Gabe Newell Speaks on The Whole Paid Skyrim Mods Debacle

[Lightspeaker]

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.

Sorry, no, I fundamentally disagree with the word "deserve" here. Because it implies people are entitled to it. Would be it be NICE for modders who put a lot of time and effort into a mod to get paid? Sure, that's what donations are for. But the idea that they're entitled to money because of what they do as a hobby is nonsense.

I've played the clarinet for approaching two decades now. I'm pretty decent at it. Do I "deserve" to get paid a performance fee every time I play because of that? Am I entitled to payment whenever anyone overhears me play? No, because its my hobby, I do it for personal entertainment and to bring joy to people, not because it makes me money. If I want to make money I go get a job. Not everything has to be a job and if I don't enjoy playing anymore I can just stop playing, similarly if people don't want to keep modding anymore there's nothing stopping them from just not modding.

The moment you bring getting paid into the equation (in a non-donation way) you completely change the dynamics of it. You are no longer a hobbyist with no responsibilities, you are a professional running a business. Its not necessarily always a BAD thing to turn your hobby into a job, but it comes with strict expectations and legal requirements. But everyone involved is trying to get around that by saying "its just a mod". Valve and Bethseda are declaiming responsibility for anything at all by saying its up to the community and simultaneously saying that its up to you to talk to the modder to fix things. This is ridiculous.


People comparing this to youtubers and artists are missing the point. Each of those produce products that are then "sold" as-is and are not required to interact with anything else. If you buy a painting you're not going to get home and find its incompatible with your existing paintings and causes them all to turn green. If you watch a poor quality youtube video that's been uploaded its not going to effect other youtube videos you watch. A poor quality mod that is incompatible with certain other mods can absolutely destroy your game and write-off your saves. And there is zero requirement for the author to do anything about it or to help you with it because "hey its just a mod". You're sight-unseen buying something that you don't even know is going to work which is absurd.

To continue the previous analogy if I play for a bunch of people and I'm good on the day they might tip me. If I'm not very good on the day then I get a bit of embarrassment at being bad and my audience is unimpressed. If I charge money in advance and then play badly on the day then I have a bunch of annoyed audience members who paid money for a good performance and didn't get it. A monetary transaction, especially in advance, changes the expectations and is very different to a donation. There's a good reason that typically you don't pay workmen the whole amount in advance. Its because you want to see that they've done a good job before they finish; you don't know how its going to turn out until after they've done the work and you can have a look.

On reflection games are very unusual these days in being one of the few commodities that change after the point of sale but that we buy outright. When you buy a car or a TV or whatever you don't have the manufacturer come around a few months later to have a poke at it and change a few things, but that's effectively what patches are. It was very different back before the internet was a big thing (for PC) and, in terms of consoles, in the PS2 era. Games either worked out of the box or they were bad, broken games. Nowadays we're in this nebulous time of "well its broken NOW but we'll fix it, really!" Which has its advantages and disadvantages, but I'm going off topic a little here.

 

[shintakie10]

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.

I'm with TB on this one. The argument that mods have always been free so they should always stay free doesn't fly with me. Its a bad argument because it doesn't allow for actually good options in the future simply because somethin has always been some way.

Modders should be able to be paid for their work. They spend far more hours workin on mods than I do playin the game most of the time. There's a ton of mods that are meh reskins, but there's also tons and tons of mods that outshine anythin that the actual developers created. To simply say they shouldn't get any form of monetary compensation if its offered simply because they've never gotten paid before is outright ridiculous.

That being said, as nearly everyone else has said the system put in place now is bad.

 

[RJ 17]

Sorry, no, I fundamentally disagree with the word "deserve" here. Because it implies people are entitled to it. Would be it be NICE for modders who put a lot of time and effort into a mod to get paid? Sure, that's what donations are for. But the idea that they're entitled to money because of what they do as a hobby is nonsense.

Let me go ahead and stop you right there, because unless you can prove that modders only mod out of the goodness of their heart and not - for instance - because there simply hasn't been any easy - and legal - way for them to get paid for their efforts, your argument is pointless. Whether someone deserves to get paid or not is entirely subjective...as in I personally feel that modders do deserve to get paid. If you think they don't deserve to get paid, well then that's your business.

Beyond that, your comparison is a bit askew. Are you honestly saying that if someone said to you "You've been playing the clarinet for a while and we really enjoy it. Now we're going to start paying you to play the clarinet regardless of if you play well or not" that you would, in turn, take the moral high ground and say "NO! AWAY WITH YOUR MONEY! I REFUSE TO GET PAID FOR DOING WHAT I ENJOY DOING!" If so, then if only for an moment I wish I could experience the enchanted world you live in. Because I imagine the standard response is "You mean you're going to start giving me money for something that I've been doing for free? Yes please."

