Valve/Bethesda announce paid modding for Skyrim, more games to follow

[DecentAnarch]

I'm all cool with this and all but, a concrete paywall? I ain't fine with that. e.g. "this mod looks awesome. I'm gonna buy it! wait, nevermind it sucks." a test run of the mod would be a nice addition or refunding.

[Deleted11834868User]

In response to post #24582509. #24582854, #24583264, #24583329, #24583634 are all replies on the same post.

EnaiSiaion wrote:

marthgun wrote: calm down now. pandoras box has been opened indeed, we are past the event horizon. the last thing we need is pessimism driving talent into the malevolent embrace of Darth Gaben for a mere 25%.

The situation can be salvaged, its not just you that is feeling burnt about this. Alot of us contributed postively for years to mods. I don't want to see it destroyed by valve.

At least hold out on getting better compensation.

Varegi wrote: That makes sense in the one-person-does-it-all-mods. Yes this whole thing is a bloody gray area... Now what about the issues with bigger mods that involve a lot of people and possibly content from those smaller mods? Copyright stuff and all that.

Yes it is a fact that many don't seem to care about the mods and modders, me included.
Yet isn't it also a fact that modders know that their work would be underappreciated by many, and that there are buttholes around the globe that would whine endlessly on their comments section?

Not expecting an answer from you to these, just throwing some thoughts here for no reason really.

Drive-by compliment incoming:
Apocalypse and Wintermyst are awesome. Sincere thanks for those.

- Not here to offend, sorry if did.

etholas wrote: The words "death knell" come to mind.

phellen wrote: Enai is right in that "Community" is the key word that has been missing from this conversation, and maybe that's the key to all of this. Steam is literally banking on money being the drawing factor for modders/users. So maybe The nexus should go the opposite direction and focus on improving the community adding features that make it easy to show modders appreciation and a better way to rate their work and interact with eachother. Besides the mods themselves, Community is probably the main thing that keeps modders coming back again and again, and I think true community is something that is lacking more and more nowadays. The nexus is in a unique position in that it offers more in this area than steam and other modding sites currently do but there's also a lot of room to improve upon this, and it would be a good way to stand apart from what the steam workshop is offering.

With all due respect to your effort and work, those 'drive-by' compliments are actual compliments, and only meaningless if you yourself choose to not care about them, not the other way around. For someone who feels there's no reward, you've doubtlessly spent a huge amount of time on a great many mods with a sea of well-made content in each.

Go for it you want, or hold up if you don't, but don't spit mod users over a fire to justify it.

[Painshadow]

Great article. Hope is and will always remain here, at Nexus. It's where the pro's are and ones i support. A little too late in the "game" i think so in all honesty it's just a test. I sense the Steam flood gates will not hold back the utter troll-trash mods people will upload just to f with the "workshop" or try to make a few bucks. Sad but true.

[Aahzmandias]

In response to post #24566989. #24567159, #24567334, #24567369, #24568009, #24568119, #24568139, #24568164, #24568744, #24568794, #24569069, #24575579, #24582114, #24582484, #24582544, #24582579, #24582979, #24583134 are all replies on the same post.

sojourner22 wrote:

Uranium - 235 wrote: Unfortunately people - even modders - are greedy and dumb. See also Wet and Cold being sold for FIVE FREAKING DOLLARS.

Hoping it will all work itself out with altruism isn't going to cut it. Furthermore, we're only talking about the current generation of modders. There are almost no people who were modding games for Morrowind who are still modding Skyrim. The torch gets passed and new modders take it up. Yeah, we might have some modders who believe in the old ways and will offer it for free, but with time, they will move on with their lives, and a new generation will take over, a generation that's been raised on microtransactions, DLC, greed, and selfishness.

And that's the end of free modding forever.

sojourner22 wrote: Wet and Cold is set default at $5, but if you select the drop down arrow it allows you to pay as little as $1 for it.... a lot of these mods are listed as pay what you want. It just requires a little bit of extra searching.

That said, the Midas Magic gold minimum price is $3 for like... 10 extra spells. No.

AmeerMahmood wrote: Very pessimistic outlook but a possibility.

Dark0ne wrote: The horrible thing about doing that is that 75% of that donation goes to Valve and Bethesda. Butter my arse, that's crazy. We'll be working to make donations more prominent here without trying to make it too in your face annoying for users still. That way, 100% of the donations will go to the user.

Reaper0021 wrote: Dark I hope you do something ASAP. If ever there was a time we needed your experience it's now. Do something to save this situation. OR make it better.

