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Title: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: rk47 on April 24, 2015, 02:33:39 AM Quote The Steam Workshop has always been a great place for discovering community-made mods, maps, and items for a variety of games. Starting now with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Workshop is also a great place for community content creators to earn money by selling their greatest works. We think this is a great opportunity to help support the incredible creative work being done by mod makers in the Steam Workshop and to encourage more top-quality work. This new feature allows mod authors to choose whether to list their items for a fixed price, for pay-what-you-want, or to make their item available for free. As a customer and fan of Skyrim, you're able to explore both paid and free mods, quests, and items. The whole feature is best explained in the full press announcement and on the detailed announcement page and FAQ here: http://www.steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent Along with these new options available to mod-creators, we've added a few features to support the experience and make everything as easy as possible: Free, Paid, or Pay What You Want With over 24,000 free mods available for Skyrim in the Steam Workshop, there will always be lots to do and explore for free. Now you can also find mods with a specified price, or mods where you can choose how much you wish to support the creators. The price is up to the mod creators. Try any mod, Risk Free When shopping for anything, it's still important to spend a little time learning about any product you are about to purchase. But, if after purchase you find that a mod is broken or doesn’t work as promised, you can easily get a refund of that mod within 24 hours of your purchase. View the full refund policy here. Play Skyrim For Free This Weekend If you're new to Skyrim and haven't yet tried it out, now is your chance. Available now through April 26th, Skyrim is free to play. Just visit the Skyrim store page and click the 'play' button to download and start playing. If you decide you want to keep the game, it's also on sale for 75% off regular price! Explore New Content To prepare for this announcement, we've asked a few community mod makers to prepare some content for release. Browse Paid Skyrim Mods Calling Creators! Whether you're just getting started or are already a professional artist or developer, now you can make money from your creations in the Steam Workshop. Starting with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you can make new cosmetic items, custom skins, fancy houses, epic quests, entire new cities, or just a new hat for Lydia. Once you've made your creation, you can easily set a price and earn a portion of each sale made through the Steam Workshop. Plus, many more of your favorite Workshop games will support paid content in the coming weeks. Check out the full announcement and FAQ for more details. http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365237576574 Well, it's been fun watching naked women bouncing in Skyrim for free the last 5 years. I'll be sure to savor my last hours watching it replay the animations unfold tonight over a glass of milk. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: satael on April 24, 2015, 02:51:15 AM There seems to be very little moderation or approval process for the mods so the most "enterprising" individuals are just uploading mods that they have no had no part in creating in hopes of making a quick buck. Add the change the dynamics of mod creation from any cooperation between the creators into competition once money becomes a factor and you just might have delivered a big blow to Skyrim modding (and whatever is the next Bethesda Elder Scroll/Falllout game). Also since it's steam workshop there's very little guarantee that the mods will actually work together especially past the 24-hour period.
tl;dr: this is a bad idea in my opinion. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: rk47 on April 24, 2015, 02:56:39 AM Oh, they lock all the pay out till you earn $400 as well. Fucking genius. Thanks for the $399.99, suckers! :why_so_serious:
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: apocrypha on April 24, 2015, 03:44:17 AM This is a car crash in slow motion. Any decent mods that go pay-only will be pirated hugely. The Steam mods will be flooded with mods ripped off from other people, crappy zero-effort $2 mods and genuine modders Steam accounts getting hacked. Those stealing other people's mods will issue copyright notices against the original mod owners.
Steam has zero customer support and a vested interest in stolen mods being sold instead of being given away free... so tough luck any genuine modders out there. For all his blather about supprting PC gaming, Gabe Newell seems to be trying to destroy it. Either that or he's just incredibly stupid/greedy. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Lucas on April 24, 2015, 03:55:20 AM yeah, this is pure internet drama fuel at the moment :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:
I think Valve and Bethesda share 75% of the revenue, mod creator 25%. I mean, C'MON :uhrr: I vastly prefer the "donate" button on Nexus (I actually purchased membership on Nexus as a 'thank you' for 7 years of awesome service), where 100% goes to the modder, as far as we know. On the workshop, the "pay what you want" formula is the only thing that you can basically set so that it vaguely resemble a donation, but I don't know what the lower limit is. For example, with that formula, "Wet & Cold" (neat mod) is listed at €4.59 (LOL), but the lower limit is "only" 0.92 euro cents. --------------------- Thanks to Mod Organizer and LOOT, I'm happily playing Skyrim with around 85 mods installed and no problems. If Nexus didn't exist, it means that, through the years, I would have paid around € 85 plus the base game + the official DLCs. EDIT: http://www.pcgamer.com/paid-for-skyrim-mod-removed-in-a-matter-of-hours/ (mod using another resource, FNIS) Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: rk47 on April 24, 2015, 05:03:47 AM Someone didn't think this through on Steam.
Predicting much butthurt before Steam reverse course on this stupid change. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: satael on April 24, 2015, 05:38:48 AM If you think that modders protesting over others using their resources for profit is something just wait until someone manages to catch the attention of some real IP holder with something like this:
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Merusk on April 24, 2015, 06:30:23 AM Which, combined with the lack of a real vetting process goes to show why Valve's "No bosses" approach doesn't work when it meets the real world.
"I don't want to be in charge of content review and vetting. That's boring and lame." They'll probably try to argue that they're just a 3rd party like Google for any DMCA notifications. I think keeping ANY money themselves or any cut of the donations will do away with that notion. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Zetor on April 24, 2015, 06:31:30 AM If you think that modders protesting over others using their resources for profit is something just wait until someone manages to catch the attention of some real IP holder with something like this: That already happened back in 2003, when Marvel shut down some major Freedom Force (and Sims) sites because they used likenesses of their characters -- they also attacked Irrational Games, but I think they didn't get to the suing part (IG just published a new EULA/disclaimers about modders not being allowed to use any IP that is not their own). I don't know whether those were paysites or not...I also seem to remember some major drama around that time with Sims sites starting to charge money for their mods. The more things change, the more they stay the same! edit: I found it, I think -- http://www.freedomfans.com/KenMessage.html Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Lantyssa on April 24, 2015, 06:58:52 AM Sweet. I need to put my Yngol Barrow Sea-Ghost mod over there, so I can make $10 that never gets released to me.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 24, 2015, 08:57:12 AM I'm honestly surprised at you all for thinking that the concept of charging money for IP is somehow brand new. This seems like a completely obvious move to me. :uhrr:
If somebody wants to keep distributing their mod for free, they can, and nothing changes, right? But if somebody wants to try to make money from their work, why the fuck shouldn't they be able to? All the whining on the Steam forums about this sounds like entitled millennials who earnestly believe that everyone else should do work for them for free and like it. There might be wrinkles with the implementation but the basic idea should be entirely uncontroversial to anyone with any concept of how much work can go into modding. Bethesda's well within its rights to ask for a cut of those profits because mods are derivative works building on the investment they put into the core game. If you don't like it go find another game that provides a better modding platform. Or make your own from scratch. They'll probably try to argue that they're just a 3rd party like Google for any DMCA notifications. I think keeping ANY money themselves or any cut of the donations will do away with that notion. That and the fact that they're actually hosting it, which is where the line tends to get drawn. They're definitely going to have to respond to notices of infringement. No different from Youtube or any of a hundred other content hosting sites. :geezer: Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Signe on April 24, 2015, 10:30:25 AM Sweet. I need to put my Yngol Barrow Sea-Ghost mod over there, so I can make $10 that never gets released to me. HA! I love you when you make me laugh out loud! Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Malakili on April 24, 2015, 10:38:08 AM Much ado about nothing.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Kail on April 24, 2015, 10:38:27 AM Oh, they lock all the pay out till you earn $400 as well. Fucking genius. Thanks for the $399.99, suckers! :why_so_serious: That sounds like a scaled back version of the $100 Greenlight fee, a way to keep people from just dumping copyrighted material with no repercussions (because what can you do when the Steam account is free). Except instead of paying $100 up front to prove u R srs Dev kthx, you're delaying the payout. So I don't think it will be as effective since you can still just grab 1000 copyrighted assets, sell them all on free accounts, and you risk nothing if Valve shuts you down. That said, I would be interested in trying something like this if they implemented it for other games. The mod scene for Skyrim is super crowded, but putting together something for Legend of Grimrock or Warlock 2 could be fun. Though I do wonder why Skyrim is guinea pigging this, instead of Valve's own titles, say, Portal 2 or something. The shop for TF2 and Dota 2 are basically the same as this except with developer moderation, seems weird to ask a third party developer to brave this shitstorm first. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Zetor on April 24, 2015, 10:47:00 AM I don't doubt that a "Skyrim Modder Union" Steam account will appear at one point for the express purpose of producing enough sales volume of various smaller mods to push them collectively past the $400 mark.
