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

[MrJoseCuervo]

In response to post #28614939. #28616054, #28617954 are all replies on the same post.

RGMage2 wrote:

Times change. We live in a problematic economy, many people are struggling to get by. Normally when people resort to cottage industry, and creative innovative ways to make a living they are lauded for their efforts. Here they are ridiculed. Reason? Not the entitlement of the one who does the work, but rather the entitlement of the one who is used to getting it for free, and sees this change as a threat to their continued privilege.

jim_uk wrote: It's only mod makers who are struggling to get by? are users rolling in money? Let's turn this around, the entitlement might come from those who have walked into a long established community and then demanded that the community support them financially. Modders aren't poor hard done by victims, no one is forced to mod, feel used and abused? then close the CK/Geck/CS and the problem will go away.

My opposition to it comes from the fact that it will fundamentally change the way games are made just as micro transactions and DLC have. Developers aren't going to put a system of paid modding into place and then not adjust the game to push those paid mods at people, we already see it with the aforementioned micro transactions and DLC. Bethesda now have an incentive not to fix lesser bugs because they'll profit from community made bug fixes, they also have an incentive to include less content, again profiting from mods, this time adding content. And don't think they wouldn't do it, companies exist solely to part people from their money, Bethesda are no exception.

Arthmoor wrote: I don't see any modders sitting around demanding payment for their time. Just those of us who would like to have that option being called evil greedy capitalist pigs for wanting an option that you aren't even required to spend money on.

Yes, companies exist to make money. That's kind of basic common knowledge and, well, I don't know why anyone thinks otherwise. There's no such thing as a company who isn't out to make money in some way. There is NOTHING evil about wanting to make money, or for the most part in being "aggressive" or "pushy" about trying to get people to spend money on your product vs some other company's product.

Hell, even changing the nature of how games work isn't evil. I remember perfectly well how everyone complained that the dawn of DLC (ironically, largely Bethesda's fault) was going to be the death of gaming. Guess what didn't happen? Paid mods are being targeted by exactly the same kind of entitlement minded people who think it'll ruin gaming forever. 10 years from now we'll all be sitting back thinking it's perfectly normal and the only real discussion will be about whether or not some mods are worth buying - just like we do now with what DLCs we all want.

This demonizing of people who want to make a bit of side money (or, yes, maybe even turn it into a job) needs to stop.

If people are struggling they should perhaps stop playing games and use that time to learn skills to gain employment.

[gezegond]

In response to post #28618854.

icecreamassassin wrote: well another aspect I hadn't really though about before now but now that I think about it really makes me angry is that fact that there are a handful of youtubers who make reviews or playthrough videos about our mods (which is great promotion for the mod mind you and I know a ton of work goes into it), But they are allowed to profit off it. I know one off hand that makes $846 per month from sustained supporters, and somehow THEY are allowed to show our content and Bethesda's intellectual property and profit off it? yet the people who are actually producing new content are not allowed to profit from it? (in a great many cases high quality content that is keeping people interested and in fact in some cases driving more sales of Skyrim and the DLC's), That is quite lame IMO.

What Bethesda should do is offer a paypal style button that sites can host in place of the donation button that allows people to contribute SUSTAINED OR ONE TIME donations to the modder who set it up, take 40% for themselves, give 10% to the parent site the donation button is from (Nexus), and the other 50% to the modder. This allows them to get their cut, allows modders to have a possibility at sustained support for current and future projects and still allows it all to be voluntary, avoiding the whole "why pay for something you don't know about the quality of" because it's all still free and you only pay if you wanna support the modder and like the product.

As far as I know Bethesda wouldn't actually be able to enforce anything about paid modding if you decided to sell your mods as long as you don't bundle Bethesda copyrighted material with your mod. Make a mod using only your own assets that works "on top" of Skyrim and they won't be able to have any say in what you do with it. It even has software precedent in people selling Photoshop plugins and Adobe not seeing any royalty from it. It's the same reason Bethesda isn't paying any royalty to Microsoft even though their game works "on top" of their Windows product.

