The paid mod feature may have been removed from Steam Workshop

[Grasmann]

I'm glad that Valve and Bethesda decided to take the paid mods down as well. It's been an ugly few days, no matter where you stood on the issue.

IMO there's nobody else to blame than valve and bethesda.

They basically had dollar signs in their eyes.

They just took the game with the most mods on the workshop and wanted to get in on the party and make money off of it.

They haven't put a single thought in what they're doing to the community.

I'm kind of proud I never uploaded my mods on the workshop at all to be honest.

 

Now again. That doesn't mean I'm against the idea of modders being rewarded for their work.

Just as nobody else is probably.

It's all about the way it's done here.

Valve and bethesda keeping 75% of the money is just a big pile of steaming bulls***.

Because they had nothing to do with the endless hours of work put into those mods.

 

This paywall kind of stuff is the only thing valve knows and is used to.

But that doesn't work with a dynamic modding community were mods are depending on other mods to work.

It destroys everything we've build for years.

 

The solution must be a way without such paywalls were ad revenue is shared based on clicks and/or downloads to reward the creators of popular content or something like that

But it has to stay free to use, everything else is bad for the community and brakes the progression.

 

Especially in the case of skyrim or any other bethesda game that is buggy by default, were so many mods are conflicting with each other.

You NEED to be able to try the mods and figure out how to make them compatible without paying money for everyting.

I know there was a refund system but there was also a one week workshop suspension in case of a refund and maybe other penalties.

 

It's just a really bad idea altogether.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Grasmann

[Rubbermatt]

I'm not against mod creators getting compensation for all the time and effort they put into their work, it was Valthesdas [censored] poor implementation and blatant money grab that got my hackles up.

The Steam Workshop is the last place I would try to sell paid for mods, no QA, no transparency, direct download into your data folder overwriting existing files with no buyer end control .... a complete and utter [censored] of a system.

And then to demand 75% of all sales was the icing on the cake.

There are ways to sell mods but they involve time, effort and money being put in to create and maintain a functional marketplace with oversight and quality control. Also not trying to muscle into a thriving community that has existed for four years and demanding danegild helps.

 

I've been unable to donate to mod creators or support this site because I've basically been flatout skint for ages, but now that things are looking up a bit I'm finally in a position to change that, my donations might not be enough to buy a half a cup of cold mouldy coffee but it's a start. So search down the back of the sofa for that lost loose change, you might only be able to donate $0.50 a month but it's better than nothing, and if enough of us do it we can put a smile on some poor overworked, underappreciated mod creators face.

Except the SkyUI guys, if they come back they need to get a new PR guy first because the one they've currently got is a complete [censored].

 

p.s Everyone saying "start a Patreon" - don't know how it works in the US but outside of the US you have got to fill in a W-8BEN form to set up a Creator account. This requires a tax ID number. Now I'm registered with HMRC as self employed so I already had a tax ID when I set mine up, but for anyone else ....

Short version - not as easy as you think.

[RurikNiall]

You know, the most annoying part is how Bethesda and Valve tried to justify taking 75% because "it's the norm." Being the norm doesn't make it moral. It's the norm for waitresses to get paid less than minimum wage and have to rely on tips to scrape by, doesn't make their boss less of a scumbag for doing it.

Edited April 28, 2015 by RurikNiall

[HiiragiTsukasa]

Entitlement is a nasty thing, it unfortunately goes both ways - I've seen more than enough modders feel like they are entitled to compensation, and more than enough people who download mods and feel like they are entitled to a 100% bug free/crash free mod. When a large company like Valve steps in and stirs up the hornets nest, it was obvious that things would end badly. This paid mod disaster really just proves the point that entitlement is a major issue these days.

 

I hate to say it here, but -- If your a modder, who is creating mods with the sole purpose of making profit then your not a modder at all, your making DLC. And I think we all know now that the vast majority of people don't want more DLC for games like Skyrim which are locked behind paywalls which in the end, don't even really benefit the modder at all - it just outwardly appeared to benefit them, far too many people just saw $$$ potential without actually thinking about the future ramifications.

 

I've seen more than enough posts from obvious entitled modders who we're quite happy to cash-in for self profit and let everything else burn as long as they benefited they couldn't care less and these are the types of people I worry about the most, whilst some created obvious quality mods in which I'm not naming names or pointing fingers but they was still very quick to jump on the profit bandwagon.

[Mystais]

Personally, I had no problem with a mod author putting their mod on Steam Workshop for pay... BUT only if they also kept the same version on Nexus for free. This way there was no pay wall. The community that paid for mods on Steam Workshop were most likely not the same community that use Nexus.

