Bethesda's New Verified Creator Program

[Guest deleted34304850]

6 hours ago, Pickysaurus said:

With the update to Skyrim, Bethesda has launched its new Verified Creator Program. This allows mod authors to sell their mods through Bethesda's Creation Club store and earn a cut of the sale price. 

This looks to be the long-suspected "paid mods" update to Bethesda.net ahead of modding being enabled for Starfield. 

 

Check out the details here:  https://creations.bethesda.net/en/creators/bethesdagamestudios

 

What do you think? 

if people can use it to make money on their efforts, let them.

[Radioactivelad]

1 hour ago, Darkstorne said:

To be fair, a big part of the frustration has always been Bethesda's implementation too. The last time they integrated paid mods they only gave mod authors 25% of the sale. I'd be VERY curious to see what they're offering this time around, but can't seem to find any information on their sign-up page about what the revenue split is here. I wonder why...

Yeah, thats true, and I hope for much a better split (CC 1.0 was apparently a one off contract, and 2.0 from what I understand is now ongoing revenue, so I think in the long run this incarnation is much better than anything prior).

But that's not what The Gamers™ have historically been concerned about with monetization.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Radioactivelad

[apollodensin]

My big hope is. None of these new CC are considered Canon. From what I gather the old cc stuff had that attached to it. Just let them be mods. I hope they do not put anything up there that is not subquality. Aka basic fetch quest/beat them up for a new armor.

I do not hold my breath regardless. Trainwiz does some good stuff, but I know he would be the diamond in the rough over it all. Only big perk I can see, is it may help get people jobs in the industry or elsewhere cause they can put it on their resume. If profits from these mods are the only 25% they got before, then do not think it is worth it for them.

[InDarkestNight]

Yet another attack? When will they let up?

That said, I'd like to add things that haven't been said. For one, this service looks like its trying to make it hard to distinguish between CC trash and real mods. This is made worse by all the TRAITOR mod authors who have made CC trash. How can we know what is a real mod and not, when there's so many users who have made both? Bit of a tangent, but why are these mod authors making obviously inferior products for CC when they're getting paid to do so?

That said, are they trying to make so you now have to pay them to use mods? How are the mod authors supposed to get money if people can just download their stuff for free? Guess this wouldn't apply to the nexus for obvious reasons, but given how SE tracks all mods you're using AS LONG AS THEY EXIST ON THEIR SITE REGARDLESS OF HOW YOU DOWNLOADED IT, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to block you from using mods that you didn't pay money for. They may even try to block us from using mods that aren't on their site. They did say years ago the SE was primarily made so they could have more control over what mods got made, which they quickly acted upon by banning half the mods out there (and I"m not just talking about adult mods either here).

That said, I really don't think mod authors should be paid. I can fully understand why people would want that; they do clearly do a lot of work, and getting money could even give them more resources, such as hiring help. However, I think it would do more harm than good honestly. As-is, all mods are passion projects. The only reason to make any mod, is if you legitimately care about the product. If you're making money, there's no reason to care as long as it makes money. This is probably why CC always seems to be inferior to the various free mods they try to copy. Its like obscure genres of music; when there's no money to be made, it actually results in an increase in quality. You're trying to get acceptance within the community, not money.

Of course I acknowledge some things could improve; I still remember those city mods that never got finished because the MO decided his time and skills were better spent on doing something that actually earned him money. Cases like that though are rare. Still, putting money into this would do more harm than good.

There's also the issue of mods that are a highly niche taste; how many people would actually pay for undeath and the various add-ons for it? Some people would, but it probably wouldn't be enough to cover the time spent on developing it. Then there's over-saturated fields like bikini armors and body mods. How do you turn a profit from that when there's so much competition? What I'm saying is paying mod authors would discourage more niche mods, making them focus mainly on the most popular types. This would obviously narrow the variety of mods available.

Again, it would be better if they didn't get paid. I admit, as a mod author myself (albeit an obviously humble one), I wouldn't mind money. My biggest limitation is the fact that I can't make my own assets. If I made money on mods, I could hire voice actors and even pay people to make any model I wanted. It would open the flood gates for me (assuming I could get my gaming computer to work again anyway, I'm still typing from my laptop that can't run a damned thing). It would also be rather nice to be able to at least supplement my income by doing something I enjoy. Still, I vote nay to paid mods. As great as it would be for me, I'm not going to let greed get the better of me and advocate something that would do far more harm than good.

