The Creation Club - How to make it helpful to the Modding community, not destroy it

[MightyZ0G]

 

Please define "very small". a buck? Less? More?

 

Again, this is buy it once, and you are done. it isn't something you need to refresh on a regular basis. There aren't going to be any 'repeat' sales here.

 

 

and if they decide to follow Topware's lead and disable the dev console completely so you have to buy cheat items through microtransactions?

the gaming industry will copy any money making idea that isn't nailed down by copyright. think how much Bethesda could make if they charged for items to unlock doors/containers or unlimited carry weight, or invincibility?

[HeyYou]

 

 

Please define "very small". a buck? Less? More?

 

Again, this is buy it once, and you are done. it isn't something you need to refresh on a regular basis. There aren't going to be any 'repeat' sales here.

 

 

and if they decide to follow Topware's lead and disable the dev console completely so you have to buy cheat items through microtransactions?

the gaming industry will copy any money making idea that isn't nailed down by copyright. think how much Bethesda could make if they charged for items to unlock doors/containers or unlimited carry weight, or invincibility?

 

They would have to change the entire dynamic of modding in order to do so. I.E. restricting use of the CK. That would kill the modding community in one blow. Not something they really want to do, as they would be killing off their potential labor pool for CC. How would that make any sense at all?

[MightyZ0G]

 

 

 

Please define "very small". a buck? Less? More?

 

Again, this is buy it once, and you are done. it isn't something you need to refresh on a regular basis. There aren't going to be any 'repeat' sales here.

 

 

and if they decide to follow Topware's lead and disable the dev console completely so you have to buy cheat items through microtransactions?

the gaming industry will copy any money making idea that isn't nailed down by copyright. think how much Bethesda could make if they charged for items to unlock doors/containers or unlimited carry weight, or invincibility?

 

They would have to change the entire dynamic of modding in order to do so. I.E. restricting use of the CK. That would kill the modding community in one blow. Not something they really want to do, as they would be killing off their potential labor pool for CC. How would that make any sense at all?

 

 

but it would give them complete control over monetised modding.

why buy a mod from CC if there is one similar on Nexus for free (with better bug reporting and support fixing them)?

why buy a mod when you can get the same result using console commands or FO4Edit?

it's why microtransactions worked so well on consoles, tablets and smartphones. no easy way to cheat or mod the game. you want to customise your experience you have to pay extra.

and what would happen if CC failed because they killed off the labour pool by prohibiting modding?

for a start people would stop playing 10 year old games and start buying new games.

will Rockstar lose sales of GTA VI or Red Dead Redemption 2 because you can no longer mod them on PC? they will get their money just the same.

for the devs, the game may well be a labour of love that they hope will be seen as a masterpiece, but the publishers want a disposable product that people will buy, play, forget. rinse and repeat.

Edited June 27, 2017 by mighty zog

[HeyYou]

 

 

 

 

Please define "very small". a buck? Less? More?

 

Again, this is buy it once, and you are done. it isn't something you need to refresh on a regular basis. There aren't going to be any 'repeat' sales here.

 

 

and if they decide to follow Topware's lead and disable the dev console completely so you have to buy cheat items through microtransactions?

the gaming industry will copy any money making idea that isn't nailed down by copyright. think how much Bethesda could make if they charged for items to unlock doors/containers or unlimited carry weight, or invincibility?

 

They would have to change the entire dynamic of modding in order to do so. I.E. restricting use of the CK. That would kill the modding community in one blow. Not something they really want to do, as they would be killing off their potential labor pool for CC. How would that make any sense at all?

 

 

but it would give them complete control over monetised modding.

why buy a mod from CC if there is one similar on Nexus for free (with better bug reporting and support fixing them)?

why buy a mod when you can get the same result using console commands or FO4Edit?

it's why microtransactions worked so well on consoles, tablets and smartphones. no easy way to cheat or mod the game. you want to customise your experience you have to pay extra.

and what would happen if CC failed because they killed off the labour pool by prohibiting modding?

for a start people would stop playing 10 year old games and start buying new games.

will Rockstar lose sales of GTA VI or Red Dead Redemption 2 because you can no longer mod them on PC? they will get their money just the same.

for the devs, the game may well be a labour of love that they hope will be seen as a masterpiece, but the publishers want a disposable product that people will buy, play, forget. rinse and repeat.

