Steam and Bethesda remove paid modding from Skyrim Workshop

[InuyashaFE]

You know, someone else made a good suggestion. If you want to give modders incentive to put mods on the nexus, I think what you ought to do is allow modders a cut of the ad revenue, supposing you can afford it.

 

Imagine it. After you get a certain amount of endorsements or downloads, you get a cut of the revenue.

Edited April 30, 2015 by InuyashaFE

[WightMage]

In response to post #24798859. #24798999, #24799109, #24799114, #24799789, #24800024, #24800839, #24802019, #24802639, #24802919, #24803084, #24803214, #24803324, #24803634, #24803924, #24804049, #24804079, #24804924, #24804984, #24805039, #24805199, #24805714, #24805729 are all replies on the same post.

Nightasy wrote:

Axeface wrote: Well said Nightasy, and thankyou for your tutorials. Sad to see your mods go, but I agree with everything you said.
Like someone else here said. Youtubers can make money from everyones mods. Twitch streamers can. The nexus can. Valve and Beth can, yet the 'community' actively refuses modders that chance, and it's only a chance, because only quality would actually sell.
Self determination is important, and that has been refused.

In hindsight they should have actively curated the system, just like they do in other games. And allowed a donate button, instead of the 'pay-what-you-want-but-PAY' system.

UberSmaug wrote: Sums up everything I've been saying for the past few days. Well said.

greggorypeccary wrote: I don't see how any thinking person could fault you.

vimebox wrote: Playing music for a family event is DIFFERENT from playing concert! go join as bethesda employee if u want a "REAL CONCERT!" and play here if u want to entertain a POOR PATHETIC FAMILY! who can only gives u a constructive critics!

did u know that somehow your mod makes RICH people buy vanilla skyrim? and bethesda not giving u anything not even a simple thanks of endorsement from that uprising selling! instead we gave u endorsement as a portfolio for your good credibility. in conclusion bethesda SHOULD make u as their employee/DLC project instead of taking money from your FAMILY!

arxerisdam wrote: i think all modders who feel that way should actually go and download their stuff.

Someone else will take the place and life will go on.

greggorypeccary wrote: I think they will. So what's your point. In the end you can download free mods from wealthy people and people that think it is their hobby and very new modders who just want experience. They will be free though so I guess you win. Some will even be good.

CNR4806 wrote: Well, goodbye then?

What makes you think you're the first? What makes you think Skyrim is the first place I've seen modders with attitude like yours?

From what I see over the years (including games with a free/paid mod split like The Sims), every time someone rage-quits, the community on a whole remains unchanged, the status quo is maintained and nobody even remembers that modder after a few months at best.

One piece of advice: Don't get fooled by those who say "Awwww thank you for all these years of modding, I will miss you" when you announce your retirement. They'll happily move on before the end of the week and forget about you altogether.

necroslord wrote: Just a remark to Axeface...

I don't think it's right to compare streamers or the nexus' earnings to "paid mods" as they are somewhat different. Most of those earnings come from third parties and not the consumers themsleves (ads and such).

A viewer can watch 10,000 videos in youtube and generate some revenue to the poster without too much trouble. But a player can't afford 100 mods at $1 a pop without affecting him to a greater or lesser degree.

Not taking sides on the matter, as it's a very complicated matter I still ahven't wrapped my head around even when it's already dead. But think that saying:

"Youtubers can make money from everyones mods. Twitch streamers can. The nexus can. Valve and Beth can, yet the 'community' actively refuses modders that chance"

is not valid.

Nightasy wrote: @CNR4806 - Oh, I'm not the first and I won't be the last. Artists have rights and no one should be allowed to take them away from us. The anti-paid mod community took away the right to sell mods from us. We need to fight for that freedom of choice. You have the right to choose whether or not do download mods, you have the right to choose whether or not to pay for mods. Artists should have the right to give away their work for free or charge a fee to purchase it.

Lastly, thanks for more of your hateful and ungrateful sentiments. They are unwelcome but they continue to prove my points. I have no response towards them, I am done listening to the hate.

freedom613 wrote: If I have the right to boycott buying mods, you have the right to boycott giving them away. I do not agree with what you are doing, but I will respect it.

arxerisdam wrote: @greggorypeccary

Some may even be good?

I think they will be better the problem now is the actual modders crying out laud how evil mod users are,do not realize they need to convince those users to actually buy their stuff, but instead of that they cry to heaven curse the mod users, is riddiculous you antagonize your future clients.

Now as anyone thinking in becoming a modder for hire?

i mean there are tons of ideas to make some money in this kind of stuff but all i see is people complaining and taking stuff too personally and looking at users as evil demos.

Really the momment you arent happy in a Open source community is time to pack up and move on, leave the spot open for new talented like minded people come and take the place, and i bet we will see a lot of good mods in the future and the community will endure no matter how many "amazing modders" go it has happen before with oblivion and the community is still here, growing and evolving, so yeah i think is time a lot of people just move on.

and really poor modders? anyone spending time making a mod for a game most have a least a more less decent computer and enough free time to spend it doing it plus an internet connection to upload the mod. if he has that then it is not a poor modder. and if by any chance it is poor and is losing he's/her time in making mods for a game for free then that person has a big problem of priorities

greggorypeccary wrote: Then you'll be happy.

DreamingGirl wrote: There is nothing stopping you from making money off your mods. Set up your own website to host them, and cash off from ad revenues. That is the way youtubers earn their money anyway (they don't actually take any money from their viewers). Make your own videos to feature your mods on youtube, even screenshots work fine if you don't have the time/skill to make actual video shots.

There are plenty of ways to make money if you just think outside the box! (And you might even enjoy it too!) :)

blackasm wrote: very well said the modding community has just declared that the work of mod authors is utterly worthless and should forever be. To me that is not their right, sure they don't need to buy it but to say they cant sell it when Bethesda says they can to me is absurd and I really don't even want to support these people with my hobby. all of my modding in the past was personal as I do try and make money off of my 3d models and so it is against my own interest to spend time making them into free mods, but recently I got a little involved in the community and made 2 retextures based on ideas I had heard in the forums. I am taking them down as I really don't even want to support a community that definitively says my time is worthless, after that the thumbs ups and the endorsements become the hollow words of someone taking advantage of you. I had learned that lesson already with my artwork and I guess this is just a further aspect of growing up. I don't have time for people who don't value me. Even though I never would have charged for my retextures, not like I could as they used assets with permission, I am still removing them.

macintroll wrote: @necroslord
You still don't understand that

With this kind of system :
Player can get ANY (ALL) mods for FREE - FOREVER
Modder can get some $ given by the ads program reward. like on youtube exactly

The more popular is his mod, the more $ he can get.
You never paid to watch a video no ?
the service itself is FREE, so why shouldn't it be the same for a mod instead of a video ?

The analogy is perfect : the "content provider" (you tuber or modded etc..) get some $, the final user (watcher - player) has access FOR FREE to this service.

Where do you find downsides here ?

freedom613 wrote: Blackasm, you are arguing against a strawman. I already replied to another of your posts showing that the boycott's views goes beyond not wanting to spend money.

Angm4r wrote: Goodbye!

Hey can you answer me some questions? I would like to know what happens if one of your paid mods breaks another 4.99€ Mod of mine? Who is to blame? You or the other modder? How fast will you fix it, cause then i will yell your mod broke my game, i paid for it. Then you are not an artist anymore, you are someone distributing a product and then the customer will get really mad if you break anything that worked before. You are already tired to answering to hate by something like those 4days, well the amount of time you can spare answering to hate,flame when you break any of the customers stuff will then take your time until you fix it. Can you see the 0 Star Ratings out of pure rage?

Please consider as well are you using anything in your mods which was provided to you via another mod? Let's say cause you use SKSE then they will get 10% of your cut, i mean you can not simply deny them their rights. They did work and all. ENB should charge money too?

necroslord wrote: @macintrol

Sorry. I'm lost here. Axeface at no point talked about using a "similar system to videos for mods.

I quoted what he said.

Either I misunderstood him greatly (Which I doubt) or maybe you shouldn't be intercepting messages addressed to someone else's specific comment.

CNR4806 wrote: *slow claps*

You can label me a hater all you want, it doesn't change what I say one bit.

I am offering genuine opinion on the matter of rage-quitting modders over many years of observations across multiple modding communities, and apparently that makes me a hater. Well sure, whatever floats your boat. I only try to wake people up once. If you insist on living in the dream bubble, who am I to persist?

And good luck with your paid-mod revolution. You'll need it if you're going by your plan of "not posting anything until the pay button comes back". This kind of tactic only works when the modding community is so small and your contribution so great that your departure would actually make a dent on it.

macintroll wrote: Hum the forum reply is a mess ^^
When re-reading everything i(m still not sure who quoting who and who speak about what.

My point was just to say that the youtube ads earning model can 100% fit the modding community, offering, reward for (good) modders and free content for end-user.
So nobody would have to pay anything. (except the advertiser)

Balx2 wrote: You look like a spoiled little brat. I would never pay for any mods by anyone with your attitude.

