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[Leafhopper]

I'll pay money for a mod that makes Skyrim a good game how bout that

Miracles can't be coded.

 

[Orochinagis]

So Bethesda and valve leverage community mods as DLC, getting 75% of the revenue.

I guess thats how you could counter Patreon and Donations?

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

This is a really nice incentive for people who want to make mods and take in to the next level. The idea that a person can become rich by making something is fantastic. Many people are struggling to get into the video game industry. The idea that they can now have an alternative revenue stream is fantastic.



If it works anything like smartphone apps, many websites will be dedicated to help consumers find the must have mods for each games. More developers and publishers will see the financial incentive in supporting steamworks for this added financial gain/exposure, user reviews, top 10 lists for mods will become big, and we will see mods of higher quality as people can dedicate more time to make mods than they have been able to in the past.

Some of the most promising mods never saw the light of day because they couldnt make any money on it even though they spend hundreds or thousands of hours on it. Saying that the best mods are made for free and a sense of passion is a bunch of bullshit. its a major sacrifice when you got a family, a full time job and tons of other obligations. telling people to do shit for free is gross.

Finally this will enable individuals to get into the video gaming industry.


There will be paid mods and free mods. Just like smartphone apps. I think this is a great thing. I know there will be problems, but this can help people. If some kid in texas has made over 10,000 dollars making hats in team fortress 2, a dedicated team of Skyrim modders, could make something that is multitudes better than anything we've seen to date. you already have the product, the platform, the distribution, and even the user base. you even got the engine and code. It's ripe for the taking.
It's never been easier.

But this is easier for everybody, which means more competition, which means better mods, which is good. It will be okay. It will be great! If you only want free mods, then go for it! If you dont want to buy a smartphone app or a mod where they wont promise to update it in the next number of years, dont buy it.

when you donate to a stream, buy a game in early access or pledge for a game on kickstarter it's all the same. It's build on trust, and if you are weary, stay away, and go with the stuff that is free. many people will, and that is okay.

 

[zombieshavebrains]

I think the reasoning is that the upper limit on how much time/effort you can devote to a mod will increase if there's a possibility of being compensated for your work.

I can see that. The people who really want to make money will probably make products that stand above the rest. Hell, modding as a whole might elevate, that doesn't equate to more people using/buying the mod though.

 

[Sendou]

I'm curious to see proof of a direct correlation between the quality of something when it's free vs. when it's charged for. Are you saying modders have been holding back, waiting on this day to really step it up?

Well make a list of your top 10 games, movies, books, music albums, comic books, whatever and see how many products that launched for free are included.

One simple example regarding mods improving now that they can charge for them could be hiring professional voice actors. It seems that there's already one mod doing that.

 

[Salsa]

what if Chris Avellone and some other people suddenly make a campaign mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4

 

[ieptbarakat]

The free modding scene has always been a benefit for games since it can drive interest and the average player gets hundreds to thousands of hours of additional value added onto their game at no additional cost.

Opening the paid workshop dlc floodgates causes the virtual pricetag of the game to increase exponentially while simultaneously sucking value out of the product since the community is no longer padding your game with additional free content, but instead using it as it's own marketplace.

 

[Krejlooc]

I'm curious to see proof of a direct correlation between the quality of something when it's free vs. when it's charged for. Are you saying modders have been holding back, waiting on this day to really step it up?

It means we can now justify spending entire weekends coding at the expense of our social lives with "well at least I can make a living now."

Yes, we hold back our time because unpaid work doesn't always trump, say, going on a date or hanging out with friends. But pay might.

 

[ashecitism]

some people make TF2 maps and they get put in the game in an update and they get money

Pretty sure they don't. People on FP were complaining about that today how there's still no map workshop and Valve haven't bought maps for ages.