Thaiauxn wrote: This is why I love Dark0ne. Wading into the trenches of a hot topic, replying to users, taking time away from life, implementing smart solutions.

*wipes away tear* Makes me so proud...

Brumbek wrote: @Dark0ne: thanks again for being awesome and making this site. I don't thank you enough. My current internal debate is...SMIM will always be free on Skyrim Nexus. But if Steam lets me charge a small fee, should I not let Steam users pay me? Steam users seem to love giving money for cosmetics...and SMIM is like the best cosmetic upgrade to Skyrim IMO, hehehe...anyway, I will never, EVER remove my mods from your site. Ever.

Dark0ne wrote: I've had lots of mod authors contact me on Skype about it, they seem to feel like they need to apologise to me or that they owe me an explanation. You don't! The modding industry (excluding the aforementioned F2P Steam games, where it's already happened) is about to go from a $0 a year industry to a multi-million dollar industry in the space of a year. Obviously it makes sense that the mod authors are compensated for their work accordingly, if they so wish.

The only thing that annoys me in all this is that there's no way for a competitor to come in and undercut that batcrap crazy 25/75 revenue share. And that's not me lamenting the fact that I can't do it, oh god no, that's far too much drama and stress for me to bother with, but the fact no one else can come along and do better due to Valve's lock-down, that's the thing that really annoys me in all of this. Used to be that people used the best platform for the job. And if you wanted to be that platform you had to analyse all the other platforms and try and come up with something better, something people really wanted to use. That's out the window, now.

25/75...my god.

mcguffin wrote: 75% cut is really high.
I understand if Bethesda want a share, because, you know, most mods are using their assets in first place, but Valve... this feel wrong.
Even Apple doesnt take that much in Itunes.

SvarogNL wrote: Its the 75% that smells, Brum.

I have no doubt people want to pay for SMIM, just not thru Steam Workshop because of the 75%.

belenbelen wrote: Dark0ne, please make the Donate button bigger and more easier to see. most of folk here dont even kbow such an option exist

Brumbek wrote: @Dark0ne: great point about the anti-competitive nature of SW. You are so right that we are forced into an unfortunate system.

@SvarogNL: hmm, I wasn't sure if 25/75 was absolute fact or still being adjusted. You are right that my plan to charge a SMALL fee for SMIM is kind of ruined by me only getting 1/4 of it. It does feel like they are making money off my effort! Well, that is exactly what is happening...

Varegi wrote: Holy dung, I just had a terrifying thought. I don't remember if Dark had this on his earlier post or anyone else has had this thought before, but...

In the long run, could Valve monopolize modding in the sense, that they would block installing mods from sources other than the workshop. Like blocking Nexus Mod Manager somehow for the average user. More advanced users would still most likely find ways...

Of course doing this to older games seems like a ridiculously stupid idea, since implementing this kind of a block would need patches, but the games that come later? I think in some games the only way to install mods is through workshop?

I don't know how well I conveyed my thoughts on this matter, but just think about it.. Could something like that happen, following this bloody mess?

akkalat85 wrote: Just going to leave this here to remind everyone https://imgur.com/wW5j5yu

That's just filthy.

EnaiSiaion wrote: $3 for Midas Gold? Good to see Apoc was dislodged from the #1 magic mod spot because the f*#@ING Workshop doesn't have a way to add update instructions other than slash and burn the entire mod page and start over.

marthgun wrote: are we heading to a place where steam / beth even allow a paid mod to be put up on the nexus?

what about copy cats? or perceived copy cats?

My biggest concern outside of muh 25% is copywrite. I can see it devestate the nexus with DMCA.

Geollyn wrote: thats a great solution, "donation version" "free version" every modder who does this or leaves their mod up for free on nexus has a brain

Of course, donations would make the authors indipendant from steam.

They are filthy, greedy bastards.

[coolystguy]

Nexus i believe u will need to make a deal the same way with beth and do the same as valve or you will lose mods support sadly but maybe u can do it for cheaper than valve ;) u might even get bit of cash too!

[Suvanto]

In response to post #24583709. #24583774, #24583929 are all replies on the same post.

Gopher wrote:

maybenexttime wrote: Your theory on the Valve contacting modders was right. Some of them admitted it was planned.

Elegost75 wrote: Well that bone armor guy has already made 100$, assuming the lowest price possible, so it might be even more.

People are sheep. They will buy it. This is forced down consumers throats on top of paying AAA game prices.