Personally the only thing with the system I didn't like was how easy it was to steal someone else's work. If Valve would have thought about that ahead of time the system probably would have worked.

Stormaxel wrote: Point of these situations is that no one likes to be told what to do. I personally think both sides of the modding community are being down right selfish. For all of the mod authors out there who believe that endorsements are false. Your right to an extent, but there are others who wholeheartedly love what you do for them. In reality without both sides of the modding community mods would not and could not exist, Why? well its simple if you make a mod and say you hand it out for free, but there are a mass of script bugs in your mod that you didn't know about, well without the AND I QUOTE "Complaining little brats" you may have not seen those errors leading to your mod being forgotten. IF YOU WANT TO QUIT UNTIL SOME CAN PAY GO AHEAD, BUT I TELL YOU THIS, WATCH HOW FAR YOU WILL MAKE IT WITHOUT HELP FROM OTHER MODDERS OR THE COMMUNITY. WE ARE ALL A MASSIVE FAMILY HERE.

This is the most important comment in this entire thread. Ultimately, none of us would have diddly squat without the community, and by withdrawing from the community whatever your intent, you are ultimately hurting yourself in the end.

Listen OP, before you lambast me as just another "little kid" who disagrees with your opinion, I must say that your logic for the most part is sound, and you have every right to pull everything off of the Nexus and never mod again, much less for free. But unfortunately, I must critique two points:

1) You say that what you do is charity, and from a financial perspective it indeed is. However, from a matter of intent, it seems to me you were never charitable at all, given that the main reason that people give charity is that they expect nothing back. Does that mean even gratitude? Unfortunately, yes. I could give a few bucks to a homeless man and he could not acknowledge me at all (though this is admittedly rare- most people I find are pretty grateful for obvious reasons) nor does he need to, since sometimes they didn't ask for my money. But I didn't give them the money to feel good about myself or to get acknowledgement- I did it because I thought it would suck if he had to spend the day without so much as a McDonalds hamburger to eat.

I think you would be lying to yourself if you thought for even a moment that what you did went unnoticed, or that people were not grateful to you. What's more likely is that you never thought their gratefulness or happiness or improved skills mattered to you, and given that we all have different measures of value, I understand how you feel.

2) The reason for my analysis above is that you admitted you are selfish. That is fine- its part of our nature as people, and honestly I think some of us need to come to terms with our negative aspects from time to time. But as this user said, we are a community- and as much as the greatest mod authors would like to think the rest of us, non modders and modders alike, are not owed anything, you do owe one thing- you would have never reached your level today without the Nexus.

You would have had no one to show your mods, and no one would be around to learn from you, given the quality of your mods. Likewise, you would not have learned from them, when they eventually find something they can improve on in your work. You would have no one but yourself and your tools to learn from, which means you would likely not get better. That's not even considering whether you used assets created by other members of the community or not.

I have no mods myself, and only recently considered getting into it. I would have appreciated finding resources here to get started but, now I'm uncertain as to what kind of people I would go to for help, if all I am to a potential teacher is part of the rabble. The experience I speak with instead comes from being part of the writing community, and what I've found there is just as applicable to this one as to any art- the isolated never improve and eventually destroy themselves. The ones that contribute, do not.

Peace mate.

[WightMage]

In response to post #24808369. #24808829, #24809074, #24809099 are all replies on the same post.

Riprock wrote:

freedom613 wrote: What part of this is not real?

Marstonn wrote: @freedom613

It's all a illusion, this never happened, the reality is: you're sleeping and feeding ultra high tech machines in a apocalyptical world.

UberSmaug wrote: Many have said there should have been a discussion about this before they sprung it on us. Agreed. Well this is that discussion. All be it a little late. Aside from a few bad apples. This has been the most sane forum I have found on the subject. Kudos to you all.

I hear that. I'll bring the margaritas.

[macintroll]

In response to post #24801759. #24802244, #24802379, #24802609, #24802804, #24802979, #24803189, #24803484, #24803499, #24803564, #24803639, #24803729, #24803904, #24804179, #24804294, #24804639, #24804809, #24805479, #24805499, #24806059, #24806324, #24806514, #24806754, #24806814, #24806854, #24807069, #24807204, #24807289, #24807309, #24807344, #24807574, #24807704, #24807719, #24807814, #24807909, #24808129, #24808364, #24808374, #24808739, #24808754 are all replies on the same post.

DaddyDirection wrote:

greggorypeccary wrote: Read my post, I used the nexus and it was very nice. It is a little blind to the fact that it does very well on the labors of un paid modders. It does not share the wealth with the ones that earn it for them. since you get free mods it seems fine to you. If you read my post I think you'll find that what I find is shameful really is that the nexus expects you to pay the modders. I think most of that onus is on them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: The dirty secret here is Greggory gets free mods too. He's been enjoying the work of other people in the community for years. He's used the free utilities and resources provided to the community for free as well. But instead of paying-it-forward like all of the mod authors whose work he has enjoyed, he now wants to profit off of what others have allowed him to do.

greggorypeccary wrote: Its no dirty secret. I have been a contributing member of this community for some time. I'm proud of my contributions and any one can see them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Gregory, I see exactly zero contributions from you. Are you one of those modders who threw a temper tantrum and hid all your mods?

greggorypeccary wrote: You could hope but you'd be wrong.

pintocat wrote: greggorypeccary has a mod. You, on the other hand, have zero. If you've got no contributions to the community, you have no place talking down to someone who actually has.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: So all of this crying from Gregory over a single mod? Hilarious. If your mod is so wonderful, why don't you try and sell it to Bethesda? They could incorporate it into their next DLC.

sunshinenbrick wrote: No offence to any mod creator but it is not the only thing people can contribute.

greggorypeccary wrote: Vesuvius1745

The more you say the more apparent your ignorance becomes.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Sunshine is right. The "well, umm, what have you contributed?" reply is just a way to avoid addressing the points made.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm being serious Greggory, and not insulting you. If your mods are so great, why don't you try and sell them to Bethesda or some other game company? Crying about not being able to sell them on Valve on the Nexus is a pointless endeavor.

Or better yet, why not get a job at a game company? I used to work at Electronic Arts in the early 2000s. Redwood Shores in California. The pay is good, the benefits are good, and you get to work on games for a living.

greggorypeccary wrote: Again I'm not crying. I'm fine, my mod was free and always will be. My payment was friends and knowledge. If i were to do more I'd want money. If that makes me a greedy monster taking away your free stuff in your eyes, so be it. I'll sleep tonight.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Fair enough, Gregory. I used to create mods for Morrowind. My payment was the enjoyment of doing it. I've started a few mods for Skyrim, and if I ever get around to finishing them, they will be released for free as well. There are many reasons I wouldn't want to get paid, but one of them is because I have enjoyed the free content other people like you have given to the community over the years. It wouldn't seem right to take payment. It's kind of like those "give a penny, take a penny" bowls you see at convenience stores. Or the person in front of you at Starbucks who paid for your drink.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Greggory I really like your mod, it looks like a lot of time and effort went in to it and I think you should never let anyone tell you how to or not to follow your ambitions. However the system that Valvethesda tried to set up was exploitative, turning honest do good modders into slave developers and customer support workers and making people who buy mods, cash cows.

I have no problem with encouraging people to form collective game development projects that can become paid for content, but that was not what they put on the table. Realise your own worth and fight for a better deal from the hand in the sky.

greggorypeccary wrote: I'm not even talking about Steam or Bethesda. I like Bethesda, A lot. To me it is the Nexus that should be nuturing the modders mainly because they profit from them. The nexus is the one who benefits from the community and the modders. Its time to give something back. They stand to the side while the community fights between modders and users and it plays into their hands while they pretend they don't realize they are part of it.

sunshinenbrick wrote: This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do. I agree that there needs to be a higher mandate of cohesion, however a top-down approach can only do so much.

If you have not already have a read of the posts in the following Nexus forum:

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2810229-is-the-word-user-negative/

While this only scratches the surface it can hopefully start a communal consensus on what role we all play in this giant machine.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm not sure Nexus is making a profit. It was my understanding that Dark0ne runs this site at a loss. A labor of love.

Capitalism is the best economic system we've discovered thus far, but it has its flaws. One of those flaws is there is always a "race to the bottom"--hamburger patties get smaller, the toaster burns out faster, and just the general overall quality of everything slowly goes down over time. And all in the name of maximizing profits. There is no reason to believe this paradigm wouldn't happen with game mods.

Take a great mod like Falskaar for example. The author put a ton of time and energy into this expansion, and churned out a mod that, in my opinion, is heads above anything Bethesda has tried to peddle to us. Now what if he had been contracted by Bethesda to make it? All of a sudden there would be a deadline by which they expect it to be ready. They want it now now now because time is money, and the author wouldn't be able to take his time to put in all the details he otherwise would have. There might even be bugs he didn't have time to fix, or other shortcuts he had to take to make sure Bethesda had their product on time (and in corporate-America it ceases to be "art", and becomes a nameless PRODUCT--a widget on an assembly line whose sole purpose is to increase profit). I believe this is what happened to Skyrim. The programmers were rushed, and released a bug-filled, and partially incomplete product. In fact I think they just quickly ported it from the console version.

