Uber; as someone who doesn't pay attention....

The really funny part is that everyone complained when GPG stopped working on the SupCom franchise. Guess what? There was no revenue stream to support it! GPG couldn't have kept working on the game even if they wanted to because there was no way to pay people.

Ultimately we want to long term support the PA platform and ecosystem. The only possible way to do this is to figure out a way to monetize the game in the long term. People can argue with us about the best way to monetize but ultimately there needs to be income or we can't support it. My ultimate vision here is allowing the community to build on the game and create exciting new content people are willing to pay for. We are slowly working towards that goal with monetization of the commanders simply being a milestone along the way to make sure our stuff works properly. If people just object to the idea of buying extra content they can easily vote with their wallets. The idea that this is in any way controversial blows my mind.

I very much support the idea of long term financial support.

I like the idea of cosmetic Commanders.

I'd also love to see a mod marketplace. If y'all don't make one, I will!

About future monetization - do you think that you'll ever do things like expansions/DLC?
That may be a bit too far in the future to answer now, but I ask out of curiosity.

I honestly have no idea. Certainly no plans are in the works for expansion/DLC type stuff. We are more concentrated on trying to make the game a real platform for other people to build on. I would love to see 3rd party factions, units, campaigns etc. Are those expansions/DLC?

I would call them mods.

DLC is such a broad term though.
Is it not content that you download?

Isn't DLC essentially a first-party mod?

Yes. But this is third party

Technically DLC, because it's content, that you download! Mwahaha!

And?
Heck, is a new faction really a mod? Mod is short for modification, after all.
You didn't modify anything you added something.
You added content.
Which must be downloaded.

In short, this is controversial because you folks aren't the first to try to monetize games outside of the purchase price. Some of these other folks have been colossally idiotic. I believe Deadspace 3 is the most salient example here. Selling commanders is not a problem IMO, but more aggressive monetization strategies can seriously be a painful experience. And certain kinds of monetization aren't things that you can just vote with your wallet to abstain from.

The following is one of my favorite Jimquisition episodes, that explains how monetization can go very, very wrong.

Also, don't think it matters what we call paid 3rd party mods. We can call them mods, p3pm, marketables or doodlewhatsits. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and if it quacks like a duck...

Will there be donate buttons for free mods? I'm sure that most mods are going to remain free in order to have a large playerbase.