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

[EvilDeadAsh34]

In response to post #24566124.

Waffenbaum wrote:

No, they are just infinitely greedy. Any nickel they can earn for doing absolutely nothing is the world to them now. Not making great games.

So screw 'em.

[ambria]

In response to post #24565684. #24565749, #24565819, #24565874, #24565944, #24566139, #24566154, #24566189, #24566214, #24566264 are all replies on the same post.

Brumbek wrote:

Zaldiir wrote: Wait a little bit. See if the updated donation system here on NexusMods will make more people donate. :thumbsup:

If it doesn't increase the amount of donations, then I don't blame you for wanting just a little bit of compensation for your hours of work. $1 or $2 is definitely not greedy - just a shock for a lot of people.

athiust wrote: Your awesome you have caused alot of joy in alot of people and have created satisfaction and an echo within the community

RJ the Shadow wrote: What I think is an option, and an error on Valve's part for not thinking of/considering this, is to make payment optional.

Was there not a thing in the music market (with CD sales only suffering more as years go by) where some artists put up a "pay what you want, or nothing at all" for the mp3's and the sales made for them reached above what they had earned on previous works?

A non-negotiable option should have been to have the mod for free, with payment a convenient option (ideal with Steam have it's Wallet).

There ARE people out there who want to vote with their wallet. But they're not given the option. Instead, they are forced to offer their wallet or are refused the content. And as made obvious, Valve will paywall anything, not even trusting us to use our money to show thanks.

It differs from Paypal Donations because the question is directly forced upon the user. Whereas a Donation button can be skipped or ignored.
Being asked on the spot if you actually want to pay nothing for the content you're about to receive, plays on our sense of morality.

Velgath wrote: My biggest problem with the new system as-is is it kind of screws with people using alternative modding tools like Mod Organizer. Your mod is very worth a fee, but I still wouldn't buy it if it were on Workshop... that said, I may have just clicked a button on your profile page.

Brumbek wrote: Thank you for the comments. Again, I'm so torn. I view myself as an average person. I don't want to be greedy or unfair. Sadly, this new system will bring out the greed in many. Valve, itself, is already pushing $1-3 weapons/armor. Then there's my mod and others like it...so much effort and passion into it. I hate to say human nature is the real issue here...

SMIM does accept donations on Nexus of course (much thanks to you and others who have donated), but in truth my total donations has been very, very low. So for Steam, I see why they want to force a price...people just won't pay if they don't have to, even if they adore a mod and wouldn't play without it. I'm not judging. I will continue to develop my thoughts. Thanks again to everyone who makes this a great community.

heero328 wrote: Do what you have to do. I don't believe anybody would blame you for charging around $2 for SMIM. For what the mod does, that's incredibly generous on your part. I think many are more concerned with the long term implications this could have on modding and the adverse effects of it. It's not necessarily the issue of mod authors receiving money, but the fact publishers and developers are now trying to get a piece of the pie as well.

1erCru wrote: Torn? Um, you have 2.3 million unique downloads. If you charge $2 bucks for the SMIM and take 25% of the cut thats over a million bucks bro.

This is a game changer.

A1Shareef wrote: Its not greedy but think about the modding community as a howl, i bet if you write this in the description of your mod people would be happy to donate you anyway. Its not worth for 25% killing this Community and putting Gamers out there into Electronic Slavery. Plz think about it.

boulegue wrote: to be honest before the paid service for the steam workshop came out i have never even seen the donation button (im not using SMIM since i play on a potato) but you sir defnetly deserve donations or payment period.
you can also set up your mod on both the steam workshop and the nexus and just see what happens

@ 1erCru
That's presuming everyone who'd downloaded would pay though.
As someone who's made music and put it on bandcamp I can tell you the drop off between downloading for free and paying is huge, even with a tiny paywall like $0.50
I'll have 100 download for free, but only 5-10 with that paywall there

[Blademaster1215]

In response to post #24565684. #24565749, #24565819, #24565874, #24565944, #24566139, #24566154, #24566189, #24566214, #24566264, #24566339 are all replies on the same post.