"It's really simple, my friend. You want to sell mod? You send me file, I put it on market for 3.99$, paypal you $0.85 per sale. Everyone is happy. Oh, don't try selling on the market yourself, or I will have my botnet downvote you and you will never get past $400. So we are agreed, yes?" I am sure nothing can go wrong here. :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Merusk on April 24, 2015, 11:19:13 AM They'll probably try to argue that they're just a 3rd party like Google for any DMCA notifications. I think keeping ANY money themselves or any cut of the donations will do away with that notion. That and the fact that they're actually hosting it, which is where the line tends to get drawn. They're definitely going to have to respond to notices of infringement. No different from Youtube or any of a hundred other content hosting sites. :geezer: No problem about charging from me, but when they're taking a cut they have to vet it. What makes it different from content hosting sites is those sites make money off ads, not the content. That's what protects THEM from DMCA lawsuits. If Valve even holds on to a single dollar, they become liable. That $400 cap means they'll be taking a dollar and if it's for an IP violation like Batman/ Superman/ Mickey Mouse they're in the shit. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Trippy on April 24, 2015, 11:30:20 AM No they don't have to vet it -- e.g. the Google Play store doesn't vet app submissions.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Paelos on April 24, 2015, 11:34:00 AM I don't doubt that a "Skyrim Modder Union" Steam account will appear at one point for the express purpose of producing enough sales volume of various smaller mods to push them collectively past the $400 mark. "It's really simple, my friend. You want to sell mod? You send me file, I put it on market for 3.99$, paypal you $0.85 per sale. Everyone is happy. Oh, don't try selling on the market yourself, or I will have my botnet downvote you and you will never get past $400. So we are agreed, yes?" I am sure nothing can go wrong here. :awesome_for_real: We should do this. I'm an accountant, I'll let you run the muscle and I'll run the books. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Torinak on April 24, 2015, 12:26:29 PM No they don't have to vet it -- e.g. the Google Play store doesn't vet app submissions. I wonder if Valve spent as much effort crafting the licensing terms as Google probably did for Google Play, or if writing licensing agreements is another of those things that isn't fun so they get an intern to do it... But low/no bar to entry plus low/no accountability means that the Workshop will be flooded with people trying to sell mods they didn't create and don't own. I wouldn't be surprised if the end result is that many of the "good" Skyrim modders just quit in disgust (spending more time on legal/copyright enforcement than on modding is probably not what they want). That sort of thing has already harmed other modding communities, even those that didn't/don't allow mods to be sold (Sims, Minecraft). It would have been much nicer, and much classier, if Valve had just made it easy to add a prominent donation button to every mod's landing page. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: apocrypha on April 24, 2015, 12:50:50 PM No they don't have to vet it -- e.g. the Google Play store doesn't vet app submissions. And the Google Play store is a heap of useless shit stuffed with rubbish. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Lucas on April 24, 2015, 12:52:27 PM No they don't have to vet it -- e.g. the Google Play store doesn't vet app submissions. I wonder if Valve spent as much effort crafting the licensing terms as Google probably did for Google Play, or if writing licensing agreements is another of those things that isn't fun so they get an intern to do it... But low/no bar to entry plus low/no accountability means that the Workshop will be flooded with people trying to sell mods they didn't create and don't own. I wouldn't be surprised if the end result is that many of the "good" Skyrim modders just quit in disgust (spending more time on legal/copyright enforcement than on modding is probably not what they want). That sort of thing has already harmed other modding communities, even those that didn't/don't allow mods to be sold (Sims, Minecraft). It would have been much nicer, and much classier, if Valve had just made it easy to add a prominent donation button to every mod's landing page. Infact, some modders already requested Nexus to hide their creation (here's a blog piece on Nexus about this topic): http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12454/? Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Rasix on April 24, 2015, 02:47:07 PM Valve employee interview. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDyXIXyAZq0) :awesome_for_real: :grin:
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Torinak on April 24, 2015, 02:56:03 PM No they don't have to vet it -- e.g. the Google Play store doesn't vet app submissions. And the Google Play store is a heap of useless shit stuffed with rubbish. Thankfully, the Workshop paid mods are shaping up to be of vastly higher caliber. For $2.49, you can buy DLC that adds six pieces of rubbish to the floor of an inn. For $29.99, you can buy DLC that adds an apple to one specific shelf. For $79.99, you can buy a mod that finally rotates that bearskin rug in the first inn so it's lined up better. Or my personal favorite, the $1.49 "rubbish bucket" mod...adding a bucket for your rubbish: Quote I am pleased to announce this exciting new DLC where you will get a chance to place your rubbish away safe in your very own bucket! -EARLY ACCESS- Currently this DLC is in early access stage and the bucket is broken and will need repairing. I will be able to fit the bucket once I have enough backers to support me! For this kind of high-quality paid DLC, I can't not fund my Steam Wallet fast enough! Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Kail on April 24, 2015, 02:56:50 PM It would have been much nicer, and much classier, if Valve had just made it easy to add a prominent donation button to every mod's landing page. It does seem odd to me, thinking about it, that they didn't just cannibalize the system they're using for Dota 2, where the dev picks workshop entries to "officially" integrate in to the game for money and the mod maker gets a cut of the sales from that. Just having a little bit of oversight here should eliminate 90% of the scammy BS you get when you can just anonymously sell whatever you want for free. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: HaemishM on April 24, 2015, 03:08:39 PM That would require effort on the developer side, effort they obviously do not give two shits about. They want FREE money, not money they have to work for.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 24, 2015, 03:18:19 PM I can't tell whether the tantrum is "the mods are so good we NEEEED them to live, how dare the mod developers try to EXTORT us for money" or "the mods are so useless and broken, how dare the mod developers even ask for money for them". Either of those complaints has a very obvious answer.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Lucas on April 24, 2015, 04:28:25 PM Now we'll get the "early access + paid mods" combo to justify rushed out products (but hey, modders will fix/improve it and we'll also get paid in the process, whoooo!!!), even more incomplete than before. Great.