Gabe Newell Speaks on The Whole Paid Skyrim Mods Debacle

[Steven Bogos]

Gabe Newell Speaks on The Whole Paid Skyrim Mods Debacle

Valve's top dog Gabe Newell addresses concerns fans are having over paid Steam mods.

On Friday, Valve announced that it was taken to reddit [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140575-Valve-Announces-Paid-Skyrim-Mods] to personally address any concerns people have over the system. "On Thursday I was flying back from LA. When I landed, I had 3,500 new messages. Hmmm. Looks like we did something to piss off the Internet," said Newell.

First and foremost, Newell stresses that Valve will not force paid mods if it is clearly not something the community at large wants. "Our goal is to make modding better for the authors and gamers. If something doesn't help with that, it will get dumped. Right now I'm more optimistic that this will be a win for authors and gamers, but we are always going to be data driven," he said.

He went on to say that he believes Valve and the community's moderation would be effective enough in stopping unscrupulous modders from stealing mods and re-uploading them as paid mods, that "censorship" of people complaining about paid mods on the official Steam forums was an error that will be rectified, and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Unfortuantely, Newell was unable to, in the words of NexusMods owner [http://www.nexusmods.com/games/?] Robin, "put his foot down" on the "'DRMification; of modding, either by Valve or developers using Steam's tools, and prevent the concept of mods ONLY being allowed to be uploaded to Steam Workshop and no where else, like ModDB, Nexus, etc.?" Newell instead replied that Valve would never force a developer to do anything, as it goes against its core philosophy.

If this kind of thing interests you, you should just go ahead and read the rest of the AMA [https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/?sort=qa], as Newell discusses quite a few concerns fans have.

Source: Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/?sort=qa]

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[Sigmund Av Volsung]

This highlights where the problem lies with Valve. Based on stories of how they conduct business, the decentralised structure where anyone can pitch and idea, work on it and implement it is starting to fall apart at the scale that Steam is at right now.

Consider this: in both of these recent controversies(Hatred being removed from Steam and the paid mods), Newell had to step in to circumvent or undo the decisions made when they got out of hand, meaning that someone else implemented these ideas, ergo, Valve has trouble focusing and controlling itself as a company.

It makes sense: the paid mods seem like a spur of the moment idea that no one veto'd. Only on reflection does Valve, through Newell's leadership understand that it's better to offer an integrated donation system to not completely break the current model of mods(otherwise, you get immense pressure on modders to monetize, which results in users going to external sources to find mods as a reaction, which creates this horrible Catch-22(modders want to get paid->migrate to Steam, players don't want to pay->migrate to Nexus)).

This sort of creative freedom is great when designing games, it truly is(Half Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, etc.) but as a way to manage business? Not so much. It then makes sense why Early Access and Greenlight are still rocky and why their refund policy is crap.

I get the feeling that Valve needs to have a separate branch that is established old-guard style to manage the business side of Steam and let the creative guys do creative stuff that doesn't mess with our wallets.

 

[DEAD34345]

I love steam, but only console children and console presents use the steam mod library.

If you really want to mod Skyrim, go to the Nexus and use their mod manager.

That's true for now, but with Steam offering payment for the mods a lot of future ones will likely only be offered there. What's the point in charging for your mod in one place and offering it for free everywhere else, after all?

OT: Sounds vaguely promising, but only in the sense that it might mean they'll be getting rid of the system in the nearby future. There's not really any kind of middle ground that will appease me other than that. Modding is major aspect of PC gaming, and a really amazing situation where a ton of people just make content for the sake of sharing it with other people for free. It benefits all PC gamers, and its existence is pretty miraculous to begin with. What Valve is doing may kill it for good.

 

[shirkbot]

I get the feeling that Valve needs to have a separate branch that is established old-guard style to manage the business side of Steam and let the creative guys do creative stuff that doesn't mess with our wallets.