Not to mention that the number of mods required to make Skyrim enjoyable (say at $1.99 each) is out of the budget for most gamers. I know I have over 100 mods myself. This means that save for a few exceptional mods, most mod authors won't be making very much because the gamers simply cannot afford it. There will be all these mods on some paysite that never (or only rarely) get downloaded, and eventually the mod authors will stop writing mods because unless they are churning out the next Falsksaar, it just isn't worth their time. This will most likely kill the modding community because by then Bethesda will probably have taken steps to close down sites like the Nexus because they will want to maintain their monopoly.

macintroll wrote: Quote Sunshinenbrick "This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do."

Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part.

ChizFoShiz wrote: While you're right about the nexus, you're way off base about falskaar given that it was made as Alexander's "application" for employment from Bethesda, while I'm sure Alexander loves to make content and all and I wouldn't dream of making assumptions of what his stance would be here, his mod had the specific goal of gainful employment in mind.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Whether he put Falskaar on his resume or not is irrelevant. He worked on it for free, and gave it to the community for free, and he had no idea whether it would get him a job for sure or not.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Nexus is not allowed to make direct profit from mods, as I gather from the legal premise Bethesda has put down in its EULA (mods must be free). By paying people through revenue they would have to include taxes and therefore be bordering on being classified as employees and would in many ways become competition to Bethesda. Youtube own the content uploaded, Nexus does not it is still technically Bethesda's property.

Additionally I think Nexus would rather avoid the headache of having to decide who is able to enter such a scheme and who is not. Especially as the creation of a mod is rarely the work of a single individual.

The crunch is Bethesda are very flexible on this issue because they make A LOT of money out of it, steer the money in other directions and they will quickly bare their teeth I can assure you.

macintroll wrote: @sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.
The money is given ONLY because of popularity of the youtubber's page and the number of ads clicked.
2) Youtube is not the proprietary of your videos.
3) For multi-modders mod, i think it's there own work to share retribution % to the different persons who have work together, not nexus not any one else.
Moderation has to occur for sure, but they show by the past that they can do this very well (banning bad boys & girls)
4) Well yes bethesda can do what they want with their game, and also can stop the nexus tomorrow if they want.

freedom613 wrote: @Sunshine, is this in response to Mac's post: "Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part."

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Again, Sunshine is right. The Youtube thing people keep bringing up is also a false analogy, because intellectual property laws make a distinction between profiting off of someone's IP directly, or from the incidental use of that IP.

With Youtube, Bethesda's IP is not being violated. You don't get to play Skyrim for free, nor do you benefit from anything for free that would normally defer to Bethesda for some sort of profit. You are just watching someone ELSE play Skyrim--and that person (presumably) bought Skyrim and has a legal right to not only play it, but to film themselves playing it, and then they can do whatever they want with the video of them playing Skyrim.

When you design something with their creation kit, you are directly utilizing their IP from start to finish, and your mod requires Skyrim to play. Bethesda's EULA allows you to trade the mod with friends, put it on a website, or do a lot of things with it as long as you aren't trying to make a profit.

greggorypeccary wrote: macintroll said
@sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.

Yes but the Nexus takes all of the advertising money already so they would have to part with some and some subscription money too. If they are willing.

Marstonn wrote: No, the youtube have "networks", these guys have deals with devs and are allowed to monetize on game videos, the youtuber must be part of a network (Machinima, Youtube, etc).

Edit, example: MMoxreview the guy from Skyrim Mods Weekly is a part of Machinima, so that's why he can monetize.

greggorypeccary wrote: I must admit to complete ignorance to how that works. I will check it out though.

sunshinenbrick wrote: The money from advertising goes to Nexus first and they would have to distribute it. Yes you are right that Nexus could strike a deal with the ad companies that the revenue is split prior to this but that is very dodgy from Bethesda's point of view... and well Google own ad sense and licence uploaded videos so they can do what they want.

Google do not own the video but they own youtube and therefor the right for your video to be uploaded to it.

Modders have enough to do without having to write business plans and start calculating how to split revenue. If they are organised enough to be making that much money out of it then they will most likely get a call from Bethesda asking them if they would like a job.

However if Bethesda could get them to become self employed (which is what the recent experiment would have entailed) then they would prefer to do that as they have little to no responsibility for them... but still make a load of money.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745
Well i should make videos instead of mods ^^

To be more serious : you miss an important point :
Bethesda allow site like nexus to gain $500.000 a year from ads, while being a platform for downloading free mods.. made with the creation kit and their assets. And the sole maker of some of the said mods would not be able to gain some buck from the same kind of earnings ???
crazy.

Again the mod is not SELL, the mod is free, the mod doesn't give a cent to the modder, only the ads give money. And that's absolutely legal, beacause i can already put ads on my own website showing my mods with no risks.

@sunshinenbrick : sorry miss but you should learn how adsense/adwords works. and nor google, nor youtube own your videos they are plateform providers period.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'd like to know where you are getting this financial info about the Nexus. It was my understanding they consistently run at a loss. Running a popular website takes a lot of time, and one that uses a ton of bandwidth can be very expensive.

sunshinenbrick wrote: If your video violates copyright they can take it down immediately without your consent. They own the licence for your video to be distributed on their network.

One should not try compare the youtube model to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts.

macintroll wrote: @Marstonn
Anybody is able to monetize his video on Google.
Being in a "network" (what does it really mean in your mind ?) is not necessary , but for sure better for the number of views.

and concerning what can be "game press" well of course they are allowed, they are free advertiser for the games companies ^^ new games are send to them for reviews , even presents etc..

What is not authorized is to diffuse a video with Copyright content (the video itself, music etc...)

macintroll wrote: quote "You cannot compare the youtube setup to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts."

Well so explain me why Nexus is allowed to make $500.000+ / year in ads earnings...
then explain me why i can't make some $ the same way, thanks.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Some days ago Dark0ne said he was spending 500.000$ a year only for servers renting and additional costs. So i take this as a base.. but it could be far more in fact ^^
As the only nexus earnings are Ads.. (and some memberships) .. it's easy to understand how much is gain from ads earnings.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I don't understand how you are extrapolating profit from what Dark0ne is saying he spends to keep the site running. It sounds to me like this is a huge money sink for him.

greggorypeccary wrote: It isn't

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Ok if you think so, but what lead you to think this ? have you found some numbers ?
A company (black tree gaming) own the nexus, and make money like any company, has operating costs like any other , at least the goal is to maintain an equilibrium. No one can work loosing money for long you know, and Nexus is growing "open to all games", it doesn't sound like a loosing company.
So if you have at least $500.000 to spend each year to make your business active, you need to earn at minima as much money somewhere.
And apart from nexus network what are the incomes ? none i'm aware of.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Please remember the money made by the Nexus is for the use of the Nexus, not for individual mods. This is why they are allowed to do it.

In legal terms when one donates for a mod they are not paying for the mod they are actually donating to the modder themselves, this is why Bethesda turn a blind eye. It is advantageous to them and it is also somewhat on the fence legally on whether the donation was for the mod or just because you like to support what the modder does. It really is a setup that is based on good will a trust, both from Bethesda's point of view and Nexus and its users.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I have no evidence of anything. I was going on Dark0ne's word that he runs this site at a loss. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and I would be surprised if a site like this was making any significant amount of profit. He spends a lot of money on upkeep, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is making at least that from donations/ads. I have friends who made a ton of money off of Bitcoins, and are now engaging in labors of love that are also money sinks.

Do you have some information the rest of us don't?

quote : " Do you have some information the rest of us don't?"
All key financial info on companies are publicly available (thus it's last year for most yet) and detailled info can be bought if you want.
Google the company name you'll find more info. (not very difficult)

I'm not here to accuse nexus of anything, just to point the fact that they are allowed to make money from ads, is it enough, is it too much ?, it's not the point of my discussion, honestly I don't care, the "service" is good here, i really appreciate what Dark0ne has made and how it helps the "community".

But if they can do it, rightfully gaining money providing access to modders content ...why not also the modders who provide each part of the content of this site ?.
I see it as a win-win solution : free mods for end users and modders rewarded with some $

Again in this formula, it's not the mod which is giving money to the modder, it's the audience it generate like elsewhere, exactly what does the nexus to pay their bills.

Edited April 30, 2015 by macintroll

[greggorypeccary]

In response to post #24801759. #24802244, #24802379, #24802609, #24802804, #24802979, #24803189, #24803484, #24803499, #24803564, #24803639, #24803729, #24803904, #24804179, #24804294, #24804639, #24804809, #24805479, #24805499, #24806059, #24806324, #24806514, #24806754, #24806814, #24806854, #24807069, #24807204, #24807289, #24807309, #24807344, #24807574, #24807704, #24807719, #24807814, #24807909, #24808129, #24808364, #24808374, #24808739, #24808754, #24809559 are all replies on the same post.

