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

[Elianora]

In response to post #28555684.

zzjay wrote: Well...that's just my opinion...but i think it's fine as it is...the donation system...it's true some people doesn't even know about its existance...but i undertand that many are not willing to donate...afterall mods are for free,and if they suddenly had a price,some may just not use them anymore.

If someone wants to do it he'll do it,and for discussing it there are always private messages.

It's very unlikely people don't know about the donation system by now. There are so many popups these days. Any regular site user must've encountered them.

[icecreamassassin]

I had suggested this in the original discussion thread awhile back and I'll suggest it again. Convert the PayPal Donation button to a PayPal recurring donation button:

 

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/get-started/create-recurring-donation-button

 

This would mirror the concept of sustained support that a patronage type site would offer, while still maintaining adherence to Bethesda's endorsement of donations as the money is not geared to specific projects like patronage sites are. It's a very simple and clear divide and literally the only different between what Nexus is doing now and this concept is that it gives the option for users to set their donation to automatically repeat. They can also still set it as a one time donation.

 

Secondly giving mod authors the ok to place a small Nexus provided narrow banner bar or small colorful donation link somewhere in their description page (which some authors are already doing BTW), after the main description of the mod perhaps, and/or to allow authors to set up a forum thread in their forum category to talk about donations would be a nice thing. We wouldn't even need a dedicated button for donation talk. Having it there would not be intrusive as the user would have to go into the forum tab and then into the forum topic itself, so it would be a destination spot rather than taking up prime real estate and visibility.

[Elgar82]

In response to post #28556219.

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

"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%. Edited September 9, 2015 by Elgar82

[gezegond]

In response to post #28555684. #28556674 is also a reply to the same post.

zzjay wrote: Well...that's just my opinion...but i think it's fine as it is...the donation system...it's true some people doesn't even know about its existance...but i undertand that many are not willing to donate...afterall mods are for free,and if they suddenly had a price,some may just not use them anymore.

If someone wants to do it he'll do it,and for discussing it there are always private messages.

Elianora wrote: It's very unlikely people don't know about the donation system by now. There are so many popups these days. Any regular site user must've encountered them.

The popups are very sloppy. The just appear when I'm "mass endorsing" and I'm like, I dont even know which mod this popup is for. And when i close the popup it also closes the endorse popup its actually really annoying. It doesn't make me want to donate, it makes me not be able to endorse.

[icecreamassassin]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049 is also a reply to 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%.

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.

[icecreamassassin]

In response to post #28555684. #28556674, #28557069 are all replies on the same post.

zzjay wrote: Well...that's just my opinion...but i think it's fine as it is...the donation system...it's true some people doesn't even know about its existance...but i undertand that many are not willing to donate...afterall mods are for free,and if they suddenly had a price,some may just not use them anymore.

If someone wants to do it he'll do it,and for discussing it there are always private messages.

Elianora wrote: It's very unlikely people don't know about the donation system by now. There are so many popups these days. Any regular site user must've encountered them.

gezegond wrote: The popups are very sloppy. The just appear when I'm "mass endorsing" and I'm like, I dont even know which mod this popup is for. And when i close the popup it also closes the endorse popup its actually really annoying. It doesn't make me want to donate, it makes me not be able to endorse.

hmmm I wasn't aware that happens during mass endorsement. That might be one you should bring up to Robbin separately to see if they can remove the endorsement pop up from mass endorsement processes or perhaps at very least find a way to label the donation window with the mod name

[Elgar82]

In response to post #28556534.

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

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 Edited September 9, 2015 by Elgar82

[indycurt]

I find it hard to believe that people on the Nexus have no clue about donations. I've had the donation notice popups, and there are numerous mod pages with donate buttons, so for someone not to know it exists is clueless, and I would go further in saying that they would be people who wouldn't consider donating anyway.

 

That said, I always found it funny that the paid modding thing could have worked had it not been for greed (mostly on the part of the companies involved, NOT the modders). I've always thought that a "$1 store" approach would have been a great thing for everyone involved, modder, user, and company alike. If all mods were $1 think of the amazing results. Excellent mods would make a modder very rich. A mod say like Frostfall. . .That would have been a $1 Million mod based on "unique" downloads. For a mod of that quality, a user would have no problem with paying a buck for it. Even if Bethesda would take 50%, that is a half a million dollars for each involved. And that is just for ONE mod. Even the less popular, but good mods would make some really good money. For example a mod that only has 5 to 7 hundred downloads, even at a %50 cut, $250 to $350 for a mediocre mod is not bad money compared to zip for it now. The concept of a $1 a mod would make the user happy, the modder VERY happy, and the big greedy companies VERY happy.

 

 

[Laast]

In response to post #28555414.

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.

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.

[pintocat]

In between huge images, change logs, the latest news about their files/their life/their cats, what they will and won't provide support on and so on and so forth, it's sometimes extremely difficult to find an actual description of the author's mod. What I didn't want was mod authors asking for/demanding donations and giving running commentaries of their donor lists within their file descriptions and sticky comment sections, further muddying what should be an easy to read and understand section of a mod author's file page.

 

:thumbsup: If only there were some guidelines in place. Pictures of text instead of text, means a translator can't work on it. It's also hard to read even if it is your language, especially with ugly fonts, on top of background images, centered justification... keep the images in the image tab, videos in video tab, and use the description tab for an actual description...