Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods

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The 24-hr window is pretty bad as well and shows how out of touch they are with Skyrim. There's a reason why load orders is so critical and it's not uncommon to spend days testing/tweaking a heavily modded Skyrim before you actually really play it.

Of course Valve's response is summed up as "not my problem, ask the modder" which is on par with their customer service.
 
Lime said:
They get 30 % already off the products we are buying from their distribution service. They make millions of dollars and are hugely profitable, have very high market dominance, and they have implemented a strict DRM that's accepted by consumers.
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Oh no they make money and must be evil. What are you, 16?

A DRM by the way that doesn't act like malware. There's a reason we accept it, it's DRM, sure. But it gives you a good storefront, good prices, greenlight etc. It's the best you're going to get, big players aren't going to release games some form of DRM and this is the best compromise.
 
Lime said:
and only get 1/4 of what people are paying for their work, apparently.
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For a dollar mod you'll need 100/0,25=400 sales to get any payment.
The most subscribed mod for Skyrim has 815.978 subscriptions. If s/he charged 1$ for it and everyone of them paid there will be ~204.000$ maximum without counting the banking and conversion fees.
 
Is kinda funny that valve ate removing mods with donation links but told modders during the NDA period that it was ok to rip off other peoples mods as long as they were free downloads.

But yeah it's *totally* about paying modders for their work.
 
MJLord said:
Oh no they make money and must be evil. What are you, 16?

A DRM by the way that doesn't act like malware. There's a reason we accept it, it's DRM, sure. But it gives you a good storefront, good prices, greenlight etc. It's the best you're going to get, big players aren't going to release games some form of DRM and this is the best compromise.
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Your argument: "Valve is hosting the content, they should get money from this"

My counter-argument: "Valve already makes money from us buying games on their service (30%) and are sitting really, really well from a corporate standpoint"

Your reply: "What are you, 16?"
 
Lime said:
"as long as a worker willingly let herself be exploited by a huge corporation, there's nothing wrong with the exploitation" is the argument you're making. The "flawed system" is what is being criticized and should be condemned strongly by both modders and consumers.
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You make it sound like they are forced to put their content in paid form on the workshop which is simply not the case.
 
Morokh said:
You make it sound like they are forced to put their content in paid form on the workshop which is simply not the case.
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Regardless of an exploitative system being used or not, it is still an exploitative system. That's what's being discussed, not whether or not people are using it or not.
 
SalsaShark said:
what if Chris Avellone and some other people suddenly make a campaign mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4
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Lime said:
Your argument: "Valve is hosting the content, they should get money from this"

My counter-argument: "Valve already makes money from us buying games on their service (30%) and are sitting really, really well from a corporate standpoint"

Your reply: "What are you, 16?"
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You seem to be completely ignoring the fact that storing mods on their servers costs money, that developing the store features cost them money, keeping it available 24/7 365 for the entire planet costs money. As I've said before they offer benefits to mod developers wanting to sell. Ignoring that kind of expense and the value they offer mod developers just because "valve already makes money" is crazy.

Valve making money off this is par for the course. I do think mod developers should get a better cut however.
 
Lime said:
Those poor multi-million corporations with 80 % market dominance who already get our money when buying their products.
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Some of you guys have a very weird mindset. If a company offers a service it can charge for it. What does being successful or not have to do with it?
 
alexandros said:
Some of you guus have a very weird mindset. If a company offers a service it can charge for it. What does being successful or not have to do with it?
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The point is they already got our money when we bought their game. And that taking 3/4 is way too exorbiant.

It's fine if they want to charge in principle, but 75% is super exploitative and greedy
 
Part of what made steam successful was offering the services it did free of cost. If it's going to start turning all of them into ways to get more money people are going to start rooting for something else.
 
Mavromatis said:
For a dollar mod you'll need 100/0,25=400 sales to get any payment.
The most subscribed mod for Skyrim has 815.978 subscriptions. If s/he charged 1$ for it and everyone of them paid there will be ~204.000$ maximum without counting the banking and conversion fees.
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Ah, but would all those people be subscribed if there was a fee attached?
 
Awww this sounds distasteful!

Super awesome for the developers of the mods and such but it is turning the users of the mods away so overall it is probably going to be a lot worse for the general modding scene in the short term. Hopefully there is some balance to the mods or other ways you can support the developer of the mods. Maybe a subscription service to their mods so you pay £5-10 (whatever the modder charges) and you gain access to their library of mods.