As for esp files, it's a bit complicated as Bethesda has apparently (I haven't personally read it) made an end user license agreement that people will not commercialize anything made with Creation Kit. Whether that would be actually enforceable in court or not is something a lawyer would be better suited to answer, though it doesn't seem likely to me since people can just write absolutely whatever they want in EULAs (search google for the guys who made people sell their souls to them in their EULA as a joke)

But even assuming it's enforceable, you can always just not use esp files and make replacers, or use something like TES5Edit or similar tool to create your esp file.

Now when it comes to Nexus it's a completely different matter because it's Dark0ne's website and he doesn't want to be bothered about the legal technicalities so he double checks everything with Bethesda and only goes forward with it if they OK it. Fair, it's his website and he can do whatever he wants with it but it doesn't mean that whatever Dark0ne is doing is now part of a "law" everyone has to abide by everywhere, I see some people misunderstanding this.

[RGMage2]

In response to post #28614939. #28616054, #28617954, #28619064 are all replies on the same post.

RGMage2 wrote:

Times change. We live in a problematic economy, many people are struggling to get by. Normally when people resort to cottage industry, and creative innovative ways to make a living they are lauded for their efforts. Here they are ridiculed. Reason? Not the entitlement of the one who does the work, but rather the entitlement of the one who is used to getting it for free, and sees this change as a threat to their continued privilege.

jim_uk wrote: It's only mod makers who are struggling to get by? are users rolling in money? Let's turn this around, the entitlement might come from those who have walked into a long established community and then demanded that the community support them financially. Modders aren't poor hard done by victims, no one is forced to mod, feel used and abused? then close the CK/Geck/CS and the problem will go away.

My opposition to it comes from the fact that it will fundamentally change the way games are made just as micro transactions and DLC have. Developers aren't going to put a system of paid modding into place and then not adjust the game to push those paid mods at people, we already see it with the aforementioned micro transactions and DLC. Bethesda now have an incentive not to fix lesser bugs because they'll profit from community made bug fixes, they also have an incentive to include less content, again profiting from mods, this time adding content. And don't think they wouldn't do it, companies exist solely to part people from their money, Bethesda are no exception.

Arthmoor wrote: I don't see any modders sitting around demanding payment for their time. Just those of us who would like to have that option being called evil greedy capitalist pigs for wanting an option that you aren't even required to spend money on.

Yes, companies exist to make money. That's kind of basic common knowledge and, well, I don't know why anyone thinks otherwise. There's no such thing as a company who isn't out to make money in some way. There is NOTHING evil about wanting to make money, or for the most part in being "aggressive" or "pushy" about trying to get people to spend money on your product vs some other company's product.

Hell, even changing the nature of how games work isn't evil. I remember perfectly well how everyone complained that the dawn of DLC (ironically, largely Bethesda's fault) was going to be the death of gaming. Guess what didn't happen? Paid mods are being targeted by exactly the same kind of entitlement minded people who think it'll ruin gaming forever. 10 years from now we'll all be sitting back thinking it's perfectly normal and the only real discussion will be about whether or not some mods are worth buying - just like we do now with what DLCs we all want.

This demonizing of people who want to make a bit of side money (or, yes, maybe even turn it into a job) needs to stop.

MrJoseCuervo wrote: If people are struggling they should perhaps stop playing games and use that time to learn skills to gain employment.

Change happens, that’s a fact of life. No successful business can stand still, because their competitors will continue to move forward. In business if you are not moving forward then you are falling behind. If a business like Bethesda does not continue to innovate and find new revenue streams then eventually they will cease to exist.

All the wonderful gadgets we enjoy today are only available to us because a business could make a profit by supplying them. Without profit there would be no video games, no Personal Computers, no Xboxes, no PlayStations, no iphones, no TV, no movies, no internet, no cars, and probably no jobs. So yes, money changes things, usually for the better.

But of course people fear change, and the argument against paid modding is rooted in fear. Fear of upsetting the status quo, fear of a changed community, fear of loss of access to free content. In some respects they are right to fear, because all of these things will be changed, irrevocably. That doesn’t mean the changes will all be negative. It is human nature to make things better, it’s what we do as a species, that’s how we evolved into what we are today. We got here by making changes, never standing still.

