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

[JimboUK]

In response to post #28556529.

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.

That's a very good idea.

[AnyOldName3]

In response to post #28555414. #28558194 is also a reply to 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.

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).

[gezegond]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104 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.

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

[AnyOldName3]

In response to post #28557464.

indycurt wrote: 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.

But if you're the first downloader of a mod, how are you going to know that it's any good just from the screenshots and description? We already have cases of mod pages being pretty miss-representative, so either a lot of people will end up scammed, or it's going to be a huge amount of work if more than a small handful of mods ever make it there.

[Amarthaniel]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119 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

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

[pintocat]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324 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.

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]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434 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".

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]

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.

Edited September 9, 2015 by EnaiSiaion

[Loveblanket]

Just to be clear, I don't mean this to be disrespectful in any way and I love the Nexus, but it is a little strange to call out Bethesda for wanting a cut and stating that they are pretending like it is "charity of their own hearts" when dealing with mod authors work. Isn't your advertising revenue based on the work of mod authors being available on this site for which you are providing tools and infrastructure, just like Bethesda and Valve were doing?

As far as a way to get money to mod authors, I don't think it matters one little bit. Almost nobody donates now and I don't see some easy functionality leading to a flood of donations. Facebook and Youtube allows links to donation sites and you allow links to Facebook and Youtube. As far as it matters, I don't see any way to make that easier, especially if you are worried about potential legal issues with Bethesda for linking to these sites through Nexus directly. The best bet for mod authors that would like to make a living doing this and people that want to support them is to let Bethesda bring paid mods back through their own site so that people once again have a choice. Free mods can still be downloaded here and on other sites and if you don't want to support paid mods, don't buy any. I honestly just don't see any one click solution that will matter at all. If people want to get money to their favorite mod author, they can do it already with little or no problem and so few do I just don't see it as an important part of the Nexus moving forward.

[EnaiSiaion]

In response to post #28556219. #28557049, #28557104, #28559119, #28559324, #28559434, #28559484 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.

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. :(