Skyrim Mods: now with paid option

[TheFeniX]

It sounds like they should have gone the Apple route and exercised a lot of control, ie. only the best mods that have been vetted for plagiarism get to be endorsed by Valve and Bethsoft as paid content.

That's a tremendous idea, provided you trust the publisher. Publishers can solicit mods, throw the best together as DLC packages, then sell them and pay a commission to the original authors. It's not as good as free, but it's better than the Anarchy Department currently set up.

If you can't charge for them until they've been vetted, how do you vett them without releasing them for free or use your own QA? One modder isn't going to have a QA team and Beth's QA team is terrible and they aren't going to bother with them anyways. So, they basically take free mods, let the player's beta test them, repackage them, and sell them for a profit. So, valve basically takes over for the Russian and Chinese modding sites, except they only keep MOST the profits, rather than all, with no work done.

This isn't Counter-Strike, The Ship, or Team Fortress. Package up a bunch of buggy shit all you want: it doesn't make it worth money. At least not the money they would try and charge for it. The kind of people who pay money for official reskins and shit are a blight on the industry anyways. It's like fleecing money off toddlers.

They then have to find a way to make you pay: like how Wet and Cold 2.0 was held for months (almost positively because the modder was under NDA as part of this bullshit) and only released after the Workshop money factory. It's bad enough Skyrim updates broke mods as a matter of course, will be awesome when they intentionally break the outdated mods so you have to cough up money. This is a tremendous idea, provided you hate video games and the people who play them.

Fore's stance on the whole thing makes it moot. If the other framework developers follow suite, then all the market is really going to be is reskins and remodels: shit which isn't worth money since you can't hide those behind updates. You can't even DRM them since model/textures are always the easiest to replace and all any modder would have to do to avoid any legal problem is to make an .esp that adds the armors into the game, point to empty directory and say "hey guys, put your legitimate *wink wink* models into this folder." I can do that in 5 minutes and I suck. This is provided they even bother putting DRM on ESPs and ESMs. Someone already tried to upload Wet and Cold 2.0 on the nexus. It got pulled. Bet good money I could find it for free in like 20 seconds.

Unless he changes his mind or Beth bullies him/them into compliance: there is no way to get past the vetting process because modding for Skyrim is already stupidly annoying because you need mods to make any other mods that might be worth money. The other option is Beth makes a decent CK, but it's unlikely they want to spend any money to make any money. If this whole thing generates any money, it's win-win because console morons will facilitate the next money injection when "Skyrim 2: electric boogalo the unmoddable version" gets released and makes them another infinity-billion dollars.

They haven't released an update for Skyrim in.... ever. They've put nothing back into the game, relying on the modders to continue to fix the massive obstacles to modding. Such as script overhead and lag, papyrus being all kinds of garbage, no first-party animation support, among other things. And now they want another cut and had every intention of letting mod authors onboard with the hatfuckery steal from mods who weren't. There is no way to make this a good idea. There is no system in which this will not fuck the modding community as Beth and valve try to double-dip.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Counter-strike and Team Fortress both started out as free mods and moved up to officially-endorsed and partnered paid-content, so the concept does work. It just has to be done the right way. A popular mod gaining deeper integration into the game and a AAA level of polish after becoming paid DLC is a lot different than throwing up a paywall behind formerly free content that was built on free community resources.

[Vendetta]

Fucking valve man, seriously: I won't inline the images, but essentially Chesko was valve's little whipping boy for this (which he signed up for) and valve told him "nah, it's cool bro: monetize others people's work because fuck them."

This was basically inevitable and anyone who knows anything about how Valve curate, or rather utterly don't curate, Steam predicted as soon as they heard about paid mods being a thing on Steam.

