gaming Selling of mods: What could possibly go wrong?

[Shift 4,274]

@@Aleh,

 

Should've specified better; most of the mods on Steam Workshop. Of course there are other mods out there, but a lot of the mods on Steam Workshop that were perfectly good will now have a price tag on them. I'm assuming most people just won't go to the Steam Workshop anymore.

[Aleh 481]

@@Aleh,

 

Should've specified better; most of the mods on Steam Workshop. Of course there are other mods out there, but a lot of the mods on Steam Workshop that were perfectly good will now have a price tag on them. I'm assuming most people just won't go to the Steam Workshop anymore.

Yeah. Which in a way is a good thing. 

Nexus mods is FAR better : P

[Shift 4,274]

@@Aleh,

 

Yep, I don't have a steam but from what people have told me Nexus mods are far superior to Steam Workshop ones, except for the occasional great one.

[NuclearBurg (Dawn) 622]

@@Aleh,

 

Yep, I don't have a steam but from what people have told me Nexus mods are far superior to Steam Workshop ones, except for the occasional great one.

I guess I'll stop using curse then. They haven't updated their skyrim mods list since 2012

[Aleh 481]

I guess I'll stop using curse then. They haven't updated their skyrim mods list since 2012

Didn't even know curse did mods for skyrim.  Thought it was just a minecraft thing. 

NMM is generally best for most bethdesa games,  think its the most active part of the skyrim modding community atm, although I may be wrong.

[NuclearBurg (Dawn) 622]

Didn't even know curse did mods for skyrim.  Thought it was just a minecraft thing. 

NMM is generally best for most bethdesa games,  think its the most active part of the skyrim modding community atm, although I may be wrong.

Well I think it was curse. And I'll have a look there as well then.

[BayoUni2847 528]

When I heard about this, my reaction was disappointment.

 

I remember downloading mods for Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament 2004 on a terrible computer with shoddy dial-up internet speeds. It was a blast to be able to get new content for a game from the internet.

 

Whenever I download a mod for a game, I always get that little spark of nostalgia from when I had to wait twenty minutes to download a custom made map for Quake 3. Only to find out that I didn't like it and deleted it afterwards.

 

Hopefully this stays within Skyrims' workshop. I played and beat the game on the PS3 when it was released and I bought the complete PC version on sale for the hilarious mods.

 

If this method if integrated into G-Mod, I'll be kind of pissed. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Deadlyblack

[Aleh 481]

Well I think it was curse. And I'll have a look there as well then.

Well the last updated mod on curse is from the 12th of April : P 

Nexus mods was most likely some time today. 

(I'd check but it seems to be down for whatever reason for me :/)

[Blaze Bronson 343]

This might lead to games being even more unfinished than ever. 
"Ahh, are we going to bother fixing this issue, when we could just leave it to the modders?"

"Haha, no, why spend money fixing it, when we could instead MAKE money selling it as a mod/DLC!"

 

Pessimistic? Yes. But I know for sure that I will never pay for a mod, so my modding career is over if this becomes standard. And I'm sure many other people think like me, and this will be a huge dent in the modding community.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Blaze Bronson

[NuclearBurg (Dawn) 622]

Well the last updated mod on curse is from the 12th of April : P 

Nexus mods was most likely some time today. 

(I'd check but it seems to be down for whatever reason for me :/)

Jesus. That's not good.

Also the face looks like a brohoof with eyes because of the bracket XD.

[ponytheorist 181]

This doesn't sound all that bad to me. Modders often put many hours into making them, and charging for it isn't a bad thing. However, if the history of games has taught us anything, it is that when a good idea comes along, there will always be people abusing it. For instance, free to play had enormous potential, and developers fucked it up.

 

Same with steam greenlight. Thousands of shitty games priced way to high with indie devs that silence critics and are total assholes.

 

Nevertheless, I think that paying for a good mod is not something that is so horrible as many people make it out to be. If I like something, I'm happy to pay for it (as long as it isn't overpriced)

 

In conclusion, I like the idea, but I am well aware that there are a lot of pitfalls this idea can fall into. I guess we just have to wait and see

[Aleh 481]

This doesn't sound all that bad to me. Modders often put many hours into making them, and charging for it isn't a bad thing. However, if the history of games has taught us anything, it is that when a good idea comes along, there will always be people abusing it. For instance, free to play had enormous potential, and developers fucked it up.

 

Same with steam greenlight. Thousands of shitty games priced way to high with indie devs that silence critics and are total assholes.