I guess the theories on why they're waging such a vicious war on modding may be true; perhaps this whole time they were just trying to make money on all the stuff being made for their game. They're like an art supplies company trying to claim money on all paintings made with their materials. Making good business is never enough; they need to drain more and more money from their customers. There's never enough money, the only way they can alleviate the pain from that is to horde as much as possible at all costs.

Laws really need to be updated about what types of digital assets people can claim ownership of. Yes, its true that mod authors don't own their own mods, but the same laws SAY THAT GAME COMPANIES DON'T OWN THEIR GAMES. As far as the law is concerned, the only way to own any digital program you make is to own the language it was coded in. This means bethesda DOES NOT OWN SKYRIM, seriously. The actual owners would be the makers of C, and whoever made the IDE they used to make the papyrus language. Yeah, the laws regarding these things really badly need to be updated. Game companies should own their own games, but if they did then mod authors could claim partial ownership of mods they make. Imagine if you could copyright a model? Keep in mind, in the US, everyone automatically has copyright over anything they manufacture even if they don't seek a copyright. Of course, enforcing a copyright can be nigh impossible if you don't register it, but there have been cases of creepy pasta characters getting their copyrights enforced YEARS after they came out. And yes, Slenderman is not a public domain character; he won't be until like 70 years after his original creator dies (assuming Disney doesn't meddle in that again of course).

I haven't played SE in years, and never planned to again. I also had to quit LE because I just couldn't get the thing stable no matter what I did DESPITE IT BEING FAR MORE STABLE THAN SE ON MY COMPUTER. Still, I'm sick of seeing the INJUSTICE of everyone's hard work being destroyed over and over again by an out of control company exploiting the lack of regulations regarding digital ownership. It may not be affecting me directly anymore, but its still an atrocity regardless of if its affecting me or not. I'm not selfish, I'm not greedy, I do care about other mod authors and fully respect them, but that doesn't change what I think is right or more sensible.

On a side note, I've heard that Starfield has already plateaued, and never did manage to reach THE CURRENT PLAYER COUNT FOR SKYRIM. Shows how their treatment of the modding community has affected them. I was expecting it to flop, and I honest to god would've been shocked if that didn't happen. ES6 is surely going to be even worse; imagine what all they're going to do to Skyrim before THAT comes about? Modding will surely be completely dead by then. I genuinely pine for the Beyond Skyrim project. All that work only for Bethesda to swoop down and trash it over and over. All the projects have already been forced to re-make their maps from scratch TWICE now. Let's be real, that project is never releasing. How can you even find people to work on it when they're battling a company trying everything in their power to stop them? We can't do anything about this; we can't own the assets we make. Even if a mod is 100% original assets, its still not ours just because it requires another program to run (guess that means anyone who coded anything in an interpreted language also cannot own it, guess that would explain why interpreted languages like flash, java, and python are only ever used to make freely available games).

Let's be real, bethesda is going to kill modding for this game and there's not a damned thing we can do about it. Maybe its about time we give up the struggle and accept that we cannot win. We all just need to move on and play something else, because bethesda simply doesn't want us to play this game.

[neocatzeo]

Arguments against this sort of thing:

- It erodes and undermines the communities ability to make mods.  Right now many mods are made in an atmosphere of cooperation, by requiring other mods, updating other mods, borrowing, getting help from other mod makers.  That will be greatly diminished if people feel they are in competition, and trying to protect their mod sales.

That crazy thing you figured out no longer gets shared to help others, it becomes your patented thing - buy now.

- Adding DRM to mods is going to make things worse. Forget making any compatibility patches for paid mods.

- Many of the victims here will be the unseen mods that never get made.  Nobody complains about these because they are out of sight and out of mind.  People will be less inclined to help people in a competitive atmosphere, you ability to mod things will diminish if there is DRM.  That mod that borrowed parts, and required a mod, and needed help to make is going to be less likely to happen now.

- This idea that mod makers deserve to be paid.  The cost of the mod is not the only price to be paid.  The cost will also be a diminished community as the paywalls go up.

 

 

 

 

[Euphan]

10 hours ago, wpgfurry said:

The issue is if the mod is on patreon, the mod author takes all the profit. With this, the mod author does all the work and bethesda takes a cut of their money for none of the work. 

not exactly, mods hosted on Beth's platform "might" get a lot more exposure, and that translates to more profit.
and Beth hosting and marinating a modding platform of their own is already a kind of work, to be fair.

