What the SDG User Agreement Actually Says

Intermediate40-60 minutesCross-platformSteam

A clause-by-clause read of the binding contract every Unturned™ Subscriber accepts, written by a working mod publisher who has signed it.

Who is writing this and why

57 Studios™ is a working Unturned mod publisher. We run a Tebex storefront, ship paid content into the live Unturned modding ecosystem, and we have direct correspondence with Nelson Sexton, the founder and lead developer of Smartly Dressed Games. Our day-to-day relationship with SDG has been positive. Nelson has been responsive and reasonable in every interaction we have had with him. None of what follows changes that.

We are writing this because the SDG User Agreement — the binding contract every Subscriber accepts in order to play Unturned at all — contains clauses that, taken together, attempt to:

• Take ownership of derivatives of your work without compensation
• Take perpetual ownership of every suggestion you make
• Eliminate SDG's liability for its own gross negligence and willful misconduct
• Cap recoverable damages at functionally zero for the typical free-to-play Subscriber
• Forbid practices the entire Unturned modding community engages in every day
• Strip away the contract-interpretation protection that exists precisely to discipline drafters
• Allow SDG to sell their position and walk away from every obligation they hold

None of those clauses is unique to SDG. The standard-form gaming contract industry is full of agreements that read like this. That breadth is not a defense; it is a description of a category of consumer-protection failure that the doctrine of contract has not adequately addressed. The legal academic literature on standard-form contracts (Margaret Jane Radin's Boilerplate is the leading source) is direct about that.

The relevant point for the community is this: 57 Studios has signed this agreement. We operate under it. The critique below is from a working publisher inside the relationship, not an outsider taking shots. We know Nelson. We run on this platform. We still think these clauses are bad. Read for yourself and decide.

Not legal advice

This article is informational analysis written by a working mod publisher who has read the contract carefully and consulted publicly available case law for context. It is not legal advice. It does not establish a solicitor–client relationship. Subscribers with significant commercial exposure — anyone running a paid mod business, operating a revenue-generating server, or contemplating a License Agreement with SDG — should consult an Alberta-qualified solicitor before relying on any interpretation offered here. The text of the agreement controls in any conflict between this article and the binding document.

A second framing point. The SDG User Agreement supplements the Steam Subscriber Agreement; it does not replace it. When you launch Unturned, two contracts bind you: Valve's terms and SDG's terms. This article only covers SDG's. For Steam-side issues — refunds, account recovery, marketplace transactions, Valve's own indemnities — the controlling document is the Steam Subscriber Agreement. We do not analyze that here.

A third framing point. The contract defines "SDG Group" broadly. Read literally, every protection, indemnification, liability waiver, and release granted to "SDG" in the agreement is granted to the entire SDG Group: employees, agents, consultants, officers, directors, advisors, shareholders, and affiliates. The contract is not a one-to-one promise between you and Smartly Dressed Games Ltd. It is a promise between you and that group, collectively. When the agreement says "Subscriber releases SDG Group of all liability," it means each of those categories of people benefits from the release. The Subscriber is on one side of the table; an extended cast of beneficiaries is on the other.

Document structure

The SDG User Agreement is 26 numbered sections plus a non-binding Quick Summary. Roughly half of those sections are routine: notice provisions, governing law, severability, the standard set of clauses that appear at the back of almost every commercial contract. The other half contain the meaningful operative terms — the IP grants, the indemnifications, the liability cap, the amendment power. The operative half is where the bargain is asymmetric.

The two yellow blocks contain the sections where SDG takes broad rights over Subscriber work and Subscriber speech. The red block contains the indemnification and liability cap — the provisions that decide what happens when something goes wrong, and which read as if they were drafted by a lawyer who wanted SDG to bear nothing.

A full table of the 26 sections follows, with a one-line characterization of each.

§	Title	One-line characterization
Preamble	Parties and acceptance	Defines Subscriber, SDG, SDG Group, and warns the reader off relying on the Quick Summary
1	Steam Agreement	Confirms the SDG User Agreement supplements rather than replaces Valve's terms
2	Steam	Subscriber releases SDG for anything Steam- or Valve-related
3	SDG Content	Grants the Subscriber a license to use the game and forbids decompilation at 3(iv)
4	Subscriber Content	The Workshop-upload content grab; includes the SC Modifications transfer at 4(vii)
5	Subscriber Suggestions	Perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, transferable license to anything labeled a Suggestion
6	Subscriber Information	SDG disclaims responsibility for personal/financial info that flows through Steam
7	In-Game Communication	SDG disclaims responsibility for voice/text chat content
8	Third Party Content	SDG disclaims responsibility for community mods and other third-party uploads
9	Security	Subscriber must keep credentials confidential
10	Access	Subscriber is fully liable for anything done with their credentials, including by attackers
11	Disclaimer of Warranty	All-caps warranty disclaimer in standard form
12	Indemnification	Subscriber indemnifies SDG Group; SDG attempts to disclaim its own gross negligence
13	SDG Liability Limit	Caps SDG's total liability at 50% of net revenue received from Subscriber over six months
14	Confidentiality	Sweeping restriction on use of any information obtained through the SDG Content
15	Intellectual Property	Subscriber waives the right to challenge SDG IP validity in any forum
16	Default and Remedies	Termination, deactivation, deletion, and injunctive remedies, all at SDG's sole option
17	Notices	Email notice to info@smartlydressedgames.com
18	Independent	Disclaims employment, agency, or representative relationship
19	Reasonable	Contra proferentem waiver and reasonableness acknowledgment
20	Entire Agreement	Merger clause; does not override the Steam Agreement
21	Amendment	Unilateral amendment by SDG via posting to Steam, with no notice
22	Severability	Standard severability
23	Law	Alberta governing law — a remedy-elimination clause in disguise for international Subscribers
24	Survival	Every section survives expiration or termination, forever
25	Assignment	SDG may assign and walk away from all obligations; Subscriber may not assign at all
26	Acceptance	Continued use is deemed acceptance of current and future amended versions

The sections that earn the closest reading from a modder's perspective are 3(iv), 4 (in particular 4(iv) through 4(vii)), 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, 24, and 25. The remainder are either routine, Steam-side, or adequately captured by their Quick Summary characterization. The remainder of this article walks through each of those clauses in order and says, in plain language, what they actually do.

Did you know?

The Quick Summary at the very end of the agreement says explicitly that it "does not form part of the SDG User Agreement, is not legally binding and while it can be used as a reference should not be relied on in any instance." If the Quick Summary characterizes a clause one way and the binding text says something different, the binding text controls. Several of the Quick Summary's characterizations meaningfully understate what the binding text does. Subscribers who read only the Quick Summary do not understand what they have agreed to. Whether that gap is intentional drafting or a lawyer-and-marketing-team that did not coordinate is for the reader to assess; either way, the binding text is what binds.

Section 3(iv) — The decompilation prohibition

The third section of the agreement establishes the underlying grant of access to the SDG Content. Most of it is routine. Sub-clause (iv) is the one that matters.

"without the prior written consent of SDG, in SDG's sole and unfettered discretion, Subscriber will not allow the SDG Content to be copied, released, disclosed, hacked, decoded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, cheated or provided to any person"

What this means in plain language: SDG prohibits the exact practice every plugin developer in the Unturned ecosystem engages in. Decompilation, reverse engineering, code inspection, disclosure of internals — the binding contract bars all of it. Without "prior written consent" granted at SDG's "sole and unfettered discretion," any Subscriber who loads Assembly-CSharp.dll into dnSpy, ILSpy, or dotPeek to understand how the game's internals work has, on a literal reading, breached the agreement.

The plugin-development ecosystem around Unturned is built on this practice. RocketMod plugins, OpenMod modules, custom server modifications — none of them can be written without inspecting the base game's internals to understand the interfaces they need to hook. Every plugin developer who has shipped a working module against Unturned has done the work that Section 3(iv) prohibits.

The escape hatch is the "prior written consent" carve-out. It has never been granted publicly. There is no published blanket consent for modding-purpose decompilation. Nelson has made supportive statements about modding generally, in Discord and in scattered public posts, but supportive statements are not a written license. Modders who decompile rely on prosecutorial restraint, not legal permission. The gap between what the community does and what the contract permits is a permanent leverage point SDG retains over every plugin developer in the ecosystem.

Section 3(iv) is a leverage point, not a prohibition with teeth — yet

SDG's documented practice has been more permissive than the contract permits. The day a future SDG decision-maker decides to read the clause literally — for instance, in a dispute with a specific plugin developer over conduct unrelated to decompilation, where the decompilation prohibition becomes a useful additional hook — the clause is sitting there in the contract. The community's protection is SDG's choice not to enforce, not anything the contract gives them. Cross-link: see Reverse Engineering and Decompilation for the broader interoperability picture, including the DMCA § 1201(f) interoperability exception in US law and the limits of statutory carve-outs against contractual prohibitions.

The practical mod developer should understand this: the work rests on SDG's tolerance, not on a written license that protects you. A direct email to Nelson Sexton requesting written permission for inspection-for-interoperability purposes would close the gap for any developer who wants to operate strictly within the four corners of the agreement. Few developers have done this. Few will. But the gap is what it is, and the contractual position is what it is.

Section 4 — Subscriber Content (uploaded mods)

This is the section every Workshop publisher should read most carefully. Section 4 is the operative clause governing what happens to content uploaded to Steam Workshop. It is also where the gap between the Quick Summary characterization and the binding text is widest, and where the agreement does the heaviest lifting in terms of taking rights away from the people who upload content.

Section 4 has nine sub-clauses, (i) through (ix). We walk through each.

4(i) through 4(iii) — Routine

Sub-clauses (i), (ii), and (iii) establish that the Subscriber uploads at their own risk, that SDG Group has no control over the security or storage of uploaded content, and that the Subscriber represents they have the necessary rights to upload what they upload and that the upload does not infringe third-party IP or violate applicable laws. These are standard "you-are-responsible-for-what-you-upload" terms and they appear in essentially every user-generated-content platform's terms of service. No special concern.

4(iv) — "Sole and unfettered discretion" over use

"that even if the Subscriber Content is designed for use or integration with the SDG Content, it is up to SDG to determine, in its sole and unfettered discretion, whether the Subscriber Content, or any of it, can be offered in conjunction with the SDG content, promoted by SDG, monetized, integrated, sold, offered or disclosed to third parties, or otherwise"

What this means: SDG decides what happens to your mod once it lives on Steam Workshop. Whether to promote it, monetize it, integrate it into the base game, sell it to third parties, disclose it — SDG decides unilaterally. The Subscriber has no contractual lever to compel any particular treatment.

"Sole and unfettered discretion" is strong language. In commercial contracts, that phrase signals the decision-maker has no obligation to act reasonably or to consider the other party's interests. Canadian law has tempered the absolutism of such clauses somewhat — the Supreme Court's decisions in Bhasin v. Hrynew, 2014 SCC 71, and C.M. Callow Inc. v. Zollinger, 2020 SCC 45, recognize a general duty of honest performance in contractual dealings. Whether and how those duties bear on a clause like 4(iv) is jurisdiction- and fact-specific. The drafting itself, however, asks for more discretion than the law generally permits a contracting party to take.

4(v) — Standard percentage from SWTRS

"unless agreed otherwise in writing between SDG and Subscriber, by way of License and Revenue Sharing Agreement ('License Agreement') or otherwise, any SC Use by SDG that involves monetization or sale of the Subscriber Content will result in Subscriber receiving the standard percentage of Adjusted Gross Revenue, as defined and set out in the Steam Supplemental Workshop Terms – Revenue Sharing ('SWTRS')"

What this means: if SDG monetizes your uploaded content, the default revenue split is the "standard percentage" set out in Steam's separate Supplemental Workshop Terms document. Subscribers who want a different split need to negotiate a written License Agreement with SDG directly. SDG is under no obligation to offer one and the path to negotiating one is not advertised anywhere on SDG's public surfaces.

The standard percentage is set by Valve, not by SDG. It is not something SDG can change unilaterally. The relevant point is that if you do not negotiate a custom License Agreement before uploading, you have accepted the default split, with all the asymmetries that come with it.

4(vi) — Compensation only via the Revenue Share Agreements

"in uploading Subscriber Content, Subscriber is authorizing any or all SC Use by SDG, Subscriber is not entitled to any compensation from SDG as a result of such SC Use, except as specifically set out herein, in any License Agreement or in the SWTRS"

What this means: uploading content to Steam Workshop is the act that authorizes SDG to engage in the full range of SC Use activities defined in 4(iv) — monetization, promotion, integration, disclosure, sale. Compensation flows only through the Revenue Share Agreements (the SWTRS standard percentage, or a separately negotiated License Agreement). There is no other compensation path. Off-Workshop value SDG extracts from your content — brand association, integration credit, derivative work — is not compensable.