Pay AAA prices. Pay for AAA priced DLC. Pay for Mods.


Surely I can't be the only one thinking this has to end somewhere.

The issue is not modders selling their mods. The issue is Valve creating a monopoly and Beth wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Gopher. If you have followed the conversation in Steam, you know that they do not have any community moderators there. Ilja and Nazenn have tried to contact Bethesda and Steam, but both have completely ignored them, or recommended turning to other. This has been going on for months.

Steam forum has relied on global moderators for a long time now. I guess they could have used community moderators now. Conversation may have developed to better direction that way.

I have made my own decisions about this mess. This includes using more Donate buttons here in Nexus, but I do hope that clunky PayPal system would have alternatives. Edited April 24, 2015 by Morferous

[Daiyus]

You know, as much as I despise the idea of capitalism in the modding community I really can't blame people for wanting to make a quick buck. There's very few people that release their mods open source as it is so it's no surprise that many modders will jump onto this service. Personally I make all my mods open source so everybody can benefit from them, even if it's just a basic framework of a script that somebody can adapt.

 

Needless to say I've updated the permissions policies on all my mods to stipulate that at no point can any work based on mine be charged for. Of course I've got no way to control that (and nor does Steam/Bethesda) but I'd like to think the modding community in general would have the decency to respect my wishes (or any other modder that has stipulated similarly).

 

As for me paying up front for mods, it simply won't happen. I know there's people out there who put hundreds of hours into fantastic mods that blow mine out of the water a thousand fold, and you could argue they deserve to some commercial recompense. I can't argue against that if they want to go that route, but quite frankly I do not agree with capitalism as a philosophy on a grander scale; I wish people would just help each other because it's the right thing to do.

 

A donation scheme is the best of both worlds, free for those who want it, payment if people want to. I'd happily set a percentage cut to go to Bethesda and the Nexus too, but payment should never be mandatory.

 

No disrespect to anyone at all using the service as a modder or user, it's just my own philosophical standpoint.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Daiyus

[truehardlol]

In response to post #24583704. #24583729, #24583829, #24584239 are all replies on the same post.

Bladehawk27 wrote:

Gopher wrote: Modgate? I love it :)

WightMage wrote: Apparently it's split 40/35 Beth/Valve, according to some reddit post. I apologize but I have lost the link...

SirPanda1 wrote: The saddest thing is that's probably a test before Fallout 4 or TES6 release! the Nexus should probably encourage users to donate, and modders to create donation links, because I totaly agree with you that modders are allowed to make money out of their workn but maybe it would be more in the spirit of the mod community to donate, and let the people unable to pay free to use mods, for the love of modded Games :D

(sry for my bad english bro)

Agree, good modders should be rewarded, that why we need Patreon-type system for this.

[boulegue]

In response to post #24583709. #24583774, #24583929, #24584364 are all replies on the same post.

Gopher wrote:

maybenexttime wrote: Your theory on the Valve contacting modders was right. Some of them admitted it was planned.

Elegost75 wrote: Well that bone armor guy has already made 100$, assuming the lowest price possible, so it might be even more.

People are sheep. They will buy it. This is forced down consumers throats on top of paying AAA game prices.

Pay AAA prices. Pay for AAA priced DLC. Pay for Mods.


Surely I can't be the only one thinking this has to end somewhere.

The issue is not modders selling their mods. The issue is Valve creating a monopoly and Beth wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

Morferous wrote: Gopher. If you have followed the conversation in Steam, you know that they do not have any community moderators there. Ilja and Nazenn have tried to contact Bethesda and Steam, but both have completely ignored them, or recommended turning to other. This has been going on for months.

Steam forum has relied on global moderators for a long time now. I guess they could have used community moderators now. Conversation may have developed to better direction that way.

I have made my own decisions about this mess. This includes using more Donate buttons here in Nexus, but I do hope that clunky PayPal system would have alternatives.

before i went to sleep there were a couple of people here basically asking for the heads of everyone that uploads or supports the steam workshop too

[Aahzmandias]

In response to post #24584199.

SamusKnight2K wrote:

You know, that you break saves, if you remove or add a mod in the elder scrolls/ Fallout games, right?

There is no such thing as a clean save. Every time you add or remove a mod, you have to start a new game. Otherwise it WILL lead to corrupt savegames eventually, many hours after the change.

I do not know how Steam and Bethesda will handle THAT problem with the paid mods. Now that these mods cost money, and the players are customers.