Steam Workshop: Now get paid for your mod creations on Steam

[Artorias]

I don't necessarily oppose modders getting paid, I think if someone creates something of quality like say Falskaar(which is still free btw) they should be given the option to charge a nominal price or collect an optional donation. Though the % cut Valve and said developers take is ludicrous.

I think what people should also realize is modders aren't saints either, look at how fast some decided put a price tag on their previously free version and introduce free versions with pop-ups to entice you to buy full.

A large segment enjoy creating things as hobby, but there are so many creators that backtracked the second they could get paid. Mind you they're in for a shock when they realize most people aren't going to buy re-skins or simple stat changes.

Valve has taken major misstep here, they thought people would rationalize the short term failings and see their long term vision of having "celebrity modders" creating fantastic work for money.

I don't know how many believe in that vision, its certainly going to be hard for them to change the mindset of people who have had access to free mods for decades.

 

[werepossum]

While I support paid mods in general, I think there should be a minimum level. If your mod is a new weapon or armor, I don't see that it deserves to be a paid mod. On the other hand, a mod such as Project Brazil for Fallout New Vegas or AWOP in finished form is certainly worthy of being a paid mod. All in all I would be a lot more comfortable if Bethesda evaluated and priced these mods rather than merely soaking in extra revenue. I'd also be more comfortable if it started clean with the next games. There has been so much collaborative effort in the existing games that working out who exactly owns what is going to be a cluster.

 

[RockinZ28]

So how does this effect mods on websites like nexusmods?

Are these paid mods exclusive to Steam? Did the creators remove their mods from all free hosters and then put them up for sale on Steam?

I've been playing Fallout 3 GOTY which I own on Steam, but I downloaded all the mods from the Nexus website, and use the Nexus Mod Manager to run it. The game .exe doesn't even launch through Steam.

I played through the Skyrim vanilla when it first came out, but purchased the Legendary ed. for cheap during a sale. Was hoping to play through that sometime all modded out. Sure won't be if I'm forced to pay more to do so.

 

[Subyman]

I think something like the Patreon system would be better like what one modder did in Cities: Skylines that worked out well for him. My fear is that the paid model completely changes the modding community. I've been using mods for over a decade and they have always been community-driven and done for fun.

I've had a blast going crazy with mods in Cities: Skylines, but if they start to cost 99 cents per subscribe then I wouldn't participate. Money always messes up a fun time

I think the publisher dipping their nose into what once was a free and open community-driven facet of gaming is what bothers me the most.

 

[norseamd]

Whole thing reminds me of the quote by activision CEO bobby kotick about how he wishes he could sell games for more than $60. Certainly they've all come up with some ideas since then

Funny because I think them selling full complete games for $80 due to inflation and increased game technology work would make far more sense and have far less ethical problems than locking away base game content in day 1 DLC and now waiting for mods to do the same.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Funny because I got lambasted just a few days ago for bringing attention to the fact that Valve was probably interested in forcing users to pay more cash to Valve just to use certain features of the Steam platform.

That's because your arguments over that were bad and then you claimed people were doing what you yourself were actually doing.

No, that's not terrible, and it's why donating directly to the modders is a much better option (well, not better for Bethesda and Valve). The really insidious thing here, these modders in essence become contractual developers without any of the employment benefits and shouldering the entire liability for their work. For 25 cents on the dollar. Valve is at least handling promotion and distribution (but not policing, that remains an unpaid community effort, which is hugely ironic given the subject here). Bethesda just sits back and counts their extra money. This whole endeavor wrecks what makes modding work. Maybe that was the plan.




I dunno, just looking at the Skyrim reviews this morning, this might have some legs.

They have the option of applying a "pay what you want" level, so that takes care of that issue (or you could donate directly to them, it's not like this prevents that; but either way accessing the mods people are being monetized somehow as it just plain would not be worth it for a company to host all these mods, but people act like that's not the case at all and Valve is suddenly muscling in to do that when it was already occurring via the Nexus site via ads and premium services). It should be up to the creator if they want to set a fixed price or let people decide. Not only that but *gasp* they can even keep it as being free, so if they want to they can. And then the community can react as they want to as well. They still have that freedom, and they even still have the freedom to not even use Steam (at least for Skyrim mods).

I agree, I would strongly prefer mod makers use a donation type of setup, but right now that is possible through Steam (although with the current financial sharing I'd definitely support donating directly to the modders).

