Steam Workshop now lets people put prices on mods.

Who cares if they don't like DRM? It is going to be foisted on the modders by selling it through Steam. Fallout 4 will be Steam workshop only if Bethesda is smart. Secondly, it is only going to be a matter of time before Bethesda or some other company participating in this scheme issues takedown notices for unauthorized use and distribution of IP,aka free mods, on other sites because they are not getting a potential cut of the authors money from Steam. Valve has already taken down links for donating to modders because it is all about getting their cut. And modders who defend this are being willfully ignorant.

Or add more legal headaches for modders who get their work stolen by "enterprising" individuals just so they can make pennies on the dollar in an unmoderated cash grab by Valve.

They are already doing so.

Valve already stated through their lawyers that paid mods can use free mods without issue. In addition, the moment you upload your mod, Valve does not have to take it down because you give them exclusive rights. They haven't with the mods that have been requested, they simply make them unpurchaseable.

This system encourages crap mods being churned out over quality ones since they get pennies to the dollar in profits.

That is the difference between a mod and a game. Why should we suddenly now be expected to pay for mods when historically they have been hobby projects? ESPECIALLY when modders can go out and use UE4 or Unity5 FOR FREE until they make a profit? Why waste your time with Valve's cash grab attempt?

Again, modders can freely ask people to donate, but going along with this scheme is just going to create another level of unofficial DLC that developers can rely on to give them a revenue stream without any accountability for them. You want game quality to go further down the toilet? Let customers add functionality to your games, get the heat when they break things, and let them deal with legal issues while you laugh it all the way to the bank. And screw everyone else over with more DRM.

Name them.

Not accepting pay to play for a historically and traditionally free medium has no bearing on whether more work intense mods get made or not. If you want to get paid, go apply for a job at a game developer.

C'mon. Are we all missing the Linux and Mac versions of Skyrim floating around? Why do we need third party DLL insertion and hacking tools for a "game engine." Skyrim has a stronger scripting language, but a game engine it it not.

When modders find modding to be work, then it is time to hang it up. They should not go around demanding that their hobby projects be funded, and expect people to just pay them. Especially when they use the wider mod community's contributions in their mods.

If you want to get paid to mod, go be a game developer, or ask for voluntary donations.

Why is modding a hobby?

Because you want mods for free?

Why not build an economy and business around modding?

The current implementation of Steam's paid mods is extremely poor. But that doesn't mean paid mods is a bad idea.

Creating a whole new ecosystem has lots of bumps and problems. But get through it and awesome stuff will happen.

Why are mods free and a hobby and not games? Some mods have created entirely new games and then the mods were eventually dropped because the people making the mods went elsewhere. Now a bunch of people are sad that their mods have been dropped.

The only reason why mods "should be a hobby" is because you want free content. You want people to make stuff for you for free.

There is absolutely no reason for modding to be only free. Well, there is a reason: entitlement.

This. So much this. Being against the Valve implementation of payed mods does not mean being against charging for mods.

I ******* KNEW IT! Sorry, carry on with the thread.

Or put a paywall in front of your work.

Ikr 5$ pizza!

As a "Victim" of Mod Piracy about 5 years ago, I can assure you it already existed. I will admit that Valve's implementation of this makes it a much more attractive thing to do but it did previously exist.

Mike

Ok my original response was a little brash. Mainly because I was tired and really p*ssed off with something else.

I really really think Valve should go with some sort of optional donation system. Because what happens if mods become incompatible? What happens if the devs break the mod with a patch? What do you think is going to happen to stuff like Star Wars mods? I'm worried copyright holders are going to have a panic attack and just put out a blanket "NOPE!" to their stuff being in mods, regardless of whether or not it's free. A world with less, or no Star Wars mods is a world I don't want anything to do with.

I've heard the argument it'll encourage modders to continue supporting their mod. But that's what Early Access was supposed to do with games and look how that turned out.

Because it IS a hobby. People don't go into modding games with a five year plan. It is a passion project.

Go ahead and try, no one is stopping you. You will be much, much more productive and successful just going into the game making route.

Valve created a horrible system. Agreed. And I completely disagree with paywalling mods. Do you understand what is going to happen to independent modders who don't kowtow to the Steam system when the parent company of the game wants money from mods badly enough? What about other copyright holders? They will do exactly what nintendo and others have done, issue cease and desist letters.

It creates envy between modders because why should one modder get paid when another is doing the same work for free. It destroys cooperation and literally forces people to join large modding teams to actually learn go do anything. It creates a barrier to entry when anyone can rip off a free mod and incorporate it into their own. And as a result you have people encrypting their files or obscuring their methods so others cannot steal their ideas and concepts. It happened before, people encrypted their files in Warcraft 3 so that others could not learn/copy their work.

In short, it is a horrible idea to the open system currently in place. What you are proposing is going to end up destroying modding. We are all going to end up with 100's of unofficial DLC. The authors will not be held accountable for bug fixing other than the rating system, authors who will invariably commit intellectual property theft, and provide almost free work for game companies.

We will be waiting a long time. And in the meantime, I hope you like the new StarForce encryption DRM for mods now that money is involved in a big way.

Those games are almost always total conversions, and usually run by large teams.
Games get abandoned all the time. What makes mods any different? Oh that's right. Mods are almost always an easily accessable open format that allows anyone to pick up where someone left off. You do paid mods, they will become just like closed source games. Let's see you try to patch up or add extra resolutions to old games without hacking them.