 

Mod authors would have gotten some financial kickback from Steam while still being part of the Nexus free modding community as before. As the mod author would have already had his mod also on Steam, he/she would not have to worry about the mod being stolen and placed on Steam behind his back.

 

There really needs to be some middle ground here. It would be nice for mod authors to receive some financial kickback for their hard work. The donation button is a nice idea but all these folks screaming for one... would you honestly be one of the donators or just sit back and assume others would do it for you?

 

There's been a lot of bad blood created between some mod authors and mod users by this fiasco and just because this pay wall is gone does not mean damage has not been done. Now we have to figure out how to heal it.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Mystais

[michaeltear]

Modders should leave this community and don't look back. What this debacle showed is that mod users respect modders so little that they're not even able to tolerate them having freedom of choice. And let's not pretend donations have ever been or ever will be a valid alternative to Steam's scheme, we all know no one donates.

[michaeltear]

Modders should leave this community and don't look back. What this debacle showed is that mod users respect modders so little that they're not even able to tolerate them having freedom of choice. And let's not pretend donations have ever been or ever will be a valid alternative to Steam's scheme, we all know no one donates.

[Teria23]

You can't split the community in "modders-only" and "players-only". This is what the entire uproar has been about - I think almost everybody has tried their hands at the Creation Kit at some time, or helped out another player, or modded a very small thing, or at least TRIED to mod something before giving up in frustration. This split happened four days ago and it was WRONG. I'm glad it's over.

[HiiragiTsukasa]

This will be my last post on this subject as I would like to relax and at least think something is right in the world at the moment for once, because last night I was heavily thinking about this subject and I came to a troubling conclusion.

 

(see attached image) I have several of these ranging from the late 90s to early 2000s, many gaming magazines would offer up FREE mod cds of the best mods, because back then most people didn't have the internet, or had bad connections. This obviously had some cost to the magazine, they didn't charge any extra for it - mods were free, the very concept of charging for them was inconceivable, games like UT and Quake thrived on mods and extended the life of those games dramatically.

 

It was an honor to get your mod listed as a top rated mod back then, and to get your mod or player skins listed on the various free CDs - thats when you knew you work had paid off. The problem and conclusion I came to last night is that the newer generation of modders, it seems many have entitlement issues and that damages the modding community severely- quite a few modders these days was probably in diapers, or in Elementary school when this CD was released back in April 2000, exactly 15 years ago.

 

15 years is a long time - times do change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. Back in 2011 we first saw DLC appear and the backlash that created, even today I don't buy into a lot of DLC if its carved from the original game like a piece of meat, and paid modding is like taking a chain saw and cutting that piece of meat in half, its going to be brutal and bloody.

 

This goes out to the current and new generation of modders, please take this into consideration that modding has a rich history, whether the developer of the games liked it or not, modders strive to make content for themselves, to make the games either better or more interesting - never once has the original modders thought about profit, many developers out there like Valve and Bethesda see modding as an opportunity for -them- to make money, not you! Please remember this in the future when almost certainly this will become an issue again.

Edited April 28, 2015 by HiiragiTsukasa

[Grasmann]

Modders should leave this community and don't look back. What this debacle showed is that mod users respect modders so little that they're not even able to tolerate them having freedom of choice. And let's not pretend donations have ever been or ever will be a valid alternative to Steam's scheme, we all know no one donates.

 

I was against this bulls*** as well although I'm a modder myself.

Well, ok I haven't released that many mods but I could've uploaded my mod AKM to the workshop for money easily.

The point is that I saw what this will lead to in the long run.

 

You can use such a paid mod system for a game like Half Life or something where most mods are total conversations that work independently.

But skyrim and the other bethesda games are a completely different thing.

Mods are interacting with each other to the point where you basically never know the outcome.

 

Not to mention the dangerous grounds we're stepping on right now.

If such a system is accepted by the customers it won't take long until game developers will only allow mods hosted on steam.

They want to turn modding communities into dlc machines and take their part of the money for every little thing that is released.

And by all means that is just wrong.

I'm not saying bethesda doesn't deserve anything but splitting 75% of the money between valve and bethesda is really greedy stuff.

And honestly bethesda already profited so much from the modding communities, it's crazy.

Their games have some of the longest lifespans just because their customers love their games so much that they develop mods nonstop.

Instead of giving something of that back they're basically ripping of both the modders and the mod users.

That's what they did! Ripping off everybody. And you're naive if you see anything else in that.

 

What we need is a different system to reward modders than erection paywalls for the mods.

It's true that modders should be rewarded for their hard work.

Some more so than others because there are big gaps when it comes to mod quality.

But this paywall kind of stuff is a bad idea with skyrim or any other bethesda game.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Grasmann