 

Nevertheless, I think that paying for a good mod is not something that is so horrible as many people make it out to be. If I like something, I'm happy to pay for it (as long as it isn't overpriced)

 

In conclusion, I like the idea, but I am well aware that there are a lot of pitfalls this idea can fall into. I guess we just have to wait and see

Modders can definitely get paid for their work. That works (Although I doubt the modding market would be as successful as it is today if that was done in the past).

But the system set up at the moment is so obnoxiously bad its not even funny.  Modders only get 25% of the money paid for the mods, the rest go to valve/bethdesa.  People can steal mods easily, the market has no quality control. 

Its piss easy to pirate mods from them as well.  All you need to do is buy it, put the mod inside a folder, and then instantly redeem it.

 

Its screwed over the modding community so badly >.<  

 

[ponytheorist 181]

Modders can definitely get paid for their work. That works (Although I doubt the modding market would be as successful as it is today if that was done in the past).

But the system set up at the moment is so obnoxiously bad its not even funny.  Modders only get 25% of the money paid for the mods, the rest go to valve/bethdesa.  People can steal mods easily, the market has no quality control. 

Its piss easy to pirate mods from them as well.  All you need to do is buy it, put the mod inside a folder, and then instantly redeem it.

Yes, the system as they have it now, should really chance. 25% is a really low percentage, considering that they made the mods without help of Bethesda

 

Pirating will never stop, no matter what. There will always be those people who aren't willing to hand over a dollar for something great. I rather have it that pirating is easy, then that modders put in anti-consumer bulls**t like DRM or something. And a lot of people are willingly to pay a few dollars is it is a good mod

 

The quality control is my biggest point. If this isn't monitored or watched very carefully, it is very easy for shitty mods that are way to overpriced to pop up, and as we have seen Greenlight, that can end badly

[Freewave 1,145]

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.

 

Reminds me of the Sims 2 community where many people started charging for their mods and a few pirate sites were created to give those mods away for free. That game had every customization under the sun for it.  Eventually EA stripped a lot of the customization that was wonderful in Sims 2 mostly out of 3+4 so they could again charge for all their own conentent to make the game actually good and cut out the custom creators. I can see this same scenario repeating here with bootlegged mods. people trying to cash in, and plenty of community drama.

[honk friend 1,978]

Well thank god all the games I mod don't use the Steam workshop.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoYWdHe4tQ4

[Passion 3,484]

I have a feeling people fail to see the entire image of that new procedure.

 

Bethesda is now probably directly earning money via the mods that other people create for Skyrim. This is an act that instantly places the entirety of modding community in the spotlight.

Nexusmods is free and safe, but only for the time being. It's really easy to predict what comes next. Valve + Bethesda decide that they could potentially earn more money if not all the modders who mod their stuff for free and place it on websites like Nexusmods. Website gets targeted as a piracy site hosting illegal mods which are not under Valve's/Bethesda's control and use Bethesda's intellectual property (a.k.a. Skyrim) without their consent. Nexusmods falls into troubles. I will be HONESTLY surprised if such step will not be undertaken sooner or later.

 

Moreover, the article on NM website points out a very major aspect which shows how flawed this system is.

 

How are you supposed to check whether a mod someone is selling isn't your own mod by accident? Someone needs to buy it. And then tell you that such mod is yours. What are the chances of this? Pretty slim. So, in order to check if the mod is not using your own materials in it, YOU need to buy it. And sure, you can refund in 24 hours. But, point is, your refunded money travels back to STEAM WALLET. From where you can NOT pick it up again. It REMAINS on Valve's account and you can do nothing about it anymore. The system is absolutely pathological and is nothing more than a shameless cash grab right now. Valve is trying to cover it up by placing the spotlight on modders and explaining they're doing it so that the modders can earn money for they work, but anybody should be able to spot just how little thought was actually given to the system. The issues that are being encountered right now were so easy to predict that even child would do it. But who cares? It yields some money, so we should do this. Sad thing that the alternative long-run cost of this solution will heavily outweigh the short-term earnings of this program.

[Commissar Alexer 763]

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

 

Dude...you don't understand that this is only the begin.

 

What speaks against Bethesda declaring all non-workshop mods as illegal? They simply can-will force people to make mods only availiable on steamworkshop with a price. Because that will make then money.

 

Oh it gets even better...now they literally can make games halfassed or broken and then let the modders fix it...and even getting payed to!

Because without a doubt this will happen, people are paying a few bucks for a sword or amor or whatever...

 

Now imagine this...new TES comes out. Completely unplayable, bugs, unbalanced, shitty translastions.

The Solution: Mods!

 

Just pay about...100€ for mods to make the game even playable.