 

Why would they WANT 'complete control'? That has never been their position.

 

We don't KNOW what kind of content they are going to be offering. In any event, I would point out that Horse Armor for oblivion sold fairly well, even to the folks on PC. It really doesn't matter WHAT they put up, there are folks out there in the world that will buy it.

 

Beth has zero reason to shut down the modding scene. It would NOT be in their best interests. I would like to think that they are not in the habit of cutting their own throats.

[VIitS]

No matter what way anyone tries to spin it, this is the official introduction of microtransactions into bethesda games. We all know from every other microtransaction driven game where that eventually leads. These 'creators' (internal or external) are helping issue in that change to the fallout and elder scrolls games. I'll not support any of them. Best of luck making money to them, whatever floats your boat.

 

What singleplayer only games have become "micro-transaction driven"? Microtransactions work in multiplayer games, but I have yet to hear of a single-player game

 

I still think it's jacked up no matter how you look at it or try to make it sound like a very select few modders are finally getting their fair pay day for their efforts. That's never what any of it was about (at least to most of us). Now it is. Bethesda finally found a way to bank on the efforts of the community (not the user community, the modding community).

I doubt many of the people who will get accepted will have that mindset. It's more about being able to spend the time focusing on modding. How many mods have died in development because the person (or people) working on them just didn't have the time to work on them? I've only made a few fairly small mods, and they were almost all delayed significantly (i.e. months) because I didn't have the time to work on them. There are two others I have not yet completed for the same reason.

 

And while I seriously doubt I would get accepted if I were to apply, my main consideration when I thought about doing so was the potential access to assets I couldn't get otherwise. I'm not planning on trying, both because I doubt I'd qualify and because I won't have the time I'd need to spend in order to meet the development milestones in a reasonable amount of time, but I have thought about it.

 

And despite what I've been told numerous times I am still not convinced they won't pursue dmca claims (which take about 30 seconds to fill out and send) if content by modders directly conflicts with something in their microtransaction club. Maybe not on these games due to how entrenched modding is, but what about future games and content?

You talk about how easy it is to send a DMCA, acting like it is no big deal, but filing a false DMCA is perjury. Yes, Bethesda has tons of money so no individual will fight it, but if they do it on a significant scale I'd be surprised if there was no class-action suit or something along those lines.

 

And what do you mean by "conflict"? If you mean "mod conflict", they'll just blame the mod author of the conflicting (free) mod. If you mean fills the same role (e.g. adding a new piece of armor), they'd have to completely shut down the free modding scene. If you mean adding something that looks the same (e.g. someone makes and releases a piece of armor that deliberately looks the same as some Creation Club armor), it would be silly of them not to, as the person was doing so maliciously (and even then, if the MA shows proof that they made that asset themselves and aren't uploading a copy of the mesh taken from the Creation Club, I doubt they'll bother). They probably would just remove it from their site (or not allow it in the first place), so no console players could use that mod.

 

How long will it take for them to release the creation tools for future games to the community now? Time will tell there. Hope I'm dead wrong. They haven't exactly covered any of this from what I've read on their website.

Why would they be talking about the release time for the creation kit for a game that hasn't even entered development yet? That makes no sense whatsoever.

 

Also, thanks to the 3rd party tools that have been developed over the years for Gamebryo/Creation Engine games, there were still over 11K mods released in the 7-ish months between the game's release and the CK's release. There have been about 14k released in the 13 -ish months since. With the exception of quest and location mods, almost all other types of mods can be made relatively easily without the CK.

 

Think the full size dlc are rough now? Wait until the shareholders get a look at the time to profit margins of microtransactions vs full size dlc. How much content will be cut from future games to dribble out through their club? They even say a majority of the content is coming from their internal devs in the about section. Hahaha. Come on. Couldn't they have just done another full sized dlc with that dev time? Or drop it all for 5 bucks? Wonder why they didn't.

I would be very surprised if "Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators" remains true in the future (unless it flops and they don't continue it past the end of this summer). They are likely just trying to ensure that one of the problems with the attempt at Skyrim paid modding (lack of choice at launch, with most of it overpriced and/or stolen) is not repeated.

