Gabe Newell Speaks on The Whole Paid Skyrim Mods Debacle

[JET1971]

He looks like a sad Santa in that picture.

Anyway, I think it's an interesting move and I'd like to see what it does. Perhaps modders who put out lots of high-quality content can carve out careers for themselves like the way YouTubers have been able to carve out careers from their videos. I can't help but feel like there were similar grievances which came out when YouTube first came up with the partnership program and allowing users to benefit from the ad revenue generated from their videos. And from what I can tell, this has only improved the quality and quantity of content available on YouTube.

That doesn't mean the same will happen with modding, but nobody can predict the future. Either way I think it's worth a shot.

I have over a dozen Skyrim mods published and I am against this. There was nothing wrong with the donation system and even better use the Humble Bundle technique of pay what you want from $0.00 to billions. The reason is the competition destroys the mod community. There are tutorials available to do a great many things not explained on the CK's website and competition for money will make those a thing of the past. If a mod author needs help with a script or something he wont get that help if money is involved because he will be competition.

I am not sure why you think this. Programmers and artists, who are in a defacto state of competition just the modders will be now, are constantly helping each other out. In fact, as the potential for financial gain has increased these sorts of resources and collaborations have only become more common.

Unless modders are just uniquely shitty and unreasonable people. I guess that is a possibility.

You have never been involved in a mod community I see. Before this whole paid mods fiasco when Robin implemented endorsements at The Nexus assistance, mod resources, and just letting anyone use your mod with just credits were cut in half. That was just endorsements that raised your mods rating if you filter the categories or searches by endorsements. Then came the Hotfiles which is based on endorsements and that further cut cooperation even more. Now there is paid mods, money! that will end cooperation except for those few who do not care if someone else profits from their own work. Effectively ending cooperation.

As for other creative areas they are not in direct competition like mods are. Someone could be programming a game engine all the way to a mobile ap and can draw from the same places for help. same with artists, photoshoping a magazine cover has the same tutorials as making a game texture. We have the CK Wiki which is a very basic beginners guide that's quickly outgrown and it doesn't teach us anything about using Nifskope and the Nifskope page doesn't have much help either. How about Papyrus scripting? you cant go to any old tutorial for another language and learn how to make an NPC get naked when entering water using Papyrus, Sources of that information are fellow mod authors and that info wasn't freely explained in a tutorial until last year even though it was implemented in mods the same month the CK was released!

 

[Vigormortis]

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

To be fair:
When does introducing something new to the internet - something different - not piss off scores of people?

 

[Olas]

I'm confused, why are people against this? Shouldn't people be able to get paid for their work if they want to? Wouldn't that encourage more people to create mods, and allow modders to do it full time allowing for higher quality and more frequent mods?

And it's not like releasing mods for free won't still be possible after this.

I don't get the outrage, like at all.

Explain the Mobile Game App market if prior to it becoming what it is now, it was once a totally free service by people who just loved the hobby of making fun or useful apps. Seems as close an explanation to the resistance of turning a free community-driven mutually beneficially hobby into a profit-driven near-completely unregulated product service.

I'm not I understand what you're trying to say.

The Mobile Game App market exists largely because people can make money off it. Would you rather it disappear?

The TES mod community has existed for a decade now. Indeed, I'd argue a big part of why the series is still around is modding. A decade without paid mods has brought us countless mods that improve the base game, expand upon it, or even just make enterily new games using the engine (see: Nehrim and Enderal, which will remain free). Any money made during this period was either through donations or ad revenue. Neither was all that much. It never showed any sign of disappearing or dying out.

I know, I've used NexusMods plenty over the years, for Elder Scrolls games, Fallout Games, The Witcher, Dark Souls, I'm not unfamiliar with these modding communities.

And I'm not arguing that without the ability to charge money these communities will disappear. But the way I see it, allowing them to charge for their work is both fairer than expecting everything to be free, and will encourage more creators, and allow current creators to devote more time and energy to their creations.

It's win/win.

And all of these mods build upon each other, using assets and the likes. If you go to the Skyrim Nexus, for example, and browse through the top 100 mods, over half of those will have something like "requires SkyUI/SKSE/Skeletonmod1234/Silentvoices/insertrandommodhere" in the description. Imagine a piece of paper with thousands of black dots on it. Those are the modders. Now imagine there are lines between the dots, going from one side to the other, crossing each other. Those are the modders building on each others work. Now throw a $2.99 pricetag on each of those lines. Can you see (part of) the problem yet?

Not really, all PC games have certain requirements, either with software or hardware. If a certain mod requires other mods to operate, they should have to say so somewhere just like games do.

Already, numerous assets developed by modders have been taken by others, built upon, and then sold for real money. One mod on the Steam workshop has already been taken down (by the person who put it on there, not Valve) because the person who created the original asset complained. Valves official stance is "If its a free mod, go ahead and build upon it and sell it, and fuck what the original content creator thinks".

Ya, well usually there's systems in place to prevent people from stealing each others work and trying to profit off it. I don't see how this is even remotely unique to modding. If they're making significant changes to the original then I'd argue they have the right to monetize it, but only with the permission of the asset creator.

Anyway, in this case the original creator wasn't making any money off the mods to begin with, so it's not like they're suffering from this.

Modders have been removing their mods from the Skyrim Nexus because they fear someone will download it and sell it on the workshop with minimal changes.

Why? If you told me I could pay money for something, or get it for free from the original creator, why would I go with the former?

This kinda reminds me of when Trent Reznor gave away one of his albums for free, but iTunes still sold it for $10. All the comments in the reviews basically told people to just download it from the NIN website instead.

