gaming Selling of mods: What could possibly go wrong?

[Skeleton Kin 385]

Just very recently Steam has put on a new system! Selling mods! Now of course there is a ton of backlash already, but I can indeed see potential in this, both good and bad.

 

Good:

• It allows people to earn a bit of money on work they usually wouldn't
• It's refundable, so scamming won't be a big deal (though in the first 24 hours)

Bad:

• Can lock out a lot of users who don't usually spend money
• Anyone can charge for these mods
• People can charge silly amounts for mods (In my opinion 50p is sensible, not £2.50)

Anyway, I put down my thoughts, how about yours?

[nolongerabout 403]

I think that independent mod websites who have not implemented this will get far less traffic, because modders will realize that they can charge via steam. And even then, the modders get an awful deal out of it, with a staggering 75% of the money going to Valve.

But the point is that it's better than charging nothing on Nexus or Moddb.

At the extreme, well known mod makers will start to charge for updates, bugfixes and any new content they make. That would ruin the mod, in my eyes. Also, there is a danger that current versions of mods that are now for sale, such as the wet and cold mod for Skyrim, could be removed entirely from these third party sites (At the time I'm writing this it's still on Nexus). I can understand that modders sometimes need monetary support, and I have seen plenty of patreon funds set up by these modders. But they shouldn't have to charge for mods, unless the developers accept it as DLC. But then it's up to the game developer to pay the modder.

 

This is a bit of a ramble, and most of my points are at the extreme. Just what I think could happen.

[Discordian 6,015]

In an age where gamers hate microtransactions...gamers find a way to abuse microtransactions. The man becomes the beast.

[Aleh 481]

psh. Well I for one am not likely to buy any mods I can't get elsewhere. 
Mods have been free all this time, my wallet prefers to keep it that way for me xD

 

Also can see a lot of the paid mods being low quality as fuck. I mean, the site has literally NO quality control xD

So yeah, thanks but no thanks. I'll stick to nexus mods.

 

(Also for Christs sakes they already have early access mods https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=430324898  )

Edited April 23, 2015 by Aleh

[Skeleton Kin 385]

May I just add this to the thread, people have already stared to try to bombard the mod developers' profiles with the typical moronic spam.

 

 

No one is revealed here for obvious reasons, except Bing Bang Dang as that is me.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Lag Spike

[Flutter's lover <3 8,206]

People create mods for the love of the games they play, not to make money off of them. This is a terrible idea. This will only end in tears.

 

 

I can just imagine some people going "Oh hey, I can make money off this." and then the market will be flooded with  crappy/useless mods. I shouldn't have to pay for a mod, like you would for DLC...since a mod is a 3rd party add-on and NOT  a sanctioned add-on from the developer of the game. Paying for a mod sounds like a ludicrous idea. Plus, with all the mods there are for games like TF2 and such...some people might be left out, since they'll have to now buy a mod to play on a favourite server of theirs that their friends play on.Instead of just freely downloading the new mod on the server.

[Aura 120]

My only complaint is that people are raging over something they can simply ignore. But for me, it was simply a Tuesday.  I do not see this affecting my experiences any time soon.  The only game that is currently supporting this is Skyrim, and I do not even own it --I would if I had good computer.  My biggest concern is the possibility of abusing the DMCA claims, both by legitimate owners and, for the time being, DLC haters.

[Discordian 6,015]

I wanna know how people get legal clearance for stuff like this. They're essentially making money off of another's product almost directly. It's kind of a grey area but enough of one that I can see laws being created to put a stop to this real quick.

[The Pink One 595]

If skyrim is the only game supporting this at the moment then might I, as a skyrim modder, point out that Steam Workshop is not very popular among skyrim modders and that they usually publish their works on the skyrim nexus ...

[Aleh 481]

I wanna know how people get legal clearance for stuff like this. They're essentially making money off of another's product almost directly. It's kind of a grey area but enough of one that I can see laws being created to put a stop to this real quick.

Well considering steam is officially endorsing it I doubt its illegal or going to be a major issue.

Also going to point out that steam and Bethdesa gets a 75% cut of the modders earnings from this. 

From what I've read anyway

Edited April 23, 2015 by Aleh

[Skeleton Kin 385]

I wanna know how people get legal clearance for stuff like this. They're essentially making money off of another's product almost directly. It's kind of a grey area but enough of one that I can see laws being created to put a stop to this real quick.

