Getting paid to mod? Great! Paying for mods? Ohh....

[Gilibran]

this would bring a lot of legal hassle with bethesda. The majority of modifications, as the name implies, are alterations of bethesda's intellectual property. Only they are legally entitled to profit from that and they would probably be upset unless you got their permission first.

 

Mods that add completely new, original content, using their own models, textures, etc, would possibly have less legal issues, but i doubt they'd escape it entirely.

 

although it's definitely illegal to sell your mods, I don't think there would be a problem with paying for the creation of them. Eg, someone pays you a few grand and you go work on a mod to their specifications for a few months. As long as the finished result is either distributed for free, or not at all, I doubt any lawyers could have a problem with it, and they wouldn't even be able to prove it happened.

 

there could still be problem areas. If for example, the administrators of this site were the ones commissioning mods. They could be seen as profiting from them by hosting them on a site with advertising.

 

And even having a donation button is legally problematic too. Creative successfully shut down a third party developer who was making better drivers for their products, on the premise that he was profiting because he had a paypal donate button where he hosted the driver files.

 

I have to agree, apart from the Bethesda content your reselling wich you probably wont get permission for. Buying is a legal contract with binding obligations for both party's you will have to spend a good amount of money first to get a good disclaimer/user agreement on your mods. Depending on the country you live in and the buyer you could be bound by customer protection laws.

 

In a worst case scenario you could face a lawsuit because someone demands the money back they paid for the mod. They can also demand full tech support on getting the mod to work. Wich you cant if they are running 200+ other mods from other modders. Within no time you will probably be spending all your time helping idiots instead of modding. And if you do manage to get a steady income from it, there's always the government that will eventuelly come along and demand tax.

 

The donation option looks viable, but as Warkirby said is debateble to.

 

This has nothing to do with the fact that i dont want to pay for mods, good mods that is. But if i take a look at my Oblivion install with 200+ mods, even at a price of $ 0,50 to $ 5,- max that i would pay for a mod (Even perhaps up to $ 10,- for something as big like a completed Underdark Saga (Viconia de Vir mod)), that would be easily over $ 200,- spent. Not that the single price of a mod would stop me from downloading a mod, but knowing the amount I downloaded for Oblivion (wellover 900 before i ended up with the 200 that i have now and make for a stabil game), would make me think twice and be a lot more selective in my mod choice.

 

I think Mod-users should always donate to sites as Nexus, so that Modders dont have to worry about where they have to upload the files and are garanteed a stabil site with easy acces, enough bandwidth and feedback for free so they dont have to invest in that themselves.

[OnlyOneWing]

Paying for mods, any amount, defets the whole puprose and point of modding. You can go all the way and call it "DLCing" or something.

Donations to grand mods is something different, but it's supposed to be by fans for fans, not making mods to get rich / getting mods for money.

 

I agree with what you are saying. But the modern world is made up of primarily capitalistic societies... Where money can be made, it will eventually be made. Bethesda is a business, not a group of artists... Bethesda's reason for existing is to make money. The only people who care about the games produced on a deeper level than sales and figures are the men and women who put thousands of hours and their hearts and souls into the game.

 

Where there is a market some one will profit off of it... Who knows? If companies realize that there is more money in the PC market then they will focus on it more...

If more companies start making construction kits for their games then PC gaming will become tempting to console gamers. It could potentially breathe new life into the PC.

 

Money makes the world go around...

Edited December 2, 2011 by OnlyOneWing

[ITOS]

I would be fine with paying $10 for a mod that was comparable to an official DLC like the ones for Fallout.

 

I would not be fine with hundreds of $1 mods than adds one armor or bunch of tweaks.

 

IF they decide to bring money into modding then I hope that they are highly restrictive so that only serious modding teams can make money of it.

[Jackal2233]

The issue?... If Bethesda and Valve begin to make a lot of money off of this they will suddenly get lawyers involved. Next thing you know the only site allowed to host mods whether free or not for Skyrim will be Steamworks.

 

That's like committing suicide for Bethesda. Only time will tell if they will be that stupid, like Ubisoft.

[Nadimos]

I dont care aslong nexus will still be around.

Would be nice, if you could give donations to modders, similar as they have the deal goin on with tf2.