Just to address one side of this, when I see the argument made that mods have no monetary value and no one would pay for them, what I really see is someone expressing a deeply held fear that mods do indeed hold monetary value and they may someday have to pay for what they now get for free. If mods had no monetary value then there would be no argument. No one would buy them and that would be the end of it. The problem with that is that people did buy them, and would have continued to buy them in ever greater quantity, thus changing the dynamics of modding forever.

Considering that almost all the mod authors involved with paid modding are on record as saying they would continue to release free mods, and many many more authors are on record as saying they would only ever release free mods, you would think that would be enough to satisfy those who want their free mods, but it’s not. What they are fighting against is the very idea that mods could have a monetary value. For someone who wants unlimited free access to all mods, regardless of the author’s wishes, the very idea of mods having a monetary value is like a sword hanging over their heads. But they are fighting a battle they can’t win, because it has already been established, in Skyrim with the brief period of paid modding, and in other games where paid modding exists, that mods do indeed have a monetary value, at this point that is indisputable.

Now if an individual has the skills to create something that other people are willing to pay for, then they are entirely justified in pursuing that to whatever end they see fit, whether it be for a few bucks for pizza and beer, or a full time profession if they can make it work. That’s up to the individual, no one else is entitled to a say in it.

[Ghatto]

Well that's just terrible. Bethesda can go suck a lemon. They don't deserve ANY cut. They already got their cut: every single person using mods has paid for a copy of the game.

 

Not only that but these systems are donation systems, not payment systems. As stipulated in the article: no exclusive or withholding content is allowed. Thus, the payments to modders is wholly voluntary and can be seen as a donation directly to the author for whatever reason - heck they don't even have to claim that donations are in direct support of their modding efforts!

[Ghatto]

In response to post #28614939. #28616054, #28617954, #28619064, #28619884 are all replies on the same post.

RGMage2 wrote:

Times change. We live in a problematic economy, many people are struggling to get by. Normally when people resort to cottage industry, and creative innovative ways to make a living they are lauded for their efforts. Here they are ridiculed. Reason? Not the entitlement of the one who does the work, but rather the entitlement of the one who is used to getting it for free, and sees this change as a threat to their continued privilege.

jim_uk wrote: It's only mod makers who are struggling to get by? are users rolling in money? Let's turn this around, the entitlement might come from those who have walked into a long established community and then demanded that the community support them financially. Modders aren't poor hard done by victims, no one is forced to mod, feel used and abused? then close the CK/Geck/CS and the problem will go away.

My opposition to it comes from the fact that it will fundamentally change the way games are made just as micro transactions and DLC have. Developers aren't going to put a system of paid modding into place and then not adjust the game to push those paid mods at people, we already see it with the aforementioned micro transactions and DLC. Bethesda now have an incentive not to fix lesser bugs because they'll profit from community made bug fixes, they also have an incentive to include less content, again profiting from mods, this time adding content. And don't think they wouldn't do it, companies exist solely to part people from their money, Bethesda are no exception.

Arthmoor wrote: I don't see any modders sitting around demanding payment for their time. Just those of us who would like to have that option being called evil greedy capitalist pigs for wanting an option that you aren't even required to spend money on.

Yes, companies exist to make money. That's kind of basic common knowledge and, well, I don't know why anyone thinks otherwise. There's no such thing as a company who isn't out to make money in some way. There is NOTHING evil about wanting to make money, or for the most part in being "aggressive" or "pushy" about trying to get people to spend money on your product vs some other company's product.

Hell, even changing the nature of how games work isn't evil. I remember perfectly well how everyone complained that the dawn of DLC (ironically, largely Bethesda's fault) was going to be the death of gaming. Guess what didn't happen? Paid mods are being targeted by exactly the same kind of entitlement minded people who think it'll ruin gaming forever. 10 years from now we'll all be sitting back thinking it's perfectly normal and the only real discussion will be about whether or not some mods are worth buying - just like we do now with what DLCs we all want.

