing so. Their actions are completely warranted. Non the less, it hurt me a lot. After I had a sort of heated discussion with one of team members that had worked on the last mod in a small part, that person decided to leave and others followed. Again, there is nothing wrong with them doing so. Eventually I was left with about 9 people that actually came to me to become a part of my next update. After chatting with them for a while, most of my new team members wanted me to agree not do anything with the mod unless I consulted with them first. At this point I realized that not even the people that had worked on the last mod expected me to do so, so why did I have to share everything with them. Though this might sound a bit self-fish the truth is this. I planned the mod and worked very hard to make it a reality. I solicited voice actors, writers, I did youtube interviews, I made the website. I worked very hard to make it appear on google’s first page. But I had a few new people the felt entitled to make decisions on my mod. It was a pleasure for them to become part of my team of writers for my next update but only for writing. All the other decisions regarding the mod were mine to make. At this point I decided not to continue working with the remainder of my new team of writers. There was two people however that I wanted to keep working with me (One agreed and the other turned me down for a very good reason).
I still have working with me 27 of the 30 team members that worked in my last mod. Including several new people that had also asked to be a part of it.
Two of my old team members that are no longer with me, were amazing for helping. Jonah worked really hard and did an amazing job voicing bishop. Sarah, who helped me to correct a lot of the writing, also worked very hard . I thank you for you time, and quality of work.
I want everyone to know, this is 100% true. Some people want to make their own theories of what were my real intentions and just be hateful, but like any other human, I make mistakes and that is all it was. I made a huge mistake because I did not take the time to read all the terms and conditions from Bethesda, Nexus Mods, and Kickstarter. I accept all responsibility and all the consequence that come with it. Hope that you can all understand what happened better.
I am working on this mod not for greed but because I want to incorporate romance with skyrim and share it with everyone. It is just a hobby for me and I really enjoy doing it.
Though the new Skyrim Romance Mod will not be as big as I was hoping it to be it will still be a lot of fun, and full of romance for everyone that likes it.
Thank you for your time,
Mara
Edit 3/14/2021: Many years have passed since this incident and I’m happy to say that Skyrim Romance is on Nexus. It has won Mod of the Month twice! Once for LE and once for SE. I have grown up a lot since I wrote this letter to the community all those years ago. It was truly a painful experience but it made me grow a lot. I hope all who have seen my journey are inspired to never give up and always keep pursuing your dreams even if things seem hopeless. I’m very happy and grateful to the people who believed I could rise from the ashes and didn’t give up on me.