 

I would be honestly surprised if the amount made through the Creation Club is even close to the amount made from DLC. DLC have a huge profit margin compared to the base game, largely because the vast majority of the assets (whether that be textures/meshes/music, game mechanics or even the game engine) already exist. If you look at the plugins for the DLC-added locations, you'll see that the vast majority of the stuff used are from Fallout4.esm.

 

And no, they couldn't just "make another full sized DLC with that Dev time", or "drop it all for 5 bucks". You talk about shareholders, good luck convincing them to focus the time on even more DLC for an "old" game, and they'd consider a $5 stuff pack DLC just the same. Full sized DLC require cohesion between a much larger team than something like this would. That adds significant time/people to the project. Plus, if they released it as DLC, they would either:

1) have to deal with the backlash over it not being included in the Season Pass (especially since they jacked the price up to $50), or

2)include it, which means they would only make money from the people who didn't by the Season Pass but would buy this stuff (I don't see that as being a very big overlap).

 

They've already shown they care about public opinion, as evidenced by them pulling the paid mods attempt for Skyrim almost immediately, rather than trying to fix their bad implementation of it.

 

That's actually a good counter to many of your points. Mass DMCAs of legitimate mods: will generate tons of bad publicity. Not releasing/significantly (1+ years) delaying the release of the CK while maintaining the Creation Club for new games: tons of bad publicity. Not releasing DLC for future games while maintaining the Creation Club for them: tons of bad press, and almost certainly significantly lower profit margins.

 

If you still don't believe that bad publicity will affect game publishers:

-Topware disabled the console while trying to sell microtransaction cheats. Result: tons of bad press, and Topware re-enables the console

-TakeTwo DMCAs OpenIV. Result: tons of bad press, they rescind the DMCA against OpenIV (the situation hasn't fully ended, but them pretending to back off only to shut Open IV down again would just reduce trust even more than leaving it taken down, and would keep news about it relevant longer)

 

You (and a lot of others) seem to believe that the situation here is identical to other games that don't have an active modding scene. The laws of supply and demand apply here just as they do elsewhere. If you have a large supply (i.e. free mods), you have to stand out to sell well. If you charge $1-$5 for individual weapons/vehicles/etc... for a game that either has no mods, or is very difficult to use mods with, people will buy them. If they charge $1-$5 for individual armors/weapons/etc..., and people can download tons of free armor/weapon mods that are just as good in quality, those types of items won't sell well. The ones that are actually worth the cost will do well, and that is something that Bethesda will take notice of. And since they already will have spent money on the overpriced mods, they would almost certainly (eventually) reduce the price so they can at least make some money off of them.

 

For it to really "kill" the modding community, they would have to not just stop supporting mods completely, but actively attack free mods. Considering how one of the big selling points for Fallout 4 was modding, and modding was the main reason for console users to buy Skyrim SE, I'm pretty sure that's not happening. That would almost certainly lose them more from lost sales than they would make from the Creation Club-style monetization.

 

Some general comments on the Creation Club:

I personally doubt that what we saw of the "store" is going to be fully representative of what is available (prices or otherwise). The fact that one of the things listed is actually called "Horse Armor" (which appears to be the Giddyup Buttercup pieces stuck to some power armor), I'm assuming it is part mock-up, part joke. It was a really stupid joke, considering the paid mods fiasco, but a joke nonetheless. And I also think one of the reasons they are setting up the system the way they are (i.e. paying for development) is to let them control the prices, which lets them avoid the issue of idiots with an inflated sense of their content's worth.

 

 

 

Some things that I think Bethesda could do to ensure this idea is a success: provide the proper support to modders they accept into the program. Not just for polishing/conflict checking/localization, but give them access to things like the raw texture files, which would allow a mod author to make their content match existing content more easily. The raw textures would let you (as an example) make a pristine version of the Red Rocket, or weather it differently than the vanilla ones. If someone wanted to make a mod that let you repair all the roads in the Commonwealth, they could do so much more easily with access to the same assets as an internal dev can use. Within the limits of their existing license agreements of course, though the way they have it structured makes it possible they would be legally considered independent contractors which should give them a lot more leeway. They could potentially be able to give access to the actual tools they use (rather than the crippled Creation Kit), assuming the contracts allow whatever licensed software their version contains that they had to remove.