DaddyDirection wrote:

greggorypeccary wrote: Read my post, I used the nexus and it was very nice. It is a little blind to the fact that it does very well on the labors of un paid modders. It does not share the wealth with the ones that earn it for them. since you get free mods it seems fine to you. If you read my post I think you'll find that what I find is shameful really is that the nexus expects you to pay the modders. I think most of that onus is on them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: The dirty secret here is Greggory gets free mods too. He's been enjoying the work of other people in the community for years. He's used the free utilities and resources provided to the community for free as well. But instead of paying-it-forward like all of the mod authors whose work he has enjoyed, he now wants to profit off of what others have allowed him to do.

greggorypeccary wrote: Its no dirty secret. I have been a contributing member of this community for some time. I'm proud of my contributions and any one can see them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Gregory, I see exactly zero contributions from you. Are you one of those modders who threw a temper tantrum and hid all your mods?

greggorypeccary wrote: You could hope but you'd be wrong.

pintocat wrote: greggorypeccary has a mod. You, on the other hand, have zero. If you've got no contributions to the community, you have no place talking down to someone who actually has.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: So all of this crying from Gregory over a single mod? Hilarious. If your mod is so wonderful, why don't you try and sell it to Bethesda? They could incorporate it into their next DLC.

sunshinenbrick wrote: No offence to any mod creator but it is not the only thing people can contribute.

greggorypeccary wrote: Vesuvius1745

The more you say the more apparent your ignorance becomes.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Sunshine is right. The "well, umm, what have you contributed?" reply is just a way to avoid addressing the points made.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm being serious Greggory, and not insulting you. If your mods are so great, why don't you try and sell them to Bethesda or some other game company? Crying about not being able to sell them on Valve on the Nexus is a pointless endeavor.

Or better yet, why not get a job at a game company? I used to work at Electronic Arts in the early 2000s. Redwood Shores in California. The pay is good, the benefits are good, and you get to work on games for a living.

greggorypeccary wrote: Again I'm not crying. I'm fine, my mod was free and always will be. My payment was friends and knowledge. If i were to do more I'd want money. If that makes me a greedy monster taking away your free stuff in your eyes, so be it. I'll sleep tonight.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Fair enough, Gregory. I used to create mods for Morrowind. My payment was the enjoyment of doing it. I've started a few mods for Skyrim, and if I ever get around to finishing them, they will be released for free as well. There are many reasons I wouldn't want to get paid, but one of them is because I have enjoyed the free content other people like you have given to the community over the years. It wouldn't seem right to take payment. It's kind of like those "give a penny, take a penny" bowls you see at convenience stores. Or the person in front of you at Starbucks who paid for your drink.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Greggory I really like your mod, it looks like a lot of time and effort went in to it and I think you should never let anyone tell you how to or not to follow your ambitions. However the system that Valvethesda tried to set up was exploitative, turning honest do good modders into slave developers and customer support workers and making people who buy mods, cash cows.

I have no problem with encouraging people to form collective game development projects that can become paid for content, but that was not what they put on the table. Realise your own worth and fight for a better deal from the hand in the sky.

greggorypeccary wrote: I'm not even talking about Steam or Bethesda. I like Bethesda, A lot. To me it is the Nexus that should be nuturing the modders mainly because they profit from them. The nexus is the one who benefits from the community and the modders. Its time to give something back. They stand to the side while the community fights between modders and users and it plays into their hands while they pretend they don't realize they are part of it.

sunshinenbrick wrote: This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do. I agree that there needs to be a higher mandate of cohesion, however a top-down approach can only do so much.

If you have not already have a read of the posts in the following Nexus forum:

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2810229-is-the-word-user-negative/

While this only scratches the surface it can hopefully start a communal consensus on what role we all play in this giant machine.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm not sure Nexus is making a profit. It was my understanding that Dark0ne runs this site at a loss. A labor of love.

Capitalism is the best economic system we've discovered thus far, but it has its flaws. One of those flaws is there is always a "race to the bottom"--hamburger patties get smaller, the toaster burns out faster, and just the general overall quality of everything slowly goes down over time. And all in the name of maximizing profits. There is no reason to believe this paradigm wouldn't happen with game mods.

Take a great mod like Falskaar for example. The author put a ton of time and energy into this expansion, and churned out a mod that, in my opinion, is heads above anything Bethesda has tried to peddle to us. Now what if he had been contracted by Bethesda to make it? All of a sudden there would be a deadline by which they expect it to be ready. They want it now now now because time is money, and the author wouldn't be able to take his time to put in all the details he otherwise would have. There might even be bugs he didn't have time to fix, or other shortcuts he had to take to make sure Bethesda had their product on time (and in corporate-America it ceases to be "art", and becomes a nameless PRODUCT--a widget on an assembly line whose sole purpose is to increase profit). I believe this is what happened to Skyrim. The programmers were rushed, and released a bug-filled, and partially incomplete product. In fact I think they just quickly ported it from the console version.

Not to mention that the number of mods required to make Skyrim enjoyable (say at $1.99 each) is out of the budget for most gamers. I know I have over 100 mods myself. This means that save for a few exceptional mods, most mod authors won't be making very much because the gamers simply cannot afford it. There will be all these mods on some paysite that never (or only rarely) get downloaded, and eventually the mod authors will stop writing mods because unless they are churning out the next Falsksaar, it just isn't worth their time. This will most likely kill the modding community because by then Bethesda will probably have taken steps to close down sites like the Nexus because they will want to maintain their monopoly.

macintroll wrote: Quote Sunshinenbrick "This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do."

Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part.

ChizFoShiz wrote: While you're right about the nexus, you're way off base about falskaar given that it was made as Alexander's "application" for employment from Bethesda, while I'm sure Alexander loves to make content and all and I wouldn't dream of making assumptions of what his stance would be here, his mod had the specific goal of gainful employment in mind.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Whether he put Falskaar on his resume or not is irrelevant. He worked on it for free, and gave it to the community for free, and he had no idea whether it would get him a job for sure or not.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Nexus is not allowed to make direct profit from mods, as I gather from the legal premise Bethesda has put down in its EULA (mods must be free). By paying people through revenue they would have to include taxes and therefore be bordering on being classified as employees and would in many ways become competition to Bethesda. Youtube own the content uploaded, Nexus does not it is still technically Bethesda's property.

Additionally I think Nexus would rather avoid the headache of having to decide who is able to enter such a scheme and who is not. Especially as the creation of a mod is rarely the work of a single individual.

The crunch is Bethesda are very flexible on this issue because they make A LOT of money out of it, steer the money in other directions and they will quickly bare their teeth I can assure you.

macintroll wrote: @sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.
The money is given ONLY because of popularity of the youtubber's page and the number of ads clicked.
2) Youtube is not the proprietary of your videos.
3) For multi-modders mod, i think it's there own work to share retribution % to the different persons who have work together, not nexus not any one else.
Moderation has to occur for sure, but they show by the past that they can do this very well (banning bad boys & girls)
4) Well yes bethesda can do what they want with their game, and also can stop the nexus tomorrow if they want.

freedom613 wrote: @Sunshine, is this in response to Mac's post: "Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part."

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Again, Sunshine is right. The Youtube thing people keep bringing up is also a false analogy, because intellectual property laws make a distinction between profiting off of someone's IP directly, or from the incidental use of that IP.

With Youtube, Bethesda's IP is not being violated. You don't get to play Skyrim for free, nor do you benefit from anything for free that would normally defer to Bethesda for some sort of profit. You are just watching someone ELSE play Skyrim--and that person (presumably) bought Skyrim and has a legal right to not only play it, but to film themselves playing it, and then they can do whatever they want with the video of them playing Skyrim.

When you design something with their creation kit, you are directly utilizing their IP from start to finish, and your mod requires Skyrim to play. Bethesda's EULA allows you to trade the mod with friends, put it on a website, or do a lot of things with it as long as you aren't trying to make a profit.

greggorypeccary wrote: macintroll said
@sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.

Yes but the Nexus takes all of the advertising money already so they would have to part with some and some subscription money too. If they are willing.

Marstonn wrote: No, the youtube have "networks", these guys have deals with devs and are allowed to monetize on game videos, the youtuber must be part of a network (Machinima, Youtube, etc).

Edit, example: MMoxreview the guy from Skyrim Mods Weekly is a part of Machinima, so that's why he can monetize.

greggorypeccary wrote: I must admit to complete ignorance to how that works. I will check it out though.

sunshinenbrick wrote: The money from advertising goes to Nexus first and they would have to distribute it. Yes you are right that Nexus could strike a deal with the ad companies that the revenue is split prior to this but that is very dodgy from Bethesda's point of view... and well Google own ad sense and licence uploaded videos so they can do what they want.

Google do not own the video but they own youtube and therefor the right for your video to be uploaded to it.

Modders have enough to do without having to write business plans and start calculating how to split revenue. If they are organised enough to be making that much money out of it then they will most likely get a call from Bethesda asking them if they would like a job.

However if Bethesda could get them to become self employed (which is what the recent experiment would have entailed) then they would prefer to do that as they have little to no responsibility for them... but still make a load of money.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745
Well i should make videos instead of mods ^^

To be more serious : you miss an important point :
Bethesda allow site like nexus to gain $500.000 a year from ads, while being a platform for downloading free mods.. made with the creation kit and their assets. And the sole maker of some of the said mods would not be able to gain some buck from the same kind of earnings ???
crazy.