4(vii) — The SC Modifications grab

This is the clause we believe most Workshop publishers have never seen because it does not appear in the Quick Summary at all. We quote it in full.

"Subscriber grants to SDG Group the right to modify, reverse engineer, make derivative works, create improvements and integrations to, and from, the Subscriber Content ('SC Modifications'), but only to the extent required to integrate, make compatible or align the Subscriber Content with the SDG Content, for the purpose of SC Use involving sale or monetization of the Subscriber Content, with all right, title and interest in the SC Modifications belonging to SDG and Subscriber is not entitled to any compensation from SDG as a result of the SC Modifications, but rather receives compensation, if any, by way of revenue share on the monetized or sold Subscriber Content pursuant to the Revenue Share Agreements"

This is a content grab. Read what it says: you upload your mod to Workshop, ostensibly for the benefit of the community and your portfolio; SDG gets the right to modify, reverse-engineer, and derive new work from it; SDG owns the derivative outright; your only compensation is the standard SWTRS revenue share on your underlying mod, which Unturned has not meaningfully used in years. If SDG decides to integrate a mechanic from your mod into the base game, they own the integration code and pay you nothing for it directly.

There is a qualifier — "only to the extent required to integrate, make compatible or align." That sounds limiting. In practice, SDG retains sole discretion over what "required" means in any given case. A court might read "to the extent required" as a meaningful limit on the breadth of the derivative work, but the limiter operates in tension with the "sole and unfettered discretion" framing of 4(iv) elsewhere in the same section.

Two further interpretive points. First, the SC Modifications themselves — the derivative work — vest in SDG outright. Your underlying mod is still yours; SDG cannot take your map and turn it into a t-shirt without your separate consent. But the integration code SDG writes to make your mod work cleanly with the base game belongs to SDG, even if the integration code only has commercial value because of the mod underneath it.

Second, the compensation language is a closed loop. You get the standard percentage on monetized Subscriber Content. You get nothing on SC Modifications. SDG gets the SC Modifications. If SDG can extract value from the derivative without monetizing the underlying mod — for instance, by using the integration techniques you developed in unrelated future content — that value is captured entirely by SDG, with no obligation flowing back.

Section 4(vii) is not mentioned in the Quick Summary

The Quick Summary describes Section 4 as: "You're responsible for what you upload and will protect SDG for any issues that arise." That is a fair characterization of 4(i) through 4(iii) and 4(viii) through 4(ix), but it does not mention the SC Modifications grab in 4(vii), the discretion clause in 4(iv), or the compensation-only-via-revenue-share clause in 4(vi). The most consequential operative provisions in the section — the ones that take rights away from Subscribers — are not summarized at all. A Subscriber who reads the Quick Summary does not know that 4(vii) exists.

4(viii) and 4(ix) — Third-party access and indemnification

Sub-clauses (viii) and (ix) round out the section. Other Steam users will access your Subscriber Content and SDG is not liable for what they do with it. Subscribers indemnify SDG Group broadly for any Claims related to the Subscriber Content. Routine in form, but harsh in combination with the wider liability picture covered in Sections 12 and 13.

Practical impact for commercial modders

The practical impact of Section 4 for commercial mod publishers is that the Workshop upload path triggers the full SC Use authorization and the SC Modifications grab. Content that is never uploaded to Steam — content sold through an external Tebex storefront and delivered as a downloadable bundle — is generally not "Subscriber Content" under Section 4's definition, because Section 4 is scoped to "certain capabilities and functionality for Subscriber to upload their own content on Steam."

This is one reason 57 Studios uses the Tebex path for paid content. Workshop is the route SDG built; Tebex is the route that preserves your ownership of the work you make. The Section 4 framework is what makes that choice consequential. We cover the Tebex path in detail in Tebex and Commercial Monetization.

Pro tip

If you intend to publish to Steam Workshop and you want clarity on what SDG can and cannot do with your content, negotiate a written License Agreement under Section 4(v) before uploading. SDG is under no obligation to offer one, but the door is contractually open. The path is: prepare your content, contact SDG by email at info@smartlydressedgames.com per Section 17, and propose specific terms. A License Agreement signed before upload supersedes the default Section 4 framework. The timing matters — SC Use authorization attaches at upload. Negotiating after upload is negotiating after the rights you wanted to negotiate over have already been granted.

Section 5 — Subscriber Suggestions

Section 5 contains the broadest one-way IP license in the agreement. We quote sub-clause (iii) in full.

"SDG is granted a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, and transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works based on, publicly perform, publicly display, make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise exploit in any way any and all Subscriber Suggestions for any purposes, for all current and future methods and forms of exploitation"

Sub-clause (i) of the same section establishes that the Suggestions are "received without any credit, compensation, obligations or liability to Subscriber."

What this means in plain language: every word of every Discord message, Workshop comment, bug report, forum post, and design proposal you send SDG becomes SDG's property — non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, transferable — to use, modify, sell, sublicense, and exploit "for all current and future methods and forms of exploitation." With no credit. With no compensation. Forever. You retain non-exclusive rights — you can still use your own ideas elsewhere — but SDG can do whatever they want with what you tell them, and they owe you nothing for it.

This is one of the broadest one-way IP licenses in standard-form gaming contracts. The fact that variations of this clause appear in essentially every AAA game company's terms — Valve, Epic, Riot, Blizzard, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo all have analogous clauses — is not a defense of SDG's drafting. It is an indictment of the genre. The standard-form gaming contract industry has converged on a pattern where companies take perpetual ownership of everything their customers say to them about their products, in any forum, and the industry has talked itself into believing that pattern is normal.

The scope of what counts as a "Subscriber Suggestion" is the second concern. The contract does not define the term narrowly. Read literally, any "suggestion on SDG Content from Subscriber" is a Subscriber Suggestion. That includes:

• Detailed feature requests posted in the Unturned Discord
• Design proposals in Workshop comments
• Bug reports sent to SDG via email or community channels
• Forum posts on the Steam community
• Direct DMs to Nelson Sexton or other SDG staff containing design ideas
• Posts on the SDG subreddit if and when SDG staff read them
• Any other channel where a Subscriber communicates an idea that SDG personnel might see

If you have a polished, monetizable design idea — a unique mechanic, a novel system, a clever solution to a longstanding problem — and you post it in any community channel, the contract takes the position that SDG has the rights enumerated above to use it, build on it, sell it, sublicense it, and never pay you or credit you. The license attaches at disclosure. There is no take-back.

Best practice for design-proposal disclosures

For casual community feedback — "the cooking system should be more interactive" or "the airdrop loot table is too generous" — Section 5 is fine in practice. SDG receives that kind of input freely, the community benefits when the developer is responsive, and no reasonable Subscriber expects compensation for that kind of contribution. The clause becomes meaningful when you have a design idea that you would want paid for or credited for in a commercial context. In that case, the path is to negotiate a written License Agreement under Section 4(v) before disclosing the design through any channel that Section 5 might reach. Casual disclosure first, then negotiation, does not work — the Suggestion license attaches at disclosure and there is no contractual mechanism to retract it.

Section 6(ii) — Subscriber Information disclaimer

"SDG Group has no control over the security, handling, protection, confidentiality, storage, third party access or otherwise of Subscriber Information"

What this means: SDG disclaims responsibility for personal, confidential, or financial information that flows through Steam — account information, purchases, marketplace transactions, anything the Subscriber uploads or provides in connection with Steam itself.

This is a Steam-side disclaimer and it is fair as far as it goes. Valve is the data custodian for Steam account data; Valve's privacy policy and the Steam Subscriber Agreement govern how Valve handles that data. SDG is positioning itself as "we are not Valve; we cannot speak to what Valve does with your information." That framing is accurate. The point worth understanding is that any data-privacy concern arising from Steam-side handling has to be addressed to Valve, not to SDG.

Section 7 — In-Game Communication

Section 7 covers in-game voice chat and text chat. SDG disclaims responsibility for the content of those communications (7(i)). The Subscriber accepts liability for their own conduct in those channels (7(ii) and 7(iii)).

For RP-server operators, the relevant point is that the agreement places liability for in-game communications squarely on the Subscriber who made the statement. Server-operator policies that police player conduct are consistent with the contract, but the contract itself does not give SDG any obligation to assist in moderation.

Section 8 — Third Party Content

Section 8 disclaims SDG's responsibility for all third-party content, including community mods. When a player installs your mod from Steam Workshop, SDG is not on the hook for what your mod does to their save data, their machine, or anything else.

This cuts both ways. It protects SDG from liability when a community mod causes problems. It also means that, as a Workshop publisher, you cannot expect SDG to backstop you if your mod is blamed for something the player did not like. Section 8 places the relationship between the Workshop publisher and the player-consumer outside SDG's responsibility envelope, leaving Subscribers on both sides of that relationship to sort it out without SDG.

Section 10 — Access

"Subscriber acknowledges that they are fully liable and accountable for anything that may occur when the Subscriber's credentials or passwords are used to access Steam, including without limitation SDG Content"

What this means: if your account is compromised — phished, malware-stolen, shared inadvisedly with someone you trusted — and the attacker uses your credentials to do something the EULA prohibits, you are liable for the attacker's actions. The contract makes no carve-out for unauthorized access. The Subscriber is on the hook for conduct by anyone who can produce the Subscriber's credentials.

This is standard in online-platform contracts and is generally enforceable. The practical implication is the same as for any Steam user: protect your credentials, use Steam Guard, and treat account-takeover as a personal-liability issue. The contract gives you no slack for being the victim of a phishing attack.

Section 12 — Indemnification (and the gross-negligence carve-out)

Section 12 is the indemnification clause. The first sentence is routine: the Subscriber indemnifies SDG Group for Claims arising from the Subscriber's conduct, the Subscriber Content, the Subscriber Information, and so on. Every commercial contract has one.

The second sentence is the one to read carefully.

"None of SDG Group shall have any liability to Subscriber for any Claims whatsoever, including without limitation those arising, directly or indirectly, out of the SDG Content, this SDG User Agreement, the In-Game Communications, the Third Party Content, the Subscriber Content, the Subscriber Information, related to Steam or Valve, any matters regarding, related to or advanced by third parties or the actions of SDG Group, even if such action or inaction of SDG Group amounts to gross negligence, intentional act or willful misconduct."

The clause attempts to disclaim SDG Group's liability for Claims arising from its own gross negligence, intentional acts, and willful misconduct. This is bad-faith drafting.

Canadian contract law — the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Tercon Contractors Ltd. v. British Columbia (Transportation and Highways), 2010 SCC 4 — establishes that exclusion clauses can be struck on public-policy grounds where the conduct sought to be immunized is egregious. The Supreme Court set out a three-part test: whether the clause applies on its terms, whether it was unconscionable at formation, and whether public-policy reasons exist to refuse enforcement notwithstanding the first two. Gross negligence and willful misconduct are precisely the categories of conduct that the public-policy step is most likely to refuse to immunize.

SDG's lawyers know this. The framework has been the law in Canada for over fifteen years. Any commercial litigator drafting an exclusion clause in 2026 knows that attempting to disclaim liability for gross negligence is more aggressive than what the courts will reliably enforce. The clause is in the contract anyway. Why?

Because most Subscribers will never sue. Because most Subscribers will never test the clause. Because most Subscribers who read Section 12 will see "no liability even for gross negligence" and accept that SDG bears no responsibility for anything. The clause is drafting that capitalizes on Subscribers not knowing the clause is likely unenforceable. It is intended to deter Claims that would otherwise be valid, not to win Claims that reach a court. That is bad-faith drafting — the deterrent effect is what the clause buys, and the deterrent effect operates entirely on Subscribers who do not have the resources to test it.

Section 12 is unusually broad

The gross-negligence carve-out is the clause most likely to be tested in court if anything goes seriously wrong, and the clause most likely to lose in that test. The presence of the clause does not mean SDG has acted with gross negligence — there is no evidence of that and we have no reason to think SDG would. The clause is a contractual position. The position is more aggressive than the law clearly permits, and the attempt itself signals how the agreement was drafted.

Section 13 — The Liability Cap

Section 12 is followed by Section 13, which caps SDG Group's liability quantitatively. We quote it.

"The total aggregate liability of SDG Group under this SDG User Agreement, arising in any manner whatsoever, shall be limited to the total maximum aggregate amount equal to fifty percent (50%) of the net revenue received directly by SDG from Subscriber for use of the SDG Content in the six (6) month period before the first Claim advanced against SDG Group under this Agreement"

The clause continues: "the SDG Liability Limit is set and crystallized by the first Claim against SDG Group under this Agreement, and the aggregate liability of SDG Group under this Agreement, for all Claims, is that SDG Liability Limit."