 

I think they ask for permission from the IP owner. Unless you're talking about taking someone else's mod and selling it at SW

Edited April 23, 2015 by Lag Spike

[Omega Centauri 317]

People on /v/ are flipping their shit right now, so I ran here.

 

I do think that this is a horrible idea though.

 

Mods are supposed to be a way for a community to make a game their own by creating their own content and sharing it with everyone else. If this trend continues, modding will turn into another way for people to squeeze money out of the community rather than share content with it. Instead of a plethora of content that can be added or removed from your game as you please, we just have infinite amounts of DLC. That infuriates me.

 

User-created content for games has always been and always should be free. If someone wants to earn money from it, then they should make a mod good enough that people will make donations.

 

People aren't actually going to pay for this crap anyway, we'll just pirate them. And if you'd told me a couple of weeks ago that people would start pirating mods soon, I'd have laughed until i cried.

 

 

FUCK YOU VALVE. FUCK YOU BETHESDA.

 

[Lagrangian 64]

One thing Valve doesn't seem to have considered: almost all TF2 and DOTA 2 mods are purely visual so it's easy to say whether or not you want it just by looking at it.

 

Skyrim mods are often much more complicated than that, so it could be really hard to justify pricing on something I can't tell if I'll want until I've already paid for it. For games that's a risk that can be mitigated through reviews and playthroughs. But mods don't usually get that much attention, and those that do are often only the most obviously popular, which likely only became noticeably popular because they're free.

I'm not just worried that Valve will continue to run rampant over the market with this, but that this kind of scheme will create a negative feedback that leads to fewer mods of any kind.

 

 

Here's to hoping that this fails horribly for Valve.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Lagrangian

[OkBuddy 586]

I would rather have a optional donation system than anything, because at least modders would make some money while still having the mods be free.

This system is gonna be very broken, with stolen mods and DMCA claims all over the place. I mean there might be some higher quality mods because of this, but there's also going to be a ton of half-assed mods as well.

Plus, the 75% cut that Valve and Bethesda are going to make is just fucking absurd.

[Blaze Bronson 343]

I think TotalBiscuit has the right idea about this, see video.

tl;dr of the video. aka TotalBiscuit's opinions:

• Mods are work and though they aren't entitled to money, they sure deserve it.
• Steam basically don't put in any effort, yet still only give 25% to the mod creator. Somewhat abusing their dominant position in PC gaming.
• Ideally this would be a good idea, but it has very many pitfalls.
• His take on the subject currently is to replace the buy button with donate, and encourage voluntary donations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k&ab_channel=TotalBiscuit,TheCynicalBrit

 

Edit: wording

Edited April 24, 2015 by Blaze Bronson

[honk friend 1,978]

The only way I would ever be fine with this is if it STAYED within Skyrim's workshop, and Nexus was still the go-to place for modding.

 

But knowing Valve, this will probably spread to other workshops like L4D2, Garry's Mod, and CS:GO's workshops.

[Commissar Alexer 763]

Well, this will probably kill the mod scence...and by extension the games too.

 

Let's be honest, for games such a Skyrim mods are more or less essential. Like certain fixes, balancing or stuff like that. And now imagine to have to pay for that.

10.00€ for a better german translation because the original one is horribly. 15.00€ for a certain bug fix that still hasn't been addressed officially. 20.00€ for a balancing mod so that certain skills and classes aren't useless anymore.

 

Wonderful.

 

Hey! Maybe i should join too....

 

Special Skyrim MLP Pony Mod (just replaced the ingame horses with models i found in the net)! Only 35.00€!

[Aleh 481]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12454/?

A response to the changes. 
Tonnes of mod authors are now pulling their content off the forums because they don't want their work being stolen. They can't afford to spend the time/money checking the workshop each day to check if their content has been stolen. Because valve is bloody useless at quality control (See steam greenlight for more xD)
So many damn things wrong with this >.<

[honk friend 1,978]

It's hilarious how many people are actually surprised that Valve would do something like this. People seem to think "better than EA" automatically means "perfect angels to the PC gaming community". Face it, if Valve wasn't greedy, TF2 would still be a half-decent game and the Greenlight system wouldn't exist.