The real problem arises from the inconsistency in the modding and gaming community at large. You've got the trolls looking to take credit (or in this case profit) from other people's works, and then you've got ones that use assets from other people and then disputes over monetizing it. That stuff really is not Valve's fault (but they're getting blamed for it because of how they're having to try and handle it, which I actually don't take issue with that criticism right now as I don't think they did proper evaluation) and is actually a problem in the community and I think it's actually the biggest issue (and it's been an issue even with mods being free).

I do think the 25% is ridiculous (I absolutely could accept people thinking it should be the total opposite so the modders getting 75% if not more).

And definitely there are other issues that could arise (locking down mods) so I'm not giving Valve a free pass on this stuff, but I think people need to calm down, backup their claims (and not spend money on mods) and voice their concerns to Bethesda, Valve, and when necessary modders.

I kinda laugh at people saying Gabe is being condescending, he's always been a major a-hole like that (but people seemed to like that about him which I never understood, just like I've never understood the fervent praising of Valve in general, even if they've been better than the typical developer/publisher).

 

[norseamd]

That's because your arguments over that were bad and then you claimed people were doing what you yourself were actually doing.

Nope.

 

[Subyman]

Funny because I think them selling full complete games for $80 due to inflation and increased game technology work would make far more sense and have far less ethical problems than locking away base game content in day 1 DLC and now waiting for mods to do the same.

Its all driven by the consumer. Not many games can even stay at $60 for more than a month these days, even big AAA games. GTA5 for PC even had preorder specials of $45. I can go to greenmangaming right now and buy it for 23% off. If they jacked the price to $80 then it'd sit on shelves.

I think DLC is a decent way to extract the money needed to develop these large games at the increasing development expenses. I tend to not reward what I find to be sleazy business models such as pay-for consumables, locked day-one content, and such. Real content is fine with me though, like Bioshock's expansions or Destiny's add ons.

 

[waggy]

Yep, it's amazing how far people bend over for this company because "Half-Life 2" is great" and "Steam gives me trading cards".

I predict the next step is DRM'ing the mods and the mod system itself. Otherwise it would be too easy for people to extract the necessary files from the paid mods, and just distribute them for free.

Imagine that: DRM in mods. This is what it's going to come to. Now go back to 2004 when the Steam abomination was first released and see who could've predicted it.

This the problem with monopolies, and at this stage Valve has virtually a monopoly on gaming digital distribution. It's time for some anti-trust action.

As for Skyrim, it's already slipped from overwhelmingly positive to very positive. Assuming Valve don't censor things, the game will be downvoted to oblivion (pardon the pun).

Thats what i figure will happen. they will say something to the effect only "trusted" mods will be allowed to be played on skyrim and the only place to get them is steam.

 

[norseamd]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8

 

[cmdrdredd]

Here be Micro-transactions.

Yeah, I'm not paying for mods. Especially not for a 3 year old game. I'll just go to Nexus instead.

This. If I want a mod I'm going to find it free.

 

[norseamd]

You know what has given the most problems out of anything with playing Skyrim with mods?

The fact that I have to guess how to make hundreds of mods work together because it seems everyone who makes mods is paranoid about not getting their name plastered over everything.

Why can the modding community not come together and start releasing mod combinations that are fully integrated and patched to work well together without causing the community to have to sit though hundreds of hours organizing everything in NMM or MO and putting every mod through LOOT and TES5 Edit and then still finding thousands of bugs.

 

[Newbian]

So how does this effect mods on websites like nexusmods?

I am waiting for bethesda to force such sites to remove free mods if they go full force to making free money. :biggrin:

 

[cmdrdredd]

Thinking about it, I hope Microsoft has a kick ass Windows Games store in mind for Windows 10 and games are released through there instead of steam or in addition to. Just because it'll put more pressure on Gabe to not be such a douche.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I am waiting for bethesda to force such sites to remove free mods if they go full force to making free money. :biggrin:

How can you force people to stop making their work free?

 

[norseamd]

I am waiting for bethesda to force such sites to remove free mods if they go full force to making free money.

How?

DMCA and IP laws?

 

[ImpulsE69]

How can you force people to stop making their work free?

Happens all the time, how do you not know this? Just ask Nintendo or Fox.

 

[norseamd]

Thinking about it, I hope Microsoft has a kick ass Windows Games store in mind for Windows 10 and games are released through there instead of steam or in addition to. Just because it'll put more pressure on Gabe to not be such a douche.