I think you might have just proposed the best solution to a number of Valve's, and by extension PC Gamers', problems. Sadly, until they actually DO something about any of the problems they've created I'll just keep buying from GOG and Humble Bundle whenever possible.

OT: I read some of the AMA, but the answers were often so vague as to be useless. Valve is notoriously bad at explaining anything and this is apparently no different. Newell even admits they know where their problems are, and that they're trying to fix them, but could they at least disable the offending systems in the meantime? If only on the main version of Steam? They can leave it in the Beta, but at least give people a choice man.

At least there's going to be a proper pay-what-you-want system now. Sadly that payment skew is not likely to be fixed any time soon since Bethesda gets to make 45% of every sale while doing no work.

 

[fix-the-spade]

That's true for now, but with Steam offering payment for the mods a lot of future ones will likely only be offered there. What's the point in charging for your mod in one place and offering it for free everywhere else, after all?

Given the rampant theft, modders moving to distance themselves from the whole thing (or spitting feathers that someone else uploaded their mod onto the store), Valve's extremely poor attitude towards infringement/enforcement and the insultingly low cut of the money being offered (that was hidden by Valve being vague ahead of time) I don't think this is going to last long.

It's only a matter of time before it disappears under a cloud of DMCA claims, both from modders seeing their work ripped off and IP holders seeing 'themed' mods being charged for. Blizzard in particular I'm expecting to bring the hammer down.

 

[Denamic]

One of the primary concerns that I have is that once mods is that mods are currently very collaborative. Many mods use aspects of other mods to improve on one another, or are entirely dependent on something. Like SKSE, the Skyrim script extender. Many, many mods use the extended scripting functionalities that it offers, including some that are on sale now. Someone is using work they made available and gets paid for it. It also prevents other people to make mods that synergise with one another when they're behind a paywall.

Another concern is that publishers gets a HEFTY portion of each sale. This will promote them to release buggy games that people will make mods to fix, and they can get paid to make their customers fix their game. Whether this will actually happen doesn't even matter; it's the fact that there's nothing stopping them from doing this that's a problem.

Finally, one of the most retarded things about this has already made itself apparent. Midas magic, a spell mod for Skyrim, has made it so that there's a 4% chance every time you cast a spell introduced by the free version of the mod, you get a popup telling you to buy the mod. We now have popups in our mods. Wonderful.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Well the petition [https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop] is over 100k signatures now, it was at half that when I looked yesterday.

This is a horrible implementation of a theoretically good system. A system like this, if done properly, has the potential to attract the more skilled modders to pursue bigger projects, like, Falskaar sized projects. While I've always thought mods should be free, with the option to donate to the modder if you really want to, I honestly wouldn't have a problem paying for things like that, if they were reasonably priced of course.

But all this is going to do is attract opportunists that don't have the same passion for the game or their projects that a lot of modders do. The sort of people that will try to re-skin a sword and sell it for £5, and I can see the workshop being flooded with this kind of crap quickly.

One of the things that outrages me the most is that the modder only gets 25% of the sale. I've donated some money to a few modders in the past myself, and that's because I was a fan of that modder's projects and I wanted to support them. If I were to buy a mod it would be for the same reason: I want to support the modder. So why would I buy a mod from the workshop when I know that the person that actually did all the work is getting the smallest cut? That's just fucking wrong.

It's easy for Gabe to say he's confident that Valve and the community's moderation would be effective enough in stopping people from stealing mods and re-uploading them as paid mods, but Valve's quality control and moderation is fucking awful, so stuff like that would mostly fall to the community and it's not the community's fucking job.

EDIT: What if you were to buy a mod that didn't work? Sure, they give you a 24 hour refund period, but the refund only goes into your steam wallet. That's bullshit. The Steam Faq basically tells you to contact the modder if there's problems with a mod, so Valve aren't even taking responsibility for that.

