There’s a lot of negativity here, and a lot of it is pretty justified. But I don’t hate the idea of paid mods. Like if there’s a way for authors like the ones the made Enderal or other really big mods to make some money off of it that’s really great. Is Bethesda going to be fair about them? Probably not. Is Bethesda going to be competent with the system? Probably as competent as they are at anything else (derogatory).
But at least it’s a way that you can make some money back for your work where you don’t have to worry about chargebacks from trolls costing you more than the donations they were originally giving you. And this can be a pretty big problem for donation driven works. Someone donates $1, 200 times. Then charges them all back. Paypal charges you $15 processing fee for each chargeback. And you can contest it but who needs that? If Bethesda can be the entity brokering all of it, then they are the ones that take the chargeback risk.
So in theory, I don’t hate it. But it will all depend on the implementation and competency of Bethesda (not looking good here).
My problem with it last time around, which was not the problem most people took with it, was how much of a cut Valve and Bethesda took before the mod maker saw any of that money. It's Valve's store and Bethesda's IP, sure, but if Bethesda was going to take that much of a cut, they should at least be spending some of that money on policing the bad actors in the paid mod scene to make sure it's all legit so that they earn their cut.
and they still dont seem to be interested in offering the full toolchain for the engine, including official mesh and anim import/export plus documentation for the formats
Also if I pay for a mod and they release a patch that breaks it (seems unlikely but we’ve already gotten about two or three more patches than I expected), I would expect them to fix the mod or pay the creator to do so.
Oh and I would expect them to magically resolve conflicts between paid mods.
If a free mod breaks and never gets fixed, or a free mod breaks another mod, fair I have no expectations there. But once I fork out money that’s not a mod, that’s a product now. And if Bethesda is taking my money, they are responsible for the product.
As long as you can easily turn individual mods on and off, I personally wouldn't have the expectation that one mod must not break another mod. I also don't mod much, but that's why I see potential in paid mods. What's out there the way things are now usually doesn't float my boat, and I'd like to see what we get when people can support themselves in producing mods.
If you’re looking for monitary returns, make a game not a mod. Otherwise you’re building your foundation on sand and owe the lack of monitary return on nothing but your own choices. Having Bethesda broker this is just a horrible idea and will lead to a cesspool of fraud, exploit, and death to genuine creative love works and passion projects. Not everything need be made for profit, and often it’s better for it.
mods made by more than a few people are impossible to monetise with this scheme, way too many creators to pay so you would make next to nothing over just making it free and putting it in your resume
and then we have bethesdas aversion to new dialog (and localising it) in these official mods, which really kills the vibe in many of them
That is exactly the point. “Hmmm, maybe it’s fine if some high quality mods can make some money” no! This is “it’s just cosmetics” all over again. Give them a finger, they’ll be taking the arm and suing you for the other one soon. Don’t! Just don’t! If you want creators to make money, donate.
I think Flight Simulator has paid mods and I’ve seen ambivalent or slightly positive opinions of it. It is definitely doable and is actually a good idea, but something about Bethesda and their way of doing it always seems shady.
In theory I’m not entirely against the idea of paid mods. I don’t necessarily buy that mods are more “pure” if no one is able to make money from them. And I do like the idea that people might invest more resources in mods than if they are effectively donating their time to the projects.
That said, things can definitely get complicated quickly once you start providing financial incentives. I think it’s smart to require mod makers to go through an approval process rather than just make it open.
Maybe, but people’s egos alone are enough to causing issues in the mod community, I’m not sure paid mods are necessarily going to make this significantly worse.
One or two egotistical modders don’t ruin the entire community unless those are the only modders in said community.
Greed ruins everything, though.
Not only would once free mods suddenly have a price tag, you’re gonna get a lot of bullshit shovelware mods flooding the scene trying to capitalize on the market.
Paid mods is almost never a good thing for the game itself.
Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game. Good game studios look at what’s popular and either pull those features into the base game, or work with the modder to do the same.
Adding a paid mod system changes that cooperative relationship into an adversarial one, where modders see their revenue stream attacked by the game maker.
I have an example, most of DCS World’s content is made by external people, each “mod” that adds a new aircraft priced at full game price, and is actually worth the money.
Bohemia is trying to do something similar to Arma, with some community mods being sold as essentially DLCs.
I can’t say I don’t like the model, if the content is big enough. No microtransaction crap though like the first iteration of paid Skyrim mods. Those sucked.
There was initial paid mod attempt that they walked back due to player outcry, not because the paid mods themselves caused any problems. Which doesn’t really work as an example of “paid mods are almost never a good thing for the game itself”.
The Creation Club has been around for years, so technically speaking “paid mods” have been around in Skyrim for a while. Which maybe suggests that paid mods aren’t going to cause problems if they’ve been in place for this long?