Valves answer is to let the community moderate this while they twiddle their thumbs and rake in the cash. The same community who sent out numerous death threats because of Skyrim mods (lets keep things in perspective here) and made Greenlight such a functional and successful service, that is.

So your problem is less with the idea of charging for mods, and more with how Valve operates it's marketplace. I agree with you on this at least. I think Valve has a serious problem with dodging responsibility and regulation, but I consider that a separate issue.

On the subject of cash, did you know Valve and Bethesda take a 75% cut?

Yes I did. Which is crazy, and I think they should reduce it, but the market will ultimately decide what works best.

The modder selling his stuff on the workshop gets 25%. Well, if that 25% at some point adds up to $400 that is. If it doesn't, he gets nothing.

And if he doesn't sell his stuff on the workshop, he gets nothing regardless of how popular it is. But why complain about how little the modder gets when just earlier you said a rich community has been thriving under a model where none of them expect to get paid at all? Now you're complaining that they won't get paid enough?

All in all I think you can see why all this is a pretty shitty move by Valve and Bethesda, especially when you consider they already took their cut from mods when the original base game was sold. TES games are known to be buggy and unfinished upon release, and people also rely on free mods to fix that.

Ya, so basically Bethesda has already been making money off the backs of people who weren't getting paid for their work. So why are you against compensating those people for their work? If Bethesda knew people would need to spend lots of money on mods to fix their terrible games, they'd have to sell their games for less. In the end the net result would be similar to if they had simply hired the modders to fix the game in the first place.

Personally I wouldn't have spent a cent on Skyrim if I knew mod support was either not there or locked behind a paywall. Theres your cut Bethesda. Theres your cut Valve. I support you and buy your shitty game which you were either too lazy or untalented to finish because I know the community will make something incredible out of it.

So you're willing to pay Bethesda, and Valve, but not the community?

I'm all for supporting modders. If Valve had added a donation button to the Workshop I'd be chuffed.

People can already do this with Patreon. Besides donations are unreliable at best. Give people an option to donate and over 95% of them won't. This has been proven time and time again.

As it stands they've thrown a community into chaos because they want to make money where previously there was none while doing little to nothing to earn that money. Yes, I understand Valve and Bethesda exist to make money. I'm not even necessarily opposed to that principle, but that doesn't mean I have to like what they are doing now.

I don't care about Valve or Bethesda making money, I want content creators to be able to make money if their content is considered valuable. Apparently you don't?

On top of that, I'd be hard pressed to think of a company I would want to do this less. If monotization in mods was going to happen no matter what and I could choose what company I could give control of it, Valve would be pretty far down the list, not because they're are "evil" but because in the last few years they've shown they are incompetent.

As far as I'm aware, Valve is the only company who's made an attempt to do this. It's not Valve's fault nobody else has stood up until now.

Steam is simply to big for them. As I've mentioned previously in this thread, they have developed a trend of adding poorly thought out, unfinished features to Steam and then leaving them to rot. Have you ever used the music player?

Yes I have. It's fine. My expectations for a music player is that it plays music.

What about Steam streaming, whens the last time you watched one of those? Or the Greenlight and Early Access system, both of which have been a complete catastrophe since their conception with very little positive sides for the consumer?

I haven't used Steam streaming, and I've only bought one early access game. I don't see how any of this is relevent. I'm arguing that modders should be able to monetize their work, not that Valve should win company of the year.

 

[Olas]

Second, why do you assume the MODS market will resemble the mobile market specifically?

Because they already are.

IIRC, the guy who does MidasMagic is already placing pop-ups in the free version of his mod encouraging people to buy it.

He also set his mod on Nexus to hidden, so you have to go through the Workshop to do it.

Okay, good for him.

 

[Lt. Rocky]

Yes! A donation system would be much better for this whole thing. I'd be happy to take a buck or two either as a commission or a friendly donation rather than establishing a paywall.

 

[Kyogissun]

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:

That response alone was worth that AMA coming into existence. It shows exactly how out of touch Gabe is slowly becoming as he becomes more and more 'hands off' and distances from the very fucking community he supposedly used to be part of and claims he helped get off the ground in said AMA.

Fuck the people who play with the Greenlight system.
Fuck Early Access games that never actually finish.
Fuck the bastards abusing the Paid Mods, stealing from others, charging for content requiring other content to work and charging prices that are greater than the sum of the game itself.
Fuck the people who work at Steam who clearly are not in touch with the god damn consumers for the business they run.

I got on board PC Gaming a few years ago to avoid the lockdown bullshit I slowly saw creeping up on the console gaming community because it seemed like a smarter investment. While I know there are other outlets I can use, I'm still incredibly concerned how long it will be before even more restrictions and checks and attempts to profit will end up causing more harm than doing good.

All this furthers the belief that if given the opportunity, major portions of the gaming industry will do whatever they think they can get away with to the consumer.

 

[DrOswald]

He looks like a sad Santa in that picture.

Anyway, I think it's an interesting move and I'd like to see what it does. Perhaps modders who put out lots of high-quality content can carve out careers for themselves like the way YouTubers have been able to carve out careers from their videos. I can't help but feel like there were similar grievances which came out when YouTube first came up with the partnership program and allowing users to benefit from the ad revenue generated from their videos. And from what I can tell, this has only improved the quality and quantity of content available on YouTube.

That doesn't mean the same will happen with modding, but nobody can predict the future. Either way I think it's worth a shot.

I have over a dozen Skyrim mods published and I am against this. There was nothing wrong with the donation system and even better use the Humble Bundle technique of pay what you want from $0.00 to billions. The reason is the competition destroys the mod community. There are tutorials available to do a great many things not explained on the CK's website and competition for money will make those a thing of the past. If a mod author needs help with a script or something he wont get that help if money is involved because he will be competition.

