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[Mavromatis]

Can't wait to read the reviews on games that support paid mods.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/reviews/

Skyrim can take it and I assume Arma 3 and Paradox games like CK2 and EU4 can too working it's why down in most popular games list this can reach most games. But I doubt that any games not from top 100 will attempt it soon.
Yet in some months this will be commonplace like the trading cards anyway.

 

[FyreWulff]

What the fuck kind of revenue split is that? 25% for content creators means what, 50% for Bethesda and 25% for valve? That's some bull shit.

Turns out the more people/companies involved, the smaller everyone's cut gets!

You got like 30% of the cut for releasing songs on Rock Band Network, because Harmonix had to split the payout between you, themselves, and MS. If you want a bigger cut, then write your own engine or make your own base game. Developers going into this know the cut upfront and cost out according to their cut.

If you want a bigger cut, you write your own base game, write your own engine, and make your own store. The more work and risk you offload to other entities, the more they'll want out of each sale. This is basic fucking business.

 

[orava]

Next step: Early Access Mods

Buy part of the game in advance! 35% of the alpha build compiled scripts for $5,99! Graphics 13% done. Only $9,99! Game not yet playable.

 

[Mesoian]

Sometimes I hate the gaming community. It's both amusing and just sad. If you don't like something, sure don't support it and speak up about it, but some civility goes a long way

I would say something about 12 year olds, but the gamergate debacle taught me that no, that's not true, these are grown men.

::Sigh::

 

[Sendou]

That street works both ways, chief. I've pointed out a number of issues and problems that have been and are inherent to a service (and modding) like this, ones that have already been echoed by quite a few people. You're making up scenarios and trying to justify it through some kind of faux-outrage, then you avoid my questions and responses.

I don't think I've ever had someone tell me they were "disturbed" by something I said. That amuses me.

Perhaps it's time we took a break from this thread. I learned a long time ago that there was no use getting angry over people's responses on a message board, but it seems you took my responses to heart. There's way too much anger in here.

I don't think I ever claimed that this initiative will come through with no problems at all. All I'm saying is that I firmly believe that this will increase the number of high quality mods available. If you think otherwise then cool. I don't think there's any way to tell who's right other than simply waiting.

It seems that you were disturbed by my use of the word "disturbed" if you will, heh. Well I do apologize. You see English isn't my mother's tongue and sometimes I use words that don't necessarily carry the meaning I want them to. In the case where I said I were "disturbed" I simply meant that I deeply disagreed with what you were saying. To be honest at first I thought you were suggesting to pirate the mods, lol. Well I hope I didn't traumatize you too much.

Do I come off as angry? Well again I apologize. It is by no means my intention. It is always good to hear opinions from people with different views from yours.

 

[Nzyme32]

Why not just do a donate option?

It seems to up to the creator. They can setup a pay what you want price if they want, and I imagine that is what will work well for a lot of mods that were already free prior to this and have nothing new added. It will be the new content that comes along that is of every expanding scope and scale that I am more likely to purchase or "donate" to

 

[elyetis]

I mean, it's not the same thing, but GTA5 is a pretty good indicator on what we have to look forward to when it comes to AAA development interacting with what would be the modding community.

I was actually speaking with a friend I play with at dota 2 & gta online; that gta online is such a missed opportunity. Released sooner on PC ( the best would have been a Gta online being separate from gta5 but free ), with a workshop integration similar to dota 2 ( R$ choose what they integrate into the game ).
It seems like gta online already made them quite some $$$ from people buying ingame money, but the game doesn't even make you spend that much because it still lack diversity. People would have made tons of clothing, elements for cars, or if they allowed it, furniture for apartments; then sold for ingame money.

 

[Mesoian]

Why not just do a donate option?

I would assume that an option in "Pay what you want" would still be 0.

 

[Nzyme32]

I would say something about 12 year olds, but the gamergate debacle taught me that no, that's not true, these are grown men.

::Sigh::

I'm amazed I some how skipped over the gamergate stuff since I don't use twitter much. I always assumed those kind of threats and posts were from arrogant kids. It's disturbing that that isn't the case

 

[SuperEpicGuy]

Now that's some bullshit. What's the other 75%? I get that steam has to take a cut and a small part to the developer but they could have at least made it 50%.