If you want examples of games where the situation with mods is much worse than it is for Skyrim, you could look at literally any other game that exists. For one indication of that, if you look at the front page of nexusmods.com right now it appears to list the games it covers in order of mod files downloaded. Skyrim is #1 (SE) and #2 (LE) on the list. The next three are other Bethesda games. Skyrim Special Edition is ahead of the first non-Bethesda game on the list by an order of magnitude. You will not find a game anywhere else offering anything like the quantity, quality, and diversity of mods that Skyrim has, and this is a large part of the reason it ranks among the best-selling games of all time.
They're mad to try and mess with the model that has proven itself more successful than anything else for more than a decade.
In addition, mods always end up in a situation where someone’s work was stolen, which no one cares about when it’s free. Everyone’s just using everyone else’s stuff because it’s all working to make a better ecosystem
That all changes when people get paid, justifiably
In addition, mods always end up in a situation where someone’s work was stolen, which no one cares about when it’s free. Everyone’s just using everyone else’s stuff because it’s all working to make a better ecosystem
<span style="color:#323232;">Creations can range anywhere from simple cosmetics or gameplay tweaks to entire new quests and encounters - it's up to what you can conjure! Our internal document available to Verified Creators has some specifics, but in general:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Creations must be standalone, so it cannot depend on other community releases, free or paid.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Creations must be all-new to qualify for release. You cannot re-purpose older releases – or work by other authors, unless contracted.
</span>
They’ve had those before and it hasn’t worked. Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’ve never seen an official supported modding marketplace exist without a significant number of free mods being sold as paid by not the original developer
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’ve never seen an official supported modding marketplace exist without a significant number of free mods being sold as paid by not the original developer
The only paid mods that Skyrim has are the ones for Creation Club, and I haven’t heard of people getting through the approval process with stolen work.
reference: every single marketplace that lets anyone upload things that in some way drives revenue back, from app stores, to youtube, to music platforms.
Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game
Emphasis on “perceived”. In my experience, the vast majority of mods are for things that I would never have asked for or expected from the developer.
Like Thomas the Tank Engine being everywhere. Or the other day I visited a friend and he was playing Civ 6 as Luigi from Mario. Or adding guns to Skyrim. Or adding tons of sexual content.
Should that content just not exist (licensing issues aside)? While I’m grateful to the noble people making and giving away mods for free, if I could start a decent side gig with it I might start making mods myself.
I can’t imagine myself ever buying a mod, but it seems like opening the platform up to allow creators to monetize is better than closing the platform entirely, or relying on the generosity of a few enthusiasts. Seems like this closes a gap on the spectrum from making your own indie game, getting a job as a developer, or using some DIY creator like Dreams.
Bethesda’s goal, as usual, is rent-seeking. They can’t penetrate more markets, so they need to make new ones, and what better way to do this then to hire what amounts to contractors doing gig work. They don’t even have to pay them except in commission, which is a really scummy thing to do.
Some people see this as a way for mod-makers to make money, but mod-makers already have those! Every mod I’ve seen and every modder I’ve talked to has a donation link you can send money to, and the ones who didn’t had organizations and charities you could send your money to instead.
It’s not exactly that, yes they want to get fees/rent that I agree, but this at least the current idea is not a walled garden, devs can decide not put it in there, or put it there but free. Of course if that changes in the future, and that might be the plan, then that’s another topic.
Every mod I’ve seen and every modder I’ve talked to has a donation link you can send money to, and the ones who didn’t had organizations and charities you could send your money to instead.
Yeah but they cannot enforce it or totally make it a paid mod. A Bethesda implementation would be more enforceable, well maybe not so much on PC, due to piracy… but at least on consoles. So if somebody said, look this is good content I am not giving it for free, they cannot currently do, (in part maybe due to EULAs too… not sure, but not just that).
It is exclusively about money for Bethesda. You can tell by looking at the last time they implemented paid mods, where they took a 25% cut for doing nothing. They offered no quality control, no resources, and boy howdy were a lot of paid mods stolen content, but they didn’t care because they wanted that money.
As to the modders, the only offer Bethesda can give is a wider customer base, but the assumption that you will make more money offering your mod for a price isn’t founded. We will see a large amount of shitty mods clogging the store using asset flips to maximize returns, because that’s what makes big money on mobile right now. Mod quality isn’t going to be enhanced by this: Mods will remain the same. You will just more of the bad ones. $99 horse dicks, anyone?
I prefer donations to the modders. Not paying 30% of it to steam for doing… Nothing much. And also being forced to pay for a mod.
Modding made so many mediocre games fantastic. The community is always a blast. People doing it for the “fame” or just for fun, and also getting occasional donations as a heartfelt “thank you” as a cherry on top.
I can’t imagine paid mods to do anything good for the scene. When does money ever…
On a positive note the incompetent morons trying to harass this dev have now blown this game up a fair bit more than it would’ve gotten otherwise, so hopefully she’ll make enough money to be able to comfortably ignore the morons.
I’m going to look into it, not sure if I’ll buy or not but it certainly seems like an interesting game.
steamcommunity.com
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