Steam Service Providers, and some how needing to clarify the Nexus stance again

[Impulseman45]

In response to post #24689134. #24689324, #24689344, #24694979 are all replies on the same post.

nekollx wrote:

Salzber wrote: And you know what? You already bought the game paying for just that.So pay twice if you want.

Lordkabal26 wrote: Except Bethesda has already got their money from the sales of the game and sales of the DLC. Why do they deserve jack all from the work of mod authors especially those that add new stuff to the game and DO NOT reuse assets from vanilla skyrim??

sunshinenbrick wrote: This is all only enforceable because of subscription based services, something that was impossible to regulate before the internet and digital distribution. A double edged sword indeed.

Our rights as consumers is being eroded.

Hmmm think I need some retail therapy now :(

Skyrim has more than paid for itself, for Bethesda, meaning the money put into making the game has been returned and then sum many times over. That goes for the DLCs as well. They are still rolling in said money from the continuing sales of Skyrim. Do I begrudge them that income, no. But the idea that they now want to further their reach into our pockets and start charging us for the mods we make is the real issue here. They are waving the idea of handfuls of money at modders to entice them to join them in taking the modding community down a path that they have not gone down before with this company. Everyone keeps mentioning ESO as the failure that caused this. The fact is, Bethesda has nothing to with it. Its Zenimax's Online's game and the only reason you see the Bethesda logo when you start the game is they are the Intellectual Property holders of the Elder Scrolls Lore and they have to recognize that even if they are sister corporations. So please, leave the ESO failure out of the equation, they from a different branch of the Zenimax family tree.

I am sure Bethesda starting taking notice of the modding community in earnest during the Oblivion days. Point one, the fact they felt they had to step in and block Morroblivion because of licensing issues over the 3D meshes in the game actually belonging to another company. Did it stop the mod, no. They simply rebuild those meshes from scratch and moved right along. So Bethesda has been watching the the modding community for some time now. They have also been watching what has been going on over on Steam with other game companies and games monetizing various little mods for cash at silly prices and parts of those proceeds going to the game companies. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out simple economics.
Bethesda sees "X" competing game maker racking in money on dam silly mods and they look at the huge modding community that has been built up around their 5 main games and say, we need to take a cut as well so we can still compete with "X" company in these areas. And that includes making money on mods that are free. So Bethesda and Valve cook up this little idea and contact a few mod makers that have mods on Steam Workshop and Nexus and spin them their whole line on how they can now make money for modding, but it has to be our way and through our outlet. That is the main issue here. Bethesda has lifted the long standing rule of making money on mods, but you have to it their way and on the site of their choice, Steam Workshop. Unfortunately that leaves all the other modders out of the picture because they do not want to deal with the Steam Workshop and they also read the copyright portion of the agreement have come to the conclusion that it is a bad move. Giving your rights up for a mod for a 25% cut of the income after spending untold hours working on it is crazy. On top of that if you change your mind and don't want the mod there anymore you can't take it down, they now own the mod. And they expect you to continue to bug fix and troubleshoot the mod as long as it exists. And all the paying customers will expect it as well. If these mod makers thought that they had issues with users using their mods on on the Nexus and dealing with the users issues here, just wait till they have to deal with a paying customer, not someone who uses the mod for free. It changes everything.

The other issue that many modders are not considering is something that was brought up in Wheeze's stream the other day. Any mod maker that goes this route is now considered a professional mod developer and it changes all the rules when it come to the use of various applications you use to make mods. Case in point, you make money on a mod using 3DSMAX student addition, technically you have to now move to the Pro edition or you are in violation of their license agreement and they can and do go after people for it. Same thing with Adobe Photoshop. If you are using a consumer version for making textures, you are going to have to upgrade to a Pro license to keep using it as a developer or change to an open-source application like Gimp. But that has its own issues as well. Then there is the whole tax issue. This is taxable income now. Its a job and you are going to have to pay taxes on the money you earn. Do you think Valve is not going to report all the modders and the money they make in there yearly tax records. Of course they are. So you have deal with a change of your tax situation. And it not going to be easy as the amount is going to fluid at times. That is why the donation system works better. It does not require all of this and in the end mod authors will get a better cut and they can keep using the tools they use under the present license agreements.

There are a ton of other issues that come along with doing this. They have all been mentioned before. The whole issue of mods on the Workshop auto-updating and breaking your game. Or how about a mod that gets taken down because the mod author jumps off Steam and takes their mods somewhere else. You know what happens. That mod goes missing the next time you launch your game and it crashes. Then you are trying to figure why, and then find out that the missing mod planted scripts into your save game and now its broken. Unless you backed that mod up on your system, your game save is now broken. Way to go Steam Workshop.