Greed is contagious, my friend, and Steam's new policy fosters that notion. That's why I disagree with the policy in principal...it's a messed up way to implement this. The better way to implement it would be - as I mentioned - a donation/tip system. It would be the equivalent of you deciding to go out to a street corner and play your clarinet with an up-turned hat in front of you for tips. You're doing what you love regardless of whether or not you're getting paid, but if some people happen to think you "deserve" (by their opinion) to get paid for your performance, well there's nothing wrong with getting some money as a sign of their appreciation for your work.

 

[AstaresPanda]

part of the reason mods are so popular is due to them being free so any flaws or short comings is forgiven as its free such in the pc gaming community. Mods if popular enough would get money for them CS or use their skills and team making the mods into somthing more Black Mesa. Does not need to be a dam price tag on everything. You use those mod skills to start a career. its abit much but it seems fair to me.Also the reason why modders did what they did was due to being a fan or like hackers they have a good poke around the game files and play. It was more about getting your name out there and making a great game that you and freinds etc wud play. The end game was never im going to make a mod and im going to make loads of money, if that were the case then it was more of a building a portfolio as its better for a game studio to see that you are making mods then coming out of uni with a game degree as they are worth shit to game studios. A tip button would be better. If its good then you will get tips, i mean shit if CS back in the day had a tip jar you could donate wot ever you wanted to they would have been minted long ago.

 

[black_knight1337]

I really wish he never even made that thread. He pretty much just came in and told us all to get fucked because all he cares about is how much money he can make off of it. All we learned from it was that it's not going anywhere because it's going to make them a fortune, that there isn't going to be a donation system because they can't profit from that and that Gabe is a big old hypocrite because he outright says that Team Fortress, Dota and Counter-Strike would have never been the success that they are today if they didn't start out as free mods.

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

That's not a donation system, that's a 'pay what you want' system. If it were a donation system, all of the money would be going to the modder. Sure, there's not a lot of difference for the customer, but there's a massive difference for the modder, or to use the actual numbers, it's around $25,000 worth of difference.

 

[XenoScifi]

SOE did a good job with user created content for it's library of games. This was mainly due to a quality control where the created items had to be approved before being allowed to be sold. Also SOE did not just give the creators some in game credit, they actually cut a check. Now, if Valve had a department that handled quality control over modded content (please hold the laughter down a bit) then in theory this could be a win/win/win for the modder, publisher and Valve. But we all know Valves track record with quality control...it's nowhere to be found. This is all just my opinion of course.

 

[loa]

If he thinks 25% for modders who only get paid if their mod sells for at least 100$ (which turns into 400$ required revenue to be paid at all due to the 75% reduction) empowers modders and if he thinks introducing a money flow into something that lives off of cross-pollination and community cooperation supports the system, he either didn't think this through at all or is lying.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Let me go ahead and stop you right there, because unless you can prove that modders only mod out of the goodness of their heart and not - for instance - because there simply hasn't been any easy - and legal - way for them to get paid for their efforts, your argument is pointless.

Are you serious here? I can prove it, outright, right now, with one sentence: modding has been happening for decades without monetary compensation.

There, done. If people weren't doing it for non-financial reasons then the modding scene wouldn't exist in the first place. Because people wouldn't have been doing it. People mod games for a variety of reasons which include gaining experience, showcasing their work, keeping themselves amused and bringing other people joy. Payoff does not have to be monetary, and to date it has NOT been monetary. Therefore all modding to date has been "out of the goodness of their hearts", as you put it.

Beyond that, your comparison is a bit askew. Are you honestly saying that if someone said to you "You've been playing the clarinet for a while and we really enjoy it. Now we're going to start paying you to play the clarinet regardless of if you play well or not" that you would, in turn, take the moral high ground and say "NO! AWAY WITH YOUR MONEY! I REFUSE TO GET PAID FOR DOING WHAT I ENJOY DOING!" If so, then if only for an moment I wish I could experience the enchanted world you live in. Because I imagine the standard response is "You mean you're going to start giving me money for something that I've been doing for free? Yes please."

Wrong, your comparison is the faulty one. Valve is not offering modders money here, nor are they offering them a job, they're basically offering a publishing deal without a contract or any responsibility on their side. If someone came up to me outright offering me money I'd say sure. If someone heard me and asked to hire me then I'd say sure. If someone came up to me offering to advertise and the rest is up to me I'd tell them to bugger off; because that puts the onus on me to be the business person in the arrangement.

It would be the equivalent of you deciding to go out to a street corner and play your clarinet with an up-turned hat in front of you for tips. You're doing what you love regardless of whether or not you're getting paid, but if some people happen to think you "deserve" (by their opinion) to get paid for your performance, well there's nothing wrong with getting some money as a sign of their appreciation for your work.