I am not sure why you think this. Programmers and artists, who are in a defacto state of competition just the modders will be now, are constantly helping each other out. In fact, as the potential for financial gain has increased these sorts of resources and collaborations have only become more common.

Unless modders are just uniquely shitty and unreasonable people. I guess that is a possibility.

You have never been involved in a mod community I see. Before this whole paid mods fiasco when Robin implemented endorsements at The Nexus assistance, mod resources, and just letting anyone use your mod with just credits were cut in half. That was just endorsements that raised your mods rating if you filter the categories or searches by endorsements. Then came the Hotfiles which is based on endorsements and that further cut cooperation even more. Now there is paid mods, money! that will end cooperation except for those few who do not care if someone else profits from their own work. Effectively ending cooperation.

As for other creative areas they are not in direct competition like mods are. Someone could be programming a game engine all the way to a mobile ap and can draw from the same places for help. same with artists, photoshoping a magazine cover has the same tutorials as making a game texture. We have the CK Wiki which is a very basic beginners guide that's quickly outgrown and it doesn't teach us anything about using Nifskope and the Nifskope page doesn't have much help either. How about Papyrus scripting? you cant go to any old tutorial for another language and learn how to make an NPC get naked when entering water using Papyrus, Sources of that information are fellow mod authors and that info wasn't freely explained in a tutorial until last year even though it was implemented in mods the same month the CK was released!

If modders really act like you say, the second profit is a potential the community implodes and no one will work together, then they actually are just a uniquely terrible community. If that really is the case I will be glad when it wipes itself out. It is hard to imagine how the replacement that will spring up could be worse. But I suspect modders are not so cut throat and stupid that they would shoot themselves in the foot like this. Professional creative communities are highly collaborative. Like the adults they are they learn to work together for their mutual advantage despite their defacto state of competition.

And I actually have been in a modding community before. I was a modder several years ago and I moved to actual professional software development when I got good enough. I guess I am more willing to believe that modders are not a bunch of selfish and immature jackasses.

 

[runic knight]

I don't see how introducing a monetary option "breaks" the community. If people want to create mods for free I don't see how this would impede them.

People sell movies, yet that doesn't keep people from making youtube videos with high production value freely available.

Ya, sure it's a different product, but you have to convince me that allowing mod creators to charge for mods will somehow dismantle the market, which nobody has yet done. In my experience, allowing producers to make money universally increases both the quantity and quality of the products they supply.

I'll touch on some of the ways this harms the overall community.

first and foremost, it isn't moderated. People can and already have been caught stealing assets and putting them up for cash. This has resulted in people pulling mods down so it doesn't happen to them. That in turn decreases the total mods out there, weakens the community, breeds distrust and kills the very atmosphere that made it a community in the first place.

Beyond that, it encourages the parasites to come visit. Once you make it monetized, you make it exploitable. When coupled with the first point, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

Added to that, the use of paid mods creates incentive to be selfish, hoard knowledge or resources, falsely DMCA other creators and try to game the system via connections. Pretty much exactly the sort of behavior youtube has been infested with. yeah, it doesn't "stop" them, but that is because you look at the general idea of "well, people still do this". The problem is that on individual levels, it has stopped many youtubers who had enough and just quit. And youtube is a very very low-skill entry thing, modding can take a bit of effort and time, and are considerably fewer people out there willing to do it then there are people with a webcam and an opinion. Making the community a pain in the ass to deal with and then getting hands off about moderating it will effectively kill any community that would rise around modding a game with a paid-mod section, even across other sites as people will loot from one site to host on another. And the only ones making money would be steam and developers, not actual content makers.

I could go on, but that seems to cover the basic issues. The chain effects of flooded mod market with garbage, the reduction of game longevity decreasing audience amount(usually increased by mods now having to compete between each other decreasing that effect substantially), and the effects an inevitable market boom and burst would have are also worth going over. Also increased legal scrutiny by companies because money is related (as happened with youtube and companies growing increasingly more DMCA happy), rise of cliques similar to the youtube company-channels like Polaris, and increased conflict between modders and audience as people treat all modders as companies selling products, making the atmosphere more hostile and decreasing the desire to mod for free.

Considering the quality, respectability and community of the mobile market, to say nothing of the lack of trust in the very nature of that, and the frequently reported abuses, I certainly don't blame people pissed that steam is trying to reduce modding to that.

First of all, what specific problems do you have with the mobile market that you think will occur to the MODS market if it allows revenue?

I use the android market and I don't really have any issues with it, but I can't respond properly if I don't know what we're talking about here.

Second, why do you assume the MODS market will resemble the mobile market specifically?

1. Flooding of shoveware, anti-consumer practices, cash-grabs, legal pressure by people making money to attack competition.

2. Because it is as close to an unmoderated market of technical nature as I can think of in terms of profiteering for profiteering sake via flooding of low quality programs, similar to what adding profits to mods will likely become. I suppose I could have also referenced the facebook flashgame era, though most of those moved to app games so sort of the same thing.

In example, Flappybird and the million clones it spawned after the creator wanted it to die.

Modding does not exist because people can make money off it,

Obviously, since they can't.

Also because the motivation for it in the first place was never money based but rather fan/passion based. After all, do you know what the people who wanted to make content for money did instead? They made actual games.

but you have people looking upon it and trying to force it to make them money. That's sort of the problem.

I don't see how Valve is trying to force anyone to do anything. It seems pretty clear that this is an optional service people can try. And frankly, I think the fact that people don't want modders to be able to earn money for the work they put into mods is absurd. Not only does it benefit modders, but it benefits the consumer too because the supply of such goods will inevitably increase.