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Rasix on April 24, 2015, 05:37:09 PM I can't tell whether the tantrum is "the mods are so good we NEEEED them to live, how dare the mod developers try to EXTORT us for money" or "the mods are so useless and broken, how dare the mod developers even ask for money for them". Either of those complaints has a very obvious answer. Neither? The main arguments I've seen are related to there being no vetting process. There's a number of reddit posts that detail the types of abuses this will occur, only one of them being your second option. There is no QA, not even the most basic level. The most pressing issue is with the potential for theft and the now the fact that if modders don't want someone profiting from their creations they have to be extremely hawkish about it. A simple donation button probably would have been a better idea, but I suppose a 75% cut off a wild west mod market is tempting enough to brave the potential Disney assfucking they'll get when someone starts selling a Jedi themed mod. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 24, 2015, 05:58:31 PM Neither? The main arguments I've seen are related to there being no vetting process. There's a number of reddit posts that detail the types of abuses this will occur, only one of them being your second option. There is no QA, not even the most basic level. Valve doesn't do any of its own QA on the games sold via Steam either. They do have the greenlight process, but that's mostly crowdsourced and doesn't include Valve putting a QA department on it to thrash it for bugs before accepting it. Yet the existence of Steam has not thus far caused PC gaming to die a horrible death. Like with anything, check the reviews before you buy it; that's your crowdsourced QA. If you don't feel good about buying it, don't fucking buy it. The theft concern is no different from existing stuff on the Steam workshop, or on Youtube, or any other thing ever created on the Internet over the last twenty years that allows users to upload original work and try to monetize it. All of those things have their share of abuses but by and large the Internet has proven to be a pretty good platform for making money off your work. I am, again, utterly baffled that people see the concept of "upload work, get paid for work" as some terrifying new invention. Holy shit people might sell stolen goods on eBay guys, civilization as we know it is going to collapse. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Hawkbit on April 24, 2015, 06:34:44 PM Valve doesn't do any of its own QA on the games sold via Steam either. They do have the greenlight process, but that's mostly crowdsourced and doesn't include Valve putting a QA department on it to thrash it for bugs before accepting it. Yet the existence of Steam has not thus far caused PC gaming to die a horrible death. Like with anything, check the reviews before you buy it; that's your crowdsourced QA. If you don't feel good about buying it, don't fucking buy it. The theft concern is no different from existing stuff on the Steam workshop, or on Youtube, or any other thing ever created on the Internet over the last twenty years that allows users to upload original work and try to monetize it. All of those things have their share of abuses but by and large the Internet has proven to be a pretty good platform for making money off your work. I am, again, utterly baffled that people see the concept of "upload work, get paid for work" as some terrifying new invention. Holy shit people might sell stolen goods on eBay guys, civilization as we know it is going to collapse. I've been all saltyballs about this announcement, but the reality is this quote. I think Steam has a responsibility to weed out the issues of theft, but otherwise, the entire process is consensual for all parties. Content creators should be able to make money on their content, if they wish. It's not going to completely stop the free mod community, but it might separate them over time. We'll still get great mods as users and over time the paid mods will have to provide a great experience to justify the cost. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Rasix on April 24, 2015, 09:05:01 PM Eh, good points. I see legal quagmires in their future, but I'm sure Valve has wrapped themselves closely with a"hey, not our problem" legal blanket as they can. How does Valve handle DMCA takedowns? How about reimbursement for illegal mods they've already taken a cut from? What about refunds (LOL Steam refunds) for mods that don't work, cease functionality, etc? Is there any compunction for modders that sold mods to keep them compatible with game versions? :psyduck:
I think this takes me further out of the modding scene, but I wasn't much a part of it anyhow. I'll continue to enjoy my stock Bethsoft games. I do want to see a tab for some of you that run with 100 Skyrim mods. :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 25, 2015, 02:03:17 AM I've been all saltyballs about this announcement, but the reality is this quote. I consider this to be very high praise. :heart: Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Fabricated on April 25, 2015, 08:41:17 AM This is a really really stupid and bad decision on Valve's behalf and for the marquee game (Skyrim) it has literally destroyed the community there in the space of like 2 days.
For example, SkyUI is basically a required mod for Skyrim since it unfucks the UI in a major way and tons and tons of very good mods people all like integrate into it (in other words, they require SkyUI to be installed). Welp, the author of it is now putting it behind the paywall. So everyone who wrote a mod that integrated with it now can either figure out how to remove this integration (if they're even still around) or their mods don't work anymore without someone having to shell out money. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: satael on April 25, 2015, 10:07:46 AM This is a really really stupid and bad decision on Valve's behalf and for the marquee game (Skyrim) it has literally destroyed the community there in the space of like 2 days. For example, SkyUI is basically a required mod for Skyrim since it unfucks the UI in a major way and tons and tons of very good mods people all like integrate into it (in other words, they require SkyUI to be installed). Welp, the author of it is now putting it behind the paywall. So everyone who wrote a mod that integrated with it now can either figure out how to remove this integration (if they're even still around) or their mods don't work anymore without someone having to shell out money. Aleast SKSE (http://skse.silverlock.org/) is staying free as it would have screwed up even more mods than SkyUI ever could. :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: schild on April 25, 2015, 10:12:56 AM On it's face, this is obviously a bad idea spearheaded by a fat check from Bethesda or someone equally stupid.
In reality, I'm shocked so many people care about mods. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Teleku on April 25, 2015, 10:13:11 AM Wow, really? Yeah, skyui going behind a paywall effectivly broke the game. No reason to replay skyrim anymore. Welp.
Smart companies realize having a free and open mod community expand the base and longevity of your game. Blizzard has made a lot of money off that fact. This is Bethesda killing off their mod community. Crazy. SKSE should just put itself behind a $100 paywall in protest, just to watch all downloads (and profits) from every single mod suddenly stop. :awesome_for_real: On it's face, this is obviously a bad idea spearheaded by a fat check from Bethesda or someone equally stupid. Eh, Skyrim had one of the most amazing mod communities out there. The game was a pretty in depth open world, and people could do amazing things with it. Lots of fun to be had. And I think mods of games are responsible for about 50% of my total game playing time over the last 2 decades, so it sucks to see bad decisions fuck that.In reality, I'm shocked so many people care about mods. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Fabricated on April 25, 2015, 10:20:46 AM Becoming a "paid modder" is really dumb unless your ambition is to simply make a pittance making mods and wanna put 75% of that cash into the pockets of publishers and valve.
