Steam Workshop now lets people put prices on mods.

It's beyond me why you would assume that this will lead to more DRM.
I don't think modders like drm. If I were to make a "pay for it" mod I would not want to share it together with a DRM system. DRM is evil, as DRM usually happens to make modding a LOT harder, so you won't find many modders who like it.

For creative works the best thing that can possibly happen is that all people are allowed to add their own ideas in any way they want and share them, as that will lead to the most cool stuff being created and we all like cool stuff.
Putting in some money to encourage more people to do so is another plus on top of that.

Some people might try to abuse the system and just sell exact copies of the work of others, but in such a case users will quickly shitstorm them to death and valve hopefully will take down mods that don't add value of their own.

Yes there are laws that hurt this kind of free creation of creative work in most countries and valve will have to deal with them, though imho that is more an issue of laws being influenced by groups that are making money from "monetizing rights on ideas".

And what is bad about horse armor DLCs? I mean if people buy them fine. If people don't buy them fine as well. Nobody gets hurt because of that.

There is a limit to how much a person is willing to do for a mod if they know they cant get money for it. The hope I would have about introducing a mod market is that it potentially will attract people to make very high quality mods to earn money from them. Because it is very likely that to actually earn substantial amounts of money you will need to make a pretty good mod. People don't pay for horse armors.... well maybe they do, in that case I should make a few horse armors myself. Capitalism is all about abusing people who buy horse armors.

Saying that you don't want modders to ask for money on their work basically means you are locking out a lot of "bigger" modding concepts that are unreasonable to do if you can't ask for money for them. So you apparently don't want people to make more work intense mods. Personally I think that is a loss, some of those mods might be fun to play.

Also where is actually the difference between a game engine and skyrim? Skyrim IS a game engine. You can basically rework it so much that you use it like any other game engine to do whatever you want.

The 25% thing really is the point I can agree on, that is a pretty low rate that valve pays.

But all this "modders should work for free" stuff is sad, it seems many people don't value mods as work at all.

I think the issue here isn't that people are asking to be paid for their work. It's that Steam is allowing the sale of unconfirmed products.

It's like a much worse version of Greenlight, in that it doesn't need to be given a green light.

On top of that, mods, unlike games, are generally largely dependent on resources made by other people. The legal issues involved with mod packs are going to be terrifying, and Valve is pretty much opening the door to them.

People want to charge for mods. Fine. But anybody who wants to charge for something should have to go through the proper channels to get it on a distributor. This is not a proper channel. There's no consumer protection. Hell, there's no IP protection for the modders. Everything about it is do-it-yourself, which means Valve isn't doing its do diligence as a distributor.

About the copying of other people's mods:

(source)

About dodgy mods/scams:

(source)

The 25% is ridiculous though... I mean even app developers for iOS get 70%.

I think the most outrageous part of this is Valve's 75% cut, which is shocking.

That's entirely do-it-yourself, which is not okay. A platform where people who have to pay to get your work should not make it easy for other people to sell that work too.

A lack of control over the sale of goods is bad for everybody.

Isn't this pretty much the same as the people selling TF2 hats and weapons they make?

Ok the rumor is

This is good for sure.

I guess that is the downside of having 2 middleman

Its also bonkers someone has to have $400 of sales before they get a payout, so much money is going to be sitting in valves account.

I have a few concerns.

1. Skyrim mods draw on one another a lot, there's quite a few interdependencies. Almost no one makes a big mod out of nothing, they're drawing on other people's work to achieve this. Once you throw money in the mix I worry that it'll become a far more siloed place where everyone protects their baby because money is on the line. Suddenly only big teams can achieve anything any more because everyone has to build everything from scratch.

2. Fake ownership. I believe Wet & Cold already got hit with this, where someone filed a takedown notice against the genuine mod, took its place and started charging. Money means a certain level of controls need to be in place, and Valve have shown they have no interest in implementing any controls at all.

And you can split the Valve cut between them and other parties such as Nexus I believe. Why it has to wait until $100 though I have no idea. Well, to make Valve more money I'd guess.

