Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[Arredamaal]

2 minutes ago, Teabag86 said:

My take is that Nexus is taking preemptive steps to avoid fracturing the community. It's a combination of protecting their own business model (which is understandable), discouraging direct monetisation of modding (this has always been their stance), keeping modding simple for their 25 million user base and preventing modding splitting and devolving into a s#*! show like some other modding / game communities. With such a large member base there will of course be differing opinions.

I'm not sure how users having to scrounge up Google Drive links on Reddit or where ever keeps modding simple compared to downloading here. If you want to find a compatibility patch for a mod here and a VC having it here is much simpler in terms of locating it and installing it compared to the in-game system where you can't do something like a FOMOD and instead need to download 10 different patches on 10 different pages using the awful in-game UI.

[elpuertorro]

33 minutes ago, showler said:

You say that like it wasn't Bethesda that had the rule against earning money from mods in the first place.

I guarantee you that if mods could have been sold when Morrowind was released then some people would have been doing it.

They had that rule because back then, they didn't know how translate the modding into profit.
As soon as they figured it out, testing people with ESO, then they knew how to start trying to persuade the narrative to make it seem like is kindness, yes we care about you, we want you to earn money for your hard work, even if we (cough)stay with (cough)70% of the profit(cough) but who is checking right? And of course that's fair right, in no way exploiting the community for profit? nah must just be my imagination.

[Khundiann]

1 hour ago, ScytheBearer said:

It's okay for NexusMods to profit from the work of mod authors which is freely donated to their site, but NexusMods will not support nor approve of mod authors profiting from their own work.

Last I checked mod authors do not need to pay Nexusmods to host their mods, and mod users don't need to pay for downloading mods. On Nexusmods you pay for premium website features, not the actual rights to download and use a mod. Comparing apples and oranges here imo.

[simtam]

The intended target audience of my upcoming VC are Xbox Pass players who want to play a detective puzzle game (and in order to do so will manage to download Skyrim and handle the in-game creations menu). You guys want a backlink to Nexus from that? Allow patches, then.

 

[Sable17]

3 minutes ago, elpuertorro said:

They had that rule because back then, they didn't know how translate the modding into profit.
As soon as they figured it out, testing people with ESO, then they knew how to start trying to persuade the narrative to make it seem like is kindness, yes we care about you, we want you to earn money for your hard work, even if we (cough)stay with (cough)70% of the profit(cough) but who is checking right? And of course that's fair right, in no way exploiting the community for profit? nah must just be my imagination.

Are you under the impression that Nexus is non-profit and they don't make money off of the free labor of authors?

[Blackread]

I for one support the ban on patches and dependencies. If someone wants to sell a mod, they should be obligated to provide patching support too. Relying on unpaid work performed by third parties to make your product more profitable is a ludicrous notion.

Besides, there's a rather simple solution isn't there? Just release the VC for free on Nexus, and you can host all the patches you want.

[ZiplockBaggies]

Thank you for the clarity. I will not be renewing my paid subscription for nexus if patches for paid mods are not allowed

[elpuertorro]

20 minutes ago, Arthmoor said:

I dunno, I remember plenty of those shareware CDs filled with DOOM mods back in the day at the swap meets that sold for $10/ea. They made plenty of profit on that stuff and nothing has changed in the intervening decades since.

 

Nope. That was console users who made Bethesda more money than they could have hoped for. It literally saved their bacon with Oblivion and they've been primarily a console focused company ever since.

I get that a lot of people want to believe the meme that modders saved the company and continue to make them relevant, but that's not been the case at all after Morrowind. We don't amount to a large enough market share on our own as PC users to matter financially to them. Which is why everything they do is either console or Game Pass focused. As someone who has skin in the VC game, I can concretely say that the vast majority of sales are coming from the console side of things. I don't ever see this changing unless Microsoft deliberately sabotages their own platform.

Sir I have no reply for you, has you DO KNOW what you are talking about, on a side note, come on... those Cd's where made by smart guys making profit off someone else's work  . but I digress, If anyone can talk about this is YOU with all you have done for the community, so my respects to you.

[Alexerator]

This was almost a good decision until I read that verified creations for Starfield are not allowed to have patches. That just ruins the whole concept. Mods on nexus such as weapons have countless patches meant to help tune a user's mod to their preference within their load order. Why should we punish that all of a sudden just because some mod authors are looking to make some money for their hard work for once. Plus if someone is going to get a patch, they likely already have the creation.

This has the chance to heavily hurt the Starfield modding scene which is already struggling. I can't stand by this policy, it has no concrete base. I can't see any reason Starfield mod authors should be punished for next to no reason. This policy should be shelved and/or heavily reworked. Because in it's current state it's nearly nonsensical.

[FrumpyBadger]

Quote

Patches for/Dependencies on Paid Mods: We will not allow any patches or addons for user-generated content that requires payment to unlock (this specifically excludes DLCs offered by the developer - including DLCs that bundle items previously sold individually such as Skyrim's Anniversary Upgrade). Equally, if a mod uploaded to the site requires a paid mod to function, it will not be permitted. 

Doesn't whether this affect users literally come down to whether or not they own the content being patched in question? If they don't own it, they don't need it, so they won't download it. And whether or not they buy it in the first place is wholly beyond Nexus' control.

Bluntly, this feels unfairly exclusionary to those making patches or building on such content at face value. If there's logic behind this decision it's eluding me.