[BlazeStryker]

Another argument against this sort of thing is a reluctance to make a mod about or which modifies DLC and/or CC content, some of which really needs fleshing out. A good example would be the Branded Tee piece for fellow imminent victim Fallout 4. In an age where most vanilla garments and armor are readily adapted to popular mod-created bodies, those things are not. There are no clean versions, either.

This is especially concerning as, on occasion, large amounts of "incomplete" CC content might be foisted in as integral parts of Skyrim (as has already happened with the first round of Anniversary Edition) and Fallout 4 (My imminent fellow victim line was no joke.)

[DocClox]

And of course, once there are enough "verified" modders, it's going to be hard to argue against a band on non-verified modders. Because security, malware, lions and tigers and bears! Oh my! And the fact they they've finally managed to tax the hobby community will be quietly swept under the carpet.

[TheManaVault]

First, a question to Nexus - please there's no need to respond to me directly, this is food for thought for now, although it would be cool to have a statement by you guys:

Will Nexusmods apply the same Patreon link-banning policy to modders who advertise their official Bethesda shop link on their mod pages? If not, will Nexusmods review the Patreon linking ban policy this time around?

 

Albeight having my own stance on yet another attempt (which will most likely fail at least on PC market) to milk a 12-year old cow, I think it's cool that PS4 players will finally have the opportunity to get some real modded content.

The Verified Creator, although meaning most definitely jumping through hoops to get the chance to monetize the content you make for a larger audience, probably at most for 30% of real revenue gain, is what it is, condemning it or mod authors who decide to take the leap is just downright senseless.

Although the Nexus user base is open enough to include people who just make a couple of presets and never make another mod again (casual), there are many who release new work monthly or even weekly. This is not casual modding, people take hundreds or thousands of hours of their time to make, test and share mods, for absolutely nothing apart from diminished DP conversion rates and the hopes of building a community of taste among the Nexus user base. This is a type of work resulting of passion for creation and this particular game environment, but efforts I believe shouldn't be taken for granted either way, the decision about getting compensation for their work, be it through Patreon or Ko-Fi, or Beth.net, is left to those who actually put in the time and their talent to give the greater user base new content and richness to their game. Of course, the decision to actually get that content wether it's paid or free, is up to that same user base, this is simple supply and demand. But the logic of "it's in the internet, it should be free" is just leading up to piracy. Nothing is inherently free, and people are entitled to price the goods and services they provide, it doesn't matter if it's online or offline. If I don't want to pay for a game, I simply don't buy it, but I don't whine about how the people who actually CREATED it have the nerve to want compensation for their efforts.

The argument that "the greatest mods like Vicn's work are free, anything less shouldn't even consider wanting compensation" isn't valid, it's Vicn's choice to not charge for their mods, but they totally could, and maybe not everyone would play Vigilant but Vicn I'm sure would get many, many sales. At the end of day, it's to each mod author what they want to do with the results of their passion. I have trouble understanding why this is still topic for discussion, especially since at least for now, Creations isn't a case of "either-or", and what's really annoying about Beth's low move is that yet again modded games get broken unless you downgrade, which in itself may be a pain, but is circumventable if you took measures before (as in, you backed up your game files in another drive location).

I got off the bend here, but in the end, Nexusmods will not disappear, so neither will free mods, and if SSE becomes hostile to a free modding community through DRM / content blocking, people can still fall back to LE as it suffers no issues of these "updates". This is just a new option for mod authors to try and make either a living or at least a bit of extra income from what they love to do. Please don't call geniuses like trainwiz or Elianora traitors (among other mod authors, they also made CC creations), that's just silly and disrespectful, we COULD actually ACT as a community and be mindful of those who have been adding value to our game for so long.

Sorry if any of this hurts or offends anyone, this is my honest opinion and by it I mean no disrespect to anyone. This is also not supposed to be the start of a sub-topic reply chain, as I'm otherwise busy to take the time for it.

[Euphan]

Speaking from a user point of view, paid mods aren't an issue if it's worth the value. 
For a PC player that has access to sites like Nexus mods that provide countless quality free mods, there is no sane reason to purchase any paid mods on Bethesda.net as of now, unless it provides something truly unique and irreplaceable. 

I mean look at this:
Aldmeri Anti-mage contains 4 pieces of armor and will cost you 400 credits (roughly around 4 USD)

And then you have this:
Immersive Armors contains 55 new sets of armor and much more will cost you nothing

How broken do you need to be to buy Aldmeri Anti-mage with a side-by-side comparison?

(I will admit I did purchase 1 or 2 Creation Club armor sets, but that was at least claimed to be officially supported by Beth with some quality assurance.)