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Paid Mods
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Steam has instituted a paid section to the workshop starting with Skyrim.
What do you guys think?
As of 19:19 on the 24th of April GMT (when I checked), all of the priced mods have been pulled down from sale. At least, when I select them it says that they are no longer on sale.
And they're up for sale again.
Meh, as long as there's some sort of customer review section, i'm fine with it.
Let the market (i.e. supply and demand) sort itself out.
I'm no fan of having to pay for mods that have been free for the whole of my life, especially after using at least 200 or more in every Bethesda game since Oblivion. Given that Valve runs off with 75% of the price tag as well, that incentivizes modders to put bigger price tags on their content not to mention how greedy it is to run off with 3/4 of a modder's money.
There should be a way at the least, to support modders by donation or better yet their not running off with 75% of the price tag under a mod. At that point, I neither want to buy mods and nor do I wish 75% of my money spent on one going to a corporation.
Mods have always been free and should always be free.
Some people are saying that it would help modders keep modding, that's ********. If you don't have the time to mod, that sucks, it really does, if you do, mod the game.
If passion (be it for the game you're modding, your idea, or modding itself) isn't enough to fuel your will to mod, just stop.
I have an idea for a HL1 mod I want to make, I hope to be able to make it, I hope to have the time to make it (if I'm not, I'll hate the universe for it), but if I end up not being able to do it I would not charge for it.
Valve was the only company I ever respected. I felt like they always did things in a fair way to their consumers. Sometimes one thing or another made me question that, but never for long, because they were not big things.
This is a big thing, this is genuinely putting that trust to check.
Please Valve, don't do that to me, roll this back and let's pretend it never happened.
Indie scene is killing modding. If you have amazing tools like UE4/Cryengine/Unity and the ability to sell what you make with them, you're not going to spend time doing mods. It's not about "having time". Modding is usually shittily documented, you have to deal with crappy engines (Skyrim would be a prime example here, really) and the lack of tools. Just compare the modding scene of HL2 from 09/10 and 11/12. Miles apart.
I don't know if paid mods are going to fix that, but at least it's an incentive for people to return once again. Money is always a good incentive, whether you like it or not. Although 75% of profits being kept with the studio is really harsh, if you compare that to Dev Kits of other engines. But maybe it will work.
I see both the positives and negatives of being able to sell a mod.
The positives are mainly that we might get some really high quality mods that we otherwise wouldn't and that we might get modders that would otherwise be too busy with life to make mods if they couldn't make a living of their work.
The negatives can pretty much be summed up in the loss of the modding *community* as we know it. (What's the point of collaborating when you can remain individualist while making a tidy profit?)
That said I'm all for modders being payed for their work. I just believe that they should still let their mods be accessible to everyone. The entire point of the modding community should be sharing. I know I never really made a mod which I published myself but I have done some assets here and there. So I understand how modding is a time commitment and how life can often keep you from working on a mod.
So from that perspective I would certainly support donation systems similar to the one on the humble bundle store where you can decide how much of it goes to the modder, game dev, store, hosting service, etc.
Although a donation system might result in the modder not getting the funding that they may need to keep modding without having to worry about how they are going to feed themselves.
Here's my take on it. As people above me said, all our lives mods were free and they should stay that way, but paying for "some" of the mods can be a good thing.
Most of the time there are some really really huge and ambitious mods that start off great but die out because devs don't have free time, they work for a living, to pay school loans etc, and well that is a big problem. If they knew they were gonna get paid when the mod is finished they would have more free time to actually mod. If they set a price of lets say 0.5 Euros and 1000 people bought the said mod, that's 500 euros, of course i'm 100% sure more people would buy it, meaning more money for the modders. But as i said that's for huge, ambitious and time consuming mods. I don't want someone to charge me a few bucks for a reskin or a model that i can do myself in my sleep.
Now the bad thing is, Valve gets 75% and that will force modders to put their mods on for ridiculous prices just so they can get a few bucks. In my opinion, Valve shouldn't be getting anything, after all, they do nothing except host a "platform" for the mods.
Exactly. The indie engines this move is designed to counter have muuuch lower rates. UE4 has 5% per quarter. 5% vs 75%... If it would be at least around 10% it would be better. The way it is right now, mostly smaller, already existing mods will profit from this. For starting larger projects 75% is not profitable. The need to lower hat ASAP, otherwise it looks like a cash grab by Valve and Bethesda...
ElfFriend, Sanguinius, you two gave the good side of it, and also the bad side and the alternative that, IMO, should be what was added.
Sure, we'll get more mods, bigger mods and better mods from it, great mods that would have otherwise died would not die, but is it worth it?
Valve (and I guess the devs, Bethesda for Skyrim) get 75% off it. This doesn't seem like a way to help modders, this seems like a way to get more profit.
And there are even more problems. We already have the occasional problem of asset stealing, and that was before people could profit from it!
A donation system would have been a way better alternative to this, everyone that didn't like paid mods agrees.
My pessimism is probably connected to the fact that I believe that money corrupts everything. We have already lost a lot to greed in the gaming industry (EA, enough said. RIP C&C), I don't want to lose modding.
As i've said in the last part of my comment, in my opinion Valve should be getting 0(ZERO) because they do nothing then host a platform for the mods, mod creators should be getting 100% income from this as they do all the work.
Also about asset stealing, that has been happening for such a long time and some people actually have the balls to profit from it. I personally saw several times where people would rip models from games or mods, post them on sites where people sell models and profit from it, it's nothing new really so there's nothing to worry about.
But i agree with you, money corrupts, too many studios have been taken over by the rEApers and today we have a very few studios who actually release playable and fun games, i wouldn't want that happening to the modding community as well. Lets just hope this works so badly, that Valve shuts down this feature. But as we all know, people are like the sheep, and they like doing what they are told...
And if that doesn't work, we can always pirate, that's not a new concept for me so i have no problem with it. That said i'd rather pay a modder then an AAA studio...
I would prefer a donation system, all mods would remain free, but they would have a donate button on the workshop, to actually support modders, without Valve and Bethesda getting anything.
If you have money to donate, you can donate, if you don't, you can still play the mods, and you can donate later when your financial situation improves.
I didn't even know there were places where people sold stolen assets. But that's part of the point I'm making. It was something underground, hidden at another corner of the internet. By bringing it to Steam, it will go mainstream, this means that it will only increase now.
Well, but as you said, we have an alternative...
"Raise the black flag, dirtbags!"
I should mention, modders only get a payout when they reach $100. So if your mod costs $1 you'll have to sell 400 copies of it to get your cash, since Valve gets the other 300 (though Bethesda gets a slice of the pie too). Refunds are also to the steam wallet and are a 24 hour refund. If a patch breaks a mod and the mod never gets fixed, as far as steam is concerned, you're not entitled to a refund if its outside the 24 hour window. There's also no steam support for mods that are downloaded from here or nexus etc for free and then sold without permission by someone other than the author; its the community's job to find and report this.
The backlash is real:
Reddit.com
Just dropping it.
Change.org