Please don't misrepresent people. No one does not want modders to go unrewarded, what they have a problem with is this implementation. Add a tipjar function and a system to allow popular and successful modders to submit ideas to the dev and get them ok'd and sold that way, and you'd get none of this backlash. Having modders take previously free mods and tack a pricetag on them and open the floodgates for theft, shovelware or legal shenanigans at the expense of killing the mod community and you will rightfully get reaction.

As for quality of goods improving... it is remarkable how many times I have heard that and yet never seen it. Passion makes quality, not throwing money at something. I can point to an endless sea of failed kickstarters to demonstrate that. No, making it a for-profit thing will do the opposite, it will decrease overall quality. Aside from modders being more distrustful of one another thereby decreasing them helping fix bugs and issues, it creates reason to flood the market with crap, as all it takes is one "FlappyBird" to make someone rich. Yes, you may argue that the 25% someone would get (if they could get up to $400 anyways) might be incentive to try harder, but compare that to the time they would need to put into a mod to make it excel. Thousands of hours into one is not uncommon, and a measly $400 is never going to convince anyone to put that much effort into it if they weren't already. But it will get people to steal other's work or pump out shitty projects in an hour or two and slap a price tag on.

The first cut of those seeking profit is always quality. Quality of worker, quality of product, quality of customer support... When money is the sole goal, and indeed after the community is gutted and reduced to a shallow husk, that is what it will be, quality will be forfeit gladly for a little more. I wonder, will they start to make mods into cookie-clickers where you have to buy new packs every so often? It isn't hard to, but until now there was no good reason to.

 

[Sardonac]

This whole issue is very strange. Commenters, here and elsewhere, often seem to conflate the issues particular to Steam's new pay-to-play system with worries about capitalist markets more generally. Taking an above post as an example:

Fuck Early Access games that never actually finish.

In capitalist markets people get what they pay for absent marketplace regulations. Steam's market for early access games isn't tightly regulated because it's an inherently fragile market. Users buy into *unfinished* work, knowing that that's what they're getting into. These game developers know that if they don't finish their project then consumers will be less likely to buy from them in the future. Consumers know that if few people buy the unfinished game then it's likely to ever be completed. None of this is worth getting angry over. Just pay for things that you think are worth the money, and be mindful of the consequences.

Fuck the bastards abusing the Paid Mods, stealing from others, charging for content requiring other content to work and charging prices that are greater than the sum of the game itself.

Agreed - screw people that disregard intellectual property rights! But don't hate Valve for this. Prior to The Change modders weren't paid at all. Now they have the opportunity to be paid. The risk that their work is 'stolen' for money is thus a largely incidental risk, one with almost no opportunity costs. That's not to say this theft isn't a problem, however. It's just to say that it's only a problem if you expect markets to provide only virtuous incentives. But markets don't do this - most markets provide many awful incentives. It's a feature of capitalist markets - not just of Steam's new marketplace.

The good news is that human society has been managing exactly this sort of problem for centuries. There are many tools for solving the problem, including but not limited to: (1) creating barriers for entry into the marketplace, thereby creating higher fixed costs for scammers (2) protections for sellers in the form of an independent enforcement agency (i.e. an empowered police force, like Bethesda admins), (3) consumers can generate a fair trade market, where buyers are alerted to scams and take steps to support legitimate sellers, etc. We're not at all helpless in dealing with this problem.

Fuck the people who work at Steam who clearly are not in touch with the god damn consumers for the business they run.

That employees at Steam did something the community finds controversial does not mean that these employees are out of touch. It may merely be that the community is slow to grasp the value of the new program.

All this furthers the belief that if given the opportunity, major portions of the gaming industry will do whatever they think they can get away with to the consumer.

This is 100% a feature of capitalist market incentives. If you didn't believe this before then you didn't understand the world you're living in.

The quoted response to Gabe's comment is also quite misguided. Capitalist marketplaces use prices as tools to signal information. Prices can be tremendously informative in some circumstances. High prices, for instance, can often indicate higher production costs. Low prices can indicate the opposite, or that the goods are thought to be undesirable. Prices are tremendously sensitive to relevant changes in the marketplace. Low confidence in American foreign policy, for instance, can lead to higher gas prices in the very same day that some event occurs that sellers might think relevant to the perceived value of gas. Gabe's comment is in this same vein. Prices and sales are both signals that indirectly guide changes in the marketplace. If nobody on Steam buys new game XYZ then this sends a signals to developers that there isn't interest in XYZ-like games. This same signal can be sent without this interaction taking place, however. Consumers might have a poll wherein everyone votes on what sort of games they plan to buy. If nobody votes for XYZ then XYZ-like games likely won't be produced. This is what happens in modding communities. Modders usually make a mod that's speculative - to test for a wider interest in the content. If there is wider interest then that mod is taken up and improved upon by modders, thereby improving in quality and finding wider popularity (with popularity increasing its quality over the long term, and its quality increasing its popularity).

But what's missing from the above picture of modders working outside of the capitalist market? A few things. The most important is efficiency: modders are only able to mod if it's financially feasible for them to do so, and this feasibility is controlled by factors irrelevant to their work as modders (e.g. their family situation, career, etc.). So when it becomes infeasible to continue working on their projects many modders abandon them, despite significant interest from the wider community. Adding capital to the marketplace for mods connects people doing work that people enjoy with the means by which they can continue doing that work (i.e. money). It also solves another, more principled problem: modders aren't getting compensated for their work. Currently, modders benefit many companies but aren't paid for this work. Whether this is a problem is debatable, but let's assume it is. Steam's new scheme solves this problem by giving modders a non-negligible amount of money. Hurray!