This demonizing of people who want to make a bit of side money (or, yes, maybe even turn it into a job) needs to stop.

MrJoseCuervo wrote: If people are struggling they should perhaps stop playing games and use that time to learn skills to gain employment.

RGMage2 wrote: Change happens, that’s a fact of life. No successful business can stand still, because their competitors will continue to move forward. In business if you are not moving forward then you are falling behind. If a business like Bethesda does not continue to innovate and find new revenue streams then eventually they will cease to exist.

All the wonderful gadgets we enjoy today are only available to us because a business could make a profit by supplying them. Without profit there would be no video games, no Personal Computers, no Xboxes, no PlayStations, no iphones, no TV, no movies, no internet, no cars, and probably no jobs. So yes, money changes things, usually for the better.

But of course people fear change, and the argument against paid modding is rooted in fear. Fear of upsetting the status quo, fear of a changed community, fear of loss of access to free content. In some respects they are right to fear, because all of these things will be changed, irrevocably. That doesn’t mean the changes will all be negative. It is human nature to make things better, it’s what we do as a species, that’s how we evolved into what we are today. We got here by making changes, never standing still.

Just to address one side of this, when I see the argument made that mods have no monetary value and no one would pay for them, what I really see is someone expressing a deeply held fear that mods do indeed hold monetary value and they may someday have to pay for what they now get for free. If mods had no monetary value then there would be no argument. No one would buy them and that would be the end of it. The problem with that is that people did buy them, and would have continued to buy them in ever greater quantity, thus changing the dynamics of modding forever.

Considering that almost all the mod authors involved with paid modding are on record as saying they would continue to release free mods, and many many more authors are on record as saying they would only ever release free mods, you would think that would be enough to satisfy those who want their free mods, but it’s not. What they are fighting against is the very idea that mods could have a monetary value. For someone who wants unlimited free access to all mods, regardless of the author’s wishes, the very idea of mods having a monetary value is like a sword hanging over their heads. But they are fighting a battle they can’t win, because it has already been established, in Skyrim with the brief period of paid modding, and in other games where paid modding exists, that mods do indeed have a monetary value, at this point that is indisputable.

Now if an individual has the skills to create something that other people are willing to pay for, then they are entirely justified in pursuing that to whatever end they see fit, whether it be for a few bucks for pizza and beer, or a full time profession if they can make it work. That’s up to the individual, no one else is entitled to a say in it.

Dude I'm not scared of losing something for free. I'm scared that these changing of the times will turn a fun part of gaming like this into the very kind of un-fun business-minded crap that the rest of gaming has turned into.
It's also very hard to take your argument seriously when words like entitlement and privilege are thrown in.

[Ghatto]

In response to post #28618854. #28619094 is also a reply to the same post.

icecreamassassin wrote: well another aspect I hadn't really though about before now but now that I think about it really makes me angry is that fact that there are a handful of youtubers who make reviews or playthrough videos about our mods (which is great promotion for the mod mind you and I know a ton of work goes into it), But they are allowed to profit off it. I know one off hand that makes $846 per month from sustained supporters, and somehow THEY are allowed to show our content and Bethesda's intellectual property and profit off it? yet the people who are actually producing new content are not allowed to profit from it? (in a great many cases high quality content that is keeping people interested and in fact in some cases driving more sales of Skyrim and the DLC's), That is quite lame IMO.

What Bethesda should do is offer a paypal style button that sites can host in place of the donation button that allows people to contribute SUSTAINED OR ONE TIME donations to the modder who set it up, take 40% for themselves, give 10% to the parent site the donation button is from (Nexus), and the other 50% to the modder. This allows them to get their cut, allows modders to have a possibility at sustained support for current and future projects and still allows it all to be voluntary, avoiding the whole "why pay for something you don't know about the quality of" because it's all still free and you only pay if you wanna support the modder and like the product.

gezegond wrote: As far as I know Bethesda wouldn't actually be able to enforce anything about paid modding if you decided to sell your mods as long as you don't bundle Bethesda copyrighted material with your mod. Make a mod using only your own assets that works "on top" of Skyrim and they won't be able to have any say in what you do with it. It even has software precedent in people selling Photoshop plugins and Adobe not seeing any royalty from it. It's the same reason Bethesda isn't paying any royalty to Microsoft even though their game works "on top" of their Windows product.