(There was also the greenlight malware thing that happened this week, someone made a fake greenlight page and the link to the "demo" was just malware)

[PREDATOR490]

Egosoft have the better concept with this: The X series have a rather large mod community similar to Bethseda and they produced 'bonus packs' which combine mods for free with permission from the authors.
Now, if you wanted to include massive community made DLC packs that are charged for - I can see that working but only if the Publishers / Developers accept the role of ensuring quality and compatibility is maintained.

I can only see mod selling working if Bethseda / Steam have regular "auditions" and the mods that meet the criteria get included into a DLC pack that is sold with suitable testing and QA to ensure it works.

The easiest example is that the current Skyrim store had a bundle deal on a selection of the paid mods. One assumes that by bundling them together all of those mods CAN and WILL function together without need for anything else. However, the moment one of those mods requires something else to work, I.E SKSE then no fucking way should that be getting sold unless SKSE is inside the pack.

Another issue: Bethseda likes to release official DLC which can cause severe issues for mods. I.E If someone makes a mod that allows the player to fly a dragon and then Bethseda has a DLC planned for a year later with that feature... do Bethseda get to take their cut of the mod income before filing an IP infringement against the Mod so the DLC can make money.
Afterall, Bethseda will naturally argue they have no obligation to ensure official DLC is compatible with mods and the mod makers can shaft the customers by simply walking away when the official DLC breaks their mods. Neither party has obligation to ensure what they are selling is compatible with one another but Bethseda sure have the ability to file an IP infringement notice the moment a mod threatens to take money from an official DLC feature even if the mod came first.

[TheFeniX]

Counter-strike and Team Fortress both started out as free mods and moved up to officially-endorsed and partnered paid-content, so the concept does work.

Those were total conversion valve bought out and brought some team members on board (as id did years ago with some of the Doom modders) to round out the original Half-Life release as they didn't think it would sell as well on it's own. They have since taken full ownership of the IPs and fostered communities around those games.

Skyrim's paid mods debut items is some generic voiced-character with custom dialog. Can't find it now, might have been pulled, but I have to assume it requires Dawnguard to tie into Serana's AI package so all you have to do is record over her lines and attached the package to a follower (something I can do, except no on wants to hear my voice), two overhaul type mods that require SKSE for their advanced features (some of those features being a large part of the mod), and a bunch of new models and reskins, some of fairly high-quality. The Mage Armor is laughable since, from reading and knowing a bit about female bodies: the "foot" on the character model is actually not just the foot. So high-heels without the heels-system mod basically eats into the calf and makes your character have misshapen legs: quality work. 305 morons paid money to have their sexy ladies missing 20% of the bottom of their legs, a problem other modders fixed years ago, for free.

It "works" in the same way Evolve's reskins work and other games with paid unlocks. Many of those games also don't have modding support, wonder why.....

This is honestly a great idea on Beth's part: use an aging game they don't support on a platform that didn't really affect their bottom line (console players don't know/ don't care about any of this) to test the waters with next to no money investment. All they can do is burn good-will with PC-users: but PC don't matter when it comes to kiddie-sandbox games like Skyrim. The real kicker come when the modding community (hopefully does not) implode on itself as people protect their source code and assets, add more bugs into their mods in an attempt to break paid mods or other modders hooking into them. This shit will negatively impact any "advanced" mods, but Beth doesn't really care about that because if 1,000 people pay $0.50 for a stupid looking sword they don't have to support, it's money for nothing. The quality or quantity of the mods doesn't matter: free money is free money.

It just has to be done the right way. A popular mod gaining deeper integration into the game and a AAA level of polish after becoming paid DLC is a lot different than throwing up a paywall behind formerly free content that was built on free community resources.

AAA Polish? I get your comparison, but have you played a Bethesda game? A common trouble-shooting tip for modding is "do you have the unofficial patches?" Have you played modded Skyrim? The amount of shit that doesn't work together is insane. The amount of shit that breaks your game/savegame is just as insane. "See you Sleep" broke any bed I use while it was installed. I had to go to a backup save. All that mod does is make you lay down/get up before and after the sleep dialog box comes up.

