Thing is some modders are already removing their mods from nexus so you can only BUY them.
Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods
- Thread starter Sendou
- Start date
- Status
ab.aeterno
Member
Disgusting. At least it reads as the naked cash grab it is; one can only hope people won't be fallkng all over themselves to excuse Valve's greed.
Monetization works with content creation because it is at least moreso about creating items -- hats or what have you -- from scratch. But this shit? The strength of the modding community has always been the open sharing of knowledge and assets. Trying to monetize mods disincentivizes this. When I think of how many amazing mods exist only because others before them paved the way, or how many mods rely on assets of other mods...
I mean, jesus christ, who wants to pay for a mod that may not work with your other installed ones? Oop, only got 24 hours to figure out what the problem might be and fix it! Better hope you don't buy it during the week if you work.
And if the mod becomes abandoned while incomplete, or with large bugs left unfixed? There are many great mods who have had others step in and fix them up years later so they can continue to be used.
This whole thing is fucking despicable. Potentially ruinously disrupting the modding community while giving a tiny cut of the money and holding it for months and until it hits above a certain amount? Fucking gross.
Monetization works with content creation because it is at least moreso about creating items -- hats or what have you -- from scratch. But this shit? The strength of the modding community has always been the open sharing of knowledge and assets. Trying to monetize mods disincentivizes this. When I think of how many amazing mods exist only because others before them paved the way, or how many mods rely on assets of other mods...
I mean, jesus christ, who wants to pay for a mod that may not work with your other installed ones? Oop, only got 24 hours to figure out what the problem might be and fix it! Better hope you don't buy it during the week if you work.
And if the mod becomes abandoned while incomplete, or with large bugs left unfixed? There are many great mods who have had others step in and fix them up years later so they can continue to be used.
This whole thing is fucking despicable. Potentially ruinously disrupting the modding community while giving a tiny cut of the money and holding it for months and until it hits above a certain amount? Fucking gross.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Not surprising at all. Valve isnt going to let that money leave their platform.
CybernatonEvolution
Member
In before pirating mods. The cluster fuck is real; this is turning into a mature animu plot.
Okay I am changing my stance on this whole thing after browsing Steamworks and reading the stupid prices of mods. This might potentially kill modding. Fuck Bethesda.
Also already happening.
The Jackdog
Member
How dare they attempt to make money for their work. Who do they think they are?
Really do not see the issue here. As with anything else, vote with your wallet.
People are going batshit about this idea that suddenly all mods are going to cost money. That isn't true.
What Steam/Valve have done is given mod developers an avenue to charge if they want. And you know what? If you think your mod is worth my money, then Valve absolutely does deserve a cut of that money for hosting the content, and Bethesda absolutely does deserve a cut of it because your mod is not a derivative work and that's pretty clearly covered by existing copyright law. I do not understand why folks are up in arms here.
Your context is a silly arbitrary line drawn up by you alone. It reeks of someone wholly unfamiliar with the development process. Where do you think shit like Rise of the Triads originates? "modding isn't work" and "this is for hobbyists" is tantamount to saying an unpaid internship isn't considered work. It's extremely ignorant.
Do you download/play mods for Skyrim?
StrangeTaco
Member
Modding (just like an unpaid internship as you point out) is not something you should be expecting to be paid from. It may take effort and work to complete, but it does not mean you should expect financial compensation.
Juke Joint Jezebel
Member
Exactly. They don't even consider the long run. What about months later? If you're paying upwards of $5 to $20 or more for a mod, then the mod better fucking work properly and stay updated as the game itself, and the other required mods update as well. When money's involved something like this becomes a product, and a service. You're entitled to a good quality product that works when cash exchanges hands.
As soon as modders start selling their content they better be able to deal with criticism and start providing a long term service for their customers cash investment. If greenlight and early access has proved anything though, I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of quick cash grabs, non-refunds from valve for clearly broken products, and a bunch of hissy fits thrown by incompetent modders on the community workshop forums
Higgins113
Banned
Fuck paying for mods
No, it hasn't. You can go back to the days of Ms. Pac-man to show that, no, modding has always been considered work. I can rattle off countless examples.