So in the end I think we need to all just sit back and let this all fall apart. The modders really have no idea all the problems that are going to come along with getting paid for mods this way. They will see it for what it is, to big of a job with little to no support from Valve and Bethesda and they will all walk away. Well at least the real modders will. The ones making little sword mods will stay. Lets hope all the mod makers really take notice and wake up to see what it really all about. Not putting money into their pocket, but putting more money into Bethesda and Valve's pockets. Edited April 27, 2015 by Impulseman45

[GamerCFG]

Like Dark0ne, I will bide some time to see how this all plays out - this is a very touchy and sensitive situation and must be meticulously accessed every step of the way before any significant decisions are made so I definitely appreciate Dark0ne's approach to this and I really thank you for keeping us apprised of the facts and keeping us in the loop as much as you are legally able.

 

Up until the latest announcements where the modding community is suddenly put in a state of displacement, I felt it was a pretty good balance between corporations, programmers/modders and players. The corporations create a good game/framework with tools to extend it that keep it interesting for a longer period (which translates to more sales of the core game). The modderes get to show off their stuff, enjoy the process in discovering the limits and create an identity within a community of like-minded hobbiests. The players... well you know how that goes, we all enjoy the dynamic selection and appreciate the diversity of creativity made available to us. I suppose the TES series was never expected or suppose to be still around after all these years so they (big-wigs) are wondering how they can generate further proceeds from the game - whatever the reason - great things only seem to last so long before change blindsides you and there is no evading it.

 

My biggest fear from all of this is how gaming corporations still hold all the cards no matter how this unfolds - if they can't find a way to make the entire "modding" concept work to their advantage (how ever they try to monotize from it) then they will seal-off extensibility in any future works by creating closed games to which they will live and die at the corporations whim - simply put shutting down the entire possibility of modding all together.

 

I'd really love to to see a group of purists and true passionate but serious hobbiests unite and create an alternative gaming engine/platform with community-based involvement where the likes of corporations and their fiscal pressures don't direct its evolution... and where only one legal binding agreement is understood among them: ...that the intellectual property and the entire concept of their initiatives is never to be sold or transferred to any corporation and will always remain the property of the community.

 

Thank you Bethesda for creating a great game that could be extended by a community of awesome creative people (I truly mean that).

 

Thank you even more so to Nexus who in my opinion is THE hub to the modding community and plays a monumental role in how we all communicate our ideas, creativity, and of course the mods themselves - This is more than a community now, it is a family that has been slowly cultivated over the years and I think for many of us who have the inclination to have a "knee-jerk reaction" to all this is doing so out of fear that this could severely disrupt our otherwise tranquil life here. Let's hope for the best.

[sunshinenbrick]

In response to post #24689134. #24689324, #24689344, #24694869 are all replies on the same post.

nekollx wrote:

Salzber wrote: And you know what? You already bought the game paying for just that.So pay twice if you want.

Lordkabal26 wrote: Except Bethesda has already got their money from the sales of the game and sales of the DLC. Why do they deserve jack all from the work of mod authors especially those that add new stuff to the game and DO NOT reuse assets from vanilla skyrim??

Impulseman45 wrote: Skyrim has more than paid for itself, for Bethesda, meaning the money put into making the game has been returned and then sum many times over. That goes for the DLCs as well. They are still rolling in said money from the continuing sales of Skyrim. Do I begrudge them that income, no. But the idea that they now want to further their reach into our pockets and start charging us for the mods we make is the real issue here. They are waving the idea of handfuls of money at modders to entice them to join them in taking the modding community down a path that they have not gone down before with this company. Everyone keeps mentioning ESO as the failure that caused this. The fact is, Bethesda has nothing to with it. Its Zenimax's Online's game and the only reason you see the Bethesda logo when you start the game is they are the Intellectual Property holders of the Elder Scrolls Lore and they have to recognize that even if they are sister corporations. So please, leave the ESO failure out of the equation, they from a different branch of the Zenimax family tree.

