Quick updates to the site, money money money edition

[Nostalgiaheart]

Good day all,

Everyone take a deep breath, Modding isn't dead and NEXUS will always be free ( per the Dark0ne ).

 

Real modder's make mods for the love of the game and the enjoyment of others. They spend countless hours developing these mods - some GREAT and some NOT so good.

But because of a few bad mouth people that doesn't like something about the mod and do nothing but complain about it, can turn a modder off real quick to making or updating a mod.

 

Give these guys a break, it is value and Bethesda that started this, the way I understand it.

 

ENJOY the game and stop complaining, from a gamer at heart at the age of 68yrs and who just passed 2000hrs in Skyrim - BECAUSE of the modding community that has made the game so much better and fun.

ENJOY

[ShadowDragyn]

In response to post #24597829. #24598674, #24599279 are all replies on the same post.

anarkywolf wrote:

Shadow_Dragyn wrote: They are not viable. The number of people who actually donate anything to any mod is literally several decimal places beneath a fraction of a percent. Some people are trying to put up crappy or stolen mods for a fee out of greed, but that isn't the norm.
The truly greedy ones are people who blindly oppose this, who've never in their life donated a single penny to actually support a modder, all because they want to continue getting stuff for free at the expense of someone else's time and energy.
People do not donate, and that's why something like this is necessary to help support modding and let it grow.
Finances have been the main thing keeping me from being able to mod as much as I would like, and I'm not the only person who has been facing that kind of issue.
How many times have you seen someone release a quality outfit that was not made of recycled parts? Hardly ever, because once someone has enough skill to actually do something like that, they'd be better off creating it for someone else's game, or even their own game, and getting paid for it.
Even Faalskar was created simply because the author was confident that he could land a job off of it. No one could justify devoting that kind of time and energy without getting anything back from it.
A "hobby" is not something everyone has the luxury of spending much time on, especially in cases like this when you already clearly have the hobby of playing video games and this would directly eat into that.

BattlemasterRiin wrote: @Shadow

No, the greedy ones are those that EXPECT compensation. I for one, will never, EVER buy a mod off Steam. I will however, donate to authors I feel deserve it. Do you think those that refuse to donate are going to instead BUY the mod? hah! If anything, it's only hurting the Modders, those would would normally donate now will not, if the Mod is up for sale on the Workshop.

I think you're missing the point. If no one buys a single mod, it's all the same regardless.
I would really like to know who, if anyone, you have ever actually donated to.
This isn't stopping anyone from donating, because they never donated in the first place. Modders are not the monsters here. It's the people who have never given anything back to the community demonizing the people who actually do.
If you truly have donated to anyone, then good on you. But the number of people who really have is astronomically small.
Particularly in contrast to the massive wave of people crying foul about this. Edited April 24, 2015 by Shadow_Dragyn

[Jawsuleashed]

In response to post #24599274.

PickleJar wrote:

If you read carefully, a lot of comments are "OMG, Valve and Beth are so wrong, I'm gonna buy a premium membership and donate a lot of money to the Nexus..." You could understand why the Nexus would have supported such a crappy idea by being being the third party who is able to get a little cut, just like how the Thalmor are supporting the Stormcloaks.

[G18AkimboNoob]

Interesting post by Chesko on the skyrim modding subreddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33qcaj/the_experiment_has_failed_my_exit_from_the/

 

 

 

Hello everyone,

 

I would like to address the current situation regarding Arissa, and Art of the Catch, an animated fishing mod scripted by myself and animated by Aqqh.

It now lives in modding history as the first paid mod to be removed due to a copyright dispute. Recent articles on Kotaku and Destructiod have positioned me as a content thief. Of course, the truth is more complex than that.

 

I will now reveal some information about some internal discussions that have occurred at Valve in the month leading up to this announcement, more than you've heard anywhere else.

I'll start with the human factor. Imagine you wake up one morning, and sitting in your inbox is an email directly from Valve, with a Bethesda staff member cc'd. And they want YOU, yes, you, to participate in a new and exciting program. Well, s***. What am I supposed to say? These kinds of opportunities happen once in a lifetime. It was a very persuasive and attractive situation.

