Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[Arredamaal]

4 minutes ago, cyan49 said:

It's easy to misunderstand, but they are different. The former is Creation Club, which is already over. The latter is Verified Creation, which is a current topic.

Quote

The Verified Creator Program may be seen as a development of the Creation Club. The primary difference is that Creation Club Creations were official microtransactional content commissioned by Bethesda, whereas the Verified Creator Program features third party mods approved by Bethesda. Verified Creators are not hired or contracted, which opens the opportunity to more people. The difference in the payment of the author is that they receive royalties instead of being paid for completing a contract, which means the profit is more closely correlated with the success of the Creation.

Unlike Creation Club Creations, Verified Creator Program Creations are not included with the Anniversary Edition. Verified Creator Program Creations are not as restricted when it comes to asset use and may utilize voiced dialogue. As a result, some Verified Creations are not available on PlayStation due to the restrictions on third party mods on that platform.

Taken from the UESP page. So the difference between Creation Club and Verified Creation is that Verified Creations are available to more people, reward quality, and can use voiced dialogue... and we want to limit those and not Creation Club content?

[Kant3n]

14 minutes ago, cyan49 said:

It's easy to misunderstand, but they are different. The former is Creation Club, which is already over. The latter is Verified Creation, which is a current topic.

They're effectively the same thing to the end user with a different name but one is being given preferential treatment over the other. 

[cyan49]

17 minutes ago, Arredamaal said:

Taken from the UESP page. So the difference between Creation Club and Verified Creation is that Verified Creations are available to more people, reward quality, and can use voiced dialogue... and we want to limit those and not Creation Club content?

UESP = The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages. Objective information is often more useful, but when quoting please refer to the BethesdaNet FAQ instead. You've proven yourself that CC and VC are different things, so I'm not sure what to add.

[cyan49]

35 minutes ago, Kant3n said:

They're effectively the same thing to the end user with a different name but one is being given preferential treatment over the other. 

End users, yes, they all look the same. Modders, yes too, lol. It's Bethesda and Nexus that are trying to define the difference between mods, creations, DLC, mini-dlcs and verified creations, not me.

[ShyViolets]

8 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.

This was the most rationale and well laid out argument for why the patch mod decision may be unwise. Emotions are running high and I’m flipping thru pages of the thread with a lot of back and forth that isn’t always on topic.

I come from the perspective of not wanting free modding and community threatened in any way - my original opinion is that not having anything to do with it on nexus (incl patches) is good.

 

But I can appreciate someone putting forth an argument counter to my own based around the same goal - not hurting other free mod authors - which is the community I most am concerned with. 

Im gonna take time to sit and mull over what you’ve said and reconsider, but thanks for outlining your perspective in a way that feels like it’s still focused on the same goal - supporting the community. 
id hope that’s the goal of everyone even if we disagree how to achieve this.

 

Given how far through the pages of posts I had to go to find this, I’m quoting it so more recent posters can see it too.

[Rjki2]

23 hours ago, Korodic said:

Some of this makes perfect sense from a proactive stance to abuse, some of this I am really not happy with. In particular:

• 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. 

You are guaranteeing that there will be no incentivized patching for Verified Creations as Bethesda offers none, which is counterintuitive to your goal of "Make Modding Easy". Yeah, modding is difficult, in most cases it wasn't even meant to be done. I don't see how this new obstacle should make patches be less accessible and visible to users who want them, especially since there is transparency in listing the requirements. The Nexus still gets it's clicks/ad revenue and nobody is lied to about what the content is. Patching is a hit or miss thing, but even more likely to be maintained for paid content which it adds value to.

I've been a frequent user to the Nexus for over a decade, proudly, and it really doesn't feel great not to be supported by the Nexus when we are offered an official opportunity to elevate ourselves as content creators. I still had plans to create more free content, now idk, or at least idk if I should post it to the Nexus.

Pls fix the airship mod on xbox

[ParagonFury]

Thinking further on it, the anti-patch rule makes no sense from any perspective other than Nexus being vindictive towards paid mods and attempting to use it's influence to diminish or destroy them.
 

• It contradicts Nexus's own stated reasoning and policy for why it's doing it (it doesn't make modding easier or better)
• It discourages traffic to Nexus, rather than encouraging it by piggybacking off of what Bethesda is doing to drive more engagement on Nexus (it doesn't make business sense)
• It only puts Nexus in a position of opposition to Bethesda in an arena where Bethesda has all the leverage and justification to squash Nexus if it looks like Nexus is trying to sabotage the Creations Shop (it's bad from a survival POV)

Functionally there are no good outcomes for Nexus or the modding community if Nexus follows through with this. At best you'll end up with a wash and at worst you could potentially end up nuking the entire PC modding scene if Bethesda decides to crucify Nexus as a show of force.

Just drop your vendetta against paid mods already. You can't put that genie back in the bottle (and TBH there are good arguments that it never should have been bottled in the first place) and instead work with it and make a better outcome for all involved rather than trying to make a statement that will just fizzle.

[Arredamaal]

2 hours ago, cyan49 said:

UESP = The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages. Objective information is often more useful, but when quoting please refer to the BethesdaNet FAQ instead. You've proven yourself that CC and VC are different things, so I'm not sure what to add.

All of this information is also available on the Bethesda FAQ.

https://creations.bethesda.net/en/creators/bethesdagamestudios

Quote

The Bethesda Game Studios Verified Creator Program is the evolution of Creation Club, making it easier for Creators to both create and release content. While everyone can upload free Creations, only admitted members of the Verified Creator Program may release content for sale and earn royalties on each Creation of theirs sold.

We are immensely proud of the Creation Club Program, and what its members achieved. In continuing to evolve with the community, we wanted to expand on Creation Club’s potential giving our Creators more flexibility with the new Verified Creator Program.

With Creation Club, members were hired and paid as professional contract developers. Now, Verified Creators can be professionals who earn royalties directly from the sale of their Creations, with an easier path to releasing their work.

Verified Creators also have fewer requirements for releases:

• Content does not require a game patch to release
• There is no restriction on including voice over
• Content has no requirement to be lore friendly
• Must follow any platform restrictions for content and storage
• May not be localized in multiple languages

So in Bethesda's own words the Verified Creator Program is an evolution that makes it more accessible and with fewer restrictions. So they rebranded the program and changed some rules and that means that patching content that might be more worthwhile is not allowed. Granted, there is plenty of stuff I would never buy in the Verified Creator Program (Read 99.99%). But if something comes along that is worthwhile why does the name of the program matter? You buy it in the same place, with the same Bethesda bucks, from the same creators.

Edited 10 hours ago by Arredamaal
Forgot the source link

[noptasis]

Well this is f*#@ing stupid, it's just going to incentivize more people moving off platform and fragmenting the community. I was thinking of making some VC content and then making compatibility patches myself and posting them on the nexus. This is going to have a deeply chilling effect on a lot of creators. 

[Djlegends]

Have anybody even bother contacting Cartogriffi so we can settle whether its legal or not to make patches for VC content so we can solve this needless debate?