You can't really blame the developers of the mods due to the hard work they put into them but maybe we will see a lot more mods costing upwards of £5 which I think will only shrink the modding community. Also the developers will probably become a lot more protective over their created content which again is all super understandable but removes some of the unique opportunities that modding provides!
 
MJLord said:
You seem to be completely ignoring the fact that storing mods on their servers costs money, that developing the store features cost them money, keeping it available 24/7 365 for the entire planet costs money. As I've said before they offer benefits to mod developers wanting to sell. Ignoring that kind of expense and the value they offer mod developers just because "valve already makes money" is crazy.

Valve making money off this is par for the course. I do think mod developers should get a better cut however.
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lol i host your file and offer a payment platform that's why i deserve 30% cut. You say you made the content? well, 25% for you.

also steam workshop sucks compared to nexus tool.
 
superseohyun said:
lol i host your file and offer a payment platform that's why i deserve 30% cut. You say you made the content? well, 25% for you.

also steam workshop sucks compared to nexus tool.
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If you bothered to read the final part of that post you'll see I take issue with the way things are cut.
 
Thread title should have been "Valve & Bethesda charging 75 % of paid mods on Steam Workshop" - the original one just muddied the issue and let people think this was an issue of mods being paid or free.
 
Lime said:
Thread title should have been "Valve & Bethesda charging 75 % of paid mods on Steam Workshop" - the original one just muddied the issue and let people think this was an issue of mods being paid or free.
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Actually you're the one focusing the discussion around that while it's only one aspect of the entire thing.
 
Valve taking 75% makes me feel sick.

They had more justification when it came to CS:Go and TF2 mods because they are valve creations, Skyrim and others, are not.

Steam Workshop brings a lot of value, I personally do no believe it comes close to having a 75% cut taken value however, and I'm not a mod creator.

I see no problem with mod creators being paid for their creations (when using unique assets), some mods transform entire games, look at DOTA and Counterstrike.

Two of the most popular games in the world came from mods of Warcraft 2 and Half Life.

This has a *ton* of potential however as a income source for creators, which is great.
 
I don't think 25% is ridiculous, but I too think it should be higher. There are lots of mods where people put in a lot of work, but there are a whole lot of mods that are just taking the games assets, using the games tools, and doing some remixing.

I think the cut makes less sense for something like pure modeling work where the mod maker has done modeling, texturing and animation from scratch. Same with music packs with original content. But 25% is certainly a fair cut for a "jump higher" mod.

Either way I think its a good thing. Some people put a lot of work into mods and should be free to make some money from it, though a tip system might have been better.

People are loosing their shit over this, but seem to forget you don't *have* to charge money to make a mod.
 
astonish said:
I don't think 25% is ridiculous, but I too think it should be higher. There are lots of mods where people put in a lot of work, but there are a whole lot of mods that are just taking the games assets, using the games tools, and doing some remixing.

I think the cut makes less sense for something like pure modeling work where the mod maker has done modeling, texturing and animation from scratch. Same with music packs with original content. But 25% is certainly a fair cut for a "jump higher" mod.

Either way I think its a good thing. Some people put a lot of work into mods and should be free to make some money from it, though a tip system might have been better.

People are loosing their shit over this, but seem to forget you don't *have* to charge money to make a mod.
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Apparently the 25% in this case is skyrim specific. The split is up to a game's publisher or developer. So this means that the publisher could also decide that the modder gets 90% of the price.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement/?appid=72850

Indirect Distributions of Contributions. Valve or the Publisher may charge a fee for the right or chance to later obtain one or more Contributions (for example, the sale of a “key” that can be used to unlock a crate containing a set of content). In cases such as these, where a fee is charged indirectly for the ability to acquire content, Valve and/or the Publisher may determine what revenue share will be paid for any Contributions that are ultimately distributed, and how such revenue share will be allocated amongst multiple Contributors, in its sole discretion.
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Not liking it, i would have been just fine if they had made each mod have a donate button instead of a buy button, in that you could still get the mods from free in Steam workshop and if you wanted to you could do a direct donation using the system they have in place now for paying for a mod - on top of this i would have also preferred that the modder get at least 50% of the donation and then Valve/Publisher each getting 25% (the current breakdown is totally wrong).