The question is this: is the added value of the new market worth the costs of the market? That's something we can debate, but only with some background context. It'll certainly cost consumers who want the sorts of content they've enjoyed for free in the past to remain free. But it'll benefit consumers who will have the opportunity to enjoy work that couldn't have been produced without the new system - such as exceptionally time-consuming work, or work over long periods (when it's more likely a modder would have to bail because of life events). These are real costs and real benefits and it's in these sorts of terms that people should be having this conversation.

 

[SadisticFire]

And I'm not arguing that without the ability to charge money these communities will disappear. But the way I see it, allowing them to charge for their work is both fairer than expecting everything to be free, and will encourage more creators, and allow current creators to devote more time and energy to their creations.

It's win/win.

Let me argue this point in particular.
It's not a win/win though. It doesn't promote quality. Just as early access or greenlight doesn't. People can get paid just for having their game approved through greenlight, then selling it on that. Do you know how many bad games get through that? So many awful, terrible games that only exist cause 13 year old Timmy wanted to make a cash. That was when the bar was set low. Now the bar has been tossed aside and now anyone can upload a mod into the mod marketplace. We're going to see shovelware, broken, and outright illegally stolen mods flood it. But let's say you're right. It does attract better modders. It's just one caveat -- they're lonewolves. People who work by themselves to get maximum profit.

These people will never make a product as good as some combined effort. Let's say you want to have some new animations. Well, you better know how to animate, rig, and also an intense level of scripting. Why? Because one of the standard resources that you would use, that some one already solved, is blocked off to you. That means you added a huge amount onto your workload, lowering the over all quality, or drastically ramping up production time. And if you're only in it for the money, you're going want to go for the former. Better get rid of those animations, let's just say fuck any mods in that department.

This system is going to turn a cooperative environment into a dog-eat-dog world, where sharing a trick to the general fanbase will be looked down upon because that means you added more competition in an already over-saturated market. We're witnissing so many mods being yanked down in fear that their assets will be stolen. Shovelware isn't healthy for a community. Broken mods aren't healthy for the community. This isn't healthy for the community. It attracts the wrong people, and discourages cooperation. Four average modders will almost always be better than one great modder.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

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

To be fair:
When does introducing something new to the internet - something different - not piss off scores of people?

Touche. Still charging money for something that was previously free is definitely going to piss people off.

 

[Karadalis]

To the people who say "lets wait and see":


Microtransactions in single player games... day one DLC...

Because the "lets wait and see" aproach has allways worked so great right?

There is only one way this all will go:

DRM for mods. Mandatory Steam workshop usage.

Gabe said it himselfe... they are not going to FORCE publishers to do this... but they sure as hell are not going to prevent it or dont OFFER it.

And you know what that means? No more Warhammer 40k space marine armors, no more lightsabers, no more games of thrones content. There wont be a legal gray area anymore thats tolerated by copyright holders as free advertisement.. there will be NONE of it. Even if you dont charge for it it will still be taken down, because you COULD make money of of it.

This system is the DEATH of modding as a HOBBY... and the birth of a corrupted sickly marsh of shovelmods, distrust and online copyright drama between valve protected thiefs and moneyless modders who as a consequence will stop making their tools and mods available for free.

Chance for better mods my ass.

Please explain to me how this system makes better mods possible? Because modders get money now AFTER they deliver a mod?

Yeah but they need money to make great mods according to this logic.. and they only get paid after delivering such a great mod... so... they are supposed to make these "better" mods in the meantime without earning money? What? How?

they are supposed to do better then before... because theres a pot of "possible" valve money waiting for them at the end of the rainbow now? While at the same time having the same OR LESS resources available to them now then they had before?

THINK PEOPLE!

This is a terrible business model! Any modding team now needs a legal advisor! They need to sign contracts now! How is that good or healthy for the modding community?

Modders will be tied down by contracts to not sell their knowledge to other modding teams, will be prevented from bringing their knowledge they learned while working on project X when they switch to another modding team working on project Y even AFTER project X is finished.

I really wish people would look past the "get paid for work" moral argument and see the ramifications that "being paid" brings to the table...

 

[DrOswald]

And I'm not arguing that without the ability to charge money these communities will disappear. But the way I see it, allowing them to charge for their work is both fairer than expecting everything to be free, and will encourage more creators, and allow current creators to devote more time and energy to their creations.

It's win/win.

Let me argue this point in particular.
It's not a win/win though. It doesn't promote quality. Just as early access or greenlight doesn't. People can get paid just for having their game approved through greenlight, then selling it on that. Do you know how many bad games get through that? So many awful, terrible games that only exist cause 13 year old Timmy wanted to make a cash. That was when the bar was set low. Now the bar has been tossed aside and now anyone can upload a mod into the mod marketplace. We're going to see shovelware, broken, and outright illegally stolen mods flood it. But let's say you're right. It does attract better modders. It's just one caveat -- they're lonewolves. People who work by themselves to get maximum profit.

These people will never make a product as good as some combined effort. Let's say you want to have some new animations. Well, you better know how to animate, rig, and also an intense level of scripting. Why? Because one of the standard resources that you would use, that some one already solved, is blocked off to you. That means you added a huge amount onto your workload, lowering the over all quality, or drastically ramping up production time. And if you're only in it for the money, you're going want to go for the former. Better get rid of those animations, let's just say fuck any mods in that department.

This system is going to turn a cooperative environment into a dog-eat-dog world, where sharing a trick to the general fanbase will be looked down upon because that means you added more competition in an already over-saturated market. We're witnissing so many mods being yanked down in fear that their assets will be stolen. Shovelware isn't healthy for a community. Broken mods aren't healthy for the community. This isn't healthy for the community. It attracts the wrong people, and discourages cooperation. Four average modders will almost always be better than one great modder.