Again the mod is not SELL, the mod is free, the mod doesn't give a cent to the modder, only the ads give money. And that's absolutely legal, beacause i can already put ads on my own website showing my mods with no risks.

@sunshinenbrick : sorry miss but you should learn how adsense/adwords works. and nor google, nor youtube own your videos they are plateform providers period.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'd like to know where you are getting this financial info about the Nexus. It was my understanding they consistently run at a loss. Running a popular website takes a lot of time, and one that uses a ton of bandwidth can be very expensive.

sunshinenbrick wrote: If your video violates copyright they can take it down immediately without your consent. They own the licence for your video to be distributed on their network.

One should not try compare the youtube model to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts.

macintroll wrote: @Marstonn
Anybody is able to monetize his video on Google.
Being in a "network" (what does it really mean in your mind ?) is not necessary , but for sure better for the number of views.

and concerning what can be "game press" well of course they are allowed, they are free advertiser for the games companies ^^ new games are send to them for reviews , even presents etc..

What is not authorized is to diffuse a video with Copyright content (the video itself, music etc...)

macintroll wrote: quote "You cannot compare the youtube setup to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts."

Well so explain me why Nexus is allowed to make $500.000+ / year in ads earnings...
then explain me why i can't make some $ the same way, thanks.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Some days ago Dark0ne said he was spending 500.000$ a year only for servers renting and additional costs. So i take this as a base.. but it could be far more in fact ^^
As the only nexus earnings are Ads.. (and some memberships) .. it's easy to understand how much is gain from ads earnings.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I don't understand how you are extrapolating profit from what Dark0ne is saying he spends to keep the site running. It sounds to me like this is a huge money sink for him.

greggorypeccary wrote: It isn't

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Ok if you think so, but what lead you to think this ? have you found some numbers ?
A company (black tree gaming) own the nexus, and make money like any company, has operating costs like any other , at least the goal is to maintain an equilibrium. No one can work loosing money for long you know, and Nexus is growing "open to all games", it doesn't sound like a loosing company.
So if you have at least $500.000 to spend each year to make your business active, you need to earn at minima as much money somewhere.
And apart from nexus network what are the incomes ? none i'm aware of.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Please remember the money made by the Nexus is for the use of the Nexus, not for individual mods. This is why they are allowed to do it.

In legal terms when one donates for a mod they are not paying for the mod they are actually donating to the modder themselves, this is why Bethesda turn a blind eye. It is advantageous to them and it is also somewhat on the fence legally on whether the donation was for the mod or just because you like to support what the modder does. It really is a setup that is based on good will a trust, both from Bethesda's point of view and Nexus and its users.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I have no evidence of anything. I was going on Dark0ne's word that he runs this site at a loss. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and I would be surprised if a site like this was making any significant amount of profit. He spends a lot of money on upkeep, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is making at least that from donations/ads. I have friends who made a ton of money off of Bitcoins, and are now engaging in labors of love that are also money sinks.

Do you have some information the rest of us don't?

macintroll wrote: quote : " Do you have some information the rest of us don't?"
All key financial info on companies are publicly available (thus it's last year for most yet) and detailled info can be bought if you want.
Google the company name you'll find more info. (not very difficult)

I'm not here to accuse nexus of anything, just to point the fact that they are allowed to make money from ads, is it enough, is it too much ?, it's not the point of my discussion, honestly I don't care, the "service" is good here, i really appreciate what Dark0ne has made and how it helps the "community".

But if they can do it, rightfully gaining money providing access to modders content ...why not also the modders who provide each part of the content of this site ?.
I see it as a win-win solution : free mods for end users and modders rewarded with some $

Again in this formula, it's not the mod which is giving money to the modder, it's the audience it generate like elsewhere, exactly what does the nexus to pay their bills.

The world is full of hugely profitable companies whose whose image is " We're your friend. We're here to help you" . And don't let the words Non Profit fool you either. My advise is that when they offer you the Kool-Aide tomorrow.....Don't drink it.

[sunshinenbrick]

In response to post #24801759. #24802244, #24802379, #24802609, #24802804, #24802979, #24803189, #24803484, #24803499, #24803564, #24803639, #24803729, #24803904, #24804179, #24804294, #24804639, #24804809, #24805479, #24805499, #24806059, #24806324, #24806514, #24806754, #24806814, #24806854, #24807069, #24807204, #24807289, #24807309, #24807344, #24807574, #24807704, #24807719, #24807814, #24807909, #24808129, #24808364, #24808374, #24808739, #24808754, #24809559, #24809844 are all replies on the same post.

DaddyDirection wrote:

greggorypeccary wrote: Read my post, I used the nexus and it was very nice. It is a little blind to the fact that it does very well on the labors of un paid modders. It does not share the wealth with the ones that earn it for them. since you get free mods it seems fine to you. If you read my post I think you'll find that what I find is shameful really is that the nexus expects you to pay the modders. I think most of that onus is on them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: The dirty secret here is Greggory gets free mods too. He's been enjoying the work of other people in the community for years. He's used the free utilities and resources provided to the community for free as well. But instead of paying-it-forward like all of the mod authors whose work he has enjoyed, he now wants to profit off of what others have allowed him to do.

greggorypeccary wrote: Its no dirty secret. I have been a contributing member of this community for some time. I'm proud of my contributions and any one can see them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Gregory, I see exactly zero contributions from you. Are you one of those modders who threw a temper tantrum and hid all your mods?

greggorypeccary wrote: You could hope but you'd be wrong.

pintocat wrote: greggorypeccary has a mod. You, on the other hand, have zero. If you've got no contributions to the community, you have no place talking down to someone who actually has.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: So all of this crying from Gregory over a single mod? Hilarious. If your mod is so wonderful, why don't you try and sell it to Bethesda? They could incorporate it into their next DLC.

sunshinenbrick wrote: No offence to any mod creator but it is not the only thing people can contribute.

greggorypeccary wrote: Vesuvius1745

The more you say the more apparent your ignorance becomes.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Sunshine is right. The "well, umm, what have you contributed?" reply is just a way to avoid addressing the points made.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm being serious Greggory, and not insulting you. If your mods are so great, why don't you try and sell them to Bethesda or some other game company? Crying about not being able to sell them on Valve on the Nexus is a pointless endeavor.

Or better yet, why not get a job at a game company? I used to work at Electronic Arts in the early 2000s. Redwood Shores in California. The pay is good, the benefits are good, and you get to work on games for a living.

greggorypeccary wrote: Again I'm not crying. I'm fine, my mod was free and always will be. My payment was friends and knowledge. If i were to do more I'd want money. If that makes me a greedy monster taking away your free stuff in your eyes, so be it. I'll sleep tonight.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Fair enough, Gregory. I used to create mods for Morrowind. My payment was the enjoyment of doing it. I've started a few mods for Skyrim, and if I ever get around to finishing them, they will be released for free as well. There are many reasons I wouldn't want to get paid, but one of them is because I have enjoyed the free content other people like you have given to the community over the years. It wouldn't seem right to take payment. It's kind of like those "give a penny, take a penny" bowls you see at convenience stores. Or the person in front of you at Starbucks who paid for your drink.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Greggory I really like your mod, it looks like a lot of time and effort went in to it and I think you should never let anyone tell you how to or not to follow your ambitions. However the system that Valvethesda tried to set up was exploitative, turning honest do good modders into slave developers and customer support workers and making people who buy mods, cash cows.

I have no problem with encouraging people to form collective game development projects that can become paid for content, but that was not what they put on the table. Realise your own worth and fight for a better deal from the hand in the sky.

greggorypeccary wrote: I'm not even talking about Steam or Bethesda. I like Bethesda, A lot. To me it is the Nexus that should be nuturing the modders mainly because they profit from them. The nexus is the one who benefits from the community and the modders. Its time to give something back. They stand to the side while the community fights between modders and users and it plays into their hands while they pretend they don't realize they are part of it.

sunshinenbrick wrote: This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do. I agree that there needs to be a higher mandate of cohesion, however a top-down approach can only do so much.

If you have not already have a read of the posts in the following Nexus forum:

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2810229-is-the-word-user-negative/

While this only scratches the surface it can hopefully start a communal consensus on what role we all play in this giant machine.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm not sure Nexus is making a profit. It was my understanding that Dark0ne runs this site at a loss. A labor of love.

Capitalism is the best economic system we've discovered thus far, but it has its flaws. One of those flaws is there is always a "race to the bottom"--hamburger patties get smaller, the toaster burns out faster, and just the general overall quality of everything slowly goes down over time. And all in the name of maximizing profits. There is no reason to believe this paradigm wouldn't happen with game mods.

