Valve Hasn't Given up on Paid Mods

[Steven Bogos]

Valve Hasn't Given up on Paid Mods

Despite the whole Skyrim fiasco, Valve is determined to make paid mods work.

If you're a citizen of the internet, you'll remember earlier in the year when Valve announced scrapped the initiative shortly after [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140575-Valve-Announces-Paid-Skyrim-Mods]. Needless to say that the experience should have been enough to bury the very concept of "paid mods" completely... but Valve is adamant on making them work.

Talking with Kotaku [http://steamed.kotaku.com/even-after-the-skyrim-fiasco-valve-is-still-interested-1736818234], Valve admitted that trying to shoehorn paid mods onto a game with a pre-existing mod community was a big mistake. "While it wasn't our intent, it was really easy to read [paid Skyrim mods] as, 'Remember that thing you love? You pay money for that now.' That's an awful plan. That's a terrible plan," mused Valve business authority Erik Johnson.

The next time around (as there will most certainly be a next time around), Valve will make sure paid mods make their debut with the game's launch. "I don't think it matters whether it's a game of ours or not," said Johnson, "but I do agree that walking into a pre-existing, very mature community is probably not the best place to start."

"You need something that's like, 'Here's the new thing. Somebody spent a couple years on it, and it's amazing. It's for sale.' We didn't really have anything like that [last time], so it came across poorly."

Johnson pointed to the success of paid user-created content in Valve titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 as the main reason why it is intent on making paid mods work.

As for me, while my heart bleeds for mod creators who have to make mods for free, "free mods" are one of the greatest things of being a PC gamer, and the day that those are taken away will be a sad day indeed.

Source: Kotaku [http://steamed.kotaku.com/even-after-the-skyrim-fiasco-valve-is-still-interested-1736818234]

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[Saulkar]

Makes worry about how they will address mods that rely on other mods and scripts and compatibility in general. That is not even getting into the realm of theft and Copyright. Man, this is just one helluva can'o'worms!

Spoiler: Edit: Here is what I had to say on the issue back in May.

Once they charge for the mod it seizes to be a mod. Then it simply becomes third party DLC instead.

Which is an odd thing people keep arguing about, arguing that this deal is the bee's knees (compared to what the average game company can negotiate) but modders are not developers, they are hobbyist and should be treated as such. They do not have the same resources, motivations, legal support, or financial backings. Third party DLC, like you said, has potential as there will be different systems governing, protecting, and supporting it in addition to what I would hope would be some quality control. The Steam system as it was setup was not in either the customer or modder's favour.

I definitely believe modders should be able to make money from their work but with legality of third-party assets and models being an issue, interdependent mods and who owns what, quality control, and theft were all issues that could not be easily sorted out. In all honesty, I believe that the system (though flawed) would have probably received less flack if it was exclusively a donation system that reminded you unobtrusively every couple of days that you had not donated (barring a negative review which would deny you further access to the mod until it was updated and you could critique it again). That would have solved the problems of paying for a mod only to find out a few days later that it was not compatible with another or if the developer showed gross incompetence or theft of assets that were not theirs to distribute.

snip

Speak of the devil, you voiced my concerns much more eloquently. This all also makes me worry about compilation mods that are redesigned for maximum compatibility. Also, what would happen to sites like Nexus and Moddb?

 

[Braedan]

I am all for modders getting paid for their work. Some mods are really good, and most take a lot of god damn time.
That said, I don't imagine it will be pretty when we start seeing authors try to unravel mod dependencies to try and sue each other over someone's armor mod which was recoloured and added to the workshop. Especially when the original mod uses the body replacer designed by X, which is a branch of Y, and required Z's animations to work properly. Who pays who what amount? Have fun!

 

[loa]

Weren't there tons of fraudulent paid mods that were just other peoples freely avaliable work repackaged for skyrim when they tried this the first time around?
I guess they are hungry for hand-steak and keep pressing down on the stove that burned them once.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

If they were smart, they'd try making paying optional, so if people actually enjoy the mod and feel like it, they'd kick a couple of dollars/pounds/etc the mod creator's way.
I know I would if I found some particularly good mods, like DUST for New Vegas, for example. Hell, even little mods if they add something nice. That way they get some cash, and they wouldn't get the huge backlash from forcing people to pay.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Weren't there tons of fraudulent paid mods that were just other peoples freely avaliable work repackaged for skyrim when they tried this the first time around?
I guess they are hungry for hand-steak and keep pressing down on the stove that burned them once.