Do you know how professional creative communities actually behave? They share solutions all the time. Your claim that "sharing a trick to the general fanbase will be looked down upon because that means you added more competition in an already over-saturated market" is just not how it works. Have you ever heard of stack overflow? W3 schools? There are more free resources to learn how to program, animate, draw, or to do anything and everything else required to make a game than I could ever possibly name. Mostly because there are so many that I cannot possibly know about all of them. All created by professionals for the benefit of the professional community. Despite the defacto state of competition professionals collaborate far better and far more often than amateur communities.

This is because professionals are know the value of a strong community and have worked hard to learn how to interact with a community. You say the possibility of money will kill cooperation, but every creative community of professionals on earth suggests otherwise.

And the idea that quantity of creators beats quality of creators is laughable. One good professional programmer is worth a dozen amateurs. The same is true of animators and artists of all varieties. When you want quality work you need quality creators with the resources to back them up. What we had before was a quantity over quality system. Hundreds and hundreds of mods, and almost all of them trash. You say shovelware is not good for a community, but most mods are lower quality than typical shovelware! A large percentage are just plain broken. And even the great mods suffer for their lack of resources with overly long development times and compromised final products. Even the greatest of mods like Stalker: Lurk are held together by the digital equivalent of duct tape, and it shows. They tend to be unstable, buggy messes when they work at all.

Finally, your lone wolf assumption is also false. People who expect to get paid for their work, professionals, are not lone wolves. They have connections. Professional programmers have dozens of professional programmer friends they have worked with. They have artist friends and friends who went to business school and they know how to work together to bring their respective skills sets to a project. It is what they were trained to do in school. It is literally what they do every day of their lives.

And yes, there will be scammers and we are going to have to deal with people trying to steal content and pass it off as their own. And I am not sure Valve is up to dealing with that (in fact I am sure they are not up to dealing with it) but people have always tried to capitalize on the hard work of others in these ways. We don't stop selling comic books because people make unlicensed spiderman ripoffs.

 

[Karadalis]

And I'm not arguing that without the ability to charge money these communities will disappear. But the way I see it, allowing them to charge for their work is both fairer than expecting everything to be free, and will encourage more creators, and allow current creators to devote more time and energy to their creations.

It's win/win.

Let me argue this point in particular.
It's not a win/win though. It doesn't promote quality. Just as early access or greenlight doesn't. People can get paid just for having their game approved through greenlight, then selling it on that. Do you know how many bad games get through that? So many awful, terrible games that only exist cause 13 year old Timmy wanted to make a cash. That was when the bar was set low. Now the bar has been tossed aside and now anyone can upload a mod into the mod marketplace. We're going to see shovelware, broken, and outright illegally stolen mods flood it. But let's say you're right. It does attract better modders. It's just one caveat -- they're lonewolves. People who work by themselves to get maximum profit.

These people will never make a product as good as some combined effort. Let's say you want to have some new animations. Well, you better know how to animate, rig, and also an intense level of scripting. Why? Because one of the standard resources that you would use, that some one already solved, is blocked off to you. That means you added a huge amount onto your workload, lowering the over all quality, or drastically ramping up production time. And if you're only in it for the money, you're going want to go for the former. Better get rid of those animations, let's just say fuck any mods in that department.

This system is going to turn a cooperative environment into a dog-eat-dog world, where sharing a trick to the general fanbase will be looked down upon because that means you added more competition in an already over-saturated market. We're witnissing so many mods being yanked down in fear that their assets will be stolen. Shovelware isn't healthy for a community. Broken mods aren't healthy for the community. This isn't healthy for the community. It attracts the wrong people, and discourages cooperation. Four average modders will almost always be better than one great modder.

Do you know how professional creative communities actually behave? They share solutions all the time. Your claim that "sharing a trick to the general fanbase will be looked down upon because that means you added more competition in an already over-saturated market" is just not how it works. Have you ever heard of stack overflow? W3 schools? There are more free resources to learn how to program, animate, draw, or to do anything and everything else required to make a game than I could ever possibly name. Mostly because there are so many that I cannot possibly know about all of them. All created by professionals for the benefit of the professional community. Despite the defacto state of competition professionals collaborate far better and far more often than amateur communities.

This is because professionals are know the value of a strong community and have worked hard to learn how to interact with a community. You say the possibility of money will kill cooperation, but every creative community of professionals on earth suggests otherwise.

And the idea that quantity of creators beats quality of creators is laughable. One good professional programmer is worth a dozen amateurs. The same is true of animators and artists of all varieties. When you want quality work you need quality creators with the resources to back them up. What we had before was a quantity over quality system. Hundreds and hundreds of mods, and almost all of them trash. You say shovelware is not good for a community, but most mods are lower quality than typical shovelware! A large percentage are just plain broken. And even the great mods suffer for their lack of resources with overly long development times and compromised final products. Even the greatest of mods like Stalker: Lurk are held together by the digital equivalent of duct tape, and it shows. They tend to be unstable, buggy messes when they work at all.

Finally, your lone wolf assumption is also false. People who expect to get paid for their work, professionals, are not lone wolves. They have connections. Professional programmers have dozens of professional programmer friends they have worked with. They have artist friends and friends who went to business school and they know how to work together to bring their respective skills sets to a project. It is what they were trained to do in school. It is literally what they do every day of their lives.

And yes, there will be scammers and we are going to have to deal with people trying to steal content and pass it off as their own. And I am not sure Valve is up to dealing with that (in fact I am sure they are not up to dealing with it) but people have always tried to capitalize on the hard work of others in these ways. We don't stop selling comic books because people make unlicensed spiderman ripoffs.

