PepsimanVsJoe
Member
The 25% cut is really ridiculous.
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Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods
- Thread starter Sendou
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SteveWinwood
Member
whats the internet without a little hyperbole and overreaction?
ashecitism
Member
No, that would lead to a short-term reduction in freely available mods, followed by a gradual normalization. Hardly a disaster.
Also, I feel like people critical of this are often arguing in two incompatible ways - "no one will pay for mods" and "all tiny mods will go paid". These can't both be true (and I think neither one will turn out to be accurate).
Stallion Dan
Member
The idea of playing vanilla Skyrim or pay extra doesn't sound good to me.
Yeah, I'm not too pleased with this. I'm all for creators getting their due, but I'm worried what this will do to actual gamers that are interested in trying out mods without the risk. I've lost count the amount of times I tried a mod out and hated it. If I have to buy it first, then that's something that will really put me off from experimenting.
DOBERMAN INC
Member
NEXUS will not die, they'll survive off the nude mods alone.
Oh yes that will definitely happen in the world where customers will readily shovel enormous amounts of cash into all kinds of mods, no matter the price or quality. Or in other words the kind we don't live in. Of course everyone that has ever made a mod no matter what kind will think to themselves "hey could I get money for this?" unfortunately it's not likely to be the case for 95% or more of them.
Open market though - people will only pay for what they deem is worthwhile, others will still put out free things, over priced and crap stuff fall over themselves. The initial period will be messy but once that stabilises, it could get very interesting
24 hour refund period.
Derp. Missed that.
But still, I do think that monetizing it will limit experimentation for people.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
I'd buy "game changing" mods but not the stuff that adds fluff. I would gladly pay for huge expansion like mods. But on the other hams, this stuff has been offered free for years so it's going to be tough to convince me to buy into a mod.
That1BlackGuy
Member
I would've personally preferred donations as I am more likely to donate good money to free content creators than actually pay for it in the traditional sense.
This, at least, is a legitimate worry.
But Steam says there is a 24 hours refund policy... so right there this undercuts the issue a bit.
I think it's going to come down to the modders being able to really detail out their mod and what it does. Having video and images like a full game site has.
Also, that 25% cut is really bad. Common. 50-50 at least!
Yes. Exactly.
crimsonheadGCN
Banned
Since Valve introduced a Pay What You Want feature, I wonder if they'll expand it and allow something like the Humble Bundle in the Steam store?
Yeah, the cut is the one thing about this I really don't like. It seems exploitative.
TheVoidDragon
Member
Content creators getting some money via donations would be fine, there are plenty of high quality mods that have had a lot of effort put in that deserve a bit of money. Only being able to get certain mods by paying for them is not a good thing, though. They're non-official, non-supported (by the game developer) fan created things usually done by someone just because they enjoy doing that.The 'point' of mods was they were free fan-created additions to the game, really. If these were being officially added to the game that would be different. These are basically microtransactions being made someone other than the games developer.
I agree up to a point. If a modder wants to create something that is regularly updating or expanding, it becomes more of a possibility to sustain and have stability for that kind of project if it is paid for rather than donations only
Skyrim's Wet & Cold has been free for years. Now they're asking people to uninstall and buy it (for $4.99).
Still free on Nexus but I wonder how long it will be before it and a lot of other mods get taken down and are only available on the workshop.
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27563/?
I get that some people want to make money off this stuff but for me whenever I was making mods and levels for other games it was always a labour of love rather than something I was looking to profit on. I think a donate button would have been more apt or maybe show the creators wishlist so people could gift them games on Steam.
johntown
Banned
I think people will pay for mods. I will honest and say I am a cheap but I have plenty of disposable income. If 2k Textures charged $5 for their mod I would most likely buy it but I wouldn't be happy about it.
Will you end up charging for DSfix someday if it became available through the workshop?
Dr. Zoidberg
Member
Refunds can be a pain in the ass based on prior experiences so I have an instant aversion to relying on that. My loss, I know, but that's probably how it will go for me. A mod will either need tons of positive feedback or be free for me to consider it.