If it's relatively low-effort shit like hats and gun skins in TF2/CS:GO, then whatever. But if you're doing stuff like Skywind or whatever you're better off just making your own game instead. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Fabricated on April 25, 2015, 10:25:38 AM Also Skyrim is flat out one of the most played games on Steam and the PC in general, even now.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Malakili on April 25, 2015, 11:20:30 AM Blizzard has made a lot of money off that fact. This is Bethesda killing off their mod community. Crazy. Blizzard also lamented the way DOTA turned out and wish they had managed a way to retain the rights to it. Blizzard proposed something almost exactly like this with Starcraft 2 modding years ago (although it never materialized) and they did make sure to clarify that they essentially own what you make on the Starcraft 2 arcade now. They also effectively shut modding off as a possibility for Diablo 3 even though mods like Eastern Sun helped to keep Diablo 2 popular for a long time. Modding Blizzard games is at an all time low with this round of games (Starcraft 2, Diablo 3). Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Ceryse on April 25, 2015, 02:11:42 PM This is a really really stupid and bad decision on Valve's behalf and for the marquee game (Skyrim) it has literally destroyed the community there in the space of like 2 days. For example, SkyUI is basically a required mod for Skyrim since it unfucks the UI in a major way and tons and tons of very good mods people all like integrate into it (in other words, they require SkyUI to be installed). Welp, the author of it is now putting it behind the paywall. So everyone who wrote a mod that integrated with it now can either figure out how to remove this integration (if they're even still around) or their mods don't work anymore without someone having to shell out money. Wow. SkyUI behind a paywall? Basically means I'll never play Skyrim ever again, as I refuse to pay for mods and it'll fuck up so very many mods I used (some of which are unlikely to ever get an update to remove the SkyUI dependency). Personally, I think the entire move by Steam is Stupid on a level that I'd normally only expect from EA or Ubisoft. Donation system would have been far superior. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Torinak on April 25, 2015, 03:07:28 PM I'm honestly surprised at you all for thinking that the concept of charging money for IP is somehow brand new. This seems like a completely obvious move to me. :uhrr: If somebody wants to keep distributing their mod for free, they can, and nothing changes, right? But if somebody wants to try to make money from their work, why the fuck shouldn't they be able to? All the whining on the Steam forums about this sounds like entitled millennials who earnestly believe that everyone else should do work for them for free and like it. There might be wrinkles with the implementation but the basic idea should be entirely uncontroversial to anyone with any concept of how much work can go into modding. Bethesda's well within its rights to ask for a cut of those profits because mods are derivative works building on the investment they put into the core game. If you don't like it go find another game that provides a better modding platform. Or make your own from scratch. IMO, it's fine for modders to charge for mods right from the start. Switching from free to paid after release feels like a money grab more than anything, unless there's a clear increase in quality or significant ongoing costs that need to be covered. Getting paid for doing as little as possible is the way of modern businesses, though. Relying on third-party modders to fix basic game flaws (and now profiting from it!), getting "volunteers" to handle processes or functionality (like vetting) that should be a responsibility of the business itself, etc. It makes me about as twitchy as day 0 DLC. I know I'm old-fashioned (and am older than many if not most of the rest of you) but I believe in paying a fair price for a good product. I don't believe in rent-seekers injecting themselves into processes to siphon out free-to-them money without adding corresponding value. As for modders who continue to work for free, they can...but now it's guaranteed that someone will steal their work and try to sell it. The volunteer modders will probably end up with increased support efforts too, beyond any effort to stop blatant theft. This happens all the time with Minecraft mods when someone downloads a stolen version of a mod and ends up with malware or an outdated version that causes problems. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Kail on April 25, 2015, 04:19:31 PM Modders being paid for their work is fine and has been happening on Steam for a while (half of Valve's library started off as mods). The problem is that this isn't helping modders much, it's DEFINITELY not helping consumers, but Valve and Bethesda "we sell horse armor" Game Studios are raking it in off of other people's work.
Yes, it's ultimately a modder's choice if they opt-in or not, but in 95% of cases that's not going to be a good decision. You're chopping your audience to maybe 5% of what it was before, and you're only getting 25% of what they're paying. This is not a situation where you get rich, it's not a situation where you get famous, it's a situation where a mod that would have had a community of a few hundred users will now have a total circulation I can count on one hand and earn the author a dollar or two. GabeN says the mod store has pulled in $10k so far. (http://www.reddit.com/user/GabeNewellBellevue) Minus Valve's cut, that's about 2.5k spread across the 17 mods that are currently pay-to-play. That's about $150 per mod on average, for mods that are in the top one tenth of one percent of all 25,000 mods on the workshop. This is not a lot of money, and that's WITH the banner ads ad the news announcement and all the coverage this has been getting. Meanwhile, Valve and Bethesda have pulled in $7,500 selling other people's work. This is not compensating modders, this is exploiting them. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 25, 2015, 06:09:15 PM For mods that have gone from free to paid, do people who had the mods before (and who possibly bought the base game on the strength of its free mods) suddenly get locked out of them? If so that's pretty bad. If not, who cares, you got your free copy. If other people don't think it's worth paying for, or if it's not worth paying for the base game without the free mod that fixes it, they don't have to pay for either.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Goreschach on April 25, 2015, 06:20:02 PM This is a terrible fucking idea. TES is already known as a series that you expect to have to mod just to fix the games, and now you'll need to buy 'mods' to make the base game playable?
This and Elder Scrolls Online really make it look like they're just trying to wreck their own IP. TES V sales aren't going to touch Skyrim. kthxbye bethsoft. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: rk47 on April 25, 2015, 08:21:49 PM You can still get most mods for free on Nexus.
But the installation is definitely not as easy as Steam Workshop. I'm successfully reinstalled the usual mods from nexus with nary a cent paid. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/poopoo/bestmodever.jpg) Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Merusk on April 25, 2015, 08:48:53 PM This is a terrible fucking idea. TES is already known as a series that you expect to have to mod just to fix the games, and now you'll need to buy 'mods' to make the base game playable? This and Elder Scrolls Online really make it look like they're just trying to wreck their own IP. TES V sales aren't going to touch Skyrim. kthxbye bethsoft. Someone made this as a very salient point on the Reddit thread. There's even less incentive for Bethesda to do shit right now. Someone else will fix it and they'll get paid for it. However, so long as the mods remain available for free on Nexus I don't think it completely applies. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 25, 2015, 11:02:08 PM Could cut both ways -- if somebody fixes something critical but then wants to charge for the fix, reviewers aren't going to consider the add-on fix in reviews and consumers are less likely to put up with the problem and buy the game, which cuts into sales. Bethesda then has a stronger motivation to buy out the modder (or do the work themselves) and put the fix into the core game.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Torinak on April 25, 2015, 11:20:21 PM Could cut both ways -- if somebody fixes something critical but then wants to charge for the fix, reviewers aren't going to consider the add-on fix in reviews and consumers are less likely to put up with the problem and buy the game, which cuts into sales. Bethesda then has a stronger motivation to buy out the modder (or do the work themselves) and put the fix into the core game. If we have to rely on the high-integrity game journalists pointing out these kinds of flaws in AAA games, I think players have already lost. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 26, 2015, 12:01:30 AM Could cut both ways -- if somebody fixes something critical but then wants to charge for the fix, reviewers aren't going to consider the add-on fix in reviews and consumers are less likely to put up with the problem and buy the game, which cuts into sales. Bethesda then has a stronger motivation to buy out the modder (or do the work themselves) and put the fix into the core game. If we have to rely on the high-integrity game journalists pointing out these kinds of flaws in AAA games, I think players have already lost. We've already established that you have to rely on the playerbase to fix the flaws themselves after they've already paid AAA prices, so I think the players lost a long time ago. :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: jakonovski on April 26, 2015, 03:11:02 AM It's like someone thinks the hobby is "paying for video games" instead of "playing video games".