Vanilla Skyrim is pretty badly broken. There's still numerous game-breaking bugs in Skyrim Beth hasn't fixed. The game is done to them. So telling me there's better ways to do it is moot, or that it has worked on other games (even though those are almost always total conversions requiring multiple modders working together for months) doesn't mean anything: this is what we're getting. valve put next to no thought into this, it's just a cash grab by anyone willing to get in on it while the big boys take the lion's share of the money. It doesn't even have to be all that successful since Skyrim's success was always tied to the console version.

Going back to your original point: it doesn't matter if it was done "right," 20 years ago. Today, it's being done "right" for the publishers and very very very "wrong" for the people trying to enjoy their game.

[PREDATOR490]

Got a link to one of the guys telling how some of this went down.

The experiment has failed: My exit from the curated Workshop (self.skyrimmods)
submitted an hour ago * by [deleted]
Hello everyone,
I would like to address the current situation regarding Arissa, and Art of the Catch, an animated fishing mod scripted by myself and animated by Aqqh.
It now lives in modding history as the first paid mod to be removed due to a copyright dispute. Recent articles on Kotaku and Destructiod have positioned me as a content thief. Of course, the truth is more complex than that.
I will now reveal some information about some internal discussions that have occurred at Valve in the month leading up to this announcement, more than you've heard anywhere else.
I'll start with the human factor. Imagine you wake up one morning, and sitting in your inbox is an email directly from Valve, with a Bethesda staff member cc'd. And they want YOU, yes, you, to participate in a new and exciting program. Well, shit. What am I supposed to say? These kinds of opportunities happen once in a lifetime. It was a very persuasive and attractive situation.
We were given about a month and a half to prepare our content. As anyone here knows, large DLC-sized mods don't happen in a month and a half. During this time, we were required to not speak to anyone about this program. And when a company like Valve or Bethesda tells you not to do something, you tend to listen.
I knew this would cause backlash, trust me. But I also knew that, with the right support and infrastructure in place, there was an opportunity to take modding to "the next level", where there are more things like Falskaar in the world because the incentive was there to do it. The boundary between "what I'm willing to do as a hobby" and "what I'm willing to do if someone paid me to do it" shifts, and more quality content gets produced. That to me sounded great for everyone. Hobbyists will continue to be hobbyists, while those that excel can create some truly magnificent work. In the case of Arissa, there are material costs associated with producing that mod (studio time, sound editing, and so on). To be able to support Arissa professionally also sounded great.
Things internally stayed rather positive and exciting until some of us discovered that "25% Revenue Share" meant 25% to the modder, not to Valve / Bethesda. This sparked a long internal discussion. My key argument to Bethesda (putting my own head on the chopping block at the time) was that this model incentivizes small, cheap to produce items (time-wise) than it does the large, full-scale mods that this system has the opportunity of championing. It does not reward the best and the biggest. But at the heart of it, the argument came down to this: How much would you pay for front-page Steam coverage? How much would you pay to use someone else's successful IP (with nearly no restrictions) for a commercial purpose? I know indie developers that would sell their houses for such an opportunity. And 25%, when someone else is doing the marketing, PR, brand building, sales, and so on, and all I have to do is "make stuff", is actually pretty attractive. Is it fair? No. But it was an experiment I was willing to at least try.
Of course, the modding community is a complex, tangled web of interdependencies and contributions. There were a lot of questions surrounding the use of tools and contributed assets, like FNIS, SKSE, SkyUI, and so on. The answer we were given is:
[Valve] Officer Mar 25 @ 4:47pm
Usual caveat: I am not a lawyer, so this does not constitute legal advice. If you are unsure, you should contact a lawyer. That said, I spoke with our lawyer and having mod A depend on mod B is fine--it doesn't matter if mod A is for sale and mod B is free, or if mod A is free or mod B is for sale.
Art of the Catch required the download of a separate animation package, which was available for free, and contained an FNIS behavior file. Art of the Catch will function without this download, but any layman can of course see that a major component of it's enjoyment required FNIS.
After a discussion with Fore, I made the decision to pull Art of the Catch down myself. (It was not removed by a staff member) Fore and I have talked since and we are OK.
I have also requested that the pages for Art of the Catch and Arissa be completely taken down. Valve's stance is that they "cannot" completely remove an item from the Workshop if it is for sale, only allow it to be marked as unpurchaseable. I feel like I have been left to twist in the wind by Valve and Bethesda.
In light of all of the above, and with the complete lack of moderation control over the hundreds of spam and attack messages I have received on Steam and off, I am making the decision to leave the curated Workshop behind. I will be refunding all PayPal donations that have occurred today and yesterday.
I am also considering removing my content from the Nexus. Why? The problem is that Robin et al, for perfectly good political reasons, have positioned themselves as essentially the champions of free mods and that they would never implement a for-pay system. However, The Nexus is a listed Service Provider on the curated Workshop, and they are profiting from Workshop sales. They are saying one thing, while simultaneously taking their cut. I'm not sure I'm comfortable supporting that any longer. I may just host my mods on my own site for anyone who is interested.
What I need to happen, right now, is for modding to return to its place in my life where it's a fun side hobby, instead of taking over my life. That starts now. Or just give it up entirely; I have other things I could spend my energy on.
Real-time update - I was just contacted by Valve's lawyer. He stated that they will not remove the content unless "legally compelled to do so", and that they will make the file visible only to currently paid users. I am beside myself with anger right now as they try to tell me what I can do with my own content. The copyright situation with Art of the Catch is shades of grey, but in Arissa 2.0's case, it's black and white; that's 100% mine and Griefmyst's work, and I should be able to dictate its distribution if I so choose. Unbelievable.

