Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[TheOGTennessee]

It's definitely legal. I even made my patch for Starsim with the express permission of the QOG team. Everything was well above board.

[GoblinHours69]

1 hour ago, Djlegends said:

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?

no need, there are literally patches for paid creations on Bethesda.net. if they were against the ToS they'd have been removed by now.

[Djlegends]

2 hours ago, GoblinHours69 said:

no need, there are literally patches for paid creations on Bethesda.net. if they were against the ToS they'd have been removed by now.

so why tf is people here keep having a "gatcha" moment since BGS controls bethesda.net lmfao

[Djlegends]

its annoying since we should have moderators checking whats uploaded on the site and know the FAQ as well

[Pickysaurus]

Thank you all for your feedback on the policy announcement. We've been reading your comments here on the forums, on our mod author Discord and in several external communities. We can see that some authors - often those currently benefiting from the Verified Creator program - are upset by certain parts of the policy, while a large number of users are generally praising the changes. A great deal of the ire about this change is related to how much you like the features of the Nexus Mods website and consider them to be far more powerful and convenient than those offered by the paid modding platforms. We're flattered by this, but we also feel it prudent to point out that if you'd like these features on platforms that do support paid mods you should be pressuring those platforms to do better to support their paid ecosystem. 

Many of you felt the section "Patches for/Dependencies on Paid Mods" was particularly problematic and gave a few examples of cases where this could be detrimental to the free modding ecosystem. We agree with some of the points raised. As a result, we'll be tempering this part of the policy to allow compatibility patches to be posted on mod pages alongside free content to allow for better interoperability with paid content. We do, however, still feel that pages where the primary purpose of the content is to support/interact with paid content should not be permitted. 

To give an example of this, if you create a mod that updates the Bard's College for Skyrim and you would like to have an easy way for users with the Bard's College Expansion paid mod to benefit from your mod, you can put an optional file on your page (or inside your mod) that adds support for this. 

We will not be permitting translations or dedicated patches on standalone pages as these would be non-functional without the paid mod content. We recommend that such content is posted on the same platform as the paid content itself. It's apparent that having these caveats has complicated things and to help you understand what is and is not permitted, we've posted a new help page.

The new wording of the section is included below:

Quote

We allow patches that fix compatibility issues between your mod on Nexus Mods and a paid mod on an official provider as long as (1) the patch is included as part of your main mod file OR the patch is added as an "Optional file" on your mod page and (2) the paid mod is not a requirement of your mod to work. We do not allow patches for paid mods to be uploaded to "patch hub" mod pages or "standalone patch pages" on Nexus Mods. These should be uploaded to the paid modding provider's platform. For more information on this policy, please check this article.

It is not lost on us that this change doesn't address all the problems you've raised. For example, we understand that a lot of patches/translations are not made by the original author of the mod. In these cases, we recommend that the patch creator ask the original author of the free content to add the patch to their mod page - where possible - or upload their patches to the paid mod vendor themselves. 

To be clear, we aren't trying to say you shouldn't use paid mods. However, we want Nexus Mods to be about free modding such that when modders come to our community, they get a complete user journey - from start to finish - where everything they are going to get on the site is free, and for free mods. 
 

[showler]

I appreciate the compromise.  It won't fix everything but it does deal with one major issue at least.

It will still have a negative effect for several of the authors who posted in this thread but pretty much any compromise would have affected someone.

[SCARaw]

i see how it is

hit me with longer and longer posts

so i can't properly comprehend what was posted in the 1st place

TLDR: they will allow you to patch paid mod with optional file

My opinion: f*#@ it, make better non-paid mod and even try to submit it to bethesda for half of the price of the paid mod that made you angry enough to pull it off in the 1st place while keeping nexus free exact version intact

[ShyViolets]

1 minute ago, showler said:

I appreciate the compromise.  It won't fix everything but it does deal with one major issue at least.

It will still have a negative effect for several of the authors who posted in this thread but pretty much any compromise would have affected someone.

Agreed. A good compromise means no one gets 100 percent what they want. 

