Bethesda's New Verified Creator Program

[DocClox]

3 hours ago, TheManaVault said:

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

And that ought to include being able to offer the fruits of our efforts for free if we so choose. Nevertheless, there are people out there who take the position that offering anything for free is immoral, and I think that comes out a lot in these discussions.

The worry is that once a corporation has a revenue stream, there is pressure to maximize that income. And the way to do that for paid mods is to make it progressively harder to release mods for free. No one is going to buy a value pack of sixteen vibrant mudcrab retextures for actual money if there's half a dozen equivalent mods on Nexus for free. But if those mods can be made to go away...

3 hours ago, TheManaVault said:

in the end, Nexusmods will not disappear, so neither will free mods

Now, if I was the Evil Overlord, I'd look at changing the engine to only accept cryptographically signed mod packages. I'd set it up so the only way to get your mod signed would only be through the "verified creators" program. So if you wanted to publish your mod, you had to set a price and let Bethesda take a slice of the money.

And I'd set it up so you could always run your own mods on your own machines. That way new modders could still learn their trade. And I'd encourage posting screenshots of unpublished mods, because peer pressure then encourages new modders to register, publish, and make money for Bethesda. And in due course, I'd change the EULAs to forbid distributing non-verified content, and use take-downs and the threat of lawsuits to force modding sites to either respect the licence or else go out of business.

If I was the Evil Overlord that is. This isn't a prediction. But I believe it is a risk.

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by DocClox

[greyday01]

Terrible idea. I try so many mods most of which I shortly remove as I don't like them. Not that they are bad mods or full of errors, I simply don't care for how it changes the game or it conflicts with another mod I prefer. If I had to buy it I wouldn't try many mods at all. Most of the CC mods I got I really don't much care for and as single mods I wouldn't have bought.

[Pickysaurus]

5 hours ago, TheManaVault said:

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?

 

You're right this is something we're already discussing. We don't have an answer yet, but we'll be sure to communicate it once we do. 

We strongly oppose the "Pay me on Patreon to access my mods" model, so I doubt that will change even if we make an exception for Bethesda.net content. This is similar but also quite different. We can trust that certain guarantees of quality and content delivery will be upheld if MS/Bethesda are the ones operating the store. 

[Crosstieger]

What I am most worried about is that there is a chance that in the future mods like SkyUi, USSEP (and/or their future equvilante for future games like Starfield), y'know the mods that essentially everyone needs to get a stable game, will be behinde a pay wall.

I didnt read all the comments so idk if this has been discussed before.

Just imagine for a second if the script extender would be payd only. Do they deserve the money? Hell yes. Would I like having to pay idk 20, 30 more € just to start modding the game?

Edited December 6, 2023 by Crosstieger

[showler]

Can we just copy/paste all the doomsaying from when Creation Club was announced and get past it already?

I mean, this is the slowest, most incompetent attack on the free modding community I've ever seen.  All those rules they put in place to make sure that people can't make currently free mods into paid mods are particularly idiotic if destroying free modding is your goal (and apparently it has been for at least ten years now).

[wpgfurry]

Since CC requires credits to buy the paid content (yes there are free mods but this is just the paid stuff).  it's $10(CAD) for 750 credits all the way up to $50 for 5500 credits.  According to their prices it's 600 credits for a weapon mod, 900 for a horse armor mod...etc etc.  it's approx. $10 for 1 mod.

[neocatzeo]

You're not likely to have an "Immersive Armors" mod at all, since each contributor would be seeking to get as many sales as possible of their own mod.

[Zanderat]

I am old enough to remember when modding was just a hobby for fun.  The idea of paid mods is totally repugnant to me.  I won't be paying for mods any time soon, if not ever.

[jjb54]

I read the posts and sadly I agree with a lot of them.

I remember back when they first attempted this with Skyrim and boy did the ...... hit the fan! There was a whole lot of FALLOUT ( pun intended ) over it and I would have thought they had learned their lesson!

But it seems .. NOT ...

The sad thing is, IF Beth did not have the Mod Community their games would die big time! Fallout 4 is only kept alive because of MOD CREATORS, other wise that one would have died big time.

Fallout 76 is still seriously problematic and I hear Starfield is not doing well and Beth is hoping the MOD COMMUNITY once again comes to their rescue! Beth owes the MOD COMMUNITY BIG TIME and not the other way around!

I understand based on FO 4 - FO 76 and Starfield that they have totally run out of the ability to tell stories like Skyrim - and the other earlier Elder Scroll games and FO 3. I cannot give them FO NV as Obsidian did that and did a great job.

I honestly fear for OS-6 ... I really do .... 

If they need $$, maybe they should take more time to put together stories that have MEAT and not just piece meal .... 

 

[InDarkestNight]

What did they learn the first time? That their past efforts have failed to get the results they want.

That said, companies do stupid s#*! all the time. Look at what happened to Atari and Sega and tell me that companies don't kill themselves by doing stupid crap. Sega did make a turn around in the end I hear, but by that point they had lost too much market share and literally nothing would've helped.

Yeah, bethesda isn't at Sega's level yet, but everyone has to start somewhere. Their quality has been going down ever since Morrowind (note I never played that game myself, so I don't really know anything about it from direct experience), I just know that Oblviion was an unplayable travesty, but even that had some redeeming qualities over Skyrim (mainly in writing). I mean, most of Skyrim's flaws are over-compensation for the flaws of Oblivion, seriously. I really don't see them making a decent game anytime soon. Besides, modders have clearly shown they can conjure up far better stories then bethesda ever can. I mean, even when it comes to graphics, when SE came out there were mods that could make LE look far better than SE. Of course, with SE they mostly just baked-in the hi-res texture pack, but still. I also haven't been too impressed by what I've seen of starfield. Why would anyone praise those graphics? They look worse than base SE! My LE looked far better than it, despite me being forced to run performance stuff WITH NO ENB because it ate up too much performance.

Can they turn around and save themselves? They're probably not deep enough in the hole yet to make that impossible, but given their behavior ever since SE came out it seems hard to believe they would change course. Money speaks louder than our cries. We can whine all we want, at the end of the day they just want to milk as much money out of us as possible. They don't give two-shits about reviews; like all businesses only the bottom line matters. Money may as well be god himself in our society. It dictates right from wrong, who is rewarded and condemned. If they make more money on something, as far as the universe is concerned they did something right. EA is still doing fine despite being literally the most despised gaming company in this country, so I doubt bethesda has much to worry about. OF course, EA's mostly being kept afloat by all that money the NFL is giving them to make those repetitive sports games. Bethesda obviously isn't receiving subsidies to make its games from anyone.

Getting back on topic, I am a bit curious; why is starfield doing so bad? Was there just no market for it? Ever since the Lord of the Rings movies came out, science fiction hasn't had much for a media pretense. It used to be literally the other way around; science fiction was everywhere prior to 2000, it was even more ubiquitous than fantasy is now. Point I"m making is, they released a game in a genre that hasn't had much mainsteam appeal for 20 years now. And from my understanding, they went for a subdued hard-science route, which has never been popular either. Maybe they just had no market? Maybe the game is just bad? Or maybe how they're treating the Skryim community just made people not want to buy anymore of their products? I for one swore off of buying anything else from them regardless of how good it was, but I have no idea how many other people made that decision. Maybe they got boycotted? Why has the game done poorly? No audience, lack of quality, mass-boycott, or something else?