Take a great mod like Falskaar for example. The author put a ton of time and energy into this expansion, and churned out a mod that, in my opinion, is heads above anything Bethesda has tried to peddle to us. Now what if he had been contracted by Bethesda to make it? All of a sudden there would be a deadline by which they expect it to be ready. They want it now now now because time is money, and the author wouldn't be able to take his time to put in all the details he otherwise would have. There might even be bugs he didn't have time to fix, or other shortcuts he had to take to make sure Bethesda had their product on time (and in corporate-America it ceases to be "art", and becomes a nameless PRODUCT--a widget on an assembly line whose sole purpose is to increase profit). I believe this is what happened to Skyrim. The programmers were rushed, and released a bug-filled, and partially incomplete product. In fact I think they just quickly ported it from the console version.

Not to mention that the number of mods required to make Skyrim enjoyable (say at $1.99 each) is out of the budget for most gamers. I know I have over 100 mods myself. This means that save for a few exceptional mods, most mod authors won't be making very much because the gamers simply cannot afford it. There will be all these mods on some paysite that never (or only rarely) get downloaded, and eventually the mod authors will stop writing mods because unless they are churning out the next Falsksaar, it just isn't worth their time. This will most likely kill the modding community because by then Bethesda will probably have taken steps to close down sites like the Nexus because they will want to maintain their monopoly.

macintroll wrote: Quote Sunshinenbrick "This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do."

Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part.

ChizFoShiz wrote: While you're right about the nexus, you're way off base about falskaar given that it was made as Alexander's "application" for employment from Bethesda, while I'm sure Alexander loves to make content and all and I wouldn't dream of making assumptions of what his stance would be here, his mod had the specific goal of gainful employment in mind.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Whether he put Falskaar on his resume or not is irrelevant. He worked on it for free, and gave it to the community for free, and he had no idea whether it would get him a job for sure or not.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Nexus is not allowed to make direct profit from mods, as I gather from the legal premise Bethesda has put down in its EULA (mods must be free). By paying people through revenue they would have to include taxes and therefore be bordering on being classified as employees and would in many ways become competition to Bethesda. Youtube own the content uploaded, Nexus does not it is still technically Bethesda's property.

Additionally I think Nexus would rather avoid the headache of having to decide who is able to enter such a scheme and who is not. Especially as the creation of a mod is rarely the work of a single individual.

The crunch is Bethesda are very flexible on this issue because they make A LOT of money out of it, steer the money in other directions and they will quickly bare their teeth I can assure you.

macintroll wrote: @sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.
The money is given ONLY because of popularity of the youtubber's page and the number of ads clicked.
2) Youtube is not the proprietary of your videos.
3) For multi-modders mod, i think it's there own work to share retribution % to the different persons who have work together, not nexus not any one else.
Moderation has to occur for sure, but they show by the past that they can do this very well (banning bad boys & girls)
4) Well yes bethesda can do what they want with their game, and also can stop the nexus tomorrow if they want.

freedom613 wrote: @Sunshine, is this in response to Mac's post: "Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part."

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Again, Sunshine is right. The Youtube thing people keep bringing up is also a false analogy, because intellectual property laws make a distinction between profiting off of someone's IP directly, or from the incidental use of that IP.

With Youtube, Bethesda's IP is not being violated. You don't get to play Skyrim for free, nor do you benefit from anything for free that would normally defer to Bethesda for some sort of profit. You are just watching someone ELSE play Skyrim--and that person (presumably) bought Skyrim and has a legal right to not only play it, but to film themselves playing it, and then they can do whatever they want with the video of them playing Skyrim.

When you design something with their creation kit, you are directly utilizing their IP from start to finish, and your mod requires Skyrim to play. Bethesda's EULA allows you to trade the mod with friends, put it on a website, or do a lot of things with it as long as you aren't trying to make a profit.

greggorypeccary wrote: macintroll said
@sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.

Yes but the Nexus takes all of the advertising money already so they would have to part with some and some subscription money too. If they are willing.

Marstonn wrote: No, the youtube have "networks", these guys have deals with devs and are allowed to monetize on game videos, the youtuber must be part of a network (Machinima, Youtube, etc).

Edit, example: MMoxreview the guy from Skyrim Mods Weekly is a part of Machinima, so that's why he can monetize.

greggorypeccary wrote: I must admit to complete ignorance to how that works. I will check it out though.

sunshinenbrick wrote: The money from advertising goes to Nexus first and they would have to distribute it. Yes you are right that Nexus could strike a deal with the ad companies that the revenue is split prior to this but that is very dodgy from Bethesda's point of view... and well Google own ad sense and licence uploaded videos so they can do what they want.

Google do not own the video but they own youtube and therefor the right for your video to be uploaded to it.

Modders have enough to do without having to write business plans and start calculating how to split revenue. If they are organised enough to be making that much money out of it then they will most likely get a call from Bethesda asking them if they would like a job.

However if Bethesda could get them to become self employed (which is what the recent experiment would have entailed) then they would prefer to do that as they have little to no responsibility for them... but still make a load of money.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745
Well i should make videos instead of mods ^^

To be more serious : you miss an important point :
Bethesda allow site like nexus to gain $500.000 a year from ads, while being a platform for downloading free mods.. made with the creation kit and their assets. And the sole maker of some of the said mods would not be able to gain some buck from the same kind of earnings ???
crazy.

Again the mod is not SELL, the mod is free, the mod doesn't give a cent to the modder, only the ads give money. And that's absolutely legal, beacause i can already put ads on my own website showing my mods with no risks.

@sunshinenbrick : sorry miss but you should learn how adsense/adwords works. and nor google, nor youtube own your videos they are plateform providers period.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'd like to know where you are getting this financial info about the Nexus. It was my understanding they consistently run at a loss. Running a popular website takes a lot of time, and one that uses a ton of bandwidth can be very expensive.

sunshinenbrick wrote: If your video violates copyright they can take it down immediately without your consent. They own the licence for your video to be distributed on their network.

One should not try compare the youtube model to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts.

macintroll wrote: @Marstonn
Anybody is able to monetize his video on Google.
Being in a "network" (what does it really mean in your mind ?) is not necessary , but for sure better for the number of views.

and concerning what can be "game press" well of course they are allowed, they are free advertiser for the games companies ^^ new games are send to them for reviews , even presents etc..

What is not authorized is to diffuse a video with Copyright content (the video itself, music etc...)

macintroll wrote: quote "You cannot compare the youtube setup to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts."

Well so explain me why Nexus is allowed to make $500.000+ / year in ads earnings...
then explain me why i can't make some $ the same way, thanks.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Some days ago Dark0ne said he was spending 500.000$ a year only for servers renting and additional costs. So i take this as a base.. but it could be far more in fact ^^
As the only nexus earnings are Ads.. (and some memberships) .. it's easy to understand how much is gain from ads earnings.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I don't understand how you are extrapolating profit from what Dark0ne is saying he spends to keep the site running. It sounds to me like this is a huge money sink for him.

greggorypeccary wrote: It isn't

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Ok if you think so, but what lead you to think this ? have you found some numbers ?
A company (black tree gaming) own the nexus, and make money like any company, has operating costs like any other , at least the goal is to maintain an equilibrium. No one can work loosing money for long you know, and Nexus is growing "open to all games", it doesn't sound like a loosing company.
So if you have at least $500.000 to spend each year to make your business active, you need to earn at minima as much money somewhere.
And apart from nexus network what are the incomes ? none i'm aware of.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Please remember the money made by the Nexus is for the use of the Nexus, not for individual mods. This is why they are allowed to do it.

In legal terms when one donates for a mod they are not paying for the mod they are actually donating to the modder themselves, this is why Bethesda turn a blind eye. It is advantageous to them and it is also somewhat on the fence legally on whether the donation was for the mod or just because you like to support what the modder does. It really is a setup that is based on good will a trust, both from Bethesda's point of view and Nexus and its users.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I have no evidence of anything. I was going on Dark0ne's word that he runs this site at a loss. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and I would be surprised if a site like this was making any significant amount of profit. He spends a lot of money on upkeep, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is making at least that from donations/ads. I have friends who made a ton of money off of Bitcoins, and are now engaging in labors of love that are also money sinks.

Do you have some information the rest of us don't?

macintroll wrote: quote : " Do you have some information the rest of us don't?"
All key financial info on companies are publicly available (thus it's last year for most yet) and detailled info can be bought if you want.
Google the company name you'll find more info. (not very difficult)

I'm not here to accuse nexus of anything, just to point the fact that they are allowed to make money from ads, is it enough, is it too much ?, it's not the point of my discussion, honestly I don't care, the "service" is good here, i really appreciate what Dark0ne has made and how it helps the "community".

But if they can do it, rightfully gaining money providing access to modders content ...why not also the modders who provide each part of the content of this site ?.
I see it as a win-win solution : free mods for end users and modders rewarded with some $

Again in this formula, it's not the mod which is giving money to the modder, it's the audience it generate like elsewhere, exactly what does the nexus to pay their bills.

greggorypeccary wrote: The world is full of hugely profitable companies whose whose image is " We're your friend. We're here to help you" . And don't let the words Non Profit fool you either. My advise is that when they offer you the Kool-Aide tomorrow.....Don't drink it.

I suppose you could make money from ads if you allowed them inside the actual mod... I am not sure of the legality of that however, interesting thought.

