The best mods I've ever played were made by folks who didn't give a damn about the money, they did it because they loved the fuck out of that game. If it was only the money that drew you back in, then just don't. It won't have any passion and it will just be a grey mass of "I did this for the money". You don't want to give your work out for free? Cool, I respect that, don't. But do notice the modding community has seemed to get along fine without you. On a side note, how can you possibly defend Valve's actions here when the actual mod creator got next to no money? It all went to Bethesda first, then Valve, and then the 2 cents went to the creator. So If Bethesda and Valve are getting the lion's share of the profits why shouldn't we expect then to provide some support for them?Starke said:
Valve Hasn't Given up on Paid Mods
- Thread starter Steven Bogos
- Start date
Valve tends to be "hands off" to a fault. Or rather, they can't be arsed to look after their user's interests. They like opening new market possibilities, but they're not very keen on dealing with the problems that comes from it.
The modding scene will become uglier when there is reasonable money in it. There will be asset thefts, there will be disagreements, people will fill their mods with lockouts and restrictions. There will be frauds, there will be abandoned, non-functional mods. But the real problem is that Valve won't lift a finger to monitor the paid mods market and resolve these issues.
It isn't a disaster as of yet, but it will become a disaster if they lock out all other mod sources, like the Nexus. Then, we'll be stuck with their shitty unmanaged Workshop-based mod market with nowhere else to turn.
The modding scene will become uglier when there is reasonable money in it. There will be asset thefts, there will be disagreements, people will fill their mods with lockouts and restrictions. There will be frauds, there will be abandoned, non-functional mods. But the real problem is that Valve won't lift a finger to monitor the paid mods market and resolve these issues.
It isn't a disaster as of yet, but it will become a disaster if they lock out all other mod sources, like the Nexus. Then, we'll be stuck with their shitty unmanaged Workshop-based mod market with nowhere else to turn.
I love the fuck out of the game, but I also need to eat. If I had the time to devote to modding, and could actually live on it? You better believe I'd do it. But, when I'm looking at a mod and realizing it's going to take a lot of time to actually get it up and running, that's where I have to stop and say, "but, I need to spend some of that time working on something that will actually get me money so I can make rent and live." It's not about raw avarice, it's that (much like you) I do need to eat.Sarge034 said:
It's a large part of why the mods I have released have been very lightweight. The stuff I can slap together in 20 hours, and call it? Yeah, that's not a problem. And, in the past, I would have said, "hey, you can have that. It's cool. It does what it's supposed to. Enjoy."
It's when I'm looking at mod ideas that will take two or three months of consistent work, and, let's be honest here, I am talking about 7 to 8 hours a day, to develop, and test? That's where actually going back and saying, "yeah, you can have this," gets a little harder to justify. Not because I don't want it out there, but because that's a lot of time and energy which I could put into something that I could actually make money off of instead.
That said, the response from the community over this has really soured me on them. I mean, I was always getting the stray suggestion that sounded amazing, but would have taken an enormous amount of time and energy to properly implement. I still remember the guy who wanted me to turn the cyborg perks in FO3 into actual items you found in the wasteland, and caused visual changes to the player when installed. And, I looked into it, and realized just how much time it would take, and ended up giving it a pass.
But, when I see stuff like, actually the editorial stinger in this article, it really pisses me off. Because it does feel like an entitled, "you owe us this stuff." Especially in concert with some of the begging I've gotten on Nexus, both publicly and privately.
You know the worst part? You'd still be getting a bigger cut of your profits than Obsidian got off New Vegas.Sarge034 said:
The split was, 25%/75%, with Bethesda and Valve splitting their 75%. And, that's not actually a terrible rate. I mean the Amazon fanfiction royalties were at 35%, and overall, given you're dealing with someone else's IP, is fairly generous. It's a hell of a lot better than the 0% we get now. Make no mistake, a large part to Skyrim (and other bethesda games') ridiculous tail(s) is the modders. I can't tell you my mods have helped keep Skyrim selling, but I can tell you that a lot of them have, and the people who have kept these games on shelves for years after release are getting nothing for it. Myself included.
I know, from the, "well, I did the work" it sounds pretty horrible. But, put another way, if I was charging 12 cents a mod, and had the downloads I have on Nexus (which, there's issues with saying it's a 1:1 ratio, but 12 cents a mod, so let's run with this as a BS number), I'd be looking at roughly $600 bucks, and Bethesda would be splitting $1800 with Valve. And, I will readily admit, I'm not a popular author. In part because I turn out small lightweight stuff that tweaks the game. I've looked at more ambitious projects, and had to say, "no, because if I do this, I won't have the time I need to actually make ends meet." And, honestly, that's a shitty place to be with something I enjoy.