Oh shut up about the entitlement bs. There are many reasons people have strong reservations against paywalling mods and I have listed a metric ton of them but instead we get to a straw man argument instead. That's fine if you don't want to face facts and live in a bubble, but paid mods will change more than just getting some player some money for his time.

You do paid mods and you will enable more DRM, more copyright and legal issues, increase monetization in games and DLC whoring, and not to mention reducing cooperation between modders outside of mod teams.

You're going to need to prove a lot of those baseless assertions.

Companies are not going to rest their post-release support or DLC content plans on modders. Otherwise they'd be doing that already for free. Because it's free currently.

Please stop your pointless scaremongering, and whining about strawmen when you tell modders to either side with you in this debate or be called 'wilfully ignorant'.

EDIT: Double post.
Mike

you don't know that. In fact you know nothing about modding.

All you keep saying about modding is full of ignorance.

I know a few modding project that have lasted MORE than five years.

and hell yeah they wouldn't have fuckingg made it without the donations

I'm sorry, but I don't think you have the right to speak for all modders, Speak for yourself and those you know well but know that you can't speak for everyone.

Mike

Worst case scenario, my biggest fear though.

Idk, I don't think it will be a game crash of '83. I think EA exclusively will be responsible for that. Well, AAA titles in general. And consoles and such. But, I do think mods will quickly turn into the app store. Which will, at best case scenario, will get annoying digging through so many mods potentially doing the same thing as each other but in various ways and costing various amounts and having free and paid for variants of same mods and such.

Worst of all, when it turns into an app store like situation, modders will "feel" lower on the food chain than they were. Modders were "great people", the scene will just feel like... well... the app store. Losing a lot of the punch that modding meant back in my day, which is apparently ending.

You know what? I want an Amnish-like movement now, for us oldfags of the 90s, with a cutoff date in technology and concept. I am so tired of new things like SSDs and mod marketplaces and new funimation anime coming out and ruining my childhood lol. /joke

Professional game development industry often puts profits above anything these days, of course people don't want modding to become the same. Paid mods feels just like the straight road towards it, though. And in this case I might rather mods be free? A contradiction - why mods free, games aren't? Oh yeah, because I would rather all digital content be free. And it doesn't mean content creator will not get any money, for there is donate!
Good things about donate/patronship vs paid:
1) Allows better quality control from consumer side - check out content, provide critique, give only as much as you think creator deserves.
2) Cuts out ripping-off middlemen, gives all* money to actual creator.
(*except for transaction fees that is)
3) Makes it harder for IP owners to demand money from modders (which was not a thing so far because modders were not making enough money).
There are artists and youtubers and actually even minecraft modders making money off Patreon, so forcing people to pay is not necessary, donate is working. It's just a matter of time/promotion/education for it to get more widely accepted.
Donate = help you fellow modder to create content you want. Paid mods = distributor reaping off both modders and users (and occasional dramas with unfinished mods, content stealing, decent modders leaving the community).
edit: wording, less bs

Patreon is not the same thing as Donating, it's more like a Kickstarter in that regard, You are exchanging money with very specific expectations in return for it.

Mike

I am not saying that it's the same thing, but if content creator has Patreon or accepts donations, they need to keep up the good work to have the money coming. Kickstarter is usually a one time thing and in said regard it seems to me that donating and Kickstarter are more similar then Patreon and Kickstarter.

You imply it by exclusion. Thought to be fair that you did include uses sweeping definitions and assumptions to assert your own point.

For example, A Donation can be just as much of a "ripoff" as you claim a "paid Mod" to be right?

Mike

I don't mind the mod store entirely though, people defend the right to be paid for their work, I get that.

What I am afraid of, is unreasonable things. 15 dollar mods that are full sized expansion packs are fine. Dollar mods that just add options to characters are fine. When you get 5 dollar half assed UI mods where the buttons don't actually work, I see the need for actual moderation of the mod store. Approval by a certified steam approved mod tester, before the mod becomes public on the store, if it costs more than a dollar.

Remember, I did kickstart PA. I practically throw money at developments when I can. But nomadic apps that don't work longer than a month or three, isn't a development really. It is a quick creation sort of toy. If it has a value, it isn't very high. If it has huge promise, more than a coding-toy, like a lot of big mods or even simple content mods that are friendly to library together like item expansions, then it is likely worth some chipping in, less for the individual model library filler, more for the total expansions.

Look, I got a perfect example. What about, in PA, people could charge for mods? There would be the Realm Balance Mod and Orbital Overhaul Mod. 5 dollars for those would be no question, I trust both to keep them updated too. If it were less, I wouldn't even care if it was updated neither. A single unit addition, like trophy system unit, a single unique model with a single anti-projectile close-quarter property to it, I would get that for a dollar or less. For a dollar updated, less as-is. Now, what about the commander health bar? Remember the OLD commander health bar? What if they charged 2 dollars, hypothetically? Then, when it broke and didn't get updated, that would probably catch a lot of flak. It was just a UI mod and people paid 2 dollars for something they barely had a chance to use. That would be irritating. Imagine people making tons of UI mods like that for a dollar, that just constantly outdate. Or people making a lot of UI buttons that don't clearly do something because they don't, but were published under guise to make money?

I am not sure I understand. I used word "ripoff" as in Steam(or another distributor) ripping off modders and customers by taking unresonable percentage of money.