Modding only for the rich in the future?

[Fearlessjay]

I'm not sure that the people selling on Steam are actually making that much. You need to sell at least 400 dollars before even seeing a penny. And seeing how modders were treated by both Steam/Bethsoft and their fan base was the thing that actually got to me. Went from a fan based endeavor to a way to enrich Valve and Bethesda. Seems strange how this came from out of no where. Usually upcoming events like this get promoted. I don't actually use that many mods, but I love the PC as a platform and this is just another way of monetising customers similer to what 's happening in the mobile field. Pretty sad, and shows how bad it is when a company like Valve with no morals has a monopoly.

[AmericanJackal]

I'm not sure that the people selling on Steam are actually making that much. You need to sell at least 400 dollars before even seeing a penny. And seeing how modders were treated by both Steam/Bethsoft and their fan base was the thing that actually got to me. Went from a fan based endeavor to a way to enrich Valve and Bethesda. Seems strange how this came from out of no where. Usually upcoming events like this get promoted. I don't actually use that many mods, but I love the PC as a platform and this is just another way of monetising customers similer to what 's happening in the mobile field. Pretty sad, and shows how bad it is when a company like Valve with no morals has a monopoly.

 

Steam is, in my opinion, becoming corrupted. It's learned some dirty habits after its success with Greenlight.

 

Valve makes a ton of money off Greenlight, as do the developers -- but so many of the games are flops and have no business being behind a major distributor paygate like Steam. Very, very few of them have an actual timetable set up for completion, and there are a lot of games being posted that are just 1 of many belonging to a particular 'studio' or team that has no track record for completing their gamese. Others are straight-up copy and pasted ideas from other Greenlight games, sometimes even running on the exact same engine.

 

Paid mods are a far more difficult beast to master, in my opinion. Valve (and any major studio, Bethesda included) is tranishing their own image by allowing a marketplace where 'poor service' and 'broken gameplay' will become synonomous with paid content endorsed by them. In the end, it's all about money, and they know that there are plenty of modders out there who are either greedy (those folks who will post reskins as paid content) or just jaded and would love to see any kind of return from their work, even if it's just 25% of the posted value.

 

What really frightens me is that this 'paid mod' system could crack open the door for Steam to become a lot more aggressive with its DRM, and get developers to agree to lock their games down so that mods can't be installed or played unless downloaded from the Workshop.

[Xenoshi]

Before i go to my main reason for this thread, let me say something other first.

 

In my opinion, modders DONT deserve any money. Dont get me wrong, they are all doing a FANTASTIC job, but its a hobby. Modding is NOT a job. Its a hobby. And getting paid for a hobby is just BS. I have hobbies too. And these hobbies require work too. Should i get paid for them now?

 

So now to my main complaiment about the new feature.

 

I have roughly 150 mods for Skyrim, 50 for Fallout 3 and 80 for Fallout New Vegas. Thats 280 mods. Now imagine JUST 25% of them costing JUST 1€. That would be 70€ for MODS. I dont have these 70€. And this only if the mods would cost 1€. But many would cost 3€ maybe even 5€. And then were really fats at 100€ or even more. I cant afford that. I am not rich. I have bills too. I can buy a game maybe every 2 months. I already have a job, but i dont get that much money from it.

 

With this new system people like me who dont have that much free money cant mod their games anymore. With this new system modding will only be for the rich.

 

This is my opinion.

 

(sry for my english skills)

 

EDIT: I have a good example for my first complaiment. Should we now pay for Fan Fictions and Fan Art because it required hard work to do these?

 

Your example is illogical. People do get paid for fanart.

 

I would also suggest you look up "Kindle Worlds" in regard to "should we now pay for Fan Fictions".

 

There are plenty of hobbies which people get paid for. Most garage bands are considered hobbies, they still get paid to perform gigs. I consider writing to be a hobby, but I still make royalties every month for my books.

 

In all reality, gaming is one industry perpetually lagging behind in terms of selling licensed derivatives.

 

You can sell fanfiction now as a licensed derivative.

 

Have you never been to a convention before and seen artists selling their fanart drawings of characters from anime/video games/movies?

 

You also act like there isn't a precedent in gaming for modders being paid. Mrs. PacMan was a modification for PacMan. DayZ was a mod. Day of Defeat was a mod. Team Fortress was a mod. DOTA was a mod.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Xenoshi

[jimsonlofifan]

I will tell you all something,

 

you guys are all looking really silly on both sides of this. Bethesda, as much as they love gamers, are in the business to make money and to modders, it seems that eventually they are going to need to either 1. Leave the community, because life catches up with them. Or 2. get paid for their work. They provide people with enjoyment and if they want to do that for free or for profit, it is their decision and really theirs alone. How about being cool and saying, "you know what, thank you for all you have done, you deserve the money you make if people pay for your mods."

 

Bethesda is going to eventually see this and think to themselves, why are we paying TONS of money for developing a creation kit, if the one time we try to help ourselves and modders the gaming community reacts with threats, hate and basic tomfoolery. A smart business decision would be to stop supporting mods and make more money based on DLC, but of coarse people don't want that to happen.

 

People like Aegrus need to stop talking down to beginning modders based on endorsements/number of mods too. That to me is just as childish as people giving mod developers grief for wanting to find a way to make a living on what they love to do.

 

Stop being foolish everyone!

[Korodic]

This thread is filled with entitlement vomit everywhere. Even the title implies that it should be free (since you can't afford them if they were paid). But that's not for you to decide. You didn't make them.

The authors should be the ones who decide whether or not to stay free or go paid. The market will control the prices. Simple mods will be remade and released for free by those who feel it should be. Only specialized mods will likely require you even pay anything at all. Otherwise you should go learn how to mod and do it yourself. No one owes anyone anything.