Paid Mods

[Dog Pants]

Hey guys, us mods do a great job here. Come on, front up!

Ahaha. No, sorry. What I mean is Valve have announced that they're going to let modders charge on the Workshop. This has led to the inevitable woe and anguish that any change brings to denizens of the internet, but could they be right on this occasion? On the one hand surely someone should be able to profit from their work. On the other hand how much of that work can actually be considered theirs, and how much the original developers? Will it promote better, more professional mods, or will it kill the modding community by putting it behind paywalls?

I don't tend to use mods personally, so I don't really care either way. A lot of people seem to have opinions though. Any of you have an opinion on this?

[Roman Totale]

I only became aware of this today, so I'm still woefully uninformed (not to mention somewhat apathetic). If they make it so that all games played through Steam can only have paid for mods, then that would be shitty - but I get the impression most modders just do it for the love of the game.

I did read an interesting piece (can't remember where) about how Valve are becoming lazy. They're making a fortune from micro-transactions in Dota, CS:GO, and others, so they appear to have very little motivation to actually develop new games. Might not be fully valid criticism, but it could lead to them resting on their laurels and doing a Google.

[Roman Totale]

I did a minimal amount of looking into this, and it looks like there's a boycott group on Steam who object as follows:

Valve taking money from modders (75%!)
No system in place to stop stolen mods
No system in place to limit low-effort mods
Overpriced "micro"transactions.
No guarantee that the mod will be patched if an update happens.
Modders lose rights to their mod after uploading.
24 hour return policy which does nothing to ensure that a mod is compatible. Errors may only become evident days after "purchase."
Not even a minimum guarantee of Quality Assurance. At least developer-produced DLC is expected to have gone through QA.

[Dog Pants]

All fairly valid points really.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Theory: Great.
Execution: Shite.

A curated set of mods with some level of support for a reasonable fee? oh fuck yes.

Letting any cupcake charge £100 for some basic INI fettling and giving it a shiny page? Nope.

[buzzmong]

This is a bad idea. I can see why people might think it's a good idea, but it's not. It'll either kill modding as good stuff is put behind a paywall, or it won't do anything as people will refuse to pay for mods.

Quite frankly, Valve themselves have already proven that good mods can be made offical with the likes of CS, TF2, Garry's Mod, Stanley Parable etc. Not need to let amateur teams sell their wares without proving their quality first.

[friznit]

Charging for mods is nothing new - MS Flight Sim has had paid mods for years. That dude from Maxis who got made redundant was taking payment in advance to make content for Cities Skylines. But the way Steam have implemented it is new, and it's a trainwreck. By far the biggest criticism is that only a small percentage actually goes to the mod maker, which belies the premise that they're doing this to support modders.

I am the Product Owner for a large and popular mod in ArmA3. Of course I would be delighted if people voluntarily donated to support our server and development costs but I would never countenance going commercial and sure as hell not going to put it on Steam.

[Dog Pants]

Is it a horse genitalia mod?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

The Plot Thickens.



Looks like it's not valve who set the cut, but the publisher of the game (in this case, Bethesda), Obviously there'll be whatever percentage goes to valve, but such is life.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Well, that lasted less time than a premature ejaculator at a strip club, there's some rumours of a pay what you want donation system type thing floating around, but nothing solid.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/the-elder-scrol ... m-workshop