Microsoft has a bad reputation but they have traditionally not been as in your face bullcrap bastards as some companies like EA and AT&T and Comcast and Monsanto and crap.

They can be quite innovative and make some good products on their good days and they can sometimes be quite competitive with smaller companies. Bill Gates is not just some dumb chump who has some MBA and some networking cred.

That statement is relative as they have done quite a lot of bad crap however.

 

[Newbian]

How can you force people to stop making their work free?

They go after the sites that host the free versions with legal threats as they have the ability to.

 

[Subyman]

You know what has given the most problems out of anything with playing Skyrim with mods?

The fact that I have to guess how to make hundreds of mods work together because it seems everyone who makes mods is paranoid about not getting their name plastered over everything.

Why can the modding community not come together and start releasing mod combinations that are fully integrated and patched to work well together without causing the community to have to sit though hundreds of hours organizing everything in NMM or MO and putting every mod through LOOT and TES5 Edit and then still finding thousands of bugs.

Maybe if they were paid...

 

[werepossum]

Its all driven by the consumer. Not many games can even stay at $60 for more than a month these days, even big AAA games. GTA5 for PC even had preorder specials of $45. I can go to greenmangaming right now and buy it for 23% off. If they jacked the price to $80 then it'd sit on shelves.

I think DLC is a decent way to extract the money needed to develop these large games at the increasing development expenses. I tend to not reward what I find to be sleazy business models such as pay-for consumables, locked day-one content, and such. Real content is fine with me though, like Bioshock's expansions or Destiny's add ons.

Yeah, I'm tickled pink to buy expansions for games with lots of content, like Fallout 3 or New Vegas. On the other hand, buying an expansion for the latest 5 hour COD cash cow ain't happening.

 

[XavierMace]

Honestly, PC Gamers have done as much to kill modding as Valve has. Do I think Valve is taking more than their fair share? Yeah, probably. But as a modder, 30% of all the sales is more than the $0 I make for my efforts now.

As this thread shows, PC Gamers have some how adopted the attitude that they are entitled to high quality mods that work flawlessly in every scenario. I mean, seriously, do you guys realize what you're expecting? Let's look at it from the mod creators perspective for a second here. We'll use Skyrim as an example.

I decide I like Skyrim, but the UI just doesn't work for me. So I decide I'm going to see if I can fix it. I'm a code guy though, so I'm going to get my artist buddy to help. Obviously, there's no documentation on this sort of thing so we're flying by the seat of our pants. After two months worth of weekends, we got our new UI. We think it's awesome and have seen other people complaining the original UI sucks so we decide to upload our mod to Nexus. People like it, but complain it doesn't work with mod X or mod Y.

Well, we weren't using those but think it's cool that people like our mod so we download X and Y and spend weeks making it work with those. Then people ask if we can make it work with mod Z and maybe add feature A. You also have angry messages from people about the color choices of the UI and that it's not available in their language, etc.

This goes on until the end of time. Or at least until people stop playing the game. How much time would YOU invest into making your mod work for other people in every situation without any sort of compensation? Do you guys realize some of these mods have hundreds or even thousands of man hours into their development? A lot of these mods aren't things that people just sat down one night and knocked out. Then people have the audacity to complain that it doesn't meet their expectations?

Between the attitudes of gamer's and the game companies trend of making modding harder and harder to do, the community has been dying off all by itself. Right now, I give this 50/50 odds on either reviving the community or being the final straw.

And the "they could take donations then" idea is laughable. Many of the large scale mods have donations requests either in the installer or in the read me. I would love to know the actual percentage of mod users that donate. I'd guess 1%.

 

[Subyman]

Honestly, PC Gamers have done as much to kill modding as Valve has. Do I think Valve is taking more than their fair share? Yeah, probably. But as a modder, 30% of all the sales is more than the $0 I make for my efforts now.

As this thread shows, PC Gamers have some how adopted the attitude that they are entitled to high quality mods that work flawlessly in every scenario. I mean, seriously, do you guys realize what you're expecting? Let's look at it from the mod creators perspective for a second here. We'll use Skyrim as an example.

