Cut and pasted from the Bethblog ...

[walshy71]

Has anyone read the stuff on the bethblog?

 

skyrim-creationkit-steamworkshop-forblog_v2

 

We believe mod developers are just that: developers. We love that Valve has given new choice to the community in how they reward them, and want to pass that choice along to our players. We are listening and will make changes as necessary.

 

We have a long history with modding, dating back to 2002 with The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. Its our belief that our games become something much more with the promise of making it your own. Even if you never try a mod, the idea you could do anything is at the core of our game experiences. Over the years we have met much resistance to the time and attention we put into making our games heavily moddable. The time and costs involved, plus the legal hurdles, havent made it easy. Modding is one of the reasons Oblivion was re-rated from T to M, costing us millions of dollars. While others in the industry went away from it, we pushed more toward it.

 

We are always looking for new ways to expand modding. Our friends at Valve share many of the same beliefs in mods and created the Steam Workshop with us in 2012 for Skyrim, making it easier than ever to search and download mods. Along with Skyrim Nexus and other sites, our players have many great ways to get mods.

 

Despite all that, its still too small in our eyes. Only 8% of the Skyrim audience has ever used a mod. Less than 1% has ever made one.

 

In our early discussions regarding Workshop with Valve, they presented data showing the effect paid user content has had on their games, their players, and their modders. All of it hugely positive. They showed, quite clearly, that allowing content creators to make money increased the quality and choice that players had. They asked if we would consider doing the same.

 

This was in 2012 and we had many questions, but only one demand. It had to be open, not curated like the current models. At every step along the way with mods, we have had many opportunities to step in and control things, and decided not to. We wanted to let our players decide what is good, bad, right, and wrong. We will not pass judgment on what they do. Were even careful about highlighting a modder on this blog for that very reason.

 

Three years later and Valve has finally solved the technical and legal hurdles to make such a thing possible, and they should be celebrated for it. It wasnt easy. They are not forcing us, or any other game, to do it. They are opening a powerful new choice for everyone.

 

We believe most mods should be free. But we also believe our community wants to reward the very best creators, and that they deserve to be rewarded. We believe the best should be paid for their work and treated like the game developers they are. But again, we dont think its right for us to decide who those creators are or what they create.

 

We also dont think we should tell the developer what to charge. That is their decision, and its up to the players to decide if that is a good value. Weve been down similar paths with our own work, and much of this gives us déjà vu from when we made the first DLC: Horse Armor. Horse Armor gave us a start into something new, and it led to us giving better and better value to our players with DLC like Shivering Isles, Point Lookout, Dragonborn and more. We hope modders will do the same.

 

Opening up a market like this is full of problems. They are all the same problems every software developer faces (support, theft, etc.), and the solutions are the same. Valve has done a great job addressing those, but there will be new ones, and were confident those will get solved over time also. If the system shows that it needs curation, well consider it, but we believe that should be a last resort.

 

There are certainly other ways of supporting modders, through donations and other options. We are in favor of all of them. One doesnt replace another, and we want the choice to be the communitys. Yet, in just one day, a popular mod developer made more on the Skyrim paid workshop then he made in all the years he asked for donations.

 

Revenue Sharing

 

Many have questioned the split of the revenue, and we agree this is where it gets debatable. Were not suggesting its perfect, but we can tell you how it was arrived at.

 

First Valve gets 30%. This is standard across all digital distributions services and we think Valve deserves this. No debate for us there.

 

The remaining is split 25% to the modder and 45% to us. We ultimately decide this percentage, not Valve.

 

Is this the right split? There are valid arguments for it being more, less, or the same. It is the current industry standard, having been successful in both paid and free games. After much consultation and research with Valve, we decided its the best place to start.

 

This is not some money grabbing scheme by us. Even this weekend, when Skyrim was free for all, mod sales represented less than 1% of our Steam revenue.

 

The percentage conversation is about assigning value in a business relationship. How do we value an open IP license? The active player base and built in audience? The extra years making the game open and developing tools? The original game that gets modded? Even now, at 25% and early sales data, were looking at some modders making more money than the studio members whose content is being edited.

 

We also look outside at how open IP licenses work, with things like Amazons Kindle Worlds, where you can publish fan fiction and get about 15-25%, but thats only an IP license, no content or tools.

 

The 25% cut has been operating on Steam successfully for years, and its currently our best data point. More games are coming to Paid Mods on Steam soon, and many will be at 25%, and many wont. Well figure out over time what feels right for us and our community. If it needs to change, well change it.

 

The Larger Issue of the Gaming Community and Modding

 

This is where we are listening, and concerned, the most. Despite seeming to sit outside the community, we are part of it. It is who we are. We dont come to work, leave and then turn off. We completely understand the potential long-term implications allowing paid mods could mean. We think most of them are good. Some of them are not good. Some of them could hurt what we have spent so long building. We have just as much invested in it as our players.

 

Some are concerned that this whole thing is leading to a world where mods are tied to one system, DRMd and not allowed to be freely accessed. That is the exact opposite of what we stand for. Not only do we want more mods, easier to access, were anti-DRM as far as we can be. Most people dont know, but our very own Skyrim DLC has zero DRM. We shipped Oblivion with no DRM because we didnt like how it affected the game.

 

There are things we can control, and things we cant. Our belief still stands that our community knows best, and they will decide how modding should work. We think its important to offer choice where there hasnt been before.

 

We will do whatever we need to do to keep our community and our games as healthy as possible. We hope you will do the same.

