Scarheart

This thread is too long to go over to see if the comments I'm about to make has been covered or not so I will just add my 2 cents worth anyways for what it's worth. Modders and anyone else NEED to be able to make money. Bills, food etc, are not paid by "likes" no matter how passionate the modder is. It's great when the person doing the work has other income and generously donates his or her free time to enrich the community with their skills. It is completely unrealistic to expect the same richness in the modding community if these talented people are not getting some recompense for their time. Today's games are increasingly complex and the casual amount of time (and often not so casual) required in the past to put out a mod doesn't cut it anymore. If we expect to see the quality and diversity of mods we have been then it is inevitable the some payment system is required. If a donation system works then great. If it's a pay before download then that may be required, but what ever ends up working to keep the modders at it. In the past, the games (and other software for that matter) that seem to have the longest legs have all been the ones with the most robust modding community. Developers often don't have the time and manpower to do everything they would have liked to for a title they put out and if their publisher doesn't deem it worthwhile to extend a title beyond a certain point then a modding community shouldn't be penalized for doing what they can to extend the life of a title. Especially when we have seen on many occasions modders fix things that the developers haven't yet. Often for the above reasons of time and dictates from "the higher powers". Lol! Understandably the original developer of the IP deserves it's cut but if the person who is doing most of the work on the mod doesn't receive enough motivation then new mods will start to dry up. I have seen this happen several times and have been a part of various teams where due to circumstances beyond the teams control things have had to be shut down and really awesome mods have not been released. Usually related to someone not directly on the mod team f*ing us over for selfish reasons killing the whole project. To give you an idea where I am coming from I would be called a "mature" member of the community as a passionate gamer and artist and have worked professionally in gaming and film TV winning awards for VFX in my field.