Steam now has Paywall mods

[Shadow_Arms]

a proper thread about this would be better

 

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent

 

also someone posted this

 

[Rosbjerg]

Its disgusting imho, I would gladly support donations etc, but this will stiffle the open source and freedom of the modding community. Reallh hate it and very dissapointed in this development.

[Gorgon]

So this is going to be what finally kills off the skyrim modding comunity. Well it's been a hell of a ride.

[LadyCrimson]

Its disgusting imho, I would gladly support donations etc, but this will stiffle the open source and freedom of the modding community. Reallh hate it and very dissapointed in this development.

I don't like it myself, but I don't really see how it stifles open source, it's supposedly up to the creator of the mod whether they want to make it free, donation, or paid? And if someone wants to mod, they can get the same tools if they don't like a price?

 

It does stifle the ability of the player to *use* any mod in their game, if/when some modders get greedy. But the open source/freedom of the modders? Maybe the former is only what you meant? (in which case I do agree).

[Gorgon]

Borrowing off eachother's assets, using someone else's code with permission. It's all going to end sooner or later with the introduction of a profit motivation. People are going to get more careful and jealous with their work and fewer people are going to do anything just for kicks. 

[Malcador]

Might discourage people from going for mods. Also, when people pay for something they expect different things versus when they just get a free mod - might be a headache for mod makers to have to deal with support of the mod, anyway.

 

Soon people will be pirating mods

[Tigranes]

 

Its disgusting imho, I would gladly support donations etc, but this will stiffle the open source and freedom of the modding community. Reallh hate it and very dissapointed in this development.

I don't like it myself, but I don't really see how it stifles open source, it's supposedly up to the creator of the mod whether they want to make it free, donation, or paid? And if someone wants to mod, they can get the same tools if they don't like a price?

 

It does stifle the ability of the player to *use* any mod in their game, if/when some modders get greedy. But the open source/freedom of the modders? Maybe the former is only what you meant? (in which case I do agree).

 

 

It's very naive and short-sighted to say "well people have a choice". People always have a choice. What matters is what kinds of choices are offered to them and how those choices are weighted. 

 

In principle there's nothing wrong with some modders wanting to be paid for their hard work, but I expect this will further pseudo-professionalise the modding community. It will accelerate the end of the days when modders were purely enthusiastic amateurs, whose work might often have been incomplete, iterative and clumsy but this very fact encouraged them to keep in close and amiable contact with the fans. This is part of a shift where we're going to see more modders let money drive their decision-making, where fans increasingly treat modders like paid service providers (which they are now), where modders fight each other over profit sharing and other monetary issues, and so on. 

 

I doubt this will actually increase the quality or diversity of mods in any way. You never really had that problem where would-be modders stopped modding because they weren't getting $0.99 a pop, and you're not going to have more than a few people try to earn a living off this. What it does change is make the community more adversarial and entitled (even more than it already has become); introduce even more micropayments into gaming so that your gaming life just becomes one continuous cycle of 'want something? pay for it right now', and other negative changes.

[HoonDing]

Console master race wins again.

[LadyCrimson]

@Tig - I didn't say "people have a choice" I said letting your mods be free/available to all for free or not was the modder choice.

 

Also, while I said tools may be available for "everyone" of course that = more work for the player who doesn't wish to spend time modding themselves (eg, they just want to download one someone else has made).  Work they probably wouldn't do. So yes, while there is a choice, it's not necessarily a choice going to be used.

 

Your point is valid enough, that's the way monetizing services/products tends to fly and yes it always sucks when one is used to something being free. And I don't like that Steam is encouraging it. But I guess I'm one of those evil people who doesn't see anything wrong with it on a moralistic level. *shrug*

[Tigranes]

Sorry, that was a bit disingenuous. The more precise point would be that Steam endorsing paid mods this way changes the name of the game for all modders and fans in the future - since before then, most people would have considered charging / paying for mods suspicious, etc.

[Gorgon]

Traditionally it's where would be indie developers get their feet wet. Do you really want to be paying for the efforts of people who are very much still learning everything. Donations are fine of course, but. I dunno. Why can't we just have this one thing to ourselves outside of market forces and considerations. 

 

Not an unfair objection I think. 

[LadyCrimson]

^ This is (imo) the danger of putting too much reliance on one or a few (digital) distribution platforms. They end up with too much power/influence. A potential price that sometimes occurs when people favor convenience over all.

 

Which is why I've never been fond of Steam, even as I now use it because it's sometimes the only choice if I want to play certain games. (edit - by only choice I mean if there's no non-digital choice and Steam is the platform I have/use for those cases).

[Rosbjerg]

And so we turn to GOG, hopefully it'll be at least 6 years until they succumb to the dark side.

[LadyCrimson]

And so we turn to GOG, hopefully it'll be at least 6 years until they succumb to the dark side.

GoG still has the issue that they're hardly the place for mainstream/new titles. Yet.

But yeah...I don't think GoG's vaunted rep. status is going to last all that much longer, personally. Not if they're interested in expanding/being more relevant outside of old/ancient and smaller indie titles, at any rate. 