Walk through what this means in numbers.

Unturned is free-to-play. The standard Subscriber pays SDG nothing. The relationship is mediated through Steam, and the only revenue SDG receives directly from a typical Subscriber is through paid cosmetic items or DLC purchases. For a Subscriber who has spent nothing on Unturned in the six months before a Claim, the liability cap is fifty percent of zero. The cap is zero. SDG has, in functional terms, written themselves zero accountability into the contract for the great majority of their player base.

For a Subscriber who has spent $10 on cosmetics in the relevant six-month window, the cap is $5. For a Subscriber who has spent $40 on DLC, the cap is $20. Even Subscribers who spend serious money on the game face caps so far below typical damages quantum — for any meaningful harm — that the cap may as well not exist.

The "set and crystallized by the first Claim" sentence locks the cap in place permanently. The first paid cosmetic item locks in a cap of a few dollars across every future Claim, no matter how serious. If a Subscriber brings a small Claim — for any reason, however minor — the cap is set based on the six months before that Claim. All subsequent Claims, no matter what conduct gives rise to them, are capped at that limit.

Combined with Section 12, the picture is this: even if a court refuses to enforce the gross-negligence carve-out and finds SDG liable, the maximum recovery is fifty percent of a small number, possibly zero. The contract does not promise the Subscriber meaningful financial recourse against SDG for anything. That is the equilibrium the drafter chose. Section 12 attempts to immunize SDG from liability altogether; Section 13 sets a ceiling on the recovery if Section 12 fails. The two clauses together form a belt-and-suspenders structure designed to make any successful Claim against SDG functionally unrecoverable.

Did you know?

Caps of this kind — "limited to fees paid in the preceding twelve months" or similar — are common in software EULAs. The unusual feature of Section 13 is the 50% multiplier (most contracts cap at 100% of fees, not 50%) and the "crystallized by the first Claim" mechanism, which means a single minor dispute permanently fixes the cap going forward. SDG has chosen a structure that is harsher than the median software EULA on both dimensions.

Section 14 — Confidentiality

"any personal or third party information obtained from, or from using, the SDG Content shall not be used in any way other than as is strictly necessary for use of the SDG Content as intended by this SDG User Agreement"

The clause restricts what Subscribers can do with information they obtain by playing the game. Read literally, it is broader than it looks. A non-exhaustive list of things this clause could plausibly reach:

• Screenshots of in-game scenes that display another player's Steam username over their character
• Discussions in public forums about what another player said on a server you played on
• Republication of player-generated content visible in the game (signs, structures, voice clips)
• Streaming or recording gameplay that captures incidental personal information of other players
• Sharing screenshots from the Steam Workshop comment threads that include other Subscribers' usernames

In practice, none of these activities draws enforcement action and most are routine in any online gaming community. The clause is interpreted narrowly in practice and "strictly necessary for use of the SDG Content as intended" is broad enough to cover incidental display of usernames in screenshots and streams.

SDG's lawyers know the clause is over-broad. The breadth is not an accident. The breadth gives SDG a contractual hook to threaten action against any Subscriber whose content SDG finds inconvenient — a content creator whose video casts SDG in a negative light, a community member whose forum posts include screenshots SDG would rather take down. The clause is not designed to be enforced uniformly. It is designed to be available when SDG wants leverage. Most Subscribers will never trip it. The few who do something SDG dislikes might find that the confidentiality clause is one of several contractual hooks available against them.

Section 15 — IP non-challenge

"Subscriber will not challenge the validity or enforceability of any of the patents or rights of SDG Group to any intellectual property, in any way, including before any governmental authority or by participating in or initiating any reexamination or inter partes proceeding."

What this means: the Subscriber contractually waives the right to challenge SDG's patents or other intellectual property — in any forum, including before patent offices and in inter partes proceedings.

No-challenge clauses have a contested legal history. In US patent law, the Supreme Court's decision in Lear, Inc. v. Adkins, 395 U.S. 653 (1969), limited the enforceability of such clauses on the public-policy ground that the public interest in invalidating bad patents outweighs the contracting parties' interest in finality. Subsequent US cases have refined the doctrine, but the Lear principle still constrains the enforceability of no-challenge clauses against accused infringers and licensees in many circumstances. Canadian law has not produced a single dominant case on no-challenge clauses comparable to Lear but generally follows similar public-policy principles, particularly where patent validity is concerned.

The clause is in the contract to make Subscribers think they cannot challenge SDG's IP at all. Most Subscribers will accept that framing and will not challenge SDG's IP, regardless of whether the clause would survive a court test. That deterrent effect is what the clause buys. Whether enforceable against any given Subscriber in any given challenge is jurisdiction- and fact-specific. The practical impact is limited because few Subscribers were going to challenge SDG patents anyway. The clause matters more as a signal of the drafter's posture than as a meaningful provision in any anticipated dispute.

Section 19 — Contra proferentem waiver

"SUBSCRIBER AGREES THE LIABILITY AND INDEMNITY OBLIGATIONS ASSUMED BY SUBSCRIBER ARE REASONABLE AND EQUITABLE BASED UPON THE NATURE OF THE SDG CONTENT PROVIDED AND THE LEGAL DOCTRINE OF CONTRA PROFERENTEM SHALL NOT APPLY TO THIS SDG USER AGREEMENT."

Two things in one clause.

First, the reasonableness acknowledgment. The Subscriber agrees that the liability and indemnity obligations they assume are "reasonable and equitable." This is the kind of acknowledgment a drafter inserts to defend against an unconscionability challenge — if the Subscriber later argues the indemnities were so one-sided as to be unconscionable, the drafter points to this clause and says "you agreed they were reasonable." Whether the acknowledgment carries weight against a genuine unconscionability argument depends on the doctrine in the relevant jurisdiction. The clause is a self-serving recitation that exists to make later challenges harder.

Second, the contra proferentem waiver. Contra proferentem is the doctrine that ambiguity in a contract is interpreted against the party that drafted it. The doctrine exists because the drafter had the chance to write clearly. Ambiguity is the drafter's failure, and the drafter should bear the cost of that failure.

Waiving the doctrine attempts to shift the cost of SDG's own drafting ambiguity onto Subscribers. It is the drafter trying to escape responsibility for being unclear — the contract equivalent of "if you didn't understand what we wrote, that's your fault, not ours." That position is one-sided on its face. The drafter wrote the contract. The Subscriber clicked accept. Ambiguity in the document is the drafter's product, not the Subscriber's. Asking the Subscriber to bear the cost of that ambiguity is asking the Subscriber to subsidize the drafter's choice of how carefully to write.

Some Canadian authorities suggest that fundamental rules of contract interpretation cannot be contracted around. Others suggest that contra proferentem is a rule of construction that parties can waive by clear language. The position is unsettled, and a Subscriber's ability to invoke contra proferentem against an ambiguous provision in a specific dispute would turn on how an Alberta court read the doctrine on the facts. The clause is aspirational at best. It is also rare among gaming-platform contracts; most platforms do not bother trying to waive contra proferentem because the attempt is so transparent.

Section 21 — Unilateral amendment

"This SDG User Agreement shall remain in full force and effect, unamended, from the date of acknowledgement and acceptance by Subscriber, unless and until amended by SDG, by posting an amended version to Steam."

Combined with Section 26, this gives SDG the unilateral power to amend the agreement by posting a new version to Steam. No notice to Subscribers is required. No subscriber consent is required. Continued use of the SDG Content after the silent amendment is deemed acceptance of the amended version.

The version of the agreement you accepted is not the version that binds you tomorrow. SDG can amend, in any direction, at any time, and the only way to reject the amendment is to stop using Unturned entirely.

For a contract as asymmetric as this one, the unilateral-amendment clause is the mechanism by which any remaining Subscriber protections can be quietly removed at any time. If the indemnities get broader, the cap gets harsher, the SC Modifications grab gets wider — those changes bind every Subscriber the moment they next launch the game. The Subscriber has no contractual lever to keep using the SDG Content under the version they accepted when they joined.

The fact that most platforms do this does not make it less concerning. It makes it worse, because it is a systemic problem across modern click-through contracts. The genre has converged on a pattern where the consumer's accepted-on-click position is not the position that binds them next week, and the doctrine of contract has not produced an effective answer to that pattern at the consumer-protection level.

Pro tip

Archive a dated copy of the SDG User Agreement at the time of each major project decision — when you publish a mod, when you launch a server, when you release a commercial product. A PDF print-to-file with the date embedded is sufficient. If the agreement is amended later in a way that affects you, having the version in effect when you made your decision is the only way to argue that you reasonably relied on its terms. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has periodically captured copies of the SDG User Agreement and similar Steam-distributed documents. That can serve as an independent archive if you do not maintain your own.

Section 23 — Alberta governing law

"This SDG User Agreement shall be governed by and construed in the accordance with the laws in force in the Province of Alberta."

Alberta law applies. Smartly Dressed Games Ltd. is an Alberta corporation. The contract is governed by Alberta law and any dispute would, in the ordinary course, be brought in an Alberta court. The contract does not contain an explicit forum-selection clause, but the combination of Alberta governing law and an Alberta corporate defendant points strongly to Alberta venue.

For Subscribers outside Canada — which is to say, the overwhelming majority of the Unturned playerbase — any contractual dispute requires engaging Alberta counsel and the Alberta court system. The cost of doing that from outside Canada, let alone from outside North America, exceeds the recoverable damages quantum under Section 13 by orders of magnitude. A US-based commercial mod publisher who suffered $10,000 of harm at SDG's hands, capped at $5 under Section 13, would spend tens of thousands of dollars on counsel to recover $5 in Alberta court. The math does not work.

The forum-selection effect is therefore not just a logistical consideration; it is a remedy-elimination mechanism. The combined effect of Sections 13 and 23 is that meaningful litigation against SDG is uneconomic for the vast majority of Subscribers. Even Subscribers with valid Claims and serious damages face a contractual structure where pursuing the Claim costs more than the Claim can ever recover. That is the practical consequence of the bargain. SDG has bought, through clauses 13 and 23 together, near-immunity from Subscriber Claims of any size.

For Canadian Subscribers in provinces other than Alberta, the governing-law clause still controls, but the practical burden of litigating in Alberta is much lower. The Subscriber population that can realistically bring a Claim against SDG is Albertans. The Subscriber population that cannot is essentially everyone else.

Section 24 — Survival

"All sections and terms of this SDG User Agreement shall survive the expiration or other termination of this SDG User Agreement."

Every provision survives termination indefinitely. Uninstalling Unturned does not end your obligations under the agreement. Stop playing Unturned and you are still bound by:

• The indemnities in Sections 4(ix) and 12
• The IP non-challenge clause in Section 15
• The Suggestion license in Section 5
• The confidentiality clause in Section 14
• The SC Modifications grant in Section 4(vii)
• Every other provision in the contract

There is no off-ramp. The contract is forever. Conduct during the agreement's life — design proposals you submitted, mods you uploaded, suggestions you made — leaves you bound by the terms attaching to that conduct, even after you have ceased every other relationship with Unturned and SDG.

This is broader than the typical survival clause. Most carefully drafted contracts enumerate the specific provisions that survive (indemnification, confidentiality, IP, dispute resolution) and let the operative grant of access terminate cleanly. Section 24's "all sections" formulation reaches even routine clauses you would expect to die with the contract. A reasonable court would read the clause pragmatically — the access grant cannot survive termination because survival of the access grant would defeat the purpose of termination — but the clause as drafted is broader than necessary, and the breadth is consistent with the rest of the agreement's posture.

Section 25 — Assignment without consent

"Neither this SDG User Agreement, or any of the rights or access under it, are assignable by Subscriber. SDG may assign its rights and obligations under this Agreement, without the consent of Subscriber, and upon notice of the assignment SDG shall be released of all obligations under this Agreement."

Two asymmetries.

First, SDG may assign; the Subscriber may not. SDG can sell their rights and obligations under the agreement to anyone, without Subscriber consent. Subscribers cannot transfer their position. The Subscriber's rights and obligations are personal and unassignable. Commercial mod businesses, in particular, cannot pass a "grandfathered" position to a successor entity — if the business is sold, the successor must accept whatever current version of the EULA is in force.

Second, on assignment, SDG is released from all obligations under the agreement. The acquiring entity inherits the rights; SDG itself walks away clean. This is unusual. Most assignment clauses provide that the assignor remains liable for pre-assignment obligations unless the counterparty consents to a novation. Section 25 takes the novation result — full release of the assignor — without Subscriber consent.

