Paying Money For Mods

[Vagrant0]

As for charging access to a site that contains mods... that's perfectly legal provided it can't be proved that access fees are being used for anything other than paying for hosting and bandwidth. Gamespy does this already, but they are digital hookers and not beneath such behavior (they need the money to pay for their addictions). If you pay your modders (grey area being that you take money for hosting your own mods) then there may be grounds for legal action.

Not necessarily true, people have been doing it with the Sims for years, while I don't pretend to know how they spend those earnings, there is nothing legally keeping you from charging for custom meshes/textures if the work is all your own. Afterall, you are doing work, and if you have the professional version of 3dsmax, or photoshop, you can charge money for your work. Needless to say that most people running around are either using educational, non-professional, or illegal versions, but if someone had the professional license legally, and had done custom meshes/textures , they could, and some do, charge for the work they've done, regardless how that work is ultimately used.

[SickleYield]

Or you could just make the meshes in Blender and the textures in GIMP and do whatever you want with them. ;) I seriously doubt many modders have a legal copy of the $1500+ pro version of Max. I'm using a one-year student copy of Max 9 and it cost me $200, which at my current income level is not cheap.

 

I don't know that I would charge for my mods -given that they're nowhere near professional quality - but I wouldn't be averse to paying for one from a reliable modder that I knew would be good (anything of Qarl's, for instance). I don't really care about Bethesda's feelings in this instance, and if their caveat could be got around, that would be all right with me. I think the effect on the modding community would be debatable, since people will always try the free stuff first and obviously not all modders would do it.

 

To my way of thinking, the big problem is that this would give Bethesda more incentive to make modding harder in current and future games, and I'd rather have and make free mods than no mods at all.

[SchmoSalt]

I have mixed feelings for this topic. I do agree modders should get some kind of reward for putting their time into a mod. Yet, I think you should only charge for a mod if it is rich in well made content. Personally, I won't pay for any mods myself. Its just how I am. But I wouldn't mind selling some of my hard work at the same time. I would make sure that it completely flawless. After all, people are paying for your modification and they should be treated with extreme support on the mod. I would also release free updates to it which would add more content to the already existing mod. Thats how I think a modder should sell their mod if they plan to sell it.