Why we can't use Patreon, and talking about donations and doing more to support mod authors

[Jokerine]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434, #28559484, #28559684 are all replies on the same post.

gezegond wrote: Simple. Allow options. Patreon is subscription based and allow people to pay monthly. You can add that functionality with paypal. Same with Flattr. Actually Flattr is a better system. Have people just generally donate an amount "overall", like $10 a month or whatever, then at the end of the month spread that amount between all the mods that they have endorsed.

You could make it so people can go into a settings menu and customize the ratios for each mod. so if they think one mod they endorsed deserves more they could tweak it, but if not or can't be bothered just distribute it evenly between all endorsed mods.

That would probably make people more selective about using the endorsed button as well, making it more meaningful as a side effect.

Damn I'm a genius. :P

Elgar82 wrote: "Make people more selective about using the endorsed button" ?!?

Are you serious ? Endorsements are incredibly and shamefully low. Even very popular mods have endorsements ratios of 5 or 6%.

icecreamassassin wrote: yeah I suggested the paypal recurring donation option months ago but I don't think it got much play, but I suggested it again above with a link. It's really absurd that we aren't just doing this because literally the issue Bethesda seems to have is that they do not want modders paid for the mod itself. They are fine with money going to modders for their overall efforts, so just giving the option for small sustained donations makes total sense IMO.

gezegond wrote: low? compared to what? endorsements are just endorsements man they're not either high or low. By making them more selective I mean that, right now I just pretty much endorse every mod I download, and I think plenty of people are the same. And then there are people who don't endorse any mods that they play. It's either all or nothing, very few are actually selecting what to endorse and what not i think

SagittariusMoon wrote: I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

pintocat wrote: How are endorsements low? The endorse / download ratio is pretty consistent across mods generally. If mods all get endorsed by about 5-10% of the people using it, how is it any different than if 100% of people do? The endorsement count's only relevence is relative to other mods, and it's already pretty consistent across mods... if this somehow changes and now all downloads auto-endorsed mod A, and the same happened to mod B, they'll still have the same relative endorsement rate to each other. The endorsement count is nothing really. It's not an indicator of quality, since it's just yes or no... which is why I am stingy about endorsing. There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f*#@ing amazing".

shinji72 wrote: I think it ever Paid Mods are to become the norm, the montly fee, all-you-can-eat, Netflix style subscriptions would be the way to go.

When you mod as a user you wanna try them all. Test them. Try different combination. To have to pay for every single mod you download (even a very modest fee) would go against the way people use mods.

EnaiSiaion wrote:

I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

It is actually really hard to not endorse a mod. Ever since the introduction of welfare endorsements a year or so ago, endorsements no longer mean "this mod is really cool, let's go back and endorse it". Now they mean "I was asked to endorse this mod when I downloaded the next mod".

I assume the intention was to cater to newbie mod creators and encourage them to keep going with the equivalent of a participation trophy, but it completely defeats the point of endorsements.

Get off my lawn. :(

"Welfare endorsements"? Yeah, because people can't just, you know, skip the endorsement window? Boo.

[SydneyB]

Thanks a lot for the information, Dark One :)

[gezegond]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434, #28559484, #28559684, #28559819 are all replies on the same post.

gezegond wrote: Simple. Allow options. Patreon is subscription based and allow people to pay monthly. You can add that functionality with paypal. Same with Flattr. Actually Flattr is a better system. Have people just generally donate an amount "overall", like $10 a month or whatever, then at the end of the month spread that amount between all the mods that they have endorsed.

You could make it so people can go into a settings menu and customize the ratios for each mod. so if they think one mod they endorsed deserves more they could tweak it, but if not or can't be bothered just distribute it evenly between all endorsed mods.

That would probably make people more selective about using the endorsed button as well, making it more meaningful as a side effect.

Damn I'm a genius. :P

Elgar82 wrote: "Make people more selective about using the endorsed button" ?!?

Are you serious ? Endorsements are incredibly and shamefully low. Even very popular mods have endorsements ratios of 5 or 6%.

icecreamassassin wrote: yeah I suggested the paypal recurring donation option months ago but I don't think it got much play, but I suggested it again above with a link. It's really absurd that we aren't just doing this because literally the issue Bethesda seems to have is that they do not want modders paid for the mod itself. They are fine with money going to modders for their overall efforts, so just giving the option for small sustained donations makes total sense IMO.

gezegond wrote: low? compared to what? endorsements are just endorsements man they're not either high or low. By making them more selective I mean that, right now I just pretty much endorse every mod I download, and I think plenty of people are the same. And then there are people who don't endorse any mods that they play. It's either all or nothing, very few are actually selecting what to endorse and what not i think