No real surprise on how this turned out and I have no real sympathy for someone bitching that he gets shafted on controlling his content after selling it at a 25% cut. The stance from Valve's lawyer is pretty insightful into how this is going to go.

Few individuals are going to be able to go up against Valve and even if they win, the IP still belongs to Bethseda so they get hit with a counter claim of IP infringement.

[TheFeniX]

Recent articles on Kotaku and Destructiod have positioned me as a content thief. Of course, the truth is more complex than that.

Legally using someone else's work doesn't make it right no matter what the legal copyright holder says.

My key argument to Bethesda (putting my own head on the chopping block at the time) was that this model incentivizes small, cheap to produce items (time-wise) than it does the large, full-scale mods that this system has the opportunity of championing. It does not reward the best and the biggest.

No shit. Just like everyone who thought DLC would usher in a new era of content that extended the longevity of games. It didn't: big surprise.

But at the heart of it, the argument came down to this: How much would you pay for front-page Steam coverage? How much would you pay to use someone else's successful IP (with nearly no restrictions) for a commercial purpose?

The irony is hilarious as Beth said: "Sure, use our dead game, kept alive by modders. Also, use that other guys mod who made all your shit possible. You don't own him anything."

Guys like Fore were the ones who actually took modding to the next level. And really, the "big mods" like Falkskarr aren't what modding is really geared to. It's the little additions, the dev left out, why many people mod, at least from those I've talked to.

They don't want big castles with land and unvoiced quests: that's what they get from DLC like Dawnguard. They want sweat, blood, new animations like kill moves and idles. They want new races, enemies that actually surrender. Hell, some just want tig-ol' biddies to take screenshots of. The only exception seems to be total conversion modes, like Star Wars and Star Trek for Sins of a Solar Empire (which you won't see sold for money). Those are mods you should really see modder and cross publisher deals being made on but you never will. Ever.

Of course, the modding community is a complex, tangled web of interdependencies and contributions. There were a lot of questions surrounding the use of tools and contributed assets, like FNIS, SKSE, SkyUI, and so on.