This is a moral-hazard mechanism. If SDG decides at some future point to monetize subscriber-unfriendly enforcement of the agreement — for instance, by selling the Unturned IP to a buyer who will aggressively pursue Workshop publishers under Section 4(vii) or plugin developers under Section 3(iv) — they can sell to a buyer who will, walk away, and take no reputational hit for what the acquirer does. The acquirer inherits the contract; SDG disappears from the legal landscape; the Subscribers are bound to terms they accepted with one company and now litigate against another.

Section 25 enables a future-owner risk

If Smartly Dressed Games Ltd. is acquired by a less scrupulous owner — or sells the Unturned IP to a different developer — the SDG User Agreement transfers with it, and the Subscriber has no right to object or terminate. The protections that come from SDG's documented practice of permissive modding policy are dependent on SDG remaining SDG. The contract does not bind a successor to the same practices. The successor inherits the maximum rights SDG drafted into the contract, not the restrained way SDG has chosen to exercise them.

This is not a prediction. SDG has been independent since founding, Nelson Sexton has shown no indication of selling, and there is no specific risk to flag in 2026. The clause is worth understanding as a structural feature of the agreement — a feature that makes the documented-practice column of the contract-vs-practice gap contingent on the identity of the company, not on the document the company signed.

The Quick Summary problem

The Quick Summary at the end of the agreement is the part most Subscribers read, if they read anything at all. It is explicitly non-binding. From the preamble: "the Quick Summary does not form part of the SDG User Agreement, is not legally binding and while it can be used as a reference should not be relied on in any instance."

Where the Quick Summary characterizes a clause one way and the binding text says something different, the binding text controls. On several points, the two diverge sharply. We compare the two on the most divergent provisions.

Topic	Quick Summary characterization	Binding text
Subscriber Content (Section 4)	"You're responsible for what you upload and will protect SDG for any issues that arise"	Plus: SC Use authorization (4(vi)), SDG ownership of integration derivatives (4(vii)), SDG's sole and unfettered discretion over monetization and integration (4(iv))
Subscriber Suggestions (Section 5)	"Any suggestions you provide are free for SDG to use"	Worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, transferable license to all reproduction, distribution, modification, derivative-works, sale, importation, and exploitation rights
Liability (Sections 12 and 13)	"SDG's liability to you is limited"	Disclaims liability for gross negligence and willful misconduct (Section 12); caps liability at 50% of six-month direct revenue, crystallized by the first Claim (Section 13)
Amendment (Sections 21 and 26)	"SDG can update this agreement"	Unilateral amendment by posting to Steam; no notice required; continued use is deemed acceptance
Assignment (Section 25)	Not mentioned in Quick Summary	SDG may assign without Subscriber consent and is released from all obligations on assignment; Subscriber may not assign

Several Quick Summary characterizations meaningfully understate the binding text. Subscribers who read only the Quick Summary do not understand what they have agreed to. Whether the gap is intentional drafting or just lawyer-and-marketing-not-talking is for the reader to assess; either way, the binding text controls and the Subscriber is bound to it.

The preamble's explicit warning against relying on the Quick Summary is a tell. Most contracts that include a non-binding summary do not affirmatively warn readers against reliance; they simply note the summary is for convenience. The SDG User Agreement's specific instruction to ignore the Quick Summary as a basis for any decision is the drafter telling you, in writing, that the document you are about to skim is not the document you have to deal with later.

Did you know?

The preamble's explicit statement that the Quick Summary "should not be relied on in any instance" is unusually direct. Most contracts that include both binding terms and a summary do not affirmatively warn readers against reliance on the summary; they simply note the summary is for convenience. The SDG User Agreement's specific instruction to ignore the Quick Summary as a basis for any decision is a sign that the drafter knew the Quick Summary and the binding text were not in alignment. If they had been in alignment, the warning would have been unnecessary.

The pattern

Step back from the clause-by-clause analysis and look at the agreement as a whole. The pattern across Sections 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, and 25 is consistent: maximum SDG discretion, maximum Subscriber obligation, minimum SDG accountability, maximum SDG ability to amend or transfer the bargain. The drafter wrote a contract designed to make the Subscriber's accepted-on-click position approximately powerless against the drafter.

Each clause considered alone might be defensible as standard practice. The SC Modifications grant in 4(vii) is a content-grab clause, but other AAA contracts contain comparable grants. The Suggestion license in Section 5 is one of the broadest one-way IP licenses in the genre, but variations appear in essentially every major gaming-platform contract. The gross-negligence carve-out in Section 12 is bad-faith drafting, but it is bad-faith drafting that appears in many indie-developer EULAs that copied an aggressive template. The liability cap in Section 13 is functionally zero for the typical free-to-play Subscriber, but caps of various harshness are universal in software EULAs. The forum-selection effect of Section 23 turns Section 13's cap into a remedy-elimination mechanism, but forum-selection clauses are also industry standard.

Considered together, the clauses form a contract that takes from Subscribers without giving back, retains every important discretion for the drafter, eliminates accountability for the drafter's own serious misconduct, caps the cost of any successful Claim at near-zero, structures the forum to make even the capped Claim uneconomic, allows the drafter to amend the terms at any time, and lets the drafter sell the position and walk away from every obligation. The pattern is consistent. The pattern is the agreement.

This pattern is not uniquely SDG's. Valve's Steam Subscriber Agreement, Epic's EULA, Riot's Terms of Service, Blizzard's Battle.net terms, Microsoft's Xbox user agreement, Sony's PSN agreement, Nintendo's Account user agreement, and dozens of other gaming-platform contracts contain analogous provisions. The pattern is industrial. SDG is operating within the genre, with some specific provisions (the 50% multiplier on the cap, the crystallization-on-first-Claim mechanism, the contra proferentem waiver, the assignment-release) that go further than the median.

That industrial context is relevant but it is not a defense. The legal academic literature on standard-form contracts is direct about it. Margaret Jane Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and the Rule of Law (Princeton University Press, 2013) is the leading book-length treatment. Radin argues that the click-through contract has become a vehicle for the systematic elimination of consumer rights that the doctrine of contract assumes consumers retain, and that the gap between contract theory and click-through reality is wide enough to constitute a category of consumer-protection failure. The Unturned EULA is one specimen of that category. The fact that it shares its specimens with every other major gaming platform does not make any of them acceptable. It makes the genre, collectively, a consumer-protection problem that the law has not yet adequately addressed.

The point of this section is not to argue that SDG is uniquely bad or that the agreement is uniquely predatory. The point is that the agreement is bad, in the specific sense that it is one-sided against Subscribers in ways the doctrine of contract has not effectively constrained, and that the pattern is recognizable and worth naming. Subscribers who recognize the pattern can plan around it. Subscribers who do not are bound by it anyway.

What this means in practice — by user category

The full picture of the agreement matters differently for different participants in the modding ecosystem. We work through the major categories.

Everyday Unturned players

Most provisions never come up. The player launches the game, accepts the click-through, plays, logs off. Section 9's confidentiality-of-credentials rule and Section 10's liability for credential misuse are the only practical concerns, and they are no different from the equivalent terms in every other online game. The decompilation prohibition in Section 3(iv) does not affect a player who does not decompile. The SC Modifications grab in 4(vii) does not affect a player who does not upload. The Suggestion license in Section 5 attaches every time the player posts a feature request, but for casual feedback the attachment is not a meaningful concern.

Recommendation: enable Steam Guard, do not share credentials, do not be the person who lets someone "borrow" your account. Beyond that, the contract is mostly latent against you.

Workshop mod creators (free, non-commercial)

Section 4(vii) is the clause to understand. By uploading, you grant SDG the right to make integration-purpose derivatives of your mod, with ownership of those derivatives in SDG. If you are uploading for community goodwill, for portfolio purposes, or to contribute to the ecosystem without commercial intent, this may be an acceptable trade. The clause does not strip you of your underlying mod; it transfers ownership of the integration derivative if and when SDG creates one.

The Section 4(iv) "sole and unfettered discretion" clause means SDG decides whether and how to integrate, monetize, or promote your content. You have no contractual lever to compel any particular treatment. Promotion, monetization, integration, sale, disclosure — all at SDG's discretion, all without compensation to you outside the revenue-share framework.

Recommendation: upload if your goals are non-commercial and you accept that SDG owns any integration derivative they make. Read the SWTRS if you are at all interested in the default revenue split for any future SDG-led monetization of your content.

Workshop mod creators (revenue share)

The SWTRS — Steam Supplemental Workshop Terms – Revenue Sharing — is the operative document, alongside Section 4 of the SDG User Agreement. The standard percentage applies unless you have a custom License Agreement negotiated under Section 4(v).

Recommendation: read the SWTRS in full before any monetized upload. If your work is meaningfully novel, negotiate a License Agreement before upload rather than after, because the SC Use authorization in 4(vi) attaches at upload. Negotiating after upload is negotiating after the rights you wanted to negotiate over have already been granted.

Commercial mod publishers (Tebex storefront)

Content sold through Tebex is not uploaded to Steam Workshop. It is delivered as a downloadable bundle from your storefront under your license terms, payable to you through the Tebex payment processor. Because Section 4 is scoped to "certain capabilities and functionality for Subscriber to upload their own content on Steam," content that does not flow through Steam's upload mechanism is generally outside the Section 4 framework.

This is the path 57 Studios uses for paid content. The structure preserves your ownership of derivatives, your discretion over pricing, and your direct relationship with the customer. The trade-off is that Tebex-sold content does not get Workshop discoverability, does not participate in any future SDG-led monetization, and lives outside the Steam ecosystem's native distribution.

Recommendation: for paid content where you want unambiguous ownership of derivatives, the Tebex path is the cleaner option. See Tebex and Commercial Monetization for the detailed mechanics.

Roleplay server operators

Standard EULA risk applies. Section 8's third-party-content disclaimer means SDG is not on the hook for what your community does. Section 10 means you are liable for anything done with your operator credentials. Section 7 means you are liable for your own in-game communications and your community members are liable for theirs, with SDG disclaiming responsibility for the content of those communications.

There is no specific RP-server clause in the agreement. RP-server operators are Subscribers like any other; the agreement applies the same way it applies to a single-player offline user. The specific operational concerns of running a community — player conduct, monetization through Tebex, donation-perk structures, advertising — are governed by separate documents (Steam's terms, Tebex's terms, applicable consumer-protection law) more than by the SDG User Agreement.

Recommendation: clear operator-side policies, two-factor authentication on the operator's Steam account, and a clear separation between the operator's personal identity and the server's brand identity. The latter is more for trademark and DMCA reasons than for EULA reasons.

Plugin developers (RocketMod, OpenMod, custom modules)

Section 3(iv) is the relevant prohibition. Decompilation, reverse engineering, and code inspection are contractually prohibited without prior written consent from SDG. The community's documented practice has been more permissive than the contract permits, but the contract is the document that binds, and the contract has not been amended to codify the permissive practice.

Recommendation: a polite email to Nelson Sexton at info@smartlydressedgames.com requesting written confirmation that decompilation for interoperability purposes is acceptable would close the gap. Many plugin developers have informal correspondence with SDG that, in substance, amounts to written consent — but few have it formalized as a single document they can produce if asked. See Reverse Engineering and Decompilation for the broader picture.

Suggestion-providers

If you have DMed Nelson, posted a detailed design idea in the Unturned Discord, submitted a polished feature request anywhere SDG staff might read it, or otherwise made a "Subscriber Suggestion" as defined in Section 5 — the license has already attached. There is no contractual "undo."

This does not mean SDG has used your suggestion. It means that under the contract, they have the right to. For most casual community feedback, this is not a meaningful concern; the contribution was offered freely and the contributor would not have sought compensation anyway. For polished, monetizable design proposals, the lesson is that the time to negotiate is before disclosure, not after.

Pro tip

If you have an idea you want compensated for, treat it the way a professional consultant treats a pitch: nondisclosure agreement first, disclosure second, written agreement on terms third. None of those steps can be retroactively applied to a Discord post. The Suggestion license attaches at disclosure and the contract gives you no path to take it back.

Recommendations

A short list of practical recommendations for the working modder.

1. Save a dated copy of the agreement at the time of each major project decision. Print to PDF with the system date embedded. If the agreement is amended in a way that affects you, having the version in effect when you made your decision is the only foundation for a reliance argument.

2. For commercial mod work, use the Tebex external-storefront path with a 57 Studios-style license. Workshop is for community contribution; Tebex is for commercial publishing. Mixing the two confuses the ownership picture and exposes content to the Section 4 framework unnecessarily.

3. Submit detailed monetizable design proposals through a private channel with a written License Agreement. Section 4(v) contemplates License Agreements. Use that path for any design you would want paid for. The default Section 5 framework gives SDG perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable rights to anything you post in a public channel.