I would say something about 12 year olds, but the gamergate debacle taught me that no, that's not true, these are grown men.

::Sigh::

You take the gamergate thing seriously? That's like taking the demisexual trigendered tumblr people seriously.

 

[Piano]

25%? Brutal.

 

[Accoun]

Why not just do a donate option?

Because Valve/Bethesda don't get a cut. Although there's a "pay what you want" option that is similar.

 

[FyreWulff]

I was actually speaking with a friend I play with at dota 2 & gta online; that gta online is such a missed opportunity. Released sooner on PC ( the best would have been a Gta online being separate from gta5 but free ), with a workshop integration similar to dota 2 ( R$ choose what they integrate into the game ).
It seems like gta online already made them quite some $$$ from people buying ingame money, but the game doesn't even make you spend that much because it still lack diversity. People would have made tons of clothing, elements for cars, or if they allowed it, furniture for apartments; then sold for ingame money.

It'd be a little bit harder to do this for GTA since Rockstar would have to integrate the mod content into the base game so that other people in the game world could see the assets. In GTA's case they would likely have to just roll in-game tools that makes furniture and cars out of pre-fab pieces that the engine assembles.

For Skyrim, it's offline and single player, so you can insert content only when people download it.

 

[Krejlooc]

to all of you going on at 25% per sale, I am curious how much you think dev studios see per sale at retail? I had one friend who worked for a studio who told me their arrangement meant they made more money when they sold their game through steam at $11 because of the revenue split than they did off of a $60 sale at retail.

And many don't even see percentages of sales at all. Most, even.

 

[RulkezX]

Now that's some bullshit. What's the other 75%? I get that steam has to take a cut and a small part to the developer but they could have at least made it 50%.

Why?

 

[Mavromatis]

It seems to up to the creator. They can setup a pay what you want price if they want, and I imagine that is what will work well for a lot of mods that were already free prior to this and have nothing new added. It will be the new content that comes along that is of every expanding scope and scale that I am more likely to purchase or "donate" to

I wonder if Valve will search for people giving donation links in the description, cutting them.

 

[The Dear Leader]

I don't know how I feel about the paid mod stuff, on one hand it's nice to see content creators make money for their work and could lead to bigger and better mods on Steam Workshop, but on the other hand, it seems like it can be easily exploited in many ways.

 

[dLMN8R]

so some personal insight into HL2VR dev process for all those "this kills passion! You don't need that money to make a living!" crowd

our mod will be depreciated in about 3 months. As in, it will no longer work. OVR is dropping direct X 9 support, meaning our only option is to switch to an OpenGL renderer. This is tantamount to essentially a complete rewrite of a very significant portion of our mod.

Now, all 3 members of our team got together explicitly to try and start a career in VR development. Our artist, Jaz, lives in the UK, and, without violating his trust here, he is in dire times financially. For the past year and a half, one of the only things keeping him sane is looking ahead to potentially getting a paycheck by landing a job thanks to his mod work. To really drive the point home about how dire some of our finances are, two of us had to pitch in to buy one of us a $25 invite to a tech demo we needed to work with. That individual couldn't afford $25.

I am in the process of setting up my own development studio through private funding. I have reached out to Jaz to try and get him to relocate to the US to try and get him making some money here. Setting up my own studio, managing a project, then actually going through with development is a massive undertaking. Nate, our project lead, has a career in Austin now. We all have social lives and day jobs. We estimate the work it'll take to get HL2VR going without Direct X 9 will be hundreds of hours of coding for Nate and I. Any time I put into HL2VR comes at the expense of my day job, which I truly work around the clock.

We have had serious discussions about whether or not we can afford to personally keep HL2VR going. The knowledge that we could eventually sell the mod has been an enormous factor in keeping us going. Speaking of which - this has been known for a good year and a half now. I find it funny that those bemoaning what this means to the "community" apparently aren't apart of said community because they had an entire seminar about this at Dev Days. Black Mesa is releasing under this model. This has been known for so long.