Just enough consumers keep falling for it that they keep trying. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Teleku on April 26, 2015, 10:56:53 AM Out of curiosity, is there anything that stops people from taking paid mods, changing a few lines of code and the name, and releasing it as free? If they are bad at quality control and stopping people from stealing free stuff, seems like it might work the other way around.
RK, so is sky ui still available on nexus? Interestimg if they keep it free over there, but start charging on steam. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Kail on April 26, 2015, 12:29:14 PM RK, so is sky ui still available on nexus? Interestimg if they keep it free over there, but start charging on steam. AFAIK his plans are to keep the current version free (on both Nexus and Steam) but any future updates are paid workshop content only. I don't think he's looking to screw people over or anything, it looks like the people involved were kind of clueless about what the reaction would be. Quote Well... currently, the plan is the following: -Upload new version for minimum $1 (pay-what-you-want) on SW. -Keep old version for free as it is on both Nexus and SW. -Service provider split would go to Nexus to support the site even if I can't host the free version there. -Any changes to core infrastructure like MCM flows back to the free version as well, so I won't try to force you to upgrade or pull any other stupid stunt like that. [snip...] I didn't make the launch date, because I'm also a contributor for SKSE, so I knew that it was going up on Steam and I wanted to wait for that. At this point, I still assumed the major hurdle would've been making everything work with a few clicks. I don't particularly regret missing it, considering the immense shitstorm. Didn't really see that coming. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 26, 2015, 12:31:18 PM Out of curiosity, is there anything that stops people from taking paid mods, changing a few lines of code and the name, and releasing it as free? If they are bad at quality control and stopping people from stealing free stuff, seems like it might work the other way around. Basically the same as people uploading copyrighted stuff to Youtube and putting a little bit of garbage into it to stop the automated detectors. Lasts until the copyright holder notices it. :awesome_for_real: Wouldn't be surprised if they end up having a rule that to contribute stuff to the workshop you need to have spent some money on your steam account (similar to Greenlight) to prevent people from making throwaway accounts. If each ban costs money that's a pretty solid deterrent. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Strazos on April 26, 2015, 01:58:30 PM Is the game really that broken out of the box that one MUST have mods to make it playable?
I'm just noticing now that I bought Skyrim at some point last fall. Still haven't bothered to load it up; I've never actually owned a TES game, and was never huge on them. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Malakili on April 26, 2015, 02:05:33 PM No, but mods to really improve the quality of life at the very least - particularly in relation to the UI.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: HaemishM on April 26, 2015, 03:32:35 PM SkyUI comes as close as one possibly could to required without actually being a part of the game you buy. I'm a pretty light mod user but that one was just necessary. It's insane how bad the inventory/spells UI on Skyrim actually is.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: jakonovski on April 27, 2015, 05:10:03 PM Paid mod feature being removed. :why_so_serious:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218 Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Rendakor on April 27, 2015, 05:15:00 PM At least they listen to community feedback. Bravo, Gaben.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Fabricated on April 27, 2015, 05:15:05 PM Good.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Lucas on April 27, 2015, 05:26:07 PM Talk about "breaking news" :awesome_for_real:
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Samwise on April 27, 2015, 05:29:50 PM Who said Internet tantrums never accomplished anything? :awesome_for_real:
If I were the SkyUI guy I'd make my next (free) update turn everything into a giant cock. But that's me. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Trippy on April 27, 2015, 05:43:44 PM Gabe held an AMA before deciding to remove this as well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/?sort=qa Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: Kail on April 27, 2015, 05:45:23 PM Hopefully it's being reworked. I think the idea has some potential, if it's handled right. Like, if you LAUNCHED a game with paid mods as an option, I don't think there'd be much outcry from consumers (because you're not taking away something they already have). But popping in to a four year old game to say "by the way, we're charging for the stuff you've been using for free for the past half decade" is going to raise eyebrows.
Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: schild on April 27, 2015, 05:46:26 PM His AMA was full of bullshit though. It was a pretty terrible, though impromptu, ama.
Anyway! Quote We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here. ENJOY TF3, NERDS. Title: Re: Now you can donate (lol) to your favorite Steam Workshop creators! Post by: rk47 on April 27, 2015, 08:56:53 PM RK, so is sky ui still available on nexus? Interestimg if they keep it free over there, but start charging on steam. It still is. I've reinstalled all of the mods over the weekend with Nexus Mod Manager. His AMA was full of bullshit though. It was a pretty terrible, though impromptu, ama. Anyway! Quote We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here. ENJOY TF3, NERDS. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/06/Zedd2.jpg) I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, POWER RANGERS! Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: satael on April 27, 2015, 10:10:32 PM I have to say I'm positively surprised that they backed down on this relatively quickly instead of deciding to double down on the idea. I wonder which game will be the next big hit that will start out with paid fan mods right from the release (or atleast as soon as the developer releases some tools for modding the game after the release) since you can be sure that the idea of getting revenue this way isn't gone and it will (un)fortunately work better next time if they avoid the biggest mistakes made this time.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: apocrypha on April 28, 2015, 01:50:23 AM Newell claimed in that AMA that the negative email etc. from this had cost them $1m over a few days whilst the mod sales had brought in $10k over the same period.
The decision to backpedal was nothing to do with listening & caring, just business. But yes, the AMA was stuffed with errors/misinformation/bullshit/lies (choose accordingly, depending on your level of Valve worship) so those numbers aren't even vaguely reliable. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Sky on April 28, 2015, 07:12:24 AM It's too bad whiny Internet cunts win this time. I've painted for free but it's my choice to gift or sell, not the recipient's. If you don't like that my time, effort and materials cost money, feel free to not buy my product. Even if I have to pay a cut to the manufacturers of the paints and materials, as well as the postal service and taxes. But don't let me piss into the overflowing well of free bees.