SagittariusMoon wrote: I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

pintocat wrote: How are endorsements low? The endorse / download ratio is pretty consistent across mods generally. If mods all get endorsed by about 5-10% of the people using it, how is it any different than if 100% of people do? The endorsement count's only relevence is relative to other mods, and it's already pretty consistent across mods... if this somehow changes and now all downloads auto-endorsed mod A, and the same happened to mod B, they'll still have the same relative endorsement rate to each other. The endorsement count is nothing really. It's not an indicator of quality, since it's just yes or no... which is why I am stingy about endorsing. There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f*#@ing amazing".

shinji72 wrote: I think it ever Paid Mods are to become the norm, the montly fee, all-you-can-eat, Netflix style subscriptions would be the way to go.

When you mod as a user you wanna try them all. Test them. Try different combination. To have to pay for every single mod you download (even a very modest fee) would go against the way people use mods.

EnaiSiaion wrote:

I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

It is actually really hard to not endorse a mod. Ever since the introduction of welfare endorsements a year or so ago, endorsements no longer mean "this mod is really cool, let's go back and endorse it". Now they mean "I was asked to endorse this mod when I downloaded the next mod".

I assume the intention was to cater to newbie mod creators and encourage them to keep going with the equivalent of a participation trophy, but it completely defeats the point of endorsements.

Get off my lawn. :(

Jokerine wrote: "Welfare endorsements"? Yeah, because people can't just, you know, skip the endorsement window? Boo.

pintocat : "There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f***ing amazing"."

Exactly. That's why i suggested the tweaking option. You may feel like 1 mod deserves a larger portion of your money than another. On the other hand if it's tucked behind in some settings screen it won't confuse the newbies who just want to endorse a mod.

@ shinji72 : this is like what i suggested except on nexus the monthly fee is not mandatory. You can open up a friendly message and be like "would you like to support these modders\content creators? here's how you can support them all at the same time."

[Psijonica]

In response to post #28555414. #28558194, #28559089 are all replies on the same post.

Psijonica wrote: *****************SOLVED****************

The best way to compensate mode authors would be to give the good authors with many a certain amount of downloads a space where they could get some advertising revenue. Essentially they become a partner with you,with no voting or legal rights but they have a square on their page where they can sell an add. This can be set up in a variety of ways where you, the nexus can get advertising to pay more to advertise on popular mod pages and therefore send the mod authors a small percentage of that. The nexus can still have adds on the better spots on the page and not share in that revenue. You can create a sliding scale where the popular mod authors make more of a percentage of their add revenue so it is tied into the amount of page clicks and mod views and also more importantly unique downloads.

Think of it like this Dark0ne: How does the Government guarantee they get their taxes. Here where I live it is called Deduction at Source. The Government makes Companies/Corporations pay their employees taxes by removing the taxes off of their pay-checks. It becomes the Companies responsibility to do this for their employees.

Your mod authors can be thought of as employees. If you really want them to make some money then you need to facilitate that into the function of this website. You wouldn't loose money and you wouldn't have any legal problems. You don't need programmers to solve this, you need accountants.

Have a nice day :)

Edit: I wonder if you would be able to tie it in with Google Adsense and therefore you wouldn't even have any extra work on your end as the Adsense guys would send them their check directly... or you could work directly with Google Adsense and figure out the details.

I think this idea changes the paradigm and solves everything. If you, Dark0ne, truly want mod authors to make some extra cash then this is a way that accomplishes you4r goal and solves the Legal Issues that are preventing you from doing so.

Laast wrote: Nice and fair idea.

My Pure Waters page has more than 3 millions views (just like most of top 50 mods). If it was a youtube video and I was a youtuber, I think I would get a nice amount of money with advertising. Nexus mostly lives because of advertising, so why not share these revenue with modders who generates millions of pages visited and generated click? That's an interesting approach.

AnyOldName3 wrote: The issues I see with this are that people who've paid for supporter membership have done so under the premise of seeing no ads on the nexus ever again. Changing that after they've paid isn't particularly fair (and is probably against a bunch of EU and UK trading laws). However, the payment was taken at a level to cover the Nexus' expenses, but not to reimburse modders for lost ad revenue too, so the price may have to be altered, which means older users will have got a better deal (which is fairer, but still not ideal). I imagine premium membership has a much larger margin, so has room to give some to modders.

People who use adblockers are also a bit of an issue, but the whole site overall copes with that adequately, so it's reasonable to assume ads in mod pages wouldn't fair differently.

Finally, a perfect mod would get fewer page views than a buggy mess, simply because if you're having to come back to troubleshoot that's an extra visit the bug-free mod would have got.