Were these people offered anything? These mods only exist because of how limited Beth's coding is and they make so much shit possible for the modding comunity: these guys should get medals, not the ass-ramming Beth and Co gave them.

Art of the Catch required the download of a separate animation package, which was available for free, and contained an FNIS behavior file. Art of the Catch will function without this download, but any layman can of course see that a major component of it's enjoyment required FNIS.

Function meaning you can imagine animations happening while fish magically appear in your inventory. Saying FNIS is optional for his mod is like saying a mouse is optional to use Windows when you don't have a touch-screen. Yea, it's technically true, but pretty god damn misleading.

In light of all of the above, and with the complete lack of moderation control over the hundreds of spam and attack messages I have received on Steam and off, I am making the decision to leave the curated Workshop behind. I will be refunding all PayPal donations that have occurred today and yesterday.

And this really shows how little they cared about the little people they got involved with: "Shit's going South, DO SOMETHING... wait, I meant 'Do nothing.'"

I am also considering removing my content from the Nexus. Why? The problem is that Robin et al, for perfectly good political reasons, have positioned themselves as essentially the champions of free mods and that they would never implement a for-pay system. However, The Nexus is a listed Service Provider on the curated Workshop, and they are profiting from Workshop sales. They are saying one thing, while simultaneously taking their cut. I'm not sure I'm comfortable supporting that any longer. I may just host my mods on my own site for anyone who is interested.

Yea, the Nexus can be extremely shady.

What I need to happen, right now, is for modding to return to its place in my life where it's a fun side hobby, instead of taking over my life. That starts now. Or just give it up entirely; I have other things I could spend my energy on.

It's called a job, which you tried to turn your modding into. Welcome to reality. I fucking love working on computers and networking: don't love it so much when it's other people's shit and they have actual (GASP) demands made for their money.

Real-time update - I was just contacted by Valve's lawyer. He stated that they will not remove the content unless "legally compelled to do so", and that they will make the file visible only to currently paid users. I am beside myself with anger right now as they try to tell me what I can do with my own content. The copyright situation with Art of the Catch is shades of grey, but in Arissa 2.0's case, it's black and white; that's 100% mine and Griefmyst's work, and I should be able to dictate its distribution if I so choose. Unbelievable.

Haha..hahahahaha! You're a modder working with someone else's IP. You honestly thought someone paying you cents on the dollar was going to respect "your property?" Delusional. At least you learned something from the whole ordeal.

[Grumman]

Who gets to decide what is stealing ? - By default every single mod is based on the IP of the original game owner so they can literally pick and choose to take action against any mod team that wont play to their tune.

You cannot infringe upon IP you have permission to use, and there is no sane way you can argue that Bethesda has not granted modders permission to produce their own IP that plays nice thematically and technically with Bethesda's IP.

The IP issue here is not the same IP issue involving Bethesda - when I make a mod that works in Skyrim, it does not replace Skyrim. You still buy Skyrim and the expansions and still give Bethesda their cut, so the existence of my mod does not interfere with Bethesda's desire to sell games. But if I take files you made available for free and bundle them into my own mod instead of treating my mod as an add-on to your mod, my success means your failure, since less people will download your mod if my mod already has all the juicy bits.

[salm]

I guess gaming companies are not really interested in other people selling mods that take up gaming time, like total conversions for example. If people buy these they won´t buy Bethesdas next game. Gaming companies and Valve are interested in selling mods that patch bugs lowering maintenance cost and beauty mods like wet characters which make the games nicer but not longer.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Going back to your original point: it doesn't matter if it was done "right," 20 years ago. Today, it's being done "right" for the publishers and very very very "wrong" for the people trying to enjoy their game.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pointing out that the concept of paid mods isn't always and everywhere a bad idea. I would happily shell out $5-10 for Requiem, for instance, and that would be a much better value than, say, Hearthfire.