I'll miss this round of "I'll never give Steam another penny (but of course I'll still have it installed because my games are there and well, the summer sale doesn't count)". And I barely paid attention. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Paelos on April 28, 2015, 07:23:13 AM Eh, you're missing the point here Sky.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 28, 2015, 08:28:47 AM Main issue (as gabe admitted) is them attempting to monitize the community after its already been established for years. This wouldn't have been an issue if they had launched the game with built in support for paid mods (as I'm sure all future Bethesda and Valve games will).
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Paelos on April 28, 2015, 09:00:11 AM Main issue (as gabe admitted) is them attempting to monitize the community after its already been established for years. This wouldn't have been an issue if they had launched the game with built in support for paid mods (as I'm sure all future Bethesda and Valve games will). Correct, that's the main issue. It's something that people who are trying to monitize news sites are finding out. People don't want to pay for something they've been getting for free for years. Now that doesn't mean people don't want to support people who create mods. But trying to half-assed regulate that while taking a healthy cut of the profits? That's not cool. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: tazelbain on April 28, 2015, 09:08:00 AM Still I am less inclined to buy the next TES game, because the mods that make the game playable are going to cost money. Sure, for the titty mods this isn't a problem
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: carnifex27 on April 28, 2015, 09:45:17 AM To me this whole situation is just shockingly stupid. If they had just added a button that said "DONATE" next to every mod and kept 10% of all donations as transaction fees, Valve would be knitting yet more money hats. Oh, and the entire internets would be applauding their integrity and generosity to boot.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: apocrypha on April 28, 2015, 10:04:32 AM To me this whole situation is just shockingly stupid. If they had just added a button that said "DONATE" next to every mod and kept 10% of all donations as transaction fees, Valve would be knitting yet more money hats. Oh, and the entire internets would be applauding their integrity and generosity to boot. That would still have required legal negotiations with Bethesda. What we don't know at all is the extent to which Bethesda were the driving force behind this, or how much they were the ones that pushed for the 75/25 split or whatever. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: jakonovski on April 28, 2015, 10:08:28 AM Communism!
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: HaemishM on April 28, 2015, 10:09:38 AM I think Carnifex is correct, though. It might have required more wrangling with Bethsoft but in the end, it would have been better for everyone involved.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Sky on April 28, 2015, 10:16:26 AM Am I missing something, then? I thought this was a voluntary deal, where mod authors could put up stuff for sale on the workshop if they wanted, or continue to release stuff free through Nexus or their own goddamned website.
There's a lot of 'free' that shouldn't be. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Kail on April 28, 2015, 10:24:51 AM To me this whole situation is just shockingly stupid. If they had just added a button that said "DONATE" next to every mod and kept 10% of all donations as transaction fees, Valve would be knitting yet more money hats. Oh, and the entire internets would be applauding their integrity and generosity to boot. Kind of pointless, though, given how unused most donation systems are. Unless you've got something in the mod itself pointing you to the donation button (and the instant THAT happens you know the exact same shitstorm would spin up) most people don't donate. A lot of these mods already had donation buttons on Nexus, but still made more in one day of direct sales than they did in years of voluntary donations (or so sayeth Bethesda's blog, (http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/) anyway) and that's even WITH Beth eating most of the pie. If Valve had added a donate button for every mod I doubt the internet would even notice or care, much less trumpet their praise from the rooftops. The only way this was going to be more than a blip on anybody's radar was if they fucked it up. Edit: What we don't know at all is the extent to which Bethesda were the driving force behind this, or how much they were the ones that pushed for the 75/25 split or whatever. Bethesda says Valve takes 30% off the top, and they elected to take 45% for their cut because it's the "industry standard" (I assume they're getting this from F2P games like TF2 and Dota 2 where workshop content is vetted by the publisher and integrated into the in-game shop, but I'm not sure). Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 10:34:46 AM Am I missing something, then? I thought this was a voluntary deal, where mod authors could put up stuff for sale on the workshop if they wanted, or continue to release stuff free through Nexus or their own goddamned website. There's a lot of 'free' that shouldn't be. Yeah, you're not missing anything. Under the system that was rolled back mod authors could also make their mods "pay what you want", which is what people claim to want. What they object to is the mod authors being the ones to make that choice. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Malakili on April 28, 2015, 10:38:50 AM Am I missing something, then? I thought this was a voluntary deal, where mod authors could put up stuff for sale on the workshop if they wanted, or continue to release stuff free through Nexus or their own goddamned website. There's a lot of 'free' that shouldn't be. Yeah, you're not missing anything. Under the system that was rolled back mod authors could also make their mods "pay what you want", which is what people claim to want. What they object to is the mod authors being the ones to make that choice. As others have said, they also inserted themselves into a really well established modding community and made a major change that no one was asking for. I agree that in principle this is a non-issue. But the way they did it in practice was bound to upset people. This will be back before long and done in a slightly different fashion that will still get some people upset, but not that many, and then it will just become a stock feature of steam that everyone uses regularly. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 28, 2015, 10:39:12 AM Am I missing something, then? I thought this was a voluntary deal, where mod authors could put up stuff for sale on the workshop if they wanted, or continue to release stuff free through Nexus or their own goddamned website. The issue is that a great many of the mods are reliant on each other. The skyrim community is a several years old collaborative programming project, where people have created something, then others have integrated it into their own (with permission), and so on. People programmed and designed their mods with the assumption that all the other mods they built dependencies with would always be free and available. There's a lot of 'free' that shouldn't be. But now, years into the collaborative project, their trying to introduce random pay walls. One guy pay walling his mod can fuck up a bunch of others that were dependent on it. If the mod had been pay for from the get go, others would not have made themselves reliant on it. Doing it after the fact hurts a lot of people, and many of the mods out there were written awhile ago. The guy who made it has probably moved on and not paying attention anymore, so you can't count on him to go reprogram the mod to use something else. It was a dumb move that would have severely impacted a lot of people. Thus the consumer uproar. You can't paywall bits and pieces of a giant collaborative programming project years after the fact without breaking the whole fucking thing. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 10:44:55 AM The issue is that a great many of the mods are reliant on each other. The skyrim community is a several years old collaborative programming project, where people have created something, then others have integrated it into their own (with permission), and so on. People programmed and designed their mods with the assumption that all the other mods they built dependencies with would always be free and available. But now, years into the collaborative project, their trying to introduce random pay walls. One guy pay walling his mod can fuck up a bunch of others that were dependent on it. One guy could just as easily withdraw permission for other people to integrate his shit into their mod, without a paywall being an issue. Unless he's granted you a perpetual license to copy his stuff for inclusion in your own mod, in which case him putting his version behind a paywall doesn't affect you. Basically if the entire modding community is a house of cards built out of gentleman's agreements and/or theft, as you're indicating here, you don't need the addition of a paywall to bring it all tumbling down. Either you trust all the people whose stuff you're borrowing, or you don't, and you either don't borrow from them, or you get some sort of solid assurance that they're not going to be able to yank it out from under you. Maybe this stuff just seems stupid to me because I'm a software developer and this is exactly the same thing that happens in other collaborative development efforts, and there are already solutions that seem very obvious to me (or other ways the problem can manifest that make this new variable irrelevant), and for the rest of you it's like Columbus discovering the New World. :awesome_for_real: Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Malakili on April 28, 2015, 11:03:37 AM Modding communities have "always" been ad hoc collections of people with varying skills and visions being vaguely collaborative. The game I modded the most was Neverwinter Nights and it was basically a free for all.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 11:43:19 AM Yeah, similar to any free software community.