 

[Nokterian]

guys it's not like this worked for TF2 / Dota and actually bloomed that market and the amount of great content for those games and every content creator out there praised Valve by making that system and putting money in creator's hands

it all failed and it was terrible

You clearly don't know how Dota 2 cosmetic items work do you? First creators need to put them on the workshop they need to get voted to a point will put them in a crate and first go through a process from valve. Then if maybe when you're lucky or do make great cosmetic your stuff will come to the dota 2 shop. There is a difference between a mod and a cosmetic item.

 

[SteveWinwood]

what if Chris Avellone and some other people suddenly make a campaign mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4

id buy that

 

[Deadstar]

I really can't say I like this. I think it's good for creators to get paid but certain mods don't work with other mods or can cause the game to crash. You might spend $1 or whatever on a mod only to find a week later it crashes the game in a weird spot. No thanks.

 

[crazyrabbits]

people jumping to conclusions yadda yadda. Im sure there'll be a system in place for those with stuff like compatiblity worries for example.

Like I said earlier, Valve can't even get its customer service division straight. Expecting them to be on top of this to the level some people here expect it will go (that is, gangbusters) is assuming a hell of a lot, even without the issues I mentioned earlier.

The Nexus blog post had good points too:

Even right now, in the world of open and free modding, things are competitive. Lots of mod authors like to fight for that hot file, for that file of the month vote, they want more views, more downloads, more endorsements. I wouldn't say it's an unhealthy obsession, not yet anyway, but it's always been there, that stark contrast between those mod authors who don't care about such "trivial" things, and those mod authors who really do, who really want their mods out there as much as possible. And sure, we have to sort out some squabbles every now and again, but such rivalries and competitions don't turn sour often because the thing being sought after is not some sort of finite resource with only so much to go around. A download, an endorsement; users can download and endorse more than one mod. They can do that for a lot of mods. Money, however, is finite. When you're competing to make your mod the top mod, the most bought mod, when you're trying to earn more money than your peers are you telling me that things don't change? You're now competing over a finite resource. Users only have so much money, after all. How does this change and affect other areas of the community?

How many mods on the Nexus use assets made by other mod authors? How many are made better by this? Such assets are used with the express permission of the creators of those assets. If a mod author came to you and asked if he could use some of your work in their mod that they were planning to sell for $5, would you feel more or less inclined to give him that permission? Would you, perhaps rightly, ask for a cut of the proceeds, a revenue share of your own? If you're one of those great authors who releases your mods freely for others to make use of in their mods, or a modder's resource developer, are you going to think about revisiting all your permissions in light of money entering the modding community? Are you still thinking about being so generous with your work?

How many mods have been developed by a team of mod authors? Lots of people working together to develop something amazing. Look at Nehrim or Falskaar, two epic, highly rated mods made by extensive groups of modders. I think a lot of us will have said at one point or another, either about those mods or about others, "I'd definitely pay for this". And my god, there are so many mods out there that are so good, so professional, so well done that yes, I'd pay for them in an instant! I mean, once you get SkyUI you don't ever want to think about going back to the way it was before again, right? But how are you going to sort out who gets what from selling such mods? We get lots of drama now, without any money changing hands, over permissions and credits, I don't even want to think how horrible it would be to try and sort out such issues when money is involved. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

 

[tensuke]

This is absolutely terrible.

 

[Twentieth]

what if Chris Avellone and some other people suddenly make a campaign mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4

For 25% of revenue? I don't think so.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Pretty sure they don't. People on FP were complaining about that today how there's still no map workshop and Valve haven't bought maps for ages.

they do and they have

just because they haven't recently doesn't prove his point wrong

 

[szaromir]

what if Chris Avellone and some other people suddenly make a campaign mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4

Not gonna happen with getting only 25% of the revenues.

 

[RulkezX]

I really can't say I like this. I think it's good for creators to get paid but certain mods don't work with other mods or can cause the game to crash. You might spend $1 or whatever on a mod only to find a week later it crashes the game in a weird spot. No thanks.