[TheFeniX]

Going back to your original point: it doesn't matter if it was done "right," 20 years ago. Today, it's being done "right" for the publishers and very very very "wrong" for the people trying to enjoy their game.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pointing out that the concept of paid mods isn't always and everywhere a bad idea. I would happily shell out $5-10 for Requiem, for instance, and that would be a much better value than, say, Hearthfire.

Sorry man, wasn't trying to beat you up. Just ranting about how it should have been/how we/I thought DLC would work out great for both parties (creator and consumer) and it all just went to shit.

SkyUI is going paid with 5.0.

[Darth Nostril]

Last SkyUI update - two years ago. "It'll take months to sort out a new crafting menu alone blah blah personal reasons blah blah"
Valve starts selling mods - new update suddenly available, paid only. Money grubbing scum fucks, not like 90% of the mods out there depend on your mod right?

At least Phenderix saw sense and changed his mind.

Oh and Gaben the Hutt has been on reddit attempting damage control and doing a piss poor attempt.

[Grumman]

Last SkyUI update - two years ago. "It'll take months to sort out a new crafting menu alone blah blah personal reasons blah blah"
Valve starts selling mods - new update suddenly available, paid only. Money grubbing scum fucks, not like 90% of the mods out there depend on your mod right?

To be fair, the version of the mod that other people's mods are dependent on is still available for free. It's not without its problems - not the least of which is that Bethesda now has a financial interest in making Skyrim incompatible with SkyUI 4.1 - but the next version of SkyUI going paid hasn't gone so far as to put half the modding community up shit creek without a paddle.

[PREDATOR490]

Not currently, but eventually it will.
We have a free alternative now because that was the old way. If this new system is adopted, mod makers will be much less likely to make free versions and that means framework mods are going to become nearly useless. This is literally going to be the modding equivalent of Jenga and with more mods being removed from the free aspect the more likely everything is going to fall to bits.
Mod makers have no obligation to make their mods work with anyone else or provide ongoing support and collaborations are going to run into issues of dividing up the pitiful amount of money they get if they try to sell their work.

If mods like SkyUI go paid, I can only see two things happening,
1) Mod Communities start building their own free equivalents of the paid mods - Thus we get into issues of copyright / IP stealing ideas from others and a development divide will form between Free and Paid mods.
2) Things like SkyUI become dependencies for future mods which then have dependencies on other paid mods resulting in an unworkable mess of micro-transactions that just kill any interest in mods.
Even if you were to put mods at a fixed $1 value, Skyrim mod collections can end up in the double digit range which ranges from massive total conversions to a basic skin for an item.

[TheFeniX]

To be fair, the version of the mod that other people's mods are dependent on is still available for free.

Still likely to create another divide in the community as modders (both free and paid) continue to use the old version. Free modders because "fuck you" and paid modders because needing ANOTHER paid mod to use your mod means less sales. Using the paid version as a prerequsite for your free or paid mod creates another divide. Oh yea, and it requires SKSE: so they're making money off someone elses work.

Really though, SkyUI needing to exist (stop me if I've said this before) is 100% on Beth for giving us a shitty console UI. This is no different than SWTOR charging for extra action bars except it manages to be worse because I already bought Skyrim. I bought it, even though it was a shitty console port because I knew people would crop up who would fix and and even waited to buy until the CK had been released and the community had already made decent progress. Bethesda now wants to sell us a functional UI, with no work involved: sweet deal.

It's not without its problems - not the least of which is that Bethesda now has a financial interest in making Skyrim incompatible with SkyUI 4.1 - but the next version of SkyUI going paid hasn't gone so far as to put half the modding community up shit creek without a paddle.

I doubt this is about the short-term: like adding unlocks to BF2 under the promise server admins would be able to unlock them with a server cvar, then "whoops, we forgot to add the cvars. I see you found a way to bypass our 'mistake' with ini hacks: enjoy your server blacklist." It wasn't about bending users over a barrel, it was about getting them to slowly do it to themselves.