I am sure Bethesda starting taking notice of the modding community in earnest during the Oblivion days. Point one, the fact they felt they had to step in and block Morroblivion because of licensing issues over the 3D meshes in the game actually belonging to another company. Did it stop the mod, no. They simply rebuild those meshes from scratch and moved right along. So Bethesda has been watching the the modding community for some time now. They have also been watching what has been going on over on Steam with other game companies and games monetizing various little mods for cash at silly prices and parts of those proceeds going to the game companies. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out simple economics.
Bethesda sees "X" competing game maker racking in money on dam silly mods and they look at the huge modding community that has been built up around their 5 main games and say, we need to take a cut as well so we can still compete with "X" company in these areas. And that includes making money on mods that are free. So Bethesda and Valve cook up this little idea and contact a few mod makers that have mods on Steam Workshop and Nexus and spin them their whole line on how they can now make money for modding, but it has to be our way and through our outlet. That is the main issue here. Bethesda has lifted the long standing rule of making money on mods, but you have to it their way and on the site of their choice, Steam Workshop. Unfortunately that leaves all the other modders out of the picture because they do not want to deal with the Steam Workshop and they also read the copyright portion of the agreement have come to the conclusion that it is a bad move. Giving your rights up for a mod for a 25% cut of the income after spending untold hours working on it is crazy. On top of that if you change your mind and don't want the mod there anymore you can't take it down, they now own the mod. And they expect you to continue to bug fix and troubleshoot the mod as long as it exists.

The other issue that many modders are not considering is something that was brought up in Wheeze's stream the other day. Any mod maker that goes this route is now considered a professional mod developer and it changes all the rules when it come to the use of various applications you use to make mods. Case in point, you make money on a mod using 3DSMAX student addition, technically you have to now move to the Pro edition or you are in violation of their license agreement and they can and do go after people for it. Same thing with Adobe Photoshop. If you are using a consumer version for making textures, you are going to have to upgrade to a Pro license to keep using it as a developer or change to an open-source application like Gimp. But that has its own issues as well. Then there is the whole tax issue. This is taxable income now. Its a job and you are going to have to pay taxes on the money you earn. Do you think Valve is not going to report all the modders and the money they make in there yearly tax records. Of course they are. So you have deal with a change of your tax situation. And it not going to be easy as the amount is going to fluid at times. That is why the donation system works better. It does not require all of this and in the end mod authors will get a better cut and they can keep using the tools they use under the present license agreements.

There are a ton of other issues that come along with doing this. They have all been mentioned before. The whole issue of mods on the Workshop auto-updating and breaking your game. Or how about a mod that gets taken down because the mod author jumps off Steam and takes their mods somewhere else. You know what happens. That mod goes missing the next time you launch your game and it crashes. Then you are trying to figure why, and then find out that the missing mod planted scripts into your save game and now its broken. Unless you backed that mod up on your system, your game save is now broken. Way to go Steam Workshop.

So in the end I think we need to all just sit back and let this all fall apart. The modders really have no idea all the problems that are going to come along with getting paid for mods this way. They will see it for what it is, to big of a job with little to no support from Valve and Bethesda and they will all walk away. Well at least the real modders will. The ones making little sword mods will stay. Lets hope all the mod makers really take notice and wake up to see what it really all about. Not putting money into their pocket, but putting more money into Bethesda and Valve's pockets.

This is all only enforceable because of subscription based services, something that was impossible to regulate before the internet and digital distribution. A double edged sword indeed.

Our rights as consumers is being eroded.

Hmmm think I need some retail therapy now :(

[AKcelsior]

That's the issue that most regular users don't yet realize. I thought the Chesko issue would shed light on it, but it seems most casual modders don't understand that the best mods were created with multiple inputs. Popular mods like Realistic Lighting Overhaul and Immersive Armors weren't created by one person sitting at his computer typing away.

 

So the issue now becomes, will we ever see mods like this anymore? It's understandable that a mod as big as RLO might want some money for the huge amount of work that is put into it, but just how do you go about dividing the revenue between the handful of people currently on the RLO team? Even worse, what about all the contributors over the years that have retired from the team but submitted countless hours of labor to the project? How will they get any of the kickback?

 

Obviously a ton of work has gone into these projects, but unless you can divide the earnings somehow between the 20 or so modders will we see an end to big projects like this? Is it worth the trouble of releasing amazing team efforts for free when Valve is holding a fishing line in front of our faces with a $ hanging from the hook? I fear modders will be more concerned with making money than creating mods for the love of the community and projects like Immersive Armors/Weapons will be a relic of a time when things were good.

[TheBillSupremacy]

This is a very interesting read, and thank you for sharing. I'm a pessimist, though, so the way I see it is that small trickle you get is merely to keep you (to an extent) content while the Workshop inevitably swallows up community modding sites as they slowly become irrelevant.

