Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[ahzidaljun]

why do ppl say you can't monetize your modding here? you can make money off modding under nexus; you get dp which converts to money, you can set up your personal support pages, have incentives etc - you just can't paywall stuff within or in relation to this platform.
you're completely free to sell your mod wherever you want that allows such practices, the onus is then on you to support it on those same platforms. why should nexus, a free modding platform, have make up for the shortcomings of private modding platforms as a source of free labor and support? it's already directly supporting you via DP and indirectly supporting it to the extent you choose to.
that social contract of recursive and iterative support that the nexus community built around itself is obviously not gonna be available if you go off-site.

if we do it based on grandfathering bc they did some cool mods X years ago as per trainwiz or arthmoor, what about new authors that are just building up their following? they're not invited to these beth platforms, but there are other places for them to directly monetize - would we have a distinction between these official and unofficial private modding platforms? are we gonna establish some kind of service record requirement before you're allowed to double-dip?

idk why there has to be so much personal incentive in what started as a community creative effort.. i just wanna make cool stuff for games i like, nexus is literally giving me money to do so, and the space for people to personally donate to me if they think my work is worthy of that.
if your primary goal is to sell stuff, i'm sure you can think of better ways to do that than minmaxing your modding trying to exploit the nexus' community's willingness to maintain and collaborate while you're privately selling stuff offsite...

[ZoddsSnappedNeck]

I was initially hesitant to comment on this because I'm not all at interested in Verified Creations, but seeing as this appears to be creating yet another rift in the community, I wanted to provide my two cents.

I fully support all the changes laid out in the OP, but the one part I cannot agree with is a blanket ban on patches/dependents for paid mods that includes Verified Creations. On the one hand, Bethesda does not consider Verified Creations to be official content, and I believe Nexus may have approached this from a perspective that views all unofficial paid mods through the same lens (since charging money for mods outside of the Verified Creations program violates Bethesda's EULA, unless I am mistaken?) and a blanket ban would be easier to moderate. But on the other hand, Verified Creations are still sanctioned by Bethesda, so treating them the same as unsanctioned paid mods feels strange.

They can keep that rule, but definitely make an exception for Verified Creations. Any paid mods outside of that can go straight to hell with the ban. Maybe Nexus could also implement a filter to allow us to filter out mods that rely on Verified Creations, if usability is an issue?

Unfortunately, the better solution would be for Bethesda to just cut the paid mods bullshit with Skyrim entirely and maybe wait until the next game so we can have an organic system from the get go instead of them repeatedly taking a wrecking ball to the status quo (not to mention the numerous modding setups people put effort into). Seriously, NOTHING good has come from Bethesda constantly pushing all these different paid mod schemes year after year. But whatever they decide to do, not like I would care anyway, as I am done with Bethesda for good.

[Arthmoor]

31 minutes ago, ZoddsSnappedNeck said:

but seeing as this appears to be creating yet another rift in the community

Correction: Just like in 2015, this isn't creating a rift in the community, the issue is exposing one that's been there the whole time. Nexus is just being more open about how much they despise the thought of mod authors making money on platforms other than their own. Not even just for BGS games either as they appear to be taking direct aim at some other platform where people can sell mods legally.

If Nexus despises paid mods this much they just need to come out and say it instead of dancing around it the way they have been. At least that would be honest and not a gross attempt to manipulate opinion on the matter.

[MadMonkey119]

3 hours ago, DavidJCobb said:

The decision to disallow patches for paid mods runs directly counter to the stated goal of "making modding easy" in the short term, and I and others I've spoken with think that that's intentional. This feels like a deliberate attempt to make paid mods, in specific, less reliable and harder to use in order to undermine them; and if that indeed is the goal, then IMO it's shady not to say so outright. Picky has already said explicitly that the decision is ideological anyway.

Despite the practical and technical problems with Verified Creations --

• The marketplace hosting literal asset flips -- you can find the original asset packs online, and easily verify by eye alone that someone just converted them to NIFs and resold them
• The marketplace being filled with overpriced low-effort content, akin to the "DP splitting" issues we see on Nexus but turned up to eleven
• The marketplace being paradoxically open: Bethesda lets in creators they shouldn't and doesn't hold them to any standard of quality or ethics once they're in, but also doesn't let just anyone sell
• VCs can't depend on or contain separate community assets or unofficial content types, such as frameworks, libraries, and SKSE DLLs, inherently limiting their scope and capability; and they don't get developer support such as new engine features, so they aren't even on equal technical footing with DLCs
• VCs can't require any sort of user-side post-install build process (e.g. DynDOLOD, leveled list patchers, most animation modding, etc.)

-- we're meant to believe that VC is such a powerful competitor to high-quality free mods, and such an imminent threat to the free modding ecosystem, that patches between free and paid mods must be disallowed in order to protect free modding. That's the only way the decision makes sense: the short-term costs must be less than the long-term ones. Given the current problems with VC, I don't believe that to be the case; I don't believe that a handful of good paid mods can shift the value proposition of paid modding enough to deal any significant damage to the free modding ecosystem.