At that point: you already owned the game and refunds on PC games? Pfft. So, I doubt we'll see anything from Beth on Skyrim. In case I'm wrong, I've already backed up my Skyrim install, which is dumb I have to do as Steam disabled turning off auto-update for Skyrim.

What we'll see is "don't worry guys, buy Fallout 4, GECK is in the pipe for the modding team, no paid mods this time." Then we get a Steam only GECK with forced file consistency like how EA turned "optional" into "fuck you."

What's the worst that can happen? Bad press? Everyone fucking hates EA and they still make millions. There's no such thing as bad press anymore. Boycott Steam? HA! I'm the most vidictive motherfucker out there and even I can't boycott Steam. This shit is here to stay and it's going to get worse. Only thing we can do is grow a set and stave off the urge to pre-order Beth's next shit-heap at $60 and wait until we find out where they're going with it.

But there's more than enough PC and console users who not only know nothing about how bad this is, but actually think it's a good idea for them. That somehow money equates to quality. Morons spouting arrow to the knee references are what made Skyrim popular, not modding. They have literally nothing to lose and everything to gain by selling buggy mods. Beth already does it with their retail releases. The only one to remotely blow up in their face was Brink and they still made money on that garbage.

[TheFeniX]

I head the pirated version of SkyUI crashes the map menu or something. Already a work-around. Pirating mods is already a thing. And I don't think it's technically illegal, I'd have to research more though.

We've already got mods popping up "BUY ME NOW" adverts.

Nexus weighs in about their profit sharing deal with valve.

Gabe gives evasive answers on DRM for mods:

Hi Gabe, Robin, owner of Nexus Mods here. Sorry to hear about the issue with your eye.

Can you make a pledge that Valve are going to do everything to prevent, and never allow, the "DRMification" of modding, either by Valve or developers using Steam's tools, and prevent the concept of mods ONLY being allowed to be uploaded to Steam Workshop and no where else, like ModDB, Nexus, etc.?

Edit, for clarity in the question:

For example, if Bethesda wanted to make modding for Fallout 4/TES 6 limited to just Steam Workshop, or even worse, just the paid Workshop, would Valve veto this and prevent it from happening?

Exclusivity is a bad idea for everyone. It's basically a financial leveraging strategy that creates short term market distortion and long term crying.

I know, right? Like Skyrim being a Steam exclusive. Terrible idea.

Gabe can talk all he wants about how exclusivity is bad, but he has no actual qualms against it in practice and he gives no answer to DarkOne's question.

[RogueIce]

I don't see what the objection to paid modding in general principle is, TBH. Are there issues with it? Of course there are, like anything else. But if the developer is okay with it, I would support dealing with those issues than having some meltdown over MODS SHOULD BE FREE FOREVER!!!!! That just smacks of entitlement, IMO, and well I think software pirates are generally freeloading scum so you can figure out my attitude on that.

That said, would I ever bother to spend money on a sword reskin? Probably not. Would I drop money on something like Skywind? Almost certainly. To me, those kind of 'all-in-one' TCs are what this should really be for, anyway. I know Skyrim is pretty famous for the "juggle 200 mods and pray" thing, and yeah if all the mods were paid mods that would probably go away, because who's spending that much money on a game?

Well aside from me in MMOs but shut up

But I guess it comes down to preferences in the end. And obviously legal stuff like "making your mod from SKSE, FINES, etc" is definitely a problem. I don't know if I completely buy into the conspiracy theory of developers locking out all free modding but time will tell. I guess it's plausible since they don't seem overly fond of modding in general as of late, but we shall see.

As far as no accountability for modders, well, people complain about all the shit Bethesda leaves unfixed in their games, why should modders be any different?