As for esp files, it's a bit complicated as Bethesda has apparently (I haven't personally read it) made an end user license agreement that people will not commercialize anything made with Creation Kit. Whether that would be actually enforceable in court or not is something a lawyer would be better suited to answer, though it doesn't seem likely to me since people can just write absolutely whatever they want in EULAs (search google for the guys who made people sell their souls to them in their EULA as a joke)

But even assuming it's enforceable, you can always just not use esp files and make replacers, or use something like TES5Edit or similar tool to create your esp file.

Now when it comes to Nexus it's a completely different matter because it's Dark0ne's website and he doesn't want to be bothered about the legal technicalities so he double checks everything with Bethesda and only goes forward with it if they OK it. Fair, it's his website and he can do whatever he wants with it but it doesn't mean that whatever Dark0ne is doing is now part of a "law" everyone has to abide by everywhere, I see some people misunderstanding this.

Well since many are using the hard work and effort of modders to promote paid mods, it's just as fair IMO to claim that video makers have put in the effort and should be paid. Of course you should always recognise that the payments will either be in ads made by a third party (which mods don't have) or donations. The latter really shouldn't be able to be stopped by anyone, I mean the Nexus guys here are afraid of Bethesda suing them but I'm having trouble seeing how they could.

[Ghatto]

In response to post #28618554. #28618879 is also a reply to the same post.

Darole wrote:

One thing I don't see mentioned, when discussing whether or not Bethesda can control the mods, is cost of the tools. Right now people can download the tools to make mods for free, but if Bethesda really wanted control/money from the modders they would charge for the tools.
So you can say they can't touch the modder or the mod, but that isn't necessarily true.
Worse, they could release updated versions of the tools for $$$ and then rescind the free license on the existing tools (had that happen to a community I was part of once).

gezegond wrote: People can make their own tools. As far as I know at least for Skyrim the only tool Bethesda has developed is Creation Kit the rest of the tools people use are all either made by the community (Nifskope, TES5Edit, BSAOpt) or have nothing to do with Skyrim itself (i.e. Blender, Gimp, Photoshop etc.)

You already pay for the tools, they come with the game you bought.

[Ghatto]

In response to post #28608069. #28610219, #28612134, #28612269, #28616814 are all replies on the same post.

Neolin_windblade wrote: So I guess I have a quick question. I'm not a modder (Well, I have 1 tiny mod released), but I can understand why modders would like to have donations for their time and talents. Which Is why I'm all for a volunteer-donation type system, and why I would probably support something like a Patreon system, if something were worked out...

Anyway, my question:

I understand that the Nexus itself can't use Patreon for their donation system, or even advocate for modders to do so, I get that. But are Bethesda saying that modders can't use Patreon themselves to support themselves while they are modding?

I have seen quite a few Patreon users (not modders necessarily, but game makers, art makers, etc) who release all their works for free, or release to their supporters first, but eventually make everything free as a project goes down the dev cycle. What would be the issue? Could not a modder use Patreon, but release the mod for free? In effect, this would be the supporters paying the modder for the time he is using to make the mod, but not for the mod itself, since the mod could be accessed for free by anyone.... Or are they saying that Bethesda has a legal issue with that?

I'm a big fan of Bethesda's games, but the paid modding thing did get to me. And what I see in their messages to Robin, about how they can't allow support of Patreon...all I see is greed. They don't want a cut of their possible profit being out of their hands...

sevencardz wrote: Good question. I was actually wondering this myself. If a modder were to say... change the description on a mod hosted on the Nexus to instead link to a neutral external site hosting the mod description and a Patreon link designed specifically to support the modder's time and effort (not the mod itself) - could Bethesda take issue with that? To be clear - the 'service' provided here would not be the mod, or even updates to the mod (which would happen free of charge on the Nexus). Rather the 'service' would be the time spent by the modder developing features for the mod, supporting the mod, communicating with users about bugs and updates, etc.