I literally said more or less those exact words in my post so I don't know why you're bringing that up. "Deserve money" implies entitlement to monetary compensation. "Be entitled to" is a synonym for deserve. Its not the same thing as a donation.

 

[Elfgore]

For the most part, these new mods that people are charging for are total shite and don't deserve to ask for money. One is just an over-powered, enchanted Daedric sword that you have to developer code into the game yourself. Another is just a poorly made house in the ground. We also have one that simply re-codes an AI with pre-made script. People think it is okay to charge for these. Once all the joke mods are cleared out and this really starts trucking, I foresee this trend continuing. The mods that actually deserve to be given money or whatever for, won't be the ones asking for it. It will be those people who half-ass a mod and then ask for money.

This whole situation doesn't seem to benefit the modders, seeing as how little they actually get. This just looks like Bethesda is trying to turn modding into some sort of lite-DLC they can profit from.

 

[ShakerSilver]

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.

"We understand your frustration, but we like money so we're gonna keep doing this."

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,

I have a hard time believing that their current moderation which is absolutely terrible at moderating Greenlight will be able to crackdown on this. Also, leaving it up to the "community" to do moderation makes them seem lazy as hell.

that "censorship" of people complaining about paid mods on the official Steam forums was an error that will be rectified

"My b"

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.

[HEADING=2]Not exactly true.[/HEADING]He was saying that the mod authors can set the minimum to $0 for their pay-as-you-like mod. Mods can still have a minimum price above $0 or just have a set price.

So he basically said a whole lot of nothing on the matter. Thanks Gabe.

 

[RJ 17]

Are you serious here? I can prove it, outright, right now, with one sentence: modding has been happening for decades without monetary compensation.

You're leaving out the bit about "they couldn't due to legal reasons." Modding already exists in a grey area as it is. I'd imagine if the legality of the matter was black and white favoring the notion of modders getting paid, then modders would have been getting paid decades ago. Now Valve has turned a blind eye to that saying essentially "Who gives a shit? Come on and get paid!"

If your view holds water, then Skyrim's paid-mod workshop would be populated entirely by scams or mods that had been ripped from Nexus and posted on the workshop by someone that's not the author. To my knowledge: this isn't the case as actual modders have moved their mods to the workshop in hopes of getting paid, so clearly there are modders out there who would be more than happy to get paid for their efforts.

Wrong, your comparison is the faulty one. Valve is not offering modders money here, nor are they offering them a job, they're basically offering a publishing deal without a contract or any responsibility on their side. If someone came up to me outright offering me money I'd say sure. If someone heard me and asked to hire me then I'd say sure. If someone came up to me offering to advertise and the rest is up to me I'd tell them to bugger off; because that puts the onus on me to be the business person in the arrangement.

Nope, they're holding a sign saying "Post your mods here and you will get paid for them." That's all they're doing. They're not advertising your mod. They're not promoting your mod. They're saying "come here to get money"...it's as simple as that. If you take that bait, you're one of the following:

A: A modder who would like to get paid for your efforts.
B: A person who has stolen a mod from somewhere like Nexus to try and get paid for someone else's work.

If the former (which this conversation is dealing with): you're already making quality mods as-is, so absolutely nothing changes about your arrangement other than the fact that you're now getting paid.

I literally said more or less those exact words in my post so I don't know why you're bringing that up. "Deserve money" implies entitlement to monetary compensation. "Be entitled to" is a synonym for deserve. Its not the same thing as a donation.

And as I've said twice now: whether someone "deserves" to get paid is subjective. Once more I'll say it: I personally believe good modders should be paid for their efforts. As such, I would be someone to donate to a tip jar. I'd toss a couple dollars into your hat for your street-corner clarinet recital. Does that mean the person behind me will feel you deserve a tip? No. Because, once again...say it with me: "who decides whether something deserves something else is a subjective notion"

In other words: you can argue semantics and definitions as much as you want...that won't change the fact that I feel if someone pours countless hours into making a quality something, then they deserve compensation for their efforts, especially if I intend to use that quality something on a daily basis. As I previously said: if you disagree with that notion, then that's your business.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

He had to realize that introducing a payment system to something that was previously 100% free is going to piss people off.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there more to this. Isn't this giving modders the option of charging for their hard work in changing the game? And isn't it your choice in buying these mods?

And before you go on about the amount the modders get, You might want to research how much money developers actually get, once they BREAK EVEN.

I think this could be a good idea, as it would encourage people with ideas for mods to come out of the woodwork, and maybe collaborate on projects, or come up with new ways to play the game.

 

[endtherapture]

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.

