The Fallout

[Darth_Payn]

Wow. It didn't occur to me that this might have been the best damage control the game industry had ever pulled off. It would also go a long way to explain the thoroughly unpolished reveal trailer we got.

Clever. Very clever, Bethesda.

Valve must be planning something big that they expect to go very wrong in the future. It would explain why they're holding out on Half Life 3 for so long. It's their last line of defense.

In light of the setting of the whole Fallout series, I'd say now Half-Life 3 has become Valve's nuclear option.

I love the implication that Bethesda's R&D studies its fans more than new technology.

That second panel raises a further question: strain? Strain of what? STRAIN OF WHAT?!

 

[Ukomba]

This is the worst idea ever; now they're just going to piss off the Fallout fans.

Only if the game is as rushed as the trailer. I mean, come on... Bethesda never releases buggy products...

That's what the modding community is for... they just want you to pay them for it. It's a great business model .

 

[RaikuFA]

This is the worst idea ever; now they're just going to piss off the Fallout fans.

Only if the game is as rushed as the trailer. I mean, come on... Bethesda never releases buggy products...

What is that from?

 

[JohnZ117]

Valve must be planning something big that they expect to go very wrong in the future. It would explain why they're holding out on Half Life 3 for so long. It's their last line of defense.

Big case of Fridge Horror there. My imagination went: Announced: Apparently, all Steam Machines are filled with Australian spiders. A few weeks later: HL 3 confirmed!!

 

[Trooper924]

I was kinda under the impression that people were blaming that particular fiasco on Valve more than Bethesda.

I was under the impression that most of the rage over the paid mod thing was directed at Valve not Bethesda.

Some were, but I saw some people that shoveled all the blame on Bethesda, to the point where--listening to them-- you'd think that they had forced paid mods onto Valve until Gabe Newell put an end to it.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

The only thing worse than the paid mods are all the doomsayers announcing that paid mods are going to be in Fallout 4 based on nothing in particular. They've got literally no basis for this announcement, but they'll be announcing that the next Bethesda game will have paid mods until the end of time or they are proven right.

THANK YOU. this particular line of conversation has been pissing me off since it started. i pointed out that not only has Fallout NEVER had paid mods, but it had the single most comprehensive First Party mod support i've ever seen, with the G.E.C.K.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, you can't say it didn't work. People be like, "Paid what now? I'm watching that Fallout 4 trailer again."

 

[vallorn]

I'm going to hold my breath on Paid Mods being for F4, Valve's PR spin at the end indicated that they weren't giving up on the idea and if Bethesda decided to shit on it's consumers once it may do it again. I'm not some oracle so I cannot say for certain but I will not forgive them their trespass and I will not forget their betrayal of their consumers and the modding community.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Hm, I do have to admit that, in the hype for a possible Fallout 4 release, I kinda forgot about the paid mods thing. Then again, the whole thing was a terrible screwup and I basically just forgot about the whole thing after Valve pulled the plug on it.

Hopefully Bethesda and Valve got the memo and they don't try to commercialize mods in Fallout 4. With how readily available free mods are on the Internet, it's just gonna be seen as a cheap money grab at best and at worst a draconian takeover of what used to be a popular Internet group, which would be kinda terrible for Bethesda in particular since a huge part of its fanbase are prolific modders.

 

[RJ 17]

The only thing worse than the paid mods are all the doomsayers announcing that paid mods are going to be in Fallout 4 based on nothing in particular. They've got literally no basis for this announcement, but they'll be announcing that the next Bethesda game will have paid mods until the end of time or they are proven right.

While I still think (or would like to think) that there won't be paid mods for a long time to come, there is a basis for their suspicions. Specifically in the fact that Valve made it seem like they were essentially going back to the drawing board with the concept. They never said "Yeah, it was a dumb idea and we're not going to try it again", but rather their statement when they announced that they were canning the idea for Skyrim left the door open to make another attempt at a paid mod program sometime down the line.

So indeed, while there's no proof or evidence to suggest that FO4 is going to have paid mods...there's actually no assurance that it - or some other game(s) down the line - won't.

The Valve quote that has everyone concerned:

stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating.

All they admit is that it was a bad idea to try and start the program with Skyrim which already has a firmly established modding community...that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't try to start again with a game that doesn't have such a firmly established modding community.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140608-Valve-Ends-Paid-Mod-Program-On-Steam-Workshop

And since Bethesda was the first company to make such a deal with Valve in the first place, that has some people worried that FO4 will be Valve's next attempt.

Again, I don't necessarily believe that FO4 is going to have paid mods...I'm just explaining where that paranoia is coming from.

 

[Imre Csete]

Yeah, I'm not that keen on buying this on release and put it on the shelf for months, until game breaking bugs will be ironed out, just like I had to do with Skyrim. Sorry Bethesda, you are making platforms for modders, not AAA games with sufficient effort put into them.

