Paid mods for skyrim workshop on steam

[RurikNiall]

Yea I just read Chesko's letter to what happened between him and Steam. It seems the fog was lifted from his face about Valve and Bethesda's true intentions. http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33qcaj/the_experiment_has_failed_my_exit_from_the/

 

Bahahahaha! This is hilarious, you can ignore "journalists" from sites like Kotaku or something, but you know you've done goofed when Forbes calls you out and explains step by step everything you've done wrong. :laugh:

[PeggleFrank]

If Valve doesn't put the kaibosh on this, which they probably won't because they're evil money-grubbing f*#@ers who don't give a s*** about gamers and haven't since 2007 when they decided to just refuse to work on the promised Episode 3 (and yes, it was promised), the only way to kill this is to make the pay-for workshop unusable.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=430858236&searchtext=

 

This guy has the right idea.

 

1) Release mods that seem functional, but carry 'logic bombs' in them that corrupt and destroy save games when you try to remove it, or do something like contain script timers with no stoppages so they eventually bloat and make the game unstable.

 

2) Create fake mods that seem amazing, but are locked in some fashion until the 24 hour 'refund' timer elapses. Tie it to endgame content, or simply put an in-game timer that locks it. People who are buying on the Workshop are probably not familiar with the console and Creation Kit. When they access the content, they find out that it's one really neat area where you took your screenshots, and then a few rooms of untextured, half-assed garbage.

 

3) Maliciously hand out reviews that make the 'popularity' rating put garbage, terrible ripoff mods at the top. Good mods should be downvoted by EVERYONE to sink them in the list. s*** mods like the one I linked should be sent to the top.

 

If we fill the pay-for Workshop with terrible game-ruining content, it undermines all faith anyone has in the system, and customers will be turned away from it. Valve will have to deal with the fallout of people's games being corrupted by shitty modding, and the 'modders' run away with the cash.

 

Sometimes the only way to fight evil is with evil.

 

I'm not one to disagree or agree with opinion, but, in terms of logic, there are some flaws with that idea.

 

For one, there are two types of people. Those that follow, and those that don't. You can get some individuals to follow along in a boycott, but there are others who won't participate no matter how good your reason is. If you tried to overload the workshop with rubbish, you would be burying genuinely good workshop-exclusive mods along the way submitted by people who don't use Nexus and who aren't aware of the boycott, which would (presumably) defeat the purpose of the boycott: to get the terrible half-baked mods off the Workshop and make Steam reconsider their choice of allowing mods to have paywalls. There are many high-quality mods on Workshop that just never make it to the Nexus, and it could be presumed that there will be more mods in the future that require payment. Some of these mods will be of the highest quality in order to try and capture the attention of the masses, while others will be terrible mobile game-quality junk mods made for a quick buck. We can do without the junk mods, but burying every mod on the Workshop beneath digital waste will do a lot more harm than good, assuming you want to remove the low-quality paid mods.

 

Secondly, you will achieve very little in regards to making people lose faith in the Workshop. There are a decent portion of players who only use the Workshop and have never heard of Nexus; if we make the Workshop useless to them, that won't guarantee or even encourage them in the slightest to move over to the Nexus; that is, assuming they don't already know about it. If the Workshop is high quality, people who don't use the Nexus will stay in the community and mod for longer than they originally would have if the Workshop was filled with junk. This highly increases the chances of them picking up word about Nexus and going to check it out (when you first buy Skyrim, you're not told about the Nexus in any way unless you visit the discussion forum and ask, which few ever would!), which, in turn, makes this site more popular. If the Workshop dies, where, people must ask, do the mods come from? Is it a thing of the past? Is Skyrim dead, for they know of no other mod distribution platform than the Workshop?

 

Thirdly, and finally, rigging mods to destroy your game does not work in any way whatsoever. I used to be active in the Minecraft modding community, and it's, by god, millions of times worse than this community has been or ever will be. Mods from different mod authors "compete" with each other, despite being free, and actively disrupt the code of other competing mods. Some mods have also been reported to install malware on the user's machine if the mods detected a mod from a competing mod author. You will get absolutely nowhere by sprinkling the Workshop with save game corruption bombs, and it just separates the community to a point where we might have two, three, or even four different sites for mods instead of just the Nexus.

 

Again, I don't disagree or agree with you, but these things you suggested have just been proven to be ineffective. Steam is a very large platform; boycotts don't work against them, and you can't target a large asset like the Workshop. If you take down the Workshop, you take down all the players and mod authors that rely on it, which would cut down the community size by quite a bit. I believe some other forms of protest have worked to make Steam reconsider its actions before; I have no idea what those types of protest were, but they're worth a shot if you want to change things back to how they used to be and remove paid mods for good. You'll need a good, probably (?) nonviolent list of actions to take as well as a platform in order to get people on your side.

 

I would highly suggest you consider what I said if you want to change things. People are riled up over this change due to how recent and shocking it's been, so finding people to support you wouldn't be difficult. There's a petition on change.org to remove paid mods; you should be able to find it on the discussion forum of Skyrim.

[lolpeura]

Some spooky stuff from Bethesda forums

 

 

Is the refund policy an actual refund? I've heard that you only receive a refund in the form of steam wallet money but don't know whether that's actually the truth or not.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/refundpolicy

 

It seems like wallet only refunds..

 

and this reddit post was quite funny

 

So, i did a little bit of calculation of the approximate sales and profit made on the first day, so people can see how much money the content creators actually get.