 

They could add the necessary hooks/features a mod requires for some feature a mod author comes up with, such as making conditionals work for "Scrap" recipes while still allowing you to scrap an item with a normal recipe regardless of conditionals. shadowslasher410 has been trying for several months now to make it so the mod Scrap Everything lets you control what is scrappable in-game (as has been asked for extensively), and if conditionals actually worked for scrapping that update would have been released hack in early April. Instead she is making a 4th attempt at it, as the first three didn't work due to various issues things the game engine can't do. And some other planned features were scrapped outright, since they are currently impossible.

 

In other words, the best chance Bethesda has of making the Creation Club not only successful but liked, is to truly work together with the modders they accept into the program, rather than just doing the minimum they have to. That will give us mods that were just not possible before the program, which will drive sales of those mods.

[HeyYou]

 

No matter what way anyone tries to spin it, this is the official introduction of microtransactions into bethesda games. We all know from every other microtransaction driven game where that eventually leads. These 'creators' (internal or external) are helping issue in that change to the fallout and elder scrolls games. I'll not support any of them. Best of luck making money to them, whatever floats your boat.

 

What singleplayer only games have become "micro-transaction driven"? Microtransactions work in multiplayer games, but I have yet to hear of a single-player game

 

I still think it's jacked up no matter how you look at it or try to make it sound like a very select few modders are finally getting their fair pay day for their efforts. That's never what any of it was about (at least to most of us). Now it is. Bethesda finally found a way to bank on the efforts of the community (not the user community, the modding community).

I doubt many of the people who will get accepted will have that mindset. It's more about being able to spend the time focusing on modding. How many mods have died in development because the person (or people) working on them just didn't have the time to work on them? I've only made a few fairly small mods, and they were almost all delayed significantly (i.e. months) because I didn't have the time to work on them. There are two others I have not yet completed for the same reason.

 

And while I seriously doubt I would get accepted if I were to apply, my main consideration when I thought about doing so was the potential access to assets I couldn't get otherwise. I'm not planning on trying, both because I doubt I'd qualify and because I won't have the time I'd need to spend in order to meet the development milestones in a reasonable amount of time, but I have thought about it.

 

And despite what I've been told numerous times I am still not convinced they won't pursue dmca claims (which take about 30 seconds to fill out and send) if content by modders directly conflicts with something in their microtransaction club. Maybe not on these games due to how entrenched modding is, but what about future games and content?

You talk about how easy it is to send a DMCA, acting like it is no big deal, but filing a false DMCA is perjury. Yes, Bethesda has tons of money so no individual will fight it, but if they do it on a significant scale I'd be surprised if there was no class-action suit or something along those lines.

 

And what do you mean by "conflict"? If you mean "mod conflict", they'll just blame the mod author of the conflicting (free) mod. If you mean fills the same role (e.g. adding a new piece of armor), they'd have to completely shut down the free modding scene. If you mean adding something that looks the same (e.g. someone makes and releases a piece of armor that deliberately looks the same as some Creation Club armor), it would be silly of them not to, as the person was doing so maliciously (and even then, if the MA shows proof that they made that asset themselves and aren't uploading a copy of the mesh taken from the Creation Club, I doubt they'll bother). They probably would just remove it from their site (or not allow it in the first place), so no console players could use that mod.

 

How long will it take for them to release the creation tools for future games to the community now? Time will tell there. Hope I'm dead wrong. They haven't exactly covered any of this from what I've read on their website.

Why would they be talking about the release time for the creation kit for a game that hasn't even entered development yet? That makes no sense whatsoever.

 

Also, thanks to the 3rd party tools that have been developed over the years for Gamebryo/Creation Engine games, there were still over 11K mods released in the 7-ish months between the game's release and the CK's release. There have been about 14k released in the 13 -ish months since. With the exception of quest and location mods, almost all other types of mods can be made relatively easily without the CK.