I decide I like Skyrim, but the UI just doesn't work for me. So I decide I'm going to see if I can fix it. I'm a code guy though, so I'm going to get my artist buddy to help. Obviously, there's no documentation on this sort of thing so we're flying by the seat of our pants. After two months worth of weekends, we got our new UI. We think it's awesome and have seen other people complaining the original UI sucks so we decide to upload our mod to Nexus. People like it, but complain it doesn't work with mod X or mod Y.

Well, we weren't using those but think it's cool that people like our mod so we download X and Y and spend weeks making it work with those. Then people ask if we can make it work with mod Z and maybe add feature A. You also have angry messages from people about the color choices of the UI and that it's not available in their language, etc.

This goes on until the end of time. Or at least until people stop playing the game. How much time would YOU invest into making your mod work for other people in every situation without any sort of compensation? Do you guys realize some of these mods have hundreds or even thousands of man hours into their development? A lot of these mods aren't things that people just sat down one night and knocked out. Then people have the audacity to complain that it doesn't meet their expectations?

Between the attitudes of gamer's and the game companies trend of making modding harder and harder to do, the community has been dying off all by itself. Right now, I give this 50/50 odds on either reviving the community or being the final straw.

And the "they could take donations then" idea is laughable. Many of the large scale mods have donations requests either in the installer or in the read me. I would love to know the actual percentage of mod users that donate. I'd guess 1%.

You must have enjoyed some portion of the process to do it for nothing. If you get compensated then that is simply icing on the cake, however it will disrupt how many people actually use your mod. So, say you have 100k downloads right now with 95k people happy with your contribution to the community. You've enriched 95k people's experience while also enjoying the hobby.

Now say you want to charge 99 cents. I can guarantee that you would only get a few thousand downloads. It happens on the app store all the time. Free? Sure! 99 cents? Nah.

Those 100's of hours you spent doing your hobby isn't worth the few hundred dollars you'd get out of the system and you've just limited how many people your mod has reached. The compensation certainly isn't enough to make the hobby a job nor will it increase your desire to patch the mod. So you have to ask yourself, is getting a few hundred dollars worth limiting the exposure your mod receives?

From what I have experienced, the biggest rush from modding and even open source is seeing the work go live and how it impacts a large number of people. It really isn't about the money. When it does become about the money, well, then that's just business and it changes the community completely. Donations are a great middle ground IMO, but the days of hobbyist modders getting a thrill from impacting and enhancing the gaming experience for fellow enthusiasts by fostering open and free mods seems to be numbered. That we can certainly agree on.

I hope we don't see a rush of sleazy junk like SEO, and a "gold rush" of garbage littering the mod community. Cities: Skylines was a fantastic modding experience for both modders and the community. It rekindled my enjoyment of mods. So to see the possible demise of such a wonderful resurgence would be very sad to see.

 

[XavierMace]

That was my point. Yeah, the initial mod was done for fun. For example myself and a friend of mine spent a lot of time back in the day making BF2 mods. One of the things we did was make "super claymores". These would clear out an entire street on Karkand but couldn't be resupplied. Do I expect any compensation for that? No, it was done for my enjoyment. If other people enjoy that too, great. But since I'm doing it for fun, that would be the end of my story.

Gamers no longer accept that. They, as you can see from some of the previous posts, expect mods to be supported as well or even better than the actual game. Look at the backlash against SkyUI for going paid for FUTURE versions.

Hobbyist modders produce hobbyist results. Personally, I have no problem with that. But most people don't want hobbyist mods any more. They expect professional mods. They want patches, they want compatibility, they want more features.

Regarding the money vs exposure aspect. I don't know anybody who does modding expecting to make it their job. However, most of the modders I know are in low income brackets for one reason or another. Every little bit helps for them and frankly, yes it would increase their desire to patch the mod. There's mods out there being supported by authors who don't even play the game any more but still go to the effort of update the mod for players who still use it. In regards to exposure, personally, if I'm doing this purely for fun, I couldn't care less about exposure. I did it for fun, who cares if other people see it. If I care about exposure, then obviously I have an interest beside just "fun" in it.

 

[norseamd]

As this thread shows, PC Gamers have some how adopted the attitude that they are entitled to high quality mods that work flawlessly in every scenario. I mean, seriously, do you guys realize what you're expecting? Let's look at it from the mod creators perspective for a second here. We'll use Skyrim as an example.

DERP!

You realize that those modders who put all that time and calories into producing mods are the same ones who are so mad at Valve for potentially ruining modding with capitalism.

This is ignorant and crony corruption Westernism 101.