A interesting read and I hope Bethesda chumps on board. it really would help out modder. here's the link: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Nick..._Bethesda_should_reveal_Paid_Mods_20_soon.php proposes a walled garden approach so mods would be curated by Bethesda for the console.
game companies should be paying the modders instead for introducing so much more popularity to their game. Like YT.
If i remember correctly, by the time Bethesda and Steam were done with it, the modmaker got something like 15 cents off every dollar spent.
Well of course that was terrible, but you can't say that there wasn't backlash towards modders themselves that put their mods up. Calling them greedy and pricey (Especially due to the cut for Bethesda and Valve raising prices further) The paid mod thing could have been grand, the implementation was terrible though.
That article even brings up the fact people are against modders creating paid mods. Quoting a modder saying that now if bugs aren't fixed by a modder on his certain mod it'd be a big deal because people paid for it. Which is obvious- but guess what? That's the same with literally every program/product ever... Games especially. If a modder has a history of doing this nobody will buy his mods or he'll start fixing his mod's bugs... Why? Because people paid for them. If mods are being paid for that means that a mod creator will actually have to resources to fix said bugs- assuming he makes enough money to warrant it. That's how business works.
I don't think paid mods is a good idea. If paid mods are a thing, mods become a product. If mods are a product, it entitles me to certain rights. Due to the nature of mods it would be impossible to guarantee most of them. Donation-based system is the way to go.
bethesta would do good to provide actual modsupport to doom instead of that mini-project spark bit the put into generaly i agree with @Geers regarding paid mods but i wonder if mods that meet set standarts shouldn't have the chance to be properly monetised ... donations are always nice and i'll never argue against that but you know todays modder might be tommorows gamedeveloper and good mods that are well QAted and as such may deserve the extracash might be a good stepping stone torwards that insentive ... you know that kinda reminds me of the reaction people had torwards healthcare in murica .... it being a superfreshconcept that likely didn't have much time to actualy develop and people expecting it to work immidiately on the first minute and get on an outrage when it doesn't .... it's like people killing the chick before it was actualy able to hatch and grow ...
Except, plenty of other nations have healthcare. considering patches have become the CGI of the gaming industry (day one bugs? just patch it!) and DLC the new pay-to-play, i don't see any good coming out of paid mods.
what's wrong with that. Mods in my experience ARE the product. PA is basically one big mod on top of a solid engine and even Uberent said that's what they were aiming for. without mods FA wouldn't have existed/looked anything like it did. What about the MOBA genre? what about teamfortress garry's mod and DAY Z??? Without mods more than half of the worlds current video game industry gross income wouldn't exist!! fuckk thinking mods are free!
I don't agree i think with the means and tech we have today legalizing mod commerce would be more than attainable
Let's say I buy a mod. Uh oh, the game updated, mod's broken. The product I paid for no longer works. Gotta wait for a patch, which may or may not come, and may or may not hold until the next update. Uh oh this other mod I paid for is incompatible. Nobody knew until now. This product I paid for no longer works. It'll work again though. If I abandon this other product I paid for. Uh oh the dev flucking vanished. Mod's permanently borked forever. I want a Star Wars mod. Uh oh you can't make money off our IP, we're shutting this down. kthxbai sincerely Disney. Now you might argue that you should "know what you're getting into" and that mods should be treated like discount goods that fell off the back of a truck, caveat emptor, and so forth. But seriously, why bother? All it does is cut off a portion of the audience, introduce a ton of legal headache, make "professional" IP mods impossible, endanger the ones that remain free, and encourage more mod theft, which is already a problem. With donations people can pay what they think the mod is worth, it doesn't entitle them to a working product, which due to the nature of mods is completely impossible to guarantee and maintain, and anyone who isn't in a position to pay can still download it, enjoy it, and share it with people who can.
that's basically a risk with any games under the triple-A standart and then again given bethesda's, square enix, ubisoft's, EA and even DICE's pitfalls can even happen then