So, about that talk of the death of free mods and all that shit - we could have started monetizing our mod with Valve's blessing a long time ago. We have discussed selling our mod for ages now. We haven't, though. Why? Well, as professionals, we take pride in our work, and we do not want to sell something that is still a work in progress. Thus, for almost 2 years, this mod that we could have sold, has been given away for free. We have hundreds of thousands of downloads of our mod, and haven't seen a dime from it. We don't even operate an ad server on our project website. Nate pays the fee.

The notion some of you guys have that we, who have done work for free for years, are somehow going to struggle to become motivated to keep our monitzation going is ridiculous. If we are selling a mod and an update breaks it, we have more motivation to fix it now because, so long as it's broken, we can't keep selling it. Don't you guys get it?

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for this, and for your work.

The entitlement of some gamers who feel like they're owed mods for free is just insane.

The fact that Valve is enabling talented developers to earn much-deserved revenue will be as groundbreaking in the next few years as the entire Workshop itself has been for years.


Good luck to all of you!

 

[Netherscourge]

to all of you going on at 25% per sale, I am curious how much you think dev studios see per sale at retail? I had one friend who worked for a studio who told me their arrangement meant they made more money when they sold their game through steam at $11 because of the revenue split than they did off of a $60 sale at retail.

And many don't even see percentages of sales at all. Most, even.

Modders are basically doing free advertising for developers/publishers.

They are unpaid contributors that help sell the game. Why should they only get 25%? How many copies of the game are selling BECAUSE of mods?

Roll the clock back several years...

How much money did DICE make off sales of BF:1942 thanks to the modders who made that amazing Battlefield: Desert Combat mod, which eventually evolved into the BF2, BF3, BF4 that we see today?

 

[Valkrai]

I thought it would have been 40% at the most, with the 60% going to the dev and steam. 25% is complete bullshit.

 

[iNvid02]

dont plan on going back to skyrim but i can see this dampening the experience of future bethesda games

the 75-25 split is gonna ensure anyone who wants to be reimbursed fairly (say a few dollars per mod is gonna have to charge $8 just to get a $2 cut.)

 

[Mesoian]

to all of you going on at 25% per sale, I am curious how much you think dev studios see per sale at retail? I had one friend who worked for a studio who told me their arrangement meant they made more money when they sold their game through steam at $11 because of the revenue split than they did off of a $60 sale at retail.

And many don't even see percentages of sales at all. Most, even.

To be fair, that still sucks.

This is a weird case though because it's comparing the split between AAA development and modder development, which is a pretty wide fucking gulf.

I want devs to reap the most benefit of the game their creating, full stop. The creator should always be getting the lion's share of the proceeds. I know that's not how it works but, that's how I feel it should work, not that feelings are worth much in the business world. Skyrim is a special case as well, where modders have done more to address stability and longevity than Bethesda ever did.

But, here we are. At 25%.

::shrug::

You take the gamergate thing seriously? That's like taking the demisexual trigendered tumblr people seriously.

Regardless of of the inanity of the underlying problem, I take situations where people falsify police records in order to make their dicks look bigger on the internet than they actually are pretty seriously.

 

[RK9039]

At least we still have the nexus, for now.

 

[elyetis]

It'd be a little bit harder to do this for GTA since Rockstar would have to integrate the mod content into the base game so that other people in the game world could see the assets. In GTA's case they would likely have to just roll in-game tools that makes furniture and cars out of pre-fab pieces that the engine assembles.

For Skyrim, it's offline and single player, so you can insert content only when people download it.

Yeah like I said it would have worked like dota, R* would validate content from the workshop, then patch it into the game. Not perfect, but still better than a complet lack of modding ( even id limited to asset ) in multiplayer.

 

[Krejlooc]

How much money did DICE make off sales of BF:1942 thanks to the modders who made that amazing Battlefield: Desert Combat mod, which eventually evolved into the BF2, BF3, BF4 that we see today?

Uuuuuh, one of my best friends was the lead modeler for Desert Combat. They bought their team out, then fired them, and shut down the mod. In all, they paid about $10k to 4 people for the mod.

Desert Combat didn't evolve into those games.

 

[Nzyme32]

I don't know how I feel about the paid mod stuff, on one hand it's nice to see content creators make money for their work and could lead to bigger and better mods on Steam Workshop, but on the other hand, it seems like it can be easily exploited in many ways.

