Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[jwisser]

11 minutes ago, mystraven777 said:

Strongly discouraging entanglement with paid content ensures that, prioritizing Nexus users and our long standing free modding community, paywalls are kept off site, out of sight, out of mind. We can rely on a cohesive, end-to-end free-to-access platform without the frustration of ever dealing with "paywalled" functionality.

Lmao. No. Literally the opposite of that. Preventing longstanding contributors to the modding community from uploading their free patches for the benefit of those who have chosen to purchase paid mods elsewhere will drive people away from this platform, and fracture the modding ecosystem.

I feel like people are missing the fact that many Verified Creators are authors who have also been critical to Nexus's success. Without authors like Trainwiz and Arthmoor (and many others), I truly do not think Nexus would have become the dominant force in modding that it is today. Now some of those authors have dipped a toe into offering mods on a different platform--a paid one! gasp, clutch pearls!--and this decision by the Nexus honestly looks like it's targeted directly at them. "We don't care how big your past contributions to players or the Nexus; if you dare to make money off your hard work, you're on the Naughty List, and so are all the players who support you."

Watch out for behavior like this that throws early contributors to a platform under the bus: it means the platform no longer has any appreciation for the people who made it what it is, and it's always a sign that there's worse to come.

[Wolfstorm]

18 hours ago, elpuertorro said:

So then why not offer the split the other way around 70% creator/ 30% for them? 

Because modern slavery. 

[Justascarypuppet]

20 minutes ago, mystraven777 said:

In the ways explained by the three previous paragraphs?

Your message didn't seem to make explicit mention of the portion of the rule allowing advertisements for creations, nor did it communicate how these patches pressure people in to buying the creations, let alone in a way that meets or outweighs how an advertisement would.
 

26 minutes ago, mystraven777 said:

paywalls are kept off site, out of sight, out of mind.

A patch/addon that depends on a creation is objectively no more of a direction towards a paywall than an ad promoting such a creation.

 

26 minutes ago, mystraven777 said:

Not to mention that paid content isn't hosted on Nexus and doesn't profit Nexus; paid content is the competition. Since Nexus does not host paid mods, it owes no support, gateway or advertising for paid content.

And yet, it still does under these new guidelines. The existence of patches between content on the Nexus and VCs is less egregious than advertisements for them. The allowing of patches that have VCs as a dependency isn't support for them any more than it is support for mods hosted on Nexus.
 

 

26 minutes ago, mystraven777 said:

Finally, while bugfixes and patches seem like a reasonable exception to allow, any exception makes moderation at scale more complex and arbitrary. Whereas a blanket ban on paid dependencies is much easier to communicate to modders and users without ambiguity, and much more expedient to moderate at scale.

The initial post had the different aspects of the new rule broken down into bullet points, communicating each point individually. Of those points, the vast majority of discourse in this forum has been concerning the one that disallows patches for and mods with dependencies on VCs. Disallowing collections depending on VCs is independent and easy to moderate on its own. Disallowing "demos" of VCs is independent and, at least to me, seems easy to moderate on it's own. Requiring links back to ones Nexus profile if they advertise VCs on the Nexus is independent and easy to moderate on it's own. So it doesn't seem far fetched to say that the rest of the new rule could continue to exist with the removal of bans on VC patches and moderation wouldn't become exceedingly complex nor arbitrary. 

[ZiplockBaggies]

37 minutes ago, mystraven777 said:

Not to mention that paid content isn't hosted on Nexus and doesn't profit Nexus; paid content is the competition.

Considering that the mods on this website that drive the most traffic and revenue for Nexus are all Bethesda games, looking at creations as "competition" is a problem. I am not a lawyer, but I imagine Bethesda and Microsoft accountants would love nothing more than to ensure that all mods for their games are ONLY offered through bethesda.net

Fight you're battles if you must, but understand that a hefty legal battle would not go well for Nexus based purely off of the history of gaming companies shutting down fan made mods/creations. 

You might say "well then no one will mod for their games" if Bethesda went down that route of taking down Nexus, but the fact is, paid mods aren't going anywhere and mod authors who are making great content and a decent income off of it aren't going to stand with you in solidarity and eventually, the bethesda.net modding community will move on and existing VC and new VCs will pop-up and you'll be there screaming about "why did bethesda do this?!?!?! Remember when we could download free mods from Nexus?!" 

[trainwiz]

6 minutes ago, Wolfstorm said:

Because modern slavery. 