There are just as many buggy mods out there as there are ones that work perfectly as intended, and if people are paying for something they're going to be expecting it to work as intended. What if it doesn't and the modder decides he can't be assed fixing it? Sure, Vavle could make them sign an agreement making them obligated to fix a paid mod if it's broken, but what if they can't fix it? These people aren't professionals, they do this as a hobby. Broken mods aren't as much as a problem when they're free.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Did he? I couldn't find that bit. I can't find him mentioning this anywhere whatsoever. Please point it out to me, cos if I've missed it I'll be overjoyed.

Unfortunately there's one line that's really stuck with everyone:

 

[Scars Unseen]

I love steam, but only console children and console presents use the steam mod library.

If you really want to mod Skyrim, go to the Nexus and use their mod manager.

Or better yet - IMO, of course - use Mod Organizer [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/?]. It supports Nexus integration the same as the site's own mod manager does, but has a lot of desirable features that the latter lacks.

 

[Louzerman102]

Mean while on Steam, DMCA take downs are being used because of mod dependencies, the modder cut is still 25 cents on the dollar, and mod curation is a bigger mess than steam Greenlight.

 

[endtherapture]

and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Did he? I couldn't find that bit. I can't find him mentioning this anywhere whatsoever. Please point it out to me, cos if I've missed it I'll be overjoyed.

Unfortunately there's one line that's really stuck with everyone:

Wow, Gabe got #rekt.

Honestly though that just sums up the whole debate so succinctly. Valve have seriously fucked up on this one. Of course there's a few people (mainly non modders or console gamers) who agree with the policy and its implementation. I've never seen public opinion turn on Valve so harshly. They've got to realise they really fucked up and hopefully they'll be back pedalling soon on this.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Did he? I couldn't find that bit. I can't find him mentioning this anywhere whatsoever. Please point it out to me, cos if I've missed it I'll be overjoyed.

Unfortunately there's one line that's really stuck with everyone:

Wow, Gabe got #rekt.

Honestly though that just sums up the whole debate so succinctly. Valve have seriously fucked up on this one. Of course there's a few people (mainly non modders or console gamers) who agree with the policy and its implementation. I've never seen public opinion turn on Valve so harshly. They've got to realise they really fucked up and hopefully they'll be back pedalling soon on this.

I want this to go the way of Microsoft thinking they could get PC to pay for GFWL. Buried in the deepest darkest pit to never be brought up again.
I never thought to ask if the people agreeing with all this were PC players or no, cos it has Zero effect on anyone who doesn't play mainly on PC.
There's already a subreddit dedicated to mod pi- erhm, acquiring paid mods through a different storefront.

People might say the nay-sayers are overreacting, but unless the backlash is extreme it's staying.

 

[endtherapture]

and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Did he? I couldn't find that bit. I can't find him mentioning this anywhere whatsoever. Please point it out to me, cos if I've missed it I'll be overjoyed.

Unfortunately there's one line that's really stuck with everyone:

Wow, Gabe got #rekt.

Honestly though that just sums up the whole debate so succinctly. Valve have seriously fucked up on this one. Of course there's a few people (mainly non modders or console gamers) who agree with the policy and its implementation. I've never seen public opinion turn on Valve so harshly. They've got to realise they really fucked up and hopefully they'll be back pedalling soon on this.

I want this to go the way of Microsoft thinking they could get PC to pay for GFWL. Buried in the deepest darkest pit to never be brought up again.
I never thought to ask if the people agreeing with all this were PC players or no, cos it has Zero effect on anyone who doesn't play mainly on PC.
There's already a subreddit dedicated to mod pi- erhm, acquiring paid mods through a different storefront.

People might say the nay-sayers are overreacting, but unless the backlash is extreme it's staying.

It's got such a backlash because modding has been engrained in PC gaming culture since day 1. When you told a friend to get a PC game, modding was one of the pillars you mentioned to them as so good, along with cheaper games, more games, better graphics etc. Valve is trying to take one of the reasons we game on PC away from us by hiding it behind paywalls.