[DavidJCobb]

So compatibility patches are now allowed here if

• the author of a free mod is personally willing to purchase a paid mod and work to assure compatibility; or
• the author of a free mod is willing to take a patch made by someone else and host it under their own mod page, with all that that implies to end users (e.g. authorship, testing/verification of functionality by the mod author, support responsibilities);

but these patches are still not allowed here if a third party wishes to offer them freely, under their own name, and take full accountability for them, because in that case, the "primary purpose" of the patch page would be to "support/interact with paid content" and somehow, not also -- and equally -- to interact with the free content that the patch improves compatibility with.

This update is better than nothing, but the distinction being made still feels nonsensical. It feels like the Nexus is trying to commit to some form of restriction on patches because they want it to accomplish something positive for free modding, rather than because they can convincingly argue that it actually would.

Edited 3 hours ago by DavidJCobb
minor updates to wording

[Chernobylite12]

1 hour ago, Pickysaurus said:

Thank you all for your feedback on the policy announcement. We've been reading your comments here on the forums, on our mod author Discord and in several external communities. We can see that some authors - often those currently benefiting from the Verified Creator program - are upset by certain parts of the policy, while a large number of users are generally praising the changes. A great deal of the ire about this change is related to how much you like the features of the Nexus Mods website and consider them to be far more powerful and convenient than those offered by the paid modding platforms. We're flattered by this, but we also feel it prudent to point out that if you'd like these features on platforms that do support paid mods you should be pressuring those platforms to do better to support their paid ecosystem. 

Many of you felt the section "Patches for/Dependencies on Paid Mods" was particularly problematic and gave a few examples of cases where this could be detrimental to the free modding ecosystem. We agree with some of the points raised. As a result, we'll be tempering this part of the policy to allow compatibility patches to be posted on mod pages alongside free content to allow for better interoperability with paid content. We do, however, still feel that pages where the primary purpose of the content is to support/interact with paid content should not be permitted. 

To give an example of this, if you create a mod that updates the Bard's College for Skyrim and you would like to have an easy way for users with the Bard's College Expansion paid mod to benefit from your mod, you can put an optional file on your page (or inside your mod) that adds support for this. 

We will not be permitting translations or dedicated patches on standalone pages as these would be non-functional without the paid mod content. We recommend that such content is posted on the same platform as the paid content itself. It's apparent that having these caveats has complicated things and to help you understand what is and is not permitted, we've posted a new help page.

The new wording of the section is included below:

It is not lost on us that this change doesn't address all the problems you've raised. For example, we understand that a lot of patches/translations are not made by the original author of the mod. In these cases, we recommend that the patch creator ask the original author of the free content to add the patch to their mod page - where possible - or upload their patches to the paid mod vendor themselves. 

To be clear, we aren't trying to say you shouldn't use paid mods. However, we want Nexus Mods to be about free modding such that when modders come to our community, they get a complete user journey - from start to finish - where everything they are going to get on the site is free, and for free mods. 
 

While I definitely believe so called patch hubs should be allowed, I do appreciate the compromise being made as it at least addresses the most grevious concerns being raised.

I would encourage patch hubs being reviewed and allowed on the basis of if the patch is designed to interact with a free mod that is posted on nexus there is still no compelling reason for it to not be hosted on the nexus.

 

Edit 2: 

I've thought on this more and reread the latest update from Picky, and I think that Nexus is choosing to believe a narrative of its own making - most of the feedback i have seen here falls into 2 camps: 

Paid mods = bad, and anything that makes them less appealing is good. 

And

The change regarding patches just hurts all of us. 

.......

Where people are generally positive is in that demos, early access, etc being disallowed is perfectly fine. 

I still believe the walk back is a step in the right direction, I also believe that nexus is being a bit disingenuous in how this is being handled, the reasons for it being done in the first place, and what the actual ramifications for the user, both mod authors and Downloader  experience are. 

As has been pointed out elsewhere, nexus is suggesting that Bethesda can change their store to be better, and more in line with nexus. Which is on its face, impossible. Console restrictions exist, and Bethesda has to work within that framework to distribute mods to console users. Pc users are under no such restriction, which allows most of our 3rd party tools that allow our mod lists to be built more comprehensively.

This whole thing looks like nexus leveraging it's market dominate position to push pc users into only utilizing the nexus, at the expense of anything from the Bethesda store, that isn't official dlc. 

Again, the latest revision is a step in the right direction, but I am still wary of the ramifications, and have definitely reevaluated my trust in the platform.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Chernobylite12
Auto correct corrections 2nd edit further thoughts