That said, there were huge problems with the program across the board. A huge one was just the drech it launched with. If you really wanted to launch a program like this, it would have needed to be with some serious content offerings. But, Bethesda and Valve had a very short turnaround to put together the initial mod offerings. It was, I think 60 days. Which is not nearly long enough to turn out a mod that would be worth paying for.
If Valve had gone to people four months before the launch, and gotten them making actual quality content, it could have launched with something other than horse armor.
Also, Valve authorized one of the mod authors to use some of their assets from HL2 in theirs. Which, undermined the idea that this would be stuff that was custom created for the paid mods, and not just random third party IP infringement city. It also undermined the idea that the mods would have any inherent value. This should not have launched with custom armor, and a fishing mod. It should have been new quests, new dungeons, things that were actually worth spending money on. But, the guys who were tapped for this weren't given the time they needed.
This is a nightmare waiting to happen, and it won't be good for anyone. People will hate valve and do whatever they can to hurt them, the backlash will also be aimed at anyone who charges for mods, and there will be the division in the fanbase as well from those who think the modders deserve money and the others who don't want to buy something that may be buggy or useless to them after a short time.
Basically nobody wins as far as I see.
Basically nobody wins as far as I see.
Having no faith in Valve handling payed mods does not neccessarily equal refusing to pay mod authors for their work.
Payed mods are fine, donations to mod authors is fine, profits from mod making is fine. Making it possible to make mod making a career is splendid. If I've come across as saying otherwise, then I beg your pardon, I must've expressed it poorly.
There will be trouble when there are decent amounts of money in modding. I don't say that as a reason not to do it. But trouble there will be, which will need to be handled and managed. Something Valve simply doesn't care to do. Hopefully, Bethesda might step up to the task, but I worry that they won't, or will be just as cack at it.
I don't want not having to pay for mods. What I want is to avoid the horrible mess that will happen if Valve's payed mod market is abandoned to fend for itself the moment it goes live.
Payed mods are fine, donations to mod authors is fine, profits from mod making is fine. Making it possible to make mod making a career is splendid. If I've come across as saying otherwise, then I beg your pardon, I must've expressed it poorly.
There will be trouble when there are decent amounts of money in modding. I don't say that as a reason not to do it. But trouble there will be, which will need to be handled and managed. Something Valve simply doesn't care to do. Hopefully, Bethesda might step up to the task, but I worry that they won't, or will be just as cack at it.
I don't want not having to pay for mods. What I want is to avoid the horrible mess that will happen if Valve's payed mod market is abandoned to fend for itself the moment it goes live.
Well I mean everyone who read the press release valve made when they first pulled the mods could assume they'd try again, I was hoping they meant they'd think about it but ultimately decide not to but it seems like being filthy rich and loved isn't good enough, they wanna try to get a little more money and be despised by half the people and only sort of supported by the other half.Starke said:
I just wonder which game is gonna be the first on the chopping block, because it won't be pretty and whatever game gets chosen is dead on arrival in terms of positive reviews just because.
Paid mods will never work due to their very nature. There's no oversight to prevent theft, no method to resolve dependency problems, no guarantee the mods will even continue to work as the game is updated, and the very real possibility the mod will cause serious problems with other payed mods.
If this is about Fallout 4, then one can only hope the good people behind the fallout and skyrim script extenders cause any script ran by a paid mod to crash the game.
If this is about Fallout 4, then one can only hope the good people behind the fallout and skyrim script extenders cause any script ran by a paid mod to crash the game.
It just goes to show that you cannot put enough reason and sense between greedy people and a pile of money. Valve obviously don't care in the slightest what happens to the modding community if it means they can squeeze a few more dollars out of their digital market share.
There is so much misinformation and ignorance in this topic that I scarcely know where to begin. It's shocking (well, not really) to me how ignorant everyone seems to be about the specifics of IP ownership and licensing.
You know you can't just...make a thing from someone else's assets and sell it for a profit without having to at least pay the IP holders for a license to use those assets, right? It's why Bethesda took a cut of the sales. (With Valve's cut going to network and storage costs)
But then, I've come to expect this sort of nonsense from aBogus Bogos article. They're practically made of hyperbole and click-bait.
And I still have to laugh at the "but paid mods will mean the death of free mods!!!11!1" Yes, because free content always disappears when premium content exists. Yep. There's never any new free games, since we pay money for some. There are never free content updates, now that premium DLC exists.
