Publisher-Approved Paid Modding Policy

[ak0d]

4 minutes ago, DavidJCobb said:

Perhaps the Nexus should consider adding a "rolling eyes" react option to the forums, given the quality of discussion seen over most of this thread.

Perhaps you should consider keeping your posts relevant to said discussion. A quip to end my post makes no difference to its quality.

[Kant3n]

6 minutes ago, ak0d said:

Perhaps you should consider keeping your posts relevant to said discussion. A quip to end my post makes no difference to its quality.

It's not a quip, it's just being a toxic individual.

[Lollia]

3 hours 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,

 

3 hours ago, ParagonFury said:

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.

 

3 hours ago, ParagonFury said:

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.

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Czasior. If a so-called "third-party" wants to create patches between free mods and paid mods, for heaven's sake, let them! It's their time and their choice, so why hinder that?

For my part, I have no interest in hosting things that I cannot test on my own mod pages. Been there, done that. Which is why I took down the patches I originally agreed to host and put this together over four years later. I didn't make the patches hosted there, and I made that abundantly clear. I was not forced to make the patch hub; I did so because I wanted to--which is the very core of modding--we create the things we want to make.

Not sure I want to put together another patch hub unless it's for patches I have personally created, or for archival purposes, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be pressured to host anything pertaining to paid content--the mere existence of which goes against the very core of my being. I prefer patches to remain with the ones who created them. It's far less confusing for the users, believe me.

Stipulate that paid mod patches can only exist within a "mixed" patch hub (peppered with free mod patches, too) by all means, but don't expect me and other mod creators to host the stuff. The focus will not be directly on the paid-mods, and users can still obtain patches. Win-win.

[TheOGTennessee]

The change seems fair. If anything further needs to be changed, I will let others discuss that. I am just happy that compatibility patches will be visible to those downloading a mod now. You have my salut Nexus.

[samuelgensler]

4 hours ago, Pickysaurus said:

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.

Ultimately this is a good change in the right direction, but at the same time why are we just denying reality here? In no way does it seem like a large number of users were praising the changes, and plenty of non VC authors were critical of them.

Being this "pro free mods" but only related to VCs still comes off as super vindictive. 

If this is truly the stance of nexus, the SE hub should be shut down and we should all be stuck on oldrim. Or we should be relegated to pre AE versions only. 

Baby steps I guess, but none of the policy changes come off as coherent with each other. 

[Pickysaurus]

2 minutes ago, samuelgensler said:

Ultimately this is a good change in the right direction, but at the same time why are we just denying reality here? In no way does it seem like a large number of users were praising the changes, and plenty of non VC authors were critical of them.

Being this "pro free mods" but only related to VCs still comes off as super vindictive. 

If this is truly the stance of nexus, the SE hub should be shut down and we should all be stuck on oldrim. Or we should be relegated to pre AE versions only. 

Baby steps I guess, but none of the policy changes come off as coherent with each other. 

I think you're missing the context where I said we've monitored chatter across multiple platforms. What you've seen in your preferred communities may have varied from what we've seen if we didn't look in all the same places. One of the key problems with Discord is all discussion is siloed. 

[samuelgensler]

2 hours ago, Kant3n said:

Burning down the load orders of users out of spite is not a solution to anything.

No, you see, this is actually good for the community. 

Instead of easy to access patch hubs for content, we now have to find specific patches in optional files from modders who may not exist anymore.

God forbid the community be allowed to do anything for itself. 

And the latest update effectively confirms this was never a legal issue or anything of the sort, it's genuinely Nexus admins trying to take a controlling role in the community and decide what people are and aren't allowed to have out of some naive belief that they're taking a stance against paid mods. We're all on AE, where was the stance then? 

[samuelgensler]

1 minute ago, Pickysaurus said:

I think you're missing the context where I said we've monitored chatter across multiple platforms. What you've seen in your preferred communities may have varied from what we've seen if we didn't look in all the same places. One of the key problems with Discord is all discussion is siloed. 

I'm aware different areas of the game represent different viewpoints. In the case of reddit, for instance, the changes received almost universal praise, but the discussion quality was not so great. Usually just one or two sentence responses to the tune of "paid mods bad" without any real debate over the nuance.

However even there I saw complaints about the patch stuff. I'm not saying the current change isn't good, but it's also worth considering who makes up what communities you're talking in. Of course reddit is largely pro-free mods. Discord I can't speak to, for the reason you gave. 

It's like, if Taylor Swift does something terrible and you walk into the Taylor Swift sub expecting criticism of it, you'll probably not find that. The sub's community took an anti-VC/CC stance a long time ago and never shook it off (ironic choice of words given my Taylor Swift reference), and have more or less made it clear alternative opinions aren't welcome. So, you don't really get them, though I'm sure if you dive deep into the downvoted posts (another issue with reddit, as a small majority can hide most of the opposing voices) you'd find criticism of the policy. Here, obviously, there's no downvoting, so someone saying "I like this policy" can't be hidden like people saying "I dislike this policy" can be there. 

But yeah, discord is unfortunate. A lot of communities I'm part of try to avoid using discord altogether for discussions because of how closed off it is. 

[zhongjiedong]

I keep seeing people talk about accessibility and hurting the end user: if the paid mod isn't even on the Nexus in the first place then the translations/patch being on the Nexus adds what exactly?

 

Answer: discoverability. 

 

I wish people would just be transparent with their intentions, like yes we get it you like being paid for your work, nobody is trying to say that's a bad thing. 

However in the end I wish Nexus would just take a hard line stance like they did with the archiving of mods a couple years back, the website didn't die from that either and it wouldn't die from this. Sure some people might leave but then that's life, some people have principles and likewise, Nexus should stick with theirs.

 

So really there's two good options:

 

1. No mention of paid mods should be permitted in any way, links to mod authors' donation pages only. This is the least ambiguous and most fair policy in this direction.

2. Paid mods free for all, just add a tag for "premium" or something similar and people can search up paid mods if they so wish or completely block them from their search filters. Authors attempting to circumvent this by not adding the tag to gain more discoverability should be punished severely. 

 

[Chernobylite12]

13 minutes ago, Pickysaurus said:

I think you're missing the context where I said we've monitored chatter across multiple platforms. What you've seen in your preferred communities may have varied from what we've seen if we didn't look in all the same places. One of the key problems with Discord is all discussion is siloed. 

The majority praise I've seen regarding these changes is a very vocal minority of the user base who see you making changes that affect paid mods in a negative way. That's all they care about. You could have said we're banning anyone who participates in the VC program and recieved positive feedback from many of those same users.

 

Both this forum and the various Bethesda game reddits have *plenty* of feedback regarding the negatives here, and it definitely seems like you're deliberately downplaying and or ignoring it in an effort to support an ideological stance regarding paid mods that you have no interest in changing, regardless of what the community has to say about it.