Hell! There are even mods there that cost much more than the game itself and people are even buying it!

 

 

 

Never have i thought i would see the day where mod piracy would be a thing but thanks to Valve and Bethesda it is a thing now.

 

 

By the way, valve is censoring and banning people from steam who speaks against it.

[Mouse 302]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/04/25/valve-39-s-gabe-newell-addressing-questions-about-steam-39-s-new-ability-to-sell-mods.aspx

 

"Well, if we are censoring people, that's stupid. I'll get that to stop. On top of it being stupid, it doesn't work (see Top Gear forums on Jeremy Clarkson)." (from the reddit post)

[Aleh 481]

Dude...you don't understand that this is only the begin.

 

What speaks against Bethesda declaring all non-workshop mods as illegal? They simply can-will force people to make mods only availiable on steamworkshop with a price. Because that will make then money.

 

Oh it gets even better...now they literally can make games halfassed or broken and then let the modders fix it...and even getting payed to!

Because without a doubt this will happen, people are paying a few bucks for a sword or amor or whatever...

 

Now imagine this...new TES comes out. Completely unplayable, bugs, unbalanced, shitty translastions.

The Solution: Mods!

 

Just pay about...100€ for mods to make the game even playable.

Hell! There are even mods there that cost much more than the game itself and people are even buying it!

 

 

 

Never have i thought i would see the day where mod piracy would be a thing but thanks to Valve and Bethesda it is a thing now.

 

 

By the way, valve is censoring and banning people from steam who speaks against it.

Well tbh Bethdesa is kind of unlikely to force mods to be paid. I'm fairly sure they recognize that free mods are acceptable and

(Whilst this is a very poorly done thing) are probably more supportive of modders than you would think.

 

Oh it gets even better...now they literally can make games halfassed or broken and then let the modders fix it...and even getting payed to!

Because without a doubt this will happen, people are paying a few bucks for a sword or amor or whatever...

 

Now imagine this...new TES comes out. Completely unplayable, bugs, unbalanced, shitty translastions.

The Solution: Mods!

 

Wait a sec, how does the fact that its paid or not change anything? Surely they could always do this, but never would do? And they'd just get no sales if they released a shit game, would completely ruin the companies reputation. I like to think that Bethdesa has more self respect than that.

Also the last parts been noted recently and will stop.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqojgfh?context=3

[A Black Circle 1,586]

By the way, valve is censoring and banning people from steam who speaks against it.

Dear mother of god. This has gone too far.

 

I HAVE AN IDEA!

 

1. Set up a donation center to get rid of paid mods

2. Use that money to buy most popular monetized mods

3. Release them for free

4. Watch mod sales dwindle

 

GENIUS!

 

[Aleh 481]

Dear mother of god. This has gone too far.

 

I HAVE AN IDEA!

 

1. Set up a donation center to get rid of paid mods

2. Use that money to buy most popular monetized mods

3. Release them for free

4. Watch mod sales dwindle

 

GENIUS!

 

People already pirate them. Thats just a less convenient way of pirating.

Also Gabe Newell confirmed that this was a dumb thing to do recently on reddit, so its likely to stop. 

Was just some of valves staff being stupid.

[Commissar Alexer 763]

this method if integrated into G-Mod, I'll be kind of pissed. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

From Garry Newman:

 

 

What about Garry’s Mod

It’s something we’re interested in for sure. It’s something I wanted to do when Workshop was first integrated into GMod in 2012, but the system wasn’t ready for it.

People already sell their mods for Garry’s Mod privately. Doesn’t it make sense that we bring that into Steam so those transactions can be trusted by both parties? Obviously it’s going to be hard to convince those guys to move their mods to Steam and lose 75% of their profits, but we’ll see what wiggle room we have on that.

We’ll wait to see what it looks like once the Skyrim system has stabilized and see what we can learn from it before pushing forward, but opportunity is never a bad thing to give people.

 

Several other publisher and developer have stated their interest imcluding Paradox Interactive, Fireaxis and some indie developers too.

 

Because they get payed for it. 45% from all revenues goes to the devs.

 

 

I have a feeling people fail to see the entire image of that new procedure.

 

Bethesda is now probably directly earning money via the mods that other people create for Skyrim. This is an act that instantly places the entirety of modding community in the spotlight.

Nexusmods is free and safe, but only for the time being. It's really easy to predict what comes next. Valve + Bethesda decide that they could potentially earn more money if not all the modders who mod their stuff for free and place it on websites like Nexusmods. Website gets targeted as a piracy site hosting illegal mods which are not under Valve's/Bethesda's control and use Bethesda's intellectual property (a.k.a. Skyrim) without their consent. Nexusmods falls into troubles. I will be HONESTLY surprised if such step will not be undertaken sooner or later.