[Zoraptor]

Embrace

Extend

Extinguish Monetise

 

Mr Newell learned well the lessons of Bill Gates III. Steam Workshop has always been a cynical attempt to subsume the PC modding scene into Valve's closed steam ecosystem via leveraging market dominance, same as they've tried for PC gaming in general. For people who are 'just fans really' and 'nice guys who love PC gaming' they sure as asterisks love to nickel and dime the people they love.

 

Plus the nexus people (hardly unbiased, to be sure, but probably should know) are suggesting the usual 70/30 split is reversed, with Valve/ Beth getting 75% and the mod creator 25%. Now awaiting the cease and desists against anyone refusing monetisation, my bet is... 2 years, max, before someone tries it.

 

Ceterum censeo Steam delendam esse, as my good bud Marcus Porcius would say.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Zoraptor

[Nonek]

I would gladly donate (and have) for a few mods i've used, sometimes they totally eclipse and better the original game, but I can also see a legion of problems inherent in this, not to mention I hardly ever use Steam. For instance will modders be forced to change content that Steam or the publishers don't find agreeable? Or will their mods simply be booted? Well whatever I hope the modmakers don't end up being the fall guys in this.

 

Edit: Would the BG:EE's now be judged as a mod, from what i've read it offers less than my last few runthroughs of a modded BG 1 & 2?

 

Edit 2: Will this incentivise developers to not finish their games? We have all probably downloaded unofficial bugfixes and such for near unfinished games, will we see a rise in this behaviour from developers and publishers knowing that modders will fix it? Some would say Bethesda already do this.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Nonek

[bonarbill]

I don't see the problem.  I'll still get my mods for free at the Nexus.

[Bartimaeus]

Comment retracted (by myself a few seconds after posting). Delete if you desire, o' mods! (P.S. In case it matters, it was just a stupid half-joke comment that I realized may not have been completely on point immediately after hitting post. Sorry!)

Edited April 24, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Gizmo]

Q. Do I need to provide bank information even though I don’t want to receive revenue share on the item(s)?

A. Yes, you will need to provide valid bank information regardless of whether your item is a paid item or a free item.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoppaymentinfofaq/#Banking_Information

[Bryy]

And yet, people look at me like I'm crazy when I say Source 2 being an instant pipeline to Steam is a VERY BAD IDEA.

[Lexx]

This is how you sell your soul.

[Bryy]

This is how you sell your soul.

You're assuming modders are being forced to sell their wares.

[Meshugger]

Well, it's been a fun ride. Thank you for your participation everyone!

 

Zooraptor is right, within a smaller timeframe we will see the rise of mod-celebrities making some nice amount of dough (eventhough the ridicolous ratio of only 25%) suing each other with seize and desist orders, popular mods getting unexplicitly shut down down and so on. Later, the business models will adapt to the new situation for the examples above, where budgets will be reflected on that.

 

Nexus will completely collapse due to said drama.

[Zoraptor]

Can't see anything positive out of this at all. Even the thought of modders getting (often deserved) money is pretty much completely subsumed by those who have done no work getting 75%. Facts seem to be:

• 25% cut for producer, rest goes to Valve/ Publisher. Hope you enjoy your serfdom, creative types.
• No payout until you get $100 ($400 gross), don't make that and steam keeps it. From a company that will cheerfully take their cut of that 7c trading card you've just sold
• Bank details required for everyone
• Valve employees apparently advising people to monetise other people's free work (!) by changing them slightly (!). If true that is just plain monumental crappiness and they deserve a boot to the gonads, at bare minimum.
• In those cases disputes will be 'resolved' by an interested party, ie valve, investigating DMCA claims where they benefit if favouring paid mods.
• per above, actively encourages people to steal other people's work
• Encourages people to remove mods from nexus and put them behind steam's paywall
• Encourages even further a 'modders will fix it' attitude. Bethesda giving you a crap UI? Here's a good one for $10, $5 of which goes to... Bethesda, the people who gave you that crap UI in the first place plus $2.50 to the people who made it possible to charge for it
• Will get the drm/ pirating cycles applied to mods of all things

Having said that, I suspect we may well get some dialling back as PR- upping the cut to 33% or something. Offer people something terrible to see if you can get away with it then rescind a few things so the slightly less horrible alternative suddenly seems a lot more reasonable.

[Bryy]

Can't see anything positive out of this at all. Even the thought of modders getting (often deserved) money is pretty much completely subsumed by those who have done no work getting 75%. Facts seem to be:

• 25% cut for producer, rest goes to Valve/ Publisher. Hope you enjoy your serfdom, creative types.
• No payout until you get $100 ($400 gross), don't make that and steam keeps it. From a company that will cheerfully take their cut of that 7c trading card you've just sold
• Bank details required for everyone
• Valve employees apparently advising people to monetise other people's free work (!) by changing them slightly (!). If true that is just plain monumental crappiness and they deserve a boot to the gonads, at bare minimum.

To be fair, the TF2 store has put people through college.