More or less. I'm guessing Valve sees Greenlight as a sufficient success to tolerate the endless amounts of shovelware and asset-flipping that ends up on that service - and the same would apply to Skyrim's little paid mods experiment.

In other words, all they saw was that money started trickling in. It didn't matter if it trickled out of repackaged and plagiarized mods, separate mod assets or wholly original creations; all that mattered was the cash flow or the potential of it. How else can you explain Valve's tolerance of Greenlight and its weird notion that paying for content that used to be free would be a good idea?

I'm of the mind that an endorsement feature would have worked best. "Here's my mod, have fun with it free of charge. Before you hit that 'Add to Queue' button, though, consider chipping in at your discretion." Something like that, at least.

It would've made a lot more sense than the blatantly unsecured system they tried out, which allowed one modder to spit out what I can only hope was a joke: a single apple placed in Riverwood's inn, on one of the tables - priced at a hundred bucks.

 

[SecondPrize]

I wouldn't buy DLC from a dev if they had zero customer support, no QA team and couldn't ensure their product worked initially and continued to work following every patch for the game. Unless you get that shit down, I won't ever pay cash up front for a mod. You can't just expect to sell people a product and then ignore those people who have issues with it. Not when mods have always been finicky as fuck.

 

[Rastrelly]

I will never pay a single penny for a mod. Whatever this mod is. Mod is a labour of love, not business. Paid mod is by default NOT a labour of love whatever its devs will say; if it was, they'd make a new game instead.

 

[Doom972]

It's going to be in Fallout 4, isn't it? There are too many problems for this concept to work,

I wouldn't buy DLC from a dev if they had zero customer support, no QA team and couldn't ensure their product worked initially and continued to work following every patch for the game. Unless you get that shit down, I won't ever pay cash up front for a mod. You can't just expect to sell people a product and then ignore those people who have issues with it. Not when mods have always been finicky as fuck.

Exactly, and it doesn't stop there: What about copyrighted material appearing in a paid mod? What about mod dependency?

I think that Valve are getting greedy, and it's sad.

 

[Therumancer]

One thing that I'll mention is that Valve is mostly interested since it doubtlessly plans to take a cut from every mod sold due to the usage of their platform. This likely means they will expect ALL mods they decide to host in their workshop to eventually be paid mods. It also means a donation system would be hinky since if you decide to say donate a couple of bucks to a good mod creator you have to wonder what % of that goes towards buying junk food for Valve's famous free employee snack bar.

Any way it goes, it's a personal suspicion that we'll see the results when the user creation tools come out for Fallout 4 as I'd imagine that's the game that has those desiring paid mods drooling given the healthy mod community for Bethesda's other games.

I'll also say that while donations are fine, I think once something goes outright professional it changes. There is a definite difference between labours of love with people putting in the effort because they want to do something, and creators instead approaching modding as a business and going at it with an eye entirely towards making a profit.

It will also be interesting to see what happens with sites like the Nexus if paid mods go through, will they survive? Will those creating the tools conspire to find ways to force you to use pay-enabled services like STEAM's workshop?

Time will tell how this turns out, it would be nice if the door was never opened.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well we knew this day will come, why wouldn't they try to push paid mods when when they take home 75% for shit they don't make. At least with games they are "lenient" and only skim 30% off the top.

I doubt it will be long before we will need to demand actual mod support from devs, as Steam Workshop grows it's money walls.

 

[Naldan]

If they were smart, they'd try making paying optional, so if people actually enjoy the mod and feel like it, they'd kick a couple of dollars/pounds/etc the mod creator's way.
I know I would if I found some particularly good mods, like DUST for New Vegas, for example. Hell, even little mods if they add something nice. That way they get some cash, and they wouldn't get the huge backlash from forcing people to pay.

Exactly.


Well, Valve talks at least about fixing 2 of 13 points absolutely wrong with their paid mods system.

But just adding another one:

There is ZERO doubt about that modders will sue each other, will cheat each other.

And all respect to Valve, but aside from releasing patches and having a moderate software for online distribution, their work sucks.

Their customer service sucks, absolutely sucks. And they do *nothing* about it. They even admitted it almost a year ago and nothing has changed.