All these mean your solution isn't perfect, but then I'm not sure a perfect solution exists.

Ideally, I'd have Bethesda just charge a little more for the game, and then have some kind of system where they partner with big mod authors like the unofficial patch team, Mike Hancho, and Fore to give them money and support to release their work as part of the main game, with smaller things from other authors that come down to taste being released as free 'DLC', with everything being screened for bugs and incompatibilities by Bethesda. I feel this would remove Bethesda's incentive to release a feature-poor, buggy game and then profit off modders fixing it, would not stop people making a second mod that does the same job as another, would allow proper quality control, and would allow Bethesda to take some kind of cut without it being solely based on the work of others (after all, it was possible under their previous system to use entirely open-source tools like TES5Edit, Blender and Nifskope without ever even running Skyrim or anything Bethesda made and still have them take a cut).

@ Laast

Exactly this! (read Laast's post)

You see Laast, if Dark0ne really wants to support modders with a financial incentive then this is the only way he could do it and have NO legal issues with Bethesda or any other third party programs.

And it doesn't get rid of Dark0ne's income. In fact it enhances it greatly. We need to think outside the box and change the paradigm here. My idea is just that, an idea. So instead of people posting why this can't work and going on about donations and other systems that don't really work (meaning the mod authors don't really gain any reasonable form of income,) why don't people start building on this idea with reason why and how it could work.

When this pay for mods fiasco started I was ripped a new butthole for mentioning ideas like this and for arguing against paying for mods. Which I still stand by my beliefs. This idea sidesteps all that. It solves everything. It is simple. Simplicity at it's finest.

It makes too much sense. It is also the only strategy that I have read that could possibly combat what Bethesda is planning. I created a Think Tank to discuss these ideas and it was very difficult to organize. I planned and organized two Think Tanks and both failed. (Umm... not sure about what happened to the second group as I and a handful of members splintered off to work on our own.) Fortunately the second attempt did give birth to a smaller more cohesive group of educated like minded individuals with the correct business and legal backgrounds to attack these issues and come up with real life SOLUTIONS.

Although I can't speak for the group, I can share this idea because it is my own and one I have had for many years as I predicted this whole mess around 6 years ago. If people here start to really think about this idea and all the possibilities with the current exploration in the future layout of the website, I think we would all agree that the possibilities are ripe for the picking.
Edited September 9, 2015 by Psijonica

[psychoslaphead]

I'm a dedicated game modder, and I just wish this whole paid/donation/I need a handout modding thing would go away. Permanently.

 

It just leads down a very dark path, as was seen in the past experience with Bethesda jumping in. So why do people want a repeat of that? Masochism?

[EnaiSiaion]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434, #28559484, #28559684, #28559819, #28560459 are all replies on the same post.

gezegond wrote: Simple. Allow options. Patreon is subscription based and allow people to pay monthly. You can add that functionality with paypal. Same with Flattr. Actually Flattr is a better system. Have people just generally donate an amount "overall", like $10 a month or whatever, then at the end of the month spread that amount between all the mods that they have endorsed.

You could make it so people can go into a settings menu and customize the ratios for each mod. so if they think one mod they endorsed deserves more they could tweak it, but if not or can't be bothered just distribute it evenly between all endorsed mods.

That would probably make people more selective about using the endorsed button as well, making it more meaningful as a side effect.

Damn I'm a genius. :P

Elgar82 wrote: "Make people more selective about using the endorsed button" ?!?

Are you serious ? Endorsements are incredibly and shamefully low. Even very popular mods have endorsements ratios of 5 or 6%.

icecreamassassin wrote: yeah I suggested the paypal recurring donation option months ago but I don't think it got much play, but I suggested it again above with a link. It's really absurd that we aren't just doing this because literally the issue Bethesda seems to have is that they do not want modders paid for the mod itself. They are fine with money going to modders for their overall efforts, so just giving the option for small sustained donations makes total sense IMO.

gezegond wrote: low? compared to what? endorsements are just endorsements man they're not either high or low. By making them more selective I mean that, right now I just pretty much endorse every mod I download, and I think plenty of people are the same. And then there are people who don't endorse any mods that they play. It's either all or nothing, very few are actually selecting what to endorse and what not i think

SagittariusMoon wrote: I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

pintocat wrote: How are endorsements low? The endorse / download ratio is pretty consistent across mods generally. If mods all get endorsed by about 5-10% of the people using it, how is it any different than if 100% of people do? The endorsement count's only relevence is relative to other mods, and it's already pretty consistent across mods... if this somehow changes and now all downloads auto-endorsed mod A, and the same happened to mod B, they'll still have the same relative endorsement rate to each other. The endorsement count is nothing really. It's not an indicator of quality, since it's just yes or no... which is why I am stingy about endorsing. There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f*#@ing amazing".

shinji72 wrote: I think it ever Paid Mods are to become the norm, the montly fee, all-you-can-eat, Netflix style subscriptions would be the way to go.

