Monetizing mods

How does Steamworks work?
It's user generated content and Valve gets a hefty cut.

From what numbers they have released Valve is literally getting wheelbarrows full of money from it.

Is it negative?

I think its a win win win.

I'm personally interested in see what YOU make specifically, I loved your mods on sup comm, so anything you make for PA will be a treat! ^_^

On topic though, money is evil.

Donation's however are completely cool!

Uber might be doing what heard they did with SMNC where you make content and if they like it they offer to make it DLC and give a percentage to you.

Never played SMNC so i dont know but i heard they were thinking of doing it.

Well I'm already gettign a slight headstart, but I don't feel Unit Packs are going to be where the BlackOps Team focuses too much, they'll be harder to create due to the Singular Faction nature of the game and potentially require lots of updating to properly account for new units added by Uber in the long term. This is why I'm particularly interested in the TC Potential of the PA Engine.

Honestly People keep saying this, but personally, I've never seen it come up. In 4-5 Years of working on the various BlackOps Mods, Not once were we ever ever asked about accepting Donations. While we never asked or had a Donation Link, the way you guys talk about it it seems as thought we shouldn't have had to either.

To me it's akin to someone who Pirate's things and says they Buy it if they like it but in the end it's still not a great argument for pirating things.

I dunno, obviously my opinion is based on my experience, but frankly, I get the feeling even if we had asked, it wouldn't have amounted to anything worth considering.

Mike

Monetizing mods would be cool with me. It could improve the quality on the top end of the mods. However, there will probably be the teething problems of all "app store" type platforms, such as scams, crappy mods spammed for quick monetization, etc. So monetization would also be worse for the bottom end of the mods, and a can of worms could be opened with people ripping off other people's code.

I think Uber might allow certain "premium" mods to monetize, maybe with their own platform currency only. (Uber bucks or whatever they'll be having)

If you're talking about TF2 then those are not mods, they are player generated DLC. Completely different and incomparable.

TF2 isn't really moddable as such. You can create a multiplayer sourcemod based on it, but there's no direct TF2 modding. Except for maybe server plugins and local skins.

Thats just scemantics, while they might not be directly comparable, they do share some key points mainly that they are both User-Created and monetized in a similar fashion. The exact in-game application might differ but up to that point they are fairly comparable.

Mike

I'm not 100% against it, but as Pawz said there's already a bunch of problems that need to be solved with a first party mod solution. Charging money adds multiple extra layers of complication on top of that. I also don't know any modders that are expecting to support themselves with mod work anyway. We all (speaking only for people I personally know) have jobs already, and it's not like we can just arbitrarily take time off work to make mods because we got some donations/royalties.

If Uber wanted to sponsor DLC packs like the Red Orchestra dev does I'd be down with that, but that's not really modding anymore. That's closer to hiring modders as contract game developers.

It's not semantics when the method of distribution and developemnt is so fundamentally different.

I haven't been able to read through the whole thread yet, but also: don't conflate having a pay marketplace available with the only way to get mods. Why shouldn't people who make pro level mods have a viable way to sell their mods if the market think's they're worth it? I agree that having a robust modding community support for both is important, but not supporting a viable ecosystem for paid content is short sighted, honestly. Relying on donations and alternative methods of supporting the best modders out there is as good as saying they're not worth paying for. Because the vast vast majority of users will never pay for it. They'll just download, and never think about it again. I don't mean that as insult, it is simply human nature and very well understood behavior patterns. It's just what happens.

It is not a paywall, and honestly, the "options" in the poll on this thread are more than a little insulting, as a developer. The inherent bias in the language and options is presupposing a desired outcome (Pay evil, anything else may be ok), rather than a real sense of where the pay for content line falls.

I like how you load your statement with the assumption that modders are professional.

The reason people will just download is because there is this unwritten understanding that modding is a charitable passionate pastime. If you make it a marketplace you drive away the charity and the passion.

There's nothing wrong with upgrading the best to DLC status and compensating them but the base assumption must be charitable.