4. Treat the EULA as the worst-case enforcement envelope, not the day-to-day relationship. SDG's documented practice has been more permissive than the contract permits on essentially every flagged clause. The contract sets the maximum reach of SDG's rights; the relationship sets the actual reach. The two are not the same, and the protection comes from the relationship, not from the contract.

5. Consider Alberta-qualified counsel if your commercial mod exposure is meaningful. The cost of a one-hour consultation with an Alberta solicitor is small compared to the cost of a commercial dispute that turns on an ambiguity in the agreement. If your annual mod revenue is a meaningful share of your income, the consultation is worth having before a dispute arises rather than during one.

6. Read the SWTRS separately. This article does not cover the Steam Supplemental Workshop Terms – Revenue Sharing in detail. For Workshop monetization, the SWTRS is as important as the SDG User Agreement, and it is a separate document with its own provisions and its own gaps.

7. Keep open communication with SDG. Nelson Sexton has historically been responsive to direct community correspondence. The contractual position is the worst case; the relationship is the actual case. Most concerns flagged in this article can be addressed in advance through a polite email rather than through reading the binding text as a worst-case enforcement document.

Where to find the agreement

The current version of the SDG User Agreement is published on the Unturned Steam store page (https://store.steampowered.com/app/304930/Unturned/) under the manual / EULA link, and on the SDG official documentation site at https://docs.smartlydressedgames.com/en/stable/.

Subscribers should review the current binding text directly rather than rely on third-party summaries, including this article. We have made our best effort to characterize the document accurately, but the binding text controls in any conflict, and the document is subject to unilateral amendment under Section 21. The version we analyzed in this article is the version in effect as of the publication date of this article. Future amendments may change the analysis.

Closing

This article is a working publisher's read of the binding contract. It is sharp because the contract is bad, and softening the description would not serve the community. We have been deliberate about what we say and what we do not say.

What we say: the clauses we have walked through are one-sided, several of them are bad-faith drafting, and the agreement as a whole forms a pattern in which the Subscriber's accepted-on-click position is approximately powerless against the drafter. The agreement is industrial in its conformity with the AAA gaming-contract genre, and the genre is a consumer-protection failure that the law has not yet adequately addressed.

What we do not say: that SDG has used the contract aggressively. There is no evidence of that. SDG's documented practice has been more permissive than the contract permits on essentially every clause we have flagged. Nelson Sexton has been a thoughtful, responsive, and reasonable counterparty in our direct correspondence. The relationship is the actual case. The contract is the worst case. We continue to operate as a working Unturned mod publisher under this agreement, and we expect to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

Several of the concerns flagged in this article can be addressed by direct correspondence with Nelson. Negotiate a License Agreement before uploading commercially novel content. Ask for written consent for inspection-for-interoperability purposes if you are a plugin developer. Treat the Tebex path as the route for paid content where you want clean ownership. Archive a dated copy of the agreement at each major project milestone. Maintain the relationship. The community is better served by understanding the contract clearly than by relying on either the Quick Summary or on assumptions about how SDG might choose to enforce the document.

For SDG's stated positions and the public-facing modding policy, see Smartly Dressed Games Modding Policy. That article covers what Nelson says; this one covers what the binding contract says. The two are usefully read together.

Other cross-references in the legal section that bear on the topics in this article: Reverse Engineering and Decompilation for the Section 3(iv) interoperability question; Tebex and Commercial Monetization for the external-storefront path; Derivative Works and Reskins for the underlying IP framework that Section 4(vii) operates within; and How Steam DMCA Works for the enforcement infrastructure that ultimately backstops the agreement on the Steam side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Section 4 mean SDG owns my Workshop mod?

No. Section 4(vii) gives SDG ownership of integration-purpose derivatives that SDG itself creates from your mod (the "SC Modifications"). It does not transfer ownership of your underlying mod to SDG. Your Subscriber Content remains yours; SDG's ownership is limited to the derivatives they create for compatibility, integration, or alignment purposes in the context of monetization or sale. The default revenue-share framework in 4(v) and 4(vi) applies to monetization of your underlying content. That said, the clause is a content grab on the derivative work — SDG gets the integration code without paying you for it directly, and the integration code may be where the commercial value lives if SDG officially adopts a mechanic from your mod.

Can I challenge SDG's IP if Section 15 is potentially unenforceable?

In theory, yes, if the no-challenge clause is held unenforceable in the relevant jurisdiction. In practice, almost no Subscriber would have a reason to challenge SDG's intellectual property in the first place, so the question rarely matters. If you find yourself in a situation where the answer matters — for instance, if SDG asserts a patent against your mod — that is the moment to retain counsel and assess whether the no-challenge clause holds up against the specific challenge you would bring. The clause is in the contract to deter the challenge, not to win it in court; most Subscribers will accept the deterrent and never test the clause, which is precisely the outcome the drafter wanted.

What happens if SDG amends the agreement while I have a pending mod release?

Continued use after an amendment is deemed acceptance under Section 26. If you launch your mod after an amendment that materially changes Section 4, the amended Section 4 governs. The practical mitigation is the recommendation in this article: archive a dated copy of the agreement at the time of each major project decision, so you have a contemporaneous record of the terms you accepted. The contract does not give you a unilateral termination right except by ceasing use, so amendments you dislike leave you with two options — accept them by continuing to play, or stop playing entirely.

Does the Section 5 suggestion clause apply to bug reports?

The contract does not carve out bug reports from the definition of Subscriber Suggestions. Read literally, a detailed bug report that includes a proposed fix is a Subscriber Suggestion, and the perpetual, irrevocable license attaches at disclosure. In practice, the kinds of bug reports that include proposed fixes are typically not the kinds of contributions where the contributor would have sought compensation, so the application of Section 5 to bug reports is not a meaningful concern in everyday practice. The Section 5 license attaches regardless; the question is whether the contributor would have wanted otherwise.

Is the gross-negligence carve-out in Section 12 actually enforceable in Alberta?

We do not predict outcomes. The Supreme Court's framework in Tercon Contractors Ltd. v. British Columbia (Transportation and Highways), 2010 SCC 4, gives Alberta courts a three-step analysis: whether the clause applies on its terms, whether it was unconscionable at formation, and whether public policy reasons exist to refuse enforcement notwithstanding the first two. Gross negligence and willful misconduct are precisely the kinds of conduct most likely to attract public-policy refusal of enforcement. A court might enforce the clause for ordinary negligence and decline to enforce it for the gross-negligence and willful-misconduct portions. SDG's lawyers know this. The clause is in the contract anyway, which is what makes the drafting bad-faith — the deterrent operates on Subscribers who do not know the clause is likely unenforceable, regardless of how a court would actually rule.

Why does Tebex sidestep most of Section 4?

Section 4's scope is "certain capabilities and functionality for Subscriber to upload their own content on Steam." Content that is sold through a Tebex external storefront and delivered as a downloadable bundle does not flow through Steam's upload mechanism. Because it is not "uploaded on Steam," it is generally not "Subscriber Content" as Section 4 defines that term. The SC Use authorization, the SC Modifications grab, and the standard-percentage revenue-share default all attach to Subscriber Content, so content outside that definition is outside those provisions. This is the structural reason commercial mod publishers, including 57 Studios, use the Tebex path for paid content. It is the only structural route to keep ownership of derivative work in the publisher's hands.

Does the EULA apply to my private dedicated server's community?

The EULA applies to each Subscriber individually. Your dedicated server's community members are each Subscribers in their own right, each bound to the agreement. As the operator, you are not vicariously bound to the agreement on behalf of your community. Section 7 makes the in-game communications liability personal to each speaker; Section 8 makes third-party-content liability personal to each consumer of that content. Your operator-side liability is governed primarily by Section 10 (credential misuse) and any commercial arrangements you have made with players (which are governed by your own terms, not by the SDG User Agreement).

Can I screenshot the EULA for my own records?

Yes. The EULA itself does not prohibit screenshotting or archiving the agreement. Section 14's confidentiality clause is about information obtained through the SDG Content, not about the agreement itself. Subscribers are encouraged to keep dated archives of the agreement at major project milestones, as recommended in this article. The contract is subject to unilateral amendment under Section 21, and the version that bound you when you made a decision is not necessarily the version that binds you later; archived copies are how you reconstruct the version you operated under.

Does Section 5 apply to a feature suggestion I made in a public forum a year ago?

If the suggestion qualified as a Subscriber Suggestion under Section 5 — which is broadly defined — the license attached at the time of disclosure. Subsequent events do not detach the license. SDG may or may not have used the suggestion; the question of whether SDG used it is separate from the question of whether the license attached. The latter is automatic on disclosure; the former depends on what SDG actually did with the input. The clause is a one-way IP grab that operates the moment the Suggestion is communicated, with no take-back mechanism.

If SDG is acquired by another company, does the EULA still apply?

Yes. Section 25 provides that SDG may assign the agreement without Subscriber consent, and the assignee inherits the rights and obligations while SDG itself is released from all further obligations. The Subscriber is bound to the agreement as inherited by the new owner. The protections that flow from SDG's documented permissive practice are dependent on SDG remaining SDG; a successor entity is not contractually bound to those practices, and Section 25 lets SDG transfer the contractual maximum rights without Subscriber consent.

Can I get a custom License Agreement under Section 4(v) for my Workshop mod?

The contract contemplates them, but SDG is under no obligation to offer one. The path is to contact SDG at info@smartlydressedgames.com per Section 17, describe your content and proposed terms, and ask. The community's experience suggests that SDG has been willing to negotiate License Agreements for substantial contributions but has not advertised the path. A polite, specific proposal is more likely to receive a substantive response than a generic inquiry. The leverage you have is highest before upload; once the SC Use authorization in 4(vi) has attached, negotiating after the fact is negotiating from a weaker position.

Does this article cover the Steam Subscriber Agreement?

No. This article covers only the SDG User Agreement. The Steam Subscriber Agreement is Valve's separate contract with Steam users; it supplements rather than is supplemented by the SDG User Agreement. Many issues that Subscribers think of as "Unturned EULA issues" are actually Steam Subscriber Agreement issues — refunds, account recovery, marketplace transactions, Valve's own indemnities. For those topics, the controlling document is Valve's, and the analysis is different. We may address the Steam-side framework in a separate article.

What is the practical difference between Subscriber Content and a Subscriber Suggestion?

Subscriber Content is content uploaded to Steam Workshop — files, mods, maps, items, code. It is governed by Section 4 with its SC Use framework, default revenue share, and SC Modifications grab. Subscriber Suggestions are ideas, design proposals, and feedback communicated to SDG in any form, governed by Section 5 with its perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable license. The practical difference is meaningful: a Subscriber Content upload triggers a revenue-share entitlement (whatever the standard percentage in the SWTRS is). A Subscriber Suggestion triggers nothing — no credit, no compensation, no obligation. If you want to be paid, the path is to convert your idea into Subscriber Content (build the mod and upload it) or to negotiate a License Agreement before sharing the idea. A suggestion in the Discord is not a path to compensation.

Are there any clauses I should challenge before accepting the agreement?

The agreement is a click-through contract with no negotiation option for individual Subscribers. The Subscriber's choices are: accept the agreement and use Unturned, or decline the agreement and not use Unturned. There is no contractual mechanism to mark up the document and accept it as modified. The only path to modified terms is a separately negotiated License Agreement under Section 4(v) for Workshop-content monetization arrangements, which operates as a supplement to the underlying EULA rather than a replacement for it. The take-it-or-leave-it structure is itself a feature of the standard-form gaming contract genre and is part of why the genre is a consumer-protection problem.

Does Section 24's "all sections survive" clause mean the access grant survives termination too?

This is a reading question. Section 24 says "all sections and terms" survive. Section 3 includes the grant of access to the SDG Content. Read literally, the access grant survives termination — which would defeat the purpose of termination as a remedy. The better reading is that survival applies to obligations and waivers that make sense post-termination (indemnities, IP non-challenge, confidentiality, the SC Modifications grab) and not to operative provisions that are inherently coterminous with the agreement (the access grant, the revenue-share framework). Courts generally read survival clauses pragmatically rather than literally. The point worth flagging is that the clause as drafted is broader than typical survival clauses, which usually enumerate the surviving provisions rather than asserting "all" survive, and the breadth is consistent with the rest of the agreement's posture.

A note on what this analysis does not cover

We have deliberately scoped this article narrowly to the binding text of the SDG User Agreement as it appears in the current version. Several adjacent topics are out of scope and we name them here so the reader knows where the boundary is.

The article does not analyze the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Valve's terms with Steam users are a separate document with its own framework. Refund policy, account recovery, marketplace transactions, Steam Guard, the family-sharing system, the trading-card economy — all of those are Valve-side and governed by Valve's terms. The SDG User Agreement supplements but does not replace those terms.