[Passion 3,484]

What surprises me the most here is how Bethesda decided to shoot its own foot.

 

I understand, Skyrim is already a game that has its years and is starting to grow old slowly. So Bethesda decides to jump on Valve's idea because they may be able to squeeze some more cash from this game.

 

What they fail to realize is that vanilla Skyrim was NOT all that popular. Let's face it: vanilla Skyrim was riding on the very well built hype that accompanied its release. However, once the hype was over, it turned out that it's heavily repetitive and has just "that many" features to present to players.

It's the 10 000+ mods that kept this game alive for so many years.

When you're reading Skyrim reviews nowadays, I doubt you'd find one that isn't a review of modded Skyrim or at least doesn't mention the vast amount of mods that this game has.

 

I remember the day when my friends bought me TES III: Morrowind first. It was funny because I wasn't able to play DVD games just yet then, and I had to wait for a year to play it. But I absolutely adored this game, with both expansions, and considered the wait worth my time.

Then came the Oblivion. While not astonishing, it had its charm. Shivering Isles carried its semi-popularity. But also the massive mods and overhauls people created for it (especially the Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul which made the game ridiculously difficult. A real challenge for hardcore TES players).

When Skyrim came out, I was more interested in its story and connections to previous lore than gameplay. And I made a right choice here, because gameplay was lacking. I'd have probably dropped it altogether if not the mods, which changed EVERYTHING. Combat system, magic system, animations, leveling, armors, weapons, scripts...

 

And now Bethesda decides they'll put a wrench in independent devs' initiative once and for all. This decision is like a nail to the coffin for this company in my eyes. Bethesda is not great at publishing developed games by themselves, they've proven it both with Skyrim and TESO. They're great, however, at allowing others to expand on their products, what developed a certain reputation to their name over time.

They've literally just decided to commit a social suicide in the name of monies.

 

I've tried looking at the case from company's perspective, and I still find this decision at least dumb. What will be the alternative cost in reputation and potential sales increase for their next products?

There are rumors that TES VI is supposed to take place in Black Marsh. Not very interesting perspective to me, but I was thinking of getting it anyway, because the mods would enhance the gameplay once more and allow me probably... everything? However, knowing that there will be NO good, free mods (or they'll be extremely hard to find), I've actually decided to skip on next TES game. That's one person less who's not going to buy their product. Question is, how many people like me will NOT buy the game, knowing mods are a thing of the past?

 

Introducing the paid mods policy will cause an irreversible damage to the modding scene.

 

Above all that, there's still stupidity of people who decided it will be a good idea to allow this in the first place. As presented in TB's video, there's a massive amount of mods which use foreign, trademarked assents as their basis: as shown in video: Frostmourne blade + Lich King armor. How long will companies like Blizzard keep their eyes closed on money being made off of their property? The moment first complaint appears will be the moment when already severely damaged modding scene will disappear. Simply because everyone will panic and most of the mods will be removed due to legal concerns.

This policy is basically a giant transparent saying: "Hey, CEOs of big gaming companies, people are making money here! Don't you want some too!?" - which will hurt the community the most.

[Commissar Alexer 763]

Well, its over now.

 

Modding is officially dead now.

[Aleh 481]

Well, its over now.

 

Modding is officially dead now.

I feel dead is a bit overpessemistic.

Its definitely damaged the community, causing a large rift between those who'd sell mods, and those who don't. But new mods are still being released constantly and  a LOT of modders are against selling their mods. 

I think it'll probably be fine. Bethdesa and valve are still greedy twats tho

[Shift 4,274]

This will probably kill off most of the mods because people can charge outrageous prices for small things, and every time you want to change up your Skyrim you need to pay, which will probably add up to a lot. However, people can just go over to other websites to mod their Skyrim, so...

 

I seriously wonder what Valve's thought process was when they implemented this.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Shift

[Aleh 481]

This will probably kill off most of the mods

Again, extreme pessimism. The majority of the modding community has nothing to do with steam workshop. And now that its done this even more modders are against it, will most likely continue to mod for free (Releasing free mods on nexus/steam workshop).

The main problem that this has caused is that there is now a massive rift in what was once a really stable community, but I don't think modding is dead just yet : P

[NuclearBurg (Dawn) 622]

I noticed this when I was looking for skyrim mods on steam. I think my brain just stopped working trying to work out why mods costed money.