Because you have to pay for that education.

That knowledge doesnt come for free... the people that sell that knowledge have made it their livelyhood to research and sell that knowledge.

A more fitting comparison would be:

Nintendo and Sony exchanging information on how to build consoles

Ubisoft and Activision sharing information on how to use the unreal engine the best

Bioware and Black isle exchanging information about how to improve their games.

Each and every single of these examples isn ot only very unlikely to happen in real live (unless there is a watertight contract) because its economical suicide... but because there are contracts in place that keep people from doing such things.

There is no open sharing of trade secrets... what you are describing does not happen in economy unless there are ulterior motives.. most often to make more money.

Heck you arent even legally allowed to somehow use your "knowledge" that you gained while lets say working at bioware... and take said knowledge to black isle or 2k. Furthermore EVERYTHING you work on.. even in your private time.. aslong as it has to do with programming belongs to the company.

Create a tool that helps you implement features into a game more easaly? That belongs to the company.. youre not allowed to share it with the "community" like you suggest.

The same sort of contracts will pop up when it comes to modding. Not only because its the clever thing to do, but because so you and your product are legally protected.

 

[SadisticFire]

Snip

Branching off of what @Karadalis said(Thank you, by the way, saved me a lot of time trying to compose this), there's another issue. These guys aren't professional, in terms of quality. The best you're going to get is a 'pretty good' specialist. Familiar with Jack of All trades, master of known? You could be the best programmer, but if you don't have anything to actually put it into, models, animations, all you have is a bunch of scripts. Sure you could use premade assets in the game, but eventually you run out creative ability to use them. You *need* a team to do this. A team of four or five ametuers, of different skill areas. Not one specialist programmer. Maybe you can get away with a specialist modeler, or texturer, but you can only go so far with model or texture overhauls.

And I stand by my lonewolf statement. Who wants to split earnings? Especially at the probably applicable audience. These guys aren't exactly professional, one term or another. If they were, they already have a job. Its' called game development. These guys are a bunch of people who started a project, some of which just put open recruitment on some subreddit, and got to work with some stranger. It just doesn't make since to actually try to work with anyone. You end up having to get into legal areas, which cost further money or you risk screwing yourself over.

And yes, we see a bunch of shitty mods. But you know what they cost us? Absolutely nothing. We don't have to risk dropping money on them. But once you add money, not only do you attract more shovelware in the name of profit, SOMEONE has to buy it to try it. SOMEONE has to lose money on it. That's not cool
Like I said. We're already seeing almost all this in action.

Also no caption, I do not speak spanish. You can stop asking me now. Shoot, I even speak and write English pretty poorly, let alone a second language.

 

[snave]

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

This raises a good point. I don't use the Nexus manager because I felt I wasn't interested in enough mods to justify to myself the time spent learning the ropes and setting it up. Conversely, I only run SkyUI because I couldn't get more than one mod running through Steamworks. My preference for a first playthrough was to run SkyUI and graphics mods only (ie: an enhanced vanilla experience).

Has Steamworks been fixed, or is it still unusable for multiple or sizeable mods? Last I checked, it couldn't even host the unofficial patch due to arbitrary restrictions, and good luck working with the piecemeal version, because files would load in an inconsistent order.

 

[Strazdas]

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

No, he only puts out some PR speak.

Spoiler: Click to enlarge:This answer is TEXTBOOK corporate doublespeak.

"I don't think these issues are specific to MODs, and they are all worth solving. For example, two areas where people have legitimate beefs against us are support and Greenlight. We have short term hacks and longer term solutions coming, but the longer term good solutions involve writing a bunch of code. In the interim, it's going to be a sore point. Both these problems boil down to building scalable solutions that are robust in the face of exponential growth."

I'll translate for you,

What he says: "I don't think these issues are specific to MODs, and they are all worth solving."

What it means: "I do not plan to engage with you in conversation so I will placate you by saying that your problem is important"

What he says: "For example, two areas where people have legitimate beefs against us are support and Greenlight."

What it means: "here is a a true statement that you cannot possibly disagree with me on, as to lend credibility and weight to my otherwise empty response"

What he says: "We have short term hacks and longer term solutions coming, but the longer term good solutions involve writing a bunch of code. In the interim, it's going to be a sore point "

What it means: "We have no plans to address this issue so I will intentionally leave out any specific information and instead substitute another empty fact you cannot disagree with: 'Quick solutions are not sustainable, and sustainable solutions require lots of work. For an unspecified amount of time you will just have to deal with it'"

What he says: "Both these problems boil down to building scalable solutions that are robust in the face of exponential growth."

What it means: "Again I will leave you with a true but empty statement, Solutions to problems must be tailored to fix the problem no matter how big the problem gets"

Now that this is out of the way, let's talk about how this reply was engineered for one purpose: Making you feel like you agree with and can trust GabeN.

What you saw: "Hey guys, i know these are problems, just like greenlight and customer support are problems. But trust me i have big plan to fix everything..Soon!"

What you felt: "Yes Gabe I agree, GreenLight and Customer support need to be fixed! Of course Gabe, long term solutions will require more work than quick bandaids, we agree again! Obviously you are right Gabe, these solutions should fit the problem! We agree 100% I didn't disagree with you at all at any point during that response!"

The reality of the situation is that this reply is a copy/paste Corporate PR template and you have probably even seen it before:

"I don't think these issues are specific to young voters, and they are all worth solving. For example, two areas where people have legitimate issues against us are Immigration and Defense Spending. We have short term hacks and longer term solutions coming, but the longer term good solutions involve writing a bunch of legislation. In the interim, it's going to be a sore point. Both these problems boil down to building scalable solutions that are robust in the face of exponential growth."