The article does not analyze the Steam Supplemental Workshop Terms – Revenue Sharing (the "SWTRS" referenced in Section 4(v)). The SWTRS is a separate Valve-side document that sets the standard percentage for Workshop revenue share. Workshop publishers who care about the default revenue split should read the SWTRS directly. We may address the SWTRS framework in a separate article.

The article does not analyze the SDG website's own terms of service, if SDG maintains separate website terms. The SDG User Agreement is the contract governing use of the Unturned client and related SDG Content distributed through Steam; it does not cover separate SDG web properties, documentation sites, or community-platform terms that may exist independently.

The article does not predict outcomes in specific disputes. Where we observe that a clause may be unenforceable in certain jurisdictions, we identify the relevant legal framework (the Tercon test for exclusion clauses in Canadian law, the Lear doctrine for no-challenge clauses in US patent law) without predicting how a particular court would decide a particular case. Outcome prediction is jurisdiction-specific, fact-specific, and counsel-dependent.

The article does not address criminal law, tax law, or regulatory questions related to commercial mod publishing. Those topics are jurisdiction-specific and beyond the scope of a contract-interpretation article.

The article does not address the SDG dispute-resolution process if and when one exists. Section 17's notice provision points to email at info@smartlydressedgames.com; there is no contractual arbitration clause, mandatory mediation step, or class-action waiver in the agreement. Dispute resolution defaults to Alberta courts under Section 23's governing-law clause, which — combined with the cap in Section 13 — is itself a remedy-elimination mechanism for international Subscribers.

How the binding text and SDG's documented practice diverge

One theme runs through this article: the SDG User Agreement as drafted reaches further than SDG's documented practice. The contract sets a worst-case enforcement envelope; the relationship sets the actual case. A small comparison table captures the most visible gaps.

Topic	Binding text position	SDG documented practice
Decompilation (Section 3(iv))	Prohibited without prior written consent	Permissive for modding-purpose interoperability; Nelson has made supportive statements but no public written consent exists
Subscriber Suggestions (Section 5)	Perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable license to all rights	No documented instance of SDG asserting the clause against a community contributor; community feedback channels remain open and informal
Default and remedies (Section 16)	Broad termination, deactivation, deletion, and injunction rights	No documented instance of SDG seeking injunctive relief against a community modder; enforcement has been informal and conversation-based
Liability cap (Section 13)	50% of six-month direct revenue, crystallized by first Claim — functionally zero for most Subscribers	No documented Claim by a Subscriber against SDG that has tested the cap; the clause is a theoretical maximum, not an applied limit
IP non-challenge (Section 15)	Subscriber waives challenge rights	No documented instance of SDG enforcing the clause; not material in practice

The point of this table is not to argue that the contract should be ignored because practice has been permissive. The point is that the contract is what controls when practice changes — for whatever reason, on either side. A modder who understands both columns can plan for the practice column day-to-day and for the contract column as a worst case. The protection comes from SDG's choice not to enforce, not from anything the contract gives the Subscriber.

Best practice

Treat the contract as a structural feature of the ecosystem, not as a present threat. SDG has not weaponized the agreement against the modding community in any documented case, and the indications are that SDG values the modding community and would not want to. The contract is what it is because it is the document a lawyer drafted for a software company; the relationship is what it is because of the choices the people running SDG have made. The two diverge naturally over time, and the divergence is the gap the modder operates in.

Comparison to other game-platform agreements

For context, we note that several of the clauses flagged in this article have direct counterparts in the user agreements of comparable game platforms. This is not a defense of SDG's drafting; it is a calibration. The SDG User Agreement is, in most respects, not an outlier among AAA and indie game terms of service. The genre is the problem; SDG is operating within the genre.

The Suggestion-license clause in Section 5 has direct counterparts in Valve's Steam Subscriber Agreement, Epic's Fortnite Creative terms, Riot's player agreement, Blizzard's Battle.net terms, Microsoft's Xbox user agreement, and most other major game-platform contracts. The grant of "non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, and transferable" rights is essentially the standard form for such clauses. The standardization does not make the clause acceptable; it makes the genre as a whole a consumer-protection failure.

The user-content clause in Section 4 has direct counterparts in any platform that hosts user-generated content. The specific mechanics — discretion over monetization, default revenue share, ownership of integration derivatives — vary by platform, but the structural framework (you grant the platform broad use rights to your content; the platform decides how to use it) is universal.

The liability cap structure in Section 13 is less standard. Most software EULA caps run to 100% of fees paid in a defined period (typically twelve months) rather than 50%, and most do not crystallize on the first Claim. The 50% multiplier and the crystallization mechanism are the specific features of Section 13 that depart from common drafting practice. They are not unique — variations exist — but they are harsher than the median.

The amendment clause in Section 21 is standard. Unilateral amendment by posting to the platform, with continued use as acceptance, is the standard form for online click-through agreements. The standardization, again, is part of the consumer-protection problem rather than a defense of the practice.

The assignment clause in Section 25 is harsh by industry standard. Most assignment clauses provide that the assignor remains liable for pre-assignment obligations unless the counterparty consents to a novation. Section 25's "released of all obligations" structure takes the novation result without Subscriber consent, which is unusual but not unprecedented.

The contra proferentem waiver in Section 19 is rare. We have not surveyed every major game-platform agreement, but the contra proferentem waiver is not a common feature of the genre. Most platforms do not bother because the attempt is so transparent.

The gross-negligence carve-out in Section 12 is rare. Most carefully drafted commercial contracts stop short of attempting to disclaim liability for gross negligence and willful misconduct, precisely because the attempt is likely unenforceable in most jurisdictions. The inclusion of the clause in Section 12 is a distinctive drafting choice and is one of the harshest provisions in the agreement.

The decompilation prohibition in Section 3(iv) is standard. Essentially every software EULA prohibits reverse engineering without permission. The standard interoperability exception under DMCA § 1201(f) and equivalent provisions in other jurisdictions exists to allow specific narrow categories of reverse engineering for compatibility purposes notwithstanding contractual prohibition; whether those statutory exceptions override contractual prohibitions is jurisdiction-specific and not reliably resolved in favor of modders.

The IP non-challenge clause in Section 15 is common in IP licenses but less common in mass-market EULAs. Its inclusion signals an IP-portfolio-protective drafting approach.

On balance, the SDG User Agreement is somewhat more aggressive than the median game-platform agreement on several specific dimensions (the liability cap mechanics, the gross-negligence carve-out, the contra proferentem waiver, the assignment release) and entirely standard on others (the Suggestion license, the user-content framework, the amendment power, the decompilation prohibition). The aggressive elements are concentrated in the indemnification, liability, and interpretation provisions rather than in the IP and operational provisions.

A short note on where the agreement came from

We do not have inside knowledge of how the SDG User Agreement was drafted. Some inference is possible from the document's structure.

The agreement reads like the work of a Canadian commercial-litigation-aware drafter. The repeated use of "Claims" as a defined term covering the full taxonomy of liability theories ("liabilities (under statute or otherwise), obligations, claims (including direct or indirect claims), suits, demands, actions, proceedings...") is the style of a drafter who has been on the receiving end of broad-form Claims and now drafts defensively in the other direction. The contra proferentem waiver in Section 19 is the kind of clause a litigator inserts after seeing the doctrine applied against a drafter in a prior dispute.

The Alberta governing-law and corporate-defendant structure suggests the drafter is local to SDG (an Alberta firm or in-house) rather than a Steam-platform specialist drafting from an American template. The aggressive limitation-of-liability and indemnification posture is consistent with a small Alberta company trying to protect itself against cross-border litigation exposure that comes with a global Steam audience.

The Quick Summary is unusual. Most commercial contracts do not include a non-binding summary at all; those that do typically scope the summary narrowly (a one-paragraph plain-language overview) rather than walking through each section as the SDG Quick Summary does. The Quick Summary's mismatch with the binding text in places — and the preamble's explicit warning against relying on it — suggests it was added at some point after the binding text was substantially finalized, possibly in response to community criticism that the agreement was too dense to read.

None of this is criticism of Nelson personally. He runs the company; the lawyers wrote the contract. The two are separable. The drafter chose an aggressive defensive posture; Nelson has chosen not to exercise the rights that posture gives him. The community has the option of either accepting the contractual position as the worst case or engaging with SDG directly to negotiate around it. Nelson has been the kind of counterparty who makes the latter option viable. The contract is the kind of document that makes the former option necessary to understand.

A note on the author voice in this article

The voice of this article is 57 Studios — a working Unturned mod publisher reading a binding contract carefully and calling out, in honest language, what each clause actually does. We have tried to write sharply without becoming a complaint and without crossing into accusations the conduct does not support. The choices in the agreement are choices SDG was entitled to make as the drafter, and we do not begrudge SDG those choices as a legal matter. We do think the choices are bad for the community, and we say so.

What we do not do is accuse SDG of conduct they have not engaged in. The point of this article is the text of the contract, not how SDG has used it. SDG has, in practice, been more permissive than the contract permits. We acknowledge that and credit it. We also note that the practice is contingent — on the people, on the company structure, on the absence of an acquirer — and the contract is durable. The protection comes from the relationship; the risk comes from the document.

The modding community is healthier when its members understand the legal framework they operate within. Many of the modders we know in the Unturned community have never read the SDG User Agreement past the Quick Summary. Some of the ones who have read it have come away with conclusions that the binding text does not quite support. Our hope is that this article narrows the gap between what the contract says and what the community understands the contract to say, and that the narrower gap leads to better decisions on both sides.

We are happy to receive corrections, additions, or counter-readings from anyone in the community with substantive input. The article is meant to be useful, not to be the final word. If a future amendment to the agreement materially changes any analysis here, we will update accordingly. If a court ruling provides clarification on any of the enforceability questions we have flagged, we will incorporate the ruling. If SDG itself publishes a clarification — for instance, a formal statement on Section 3(iv) interoperability — we will reflect it.

Where to send corrections

Corrections, counter-readings, and additions to this article are welcome through the 57 Studios documentation site's contribution channel. Substantive input from working modders, plugin developers, server operators, and anyone with direct experience navigating the agreement's edge cases helps the analysis stay current.

Edge cases worth thinking through in advance

Several edge cases come up in conversations with other modders. We walk through them here because the answers in each case are not obvious from a single reading of the agreement.

Edge case 1: You upload a mod, then later want to take it down

Section 4 does not contain an explicit takedown right for the Subscriber. The right to remove your own Workshop upload is governed by Steam's interface — Valve, not SDG, hosts the Workshop, and the takedown mechanism is a Steam feature. The question is whether removing the Workshop listing extinguishes SDG's SC Use rights under Section 4(vi) and the SC Modifications grant under 4(vii).

The agreement does not say. Read narrowly, SC Use rights attach to the Subscriber Content; if the Subscriber Content is no longer hosted on Steam, there is arguably nothing for SC Use to attach to. Read broadly, SC Use rights attach at upload and persist regardless of subsequent removal — particularly because Section 24's survival clause asserts that "all sections and terms" survive.

The practical answer is jurisdiction-specific and probably depends on what SDG has done with the Subscriber Content in the interim. If SDG has not used the content, the question is academic. If SDG has integrated the content into the base game or sold it through some channel, the rights SDG has already exercised do not disappear when the upload is taken down. New uses after takedown are the contested area.

Recommendation: if you are considering taking down a Workshop upload that has been monetized or integrated, talk to SDG before doing it. The relationship answer is almost certainly more useful than the contractual answer.

Edge case 2: Your mod includes assets created by a third party

Section 4(iii) requires the Subscriber to represent that they have "all necessary right, title, interest, consent, authorization and authority to upload such Subscriber Content to Steam, that the Subscriber Content will not cause harm to any person or to the SDG Content, that the Subscriber Content does not, and will not, infringe on the intellectual property rights of any third party."

If you upload a mod that incorporates third-party assets — sound effects, textures, models, code — and you do not have a license that permits Steam Workshop distribution, you have breached Section 4(iii). The third-party rightsholder can also bring a DMCA claim against your upload (see How Steam DMCA Works for the takedown process).

The SC Modifications grab in 4(vii) compounds the issue. If SDG creates an integration derivative of your mod and that derivative incorporates the third-party assets, SDG's ownership of the integration derivative is shadowed by the third-party rights you did not have to license. The indemnification in 4(ix) means you are on the hook for the resulting Claims.

Recommendation: never upload third-party assets you do not have a clear license for. The asset-licensing question is covered in Asset Licensing and Attribution.