No worries , modders are going to "potentially motivated" to fix their shit and provide customer support now . It's aces for everyone.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

Donations > mandatory untrustworthy charge.

yup

 

[_machine]

I'm curious to see proof of a direct correlation between the quality of something when it's free vs. when it's charged for. Are you saying modders have been holding back, waiting on this day to really step it up?

This should do: http://www.unitedracingdesign.net/#!projects/c66t

Some of the best quality mods, done by professionals that have worked on commercial projects as well.

 

[Bornstellar]

Like I said earlier, Valve can't even get its customer service division straight. Expecting them to be on top of this to the level some people here expect it will go (that is, gangbusters) is assuming a hell of a lot, even without the issues I mentioned earlier.

The Nexus blog post had good points too:

.

I doubt there is a single paid mod that ISN'T cribbing off someone else's work - either for the tools used in creation (not to mention how many use student editions of software...) or for some modified assets.

 

[Almighty]

This discussion reminds me of freelance writing. The ongoing dilution of the craft has been a problem for years, and even though it doesn't exactly prescribe to the same ethics or principles, the intent is the same in both cases.

Like I said in the Steam OT, you can be a master at the top of your game and create compelling content, but there's always going to be someone who will do the job better, faster and cheaper (or free) than you will ever want to admit.

Mods being free never had this issue, but now that Valve is seguing into the paid side, I won't be surprised at all if it tanks and everyone on Nexus one-ups paid creators just as a sort of "fuck you" to them. It's already happening in the comments section on the listed paid Workshop mods that had original versions over at Nexus - people are unendorsing them en masse and warning others to look elsewhere for better content.

That will probably happen if you are charging for say a sword or some horse armor, but I doubt there is a long list of people willing to put in all the work to top some of the big overhaul mods just to say "fuck you". Then again I have seen the internet put in tons of effort over small shit so maybe I am wrong.

Anyway what is obvious to me at least is we will see big mods at the top making tons of money, some in the middle doing pretty well, and everything else bringing in nothing or being free. The only thing I really disagree with is the idea that mods will become so much better now because people are paying for them now so the creators have all this incentive.

 

[tuxfool]

Arguably, allowing paid mods should increase the visibility of quality, no? If a mod is both paid and popular, that should be a great indicator of it being worthwhile.

Anyway, as with the game "curation" debate, I think it's all just a matter of software -- data aggregation and analysis -- and offering the right self-curation tools to the community. Valve are already on a great path for this. As a working example, Amazon doesn't curate books, there are a lot more of those than games, and yet I've never seen any complaints that it's a sea of shit (though objectively and statistically speaking, it is!).

The cream of the crop should have no issue with getting noticed and the quality at the top will probably improve. However discovery of content becomes much harder beyond front page type stuff, the old question of how one gets noticed.

I'd argue that the steam curation system as it stands is fairly ineffective for discovery and in that sense nothing has changed, thus one still has to rely on external sources. The same goes with Amazon, I tend to know what I'm looking for before I go there.

 

[Salsa]

You clearly don't know how Dota 2 cosmetic items work do you? First creators need to put them on the workshop they need to get voted to a point will put them in a crate and first go through a process from valve. Then if maybe when you're lucky or do make great cosmetic your stuff will come to the dota 2 shop. There is a difference between a mod and a cosmetic item.

like I said in the previous post; im merely stating they've done a good job handling something akin to this before. this is a next step, and I just don't think there's much reason to immediatly go the "this will fail" route. It's gonna be open and that makes it a creator-per-creator basis on how this will turn out, mostly.

this beyond the fact that it sounds like a great thing for me

Like I said earlier, Valve can't even get its customer service division straight. Expecting them to be on top of this to the level some people here expect it will go (that is, gangbusters) is assuming a hell of a lot, even without the issues I mentioned earlier.

it's hit or miss. they've handled some stuff really well and some other new-ish concepts have had some issues. we'll see

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Gamebryo modders deserve it, a lot of the mods they put out on Fallouts, and TES are worth paying for.