Additionally it's been something we've had for 10 or 20 years now, and to try and monetise that, when the system has worked fine, and even thrived, for 20 years, its pathetic. It's greedy and anti-consumer and I'm glad people are outraged about it.

It's worse than the move to paid micro-DLCs in my opinion, because at least those micro-DLCs go through professional QA and fund the developers.

 

[Steven Bogos]

and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Did he? I couldn't find that bit. I can't find him mentioning this anywhere whatsoever. Please point it out to me, cos if I've missed it I'll be overjoyed.

Unfortunately there's one line that's really stuck with everyone:

There ya go. It can be a bit hard to find specific things he said because lots of people are just downvoting his replies...

 

[shrekfan246]

I have to laugh at the supposed claim that Steam's moderation would be able to curate unscrupulous modifications. Sonny Jim, have you been paying attention to the way your company has been handling things in the past year and a half?

Heaven knows the people who actually are actively working with Steam don't care about curation, and relying on the community has resulted in Greenlight becoming a massive laughing stock that's not even worth glancing at any longer unless you're trying to find something to throw in Jim Sterling's direction.

 

[RJ 17]

Ohhh god, I love how you pluck one little string and all hell breaks loose. You wake up one morning and the grass is green, sky is blue, the sun is shining and everyone is enjoying their PC gaming thanks to the pseudo-monopoly Steam has on everything...the next day, however, the grass is blue, sky is green and you realize "Holy shit! I've been teleported to Namek!" You go to check your steam library and see "PAID MODS ARE NOW A THING!" and proceed to run towards the nearest living thing and kill it.

Honestly, I'm actually with Total Biscuit on this one: I fully agree with the concept that modders deserve to get paid for all the hard work that they put into making the games we love even more enjoyable in countless ways. This, however, is not the way to go about that. Indeed, adding a tip-jar functionality to the workshop would have been a much better situation. That's the "middle ground" that needs to be reached if Valve is insistent upon doing this. That and in no way should Valve be getting 75% of the cut...that's just insulting. Even then, however, the problem remains that by monetizing mods, you enter Willy Wonka's Wonderful World of Copyright Claims.

I do love the willy-nilly manner in which this was implemented...as if they were in a board meeting and someone said "I know! How about we make them pay for mods!" to which the reply was "DONE! Make it happen!" No forethought put into it, no consideration of the copyright shitstorm that this was most assuredly going to kick-up, no discussion of possible pros and cons or getting the community's input...they just slapped together a make-shift plan and put it into play as though they weren't expecting the world's biggest can of worms to be opened over this.

 

[Smooth Operator]

So in short "we might scrap this system because you hate us, but we would really rather not".
To be honest this is far more then any other major site would do but it's really not much of anything, one of these days Gabe will be fed up with reading Reddit and then all this shit will stick permanently.

 

[Adultratedhydra]

On this day Statues of Gaben were torn from their plinths, Steam Trading cards were burned in ritualistic pyres.

OT: In other words today Valvedrones learned just how out of touch their lord and master is with gaming.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

and that a kind of "donation" system will be hitting paid mods soon, that modifies the "pay-as-you-like" system so that fans can pay $0, allowing them to donate as much or as little money as they feel the mod is worth.

Did he? I couldn't find that bit. I can't find him mentioning this anywhere whatsoever. Please point it out to me, cos if I've missed it I'll be overjoyed.

Unfortunately there's one line that's really stuck with everyone:

There ya go. It can be a bit hard to find specific things he said because lots of people are just downvoting his replies...

Ah yes I saw that one.

It's not a donation button if they can set a minimum amount and you can't touch the mod unless you pay up. It's essentially asking for a price and encouraging you to pay more for... no reason really.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I wish they would release some stats on how many people actually bought mods so far. For all we know, people actually don't mind this kind of thing.