Edge case 3: SDG asks for changes to your Workshop upload

If SDG contacts you and asks you to modify your Workshop upload — for instance, to remove content that conflicts with the trademark and brand guidelines, or to address a compatibility issue — the contract gives SDG no direct authority to force the change. Section 16 gives SDG remedies (termination, deactivation via Valve, deletion demand, injunction) for breach, but a request to modify is not a remedy; it is a request.

The practical answer is to take such requests seriously. SDG has not historically asked modders to change their uploads without a substantive reason. When such a request comes, engaging cooperatively is almost always the right call. If the request is one you disagree with, the path is a polite reply explaining your position and proposing an alternative resolution. The path is not to ignore the request and continue with the upload as-is, because Section 16's remedies are available if SDG escalates.

Edge case 4: A community member contributes to your mod

If you publish a mod that includes contributions from other community members — code, assets, design input — the contractual situation gets complicated quickly. You are the Subscriber uploading the Subscriber Content, so the Section 4 framework applies to you. But you are uploading content that incorporates contributions you do not solely own.

The contributors are themselves Subscribers, each individually bound to the agreement. If they intended to give you the right to upload their contributions to Steam Workshop, they need to have either (a) transferred ownership of the contribution to you, or (b) granted you a license that explicitly permits Workshop upload. Without one of those, you do not have the right to make the Section 4(iii) representation that you have "all necessary right, title, interest, consent, authorization and authority to upload such Subscriber Content."

Recommendation: a one-page contributor agreement, signed by each contributor, granting you the right to incorporate their contribution into the Workshop upload. The threshold is the contributor's potential to bring a Claim later — small contributions, low risk; substantial contributions, written agreement.

Edge case 5: Your mod becomes popular and SDG wants to officially adopt it

This is the case that Section 4(vii) is designed for. If SDG decides to officially adopt a mechanic from your Workshop mod, they will create an integration derivative — the "SC Modifications" — and that integration derivative will be owned by SDG. Your underlying mod is still yours. The integration derivative is theirs. The compensation path is the revenue-share framework on the underlying mod, with nothing flowing on the derivative itself.

The standard percentage applies unless you have a custom License Agreement. If your mod is meaningfully novel, this is the moment when negotiating a License Agreement matters most — and unfortunately, it is also the moment when you have the least leverage, because the SC Use authorization in 4(vi) has already attached.

Recommendation: if you publish a mod that you think might be a candidate for official adoption, negotiate a License Agreement at the time of upload, before SDG has any specific interest in the content. Your leverage is highest before the adoption discussion has begun. Section 4(vii) is the content grab; you can only negotiate around it before the upload that triggers it.

Edge case 6: A player blames your mod for ruining their save

Sections 4(viii) and 8 together mean SDG is not on the hook for what your mod does to players' save files. Players use Workshop content at their own risk; you are not contractually shielded from claims by players who blame your mod.

The practical reality is that the threshold for a player to bring a Claim against a Workshop publisher is low in theory and high in practice. Most disputes resolve in the comments thread on the Workshop page or in the modder's Discord. Formal Claims by players against modders are essentially never seen in this community. But the contractual position is that you are exposed to such Claims if they ever do come — and SDG is not.

Recommendation: clear warnings on Workshop pages about beta status, save compatibility, and known issues. Documented version histories so players who have problems can identify which version they were using. A modder who has been transparent about risks is in a much better practical position than one who has not, even if the contractual position is the same either way.

Edge case 7: You want to charge for support on a free Workshop mod

If your Workshop mod is free but you offer paid support, custom commissions, or premium features through an external channel like Tebex or a Patreon, the question is whether the paid-support arrangement triggers any provision of the SDG User Agreement.

The contract does not directly address support arrangements. Paid support for a free mod is a separate transaction between you and the customer, mediated through your chosen payment processor (Tebex, Patreon, Stripe, etc.). It is not Subscriber Content under Section 4 because the support itself is not uploaded to Steam. It is not a Subscriber Suggestion under Section 5 because it is not a suggestion to SDG.

The grey area is if your paid support includes delivering modified versions of the Workshop mod to paying customers — versions that differ from the Workshop public version. At that point you are distributing Subscriber-Content-adjacent files outside Steam, which is not directly covered by the SDG User Agreement but is touched by the Section 14 confidentiality clause if any SDG-derived content is included.

Recommendation: for paid support arrangements, keep the paid version genuinely outside the Workshop. Tebex-distributed paid extensions to a free Workshop base mod are a clean structure; private custom commissions delivered as patches to the Workshop mod are a structure with more ambiguity.

Edge case 8: SDG amends the agreement in a way that materially changes your position

Section 21 gives SDG unilateral amendment power. Section 26 makes continued use deemed acceptance. If SDG amends the agreement in a way that materially changes your position — for instance, by broadening the SC Modifications grab in Section 4(vii) — your options are limited.

The practical answer is that material amendments to high-profile platform contracts often draw community attention, and platforms generally communicate them rather than slipping them in silently. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine captures public-facing EULAs periodically. The Steam community discussion forums sometimes notice and discuss amendments. There is some informal community surveillance, even if the contract does not require formal notice.

Recommendation: archive a dated copy of the agreement at the time of each major project decision. Subscribe to community channels (the Unturned subreddit, the official Discord) where amendments would likely be discussed. If an amendment changes your position materially, the practical option is to stop using the SDG Content; the contract does not give you a unilateral termination right except by ceasing use.

Section 26 makes continued use deemed acceptance

There is no contractual mechanism to keep using the SDG Content under the prior version of the agreement after an amendment. Once an amendment is posted, your continued use is acceptance of the amended version. The only way to reject an amendment is to stop using the SDG Content entirely. The amendment power in Section 21 plus the acceptance mechanism in Section 26 is the mechanism by which any remaining Subscriber protections can be quietly removed at any time.

A walkthrough for a hypothetical commercial mod publisher

To make the analysis concrete, we walk through a hypothetical sequence: a developer who is starting a paid Unturned mod business in 2026 and wants to do it with their contractual eyes open.

Step 1: Read the SDG User Agreement. Print to PDF with the current date embedded. Archive the file with a clear name: SDG-User-Agreement-2026-05-18.pdf. This is the version you accepted; it is the version that binds you (subject to amendment). Save the PDF in a project-archive folder you will not lose.

Step 2: Read this article and the four sibling articles. Cross-link list: Smartly Dressed Games Modding Policy, Reverse Engineering and Decompilation, Tebex and Commercial Monetization, Derivative Works and Reskins. The articles cover adjacent topics; reading them together gives a more complete picture than any single article.

Step 3: Decide your distribution path. Workshop or Tebex? For commercial content where you want unambiguous ownership of derivatives, Tebex is the cleaner path. For community contribution where you want discoverability and the Workshop's native distribution, Workshop is a choice — but the Section 4 framework applies in full, including the SC Modifications grab.

Step 4: Set up your storefront. If you chose Tebex, set up the storefront, integrate with your payment processor, write your own customer-facing license terms. The license terms are your contract with the customer, separate from the SDG User Agreement. If you chose Workshop, the SWTRS and the SDG User Agreement together govern.

Step 5: Prepare your content. Build the mod. Test it. Get a small group of beta users. Iterate.

Step 6: If you chose Workshop and your content might be a candidate for official adoption, contact SDG before uploading. Email at info@smartlydressedgames.com. Propose a License Agreement under Section 4(v) that addresses your specific concerns — most likely the ownership of derivatives in 4(vii) and the discretion clause in 4(iv). SDG may or may not offer a custom agreement. If they do, your position is clearer than the default. If they decline, you proceed with the default Section 4 framework, with full awareness of what it grants SDG.

Step 7: Upload or publish. Workshop upload or Tebex publication, depending on the path you chose.

Step 8: Document your work. Version histories, changelogs, customer communications, support tickets. The documentation matters less for contractual reasons than for practical reasons — disputes, when they come, turn more often on facts than on contract language. Good documentation is the best protection.

Step 9: Maintain the relationship with SDG. Polite, periodic, substantive communication. Bug reports framed as helpful contributions (with awareness of Section 5). Trade-show meetings if SDG attends events you also attend. The relationship is the actual case; the contract is the worst case.

Step 10: Re-archive the agreement at each major milestone. New version of your mod, new commercial release, new License Agreement, significant ecosystem changes. Each archived PDF is a contemporaneous record of the terms you operated under at the time.

This is the workflow 57 Studios uses, simplified. The specific mechanics vary by project, but the structural framework is consistent.

Appendix: full clause map with operative phrases

For readers who want a more compact reference than the body of the article, the table below lists each numbered section of the agreement with the operative phrase that defines what the section does.

§	Operative phrase	Concern level for modders
1	"Subscriber's rights, obligations and agreements in relation to Steam and Valve are set out and governed in the Steam Agreement"	Low; cross-reference only
2	"Subscriber releases, indemnifies and holds harmless SDG Group for any and all liabilities ... related directly or indirectly to Steam or Valve"	Low; Steam-side disclaimer
3(iv)	"Subscriber will not allow the SDG Content to be ... decompiled, reverse-engineered ..."	Medium-high for plugin developers; leverage point retained by SDG
3(v)	"Subscriber releases, indemnifies and holds harmless SDG Group for any and all Claims related directly or indirectly to the SDG Content"	Low; routine
4(iv)	"it is up to SDG to determine, in its sole and unfettered discretion, whether the Subscriber Content ... can be offered"	Medium for Workshop publishers; one-sided discretion
4(vi)	"Subscriber is authorizing any or all SC Use by SDG"	Medium for Workshop publishers; broad authorization at upload
4(vii)	"with all right, title and interest in the SC Modifications belonging to SDG"	High for commercial Workshop publishers; content grab on derivative work
5(iii)	"non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, and transferable licence"	High for design-proposal contributors; one of the broadest one-way IP grabs in the genre
6(ii)	"SDG Group has no control over the security, handling, protection ... of Subscriber Information"	Low; Steam-side disclaimer
7	"SDG is in no way responsible for ... the In-Game Communications"	Low; routine
8	"SDG Group has no control over ... Third Party Content"	Low; routine
9	"Subscriber will at all times keep confidential all Subscriber credentials"	Low; standard
10	"Subscriber is fully liable and accountable for anything that may occur when the Subscriber's credentials ... are used"	Medium; standard but harsh, no carve-out for unauthorized access
11	"SDG DOES NOT PROVIDE A WARRANTY OF ANY KIND"	Low; standard
12	"even if such action or inaction of SDG Group amounts to gross negligence, intentional act or willful misconduct"	High; bad-faith drafting that attempts more than the law clearly permits
13	"limited to ... fifty percent (50%) of the net revenue received directly by SDG from Subscriber ... in the six (6) month period before the first Claim"	High; cap is effectively zero for most Subscribers; remedy-elimination together with Section 23
14	"any personal or third party information obtained from, or from using, the SDG Content shall not be used in any way other than as is strictly necessary"	Medium; over-broad scope retained as a contractual hook
15	"Subscriber will not challenge the validity or enforceability of any of the patents or rights of SDG Group"	Medium; deterrent effect that operates regardless of enforceability
16	"demand Subscriber delete the SDG Content, any copies, extracts, reverse engineering, work product, code or otherwise"	Medium for modders relying on past work product
17	"notice to SDG ... must be delivered by electronic mail to info@smartlydressedgames.com"	Low; routine
18	"SDG Group shall remain completely independent of Subscriber"	Low; routine
19	"THE LEGAL DOCTRINE OF CONTRA PROFERENTEM SHALL NOT APPLY"	Medium; drafter trying to escape responsibility for being unclear
20	"This SDG User Agreement sets out the entire understanding ... and there are no terms, conditions, representation, or warranties, expressed or implied"	Low; routine merger clause
21	"amended by SDG, by posting an amended version to Steam"	Medium; mechanism for silent removal of remaining Subscriber protections
22	Severability	Low; routine
23	"governed by ... the laws in force in the Province of Alberta"	Medium-high for non-Canadian Subscribers; remedy-elimination mechanism in combination with Section 13
24	"All sections and terms of this SDG User Agreement shall survive"	Medium; broader than typical survival; no off-ramp
25	"SDG may assign its rights and obligations under this Agreement, without the consent of Subscriber, and upon notice of the assignment SDG shall be released of all obligations"	High; moral-hazard mechanism allowing SDG to sell and walk away
26	"Your continued access or use of SDG Content after such modifications have been posted indicates your acceptance"	Medium; amendments bind without separate acceptance

The concern levels in the right column are 57 Studios' own characterizations and do not reflect any view by SDG. A different modder with a different risk profile or different commercial exposure might characterize the same clauses differently. The levels are a starting point for the reader's own analysis, not a final assessment.

Reading the agreement as a non-lawyer

A short note for readers who are not lawyers and have never read a commercial contract closely. Some skills transfer; here are the ones worth applying when reading the SDG User Agreement.