 

Moreover, the article on NM website points out a very major aspect which shows how flawed this system is.

 

How are you supposed to check whether a mod someone is selling isn't your own mod by accident? Someone needs to buy it. And then tell you that such mod is yours. What are the chances of this? Pretty slim. So, in order to check if the mod is not using your own materials in it, YOU need to buy it. And sure, you can refund in 24 hours. But, point is, your refunded money travels back to STEAM WALLET. From where you can NOT pick it up again. It REMAINS on Valve's account and you can do nothing about it anymore. The system is absolutely pathological and is nothing more than a shameless cash grab right now. Valve is trying to cover it up by placing the spotlight on modders and explaining they're doing it so that the modders can earn money for they work, but anybody should be able to spot just how little thought was actually given to the system. The issues that are being encountered right now were so easy to predict that even child would do it. But who cares? It yields some money, so we should do this. Sad thing that the alternative long-run cost of this solution will heavily outweigh the short-term earnings of this program.

 

According to reports, Nexus is apparently getting themselves a tiny share of the revenues. Oh and peolpe have began to pull their mods from nexus and sell it on steam, including several ones who are essential to many other mods.

 

 

 

 

 

Wait a sec, how does the fact that its paid or not change anything? Surely they could always do this, but never would do? And they'd just get no sales if they released a shit game, would completely ruin the companies reputation. I like to think that Bethdesa has more self respect than that. Also the last parts been noted recently and will stop.

 

You are too optimistic. People will buy their games, even if its shit simply because they are Bethesda. They are even buying a shitty retextured sword for 2€...

 

Do you really want to pay 15€ for a mod that fixes for example some spelling errors in the game? Or balance certain abilities out?

Because you will need it.

Dear mother of god. This has gone too far.

 

I HAVE AN IDEA!

 

1. Set up a donation center to get rid of paid mods

2. Use that money to buy most popular monetized mods

3. Release them for free

4. Watch mod sales dwindle

 

GENIUS!

 

 

Some free mods had a donation link on their page and according to reports it was removed from valve.

Either you start selling or you get nothing.

 

Oh and theirs a threshold too: Apparently you have to make at least 100€ in order to get payed. So if you make only 80€ then you get nothing but valve and beth get the 80€ always.

[Aleh 481]

 

You are too optimistic. People will buy their games, even if its shit simply because they are Bethesda. They are even buying a shitty retextured sword for 2€...

 

Do you really want to pay 15€ for a mod that fixes for example some spelling errors in the game? Or balance certain abilities out?

Because you will need it.

Again, still think you're being too pessimistic. 

Bethdesa isn't likely to kill off free modding at all, that'd be a terrible move (Even compared to this one).

And again, I'd like to think Bethdesa knows, as a company. That the short term profits of releasing a shit game don't outweigh the negative reputation they'd get. 

 

Also 

 including several ones who are essential to many other mods

Only one I know thats of that's essential is SkyUI (For $1). And the earlier update is free and on nexus mods 

Edited April 26, 2015 by Aleh

[Commissar Alexer 763]

Again, still think you're being too pessimistic. 

Bethdesa isn't likely to kill off free modding at all, that'd be a terrible move (Even compared to this one).

And again, I'd like to think Bethdesa knows, as a company. That the short term profits of releasing a shit game don't outweigh the negative reputation they'd get. 

 

Also 

 including several ones who are essential to many other mods

Only one I know thats of that's essential is SkyUI (For $1). And the earlier update is free and on nexus mods 

 

Why not? It's profitable.

 

 

SkyUI is only the beginning. Other will follow...

[Aleh 481]

Why not? It's profitable.

 

 

SkyUI is only the beginning. Other will follow...

Which ones? Again, instead of assuming the worst its best to at least wait.

A very large amount of mods are likely to stay on nexus (Or go on the workshop AND nexus. Which I fail to see the problem with). 

Either because they think it needs to be free as a matter of principle or because they can't see it being profitable OR because they can't stand the level of vitriol the community will throw at them.

Either way, its nowhere near the death of modding or whatever. This is just an overreaction >.<

For every paid for mod on steam, another modder will make a free version of the mod just to spite the modder xD

 

Also psh. I doubt anybody will watch it but

 

 

Pretty good response to it (tl;dw calm down. System is crap, but modding isn't quite dead yet : P)

Edited April 26, 2015 by Aleh