Brumbek wrote:

Zaldiir wrote: Wait a little bit. See if the updated donation system here on NexusMods will make more people donate. :thumbsup:

If it doesn't increase the amount of donations, then I don't blame you for wanting just a little bit of compensation for your hours of work. $1 or $2 is definitely not greedy - just a shock for a lot of people.

athiust wrote: Your awesome you have caused alot of joy in alot of people and have created satisfaction and an echo within the community

RJ the Shadow wrote: What I think is an option, and an error on Valve's part for not thinking of/considering this, is to make payment optional.

Was there not a thing in the music market (with CD sales only suffering more as years go by) where some artists put up a "pay what you want, or nothing at all" for the mp3's and the sales made for them reached above what they had earned on previous works?

A non-negotiable option should have been to have the mod for free, with payment a convenient option (ideal with Steam have it's Wallet).

There ARE people out there who want to vote with their wallet. But they're not given the option. Instead, they are forced to offer their wallet or are refused the content. And as made obvious, Valve will paywall anything, not even trusting us to use our money to show thanks.

It differs from Paypal Donations because the question is directly forced upon the user. Whereas a Donation button can be skipped or ignored.
Being asked on the spot if you actually want to pay nothing for the content you're about to receive, plays on our sense of morality.

Velgath wrote: My biggest problem with the new system as-is is it kind of screws with people using alternative modding tools like Mod Organizer. Your mod is very worth a fee, but I still wouldn't buy it if it were on Workshop... that said, I may have just clicked a button on your profile page.

Brumbek wrote: Thank you for the comments. Again, I'm so torn. I view myself as an average person. I don't want to be greedy or unfair. Sadly, this new system will bring out the greed in many. Valve, itself, is already pushing $1-3 weapons/armor. Then there's my mod and others like it...so much effort and passion into it. I hate to say human nature is the real issue here...

SMIM does accept donations on Nexus of course (much thanks to you and others who have donated), but in truth my total donations has been very, very low. So for Steam, I see why they want to force a price...people just won't pay if they don't have to, even if they adore a mod and wouldn't play without it. I'm not judging. I will continue to develop my thoughts. Thanks again to everyone who makes this a great community.

heero328 wrote: Do what you have to do. I don't believe anybody would blame you for charging around $2 for SMIM. For what the mod does, that's incredibly generous on your part. I think many are more concerned with the long term implications this could have on modding and the adverse effects of it. It's not necessarily the issue of mod authors receiving money, but the fact publishers and developers are now trying to get a piece of the pie as well.

1erCru wrote: Torn? Um, you have 2.3 million unique downloads. If you charge $2 bucks for the SMIM and take 25% of the cut thats over a million bucks bro.

This is a game changer.

A1Shareef wrote: Its not greedy but think about the modding community as a howl, i bet if you write this in the description of your mod people would be happy to donate you anyway. Its not worth for 25% killing this Community and putting Gamers out there into Electronic Slavery. Plz think about it.

boulegue wrote: to be honest before the paid service for the steam workshop came out i have never even seen the donation button (im not using SMIM since i play on a potato) but you sir defnetly deserve donations or payment period.
you can also set up your mod on both the steam workshop and the nexus and just see what happens

ambria wrote: @ 1erCru
That's presuming everyone who'd downloaded would pay though.
As someone who's made music and put it on bandcamp I can tell you the drop off between downloading for free and paying is huge, even with a tiny paywall like $0.50
I'll have 100 download for free, but only 5-10 with that paywall there

All I'm going to say, while I very much love SMIM, and I appreciate the work you do. I would uninstall SMIM right now if you started paygating. I'd more than happily donate to you -- In fact I'll drop you 10 buck through the Nexus donation system if you don't do paygating. Edited April 23, 2015 by Blademaster1215

[VoodooMcGee]

In response to post #24565794.

Maeldun0 wrote:

Thank you for being another modder who believes in love of the craft and not glory of the pocket book.

What you said is for me the major point, most if not all Beth games are riddled with game breaking bugs out of the box since day one. The vast majority of mods start out as fixing these bugs and similair nusance issues. Now Beth want you to pay a modder to fix these and now they get a cut instead of actually fixing the product themsleves, they will just depend on modders to fix for them, making lazy Beth even more lazy and the out of the box experience even crappier.

Seems like this would just in incentivize Beth to put out broken game to start with, something they have mastered over the years.

[mcguffin]

In response to post #24565784. #24566209, #24566229, #24566279, #24566319 are all replies on the same post.