Edited December 2, 2011 by Nadimos

[elvinkun]

 

I agree with what you are saying. But the modern world is made up of primarily capitalistic societies... Where money can be made, it will eventually be made. Bethesda is a business, not a group of artists... Bethesda's reason for existing is to make money. The only people who care about the games produced on a deeper level than sales and figures are the men and women who put thousands of hours and their hearts and souls into the game.

 

Where there is a market some one will profit off of it... Who knows? If companies realize that there is more money in the PC market then they will focus on it more...

If more companies start making construction kits for their games then PC gaming will become tempting to console gamers. It could potentially breathe new life into the PC.

 

Money makes the world go around...

 

They make money by releasing the game and after that, they can release several big DLCs, such as new areas and adventures and countless small DLCs which are in fact "official" mods ... Be it (quite legendary nowdays) horse armor, pack of new weapons, new skills, new questlines... And in a way, they are "original" and should be more professional than your average mods... They can make tenths of things like that, and unless they go nuts and give unrealistic prices, people will buy. But that's as far as they can go.

 

Trying to make money off the fan-made modding stage is unrealistic, apart from donations, but that is a "gift" from player to player, no profit for bethesda or anyone else. Also, as the name "donation" suggest, the author does it for enjoyment rather than money. On PC at least. At this day and age. Who knows what kind of sh... erm, will be around in 5, 10 or 15 years. Maybe all game will be streamed only by that time, so there will be no mod-stage to talk about.

 

EDIT: And do not take it as an offense please, but saying computer market is insignificant is about as truthfull as saying that loosing your left hand is insignificant, since it does less needed things than legs or right hand. And close to it's lifespans end? You do NOT want me to comment on that.

Edited December 2, 2011 by elvinkun

[OnlyOneWing]

The issue?... If Bethesda and Valve begin to make a lot of money off of this they will suddenly get lawyers involved. Next thing you know the only site allowed to host mods whether free or not for Skyrim will be Steamworks.

 

That's like committing suicide for Bethesda. Only time will tell if they will be that stupid, like Ubisoft.

The majority of sales for Skyrim were on consoles...the vast majority. Bethesda's financial future doesn't depend on the PC gamer since it is an insignificant market share.

However, where as it is impossible to sell DLC to PC gamers, perhaps they can take a cut of the profit made off of mods. You have to remember, console gamers are still to this very day paying money for the STUPID Horse Armor DLC for Oblivion.

 

The reason why Skyrim was ported to PC and not ported to consoles is because of money. Bethesda looked at the Oblivion sales figures and did market research to determine whether it was worth it to make a sequel at all. They found it justifiable and decided to optimize the game for consoles because consoles dominate the market.

 

Since the PC market is close to it's end of life we should be grateful to Bethesda for even putting in the extra effort in to give us the creation kit.

[hipolipolopigus]

Something like Companion Vilja from Oblivion? Easily more than just a few dollars.

 

Most definitely - the superb job I found was that she commented with EACH quest in vanilla oblivion. It was like a whole new experience with her around. That's a high standard though you know, Vilja took years to perfect.

So I'm a little picky :happy: If a mod deserves my money, I'll pay for it. If not, well... Let's say I wouldn't have paid for Skyrim in its' current state if I knew before hand. At least I got a neat map out of it :rolleyes:

[Nadimos]

Hahahaha! So, true. Edited December 2, 2011 by Nadimos

[stars2heaven]

My worry here with getting money involved has to do with modders becoming more protective of their work. Right now a huge number of mods aren't created by the author alone and are only possible due to someone elses work. Look at just about any mod out there and you will notice that most of them use some sort of resource from another modder. This could be anything from actual modders resources like new meshes and textures or scripts to programs like obse and wrye bash.

 

If money starts getting involved then a lot of the cooperation that exists now could stop. People might become too worried about others using their work just for profit, and will be much more protective over who gets to use it. What that means is the number and quality of the mods we see now for games like Oblivion and Fallout could be significantly reduced for Skyrim just because modders can get payed.

 

I really like the idea of modders being able to profit from their hard work, but I am not too blind to see the consequences that could result if it were to happen.

Edited December 2, 2011 by stars2heaven