Bethesda doesn't own me or my time so they can't claim to have any rights to any revenue I generate from that. Essentially, users would be donating to me as a mod author for my time and expertise, not for the mods themselves.

Based on Bethesda's rather terse response, it sounds like they don't even know where the line is or they haven't put much thought into it beyond "Oh, just tell everyone not to do anything that might cut into our profit margin". No problem - my time is not part of Bethesda's profit margin.

icecreamassassin wrote: The issue is that Nexus would be responsible for any links to external sites that directly provide something that Bethesda is legally against. Nexus would not allow a link to your Patreon site for example. The only gray area around this would be if you put a link to your blog which has info about your Patreon account. I think at that point, Bethesda would not be able to hold Nexus accountable because Nexus is not in control of content on other people's web pages, only the links to offending web pages (direct links to patreon for example).

icecreamassassin wrote: That said, there would be nothing stopping Bethesda from coming after the modder directly and it would be within their right to do so, but it would be a needle in a haystack situation to track down the modders that are setting up support pages.

The only other way I see would be if you were a designer in other areas such as a table top RPG/Board/Card game designer (like me) who has products and projects in the works and you also made mention of your modding projects (blog style) and via the Nexus based link to your blog page people could find your patreon page, I think it would be pretty hard to have Nexus or Bethesda object as long as the other projects were in fact legit and your mod fans wanted to just happen to support your modding by means of supporting your other projects.

gezegond wrote: Just make a blog and write "Hello" in a single post and then write in your patreon "Blogger and Mod Author" and if Bethesda came after you for the patreon (hint: they can't) just tell em people are paying for your blog.

It's ridiculous because Bethesda is being ridiculous they don't own us just because we used their tools.

I wanna see some precedents. I mean really. There's tonnes of artists that are making money on unoriginal IP and are getting away with donations. All the examples the article provides are of Bethesda trying to keep an iron grip on their trademarks which is not the same.

Unlike many other modified games that have sent out C&Ds, Skyrim et. al. allow modding in general, and don't block reverse-engineering (for modding sake).

I mean how can they go after donations? How is there a provable link between profits of the maker and their free mods? Since the 'product' is free and allowed, the money is just being thrown at random people for 'whatever' reason. In fact if they're so worried about lawsuits then how is the current 'link to paypal' option even here?

[Ghatto]

In response to post #28616699.

simtam wrote:

Let's not antagonize users and modders, shall we?

 

For games where paid mods are allowed, there is - and it ever will be - a full spectrum of free mods, full-priced mods, discounted mods, free demo-versions of full payable mods, and so on - whatever price discrimination marketing invented.

 

For game titles where paid mods are disallowed by the game creators, modding remains free. Sure, you could expect some exceptions in some jurisdictions, but this activity is dwarfed by real commercial game development, where one can actually build or rent a game engine of one's choice.

Oh yeah there's just so many free skins in Counter Strike GO I can use.

[jpengenheiro2]

Regarding the donations, I have no problem with it, I would prefer a more peer to peer system if it's available (Bitcoin!) instead of using paypal.

 

Regarding paying for mods I really think that it is a really bad ideia, simply because, people use many mods at a time that are not designed to work with each other, and when someone downloads a new mod there is no guarantee that it will be compatible or not cause a lot of problems in your game. If people were to pay for mods from now on, people would have the right to some sort of guarantee that the mods they bought would work for them, and also support. Would mod authors be willing to provide support for all users and their load orders? and for how long? Because right now mods are hosted on the Nexus long after authors stop providing support. Would anyone pay for a mod that they never tried and may never get support? also refund policy? Many doubts indeed.

 

Please don't read this as an attack on mod authors, because I have an enormous amount of respect for what they do. But this is not a simple "market" and anyone pushing for paid mods at this time is making a huge mistake in my opinion.