 

[SerTapTap]

Woof, you only get a 25% cut? And I bitched about Youtube taking 45%. Cool other than that though, I was interested in seeing how UT4 would turn out with this stuff. Hope it encourages more high-end mod projects without harming the availability of extensive free mods, I can't really see it changing things TOO much--modders were always hobbyists.

Easy to say donations is better, but most people don't touch that shit. People say the same about youtube--get donations blah blah blah. 4 figures in ad rev, $0 in donations. Only the very, very most popular ones can do that.

 

[baconcow]

I will be buying Skywind.

 

[Qassim]

I'm curious to see proof of a direct correlation between the quality of something when it's free vs. when it's charged for. Are you saying modders have been holding back, waiting on this day to really step it up?

Are you saying you don't see the fact that if someone can be paid for their work they could possibly spend more time on it? If modders can earn a legitimate, steady income from their work then they can either go full time or part time just working on the mods.

If its free, people still often need to work full time to keep themselves housed and fed. A way to easily sell content has given lots of people a way to go full time in other parts of the Steam ecosystem, it could do the same for modders.

 

[Salsa]

The cream of the crop should have no issue with getting noticed and the quality at the top will probably improve. However discovery of content becomes much harder beyond front page type stuff, the old question of how one gets noticed.

I'd argue that the steam curation system as it stands is fairly ineffective for discovery and in that sense nothing has changed, thus one still has to rely on external sources. The same goes with Amazon, I tend to know what I'm looking for before I go there.

the curator system is bad but this is different

this could be more akin to the automatic "top sellers" on Steam, which ussually shows good stuff people are paying for

I don't see the complaint of "people are just gonna make fucking horse armor for $5!"

no one will buy that shit and it'll go to the deep bottom. it's a non-issue

 

[Mavromatis]

It means we can now justify spending entire weekends coding at the expense of our social lives with "well at least I can make a living now."

Yes, we hold back our time because unpaid work doesn't always trump, say, going on a date or hanging out with friends. But pay might.

I really wonder if that can make a living but I assume many of the people who quit their day jobs for this will have a bad time.
Those who give up their weekend for it might actually get up ahead.
So people will certainly make money from it but I doubt any would call it a living.

I don't see the complaint of "people are just gonna make fucking horse armor for $5!"

no one will buy that shit and it'll go to the deep bottom. it's a non-issue

Yeah just like that time they didn't buy those shitty early access/greenlight games that weren't even a game.
But if they buy it it's their problem unless they are buying them with their parents credit cards which will become their parents problem.
I'm more concerned about good mods dying when a modder see no more income in it or when a modder divide an overhaul pack into smaller packs but doesn't scale the price, or just lie about the mod.
I think greenlight made people more aggressive towards this idea since users don't trust developers, now how will they trust modders?

 

[superseohyun]

25% of the revenues......................is not good

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

On one hand, I'm all for modders getting some financial benefit for their work. I've downloaded plenty of mods that were fantastic and would have loved to toss some money at the people making them. On the other hand, a huge appeal of modding to me is that I'm not having any financial investment in it, so I can go crazy with trying tons of different mods and if some are incompatible with each other or buggy, the only thing I've lost is time. If most mods end up being monetized in some way, I'm going to be way more cautious in putting down any money for any mod, especially in something like Skyrim where downloading one mod or putting it in the wrong order can break so many things.

The Nexus blog post had good points too:

Yeah... I hope this all works out well but I'm kind of skeptical. Like that post mentions, so many Skyrim mods wind up depending on some other Skyrim mod. Let's not even get into copyright issues like importing some Dragon Age armor or something into Skyrim. Stuff like that can likely slide by now but once money starts changing hands?

 

[starwarsfan541]

I like this idea, I hope CKII and EUIV would adopt this.