And the charge that "this is a hobbyist scene, thus it cannot change" is flat out stupid. Computing in general began as a hobbyist scene. I was a member of PC Users clubs in the early 90's. It's a billion dollar industry now. This always happens as technology matures. This is an accepted, anticipated part of the technological distribution curve. This is literally how industry forms.
I always expected to make money modding, and I have. Your prattling sounds like terrible business advice.
Higgins113
Banned
Amazing
I do. And I'll continue to download free ones.
You got beef, go beef with the mod creators who decided to charge money. Don't yell at Valve for giving folks options.
Are you sure? Or is this an option that mod creators have.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
http://www.destructoid.com/the-first-paid-skyrim-mod-has-been-pulled-290924.phtml
This is what bugs me the most about the whole thing.
If what Chesko said is true, then how can Valve be so out of touch?
It's baffling.
This is what bugs me the most about the whole thing.
If what Chesko said is true, then how can Valve be so out of touch?
It's baffling.
No, it isn't. Work's operational and contextual definition is tied to the goal of generating income. That's never been the point of general modding, ever (and is not for the vast majority of Skyrim mods). Some outliers eventually make it to the stage of their own independent, stand-alone games with all the obligations I mentioned attached. That is a completely different situation. The ignorance is in trying to apply that asinine analogy to what's actually going on here (again, detailed in the rest of my post you've omitted).
Tell me, do people do unpaid internships to get to a higher position or purely of their own volition because they enjoy doing it (as that vast majority of modders do)? Modding is for hobbyists with some scarce and exceptional success stories spinning off into something much greater. That doesn't make the underlying hobby that can lead there "work" in any colloquial context. Pure exertion is necessary in all actions, it alone does not constitute work as such.
Learn your gaming history then get back to me.
That is gaming history. Modding for money is an exception. When you can actually address my points instead of vaguely disagreeing and generalizing minute exceptions, get back to me.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Here is the problem.
People will start stealing the assets from other people's mods and repackage them as their own. It just happened today.
I hope Valve has fun dealing with all that.
You are wrong.
Juke Joint Jezebel
Member
I take it the mod was removed, any reports of people who bought it getting their dosh back?
Making money from mods are outliers.. they are called outliers for a reason.
Outliers don't determine what something is.
Hyperzephyrian
Banned
I'll just leave this here.
When you can actually address my points instead of vaguely disagreeing and generalizing minute exceptions, get back to me.
Jeevesmeister
Banned
This is super fucked all across the board for all parties involved. Valve doesn't have the customer support to protect consumers from the infinite numbers of potential abuses this opens up, nor protect creators from abusive customers who are going to be even more emboldened by the money being on the table.
Bethesda sure as hell isn't entitled to the majority of the cut - if anything they should get the least, as they (and by proxy Valve) benefit from mods giving people a reason to buy their crappy game (base Skyrim is a pox upon RPGs, don't get me started) and as we've seen with the abuse of platforms like Early Access and Greenlight, it's going to turn the storefront into a damn mess.
Here's a fun little Medium piece covering a lot of these issues.
Simply put, you have to be drunk or blind to think that this implementation is at all okay. When modding was considered a strict hobby, there wasn't an obligation to provide customer support or quality assurance - sure, you'd get some disgruntled complaints, but a lot of people are going to be in over their head and not ready to deal with the pressure.
A 24 hour grace period where Valve keeps the profits and puts the money back in your Steam wallet simply doesn't cut it, either. This entire implementation is fucked and Valve has their head all the way up their ass to think this will work out.
In summary,
Also the nonsensical libertarian defenses of a supposed free market being repeated ad-nauseum in this thread have been hilarious to read, thanks for defending the practices of billion dollar corporations without question.
Bethesda sure as hell isn't entitled to the majority of the cut - if anything they should get the least, as they (and by proxy Valve) benefit from mods giving people a reason to buy their crappy game (base Skyrim is a pox upon RPGs, don't get me started) and as we've seen with the abuse of platforms like Early Access and Greenlight, it's going to turn the storefront into a damn mess.
Here's a fun little Medium piece covering a lot of these issues.
Simply put, you have to be drunk or blind to think that this implementation is at all okay. When modding was considered a strict hobby, there wasn't an obligation to provide customer support or quality assurance - sure, you'd get some disgruntled complaints, but a lot of people are going to be in over their head and not ready to deal with the pressure.