I imagine the first months are going to be a total mess with people experimenting on pricing for mods that were free before hand and have no new meaningful content, along with others plagiarising or not paying / adding the collaborators or the people whose mods they have used in their own - so DMCA notices everywhere.

Once it settles down, I think it could really be something great for getting even better mods with bigger teams and time involved in developing. I don't think free mods will go anywhere. I'd actually hope they proliferate under the pay what you want banner and are encouraged to build upon their work to make bigger better mods.

Lol. At least that's what I hope happens

 

[CybernatonEvolution]

Is Rockstar going to choose Multiplayer microstransactions or Steamworks? Does that mean more modding support from developers in general?


I have mixed feelings about this. I definitely wanted to support modders and pay them in a way, but just casually searching the Nexus and downloading multiple free mods is definitely better than being extremely picky and having to pay for everything. If the published mods are large, polished and well-tested, I could see it working, but if I have to pay something more than 1-5$ per mod for something very minor or trivial (few texture/character model replacement, half-assed texture work, or any single-type mod) then nope.

It might work if mods are reasonably priced, actually worth it (as in game overhauls that include modifications everywhere), and if Steam has to check mods before publishing them, because having anyone publish anything and ask for his/her own price is ridiculous.

 

[Mesoian]

Is Rockstar going to choose Multiplayer microstransactions or Steamworks? Does that mean more modding support from developers in general?

Thus far, they seem to be staying as far away from Steamworks as possible in the PC setting.

 

[The Dear Leader]

I imagine the first months are going to be a total mess with people experimenting on pricing for mods that were free before hand and have no new meaningful content, along with others plagiarising or not paying / adding the collaborators or the people whose mods they have used in their own - so DMCA notices everywhere.

Once it settles down, I think it could really be something great for getting even better mods with bigger teams and time involved in developing. I don't think free mods will go anywhere. I'd actually hope they proliferate under the pay what you want banner and are encouraged to build upon their work to make bigger better mods.

Lol. At least that's what I hope happens

I agree, I hope it goes that way too, but never underestimate the greediness/shittyness of the gaming community sometimes lol.

 

[Jpope]

Damn, TESO must of put them on the verge of bankruptcy for them to put something like this out.

 

[FyreWulff]

If you feel someone is overcharging for a mod.. just don't buy the mod.

Developers aren't automatically entitled to your money, but on the other hand, nobody is entitled to a developer's work.

 

[Perfect Cha0s]

Damn, TESO must of put them on the verge of bankruptcy for them to put something like this out.

You might want to reread.

 

[Netherscourge]

Uuuuuh, one of my best friends was the lead modeler for Desert Combat. They bought their team out, then fired them, and shut down the mod. In all, they paid about $10k to 4 people for the mod.

Desert Combat didn't evolve into those games.

I and many of my friends bought BF:1942 and the expansions because we saw a Desert Combat demonstration on Gamespot (or maybe IGN? was a long time ago).

I don't have any stats or figures. But I would imagine Desert Combat helped sell a lot more copies of BF:1942 because it added modern-day vehicles and ships.

I'm glad they eventually got some money out of it though. But they probably would have deserved more than 25% of whatever the extra sales were.

EDIT: we're they the ones that went on to make Frontlines: Fuel for War?

 

[justjim89]

Skywind is gonna be $100, isn't it?

 

[wickfut]

So right now you can buy Skyrim the full game for £2.49, but to buy some new weapon and armour skins in a pack it's going to cost people £25.

I can't see this going anywhere good to be honest.

 

[Mesoian]

Skywind is gonna be $100, isn't it?

They ain't gonna be able to sell that thing.

So right now you can buy Skyrim the full game for £2.49, but to buy some new weapon and armour skins in a pack it's going to cost people £25.

I can't see this going anywhere good to be honest.

Seriously doubt it will ever be that bad.

Selling Wet and Cold at 5 dollars is not going to pan out.

 

[scoobidoo112]

I just cannot seem to get the fuck away from DLC.

It began with horse armor, then pre-order content, then day 1 DLC, then on-disc DLC, then season passes, then microtransactions, then store exclusives, then social media exclusives, and now you're telling me mods are basically becoming DLC? Is there still no end in sight?