[Thanas]

Regardless if you think this is a good idea and might give some money to developers of mods, I see this as just the first step towards a model where every little change to a game file costs you money. Want to fix a bug in a txt document that determines the value of goods? Pay money. Want to download a fan-made patch that tries to fix it? Pay money (this too in an age where devs already probably consider bug fixing to be superfluous or an inconvenient hassle).

This coupled with devs already making their files inaccessible for modders for no good reason (looking at you, CA).

[Thanas]

Ghetto edit:

This is even worse than I initially thought.

For example:
I am a huge fan of the BG and BGII mod scene. They keep a game that was launched almost 18 years ago fresh and relavant and fun to play. Now, over my total playtime, I got a lot of mods. And I change things and script. Under this model, if I would take a script from mod A to enhance mod B I cannot share it because it is potential paid content despite it being free earlier.

Even worse, what is if some idiot just steals a popular mod script and publishes it? Hope for steam to step in? Hah. This puts just more workload on legitimate modders to police their content.

[bilateralrope]

I don't think blocking free mods is going to happen.

Lets assume that a developer implements some system to limit mods to the Steam workshop. Lets also assume that they convince Valve to disable the mod creators ability to offer the mod for free. This leaves three possibilities:
- People install free mods via whatever means exist for mod creators to test their mods before making them public on the workshop. Complete with video instructions of how to install them.
- Steam prevents people from testing mods before releasing them. I hope I don't need to explain why this is a bad idea.
- Valve does something to restrict testing mods. Which will either require active oversight or making people pay a fee to become mod testers. Oversight would cost money to implement and is something Valve doesn't seem to do for anything else, a testers fee would drive away modders and the potential revenue they provide.

Given this, blocking free mods looks like a stupid move. The most I can see Valve doing is making the free mods used pay what you want with a minimum price of $0. That way, even free mods will send cash in Valve's direction. But that amount of money might not be worth the cost of processing the paperwork.

[Oskuro]

To me this just seem like them testing the waters for a future attempt to shift creation of DLC from developers to the community.

I've personally been certain for a long time that publisher's attitude towards mods has been increasingly hostile due to the difficulty in monetizing them (not to mention that extra longevity for a title might cut into sales of the follow-up title), and the current DLC-centric climate (which I personally hated with a passion from day one) seems finally conducive to the monetization of said user created content.

I'm pretty certain also, that this will not bode well for the final user. I foresee a similar trend as we've seen on mobile gaming, with cheap quick developments, usually relying more on hype and social engineering than quality, resulting in a crap-saturated market. You know, like Steam these days.

If I only could turn this apocalyptic scenario into a viable game plot....

[Zaune]

To me this just seem like them testing the waters for a future attempt to shift creation of DLC from developers to the community.

That doesn't strike me as automatically being a bad thing, because if you want to build a market for content created by hobbyists working in their free time then Step 1 is "Make the base game really, really good". I didn't spend hundreds of hours of my life over the last four years creating nearly a dozen extra weapons and a bunch of complicated item-crafting reactions for a game I thought was merely okay.

[Oskuro]

I agree that quality mod creators deserve compensation, I was referring more to publishers abusing the system to offload the cost of DLC creation to the community, while receiving most of the profits.


And, right on cue, I just watched this week's Jimquisition on this very subject, which I quite agree with:

[bilateralrope]

Paid mods are now gone

Removing Payment Feature From Skyrim Workshop
28 APRIL - ALDEN
We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.

But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. 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.

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.

I was expecting Valve to do nothing and let the rage simmer down, maybe provide more tools to help people avoid paying for crap mods.

Still, it sounds like paid mods will come back at some point. Once Valve figures out a better system.

[Darmalus]

Oh well, time to move on. Was nice while it lasted. The only reason I considered the terrible state of Bethesda games tolerable was because of the extensive and free modding community.

Ah, well I guess the bullet has been dodged for the moment. I expect this feature will be fully integrated into future games, however. So unless Bethesda starts releasing their games for $10, paying full price plus extra fees to not be a half functional mess is unacceptable.