When you mod as a user you wanna try them all. Test them. Try different combination. To have to pay for every single mod you download (even a very modest fee) would go against the way people use mods.

EnaiSiaion wrote:

I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

It is actually really hard to not endorse a mod. Ever since the introduction of welfare endorsements a year or so ago, endorsements no longer mean "this mod is really cool, let's go back and endorse it". Now they mean "I was asked to endorse this mod when I downloaded the next mod".

I assume the intention was to cater to newbie mod creators and encourage them to keep going with the equivalent of a participation trophy, but it completely defeats the point of endorsements.

Get off my lawn. :(

Jokerine wrote: "Welfare endorsements"? Yeah, because people can't just, you know, skip the endorsement window? Boo.

gezegond wrote: pintocat : "There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f***ing amazing"."

Exactly. That's why i suggested the tweaking option. You may feel like 1 mod deserves a larger portion of your money than another. On the other hand if it's tucked behind in some settings screen it won't confuse the newbies who just want to endorse a mod.

@ shinji72 : this is like what i suggested except on nexus the monthly fee is not mandatory. You can open up a friendly message and be like "would you like to support these modders\content creators? here's how you can support them all at the same time."

"Welfare endorsements"? Yeah, because people can't just, you know, skip the endorsement window? Boo.

They can, but they could just not come back to endorse a mod either.

It used to require some actual effort to endorse, so only users who were blown away by your mod came back to endorse it. Today, as long as your mod doesn't completely suck, it gets a steady stream of endorsements from logged in users being shown a thumb button and asked to click it.

The information conveyed by endorsements ("how many people thought your mod was awesome") has been sacrificed in the name of generating more endorsements.

:(

[Arthmoor]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434, #28559484, #28559684, #28559819, #28560459, #28560764 are all replies on the same post.

gezegond wrote: Simple. Allow options. Patreon is subscription based and allow people to pay monthly. You can add that functionality with paypal. Same with Flattr. Actually Flattr is a better system. Have people just generally donate an amount "overall", like $10 a month or whatever, then at the end of the month spread that amount between all the mods that they have endorsed.

You could make it so people can go into a settings menu and customize the ratios for each mod. so if they think one mod they endorsed deserves more they could tweak it, but if not or can't be bothered just distribute it evenly between all endorsed mods.

That would probably make people more selective about using the endorsed button as well, making it more meaningful as a side effect.

Damn I'm a genius. :P

Elgar82 wrote: "Make people more selective about using the endorsed button" ?!?

Are you serious ? Endorsements are incredibly and shamefully low. Even very popular mods have endorsements ratios of 5 or 6%.

icecreamassassin wrote: yeah I suggested the paypal recurring donation option months ago but I don't think it got much play, but I suggested it again above with a link. It's really absurd that we aren't just doing this because literally the issue Bethesda seems to have is that they do not want modders paid for the mod itself. They are fine with money going to modders for their overall efforts, so just giving the option for small sustained donations makes total sense IMO.

gezegond wrote: low? compared to what? endorsements are just endorsements man they're not either high or low. By making them more selective I mean that, right now I just pretty much endorse every mod I download, and I think plenty of people are the same. And then there are people who don't endorse any mods that they play. It's either all or nothing, very few are actually selecting what to endorse and what not i think

SagittariusMoon wrote: I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

pintocat wrote: How are endorsements low? The endorse / download ratio is pretty consistent across mods generally. If mods all get endorsed by about 5-10% of the people using it, how is it any different than if 100% of people do? The endorsement count's only relevence is relative to other mods, and it's already pretty consistent across mods... if this somehow changes and now all downloads auto-endorsed mod A, and the same happened to mod B, they'll still have the same relative endorsement rate to each other. The endorsement count is nothing really. It's not an indicator of quality, since it's just yes or no... which is why I am stingy about endorsing. There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f*#@ing amazing".

shinji72 wrote: I think it ever Paid Mods are to become the norm, the montly fee, all-you-can-eat, Netflix style subscriptions would be the way to go.

When you mod as a user you wanna try them all. Test them. Try different combination. To have to pay for every single mod you download (even a very modest fee) would go against the way people use mods.

EnaiSiaion wrote:

I have to agree about low endorsements. Most people just download and run, never to be seen or heard from again.