[OnHolyServiceBound]

I think an ideal solution would be for modders to set their price range to 0, I think in general mods will still sell for those who genuinely want to support them.(Look at things like kickstarter, people who want to support the content creators they love go above and beyond) And no offense to Nexus, but compared to it's donation system it would be a lot more streamlined and less awkward. Mod lovers want their favourite modders to be able to continue making great content for them. What they don't want is for previously free content to be locked behind a pay wall.

 

Obviously those who aren't willing will continue to set their prices whatever they want, and instead of valve and beth shouldering the responsibilities it will be on the individual modder to handle their own PR. If they want to support and contribute to the micro-transaction culture that the most controversial game devs are a part of then they shouldn't be surprised when they get the same reception.

 

People claim it's the vocal minority, I don't think it is, they're getting the same treatment as beth did for their horse armor, and ultimately it's completely fair.

[ABlindPerson]

Mod authors get a 25% cut? some mods require 3600$ software lol, I could see a pay-for-mod system on a newer TES, but on Skyrim it just seems like sucking more milk from the teet, at the expense of the modding community which saved Skyrim from being a single playthrough glitch filled flop of a game...

 

Watch next all the Skyrim tools like SKSE and LOOT and all the others become pay-for content with current versions invalidated by the Steam login system...unlikely but it's Valve we're talking about, the only thing running through THAT leaky Valve is dollar signs....

 

I'm all for talented mod makers earning something, but Valve/Beth? aside from offering Skyrim they have nothing to do with modders or any profits they "Should" make let alone taking that big a chunk of the pie, and if Beth soft wants their cut they should fix the damn game so we wouldn't need SKSE, TES5 edit or ENB to begin with!

[Arisette]

I agree with your own admission that perhaps you should have been a bit more transparent and released the information about Service Providers up front. From what we understand, the lack of transparency and the NDA Valve/Beth instituted about this program left modders in a bad position in regards to their ability to contact other modders about borrowed resources, which has caused a mess all on its own.

 

We definitely need more transparency in the community after this whole debacle. Being open and upfront before someone throws you under the bus helps maintain your own credibility. Now you're just trying to do some damage control after a couple pitchforks were raised.

 

I like how you explained what the Service Provider proceeds would be used for. I definitely support keeping the Nexus, a huge community of great talent and values, running to the best of its capabilities.

 

I hope the Curated Workshop goes. It's caused nothing but a huge mess. The system itself is flawed and exploits modders openly while touting they are attracting "better" talent for the modding community. They are attracting money-grubbers who may not care about quality control, as several posts on Reddit have illustrated.

 

Thank you for your stand and your honesty.

[madpaddy]

In response to post #24695309.

TheBillSupremacy wrote:

^^This!!

[TheknightofRand]

In response to post #24693799. #24693879, #24693944, #24694499, #24694684 are all replies on the same post.

digitaltrucker wrote:

greggorypeccary wrote: My guess is Bethesda will not allow free range modding and for pay modding to exist at the same time. That would be bad capitalism.

sunshinenbrick wrote: While I totally agree that this is a very grey area... like lending a VHS to your mate back in the day. Completely illegal.

Lets take the car analogy because I see it a little differently...

Say I buy this car, I get a bit bored of it so I give a paint job and put some groovy stuff into it. I now sell that car, do I owe anything to the person who made that car?

The other thing is the rejection of companies hiding everything in a EULA. Oh and then turning a blind eye to it till it is convenient for them to use it against you. This has legal and moral questions about it as well.

digitaltrucker wrote: My guess is your guess is correct. The only exception would be if the free modding would be under their control. Mod DRM. That won't necessarily kill the Nexus as a whole, but the Skyrim section wold be gone for a start...and if you look at the numbers of mods available and how many times they've been downloaded, The Skyrim section is larger than all the other game sections combined.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Companies have always "stolen" ideas and tools... look at Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Sony, Ikea... uh the list goes on.

The difference? They can afford legal aid and they have people in influential positions who can turn things in their favor. Incidentally enough there is no more free legal aid in the UK as of recent.

EDIT: I DO NOT promote or condone breaking the law. But the rules on the inside of the box of the game of life keep changing and they can find loop holes. Heck look at the international tax crime ring...

Digital I agree with your analysis and ultimately it is the numbers that are telling. For all the talk of donations, prior to the curated shop there were very few donations given through the or patreon. The crux of the argument for one side is "x should be free because it was free." the other side is saying "x should be allowed to be charged for because it takes labor to create." The discussion of the cut valve and Bethesda takes is wholly irrelevant to the particular argument as to whether this is good for modding. further the "free modding" side is viewing this as a zero sum game, which it is of course not. It is in fact possible to have free mods and paid mods coexist. But between the two positions stated I take labor theory over tradition.