Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[DefinitelyNotNoah]

35 minutes 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. 
 

Bit sadge but I understand the decision behind this. I completely opppose most if not all arguments made in favor of support patches for paid content (since I have 0 respect of paid creations INCLUDING the users who support them) but luckily, I'm not the guy who has to deal with the aftermath. 

Still glad u didn't fully backtrack on the original decision. Thanks for the update. 

Edited 2 hours ago by DefinitelyNotNoah
Minor additions and a little thank you

[Wolfstorm]

Why dont those who benefit from the exclusive Bethesda's system dont ask their patchers to release their patches and tweaks in the Bethesda platform? 

[Czasior]

My East Empire Expansion patches are a part of bigger patch collections (for JK's Solitude Outskirts, JK's Interiors, RedBag's Falkreath, COTN Falkreath) constituting only approximately half a percent of all the files provided in the particular collection (each contains from 80 to over 500 different patches). I don't think we could treat this as an advertisement of this Verified Creation, but with current rules, I still have to remove them. The only person who loses in this case is the user, not me or the author of the VC, but I don't have the time and willingness to argue about it further. I will gradually remove these patches with the next update of each collection.

[Chernobylite12]

3 minutes ago, Czasior said:

My East Empire Expansion patches are a part of bigger patch collections (for JK's Solitude Outskirts, JK's Interiors, RedBag's Falkreath, COTN Falkreath) constituting only approximately half a percent of all the files provided in the particular collection (each contains from 80 to over 500 different patches). I don't think we could treat this as an advertisement of this Verified Creation, but with current rules, I still have to remove them. The only person who loses in this case is the user, not me or the author of the VC, but I don't have the time and willingness to argue about it further. I will gradually remove these patches with the next update of each collection.

Are they not in the clear with the most recent revision?

[ParagonFury]

While it's better than nothing it still falls short - you're essentially making dozens of different people responsible for patching, rather than one or two people who might be dedicated to it for a certain mod (as is already the case for several larger creations), just so you can still dance around the issue.

You realize Bethesda literally cannot make the changes necessary to "make it equal" even if they want to, because they cannot allow the Bethesda Marketplace to do anything that can't be done/isn't allowed to be done on consoles, right?

[Remiros]

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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.

I'm not sure if that's accurate. While I see several verified creators voicing their concerns, I'm mostly seeing end users who are negatively affected by this change. Ultimately, it seems like this is a net loss for everyone involved, including the Nexus, unless someone can point out the positive aspects to me.

 

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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.

I don't think that was ever really part of the discussion in the first place. It's not about whether the Nexus is better or worse than other platforms in terms of features, but instead that it's "the" go-to modding platform, whether people like it or not. I genuinely do think that it's currently the best platform in terms of features and reach, but I feel like that's very much missing the point.

 

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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.

Considering that this has been the primary issue in this discussion, even the minor alteration to the rules to placate users effectively changes nothing. I'm not a verified creator myself, so I have no direct stakes here, but I still think this is a bad precedent that will only serve to create another rift in the community. I have always been (and will continue to be) a big proponent of cathedral modding, but free modding means having to account for both sides.

 

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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. 

That seems contradictory, because the Nexus does require payment in the form of a monthly subscription to access some if its more prominent features like automatic collections, faster downloads and an ad-free experience.

[ParagonFury]

Just now, Chernobylite12 said:

Are they not in the clear with the most recent revision?

No.

The most recent revision makes it so that each individual mod author is responsible for compatibility patches for making their mods work with paid mods and hosting them - third parties and others aren't allowed to do it on Nexus. 

It's basically a "we know we pissed a bunch of people off but we still hate paid mods so we'll make a tweak so that it can't be said we didn't do anything about it but still get to kneecap paid mods" change.

[Chernobylite12]

1 minute ago, ParagonFury said:

No.

The most recent revision makes it so that each individual mod author is responsible for compatibility patches for making their mods work with paid mods and hosting them - third parties and others aren't allowed to do it on Nexus. 

It's basically a "we know we pissed a bunch of people off but we still hate paid mods so we'll make a tweak so that it can't be said we didn't do anything about it but still get to kneecap paid mods" change.

Fair enough - my understanding was so long as the patch is part of a bigger collection. I.e. the JKs city hub. It would be in the clear.

 

If you're reading is correct then nexus is still making things harder than they need to.

[ParagonFury]

Actually, I just thought of something.

Doesn't this change mean that Nexus is actually taking a position against itself in the Parlor vs. Cathedral debate it had all those years ago? That Nexus is essentially saying that free mods must be Cathedral, mod maker's wishes be damned but that paid mods must be Parlor, regardless if the community or users want them to be more open or treated the same?

EDIT: This whole thing about "free modding being sacred" too really stinks because it seems like Nexus is okay with making money off of mods or modding-related services through ads and their subscription service, but seems to have a problem when Bethesda and individual modders do the same thing directly on the mods. I wanna know why Nexus thinks their Netflix/Youtube Premium-esque monetary scheme is okay, but Bethesda's Point of Sale/By-Item scheme isn't.

[Kant3n]

It's an improvement but still not good enough, it's still being needlessly obtuse about solving a problem that only began existing two days ago and because Nexus invented it. There is literally no reason to ban patch hubs so long as they have valid permissions, period. The patch hubs requires the free mods to work, too, so why are you treating the very existence of the paid mod as some sort of terminal cancer that invalidates 100% of what is being interacted with by that patch?

Just please knock this whole thing off and leave the patches alone. You took one step back after taking five steps forward.