I think it's because as soon as you get someone who makes a good mod purely for the love of making mods, and releases it for free, you get a new standard for what the market thinks is worth it.

It also raises the question of DRM - are paid mods going to require some kind of DRM to differentiate them from free mods? How would that work? How many resources would Uber have to put into handling things like dispute resolutions, returns and the like?

Finally, mods tend to have an inverse user base over time - namely, they start small, do a couple releases, and add features / content as they grow. At what point would a modder require money for their mod? If it was free before and they added a bit of final polish, called it 'done' and put it on the market, wouldn't players consider that to be 'not worth it' simply because the incomplete version was free? End result, modders won't want to release anything until they have a complete product, which could have a big impact on how many mods actually get released.

The best scenario I can come up with in terms of monetizing mods would to have some kind of internal economy where players and modders trade some 'uberPennies' or some such for different services. Similar to the systems used by League of Legends, where players generate RiotPoints just by playing the game. Game hosts could generate uPs by advertising game mods, mods could get uPs from people willing to 'buy' the mod, and modders could use the uPs to buy space on the front page of the app store, or a spot in the ad rotation on servers, and so on.


Personally though, I think a Greenlight style system that allows the playerbase to promote the very best mods for polish & inclusion in some kind of paid DLC would be the best route.

Once again Putting words into your opponent's mouth eh? Garat said nothing of the sort, he said;

Bolded for Emphasis, He isn't making ANY assumptions, he is more so setting a "standard", that being the Mod itself being of sufficient quality.

Mike

Mike already said it, but bmb, do not tell me I said something I didn't. It doesn't help your argument. I didn't even imply it.

Also:

"The reason people will just download is because there is this unwritten understanding that modding is a charitable passionate pastime. If you make it a marketplace you drive away the charity and the passion."

You tell me I'm saying something I didn't, and then you assume the motivations for all modders, who are as varied the sea. Just because that's what you think, doesn't mean there aren't highly talented modders out there who'd like the chance to make a living off their hard work. You're very good at confusing your own opinions with fact.

False. People will play mods because they want to! If a guy put a lot of passion and time in a mod that is not fun, people will not play it.

You did say it though, you only included "pro quality" mods in your considerations.

There is no assuming, passion and charity is the motivation behind modding because that's the only environment it has been able to exist in so far. You could create a new monetized environment but don't come crying to me when it becomes a cesspool of moneygrubbers and drama over who made what with no passion. There's already enough of that just in the charitable circles without money to motivate it.

I'd buy a total conversion compilation of PA for $5. Sure, no problem. But just a tiny unit mod? An aesthetics mod? A pair of dice hanging off the UI with Havok physics? That's not worth any amount of actual money to me.

Neat, yes; worth my minimum wage coin? Not so much.

I did not say it. Could you stop using emotional arguments and telling me, the author of my own post, what I wrote clearly is implying? Professional quality does not imply doing something as a professional. The internet is awash with examples of incredibly talented hobbyists, at least some of whom would love the opportunity to turn their hobby into their passion and job. I know this, because I've helped hire a lot of hobbyists over the years who wanted to turn their hobby into a paying career. It's an anecdote, but a fairly solidly backed on - a great many people in the industry were looking for a way to make a career out of their passion: making games.

Nothing in your last two posts has any evidence to back it up. It's all emotionally loaded opinion. It's fine if you somehow think it's morally wrong to charge for a mod. I don't fault you for that. I do fault you for thinking anyone else shouldn't have the opportunity to do just that. Inevitably, the market always decides these sorts of things.

And for the hobbyists who have no desire to make a career out of their hobby? More power to them. They just continue to raise the bar of what is worth spending a few bucks on. Why are you so intent on making sure no one else can make a living off of modding? There is zero correlation between getting paid and passion. That is, frankly, stupid.

An alternative is to see how Valve does with their ticket program to play custom maps on official servers.

You could have a similar system to play top rated mods on official Uber servers (higher bandwidth/CPU/memory) and you could distribute the revenue from these tickets between Uber and the modders.

Might work.