Oh yes. Paid mods would 'totes for realz' mean the death of ALL free mods. In fact, paid mods would probably make all of my old Doom 2 mods just stop working, somehow.
I must be seeing things. There couldn't possibly be a rational point of view on the matter, could there?
You know you can't just...make a thing from someone else's assets and sell it for a profit without having to at least pay the IP holders for a license to use those assets, right? It's why Bethesda took a cut of the sales. (With Valve's cut going to network and storage costs)
But then, I've come to expect this sort of nonsense from a
And I still have to laugh at the "but paid mods will mean the death of free mods!!!11!1" Yes, because free content always disappears when premium content exists. Yep. There's never any new free games, since we pay money for some. There are never free content updates, now that premium DLC exists.
Oh yes. Paid mods would 'totes for realz' mean the death of ALL free mods. In fact, paid mods would probably make all of my old Doom 2 mods just stop working, somehow.
Can it be? Someone who actually understands what the issues were with the system?Starke said:
I must be seeing things. There couldn't possibly be a rational point of view on the matter, could there?
honestly, with all of the "monetization" of gaming basically being groping in the dark by game companies until they figure out something that people are willing to put up with (not necessarily something that is constructive or sustainable), i have to question the value of trying to capitalize every facet of our lives
Oh boy, here we go again... Forget about the myriad of obvious problems paid Mods would cause on their own, the very idea of Paid Mods is and always will be nothing more than ridiculous money grubbing even if somehow the game industry got people to be suckered into actually supporting it. Mods are something made by fans, for fans, given out for FREE, and if there's any sense in this world every single one always will be. Anyone that thinks that modders deserve a single cent for making mods and/or distributors like Value for distributing them misses the entire point, especially those who are modders themselves. "Modders" that think they deserve money don't deserve to carry that label. Mods are something done as a labor of love by modders in their free time because they ENJOY MAKING THEM and because they love the positive response from the community. Modders mod in their FREE TIME for the sheer fun of it, there is not a single modder in the world that is starving because they spent their time modding a game and not getting paid for it, and if there was it would solely be because they were irresponsible enough to get to that point. Any attempt at paid mods will fail catastrophically by the very nature of mods themselves, they are SUPPOSED to be free additions that the player base uses to customize their particular video game to their liking, that's the freaking point. Mods can take a mediocre game and turn it into something fantastic and a fantastic game into something even better, they often carry the game itself from obscurity to prominence and the entire reason they can do that is because they don't cost anything.
I will NEVER support paid mods in any way, shape, or form for these reasons. Completely optional donations yes, but that's not even remotely the same thing.
I will NEVER support paid mods in any way, shape, or form for these reasons. Completely optional donations yes, but that's not even remotely the same thing.
The modding community surrounding Bethesda games is definitely a shitty one to cater to, especially given the 'accessibility' they've been shoveling out for the past three titles. Once upon a time, I really enjoyed the conversations I had with my fellows there... but the masses which have flooded in since Oblivion are among the most hostile, self-absorbed jerkasses I've ever had the misfortune of interacting with.MonsterCrit said:Why should Valve give up on Paid mods. Me thinks the biggest mistake was.. mods for such a whinny community as the Bethesda fan base. It's been working great for them for over 5 years. TF2, CS:GO, DOta2, Portal, HL2...Heck a third of all those TF2 hats are community maid and the community gets paid for them.
As for mods which rely on other mods. That's just something that will need to be documented in a given mod. Requires X-Mod to Run.
They're still not the reason paid modding failed.
Paid modding failed because it's simply far too late for such a system to be implemented. The 'niche' nature of modding culture back in the day was so small and specialized that the incentive of a paid program for user-generated content would have been welcomed with open arms. Bear in mind that this was back in the days when developers still ROUTINELY offered new FREE content for their games post-release as a means of driving new sales and extending the shelf-life of their product. Such a system would have likely been offering community-made expansions for CENTS, rather than dollars, as a thank-you to the devoted fanbase continuing to drive support for the product.
As gaming has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry, two major factors have changed which make a paid program increasingly untenable:
Firstly, the developers who once valued their consumers as the heart and soul of their operation no longer value the quality, or loyalty, of their fan-base. Everything has become quantity over quality. Who cares if you lose the old core demographic when you can just whip out a generic piece of shit that appeals to a wide range of exceedingly-bored Average Joes and Janes? Why does this matter, you ask? Because modding is very much a passion project, and if the people playing your game feel unappreciated or taken advantage of then they're not going to give a damn about creating anything for you games to make it better. All the best, most detailed mods have been made by folks who loved the games they modded for. Ostracizing that dedicated talent has left a handful of die-hards who refuse to give up making some exceedingly amazing content amid wave after wave of hot trash.