What all this outrage is about is the theory that people who have previously been giving stuff out for free out of the generosity of their hearts will be suddenly and irresistibly corrupted by the lure of monetization once that option is available, and that they should therefore not be trusted with having the option to monetize. So (a) to the extent you had gentlemen's agreements for them to let you use your work for free, you think they're going to welch at the first opportunity, and (b) you think that because you've been borrowing their work for free up to this point, they now owe it to you in perpetuity even if there was no such agreement. If I were one of these modders who apparently can't be trusted to ask for five bucks for years worth of work, I'd be annoyed. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 28, 2015, 12:13:01 PM Hey man, nothing has been stopping them from selling there mods through their own web page before this. If they had really wanted to sell the mods for money, they already would have. Obviously none of them really wanted this. :why_so_serious:
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: tazelbain on April 28, 2015, 12:14:42 PM Yep, that argument goes both ways.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 12:24:59 PM Not really. The argument you're making is that making it EASIER for the mod authors to monetize is a bad thing. That giving the mod authors more tools/choice is detrimental to the mod community. Being as they're the ones who make the mods, saying that they're the enemy and that something which is good for them is necessarily bad for you is pretty fucked up.
(edit) The part about selling mods through your own web page is why the complaint about Valve taking 25% is so dumb, though. You know why Valve gets to take 25%? Because it's fucking worth every penny, given how much of a pain in the ass running a store is. As evidenced by the fact that nobody's doing it themselves. If you actually thought it were a bad deal for the modders rather than a fair deal, you wouldn't be so worried about modders taking them up on it. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 28, 2015, 12:55:20 PM Hey man, anything to drive down prices. When did you become so pro-buisness and anti-consumer? Are we going to have to ban you from the politics forum soon? :why_so_serious:
But seriously, I have nothing against them charging for their mods. Suddenly throwing a pay wall over something that has been free is of course going to piss off customers, however. Then due to the way the mods community works, it also breaks a ton of free mods unless you want to spend money on the few who decided to paywall. Mods that were designed with the idea that the other ones would always remain available, and would have made different design decisions if that wasn't the case (which you may find naive, but this has been the status quo for mod communities since the beginning of the Internet). It would have caused a lot of strife in what was a vibrant modding community that was the sole reason skyrim is still one of the most played games on steam. And finally all the legal issues they face by people uploading copyrighted shit, as well as people profiting off mods that others have released for free. So pissing off your customer base, gimping the one feature that drove new sales of your old game, and setting yourself up for a lot of potential QA/legal issues, means a lot of us were confident to call this a really fucking stupid idea. If you disagree with all that, we'll just have to agree to disagree, heh. These issues (except the need to actually pay people to monitor what users are uploading for sale), will go away if they launch with this feature already in place. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 12:58:47 PM Suddenly throwing a pay wall over something that has been free is of course going to piss off customers, however. Well, yes, especially given that the target demo is largely composed of whiny bitches who have been living in their parents' basement rent-free since they finished college. :oh_i_see: Being pissed off doesn't make them right. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 28, 2015, 01:01:45 PM Sure, and having worked private sector software for years before this, I'm well aware the customer is the enemy. But unfortunatly you have to try not to rabidly piss them off if you want them to keep giving your company money. It's always a hard choice!
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 01:03:51 PM Sure, and Valve probably made the right choice caving to the tantrum here. There's no reasoning with a spoiled brat. I'm just surprised to see anyone here expressing the view that it was a well thought out tantrum with some solid points.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Kail on April 28, 2015, 01:06:41 PM (edit) The part about selling mods through your own web page is why the complaint about Valve taking 25% is so dumb, though. You know why Valve gets to take 25%? Because it's fucking worth every penny, given how much of a pain in the ass running a store is. As evidenced by the fact that nobody's doing it themselves. If it were a bad deal for the modders, you wouldn't be so worried about modders taking them up on it. They don't take 25%, they LEAVE 25%. And Valve at least is providing a service to the modder, Bethesda is just milking this for even more than Valve is. By Bethesda's own admission, the sales of mods were a fraction of a percent of what they pulled in from box sales. If you're charging $4 for your mod, and someone wants to play that mod, then they already have to pay $20 to buy the game to do so (and that's the reduced price not including DLC etc.) which the mod author doesn't see a penny of. For Bethesda to come in and then demand from you $2 more comes off as petty when you're already driving sales to them. With something like TF2 or Dota you at least have the excuse that A) the base game is free and selling content is their only revenue stream and B) the game costs a ton to keep running and updating, but Skyrim has neither of those excuses. If you're serious about wanting to encourage modders then skimming 45% of their net sales is not the way to do it. If it's just a cash grab then it's not a very lucrative one. But it's got to be one or the other, you can't play the "we just want to help you" card while you're gouging your content creators and then "but we hardly made any money off of doing it" when people complain, then you just look stupid. I'm not saying 100% of proceeds need to go back to the modders, there are costs involved in establishing and running this kind of thing, but the more prohibitive you make those costs the more dis-incentivized people are to use the system in the first place. If you want people to make mods and produce content for your game then you should be giving them as good of a deal as you can and they'll flock to it. Otherwise what's the point of this system in the first place if it's not making any money by itself? Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: tazelbain on April 28, 2015, 01:08:02 PM Its not about EASY its about SURPRISE PAYWALL. I guess don't understand why people who were expecting to get paid were working on mods unpaid 2+ years. I, as a programmer, always figure how I am getting paid before I start. I thought these guys were hobbyists doing it for fun. Guess not. I don't really have anything against them, my problem is more due to how these development houses has leaned on these guy's free labor to make their game playable.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: jakonovski on April 28, 2015, 01:30:46 PM Where do tantrums enter the equation? Market bears what the market bears.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Sky on April 28, 2015, 02:17:18 PM The 7D2D devs were talking about this before locking the thread and they seemed to think the cuts for the developers were pretty reasonable, though a better split would have been 30/30/40 Valve/Zenimax/Author.