Hamthaak wrote:

Jakal256 wrote: IMO the moment he charges for his content is the moment he stops working for others and starts working for himself. This is not necessarily a bad thing as people need to eat, but as you can see, charging for mod updates probably wasn't the greatest of ideas for him.

Trickysocks wrote: Most mod authors know full well that their shared hard work is appreciated and do it because it's fun. They want to share and have others enjoy it as well. Every mod author has the right to do whatever they want with their content. Share it or not. They can go with this new plan of Bethesda's too. If so, i wish them luck.

Most likely people will not see any substantial amount of revenue from this. People will find the free content to enjoy because a lot of mod authors will continue to release mods for free. The content that would be worth spending money on would have to be amazing and truly a "staple" mod that you just couldn't do without in order to really get a decent sum of profit.

I really value the mod authors contributions, but this tactic from Bethesda is dirty in my opinion. All I see is, greed on their part. They're really digging deep for money on this one.

Darkarhon wrote: I agree with this but personally i would have preferred to see a donate button in Steam workshop rather than paying :( would have loved to give them the full amount instead of 25%...

boulegue wrote: i'm pretty sure he was rather working for valve/bethesda in this case, all the mods released are either professionally created off valve property or got "major" updates when it went live

Donation button doesnt work well. people who actually donate are a very minor minority, to say the least.

[Xianshi]

In response to post #24565229.

numgun wrote:

Yeah, it will be really nice when mods are stuck behinde a paywall that will cost you five times more than the game itself when you have 100+ mods. 10/10

[EwokalypseNow]

Another reason why I never download mods on the Workshop. As long as Nexus mods stay free I really don't give a poop.

[boulegue]

In response to post #24565609. #24565774, #24566244 are all replies on the same post.

icecreamassassin wrote:

boulegue wrote: take a way a kids lollipop and tell them they get it back for a dollar..... i promise you they're gonna be pissed :D

everyone is free to decide if they want to charge money for their mods or not, yet i still hope most people wont

CenturyNitro wrote: Just out of curiousity, when you rip, let's say, entire armor sets out of an MMO like TERA Online, why should I pay you for that?

I mean, yes, you invested time in getting it done, and such a mod is awesome, but you'd still be abusing and infringing the copyright of in this case Bluehole Studios's TERA Online, this example I use because I've seen the whole TERA armor mod packs to be quite popular amongst Skyrim mod users.

This is a glaring issue in this paid mod thing, I can't even imagine how quick companies like Bluehole Studios will take action once they catch wind of this whole thing of Valve's.

if you take the tera armor without their permission and start selling it your in deep doo doo

[ZZZ02]

My opinion is that as long as the mods here all remain free that is fine with me as for the steam workshops paid mods you can download them or not, no one is forcing you to download specific mods.

[Darkarhon]

In response to post #24565784. #24566209, #24566229, #24566279, #24566319, #24566359 are all replies on the same post.

Hamthaak wrote:

Jakal256 wrote: IMO the moment he charges for his content is the moment he stops working for others and starts working for himself. This is not necessarily a bad thing as people need to eat, but as you can see, charging for mod updates probably wasn't the greatest of ideas for him.

Trickysocks wrote: Most mod authors know full well that their shared hard work is appreciated and do it because it's fun. They want to share and have others enjoy it as well. Every mod author has the right to do whatever they want with their content. Share it or not. They can go with this new plan of Bethesda's too. If so, i wish them luck.

Most likely people will not see any substantial amount of revenue from this. People will find the free content to enjoy because a lot of mod authors will continue to release mods for free. The content that would be worth spending money on would have to be amazing and truly a "staple" mod that you just couldn't do without in order to really get a decent sum of profit.

I really value the mod authors contributions, but this tactic from Bethesda is dirty in my opinion. All I see is, greed on their part. They're really digging deep for money on this one.

Darkarhon wrote: I agree with this but personally i would have preferred to see a donate button in Steam workshop rather than paying :( would have loved to give them the full amount instead of 25%...

boulegue wrote: i'm pretty sure he was rather working for valve/bethesda in this case, all the mods released are either professionally created off valve property or got "major" updates when it went live

mcguffin wrote: Donation button doesnt work well. people who actually donate are a very minor minority, to say the least.

yup donation button doesnt work always, no idea why however, but most of the time just a refresh of the page or closing and opening the browser fixs it