 

Think the full size dlc are rough now? Wait until the shareholders get a look at the time to profit margins of microtransactions vs full size dlc. How much content will be cut from future games to dribble out through their club? They even say a majority of the content is coming from their internal devs in the about section. Hahaha. Come on. Couldn't they have just done another full sized dlc with that dev time? Or drop it all for 5 bucks? Wonder why they didn't.

I would be very surprised if "Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators" remains true in the future (unless it flops and they don't continue it past the end of this summer). They are likely just trying to ensure that one of the problems with the attempt at Skyrim paid modding (lack of choice at launch, with most of it overpriced and/or stolen) is not repeated.

 

I would be honestly surprised if the amount made through the Creation Club is even close to the amount made from DLC. DLC have a huge profit margin compared to the base game, largely because the vast majority of the assets (whether that be textures/meshes/music, game mechanics or even the game engine) already exist. If you look at the plugins for the DLC-added locations, you'll see that the vast majority of the stuff used are from Fallout4.esm.

 

And no, they couldn't just "make another full sized DLC with that Dev time", or "drop it all for 5 bucks". You talk about shareholders, good luck convincing them to focus the time on even more DLC for an "old" game, and they'd consider a $5 stuff pack DLC just the same. Full sized DLC require cohesion between a much larger team than something like this would. That adds significant time/people to the project. Plus, if they released it as DLC, they would either:

1) have to deal with the backlash over it not being included in the Season Pass (especially since they jacked the price up to $50), or

2)include it, which means they would only make money from the people who didn't by the Season Pass but would buy this stuff (I don't see that as being a very big overlap).

 

They've already shown they care about public opinion, as evidenced by them pulling the paid mods attempt for Skyrim almost immediately, rather than trying to fix their bad implementation of it.

 

That's actually a good counter to many of your points. Mass DMCAs of legitimate mods: will generate tons of bad publicity. Not releasing/significantly (1+ years) delaying the release of the CK while maintaining the Creation Club for new games: tons of bad publicity. Not releasing DLC for future games while maintaining the Creation Club for them: tons of bad press, and almost certainly significantly lower profit margins.

 

If you still don't believe that bad publicity will affect game publishers:

-Topware disabled the console while trying to sell microtransaction cheats. Result: tons of bad press, and Topware re-enables the console

-TakeTwo DMCAs OpenIV. Result: tons of bad press, they rescind the DMCA against OpenIV (the situation hasn't fully ended, but them pretending to back off only to shut Open IV down again would just reduce trust even more than leaving it taken down, and would keep news about it relevant longer)

 

You (and a lot of others) seem to believe that the situation here is identical to other games that don't have an active modding scene. The laws of supply and demand apply here just as they do elsewhere. If you have a large supply (i.e. free mods), you have to stand out to sell well. If you charge $1-$5 for individual weapons/vehicles/etc... for a game that either has no mods, or is very difficult to use mods with, people will buy them. If they charge $1-$5 for individual armors/weapons/etc..., and people can download tons of free armor/weapon mods that are just as good in quality, those types of items won't sell well. The ones that are actually worth the cost will do well, and that is something that Bethesda will take notice of. And since they already will have spent money on the overpriced mods, they would almost certainly (eventually) reduce the price so they can at least make some money off of them.

 

For it to really "kill" the modding community, they would have to not just stop supporting mods completely, but actively attack free mods. Considering how one of the big selling points for Fallout 4 was modding, and modding was the main reason for console users to buy Skyrim SE, I'm pretty sure that's not happening. That would almost certainly lose them more from lost sales than they would make from the Creation Club-style monetization.

 

Some general comments on the Creation Club:

I personally doubt that what we saw of the "store" is going to be fully representative of what is available (prices or otherwise). The fact that one of the things listed is actually called "Horse Armor" (which appears to be the Giddyup Buttercup pieces stuck to some power armor), I'm assuming it is part mock-up, part joke. It was a really stupid joke, considering the paid mods fiasco, but a joke nonetheless. And I also think one of the reasons they are setting up the system the way they are (i.e. paying for development) is to let them control the prices, which lets them avoid the issue of idiots with an inflated sense of their content's worth.