It is actually really hard to not endorse a mod. Ever since the introduction of welfare endorsements a year or so ago, endorsements no longer mean "this mod is really cool, let's go back and endorse it". Now they mean "I was asked to endorse this mod when I downloaded the next mod".

I assume the intention was to cater to newbie mod creators and encourage them to keep going with the equivalent of a participation trophy, but it completely defeats the point of endorsements.

Get off my lawn. :(

Jokerine wrote: "Welfare endorsements"? Yeah, because people can't just, you know, skip the endorsement window? Boo.

gezegond wrote: pintocat : "There's no way to say "this mod works" vs "this mod is f***ing amazing"."

Exactly. That's why i suggested the tweaking option. You may feel like 1 mod deserves a larger portion of your money than another. On the other hand if it's tucked behind in some settings screen it won't confuse the newbies who just want to endorse a mod.

@ shinji72 : this is like what i suggested except on nexus the monthly fee is not mandatory. You can open up a friendly message and be like "would you like to support these modders\content creators? here's how you can support them all at the same time."

EnaiSiaion wrote:

"Welfare endorsements"? Yeah, because people can't just, you know, skip the endorsement window? Boo.

They can, but they could just not come back to endorse a mod either.

It used to require some actual effort to endorse, so only users who were blown away by your mod came back to endorse it. Today, as long as your mod doesn't completely suck, it gets a steady stream of endorsements from logged in users being shown a thumb button and asked to click it.

The information conveyed by endorsements ("how many people thought your mod was awesome") has been sacrificed in the name of generating more endorsements.

:(

@icecreamassassin:

I suspect the recurring part is mostly what Bethesda has issue with because that converts from a "donation" to a "subscription" which is substantially different in legal terms. Once you get into recurring payments, whether it be a "recurring donation" or something more concrete like Patreon or Flattr, they may view that as crossing into commercialization. Commercializing your mods is currently against their EULA for the various CKs.

[Arthmoor]

In response to post #28559499.

EnaiSiaion wrote: To be honest, the current donation popups on the Nexus are aggressively pushy and more likely to upset users than to encourage them to donate.

Asking for donations is one thing, but slamming a popup into the user's face with "Amount: ______" before they can so much as try the mod reminds me a lot of Midas Magic's ingame advertisements for the paid version. Interrupting the user to panhandle for money seems rather desperate.

So I turned them off on my own mods. If people like them, they will donate (several hundred bucks so far), but it should be their own freaking decision.

But I can easily see mod creators turning on every donation option to dredge for the largest possible number of donations and users getting pissed off by a constant barrage of nag popups to the point where they don't donate at all anymore.

Actually those pop-ups are directly responsible for the clearly visible rise in donations vs not having them at all where people ignored the green button to the upper right. There was a verifiable dip in these when something got tweaked in how those were displayed, which appears to have been reversed now that the pop-ups during downloads are working properly again.

If people were as pissed off about it as you say, they'd vent their frustration by not donating any money and possibly by filling the comments with nasty notes. This obviously hasn't happened, so I think for the most part the majority of users are OK with it.

[Arthmoor]

In response to post #28556529. #28558864 is also a reply to the same post.

axonis wrote: You can use a badge system to distinguish donors to mods just as you distinguish donors to the Nexus by the "supporter" or "premium" badges.

jim_uk wrote: That's a very good idea.

I would certainly support something like this.

[Arthmoor]

In response to post #28556534. #28557359 is also a reply to the same post.

Natterforme wrote: Unfortunately Skyrim is not Minecraft. You dont own your copy and since it is basically a permanent rental you cant do anything you want with it (especially concerning money). It will probably be very similar with Fallout 4. If Bethesda wants Fallout 5 or TES 6 to be competitive (in 3-5 years) it is going to have to reconsider its business model and its association with Valve.

-Natterforme

Elgar82 wrote: You don't own your Minecraft copy either.

When you buy our Game, we give you permission to install the Game on your own personal computer and use and play it on that computer as set out in this EULA. This permission is personal to you, so you are not allowed to distribute the Game (or any part of it) to anyone else. This also means you cannot sell or rent the Game, or make it available for access to other people and you cannot pass on or resell any licence keys.

Although we give you permission to play our Game, we are still the owners of it. We are also the owners of our brands and any content contained in the Game. Therefore, when you pay for our Game, you are buying a permission to play / use our Game in accordance with this EULA - you are not buying the Game itself. The only permissions you have in connection with the Game are the permissions set out in this EULA.

https://account.mojang.com/documents/minecraft_eula

You don't "own" your copy of anything bought in the last 15 years since pretty much everyone uses the same boilerplate EULAs :P