Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[Chernobylite12]

1 minute ago, Khundiann said:

Because it makes no sense for Nexusmods to host files that can only be used along with masters of paid mods.

Modding has existed for decades without significant problems, it's only when greedy corps got involved that the community got split up like this. To put this situation on Nexusmods is just hilarious to me, they're just rolling with the punches. There was never a missunderstanding about what modding is, now it gets flipped into "what Nexusmods thinks it should be". Nexusmods holds to these core values, and I commend them for that. One who makes money from his mods can put in the work himself to patch and set up his own distribution channels for patches and fixes.

Which only hurts the nexus, or in a more extreme extrapolated nexus is doing something that has a very real possibility Bethesdas cash flow, who's to say they don't just change the Eula and say the only okay mods exist on their platform? Everyone loses then.

 

Nexus making a petty performative political stance on paid mods is both asinine, and disappointing. Paid mods aren't going anywhere, and mod authors who are VC's seem generally happy with the arrangement they have. Mod users weren't complaining in any noticeable numbers about their favorite nexus mods being patched for what ever VC mod. 

For the most part I generally agree with the change they made - the issue is patches for those mods being treated the way they are is just hostile to the community who has chosen to use paid mods, even if all they spent was the 500 credits Bethesda gave us with a premium edition. 

 

 

[Blackread]

6 minutes ago, Chernobylite12 said:

Paid mods are here to stay whether or not you or I like it. Best thing we can do is encourage "good" paid mods vs crappy cash grabs. 

 

Regarding posting of patches - my understanding is that anything on the CC store cannot have dependencies outside the CC store.

Best thing we can do is not buy paid mods.

I checked Bethesda's guidelines for mods, but couldn't find any mention of dependencies.

[Chernobylite12]

1 minute ago, Blackread said:

Best thing we can do is not buy paid mods.

 

I don't need that decision to be made for me - I bought a paid mod because it looked interesting and a mod author I like the work of got a couple bucks off that - isn't that a win for everyone?  

The only loss was what I might have spent for coffee one morning.

[Sable17]

The irony of all this to me is it in no way hurts mod authors, or people in the VC program, because we and they know how to patch things for ourselves. The only people it hurts is mod users who don't know how to do these things and rely on patches of others to use all the content they want to use together without issue. And yet still I see mod users applauding the banning of patches. My god.

[Khundiann]

3 minutes ago, Chernobylite12 said:

Which only hurts the nexus, or in a more extreme extrapolated nexus is doing something that has a very real possibility Bethesdas cash flow, who's to say they don't just change the Eula and say the only okay mods exist on their platform? Everyone loses then.

Do you have any guarantuees that EULA or TOS changes will not happen anyway in the future if Nexusmods hosts patches to paid mods? You can't possibly be thinking that this whole Creation Club thing and paying mod authors is something Beth is doing out of the kindness of their hearts right? 

[Chernobylite12]

7 minutes ago, Khundiann said:

Do you have any guarantuees that EULA or TOS changes will not happen anyway in the future if Nexusmods hosts patches to paid mods? You can't possibly be thinking that this whole Creation Club thing and paying mod authors is something Beth is doing out of the kindness of their hearts right? 

You're missing the point - there was no issue before hand because beth got their cut, and nexus got their ad traffic.

Nexus has made an explicitly antagonistic move towards Bethesda. Regardless of the language it's couched in. 

We all operate under the general good grace of Bethesda allowing us to mod their games, and explicitly supporting it. And Bethesda knows they can make money off that now.  

It's a bit of a Faustian bargain but it's what we've got. The realistic approach is to play nicely and not rock the boat too much. 

 

 

[Sostratus]

I have no problem with a "no free trials" policy, but please do not disallow patches. There's already a lot of great work here making compatibility patches and that should not be destroyed.

[Khundiann]

2 minutes ago, Chernobylite12 said:

You're missing the point - there was no issue before hand because beth got their cut, and nexus got their ad traffic.

I'm not missing the point, I'm talking about the decades of modding before greedy beth turned its gaze onto it and created CC and VC. Modding was, is and should stay free period!

5 minutes ago, Chernobylite12 said:

It's a bit of a Faustian bargain but it's what we've got. The realistic approach is to play nicely and not rock the boat too much.

This is where opinions differ, I refuse to believe that this is a lost battle. Let beth change the TOS in relation to mods and watch their games fall flat after a few months or a year. Let them release bugged out games that will not get fixed by mods anymore. I'm not sure after the Fallout76 and Starfield release debacles they have much respect left from the gaming community apart from the plethora of mods that are available for free for their games. How about they focus on their actual purpose in the gaming sphere, fixing bugs in their games instead of re-releasing it countless times, or better yet.. finishing Elder Scrolls 6?

[Chernobylite12]

11 minutes ago, Khundiann said:

I'm not missing the point, I'm talking about the decades of modding before greedy beth turned its gaze onto it and created CC and VC. Modding was, is and should stay free period!

This is where opinions differ, I refuse to believe that this is a lost battle. Let beth change the TOS in relation to mods and watch their games fall flat after a few months or a year. Let them release bugged out games that will not get fixed by mods anymore. I'm not sure after the Fallout76 and Starfield release debacles they have much respect left from the gaming community apart from the plethora of mods that are available for free for their games. How about they focus on their actual purpose in the gaming sphere, fixing bugs in their games instead of re-releasing it countless times, or better yet.. finishing Elder Scrolls 6?

But paid mods are entirely optional - so what's the big angst about them, other than entitlement? 

While I think we agree in that modding is primarily a hobby, for some people it has been successful enough that they have been able to make it a bigger part of their lives.

The argument of paid mods = bad is entirely dependent on us only acknowledging the parts that benefit Bethesda or hurt users.

 

But forgetting that users still have the option of getting the content if they want it or still having access to the free mods that have always existed, and the mod authors getting something out of the deal as well. 

[showler]

Seems egotistical to think that mods are that important to Bethesda that they'll give up a new revenue stream to protect them.

Seems even more egotistical to think that sites like Nexus Mods are that valuable when Bethesda has their own mod hosting service which also serves their largest customer base on consoles.

Bethesda could change their TOS and make it so Nexus Mods was no longer allowed and I think it would have far less impact on them than people here think.  A lot of mod creators already post their mods on Bethesda.net and would continue to do so.  The mods we would lose would be the ones that are less beneficial to Bethesda to begin with.