Since it's optional and it's a way for people to get paid for their work if they choose to, I'm all for it. But I guess I've made my point and will just wait out the gnashing of teeth until this inevitably goes live, as it should. My statement about mod devs in general is that I'd like to see it lucrative so there is a reason for them to continue when the whiny Internet cunts' ceaseless roar of entitled, unhappy selfishness drives them to abandon otherwise amazing works (see: minecraft mods). Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 02:36:23 PM Where do tantrums enter the equation? Market bears what the market bears. The market had nothing to do with it; the driving force behind Valve's decision was people who'd already bought the game and were just spamming them with whiny emails and black page faxes. I suspect when the next game rolls around and this is a feature out of the gate, there'll be minimal whining and then we'll see that the market will bear it just fine, because whatever threats they might make, none of these kids want to be the only one on their block without the latest toy. And we'll probably find out that in practice most modders keep making stuff for free just for fun, and when one or two of them do decide to try charging something, the world won't end. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Kail on April 28, 2015, 02:49:21 PM The market had nothing to do with it; the driving force behind Valve's decision was people who'd already bought the game and were just spamming them with whiny emails and black page faxes. I kind of doubt it, though it's hard to say what the "real" reason is. You don't launch a feature designed to make piles of money and then cancel it because somewhere someone on reddit is angry. Both Valve and Bethesda have said that this wasn't making much money, I suspect if there had been actual profit here we'd still be dealing with it. See also: early access, Steam Greenlight, all the other initiatives that people have bitched and moaned about but which are still around. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 02:57:06 PM Oh it definitely wasn't making them piles of money; I don't think it was ever intended to. But Gabe said in his AMA that the sheer quantity of customer emails they'd gotten on this issue (which they have to read and possibly respond to) essentially cost them $1M worth of their employees' time. So it wasn't just people being angry on reddit, they were basically getting DDOSed and decided (wisely) that it wasn't worth making a stand over when they could just do it again later with a different game after the outrage machine has spun down.
Ironically, the 25% cut that Valve was taking was probably intended to cover the cost of shit like that (rather than actually making them piles of money I'd guess their aim was just to more or less break even after they'd paid people to process refunds, answer stupid questions, etc) and it turned out to fall far short; they might well change up the percentages next time to account for that. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Merusk on April 28, 2015, 03:10:46 PM I've seen it said that it was a 30% for valve and 45% for Bethesda, 75% total. Not the 25% you keep quoting. Makes it far less attractive and far more likely to be abused by bad actors, IMO. If I can't make money I'll scam it.
It's fun watching though. The software debs who are always so "it should be free" on tech and art copyright are suddenly demanding pay models be respected in their sector. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 03:29:03 PM I've seen it said that it was a 30% for valve and 45% for Bethesda, 75% total. Not the 25% you keep quoting. Makes it far less attractive and far more likely to be abused by bad actors, IMO. If I can't make money I'll scam it. I saw 25% for Valve and 50% for Bethesda. Since most of the hate seems directed at Valve their cut seems like the relevant piece. 50% for Bethesda's cut does seem on the high side to me, but ultimately it's their IP and their platform so they get to set those rules. Modders looking to sell stuff on the workshop would have been the ones to decide whether to play along or to just keep doing what they've been doing (whether that be giving it away for free or selling it some other way or what). I dunno if you can even draw comparisons between this tantrum and pushback in other sectors to copyright enforcement. What we've got here is the equivalent of people protesting and DDOSing the iTunes store because MUSIC SHOULD BE FREE, MAN, and their favorite indy band might start trying to sell their album instead of giving it away in clubs. It's not even like this shit would have been hard to pirate or that there was any hint that they'd be sending SWAT team door to door for unauthorized mod usage, it was the idea that someone might even ASK for money for their work that was enough to set off the Internet hordes. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Fabricated on April 28, 2015, 03:37:01 PM It probably wouldn't have been a big deal had it been in from the inception of Skyrim but it wasn't so it turned out it was a bad idea.
Also that itunes comparison is really dumb. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Samwise on April 28, 2015, 03:54:07 PM Also that itunes comparison is really dumb. It's true; for iTunes the artist only gets a 10% cut (http://ugsmag.com/2010/04/infographic-how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/) of the sale. That's at least twice as outrageous. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Rendakor on April 28, 2015, 05:42:33 PM It would be annoying to pirate, assuming mods weren't listed on Nexus. Trying to search YARRRR for Necessary_UI_MOD_2.1.7.42 to get Bouncy_Titties_MOD to work would be fucking obnoxious.
Plus, paying for something feels like it guarantees that said thing will always work. I'd be pretty resentful if I bought a mod and then a patch to Skyrim broke it. That situation gets even more awkward because sometimes other people take abandoned mods and update them for current compatibility; who gets to charge for the content in that case? Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Zetor on April 28, 2015, 09:58:48 PM I don't imagine doing tech support around the clock for a bunch of whiny / entitled gamers that paid $0.50 for Slightly Better Looking Building Shadows ("I paid ~good money~ for this, you'd better resolve this mod incompatibility that is not actually your fault or I'll downvote you and demand a refund, you fraudster") would be particularly pleasant for the modders, either. On the other hand, they'd get a taste of what real game development feels like, I guess? :why_so_serious:
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 28, 2015, 10:12:29 PM Not really. They'd just ignore it and let the sweet sweet pennies roll in while not touching the mod, while valve QA would have to deal with endless tickets demanding refunds because valve sold them a product that doesn't work.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Sky on April 29, 2015, 09:02:01 AM No, there will be a stamp EULA and proper CS funnel to null.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Teleku on April 29, 2015, 05:27:03 PM That's not going to stop people clogging up their CS system as they angrily fight over it.
Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Merusk on April 30, 2015, 05:35:19 AM Yeah, we've seen that happen in other games & industry but I forget the specific examples at the moment. WoW had something the CS reps always had to deal with even though it was 3rd party. (e-bay transactions and something else...) I remember seeing somewhere Apple CS gets questions/ complaints about apps all the time, too.
People pay for it, they expect it to work 100% (even if it's their fault it's not) and will bitch to someone at your company when you're the face of the product. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Tebonas on April 30, 2015, 06:37:37 AM This is a good idea in theory and will likely work as intended when introduced with a new game. People have an irrational hatred against paying for things they got legally free in the past, I guess Valve underestimated that factor and are now in shock about the reaction.
The support nightmare they will have once the "bouncing elf titties" mod for Elder Scrolls 6 doesn't work anymore because Bethesda patched it and the modder moved on to different things will likely be their next shock. Hope it works out, though. Getting good Mods by paying the modders their fair share is in every gamers best interest. If that fair share is 25% like Betheda thinks or more because they already sold more copies than they would have otherwise due to their game being modable is an entirely different discussion. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: apocrypha on May 04, 2015, 04:21:55 AM Here's (http://savygamer.co.uk/2015/05/04/heres-how-i-would-do-paid-mods/) a very good piece about how this should have been done.
TL:DR - Asking users to pay for mods with no quality control of those mods, no assurance that they wouldn't break anything else or become unusable after future patches or were actually any good was Valve & Bethesda asking for money for nothing. If Valve/Bethesda had devoted resources to it and ensured that the mods offered for sale were of decent quality and would be fixed if future patches rendered them unusable, it would have gone a long way to smoothing this idea over. I.e. mod developers deserve to be paid for their efforts but Valve & Bethesda etc. have to do some actual work in order to get paid. Also asking users to pay for fixes to things broken in the game by default (UI) is stupid. Title: Re: Now you CAN'T donate cuz $ made/gudwill lost is negative. Post by: Goreschach on May 08, 2015, 01:20:25 AM Here's a nice recap of the events. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emW15aLYbp4) It's kindof impressive just how quickly Valve is managing to burn through the goodwill they've acquired.
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