What's next?

Will it invade my dreams and force me to pay imaginary-me to unlock extra goddamn content?

 

[Krejlooc]

EDIT: we're they the ones that went on to make Frontlines: Fuel for War?

Maybe the project lead - I think he went on into game dev after Desert Combat, but I'm not sure. I know my friend and 2 of his teammates left game dev after that. He works in aeronautics currently.

 

[sosage]

Making a game is still an order of magnitude harder than making a mod, let's not kid ourselves here.

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.

 

[Tagyhag]

Being a long time PC gamer, this is conflicting, but we'll see where it takes us.

 

[wickfut]

Seriously doubt it will ever be that bad.

It is already that bad. I've just been checking prices of stuff.

People are already selling mod packs containing their swords and armour and a few other bits for £25.

 

[YuShtink]

This is awful. We won't see more quality out of this, all we'll see is overpriced schlock we used to get for free. Modding was the last bastion of the open PC ecosystem. Now it's another DLC scheme....smh...

 

[hermeslyre]

The entitlement of some gamers who feel like they're owed mods for free is just insane.

It's just anger. And that's expected and natural in my opinion.

For the most part, mods have always been free. This is, possibly, the beginnings of a new landscape for PC gaming. It has it's pros and cons, but perceived cons are often felt first, emotionally, some people feel what they think is being taken away before anything else.

I look at my Skyrim mod load order and I see a hundred quality mods, and their potential worth might be in the hundreds of dollars. For a game some have payed $5 for. I can't afford that, so my gut reaction is I'm losing something, I'm losing that potential experience.

Whether mod makers deserve that money is felt as a secondary. Of course people deserve money for their hard work, but If I can't afford to live in that new system, there's still that perceived sense of loss to deal with. And some people don't deal with it very well.

 

[Kama_1082]

Exactly the day where my PC parts arrive and include PC gaming in my rotation, this happens.

Sorry for the jinx

 

[Nzyme32]

So right now you can buy Skyrim the full game for £2.49, but to buy some new weapon and armour skins in a pack it's going to cost people £25.

I can't see this going anywhere good to be honest.

There is no pricing like that. There is one bundle curated by Bethesda and Valve which contains a collection of mods they have chosen, however many of the mods in there are pay what you want - where the creators have set the minimum value (as low as free, or whatever they think is best for the work).

Free mods are still there. If you don't like the price of something, don't buy it or support it. Particularly for the mods that were free, and have experimented with being paid (with no new content added) you may as well head to nexus and grab it for free as usual until those guys offer something more compelling

 

[Mesoian]

Exactly the day where my PC parts arrive and include PC gaming in my rotation, this happens.

Sorry for the jinx

It's all your fault Kama.

It is already that bad. I've just been checking prices of stuff.

People are already selling mod packs containing their swords and armour and a few other bits for £25.

LOL link? I wanna see this, the highest I had seen was wet and cold

Oh....

Yeah, maybe you don't buy this.

 

[Almighty]

It is already that bad. I've just been checking prices of stuff.

People are already selling mod packs containing their swords and armour and a few other bits for £25.

Those prices will fluctuate though for the first few months at least I bet. I have already seen more then a few of them change prices. Though at current prices if I was to mod my game like I used to right now I would be spending 10 bucks. Which is I believe just 2 or 4 bucks less then I spent to buy the game and its official dlc in the first place.

 

[CountAntonius]

has someone put up horse armor yet?

 

[RK9039]

I just cannot seem to get the fuck away from DLC.

It began with horse armor, then pre-order content, then day 1 DLC, then on-disc DLC, then season passes, then microtransactions, then store exclusives, then social media exclusives, and now you're telling me mods are basically becoming DLC? Is there still no end in sight?

What's next?

Will it invade my dreams and force me to pay imaginary-me to unlock extra goddamn content?

Soon all full priced games will become a sample and then you have to buy DLC to unlock the actual game, sort of like Ground Zeroes.

 

[Enter the Dragon Punch]

Why do people assume this will generate quality paid content?

Look at the workshop now.

That's exactly what it's going to look like - but paid. You're going to be ending up with .99 cent weapons, $4.99 quest packs, etc. And they won't be very good.