 

[Chezzymann]

the curator system is bad but this is different

this could be more akin to the automatic "top sellers" on Steam, which ussually shows good stuff people are paying for

I don't see the complaint of "people are just gonna make fucking horse armor for $5!"

no one will buy that shit and it'll go to the deep bottom. it's a non-issue

What if I buy a mod, and the developer never updates it? Since you have only a day to get a refund am I just SOL? That's what's making me nervous about this. I'll probably have to stick to only the top modders that are trusted.

 

[Sendou]

You can actually track in real-time how many people are buying these mods by looking at the "Current Subscribers" count. This one has sold 80 copies so far.

 

[Krejlooc]

What if I buy a mod, and the developer never updates it? Since you have only a day to get a refund am I just SOL? That's what's making me nervous about this. I'll probably have to stick to only the top modders that are trusted.

What if you buy an MMO, and they take the server down in a year?

 

[K.Jack]

RIP Nexus?

That really sucks

 

[banefirelord]

I'm relatively okay with this going forward, but the retroactive application of prices to mods I already have installed (Wet and Cold, etc.) has killed any interest I have in playing Skyrim ever again.

 

[crazyrabbits]

What if you buy an MMO, and they take the server down in a year?

You buy an MMO with the expectation that you're getting an online experience for as long as you pay for it (monthly, in most cases). If you feel that the experience isn't up to par, you can cancel that service at the end of the month (or, in some cases, anytime you want).

If you buy a mod, and it breaks in a week, there's technically nothing you can do according to the agreement. If you don't get a refund in 24 hours, you're SOL.

What's the incentive to buy a mod on Workshop versus getting it for free somewhere else?

 

[Sendou]

What's the incentive to buy a mod on Workshop versus getting it for free somewhere else?

What does that mean?

 

[Twentieth]

RIP Nexus?

They'll survive for a lot of reasons e.g. adult mods. In the worst case scenario, they can implement options to buy DRM-free mods.

 

[crazyrabbits]

What does that mean?

What is the incentive (and benefits) of paid mods versus free ones?

Come on, I know you're not obtuse.

 

[DeadlyParasite]

This would've been ok if creators got all/nearly all the money from purchases but instead it's just another jar of honey for valve to dip their hands into. 25% is an insult.

 

[superseohyun]

What if you buy an MMO, and they take the server down in a year?

id say the chance of an MMO gets taken down is considerably lower than one guy stop updating his mod.

but you should only pay if you find the current content is worth paying for anyway.

edit: wait... now i think about it... if the main game is upgraded and the mod is no longer working after 1 month.... oh god...

 

[Mesoian]

what if Chris Avellone and some other people suddenly make a campaign mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4

They'd likely put it out as DLC.

 

[elyetis]

Now that I think about it, can you even use Mod Manager with mods downloaded on the workshop ?

 

[ashecitism]

https://twitter.com/chetfaliszek/status/591305178898378755
http://jimo.co.uk/post/116990857404

 

[Juniez]

Are you saying you don't see the fact that if someone can be paid for their work they could possibly spend more time on it? If modders can earn a legitimate, steady income from their work then they can either go full time or part time just working on the mods.

If its free, people still often need to work full time to keep themselves housed and fed. A way to easily sell content has given lots of people a way to go full time in other parts of the Steam ecosystem, it could do the same for modders.

probably won't see anyone switching over to a part time / full time work dedication with so many people in the market and and

25%

lol

 

[Mesoian]

I will be buying Skywind.

Whenever it actually comes out...

Also, they'd never be able to sell Skywind as most of it is stuff that does not belong to the team making it. It's not original content at all.

Now that I think about it, can you even use Mod Manager with mods downloaded on the workshop ?

There are ways....but real talk, you don't want to.

 

[Almighty]

but you should only pay if you find the current content is worth paying for anyway.

Yeah you will have to adopt an early access approach to buying mods I would think. If you are buying based on what might get added in the future you are setting you are just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Also does anyone know what Valve does if a game/mod gets taken down via DMCA notice. Do they let those who bought it keep using it or do they refund the money and remove it from accounts?