So There's Going To Be Monetization of Mods on Steam

[Ori]

Stock up on your rare Nexus mods, guys. Time to smuggle modainum.

"Unlike other curated games on Steam that allow users to sell their creations, this will be the first game with an open market. It will not be curated by us or Valve. It was essential to us that our fans decide what they want to create, what they want to download, and what they want to charge. 
Many of our fans have been modding our games since Morrowind, for over 10 years. They now have the opportunity to earn money doing what they love – and all fans have a new way to support their favorite mod authors. We’ve also updated Skyrim and the Creation Kit with new features to help support paid mods including the ability to upload master files, adding more categories and removing filesize limit restrictions."

-GStaffBethesda 

Now while the intent is absolutely fucking disgusting arguably positive to the modders, this only grows another chin on the endless layers of microtransaction hate, and worse still, there will be intellectual property issues for people who use mods with free modders' assets, such as what happened with Fores (known for Skyrim animation modding), who openly disapproves of the concept of monetized modding.

There is also a major cashgrab percentage of the money that apparently goes to the increased file hosting, which leaves around 25% of the final price tag going to the author of the mod. As I type this there is such a thing as "Early Access Modding" for mods that are obviously unfinished, glitchy and of course, conflicting with other mods.

So I kinda want SFO's input to hear what might come out from this decision in you guys' opinions because holy sharktits gaben done fucked up for real this time Valve is definitely going to have a noticeable consumer and user impact from their decision to pull an EA monetize otherwise usable free-of-charge intellectual property.

Edited April 24, 2015 by OrbiKitsune
(Also apparently trying to quote the Bethesda text messed up some of the rest, wut)

[Vy'drach]

No one is really going to do it given a good mod on Nexus gets far more revenue from donations than anything that could be made, even without the meager 25% the modder gets of the price, that Workshop could muster with a set price on mods deal.

[Who Knows]

Time to board the galleon men

In all seriousness though if steam were really out to help the modders in workshop they would have added a donation button underneath or above the subscribe button but forcing people to pay for mods will only lead people to the method in bold

Also personally i hope this can be squashed before companies get ideas i would hate to have this extend to mount and blade bannerlord

[Ori]

The kicker is that apparently, Valve's been removing Patreon and other donation site links from mod pages ever since they put this up.

Also side note: Apparently modders only make any sort of money (which apparently is only Steam virtual money not actual dollars or whatevers) for themselves if they hit past the $100 mark total gain. So, yeah. PC gamers are in total disgust everywhere.

[Xortberg]

See all this hubbub about the modders having to make a lot of money before they actually get any and the outrage about them only getting 25% of the profits?

That's 25% of the profits on mods that they chose to make (and can choose to circulate for free) for games that they had no hand in making whatsoever. They literally have the choice to monetize mods that they were making for free up till now. So they only get 25% of the profits from what is essentially fanfiction for coders?

I'm not seeing the problem here.

Removing Patreon links and whatnot is a bit douchier, but are the only doing it for monetized mods or is it for all mods? Plus, there's still other sites you can host your free mods on and again, donations for making mods should not be your primary motivation. If you were modding Skyrim for money (pre-monetization), not only were you again making money from another person's product, you probably weren't expecting to pay the bills with it anyway.

So yeah, maybe someone can help me see the problem here because while I think the monetized mods is dumb as fuck because

1. Mods are stupidly easy to pirate since it's just a collection of files you slap in the game folder and
2. From what I hear, there's a 24 hour refund period so you can literally just buy a mod, copy the files, then refund for free mods

That's a problem with the concept of monetizing mods in the first place. I really don't see what's wrong with the Steam/Bethesda getting most of the money for the mods that get sold.

[DZComposer]

Yeah, the internet is collectively losing its shit and overreacting. Steam is giving mod authors the ability to sell mods, provided the game publisher agrees. Steam is not forcing all mods to be behind a paywall.

However, they are doing something that does irk me, and that is they are banning people for criticizing the practice and deleting donation links on free mods. That's a step over the line, IMO, but the idea of creating a platform for mod authors to get paid is not something I find atrocious. In fact, I prefer this method of monitization over posting adfly links any day.

[Ori]

While I don't find the concept atrocious either, here's the thing. Even if people made free mods with donations as motivation in mind, they were still free for anyone to donate and others could just download it without putting money into it. Valve proposes an established toll for some mods, likely higher quality content will become more and more monetized.

A pay-what-you-want/tip jar system would work just fine and I feel like most people wouldn't be complaining if it were that way. I wouldn't at least.