I'm with TB on this one. The argument that mods have always been free so they should always stay free doesn't fly with me. Its a bad argument because it doesn't allow for actually good options in the future simply because somethin has always been some way.

Modders should be able to be paid for their work. They spend far more hours workin on mods than I do playin the game most of the time. There's a ton of mods that are meh reskins, but there's also tons and tons of mods that outshine anythin that the actual developers created. To simply say they shouldn't get any form of monetary compensation if its offered simply because they've never gotten paid before is outright ridiculous.

That being said, as nearly everyone else has said the system put in place now is bad.

I disagree because modders haven't been modding as a job, or a duty. They've been modding as a hobby and something they do primarily to fun, not as a service for other people. Turning a simple mod into a product throws up a whole load of issues regarding consumer rights, and for a lot of people it will turn a fun hobby into something far more serious a stressful. Fans using mods will now have higher expectations, and modders will be required to deliver a level of customer service to their customers. It destroys the fun dynamic and as you can see is immediately causing problems just due to the outrage. 3 days ago modders weren't some oppressed underclass who did a thankless and payless job and died alone in starvation. Extra money for them is a benefit of course, but it is not a necessity.

Then there's the fact that a commodity which has been free for 20 years suddenly as a market value on it. Who decides how expensive a mod is worth? Some of the packs out there cost more than the actual base game of Skyrim. Modding then turns from something universal to something akin to DLC where only the gamers with more disposable income can afford it. That is wrong. Games are expensive enough as it is without adding extra layers of money you have to pay to unlock previously free services.

I believe that whilst modders do us a good service, price tags should not be slapped on mods willy nilly. Contributions should be voluntary in order so that the hobby is still inclusive, and there should be better systems in place for donation, but not crappy tacked on paywalls with no pricing structure or anything.

Mod piracy is now a thing thanks to Valve. How crazy is that? 3 days ago it would have been considered a joke.

 

[Josh123914]

Can someone explain to me how this is even legal?

I mean I thought mods were only allowed to be done in the first place because the modder is doing it for free, and to sell the work would be to profit off of a studio's work, since the mod will no doubt be built off of the assets of that studio.

With this in mind, I'm surprised there isn't a lawsuit brewing.

 

[Shinkicker444]

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.

I think Gabe said that they had sold $10,000 worth in that AMA.. which cost them $1 million in (email) resources or something. He was using the figures as a counterpoint to them being greedy. Not the best counterpoint I think.

Let's assume for a second that we are stupidly greedy. So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That's like 1% of the cost of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of days). That's not stupidly greedy, that's stupidly stupid.
You need a more robust Valve-is-evil hypothesis.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqojx8y

Also, with them altering the PWUW system to include $0 payments (I'm not holding my breath on that one), that won't do anything for the mods that are set to one price.

Lastly, wow, Skyrim has dropped almost 10% in rating on Steam from 97% to 88% (first page when you order games by rating to probably like page 13).

The Workshop is down atm? It just shows a black screen for me.

edit: added quote.

 

[Donnicton]

Can someone explain to me how this is even legal?

I mean I thought mods were only allowed to be done in the first place because the modder is doing it for free, and to sell the work would be to profit off of a studio's work, since the mod will no doubt be built off of the assets of that studio.

With this in mind, I'm surprised there isn't a lawsuit brewing.

It's done with the publisher/developer's(see: Bethesda) approval, and (in this case) Bethesda has full control over how much money they get to pocket out of the modder's revenue before the modder even sees a dime. (see: Supplemental Workshop Terms [http://i.imgur.com/VdHg4dG.png])

If anything, since Bethesda is well known as being a pretty litigious company(see: scrolls, fortress fallout, morroblivion), we'll probably start to see the free mod sites start getting C&D'd over the paid mods.

 

[BadNewDingus]

Gabe seems to be out of touch with the community. He has dreams of freedom in the PC gaming world, but it's turning more and more into an endless amount of paywalls and shitty content(Greenlight). It reminds me of that episode of Always Sunny where they wanted to have Mardi Gras everyday, but just turned into abuse and unspeakable actions of others. No one wants to be in a bar during Mardi Gras where it's all men. Just like no one(well most) wants to be in a community where everything is pay to play.

 

[NoPants2win]

Can someone explain to me how this is even legal?

I mean I thought mods were only allowed to be done in the first place because the modder is doing it for free, and to sell the work would be to profit off of a studio's work, since the mod will no doubt be built off of the assets of that studio.

With this in mind, I'm surprised there isn't a lawsuit brewing.

It's being done with permission from the publisher. I suspect the reason the modder's cut is so small is because the publisher is getting most of the money.

 

[weirdee]

Basically, given the state of the rest of the industry, this is probably a step too far into territory that has been all but eroded from years of taking and taking.