Damn, I wish I had learned I'm a slave before I flew out to New Orleans for a nice vacation on that VC cash, now I'll have to report back to Todd and beg for his forgiveness for leaving my overlords without notice.

[jwisser]

8 minutes ago, Wolfstorm said:

18 hours ago, elpuertorro said:

So then why not offer the split the other way around 70% creator/ 30% for them? 

Because modern slavery. 

This split rate has been debunked. Stop perpetuating it.

[Chernobylite12]

Just now, ZiplockBaggies said:

Considering that the mods on this website that drive the most traffic and revenue for Nexus are all Bethesda games, looking at creations as "competition" is a problem. I am not a lawyer, but I imagine Bethesda and Microsoft accountants would love nothing more than to ensure that all mods for their games are ONLY offered through bethesda.net

Fight you're battles if you must, but understand that a hefty legal battle would not go well for Nexus based purely off of the history of gaming companies shutting down fan made mods/creations. 

You might say "well then no one will mod for their games" if Bethesda went down that route of taking down Nexus, but the fact is, paid mods aren't going anywhere and mod authors who are making great content and a decent income off of it aren't going to stand with you in solidarity and eventually, the bethesda.net modding community will move on and existing VC and new VCs will pop-up and you'll be their screaming about "why did bethesda do this?!?!?! Remember when we could download free mods from Nexus?!" 

As I've mentioned previously - this move is quite antagonistic to Bethesda/Microsoft. As it looks like nexus is directly attempting to set itself up as the better *freeeee* alternative to Beth's store - and while they make relative pennies off of any VC purchase. Pennies add up, and given the option of pennies vs no pennies they're going to choose the former. 

I could very easily see Bethesda saying enough is enough changing the terms of use on the kit and saying the only legitimate way to distribute  ESP/l/m files generated with the kit is through the bethesda storefront. In which case we all lose. 

[ScytheBearer]

9 hours ago, Khundiann said:

 

FYI, I live in a trilingual country and English is my 4th language. Education system comments coming from the US, now thats rich! 

My point is that Nexusmods provides a FREE service to both mod authors and mod users, they are not profiting from mod authors their work in the same way that Beth is profiting from it. Nexusmods doesn't make anyone pay to use their website or upload/download mods, the only thing you pay for is the premium website features.

Nexusmods' existence is directly related to the historically "free" nature of mods, as there was no legal framework to profit from the intellectual properties by mod authors or websites like Nexusmods. Now some of the greedy corps are tapping into the modding community and monetizing it, why would Nexusmods be obligated to help anyone destroy the free nature of the modding community and by extension jeopardize their own business plan?

If Beth had their way we would be paying for every small mod you can imagine, remember the Oblivion horse armor anyone? If i'm not mistaken this is widely regarded as the root of the evil we know today as crappy paid DLC. This is just the beginning imo, wouldn't suprise me at all that in the future the TOS of Beth games will change to only allow mods to exist on their own paid platform or something.

I applaud Nexusmods for taking a firm stance against publishers trying to wiggle their way into and exploiting the modding community!

I said "As for the rest of your screed, NexusMods makes a profit, but without those free mods to share, where would NexusMods' profit come from?  Here again, I think even you are smart enough to understand that "no mods" means "no NexusMods".  So, NexusMods profits come from the work of mod makers, but NexusMods will not support mod makers who which to profit from their work." 

I find I must retract that paragraph, as you are obviously not smart enough to understand or accept the reality that NexusMods' only source for their millions of pounds in profits comes at the expense of free mods and those who make those mods.  Until you are willing to accept that simple truth, any attempt at frank and honest discourse with you is a complete waste of time.   I am done with you.

My original statement remains "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."

 

[Khundiann]

9 minutes ago, ScytheBearer said:

I said "As for the rest of your screed, NexusMods makes a profit, but without those free mods to share, where would NexusMods' profit come from?  Here again, I think even you are smart enough to understand that "no mods" means "no NexusMods".  So, NexusMods profits come from the work of mod makers, but NexusMods will not support mod makers who which to profit from their work." 

I find I must retract that paragraph, as you are obviously not smart enough to understand or accept the reality that NexusMods' only source for their millions of pounds in profits comes at the expense of free mods and those who make those mods.  Until you are willing to accept that simple truth, any attempt at frank and honest discourse with you is a complete waste of time.   I am done with you.

My original statement remains "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."

 

How about you stop insulting people personally?

[henryetha]

21 minutes ago, Khundiann said:

How about you stop insulting people personally?

Nvm that. It just says a lot about their personality. No use “discussing” with that kind of people.