Thus, the 2 kinds of mods. Amazing ones. And ones that scrape the bottom percent of stupid to do no work for at least some profit via basically scam.

Honestly, the pay-what-you-want and well-organized mods with a community backing, are rare, and don't make them out not to be. Every game has 1, or several, but every game that does has 50 mods for each 1 that just isn't that.

I am saying, out of those 50, a lot are going to start being stupid over this. I am bad at internet-business, generally I wouldn't sell any mods I make anyway because I don't feel like it but I wouldn't know what to price it per effect to where people "need" it but are still willing to "afford" it. Too restrictive price, like 50 dollars, even for character lines that is buying the game over again, and you don't have a mod userbase to back it's glory, let alone the "Reaganomics" where there is a certain price that gets you more money by more users and not by less users paying more.

It is an interesting "google" type decision to do this, when the money goes to Valve first and then someone must collect it. A lot of crappy mods are going to collect mid-point moneys that Valve just get's to keep. In a way, it is like Valve is contracting people to scam people and if they do a good enough job they get some scam money too. That, I honestly hope gets them taken to court, so they either have to nut up and do the mod marketplace right, or go home and quit out of that idea early.

They have a EULA that signs away all you and your families rights to use Steam, but there is only so many lawyers worth of weight that can hold up against. Microsoft finds that out the hard way often enough, when the EULA signs away rights that people legally always have, they get those rights anyway and your *** still gets sued hard, because you can't sign away consumer rights that are a legally given right.

It's not that easy, it's like telling someone that jogs twice a week that they're not allowed to unless they do a triathlons instead because it's more "legit" regardless of the runner's own intentions.

How can it create something that was already there? I won't deny that the potential for profit can encourage it but you'd be naive to believe that modding piracy wasn't a thing before now. BlackOps(and several others as well) had content taken and included into a "compilation" against our will that it not be used and seemingly in spite of it.

Mike

Doesn't Valve need to OK those?

Lol, oh the forestry mod from minecraft... I love memories like that.

This presents two issues.

1. If someone buys one mod, then 24 hours later downloads some free mods that conflict with the purchased mod, the buyer either has to delete the free ones and lose out on that content, or use the other mods and be out however much money he spent on the mod in the first place.

2. If someone purchases a mod, then a patch is released for that game, the person who bought the mod won't be able to use it until an update is released, and IF the modder decides to discontinue his/her mod, you're SOL.

That's true for any software that interacts with other software though. For instance that Start-menu programs that appeared when Windows 8 was just released. Or that WindowsBlinds stuff from Stardock.

But yeah, they are kind of vague about keeping mods working:

(source)

Question. How often do you expect the mod developer to actually support bugfixing in their mods? Basically paying for bugs almost guranteed, that is something you will pretty much have to live with like it were having to breathe.

EVERYTHING has bugs, don't get me wrong. I just expect mods, to be buying something that is literally unuseable in the longrun. Literally unuseable. Like if a mod were made and bought on FTL, before AE, it would be 10 dollars taken from your wallet and nuts rubbed in your face because you would own nothing to this day.

EDIT: Yeah, actually, in the long run, I think I personally have decided, that unless the mod literally has a huge wiki and fanbase of support, like a thousand person userbase at least, then I likely will not be buying it. If it is an added assets sort of thing, they are likely out of luck given how dodgy a longterm investment it may be. Mods are great, free ones are great, paid for ones with a large base are basically "player expansion packs" and I support those naturally and would volunteer money let alone pay. Basic asset mods that are one-release and trying to get a buck, sorry but I likely cannot do that.

That is the wrong attitude. When you start charging money for something that thing becomes a product and needs to be treated as one. Could you imagine if DLC just stopped working every time a patch came out?

If FTL Infinite Space was a paid-for mod, then AE came out and the dev didn't update it that would have been inexcusable because the dev was taking money for a product. If the product isn't up to snuff with at the very least updates for the game in question it's nothing short of theft.