My idea behind this is you could put Coke billboards up in Fallout, for example, and gain revenue from that. Problem is even if this were legal, I'm not sure people would like it.

I think Bethesda actually have to look at where they stand on individual modders making money from advertising their mods on the Nexus, or elsewhere for that matter. Either way it is not a decision the Nexus can make. It could work to Bethesda's advantage as they will be gaining free marketing. Only real issue is the type of mod, does it adhere to what Bethesda want to be associated with. Lord of the Rings mods would bring unwanted legal action, as too would many of the sex mods.

[Fowldragon]

I wonder how much we play this game anymore?

 

I played this game first on console...I would bet i amassed a half dozen complete play-throughs. I had 2 different accounts with steam and I spent another 3,000hrs on PC. I've also spent at least a thousand hours on the ck. I was never good enough to publish a finished mod. In the last two weeks I have about 13 hours ck/Skyrim. and in truth, that was all within 3 days.

 

I don't Play the game any more..what I played was the CK...and now I've dropped that as well. As I look back on the last week and consider the effort I put into fighting the Valvethesda "Revenue Sharing Model"...I now wonder if I was doing the right thing.

 

 

 

Dark0ne blogged .."a lack of good communication with the community at large prior to releasing the tools has completely bewildered the entire community and contributed in a big part to the resounding amount of resentment towards the new system."

 

Reasonable people can generally agree when given time to consider all there is to an issue, But I believe that even when we are given NO time, we are still obligated to choose and act.

 

I wish I'd read FavoredSoul and Foster and the other modders who made such excellent points BEFORE this all went down. I wish there had been time for us all to really understand all that this meant to all of those involved...I wish I had it all to do over again, because I'm not sure I would have responded the same way.

 

 

Edited April 30, 2015 by Fowldragon

[DreamingGirl]

In response to post #24801759. #24802244, #24802379, #24802609, #24802804, #24802979, #24803189, #24803484, #24803499, #24803564, #24803639, #24803729, #24803904, #24804179, #24804294, #24804639, #24804809, #24805479, #24805499, #24806059, #24806324, #24806514, #24806754, #24806814, #24806854, #24807069, #24807204, #24807289, #24807309, #24807344, #24807574, #24807704, #24807719, #24807814, #24807909, #24808129, #24808364, #24808374, #24808739, #24808754, #24809559, #24809844, #24809854 are all replies on the same post.

DaddyDirection wrote:

greggorypeccary wrote: Read my post, I used the nexus and it was very nice. It is a little blind to the fact that it does very well on the labors of un paid modders. It does not share the wealth with the ones that earn it for them. since you get free mods it seems fine to you. If you read my post I think you'll find that what I find is shameful really is that the nexus expects you to pay the modders. I think most of that onus is on them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: The dirty secret here is Greggory gets free mods too. He's been enjoying the work of other people in the community for years. He's used the free utilities and resources provided to the community for free as well. But instead of paying-it-forward like all of the mod authors whose work he has enjoyed, he now wants to profit off of what others have allowed him to do.

greggorypeccary wrote: Its no dirty secret. I have been a contributing member of this community for some time. I'm proud of my contributions and any one can see them.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Gregory, I see exactly zero contributions from you. Are you one of those modders who threw a temper tantrum and hid all your mods?

greggorypeccary wrote: You could hope but you'd be wrong.

pintocat wrote: greggorypeccary has a mod. You, on the other hand, have zero. If you've got no contributions to the community, you have no place talking down to someone who actually has.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: So all of this crying from Gregory over a single mod? Hilarious. If your mod is so wonderful, why don't you try and sell it to Bethesda? They could incorporate it into their next DLC.

sunshinenbrick wrote: No offence to any mod creator but it is not the only thing people can contribute.

greggorypeccary wrote: Vesuvius1745

The more you say the more apparent your ignorance becomes.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Sunshine is right. The "well, umm, what have you contributed?" reply is just a way to avoid addressing the points made.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm being serious Greggory, and not insulting you. If your mods are so great, why don't you try and sell them to Bethesda or some other game company? Crying about not being able to sell them on Valve on the Nexus is a pointless endeavor.

Or better yet, why not get a job at a game company? I used to work at Electronic Arts in the early 2000s. Redwood Shores in California. The pay is good, the benefits are good, and you get to work on games for a living.

greggorypeccary wrote: Again I'm not crying. I'm fine, my mod was free and always will be. My payment was friends and knowledge. If i were to do more I'd want money. If that makes me a greedy monster taking away your free stuff in your eyes, so be it. I'll sleep tonight.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Fair enough, Gregory. I used to create mods for Morrowind. My payment was the enjoyment of doing it. I've started a few mods for Skyrim, and if I ever get around to finishing them, they will be released for free as well. There are many reasons I wouldn't want to get paid, but one of them is because I have enjoyed the free content other people like you have given to the community over the years. It wouldn't seem right to take payment. It's kind of like those "give a penny, take a penny" bowls you see at convenience stores. Or the person in front of you at Starbucks who paid for your drink.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Greggory I really like your mod, it looks like a lot of time and effort went in to it and I think you should never let anyone tell you how to or not to follow your ambitions. However the system that Valvethesda tried to set up was exploitative, turning honest do good modders into slave developers and customer support workers and making people who buy mods, cash cows.

I have no problem with encouraging people to form collective game development projects that can become paid for content, but that was not what they put on the table. Realise your own worth and fight for a better deal from the hand in the sky.

greggorypeccary wrote: I'm not even talking about Steam or Bethesda. I like Bethesda, A lot. To me it is the Nexus that should be nuturing the modders mainly because they profit from them. The nexus is the one who benefits from the community and the modders. Its time to give something back. They stand to the side while the community fights between modders and users and it plays into their hands while they pretend they don't realize they are part of it.

sunshinenbrick wrote: This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do. I agree that there needs to be a higher mandate of cohesion, however a top-down approach can only do so much.

If you have not already have a read of the posts in the following Nexus forum:

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2810229-is-the-word-user-negative/

While this only scratches the surface it can hopefully start a communal consensus on what role we all play in this giant machine.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'm not sure Nexus is making a profit. It was my understanding that Dark0ne runs this site at a loss. A labor of love.

Capitalism is the best economic system we've discovered thus far, but it has its flaws. One of those flaws is there is always a "race to the bottom"--hamburger patties get smaller, the toaster burns out faster, and just the general overall quality of everything slowly goes down over time. And all in the name of maximizing profits. There is no reason to believe this paradigm wouldn't happen with game mods.

Take a great mod like Falskaar for example. The author put a ton of time and energy into this expansion, and churned out a mod that, in my opinion, is heads above anything Bethesda has tried to peddle to us. Now what if he had been contracted by Bethesda to make it? All of a sudden there would be a deadline by which they expect it to be ready. They want it now now now because time is money, and the author wouldn't be able to take his time to put in all the details he otherwise would have. There might even be bugs he didn't have time to fix, or other shortcuts he had to take to make sure Bethesda had their product on time (and in corporate-America it ceases to be "art", and becomes a nameless PRODUCT--a widget on an assembly line whose sole purpose is to increase profit). I believe this is what happened to Skyrim. The programmers were rushed, and released a bug-filled, and partially incomplete product. In fact I think they just quickly ported it from the console version.

Not to mention that the number of mods required to make Skyrim enjoyable (say at $1.99 each) is out of the budget for most gamers. I know I have over 100 mods myself. This means that save for a few exceptional mods, most mod authors won't be making very much because the gamers simply cannot afford it. There will be all these mods on some paysite that never (or only rarely) get downloaded, and eventually the mod authors will stop writing mods because unless they are churning out the next Falsksaar, it just isn't worth their time. This will most likely kill the modding community because by then Bethesda will probably have taken steps to close down sites like the Nexus because they will want to maintain their monopoly.

macintroll wrote: Quote Sunshinenbrick "This is a massively complex situation and in many regards the Nexus have their hands tied in what they can legally do."

Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part.

ChizFoShiz wrote: While you're right about the nexus, you're way off base about falskaar given that it was made as Alexander's "application" for employment from Bethesda, while I'm sure Alexander loves to make content and all and I wouldn't dream of making assumptions of what his stance would be here, his mod had the specific goal of gainful employment in mind.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Whether he put Falskaar on his resume or not is irrelevant. He worked on it for free, and gave it to the community for free, and he had no idea whether it would get him a job for sure or not.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Nexus is not allowed to make direct profit from mods, as I gather from the legal premise Bethesda has put down in its EULA (mods must be free). By paying people through revenue they would have to include taxes and therefore be bordering on being classified as employees and would in many ways become competition to Bethesda. Youtube own the content uploaded, Nexus does not it is still technically Bethesda's property.

Additionally I think Nexus would rather avoid the headache of having to decide who is able to enter such a scheme and who is not. Especially as the creation of a mod is rarely the work of a single individual.