A 24 hour grace period where Valve keeps the profits and puts the money back in your Steam wallet simply doesn't cut it, either. This entire implementation is fucked and Valve has their head all the way up their ass to think this will work out.
In summary,
Also the nonsensical libertarian defenses of a supposed free market being repeated ad-nauseum in this thread have been hilarious to read, thanks for defending the practices of billion dollar corporations without question.
They are not outliers, there are tons, and tons of examples of people modding specifically to make money. You guys simply are unaware. It is a common practice.
How much money have you made modding if I may ask? I used to make mods for morrowind as a 15 year old, some of them ended up getting 5 digit download counts. I did not then, and I do not now (if I pick up the modders hammer again) expect money for my experimentation/work. I made those mods for myself and I shared them because I thought others would like what I had made. The mod scene wasn't exactly struggling prior to this despite the lack of earnings, so I imagine a lot of individuals were like minded. While it's currently still possible to mod for free I imagine this option will be trimmed in the future and all of the content modders create will be locked to either being for purchase or being for personal use. It's not hard to imagine the next elder scrolls or fallout creation kit creating encrypted files which can only be decrypted by the steam client upon install, which it will only do if it's served through a monetized workshop.
Could you also cite examples of mods created specifically for monetization purposes outside of the nonsense valve originated? I honestly can't think of many.
StrangeTaco
Member
If you can actually show concrete evidence that the modding scene has at it's core always been about making money I would be extremely interested in seeing that.
Your points are all stemming from an incorrect assumption. "Nobody mods for money, thus blah and blah and blah."
Your premise is false. All your points do not apply. Modding absolutely is work. The end goal of the vast majority of modders is to make a living.
I parlayed my modding into a multi-million budget with MD Anderson.
The last thirty(ish) years of pc modding disagrees with you. You know since most tools specifically prohibit making money and since almost all mods are free.
FunkyMunkey
Banned
Yeah it's really quite pathetic
They're so shortsighted. Many poster here including myself have a ton of experience with Skyrim mods and have already pointed out several flaws.
A mod isn't a piece of official DLC, it can break (much like Bethesda's games themselves), it can fuck up your entire game forcing you to sometimes do an entire fresh re-install (I've done this many times with Skyrim). Let's see how much quality control there is in the Workshop
there won't be any if you read the FAQ
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
i would have never dreamed of charging for any Doom wads, FRUA modules, or Starcraft maps i made.
Oh. It's going to be a cluster. Don't mistake my words.
I just don't see the issue with Valve giving mod creators an option to monetize their work. It is my sincere hope that the good ones won't do it, but if they choose to then that's on them. I won't be paying for anything, that's for sure.
Actually, most of PC history agrees with me. Where do you think expansion packs originate from? Rise of the Triads? Stuff like Katakis?
That's on you, then. TeamTNT dreamed way bigger and wound up a success. I have dozens of commercial Quake mod packs. Unreal mod packs. Warcraft mod packs. I can go way back and start looking at commercial Amiga mods, too.
I don't like this at all. By monetizing mods, Valve is turning them into some kind of paid user-created DLC. Of course you can still download mods for free from other sites like Nexus, but it's only a matter of time before devs will only allow mods from Steamworks since they can get extra money that way.
Well have fun finding free ones that add actual quality to the game in a year or two because they will be all monitized, maybe with a few exceptions.
Netherscourge
Banned
If this actually takes off and Valve/Developers make a ton of money off of modding, I wonder if a new business model might emerge?
Like, say a developer decided to make a "base game" and offers it for free, with mod tools included (although you could use your own tools if you wanted too). The idea is, the base game is offered for free and modders are the ones who develop for it. The original developers (and Valve) make their money through the Workshop cut.
Something like Free 2 Play with DLC or microtransactions - except instead of DLC or micros, it's community-built mods that are sold.
Like, say a developer decided to make a "base game" and offers it for free, with mod tools included (although you could use your own tools if you wanted too). The idea is, the base game is offered for free and modders are the ones who develop for it. The original developers (and Valve) make their money through the Workshop cut.
Something like Free 2 Play with DLC or microtransactions - except instead of DLC or micros, it's community-built mods that are sold.
it's an "option"
but why pass up the sweet benjamins?
I can't wait to pay for Crusader Kings 2 mods.
- Status