Their interface sucks. The Steam client's interface absolutely sucks. It's like they have mid-beta forgotten where they wanted to go with this and now have to deal with the state of the interface for ever.

- I - could do a better interface. Userfriendlier and more rich of features.

What I mean with this is that they start stuff and just let it run. They just let Greenlight run. They just let the Workshop run. They don't develope it anymore, at least not in terms of the interface.

And I know that the workshop's categories is in the hands of the dev/publisher. But the skeleton already is barebones, pun intended.

They just made refunds available. Are they even aware of how fast they were riding towards an EU lawsuit? And now with paid mods? And don't tell me that this won't be implemented in the next dozen AAA games at least. That is microtransactions (mostly, or at least the mods I'm concerned with) with ZERO investment besides dev tools.

Whatever. I won't buy a single game that maintains this as the praxis. I will and am donating money. But not to the publisher, definitely not to Valve, and only after I've tested it.

 

[dangoball]

Unless Valve somehow makes Nexus and Moddb incompatible with Steam versions of games, I don't see this catching on. Some simple cosmetic mods might work, like everyone's favourite hats, but content mods and redesigns? Aww, heck naw.
Modders are a creative bunch, the good and laborious ones usually have a tip jar over some service or another, which doesn't hog wast majority of money sent, they often collaborate on projects and are good at finding workarounds.

You see, Valve, even if you try, all you'll ever get on your paid-mods are cheap knock-offs, jokes on the absurdity of the system and outright stolen mods that are available elsewhere for free. Even if you try to stomp down on Nexus and Moddb, modders will find a way.
Also, we have German gamers, those guys who actually read terms and conditions and know what legal grounds they stand on.

Maybe we need a gamer's Nietzsche who would proclaim the God of PC Gaming Master Race dead. Germans, I'm waiting.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

HOW ABOUT... They just set up a donation system? How about that? Is that really too hard to put in?

 

[MonsterCrit]

Why should Valve give up on Paid mods. Me thinks the biggest mistake was.. mods for such a whinny community as the Bethesda fan base. It's been working great for them for over 5 years. TF2, CS:GO, DOta2, Portal, HL2...Heck a third of all those TF2 hats are community maid and the community gets paid for them .


As for mods which rely on other mods. That's just something that will need to be documented in a given mod. Requires X-Mod to Run.

 

[JLF]

Please no paid mods for Fallout 4!

It sounds like they will make it difficult to post free mods (because of psychological barriers). It is easy to be tempted to try getting paid even if the mod is not planed to be sold. In other words there can be a lot of material in the mod that was created by other individuals. If there are copyrighted material from behemoth companies --> big legal problems that can cause mods being stopped for a period of time (worst case scenario).

Posting paid mods will have to have a system in place to avoid "Steam greenlight" fiascos. Also making a process that makes mod authors go through a time consuming process which will detriment authors posting IMPULSE "for sale" products on the site. This could filter a bit of the not completely "kosher" products.

Bad apples will have a terrible affect on the modding community (every community for that matter) and these 5% will cause a whole lot of problems.

Also Steam has to remember that if they are taking a slice in the earnings it will also be partly accountable for their practices and products.

 

[Zontar]

It's been working great for them for over 5 years. TF2, CS:GO, DOta2, Portal, HL2

All Portal and HL2 mods are free, there just happens to be a full conversion mod for HL that became a retail game. As for DOTA2, TF2 and CS:GO, DOTA has its mods free, and TF2 and CS:GO don't have mods. Cosmetic items for weapons and character skins are not mods.

 

[MHR]

I'm smelling something foul brewing in the Direction of Fallout 4. They're going to try to sneak the announcement of paid mods, like, a few hours before the release of the game to ensure everyone's pre-order is already locked in. With the same terrible #*@$ing terms, no doubt. No smaller cut taken off the top by the companies, or option to pay "0" dollars.

I smell a trap.

 

[JLF]

I'm smelling something foul brewing in the Direction of Fallout 4. They're going to try to sneak the announcement of paid mods, like, a few hours before the release of the game to ensure everyone's pre-order is already locked in. With the same terrible #*@$ing terms, no doubt. No smaller cut taken off the top by the companies, or option to pay "0" dollars.

I smell a trap.

I will have to agree that is a very good possibility. What made Bethesda games great was (to a big part) the mods. Also they were in collaboration with Bethesda last time they tried to implement a paid mods system.