Read defined terms carefully. The contract defines specific phrases — "SDG Group," "SDG Content," "Subscriber Content," "Subscriber Suggestions," "Subscriber Information," "Third Party Content," "In-Game Communications," "Claims," "SC Use," "SC Modifications," "License Agreement," "SWTRS," "Revenue Share Agreements," "SDG Liability Limit," "Laws." Each defined term has a specific meaning that controls every later use. When you see one of these phrases in capital letters or in the bolded form, check back to the definition before deciding what the sentence means.

Read the operative verbs. Contractual sentences hinge on verbs: "shall," "will," "may," "is entitled to," "is granted," "releases," "indemnifies," "holds harmless," "acknowledges," "accepts," "agrees," "warrants," "represents." "Shall" and "will" are obligations. "May" is permission. "Acknowledges" and "agrees" are conclusory statements that bind the party to a position. The verb determines the legal effect of the sentence; the rest of the sentence determines what the effect attaches to.

Read what is missing. Contracts are often more revealing in what they do not say than in what they do say. The SDG User Agreement does not contain an arbitration clause. It does not contain a class-action waiver. It does not contain a specific notice-of-amendment provision. It does not contain a customer-side termination right. Each missing provision is a choice; the absence of the provision means the default rule applies (whatever that rule is in the relevant jurisdiction).

Read across sections. A single section rarely tells the whole story. Section 12 is the indemnification clause; Section 13 is the liability cap; Section 23 is the governing-law clause; together they form a liability framework where SDG is functionally immune and Subscriber recovery is uneconomic. Section 4 is the Subscriber Content clause; Section 5 is the Subscriber Suggestions clause; together they form the IP-acquisition framework. The agreement is a system, not a list of independent provisions, and the system is the thing that has to be evaluated.

Read the Quick Summary as a tell. The Quick Summary is not binding, but it is a window into what the drafter wanted non-lawyers to walk away thinking. Where the Quick Summary characterizes a clause and the binding text says something different, the divergence is a flag — either the Quick Summary is imprecise, or the binding text was drafted more aggressively than the Quick Summary's author thought was worth mentioning. The preamble's instruction not to rely on the Quick Summary is itself the drafter telling you the gap exists.

Pro tip

If you have never read a commercial contract before, start by reading the SDG User Agreement once through quickly without trying to understand every clause. Then read it again slowly, with the defined terms list in your head. Then read this article alongside it. The third pass is when the structure starts to click. Most non-lawyers find that three passes is the threshold for clear comprehension, and the third pass is much faster than the first.

A note on the relationship between the contract and the wiki

This article is one piece of a larger documentation project. The 57 Studios Modding Knowledge Base aims to provide working modders with the contractual, technical, and operational context they need to publish successfully in the Unturned ecosystem. The legal section in particular is meant to be the resource a modder reads before making major decisions, not after a dispute has arisen.

We try to update the articles in the legal section when material changes occur in the underlying documents. The SDG User Agreement is subject to unilateral amendment under Section 21, and we will revise this article when amendments materially affect the analysis. The Steam Subscriber Agreement is similarly subject to amendment; we do not analyze it in this article but related Steam-side topics are covered in How Steam DMCA Works.

The articles cross-link extensively. The five legal-section articles are designed to be read in any order, but the recommended reading order for a new commercial mod publisher is:

1. Smartly Dressed Games Modding Policy — what SDG publicly says about modding
2. This article — what the binding contract says
3. Tebex and Commercial Monetization — how to monetize outside the Workshop framework
4. Reverse Engineering and Decompilation — the Section 3(iv) interoperability question in depth
5. Derivative Works and Reskins — the underlying IP framework

A modder who reads all five comes away with the contractual context for any major decision they are likely to face in the Unturned commercial-mod ecosystem.

A second look at Section 16 — Default and Remedies

We did not give Section 16 a full subsection earlier in the article because it is not a clause most modders need to worry about under SDG's documented practice. It is worth a short focused look here, because the remedies available to SDG on Subscriber breach are broader than they may initially appear.

"Should Subscriber default under or breach any of the terms of this SDG User Agreement, SDG may immediately, or at any time after the breach or default regardless of whether the same was remedied, at its sole option and without limitation or election as to other remedies available under this Agreement or at law or in equity, exercise one or more of the following remedies: (a) terminate this SDG User Agreement; (b) direct Valve to temporarily or permanently deactivate Subscriber's access to SDG Content or any component thereof; (c) demand Subscriber delete the SDG Content, any copies, extracts, reverse engineering, work product, code or otherwise related to or derived from the SDG Content; (d) seek an injunction in any court of competent jurisdiction restraining Subscriber and any affiliates or representatives of Subscriber, from violating the provisions of this SDG User Agreement without the necessity of posting a bond or other security therefore and without the necessity of proving actual damages; and (e) to strictly enforce this SDG User Agreement, including without limitation the indemnities and releases contained herein."

Several features worth flagging.

The clause permits SDG to exercise remedies "regardless of whether the same was remedied." A Subscriber who breaches the agreement and then cures the breach is still exposed to remedies for the original breach. There is no contractual cure period, no obligation by SDG to provide notice and an opportunity to remedy before exercising remedies, and no contractual statute of limitations on when SDG must exercise remedies after becoming aware of a breach.

The clause permits SDG to "direct Valve to temporarily or permanently deactivate Subscriber's access to SDG Content." The deactivation runs through Valve's infrastructure, not SDG's. The contractual mechanism is for SDG to issue a directive to Valve; whether Valve acts on the directive depends on Valve's own policies and procedures, which are governed by the Steam Subscriber Agreement and Valve's own internal processes.

The clause permits SDG to "demand Subscriber delete the SDG Content, any copies, extracts, reverse engineering, work product, code or otherwise related to or derived from the SDG Content." Read literally, this could reach a modder's work-product files even if those files are not themselves the SDG Content — for instance, decompiled output, code snippets in the modder's local development environment, reverse-engineered documentation. The scope of "related to or derived from" is broad and the clause is the contractual hook by which SDG could demand destruction of a plugin developer's working materials in a dispute.

The injunction clause permits SDG to "seek an injunction in any court of competent jurisdiction restraining Subscriber and any affiliates or representatives of Subscriber, from violating the provisions of this SDG User Agreement without the necessity of posting a bond or other security therefore and without the necessity of proving actual damages." The "without the necessity of proving actual damages" language is meaningful. Injunctive relief typically requires the moving party to show irreparable harm; this clause tries to contract around that requirement by agreement. Whether a court will honor that contractual waiver of the irreparable-harm requirement depends on the jurisdiction; some courts will, some will not. The clause also reaches "any affiliates or representatives of Subscriber" — meaning an injunction against you would extend to people acting on your behalf.

In practice, none of these remedies has been used against any community modder we are aware of. The clause is a contractual maximum, not a documented practice. But the maximum is wider than a casual reading might suggest, and the breadth of "regardless of whether the breach was remedied," "without the necessity of proving actual damages," and "any affiliates or representatives of Subscriber" together gives SDG enforcement flexibility that the median commercial contract does not.

Section 16's remedies are broad

The remedies are exercisable at SDG's "sole option," cumulative ("one or more"), available "regardless of whether the [breach] was remedied," and explicit about reaching affiliates and representatives. The drafter wanted maximum enforcement flexibility. The community's experience has been that SDG has not used the breadth of the clause, but the breadth is sitting in the contract and is one of the harshest enforcement provisions in the agreement.

Comparison: SDG public position vs binding text on the most-asked topics

We close the analysis with one more comparison table, this time between SDG's public position on modding (as articulated by Nelson and the official documentation) and the binding text of the agreement. This contrasts with the earlier Quick-Summary-vs-binding-text table because here we are comparing SDG's external statements to the contract, rather than the contract's own summary to its own binding text.

Topic	SDG public position	Binding text
Modding-purpose decompilation	Tolerated; Nelson has made supportive statements; the official docs encourage plugin development	Prohibited without prior written consent (Section 3(iv)); permission is retained at SDG's sole and unfettered discretion
Workshop monetization	Standard revenue share via SWTRS; custom License Agreements available for specific cases	Standard percentage applies unless License Agreement (Section 4(v)); SDG has sole and unfettered discretion over whether to monetize (Section 4(iv))
Community contributions	Welcomed; the Discord and Steam community are active feedback channels	Broad license to all Subscriber Suggestions (Section 5); SDG owns integration derivatives of Subscriber Content (Section 4(vii)); content grab on the derivative
Server operation	Server operators are first-class community members; SDG provides dedicated-server tools	Server operators are Subscribers like any other; full liability for credential use (Section 10); no contractual server-operator status
RP-server commercial monetization	Tolerated; Tebex-based monetization is broadly accepted in the community	Not directly addressed; the agreement's silence on RP-server commercial models has been interpreted by the community as tacit permission
DMCA enforcement	SDG has historically not been aggressive about pursuing modders; correspondence is the standard channel	Section 16 makes broad remedies available, including injunctive relief without proving actual damages

The gap between the two columns is the heart of this article. The community lives in the left column day-to-day. The contract is the right column. Both columns are real, and the modder who understands both is in a better position than the modder who knows only one.

Final word

We close with the framing we opened with. This article is a working publisher's read, written for other working publishers. It is sharp because the contract is bad, and softening the description would have served no one. We have been careful about what we say and what we do not say.

We have called the SC Modifications grab a content grab because that is what it is. We have called Section 12's gross-negligence carve-out bad-faith drafting because that is what it is. We have noted that Section 13's cap is functionally zero for the typical Subscriber because that is what the arithmetic shows. We have called the Section 5 Suggestion license one of the broadest one-way IP grabs in the standard-form gaming contract genre because that is what a survey of the comparable clauses across other major platforms confirms. We have called the combined effect of Sections 13 and 23 a remedy-elimination mechanism because the cost of litigating in Alberta exceeds the recoverable damages quantum by orders of magnitude.

We have not called any of these clauses illegal. They are not illegal. They are aggressive drafting that exists within the standard-form gaming contract genre, and the genre is a category of consumer-protection failure rather than a category of legal violation. The doctrine of contract permits drafters to attempt provisions that may not survive judicial scrutiny; the relevant question for the Subscriber is not whether the attempt is illegal but whether the Subscriber understands what the attempt is asking for.

We have not accused SDG of conduct they have not engaged in. SDG's documented practice has been more permissive than the contract permits on essentially every clause we have flagged. Nelson Sexton has been a thoughtful counterparty. The relationship is the actual case; the contract is the worst case. The two diverge naturally, and the divergence is the gap in which the modding community operates.

Read the binding text. Archive a dated copy. If your commercial exposure is meaningful, consult counsel. Use the Tebex path for paid content where ownership clarity matters. Keep the relationship with SDG warm and direct — the contractual position is the worst case, the relationship is the actual case. Negotiate License Agreements before you upload, not after. Treat Subscriber Suggestions as gifts, not as compensable contributions. Protect your credentials. Maintain two-factor authentication.

The rest is the work. We will see you in the Workshop, on Tebex, and on the servers.

— 57 Studios

Postscript: a checklist for the working modder

A condensed checklist, drawn from the recommendations throughout the article. Suitable for printing and pinning above the workstation.

• [ ] Archived a dated PDF of the current SDG User Agreement before starting the project
• [ ] Decided distribution path (Workshop vs Tebex) with the Section 4 implications in mind
• [ ] Read the SWTRS if any Workshop monetization is contemplated
• [ ] If Workshop and content is novel, contacted SDG about a License Agreement before uploading
• [ ] If Tebex, established storefront with customer-facing license terms drafted by or for me
• [ ] Verified all third-party assets in the mod are properly licensed for the chosen distribution path
• [ ] Got written contributor agreements from any community members whose work I am incorporating
• [ ] Enabled two-factor authentication on the Steam account used for publishing
• [ ] Set up a project archive folder for version-by-version artifacts, including dated EULA captures
• [ ] Subscribed to the channels where amendments are likely to be discussed (Discord, subreddit)
• [ ] Identified an Alberta-qualified solicitor I would contact if a Claim arose
• [ ] Read the four sibling legal articles in this knowledge base
• [ ] Maintained an active, polite, periodic relationship with SDG

The checklist is not a substitute for reading the agreement and the articles. It is a reminder of the operational habits that reduce contractual exposure over time.

A working modder who can check every item on this list has done the legal-housekeeping work the agreement implicitly assumes the Subscriber will do. A working modder who has not is not necessarily in trouble — most modders skip most of these items and most modders never need them — but the items represent the difference between operating with awareness and operating on hope. The agreement is what it is. The community's job is to understand it. This article is one attempt at making that understanding accessible.