Edited April 24, 2015 by OrbiKitsune

[DZComposer]

It's the mod authors who choose to monetize their mods, not Steam or Bethesda, or whatever publisher does this next. If an author takes a free mod and puts it behind a paywall, be pissed with them, not with Steam for daring to allow modders to get compensated.

[Xortberg]

But Valve isn't saying "We're going to force people to pay a toll for good mods."

They're saying "We're going to allow mod creators to decide whether their mod is worth paying for."

If the modders see that people are willing to pay 5/10/20/etc dollars for their work and they start selling for that much, then that's kind of just how capitalism works.

Also ninjad by DZ

[DZComposer]

Total Biscuit hits the mark on this:

 

 

[Dr. Orange]

Paying for mods is something I can live with. I love the idea of capatalizing ones work so that people who have made cool additive content to a game the credit they deserve. What I DISLIKE is the fact that Valve is taking 75% of the income. They're just putting the links up for them. That's a middle finger to the developers. 

[Arashikage]

I never downloaded mods from the workshop anyway.  To be honest, if I really really want a mod that someone decided to put behind a paywall, there's a pretty good chance someone else made the same thing for free.

[Vy'drach]

Valve actually only gets 30% of the cut, Bethesda gets the remaining 45%.

[Arashikage]

25% is still abysmally low for someone to receive for their work.  The freaking Apple app store gives people at least 70%.  

What I want to know is what happened to modding a game for the love of the game?  Bethesda(Who undoubtedly are the ones that came up with this idea), are viewing the modding scene more as "Why aren't we getting more money from these players" instead of "These modders are keeping this five year old game alive and building up more and more of a player base."  When you make it more available to start charging for these mods, you're inviting the wrong sort of crowd.  The kind that will reskin a sword and charge 5 dollars for it.  Obviously, that's an extreme example, and nobody would pay 5 dollars for a reskinned sword, but it's still annoying for that sort of thing to be there.  It's taking away floorspace from the mods that actually deserve it.  Instead of a fun game that's got a ton of potential and a million mods, the game would become this open world sandbox where you'd be able to do a ton of cool shit, but you have to pay a buck forty nine every time you wanted more.  You'll get modders into the scene that aren't into it for the love of the game, but rather they're in it for money.  When all the mods were free, and there was just the option to donate, every mod you'd see on the pages of the Nexus were legitimately trying to do something for the game.  

On the topic of modders actually caring.  What's to say a modder who's only in it for the money will make a mod, people will buy it, but sometime way down the line, the mod breaks, and they don't update it or anything to fix the issues.  Now, this mod you paid 7.49 for is broken, and the modder fell off the face of the earth, or just simply won't fix it.  You can't return it because it's past the 24 hour expiration for your return.  You're just kind of stuck with a chunk of code that doesn't work, that you paid actual money for.  

So, no, I don't believe these paid mods are a good idea at all.  Frankly, I'm a bit upset at Bethesda and Valve for this, but I can't really do anything about it except refuse to pay for mods.  

[Arashikage]

Apologies for the double post, but this needs to be said.  Valve and Bethesda are discontinuing the paid mods on Steam.  

 

Read more about it here http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/

[Xortberg]

On one hand the very concept of selling mods strikes me as utterly retarded - even having a patreon set up and taking donations for code-fanfiction bothers me - so I'm pretty okay that they canceled this and I'm glad that this whole debacle is (hopefully) over so I don't have to fucking see it anymore

On the other hand, I have rarely felt so much hate for a group of people as I have for all the overreacting, shitstorm-causing retards that this thing has brought out, and I really wish it had stuck around just to piss them off as much as they pissed me off

[DZComposer]

On the other hand, I have rarely felt so much hate for a group of people as I have for all the overreacting, shitstorm-causing retards that this thing has brought out,

​And they just won. Shitstorms are now to be considered a viable weapon.

[Dr. Orange]

Shitstorms have always been a weapon, especially on the web. I'm just bothered that done of these moders have less of a chance to ask for say donations for their major fan projects. 

[Arashikage]

Let's put this into perspective here.  Millions of people use Steam, and when the Steam guys work with another company to bring something that the users don't like, you expect them to sit there and take it?  I think everybody knew that this was going to create a shitstorm, because everybody has their own way of reacting to things, and when you're on the internet, these types of things have the habit of getting out of hand.  

About the modders now having less of a chance of being able to receive money or donations for their work, that's actually false.  Donate buttons have been in descriptions for a long time, and most people that truly enjoy the work and have a bit of extra money to spare click them.  I've donated to modders before, a lot of them leave a link in their description to click.