If you like your Mod community, you can keep your mod community.

[phreatophile]

I strongly believe that this is far from over, Valve and Bethesda clearly now see the lot of us as a bunch of ambulatory dollar signs. The hamfisted way that they rolled this out has fractured the community in ways that will take a long time to get sorted out.

 

They will try this again. They will remember what went wrong this time. The backlash and circular firing squad of gamers and mod authors did nobody any good, but it did expose some open wounds that have been around awhile.

 

To Bethesda and Valve:

Bethesda tried to profit from other peoples efforts to do what they couldn't be bothered to do.

 

Bethesda has represented themselves as not being outside "the community". How did they manage such a hamfisted tin-eared rollout? In order to roll out paid modding the way they did, they had to have had no clue about how modding functions. Modders use each others assets, in most cases only permission and credit are required. Often mods are dependant on other mods to function. How do you collect money for a piece of software that requires five others to work at all? The spirit of co-operation goes out the window when real financial competition enters the equasion.

 

The split they started with was possibly appropriate by industry standards, but it was never going to fly in a community that's been free for decades. Some of the most important mods are fixes for what Bethesda did poorly. Let's use SkyUI as an example, it has 4.5 million unique downloads because Bethesda released Skyrim with an aweful console UI that lacked proper PC functionality. I'd pay at least $5 for what SkyUI provides me, that's $22.5 Million, of which Bethesda gets more than $10 million for doing an aweful job. The mod authors would get over $5.5 million. There needs to be no incentive or reward to Bethesda for doing a crap job. You can divide those numbers down to $1 per mod and it's still a lot of money.

 

If you offered a more equitable split, and actually worked with people to find a way to make this work while preserving the things that make modding great, you might get it right next time, we all know there will be a next time.

 

A good place to start might have been to tell us you had plans to actually earn that 45% of the take. What precisely was Bethesda going to do to justify millions of dollars from SkyUI, or any of the other top mods? Were they going to patch the game some more? Take a look at what Apollodown has down with the assets Bethesda left behind to see what they gave up on that should have been there at release. Mods have kept Morrowind and Oblivion going long past their expected shelf life. Put another way, mods have been keeping money flowing to Bethesda for a long time now, was the potential to skim some more worth the backlash? Tell us you had plans other than rent seeking and the reaction might have been different.

 

 

To US as consumer of mods:

We need to be a lot more greatfull for the things we get for free. The kind of backlash some modders recieved was ridiculous and hurtfull. Unless you are paying for a mod, it is a gift, treat it as such.

 

I am going to examine my usage and decide on how much I can afford to contribute to mod authors. In the past I've endorsed a lot, but not paid. That needs to change for a lot of us. For example, $1, $2 or $3 dollars here and there matters. That said, I'll never give money to anybody that took their marbles and left, ever. I hope the forever free logo sticks around, it helps make those decisions.

 

To mod authors:

There is nothing wrong with wanting to get paid for your efforts. A little less vocal enthusiasm for this bandwagon from a few notable authors would have gone a long way in the goodwill department.

 

Don't worry, you will get another chance, too many see the untapped well of money just sitting there. This most recent experience will have taught the suits where the fault lines are and how easily fractured this community is. They'll have a better plan next time.

 

Beth/Valve did not set this up because they are nice thankful people, they saw lots and lots of money to be made. Check the licence agreemnets, they already own your mods. They also knew that even with the crappy split that it would look like a whole lot of money to the authors.

 

There was at least one author who built spammy adds for the paid version of their mod into the free version, classy.

 

I also wonder how many of you were actually prepared for your downloaders to be customers, some clearly were not, even when they're calling you names customers are customers. Some mods are well known for excellent support, some aren't. How many were willing to commit themselves to treating their downloaders as customers and providing the level of support that should go with a paid service? That is a real question not an accusation.

 

 

To the folks who have impugned Dark0ne's integrity:

Are you out of your minds?

He's kept this big disfunctional family going for a decade and a half, and done it better than every other mod resource out there. He has to tread pretty carefully, the Nexus and other sites exist because Bethesda allows them too.

 

 

 

These are just a few slightly more than half baked thoughts of mine about this mess.

 

We should all give some thought to ways that mod authors can be rewarded without 30% of the money going to a digital storefront and 45% going to a company whose game needed so many repairs, especially when folks working in their spare time were able to make those repairs, but Bethesda couldn't be bothered.

 

This will come up again, and next time Valve and Bethesda will have a much better plan, the time between then and now would be well spent figuring out what we can accept when they come around next time.

 

[MonsterLunaChick]

Here, here! Yes, we must continue to stay vigilant. They'll try this "experiment" again.

 

I was shocked to see some people posting the financial record books of blacktreegaming. Fearmongering and trying to make it seem like there is a conspiracy by Dark0ne. A site with almost 10million members is not cheap or easy to maintain, for crying out loud. They try to make it look like he was the one doing a kind of cash grab. Heck.. Chesko panicked from the backlash of his decision and flipped it on Drak0ne. Wtf?

 

I hope the modders involved are not tarred and feathered. The 30 silver pieces was a tempting deal for a few, it seems. But please, if any fair criticism comes your way because of your choice to paywall, own up to it. Please don't backpeddle and detour your backlash onto innocent parties. Most certainly not to the site who gave you a free stage to showcase your mods.

[cowgirl1776]

Thank you for saying what I've been trying to say, except without all my Stupid in trying to do so.

Edited April 29, 2015 by cowgirl1776

[MrDisaster88]

The thing I find most ironic about this whole situation, is how bethesda is trying to make it look like this is the communitys fault for rejecting their brilliant idea. Like they did this out of goodness of their heart.

If they cared about modders so much, why didn't they allow mod monetization earlier? So modders could sell content on their own terms. Of course this was of no interest to Bethesda because there was no money in it for them.

But now that they have a platform where they can control it all and also make a profit, they suddenly come up with this idea?

 

Somehow smells fishy..

Edited April 29, 2015 by MrDisaster88

[bboyelvinn]

Thank you for this. People need to see things from other perspectives other than their own. Not so many were considerate enough and just became vicious as hell. Indeed this will take quite sometime to amend.

[Hallgarth]

I honestly believe that modding is made by the community for the community. It's something you do for the love of the game, not because it earns some cash. On the other hand, I wholly support modders who accept donations, some of them definitely deserve them.

 

The issue with paid mods is that before one could get a simple permission to use assets, or be able to make a patch so their mods could work together. What happens once the former is paid for? What if someone makes a mod that's free, but it requires another paid mod to run? What if someone makes a paid mod that requires another paid mod that requires yet another paid mod to run? There's simply too many variables for it to function. Donations work, because it's heartfelt by those donating and isn't a requirement. Having to actually pay doesn't work, because you could end up with a stack of mods you have to pay for, which you simply couldn't justify. It stinks of micro-transactions that Beth doesn't have to spend hours working on. Why waste time making horse-armour to sell when someone in the community will do the making part for you?

 

These are just my thoughts on the issue. Too many variables for it to function without a lot of issues.