Secondly, people just don't feel that digital media is worth the price being demanded for it. The high cost of gaming as a hobby USED to be in order to compensate for the storage media, for the production costs, and for distribution. The high cost of gaming as a hobby TODAY is due entirely to massively bloated marketing budgets, gimmicky bullshit, and a massive 'mark-up' which goes straight into the company coffers. Meanwhile, the QUALITY of the product has been consistently reduced. These days the MOST USED mods aren't massive projects creating expanded content but COMPILATION PATCHES of bugfixes, USER INTERFACE mods to make the game not look like a shit console port, and anything involving sex. That's not to say there's anything wrong or telling about that... it's the first two that are the problem.
Right now, more people view modding as a means to FIX BROKEN GAMES than as a way to make their favorite games more enjoyable. You're not going to convince those people that the company that screwed them over with a faulty product deserves MORE MONEY out of them for the privilege of making the game work as intended.
You're also not going to convince many of the people who appreciate the FULL SCOPE of what modding can accomplish that the things they've been enjoying for free are suddenly worth a chunk of their already limited pocket change.
You're not going to convince EITHER by telling them that Valve is going to take a massive cut, as well as the developer, and then give the scraps to the people actually putting in the work.
There are lots of sites out there which will host the paid mods, and give them out for free.
So my question is; If mod makers are doing this to make money, shouldn't they focus on making their own games instead?
So my question is; If mod makers are doing this to make money, shouldn't they focus on making their own games instead?
I don't think you know how video games work, or anything that goes into making them. I hope you haven't bought any video games, because it's almost certain that people did it a) for the money and b) may or may not have loved the fuck out of what they were making. Anyone pretending that modders need to do it entirely out of "love" for the game, while talking mods for AAA games needs to just stop, because there is no point at which that is a cogent argument. Skyrim was not made for love, and the people who made it sure as hell didn't do it just for love. Being given the mechanism to be paid for their content, like every other creative, isn't preventing people from modding, it's letting them do what every other artist already does.Sarge034 said:
And if we're really arguing for the amazing quality of mods, and the sheer love that goes into them-have you seen the Steam Workshop? A good chunk of that is absolute crap, jokes, pranks, or just badly made. There are amazing, stand out items, and there is junk, and amateur-hour rubbish going on. What exactly is it that's being supposedly destroyed? We already have to filter through the rubbish to find the good stuff. If this means that people who make genuinely good content can dedicate more time to it, then we should be for it. There is no principle that says that it can ONLY be free.
People who love the game can be completely incompetent at making things relating to it (Look at the Steam Workshop for Skyrim, taadaaaa), and people who don't love a game can still have valuable skills that can make good content. The skills are FAR more important. And yeah, money does attract those skills. Often, larger, more ambitious mods, are being used in the hopes of being a portfolio of sorts so that the creators can get into game development, and get paid for it. They are hoping to get paid at the end of the line, it's the dream. That's one of the reason's Valve is so popular in dev mythology, Portal, CS, they're seen not only as a good workplace, but also having an interest in talent, even from unconventional spaces, and a way in.
Being able to live off it can drive a creative person to give up conventional work, to focus more on the creative side, and if that means that they're allowed to charge money, then fair enough to them, if they want to make content and try to find a market for it and sell it, that should be an option. At the very least, a donate button would be a good compromise. If people don't want to pay for it, or aren't interested, fair enough. People can still release them for free, and people are free to choose who they want to support. Personally, I think allowing donations is the optimum solution here. At present, you're going to have to do that externally, and if you do, Valve and Bethesda can come down on you.
Yes, the way Valve implemented it was bad. Directly charging for mods becomes a hassle when people are borrowing (Or stealing) assets, when mods rely on other mods, or someone else's code. It's a nightmare to untangle who is owed what, and the division of profit was hardly fair, especially when, as many rightly point out, some of the mods people use have been to fix the broken nature of Bethesda's releases.
But the contempt and vitriol aimed at the idea of paying for mods? Totally uncalled for, and unhelpful. Telling people to go away, calling them money grubbers, calling them "fuckwits". Those are just examples on this page.
Oh you will be glad to hear Bethesda is launching their own DRM/Digital store soon, to make sure you get the best content delivery system right inside the games where you didn't want that shit.dirtysteve said:
I'm guessing their debut will go along with some high profile game that is coming up...