We were given about a month and a half to prepare our content. As anyone here knows, large DLC-sized mods don't happen in a month and a half. During this time, we were required to not speak to anyone about this program. And when a company like Valve or Bethesda tells you not to do something, you tend to listen.

 

I knew this would cause backlash, trust me. But I also knew that, with the right support and infrastructure in place, there was an opportunity to take modding to "the next level", where there are more things like Falskaar in the world because the incentive was there to do it. The boundary between "what I'm willing to do as a hobby" and "what I'm willing to do if someone paid me to do it" shifts, and more quality content gets produced. That to me sounded great for everyone. Hobbyists will continue to be hobbyists, while those that excel can create some truly magnificent work. In the case of Arissa, there are material costs associated with producing that mod (studio time, sound editing, and so on). To be able to support Arissa professionally also sounded great.

Things internally stayed rather positive and exciting until some of us discovered that "25% Revenue Share" meant 25% to the modder, not to Valve / Bethesda. This sparked a long internal discussion. My key argument to Bethesda (putting my own head on the chopping block at the time) was that this model incentivizes small, cheap to produce items (time-wise) than it does the large, full-scale mods that this system has the opportunity of championing. It does not reward the best and the biggest. But at the heart of it, the argument came down to this: How much would you pay for front-page Steam coverage? How much would you pay to use someone else's successful IP (with nearly no restrictions) for a commercial purpose? I know indie developers that would sell their houses for such an opportunity. And 25%, when someone else is doing the marketing, PR, brand building, sales, and so on, and all I have to do is "make stuff", is actually pretty attractive. Is it fair? No. But it was an experiment I was willing to at least try.

 

Of course, the modding community is a complex, tangled web of interdependencies and contributions. There were a lot of questions surrounding the use of tools and contributed assets, like FNIS, SKSE, SkyUI, and so on. The answer we were given is:

[Valve] Officer Mar 25 @ 4:47pm

Usual caveat: I am not a lawyer, so this does not constitute legal advice. If you are unsure, you should contact a lawyer. That said, I spoke with our lawyer and having mod A depend on mod B is fine--

it doesn't matter if mod A is for sale and mod B is free, or if mod A is free or mod B is for sale.

Art of the Catch required the download of a separate animation package, which was available for free, and contained an FNIS behavior file. Art of the Catch will function without this download, but any layman can of course see that a major component of it's enjoyment required FNIS. Was this a risky, perhaps bold, thing to go ahead with? Yes. Was it a bit crappy of me? Also yes. But it was a risk I took, and the outcome was largely dependent on the FNIS author's reaction to the situation. He was not happy, so I took steps to resolve it. I did not "steal animations" or "steal content".

After a discussion with Fore, I made the decision to pull Art of the Catch down myself. (It was not removed by a staff member) Fore and I have talked since and we are OK.

I have also requested that the pages for Art of the Catch and Arissa be completely taken down. Valve's stance is that they "cannot" completely remove an item from the Workshop if it is for sale, only allow it to be marked as unpurchaseable. I feel like I have been left to twist in the wind by Valve and Bethesda.

 

In light of all of the above, and with the complete lack of moderation control over the hundreds of spam and attack messages I have received on Steam and off, I am making the decision to leave the curated Workshop behind. I will be refunding all PayPal donations that have occurred today and yesterday.

I am also considering removing my content from the Nexus. Why? The problem is that Robin et al, for perfectly good political reasons, have positioned themselves as essentially the champions of free mods and that they would never implement a for-pay system. However, The Nexus is a listed Service Provider on the curated Workshop, and they are profiting from Workshop sales. They are saying one thing, while simultaneously taking their cut. I'm not sure I'm comfortable supporting that any longer. I may just host my mods on my own site for anyone who is interested.

What I need to happen, right now, is for modding to return to its place in my life where it's a fun side hobby, instead of taking over my life. That starts now. Or just give it up entirely; I have other things I could spend my energy on.

 

Real-time update - I was just contacted by Valve's lawyer. He stated that they will not remove the content unless "legally compelled to do so", and that they will make the file visible only to currently paid users. I am beside myself with anger right now as they try to tell me what I can do with my own content. The copyright situation with Art of the Catch is shades of grey, but in Arissa 2.0's case, it's black and white; that's 100% mine and Griefmyst's work, and I should be able to dictate its distribution if I so choose. Unbelievable.