And who pays the short-term costs of the Nexus's decision?

• Patch authors who want free mods to be accessible to users of paid mods that would otherwise be incompatible
• Free mod authors who have the time and money to ensure their own works are compatible
• Paid mod authors who produce content that is high-quality enough, and hopefully priced ethically enough, to merit those sorts of patches
• Paid mod users, whether they be the stereotypical "lowest common denominator," or more emotionally invested community members who want to see good creators compensated for their time and work
• Free mod authors whose works end up being incompatible with paid mods, who risk missing out on downloads and mod usage because people are more likely to stick with their sunk costs

And who doesn't pay the short-term costs of the Nexus's decision?

• Con artists who buy asset packs for ten dollars, hastily convert them to NIFs, and flip them on Bethesda's marketplace
• Opportunists who pump out low-effort content, or who drip-feed items, at $5 a pop
• Bethesda, who puts the word "Verified" on that garbage without assuming any of the accountability that "verification" would imply to an end user: all the profit with none of the responsibility

In the short term, it is almost exclusively people who engage with modding in good faith that are negatively affected by the new policy for patches, while actual troublemakers and malicious actors are completely fine; and we need to believe that despite VC rarely being worth paying for, it is, again, such a threat in the long term that screwing the former over in the short term is acceptable collateral damage. I am not convinced. I've seen plenty of folks cheerleading this ban on patches because they think the Nexus's goal is to defeat greedy corporations encroaching on the modding ecosystem, but I don't think the ban achieves that at all. It does nothing to stop Bethesda from monetizing slop; it does nothing to raise the standards of the audiences that Bethesda is targeting with that slop; and though it creates a new disincentive for authors with any interest in craftsmanship to join VC, it doesn't actually remove any existing incentives to do so.

Banning patches for paid mods is a bad policy decision and it should be reverted in full. There are minor concerns to be had with some aspects of the other changes, but the patch ban is so egregious as to eclipse anything else.

---

As a side note:

Regarding the one unhinged poster with dreadful reading comprehension who keeps belittling everyone else's intelligence: people here have rightly pointed out that they're derailing the thread with a dozen pages of garbage while contributing nothing of value. There's a solution to that: on mobile, open the hamburger menu, tap Account, and go to Ignored Users. You can add that user to the list such that their posts are collapsed out of view by default, so they can snarl and scream into the void without any of you having to be distracted by them. Save your breath and starve the fire of oxygen.

Excellent post and entirely correct in my opinion.

[Khundiann]

1 hour ago, ScytheBearer said:

How about you stop your willful and deliberate avoidance of the truth?  Perhaps you find my comments about your observable behavior personally insulting because they hit too close to home.  Perhaps you should examine your behavior instead of trying to displace the blame for your wounded ego onto the observer.  Perhaps you should take your umbrage to a mirror. 

Your truth, the truth of someone who is not actively contributing to the community aside from downloading mods. And probably couldn't care less about mod authors or the community in general, and only has a stake in this issue because he could be personally inconvenienced in the future while downloading collections for his games.

[TheOGTennessee]

I understand -why- the decision was made. You don't want the Nexus to become some advertising platform for paid mods. I get it. I even agree with that sentiment. Maybe a more elegant balanced solution would be an administrative nightmare even.

Now here's the but: Patches are a necessary part of this ecosystem. If you have a mod, and that mod requires a patch to work with a paid mod, then you're going to have to make a patch. Why host it on Creations only and make it less accessible and visible to users of your mod? This part, banning patching, feels rather contrary to 'what's best for the community'.

I'm sure you won't suddenly backtrack because of a little backlash. It's not so easy to go back on policy changes like that. However, when you do get around to reconsidering the stance, keep the above in mind.

[ScytheBearer]

27 minutes ago, Khundiann said:

Your truth, the truth of someone who is not actively contributing to the community aside from downloading mods. And probably couldn't care less about mod authors or the community in general, and only has a stake in this issue because he could be personally inconvenienced in the future while downloading collections for his games.

Really?  Maybe you should do just a modicum of research before lying to yourself and anyone foolish enough to read your drivel.  Start with my profile, or just check out these two links for Fallout 4 and SSE.  If you have enough intestinal fortitude, try this link to AFKMods to see all my mods.   Hell, you can even join my Discord to see what I have contributed to the community; here is the invite. 

But my guess is you won't, 'cause the truth is not something you seem willing to face.  You last post is just more deliberate avoidance of the truth. 

 

[Gambit77]

Probably did check your profile, as it shows 0 mods on Nexus.

That said, the handful of people backing the patch ban are for the most part, people that contribute very little to the community, so there's probably some projection in their attack on you.

[Frank01]

I kind of understand not allowing dependencies for paid mods for most other types of mods, but allowing compatibility patches is a must from my perspective as a mod user.  I do not currently have any non AE-paid mods, but if someday I do, I'd like to be able to keep coming here to get compatibility patches for them so they work with my other mods I've downloaded from here.

[SigynX1]

There are mods I've used for years where the creator kindly offered a patch for their mod and a paid mod to work together... those aren't allowed? :/