No ticket on the Hype Train for me.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I bet they will push paid mods with this game too.

 

[General Torg]

This is the worst idea ever; now they're just going to piss off the Fallout fans.

Only if the game is as rushed as the trailer. I mean, come on... Bethesda never releases buggy products...

What is that from?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/9556-Show-Me-Your-Journo-Face

 

[Smooth Operator]

As for the paid mods: everyone's acting as if Bethesda or Valve have a way of shutting down Nexus. I don't think that's the case and seeing that lot of the outrage came from long-time modders I don't see them flocking to any paid mods program any time soon.

Bethesda could take Nexus down but that would be one hell of an expensive legal battle, even if they won no one would ever forget what crimes they committed against their community. So that won't go there.
But something they can very easily do (all devs can in fact) is make their game only run content from Steam Workshop... very simply cutting all your options out, and they can still tell some BS that other features are coming.
And once you have people in that "unfortunate" position Steam can turn on paid mods at any moment, that project didn't go anywhere, their system is done and working it's just not public at the moment.

I wouldn't mind if someone starts doing properly packaged community content, but they can't intermix them with random fuck around nonsense that are mods, there needs to be a ten foot high wall between those two things. One is business with commercial items which need to adhere to all kinds of consumer laws, the other is random fuck around nonsense that should never be sold as is.

 

[sagitel]

As for the paid mods: everyone's acting as if Bethesda or Valve have a way of shutting down Nexus. I don't think that's the case and seeing that lot of the outrage came from long-time modders I don't see them flocking to any paid mods program any time soon.

Bethesda could take Nexus down but that would be one hell of an expensive legal battle, even if they won no one would ever forget what crimes they committed against their community. So that won't go there.
But something they can very easily do (all devs can in fact) is make their game only run content from Steam Workshop... very simply cutting all your options out, and they can still tell some BS that other features are coming.
And once you have people in that "unfortunate" position Steam can turn on paid mods at any moment, that project didn't go anywhere, their system is done and working it's just not public at the moment.

yeah well i dont think they will ever be able to do that. publishers have tried for many years to stop people from pirating and we still have pirated versions of the games from day one. many games that supposedly locked their content or you werent supposed to have access to them have failed (simcity and watch_dogs come to mind) these days in PC its nearly impossible to lock your content.

 

[Smooth Operator]

yeah well i dont think they will ever be able to do that. publishers have tried for many years to stop people from pirating and we still have pirated versions of the games from day one. many games that supposedly locked their content or you werent supposed to have access to them have failed (simcity and watch_dogs come to mind) these days in PC its nearly impossible to lock your content.

Obviously pirates will pirate things, that's really a separate demographic all together. The demographic that companies rely on are paying customers and paying customers will in 97% of cases stick to the specific system the game puts on offer, if third party mods are no longer available there will not be many paying customers that take a step outside the box.

More over with Steam being as it is you always need to fear your entire game library gets wiped, which could very well happen should they detect "unwanted" mods.

 

[Frankster]

Is it still satire when it's true?

Seriously the whole paid mod debacle is why I'm NOT hyped for fallout 4 at all, if anything I'm apprehensive about what BS they are going to try to sneak in.

 

[Olas]

Whether Bethesda or Valve are responsible ... paid mods is something no one should ever forget. It's the very essence of corruption at it's finest, and I for one don't want it touching our mods ever again.

Now if the author sets up a donation link or something, that's perfectly fine. If the author asks for a kickstarter so said mod can get support in the making, all the better.. but have a company allow authors to abuse mods for a ridiculous price while putting little effort into them? . .. . That's to much.

Forever free my friends. Forever free- ALSO WOOH FALLOUT 4!!

I for one think modders should have to PAY US money to use their mods, and it should be non-optional for them. Because we all know modders don't care about money and we the players are entitled to whatever we want.

Honestly though, maybe Bethesda could just stop trying to outsource their development to modders in the first place.

 

[MrOmen]

Just remember Bethesda, we are willing to forgive the paid mod fiasco once but try it again and Forever Free will be the least of your worries.~

 

[XDSkyFreak]

Replace the Bethesda logo on the shirts with Valve's and the Fallout 4 box with a manual reading "refund policy" and you've got another whole comic that works just as well.

Except it doesn't really apply. See, without a refund policy that fit into the laws, Valve would have lost the right to sell games through steam in ALL the countries of the European Union. Which would have been a far greater disaster than any PR fiasco they could ever unleash. They were allready beeing preasured by the Union to implement a refund policy, but after years of dancing around the issue they were recently given an ultimatum. It was that or have steam banned from EU space.

Nowo onto the mod fiasco: paid mods will never work the way they want to implement the. The variety in scope and quality of mods is so high you simply can't come up with a pricing system for them. The only way I can think to make "paid mods" work is for the devs to pay a mod maker money to take his mod away and work it into a DLC for the game with dev polish if needed.