As it is now i can freely say easily, i will not buy a single item that is for sale unless its using Chesko's (Creator of Skyrim mod Frostfall) pay what you like method - i will only support ones that offer the mod for free and are ok with just getting a donation (and i hope Chesko offers a donation via other means instead/as well as the pay what you want on Steam, - I'd rather he/she get a lot more than 25%).
 
sosage said:
You guys realize that most commercial releases using another game's engine are technically the same as a total conversion mod.

Unity and UnrealEd projects fall under that same boat. You are modifying someone else's game engine.

So, is that where we are going to take this? A project is only worth money if the developer built an engine from scratch, to place a game on top of it? With that logic, we shouldn't be paying for a vast majority of today's games.

We'd be rocketed back to the 90s', where actual game development couldn't start for 6-10 months because the programmers are trying to out Carmack, John Carmack.

P.S. 25% is no bueno.
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Have you ever actually used Unity or Unreal?
I've both made mods (For WC3, mainly) and used Unity and Unreal for a year each, and there's a world of difference.
It's the difference between being in a structured framework and having to create the structure yourself.

Modding is still very hard work, that requires both talent and hard work, but it's a subset of what's required to actually make a game.


I wholly agree that 25% is a joke, but i wouldn't expect the 70% of full games, either. Bethesda is right in taking a cut, it's just that 50% of gross is ridiculous.
 
What's with the listed prices for many of these mods?

Wet and Cold is listed for 4.59€ on the front page for the workshop, but it's actually a Pay What You Want and the lowest price you can pay is 0.92€. Midas Magic Gold Edition is 5.49€ on the front page but the lowest price for it is actually 2.79€.

This makes browsing paid mods more difficult than it should be, you're not even seeing the correct prices.
 
Hamster Plugin said:
What's with the listed prices for many of these mods?

Wet and Cold is listed for 4.59€ on the front page for the workshop, but it's actually a Pay What You Want and the lowest price you can pay is 0.92€. Midas Magic Gold Edition is 5.49€ on the front page but the lowest price for it is actually 2.79€.

This makes browsing paid mods more difficult than it should be, you're not even seeing the correct prices.
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I heard they removed some features due to license conflicts with other mods they use.
At the moment it costs more than a DLC of the same game with the listed price.
 
Looking closer at some of these mods ....... oh boy ....

The 'Blind raven mod' on the page isn't even a mod it's a WIP

NOTE: At this moment, it contains only 2 pieces (Dress and Shoes). A lot of additional pieces are being in the works and they will become available soon.
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The Shadow Scale armor, while it looks cool isn't even properly implemented in the game yet

You can access the set via console: help shadowscale
Then: player.additem XXXXXXXX 1
(replace XXXXXXXX with the code that appears).
Coming 4/26: mini-quest and female armour. :)
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I'm not a big fan of this myself. It's good for the mod creators but when it comes to PC games I always look to enhancing the experience with free mods. I can see this becoming rampant and just another thing you pay for.
 
edit. nvm


This "paid mods" thing needs to be more controlled. Like literally, it shouldn't be easy to make your mod be buyable. There should be only a few selected ones
 
balladofwindfishes said:
He sold his mod at 50% of the product with a full and proper Steam release... Not exactly comparable.
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key point:

So obviously Valve and Game Devs are the biggest winners right now. That’s the wrong way around in my opinion. The modders should be getting the majority share of the revenue from this – that just seems like common sense.

It’s obvious that Valve and the game developer need to make money here too, enough to cover costs at least – but it’s the modder’s work that is making the money. I don’t know whose choice that is though, but it feels like someone is being a greedy asshole. This is something that will get better with time.
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Odah said:
This "paid mods" thing needs to be more controlled. Like literally, it shouldn't be easy to make your mod be buyable. There should be only a few selected ones
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This will depend on game. Devs can choose to curate, so it will be more like CS:GO & Dota 2 -style even if it's sold on workshop.
 
2015-04-24_0745.png


I saw boogie2988's video of this matter and I say I agree with him on that if this was a policed and managed properly just maybe it could work out. Not every mod should be monetized however, and something kinda like green-light but kick-starter as in paying for it. which all the money is put in holding till the "amount of voters" reaches requirement and then the payment goes to the mod author. and the mod it accepted into the workshop. While in this process on going the players could pay the mod since they already forked the money over.
 
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