The crunch is Bethesda are very flexible on this issue because they make A LOT of money out of it, steer the money in other directions and they will quickly bare their teeth I can assure you.

macintroll wrote: @sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.
The money is given ONLY because of popularity of the youtubber's page and the number of ads clicked.
2) Youtube is not the proprietary of your videos.
3) For multi-modders mod, i think it's there own work to share retribution % to the different persons who have work together, not nexus not any one else.
Moderation has to occur for sure, but they show by the past that they can do this very well (banning bad boys & girls)
4) Well yes bethesda can do what they want with their game, and also can stop the nexus tomorrow if they want.

freedom613 wrote: @Sunshine, is this in response to Mac's post: "Not really sure why nexus should be tied for adding an ads earning to modders.

The same thing exist on youtube where youtubbers/players can showcase videos game walk threw , reviews, or simply their gameplay and get some $ simply because they have xxx views.
Nobodies even bethesda ever complain about this. but the fact is, they are making money when playing a game ^^

It works because what is rewarded in this case is not the content itself, it's the audience, the more audience the more incomes (basic advertising earnings concept)

And more, the content itself is still FREE OF CHARGE for the end-user, and for me it's the best part."

Vesuvius1745 wrote: Again, Sunshine is right. The Youtube thing people keep bringing up is also a false analogy, because intellectual property laws make a distinction between profiting off of someone's IP directly, or from the incidental use of that IP.

With Youtube, Bethesda's IP is not being violated. You don't get to play Skyrim for free, nor do you benefit from anything for free that would normally defer to Bethesda for some sort of profit. You are just watching someone ELSE play Skyrim--and that person (presumably) bought Skyrim and has a legal right to not only play it, but to film themselves playing it, and then they can do whatever they want with the video of them playing Skyrim.

When you design something with their creation kit, you are directly utilizing their IP from start to finish, and your mod requires Skyrim to play. Bethesda's EULA allows you to trade the mod with friends, put it on a website, or do a lot of things with it as long as you aren't trying to make a profit.

greggorypeccary wrote: macintroll said
@sunshinenbrick
1) It's not nexus who has to pay the modder. youtube does not pay the youtubber, each youtubber make a single contract with google adsense, and adsense give the money.

Yes but the Nexus takes all of the advertising money already so they would have to part with some and some subscription money too. If they are willing.

Marstonn wrote: No, the youtube have "networks", these guys have deals with devs and are allowed to monetize on game videos, the youtuber must be part of a network (Machinima, Youtube, etc).

Edit, example: MMoxreview the guy from Skyrim Mods Weekly is a part of Machinima, so that's why he can monetize.

greggorypeccary wrote: I must admit to complete ignorance to how that works. I will check it out though.

sunshinenbrick wrote: The money from advertising goes to Nexus first and they would have to distribute it. Yes you are right that Nexus could strike a deal with the ad companies that the revenue is split prior to this but that is very dodgy from Bethesda's point of view... and well Google own ad sense and licence uploaded videos so they can do what they want.

Google do not own the video but they own youtube and therefor the right for your video to be uploaded to it.

Modders have enough to do without having to write business plans and start calculating how to split revenue. If they are organised enough to be making that much money out of it then they will most likely get a call from Bethesda asking them if they would like a job.

However if Bethesda could get them to become self employed (which is what the recent experiment would have entailed) then they would prefer to do that as they have little to no responsibility for them... but still make a load of money.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745
Well i should make videos instead of mods ^^

To be more serious : you miss an important point :
Bethesda allow site like nexus to gain $500.000 a year from ads, while being a platform for downloading free mods.. made with the creation kit and their assets. And the sole maker of some of the said mods would not be able to gain some buck from the same kind of earnings ???
crazy.

Again the mod is not SELL, the mod is free, the mod doesn't give a cent to the modder, only the ads give money. And that's absolutely legal, beacause i can already put ads on my own website showing my mods with no risks.

@sunshinenbrick : sorry miss but you should learn how adsense/adwords works. and nor google, nor youtube own your videos they are plateform providers period.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I'd like to know where you are getting this financial info about the Nexus. It was my understanding they consistently run at a loss. Running a popular website takes a lot of time, and one that uses a ton of bandwidth can be very expensive.

sunshinenbrick wrote: If your video violates copyright they can take it down immediately without your consent. They own the licence for your video to be distributed on their network.

One should not try compare the youtube model to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts.

macintroll wrote: @Marstonn
Anybody is able to monetize his video on Google.
Being in a "network" (what does it really mean in your mind ?) is not necessary , but for sure better for the number of views.

and concerning what can be "game press" well of course they are allowed, they are free advertiser for the games companies ^^ new games are send to them for reviews , even presents etc..

What is not authorized is to diffuse a video with Copyright content (the video itself, music etc...)

macintroll wrote: quote "You cannot compare the youtube setup to the Nexus, modder, Bethesda, Valve model... they really are very different beasts."

Well so explain me why Nexus is allowed to make $500.000+ / year in ads earnings...
then explain me why i can't make some $ the same way, thanks.

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Some days ago Dark0ne said he was spending 500.000$ a year only for servers renting and additional costs. So i take this as a base.. but it could be far more in fact ^^
As the only nexus earnings are Ads.. (and some memberships) .. it's easy to understand how much is gain from ads earnings.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I don't understand how you are extrapolating profit from what Dark0ne is saying he spends to keep the site running. It sounds to me like this is a huge money sink for him.

greggorypeccary wrote: It isn't

macintroll wrote: @Vesuvius1745

Ok if you think so, but what lead you to think this ? have you found some numbers ?
A company (black tree gaming) own the nexus, and make money like any company, has operating costs like any other , at least the goal is to maintain an equilibrium. No one can work loosing money for long you know, and Nexus is growing "open to all games", it doesn't sound like a loosing company.
So if you have at least $500.000 to spend each year to make your business active, you need to earn at minima as much money somewhere.
And apart from nexus network what are the incomes ? none i'm aware of.

sunshinenbrick wrote: Please remember the money made by the Nexus is for the use of the Nexus, not for individual mods. This is why they are allowed to do it.

In legal terms when one donates for a mod they are not paying for the mod they are actually donating to the modder themselves, this is why Bethesda turn a blind eye. It is advantageous to them and it is also somewhat on the fence legally on whether the donation was for the mod or just because you like to support what the modder does. It really is a setup that is based on good will a trust, both from Bethesda's point of view and Nexus and its users.

Vesuvius1745 wrote: I have no evidence of anything. I was going on Dark0ne's word that he runs this site at a loss. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and I would be surprised if a site like this was making any significant amount of profit. He spends a lot of money on upkeep, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is making at least that from donations/ads. I have friends who made a ton of money off of Bitcoins, and are now engaging in labors of love that are also money sinks.

Do you have some information the rest of us don't?

macintroll wrote: quote : " Do you have some information the rest of us don't?"
All key financial info on companies are publicly available (thus it's last year for most yet) and detailled info can be bought if you want.
Google the company name you'll find more info. (not very difficult)

I'm not here to accuse nexus of anything, just to point the fact that they are allowed to make money from ads, is it enough, is it too much ?, it's not the point of my discussion, honestly I don't care, the "service" is good here, i really appreciate what Dark0ne has made and how it helps the "community".

But if they can do it, rightfully gaining money providing access to modders content ...why not also the modders who provide each part of the content of this site ?.
I see it as a win-win solution : free mods for end users and modders rewarded with some $

Again in this formula, it's not the mod which is giving money to the modder, it's the audience it generate like elsewhere, exactly what does the nexus to pay their bills.

greggorypeccary wrote: The world is full of hugely profitable companies whose whose image is " We're your friend. We're here to help you" . And don't let the words Non Profit fool you either. My advise is that when they offer you the Kool-Aide tomorrow.....Don't drink it.

sunshinenbrick wrote: I suppose you could make money from ads if you allowed them inside the actual mod... I am not sure of the legality of that however, interesting thought.

My idea behind this is you could put Coke billboards up in Fallout, for example, and gain revenue from that. Problem is even if this were legal, I'm not sure people would like it.

I think Bethesda actually have to look at where they stand on individual modders making money from advertising their mods on the Nexus, or elsewhere for that matter. Either way it is not a decision the Nexus can make. It could work to Bethesda's advantage as they will be gaining free marketing. Only real issue is the type of mod, does it adhere to what Bethesda want to be associated with. Lord of the Rings mods would bring unwanted legal action, as too would many of the sex mods.

If you don't like Nexus 'making money' off your mods, you are free to set up your own site to host them on, get advertizement and see how much you actually earn from it :)

[InuyashaFE]

Honestly with the nature of Elder Scrolls modding and the way it works, there are just too many factors for valve or bethesda to stick their fingers in it and expect it to work.

 

Modding is best done for the community, and shared with one another. That's how it's always worked, with a donation option that is much more prominent now.

 

Don't let this schism divide us. Please don't forget what modding was all about. It was never about making money, it was about passion, hobby and a community to share it with. If that all gets torn away, what will be left? We'll lose everything that made this community what it was.

[sunshinenbrick]

In response to post #24809899.

InuyashaFE wrote:

100% agree.

EDIT: Although I believe they could recruit people they think cut the mustard. Edited April 30, 2015 by sunshinenbrick