 

 

 

 

[Aahzmandias]

In response to post #24596944. #24597759, #24597794, #24597919, #24598154, #24599534 are all replies on the same post.

phellen wrote:

oqhansoloqo wrote: That's a great idea, I think.

akkalat85 wrote: That's kind of a cool idea. Maybe give them a month's free premium membership or something along those lines.

hector530 wrote: "After all the modding community wouldn't exist as it does today if it wasn't for the nexus."

maybe for TES, but other games did well without nexus

SunPuppy wrote: Personally I think (and have always thought) Nexus should simply make a tipjar app where you can (if you want) tip the artist if they link it to their paypal account or something similar to that.
That way you aren't getting bogged down into legal issues with paying for mods which may have dmca issues, etc..simply giving a personal little reward to someones hard work..gives modders incentive to make good works, and everyones happy.

Mods of the month getting bonuses are ok, but some people may find far more enjoyment out of some obscure mod that was overlooked a year ago verses the latest elf clothing that got popvoted.

phellen wrote: More suggestions for how to improve the community:

1. Some sort of Nexus symbol for modders to place on their mod pages if they win files of the month would be cool, like a nexus Gold badge that says File of the Month or a silver one that says Top 5

2. Featured modders of the week is another cool idea, where a certain mod author can have his/her work featured on the front page, along with a little text box interview with that modder.

3. Hot files should have their own search feature, such as "past hot files."

That if we as community, put some prize money in a pool. Even if it is only 1$ per person?

Would that help.

Including money for the mods of the year, or something like that.

[PickleJar]

In response to post #24599274. #24599654 is also a reply to the same post.

PickleJar wrote:

Jawsuleashed wrote: If you read carefully, a lot of comments are "OMG, Valve and Beth are so wrong, I'm gonna buy a premium membership and donate a lot of money to the Nexus..." You could understand why the Nexus would have supported such a crappy idea by being being the third party who is able to get a little cut, just like how the Thalmor are supporting the Stormcloaks.

Why is this not mentioned in the news post?

[CiderMuffin]

Honestly Dark0ne, I think you should start telling people to set up Patreons and actively advertise them on their mod page instead of trying to fix the donation system. I know, I know the nexus donation system may be easier at the start but if a mod author has a Patreon that means people can donate once or monthly if they want to and they can earn certain rewards and mod makers can even start a new "Commission for mods by donating a certain amount" feature for their patreon.

 

Of course I only say this as another option to the Nexus donation which may only get people a one time thing whereas Patreon encourages more donations and a way to give back to the patrons besides just what the modmaker promised.

[Eiries]

In response to post #24599664.

G18AkimboNoob wrote:

However, The Nexus is a listed Service Provider on the curated Workshop, and they are profiting from Workshop sales. They are saying one thing, while simultaneously taking their cut.

I don't see how mentioning "these guys have mods too" constitutes Nexusmods making money off of this (except through traffic which he has no control over.)

Citation from bossman requested.

[Razgriz009]

In response to post #24599274. #24599654, #24599739 are all replies on the same post.

PickleJar wrote:

Jawsuleashed wrote: If you read carefully, a lot of comments are "OMG, Valve and Beth are so wrong, I'm gonna buy a premium membership and donate a lot of money to the Nexus..." You could understand why the Nexus would have supported such a crappy idea by being being the third party who is able to get a little cut, just like how the Thalmor are supporting the Stormcloaks.

PickleJar wrote: Why is this not mentioned in the news post?

I would like some clarification on this as well

[TheStrictNein]

In response to post #24599664. #24599799 is also a reply to the same post.

G18AkimboNoob wrote:

Eiries wrote:

However, The Nexus is a listed Service Provider on the curated Workshop, and they are profiting from Workshop sales. They are saying one thing, while simultaneously taking their cut.

I don't see how mentioning "these guys have mods too" constitutes Nexusmods making money off of this (except through traffic which he has no control over.)

Citation from bossman requested.

So Dark0ne is being as greedy as Valve

Unless he personally responds to these accusations, I'm going to ask for my account to be banned. I don't have local copies of my mods. They'll be dead forever.