It would be kinda funny if someone started selling unofficial patches in the Workshop.
I don't know what to think about all this. Yes, content creators should get paid for their work and sure, TF2 and CS:GO have done really well with paid content. It's going to be a rough ride before everything settles, though.
GoonerTRON
Banned
Skyrim nexus still exists, so you can still manually apply mods to the game.As for developers making mods in their free time: YES
As for any other people: NO
this could destroy modding
I agree with a previous comment that a donate button is really all it needed.
I really think people need to look at the NWN games as an example of how this is likely to end up.
There were several "premium" mods created by members of the community in collaboration with Bioware and Obsidian. The quality, breadth and polish of those mods was in another league compared to 99% of other mods.
My guess is that most mods will remain free. There will be a mid tier, section of cheap mods with some decent content with a level of polish you would have never seen if they couldn't charge at all for them, and then there will be a top tier of mods that will be more pricey, but they will add tons of content, and that content will again, be more polished than anything else out there.
People will buy the worthwhile things, and won't buy the crap.
Willy Wanka
my god this avatar owns
A 25% cut for the creator is taking the piss.
Skyrim's Wet & Cold has been free for years. Now they're asking people to uninstall and buy it (for $4.99).
You missed my edit, but yeah, I missed the part of Bethesda endorsing it. Hence me asking originally, and instead of answering you decided to be an ass about it. Thanks for the late confirmation anyway, though.
Greed / wanting to be paid is expected initially, but the acceptance of that from the market will vary depending on the content and if they can provide something more meaningful than what is free via other sources. This is going to be messy till the market stabilises and people understand it better.
The main reason for that is charity donation. I would only agree if Steam tried the same.
As for the news itself, it's good that modders will get paid for their work. For instace, the restoration mod for KotOR II really makes it a new game. Sure, some will try to take advantage of it. But, like every other product, the market will react against them, so they will realise that either the price isn't right or it should be free.
No one donates.
Bornstellar
Member
This kind of thing will ruin the mod community. Especially once we get in the waters of people using parts of other people's mods which are freely available then selling the result.
Screw this.
Screw this.
Skyrim's Wet & Cold has been free for years. Now they're asking people to uninstall and buy it (for $4.99).
You missed my edit, but yeah, I missed the part of Bethesda endorsing it. Hence me asking originally, and instead of answering you decided to be an ass about it. Thanks for the late confirmation anyway, though.
Welp this is no good.
ieptbarakat
Member
Selling content on someone elses' service and someone else's game engine for a specific game is a lot of legal hoops to jump through.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Have you even looked at Twitch lately?
No, never. I never even put any ads on my blog when it was getting massive views. But I'm a bit of a silly idealist (see also me releasing pretty much everything I ever made as open source) and I wouldn't presume to speak for everyone.
I think people need to try to understand what's going through the mind of creators who made something popular and free. E.g. the single most popular numbered version of DSfix has over 600k downloads. When you are a normal (not independently rich) person and you made something like that It's hard not to think of "what if I had charged just 1 per copy".
UnluckyKate
Member
welp, back to nexus
Netherscourge
Banned
My only long-term fear is that game developers will stop allowing native mod or Workshop support to protect their own DLC interests.
.FAQ said:
That's a whole different kind of beast. I don't agree that nobody donates but comparing it to people donating to streamers is not accurate either.
The funniest part is that it would mean Bethesda making money off [other people fixing] their games being broken.
TouchMyBox
Member
It has been the standard for the last few years and people seem generally happy with it so far. The game's publisher has to make enough of a cut in order for them to justify allowing the community to mod their game and potentially undercut their DLC sales, so it could be a good thing if it gets companies who were previous unfriendly to modding to open up a bit more.
Read the OP, it's in the FAQ, there are tools to sort out authors and collaborators so they are paid. DMCA can be filed if anyone abuses things
Well it's not like Valve invented mods with Workshop. I don't see how this changes anything on that front.
Actually it's the opposite. Now that there's a revenue source from community made mods the incentive to make games mod friendly is higher.
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