"I don't think these issues are specific to Stem Fields, and they are all worth solving. For example, two areas where people have legitimate issues against us are the gender gap and workplace diversity. We have short term hacks and longer term solutions coming, but the longer term good solutions involve writing a bunch of history. In the interim, it's going to be a sore point. Both these problems boil down to building scalable solutions that are robust in the face of exponential growth."

"I don't think these issues are specific to Education, and they are all worth solving. For example, two areas where people have legitimate issues against us are Tenure and Tuition Costs. We have short term hacks and longer term solutions coming, but the longer term good solutions involve writing a bunch of policies. In the interim, it's going to be a sore point. Both these problems boil down to building scalable solutions that are robust in the face of exponential growth."

Source [http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/33uxz0/please_do_not_do_a_180_on_your_opinion_because_of/cqopxts]

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.

but he saids nothing of the sort. in fact he clearly pushes the "paid mods = good idea" in the AMA. That is, when he even bothere to answer cherrypicked comments.

Wow, Gabe got #rekt.

I never thought this day would come but GabeN is being massively downvoted and im not even mad.

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.

there is also a massive legal distance, because if it was legally "donation" then valve or pulisher could not legally touch the money at all. if its a pay what you want they can do whatever the hell they want.

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.

Mods are fully legal as long as they are making the assets themselves and not taking them from other works (make your own tree texture - fine. take blizzards asset and make it work with skyrim - not fine). Studio did absolutely nothing in this case and does not deserve a single cent from this.

Also Steam has pissed their customers off before and very few of them ever leave, I doubt this will be any different. I will believe that this is bad for Value when I see people actually refusing to use Steam.

Steam has never pissed them on such a scale. even people who never used a mod is pissed at this. This is the "burn this shit down" situation going on. Valves reputtation went from one of the best companies to a company that killed modding. People are shouting that EA is better than Valve. EA.

Anyway, I think it's an interesting move and I'd like to see what it does. Perhaps modders who put out lots of high-quality content can carve out careers for themselves like the way YouTubers have been able to carve out careers from their videos. I can't help but feel like there were similar grievances which came out when YouTube first came up with the partnership program and allowing users to benefit from the ad revenue generated from their videos. And from what I can tell, this has only improved the quality and quantity of content available on YouTube.

That doesn't mean the same will happen with modding, but nobody can predict the future. Either way I think it's worth a shot.

Incomparable. Youtube partnership did not allow users to pay twice for videos they already bought. Nor did watching a video requires you to watch 5 other videos that were suddenly behind a paywall. Nor did you have youtube commenters make 20 parts of a video that only works when added together.

I don't see how introducing a monetary option "breaks" the community.

Thats because you dont udnerstand how modding community works. Its a collaboration. People work together, find adresses together, work on mods together. For somone to suddenly go from free to paid breaks half the mods around and forces them from collaborative hobby into legal nightmare labyrinth. Modding is not the same as regular developement because you dont just buy and engine and create everything from scratch. you cooperate between many people openly and publicly.

THINK PEOPLE!

Sorry, thats too hard. much easier to call everyone entitled and tell everyone how terrible modding community is.

My preference for a first playthrough was to run SkyUI and graphics mods only (ie: an enhanced vanilla experience).

well i guess you are expected to pay double for Skyrim now that SkyUI costs as much as the game itself and is required for every mod using it, free or paid.

 

[black_knight1337]

there is also a massive legal distance, because if it was legally "donation" then valve or pulisher could not legally touch the money at all. if its a pay what you want they can do whatever the hell they want.

Exactly. I mentioned that in the other part of that post. His response to everyone asking for it to be a donation system instead, is simply that they can't profit off of it so it's not going to happen.

Has Steamworks been fixed, or is it still unusable for multiple or sizeable mods? Last I checked, it couldn't even host the unofficial patch due to arbitrary restrictions, and good luck working with the piecemeal version, because files would load in an inconsistent order.

They have reduced some of the restrictions that they had on mods uploaded to the workshop but even if the workshop side got completely fixed there's still the major issue in that the default skyrim launcher lacks basic features that are essential in having a stable game. You're much better off setting up Mod Organizer and sticking to the Nexus.

 

[Strazdas]

You know last year people were joking about EA and Ubisoft racing on who can dig themselves into a larger hole. Well, i guess Valve is joining too [http://i.imgur.com/6xy5aj2.png].

 

[Lightspeaker]

You're leaving out the bit about "they couldn't due to legal reasons."

I've cut the entirety of rest of the first part of your post because its not necessary. Your argument is based on ths point which is totally irrelevant.

It doesn't matter WHY they didn't monetise, what matters is that they weren't monetised and yet people were still making them. I have no clue why you're getting so hung up on the "the only reason they didn't do it is because they couldn't" thing. I mean...so what? I can't monetise me making these forum posts but I'm still writing them anyway.

If being unable to monetise was a problem in the past then guess what? Modding wouldn't have happened at all. Nobody was holding a gun to modders' heads and MAKING them make mods. They could have chosen to do whatever they wanted to do with their free time, they chose to make mods.

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.

Wrong. Steam is a major digital storefront. They're offering to sell modders products on their store. That is advertising for the business that modders are now running.

Without anyone taking any responsibility for it. Fun.

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.

So you think people are entitled to be paid for their hobbies? That's up to you. Personally I think donations are the way to go.


Captacha: "gobsmacked" You and me both, Captcha. Can't believe people think this is a good thing.


Edit:

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).

85% now at time of writing. That's a hell of a drop considering it has over 120,000 reviews. Page 65 now of all games sorted by rating.