Randomvirus said:
I really never saw why any of this was bad. The complaint about "the money" was just asinine to me.
People are making things for a product they don't own, then selling it on a service using an infrastructure they didn't create.
If people didn't want it, they don't have to pay for it. I've downloaded tons of mods for Skyrim, I would seriously pay for none of them. Well, maybe Frostfall. Because they weren't significant in any way. But I'm pretty frugal on any DLC.
Maybe it's because gamers are seriously the dumbest demographic there is, and have to buy everything they see.
Or maybe you should read the article and think about the arguments he brings up about there being no quality control, rampant stealing and bethesda and valve claiming money while doing jack shit instead of insulting everyone around you?
This scheme was a poorly implemented mess and shows that Valve does not understand modding culture, and aparantly some other people with capitalist boners in this very thread dont understand it either. Especially when they now get a steady paycheck at the end of the month instead of having to hope that no one steals their work with them having actually no legal protection to prevent it.
Valve doesnt take responsibility, Bethesda takes no responsibility... and good luck trying to get a dmca against a guy you only know as pwnzer348!!! who stole and uploaded your mod and claims that hes the original developer and you are the fraud. Steam has absolutely no copyright protection measures installed into their workshop, and unlike with their own games refuses to commit to any QA whatsofreaking ever, and even encourages people to steal mods that they found for free somewhere else!
Not only that but everyone keeps ignoring the "poisen the well" argument and instead keep stomping their feet on the ground and keep changing "if modders get paid they make better mods"
Without even having any arguments to back that up... as if repeating this statement makes it true.
Not only do these wannabe hardcore capitalists completly ignore modding culture and what makes modding actually possible in the first place (the cooperation of modders due to mods being a free labor of love) but they somehow think that being promised a vague payout at the end of the day suddenly means that people will invest huge sums of money into developing mods... when recent history has shown us that the oposite is true.
Did early acess actually lead to better games? NO! Most games that come out of early access do so with promised features never implemented, the rest are complete garbage unity assets using cash grabs, and then you have one or two games that are actually worth it every now and then.
Or how about steam greenlight? Yeah that one surely helped bring out the best games indie devs can make right?
How can people be so naive and think that introducing corporate culture into a digital HOBBY can lead to any positive outcome? Especialy those that have depended on this hobby to get themselves a job with a steady paycheck?
Its just sad to see how eager these people are to get shafted and sell out their fellow gamers to big corporations whos only care is how to make the biggest amount of money with the least amount of investment.
For fucks sake the quality of games, even AAA games has DECREASED over the last 10 years with the introduction of microtransactions and DLC... and yet these people somehow believe that this time it will actually help improve things?
Have you spend your live under a rock? Take a look around! Pre order incentives, micro transactions in single player games with no replayability, nickle and diming "free to play" games that like to go whale hunting, DLC ondisk, heavily monetized multyplayer for full priced games and it goes on and on and on.
But modders... they are saints... they would never try to abuse the system to make a quick buck... no sir.. because now they are promised some sort of compensation they suddenly will all quit their jobs and start developing mods fulltime...
Ignoring the fact that theres no copyright protection for modders work.
That there is no incentive for them to finish their mods after they sold them (quite the contrary from an economic standpoint, why should you keep working on something that doesnt make you money anymore?)
That there is no incentive to actually maintain their mods when something breaks due to a game update (again, an economical stupid decision seeing that word of mouth is useless when you can just upload new mods with a new account)
That there is a bigger incentive for developing tons of smaller mods instead of one single big mod of high quality (selling 3 x 10k 1 dollar mods is more profitable then selling 1k 5 dollar mods)
But because people are such saints they would surely never exploit the system and the overall quality of mods would improve?