 

Bethesda Game Studios ] ------

here is the link, it is behind a language and age selection

http://www.bethblog.com/

 

Don't know what to make of this ... If it means the heard the shitstorm then feckin good I say, to paraqoute Brother Thorlogh from a mod we all know and love that's free, "Bethesda just hit the Hornets nest with a stick!" More importantly I think everyone needs to read this imgur screen grab, that I suspect was from a very heated reddit exchange with Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve.

 

http://i.imgur.com/GPbumHU.png

 

Really interesting read basically in business practise what Valve has been doing is called "Rentseeking" from Wiki-pedia -

 

"Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of that which is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth. Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is helping nobody in any way, directly or indirectly, except himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free."

Edited April 27, 2015 by walshy71

[antipax]

Basically they're telling us that they're the good guys in this. Gotcha.

EDIT: Not just that, but they're telling us we can decide whether it will work or not, but simply reiterate everything they intend to do since day one is justified. Nothing will change, they really won't listen to the community. This is just them speaking down to us telling it like it is, but pretending like they care about our opinion. Nothing in their whole plan for paid mods has changed, or is likely to change.

 

"If anything needs to change, we'll change it but we decide what needs to change, not you."

Edited April 27, 2015 by antipax

[walshy71]

@Antipax re-edited my original post, the imgur link is really eye-opening ...

[Caithe]

If Bethesda believes that modders are developpers, then they should be the one who pay them for fixing and making their games playable and still relevant so many years after release.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Caithe

[Levantinium]

I recall someone earlier saying Bethesda actually put a lot of the current terms of paid mods in their CK terms of service when it was first released. So either they're saying "we never considered this, it was just in terms of service magically" or by "2012" they mean "discussed it in November 2011 because we magically knew only 8 percent of people would use mods."

 

It seems to me Valve and Bethesda are doing a lot of "he-said-she-said" blaming of each other to get painted less as the bad guy.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Levantinium

[walshy71]

More reading for you, this time about Digital copyright law. http://www.digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise26.html

 

"Copyright for a computer program, under the Copyright Act of 1976, comes into being as the source code for the computer program is being written by the programmer. As Section 102(a) states, “Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression,” {FN100: 17 U.S.C. §102(a)} such as keypunch cards, magnetic tape, hard or floppy disks, or even the RAM of the computer. The program does not need to be complete or even functional for copyright protection to come into being.

 

When additional source statements are added to the computer program, or corrections are made to the computer program, those additions or corrections are a “derivative work” based on the original computer program. Section 101 {FN101: 17 U.S.C. §101} defines a derivative work as “a work based upon one or more preexisting works” and states that “editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship” are derivative works.

 

Just as a copyright came into being when the original lines of source code were written by the programmer, so another copyright comes into being for each addition or modification to the source code that shows sufficient originality. Because of this, a computer program generally is protected not by a single copyright but by a series of copyrights starting when it is first written and continuing through the last modification.

 

However, there is little practical significance in viewing the source code copyrights as a series of separate copyrights rather than a single copyright. If the computer program is not a work made for hire, then all the copyrights will expire at the same time – 70 years after the death of the last surviving author. For works made for hire, the copyrights will expire in the order in which they came into being. The copyright on the original program will expire first, allowing it (but not its later modifications) to enter the public domain, where it can be copied freely. The copyright on each modification will expire at some later time, until all the copyrights have expired and the complete computer program enters the public domain. However, because the copyright for the original source code will not expire for 95 years after it is first published (and 120 years after it is first written, if it remains unpublished), it is unlikely that the fact that part of an outdated, 95-year-old computer program has entered the public domain while a part remains copyrighted will be of any significance.

 

One situation in which this series of copyrights may be significant when the copyright in the computer program is registered. It is common to register the copyright whenever a major release of the computer program occurs, but not when there has been only a minor change. While the copyright owner can sue for infringement of the copyright only on the material that has been registered, if there have been only minor changes since registration, the copied version will be substantially similar to the registered one – sufficient for a finding of copyright infringement.

 

It may also be important to look at a computer program as a series of derivative works is when the original author has not written the modifications. For a program written by company employees, it makes no difference because the author under the law for such a work made for hire is the employer. But if there are different authors, then the copyright owner in any work has to authorize the making of any further derivative works and must approve of any distribution of the work that contains his material. Unless ownership and distribution rules are resolved at the time the work is being developed, there could be problems at a later time."

 

 

And more http://www.digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise27.html

 

"When two or more preexisting works are combined to form a new work, in copyright law that work is called a “compilation” – “a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” The copyright in the resulting overall computer program comprises the copyrights in the preexisting component computer programs and a new copyright in the compilation. But that compilation copyright is very limited.

 

The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material. {FN108: 17 U.S.C. §103(b)}

 

This means that to distribute the overall computer program, there must be permission from the copyright owners of all the component computer programs. It is important before distributing a program using a library that the license that accompanied that library allow the redistribution of the library in the way intended, or else the distribution right for that library will be infringed."

 

So basically get your content copyrighted and trademarked guys.

Edited April 27, 2015 by walshy71

[69mAnU96]

Puzzling.

I don't seem to live in the same world that these people.

In my world, there is Nexus.

[PeggleFrank]

Great. I personally wasn't against paid modding, but I'm glad it's gone regardless. Hopefully the mod authors hosting paid mods didn't get hurt too badly.

 

Also, why did the apostrophes get taken out?

[walshy71]

Also, why did the apostrophes get taken out?

LOL just noticed haven't the foggiest notion ...