 

 

 

Some things that I think Bethesda could do to ensure this idea is a success: provide the proper support to modders they accept into the program. Not just for polishing/conflict checking/localization, but give them access to things like the raw texture files, which would allow a mod author to make their content match existing content more easily. The raw textures would let you (as an example) make a pristine version of the Red Rocket, or weather it differently than the vanilla ones. If someone wanted to make a mod that let you repair all the roads in the Commonwealth, they could do so much more easily with access to the same assets as an internal dev can use. Within the limits of their existing license agreements of course, though the way they have it structured makes it possible they would be legally considered independent contractors which should give them a lot more leeway. They could potentially be able to give access to the actual tools they use (rather than the crippled Creation Kit), assuming the contracts allow whatever licensed software their version contains that they had to remove.

 

They could add the necessary hooks/features a mod requires for some feature a mod author comes up with, such as making conditionals work for "Scrap" recipes while still allowing you to scrap an item with a normal recipe regardless of conditionals. shadowslasher410 has been trying for several months now to make it so the mod Scrap Everything lets you control what is scrappable in-game (as has been asked for extensively), and if conditionals actually worked for scrapping that update would have been released hack in early April. Instead she is making a 4th attempt at it, as the first three didn't work due to various issues things the game engine can't do. And some other planned features were scrapped outright, since they are currently impossible.

 

In other words, the best chance Bethesda has of making the Creation Club not only successful but liked, is to truly work together with the modders they accept into the program, rather than just doing the minimum they have to. That will give us mods that were just not possible before the program, which will drive sales of those mods.

 

Gabe (steam) pulled the plug on Paid Mods 1.0. It came as a surprise to Beth.

[Gruffydd]

What singleplayer only games have become "micro-transaction driven"? Microtransactions work in multiplayer games, but I have yet to hear of a single-player game

^^^ This.

 

Microtransactions rake in the cash in multiplayer because people with more money than skill, brains, or time (depending) buy stuff, and the big money is in those who do it to make them better than the other guy (pay to win), and those who obsessively have to have everything, no matter how stupidly high priced.

 

Also, three of the official Fallout 4 DLCs are on sale on Steam right now at $2.99, and a third at $5.99.

That's cheaper than most MMO "micro"transactions. (I have issues calling a $40-$60 mount "micro".)

 

I don't see cheap, limited effect DLC on single-player games (ex: the workshop expansions) having the same effect that microtransactions do in multiplayer games.

[MightyZ0G]

 

What singleplayer only games have become "micro-transaction driven"? Microtransactions work in multiplayer games, but I have yet to hear of a single-player game

^^^ This.

I don't see cheap, limited effect DLC on single-player games (ex: the workshop expansions) having the same effect that microtransactions do in multiplayer games.

 

 

they don't work (yet) because we have the free options of modding and console commands.

 

modding a game and sharing those mods in a community such as this is not a right. it is something that the copyright holders allow.

 

the lack of a modding community will not hurt game sales in any way.

most PC gamers have a console as well. studios could stop making PC ports of games and 99% will just buy the game on console (just like they have to do with exclusives).

[HeyYou]

 

 

What singleplayer only games have become "micro-transaction driven"? Microtransactions work in multiplayer games, but I have yet to hear of a single-player game

^^^ This.

I don't see cheap, limited effect DLC on single-player games (ex: the workshop expansions) having the same effect that microtransactions do in multiplayer games.

 

 

they don't work (yet) because we have the free options of modding and console commands.

 

modding a game and sharing those mods in a community such as this is not a right. it is something that the copyright holders allow.

 

the lack of a modding community will not hurt game sales in any way.

most PC gamers have a console as well. studios could stop making PC ports of games and 99% will just buy the game on console (just like they have to do with exclusives).

 

I don't have a console, and I don't want one. If developers stop making games for PC, then I stop playing games. It really is that simple.

 

That said, I don't see beth shutting down the modding community. There's no percentage in it for them. No mods *might* put a dent in game sales, but, I doubt beth would notice it. The creation club is never going to put out the volume of work the free-modding community does. Remains to be seen if they will even do anything on the scale that the free community does. (I don't expect we will ever see a total conversion from them......)

[pierreluimeme]

Can't stop laughing after i watch this creation club video :