These stats were made assuming everybody who subscribed to the item has paid the lowest price option available, and it does not include the price in the bundle (as it is unknown)

Gifts of Akatosh [Corvalho] - $731.59 revenue, $100 personal profit

Shadow Scale Set [sebastian] - $644.49 revenue, $100 personal profit

Sange Sword [T_Vidotto] - $88.25 revenue, $0 personal profit

Yasha Sword [T_Vidotto] - $104.00 revenue, $0 personal profit

Butterfly Sword [T_Vidotto] - $55.75 revenue, $0 personal profit

Lambda Locator [Jimo] - $118.09 revenue, $0 personal profit

Purity [Laast] - $1055.47 revenue, $200 personal profit

Blazing Ringsword [Fido] - $122.50 revenue, $0 personal profit

Scrib Crusher [Fido] - $53.00 revenue, $0 personal profit

iNeed [isoku] - $88.11 revenue, $0 personal profit

Wet and Cold [isoku] - $229.68 revenue. $0 personal profit

Shezrie's Bleakden Town [shezrie] - $344.27 revenue, $0 personal profit

Firelink Implements [Vermilion Wlad] - $209.88 revenue, $0 personal profit

Midas Magic Gold Edition [xilverbulet] - $615.94 revenue, $100 personal profit

The Watcher Staff [Jeremy Klein] - $151.47 revenue, $0 personal profit

Blind Raven [RadLyte] - $193.50 revenue, $0 personal profit

Arissa - The Wandering Rogue [Chesko] - $499.93 revenue, $100 personal profit

Castle Volkihar Rebuilt [Arthmoor] - $471.15 revenue, $100 personal profit

Totals

$5777.08 Total Revenue

$700 paid to 6 content creators

$744.27 content creator revenue being withheld

$1733.12 Profit for Valve

$2599.69 profit for Bethesda

 

what a mess!

[Boombro]

The modders get so little.

Beth, please don't be like EA.

[Marcho70]

I remember when my older brother sold modded Commodore 64 datasettes to many friends of his back in the 80's.. I can hardly believe it's starting to become a thing. What makes it even harder to believe is that this subject of money milking was given birth from corporations Valve and Bethesda. I'm not actually that surprised.. Remember premium / monthly fees in games like Ultimate Online, Runescape or World of Warcraft? It became a thing. Remember when expansion packs started to go almost extinct, only to be replaced by lower quality DLCs? Yup. Microtransactions / P2W elements? f***ing everywhere. Israeli approved Kickstarters? Steam Early Access? And it all has become to this.. Mods with prize tags. Took a while to get there, but hey what to expect from the pioneers of a growing industry? Nice to see that EA, Dice and Ubisoft aren't the only devils in this business. What a f***ing shame though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNxxncydX2o

Edited April 24, 2015 by Marcho70

[Tikkidew]

I just heard the news. I'm absolutely appalled by this.

[ashleyclark]

I also am appalled. I had subscribed to the weapon and shield mods, 3 of them on Steam. I had the weapons, forged some of them, and this morning I discovered that not only were the mods un-subscribed without me knowing, I no longer had the weapons, even the ones I forged. Suppose that was a house mod, and I had all my hard earned plunder in it?? The house would be gone along with all my plunder.

 

I have went through all the mods I had subscribed to on Steam, and "matched" them with Nexus and then un-subscribed from them. I run at least 130 mods, and only 30 were from Steam, which number is now down to 18. I also have 4 mods on Steam that I made, and as soon as they are fit and able, and complete to the best I can make them, I am moving them over to Nexus. I will never charge for my mods, nor will I pay for the use of one. I would rather play a vanilla Skyrim on the Xbox 360 first. My opinion.

 

Ashley

[setupexec]

So this happened (look for schlangster's):

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1516818-discussion-for-workshop-paid-mods-thread-4/page-5

 

You know, I was fairly optimistic about the future of this situation, but now...

[Ceruulean]

Pirating mods. . . now that's funny!

 

I see some unreviewed paid mods that used textures from other people. Of course, those textures are free to use, but that still seems wrong to me. Who's going to give the texture artist compensation for her work that she give permission to use freely? Maybe she doesn't expect any, but if I was her it would bother me. If I gave this for free, pass on the goodwill.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Ceruulean

[Galandil]

So this happened (look for schlangster's):

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1516818-discussion-for-workshop-paid-mods-thread-4/page-5

 

You know, I was fairly optimistic about the future of this situation, but now...

Well, SkyUI is a mod I for one wouldn't mind giving a little to the developer for creating. It is hands down a must-have. With that said I hope he will not remove the earlier releases of SkyUI from the Skyrim Nexus.

 

Do not get the wrong impression of me though, I am as upset over this as anyone else. If this is going to be the norm for the Elder Scrolls modding in the future I might reconsider purchasing any TES Games in the future, after all, it is the modding community that has kept me playing these games, if I am now forced to pay for every little mod I decide to download well... It just feels wrong. Modding should be about contributing entertainment to others, not a quick and easy way to make money. We do not know what sort of situation some of the modders are in though, and yes there are mods I would definitely consider donating to a mod creator, but forcing a payment really leaves a sour taste in my mouth, and it mostly comes from the fact that the ones who are grinning is Valve and Bethesda who are grabbing 75% of what a mod creator earns releasing their mod, which really begs the question; Are you really going to make any money charging money for this? I personally own a legal copy of Skyrim and all of the DLC's, I've paid for this product, it is not Bethesda developing mods, it is us here in the modding community, and Steam has been more of an annoyance then anything else when it comes to attaching itself to Skyrim, at least for me. So, why should these companies take such a large share, or any for that matter. I doubt Bethesda didn't forsee a huge backlash from this, I wonder how this will hurt their franchise in the future.