First donation point report delivered, and recent updates to the system

[Dark0ne]

First report available

Towards the end of May, we announced and launched our Donation Point system for mod authors to receive donations directly from Nexus Mods.

 

While we don't send Donation Points until 3 months after the end of the month (e.g. Donation Points generated in May won't be received by users until the beginning of September) we will provide a report at the start of each month to all opted-in users, for the previous month, that shows and explains the DP you should expect to receive in 3 months time, subject to any potential moderation issues. This report will show you the total amount of DP you should receive and then break that down further so you can see exactly what mods have produced what amount of DP. It will also show you the DP you've received from others sharing their DP with you.

 

May's report has been delayed a little while we work on some finishing touches, but it should now be finished and available for viewing for any opted in authors from their wallet page. Hopefully, from next month onwards, this report will be automatically generated and available to you within the first few working days of the month.

 

 

Some figures to reflect on

 

We launched the Donation Point system on the 22nd of May. Within the 10 days the donation system was operational in May, 2,674 mod authors opted in 10,955 of their mods to the Donation Points system.

 

For the first month, Nexus Mods has contributed $6,000 to the Donation Pool, which means there were 6,000,000 DP up for grabs in May. We intend to put $8,000 into the Donation Pool for the coming month.

 

Between the 10,955 files that were opted in, there were 5,289,062 unique downloads, which means each unique download in the month of May will be worth ~1.13 DP.

 

Of the 2,674 mod authors who have opted in, 129 will receive 10,000 DP ($10) or more, 255 will receive $5 or more and 709 mod authors will receive 1,000 DP ($1) or more.

 

Bethesda owned games accounted for 93% of the Donation Points distribution, despite the fact total download stats (and not just opted in stats) show more of an 85/15 split for downloads between Bethesda and non-Bethesda games on Nexus Mods. This disparity is simply because not as many mod authors from other games have opted in their mods.

 

While Bethesda games have been our bread and butter for almost 17 years, I am very keen to foster the entire PC modding community and not just Bethesda games. I am going to reflect on what we can do to balance that out a little and ensure games other than Bethesda games receive an adequate amount of donation funding that is more reflective of their worth both to users of the site, and to Nexus Mods, in the interests of encouraging our community past just Bethesda games. More than likely, this is going to mean simply creating a separate, and much smaller top-up pool for non-Bethesda games that takes nothing away from the main pool (e.g. an additional $500 set aside each month for non-Bethesda games). Ergo costing us a bit more, but I believe we can stretch to it so we do a little better by our non-Bethesda mod authors as well.

 

I'll have a think about it, review the next couple of month's figures, and see what I can do on that front.

 

 

Share directly with charities no matter how much you receive

 

Before the first Donation Points get delivered in September we'll be making some changes to our DP store (and adding more items to it). However, in the meantime, we've made a rather big change to the opt-in system.

 

You can now directly donate some (or all) of your DP, on a per-file basis, to one or more of the charities we have selected. At the end of each month, we'll tally up the Donation Points each charity has received and then donate the dollar equivalent to that charity. We'll likely open up these stats somewhere on the site so everyone can see how much is getting donated to charity.

 

The idea here is that there are going to be a not insignificant percentage of mod authors who only receive a small number of unique downloads each month and who might never actually reach the $10 minimum payout we have on the store. However, we can make the DP these less popular files receive still have some significance by allowing them to be pooled together for a number of good causes.

 

We'll continue to improve on this and we will change the charity system in our store so you can donate any number of DP, starting from just 1 DP, instead of having to wait until you have 10,000 DP. Thus, even if you're not sharing your DP directly with charities and you don't want to give 10,000 DP, you can give whatever you can or want and it will still make a difference when pooled with everyone else's donated DP. Donated Donation Points. Classic.

 

 

Fixes to permissions and you can now see what mods are opted in

 

We have now added some additional text to the "Permissions and credits" section of a mod page that will tell you whether a mod has opted into the Donation Points system. Mod authors need to be able to see and know if other mod authors have opted mods into the system to ensure any permissions or rights issues are being kept to and followed as necessary. This is necessary for us, and other mod authors, to properly moderate the system and is therefore non-negotiable. We will not remove this notification and there is no option to do so on your end.

 

A few mod authors reported some oddities with the opt-in permissions that you can set for allowing the use of DP, and that should now be cleared up and a bit more logical. Let us know if it still needs some tweaking.

[JosephRussell]

Great stuff - thanks for making all this data available! :)

[Jinxxed0]

I'm really liking this new system and am glad you've added it. I create and sell digital stuff for Second Life which (Second life currency is then converted to real life money). The process of creating stuff for that is very similar to modding, so I'll sometimes find myself making stuff for that instead of TES or Fallout. So it's a nice little incentive to mod more without having to directly mod for money because I personally believe that all mods should be free (not knocking anyone, just a personal preference).

 

With that said though, i'm also really glad you've added charity options. Which brings me to a request (not sure if this is the right place to do it), but it would be really cool if you could add more. Cancer research is something that's very important to me and I think that should be an option along with other and general disease research. Children's hospitals would be great as well. Maybe an effective group that helps starving people in poverty stricken areas. Just throwing some ideas out there. I guess you wouldn't want to add too many because it would stretch the contributions too thin...but maybe a system where if DP just sits there for a over year and is never spent, it automatically goes to random charities.

 

Imagine the amount of accounts that will be getting a percentage of DP from mods even though those authors are long gone, never to return. I used to do data entry for a site that gave out points for various tasks and so many users never actually used their points that ended up just sitting there. At least 10-20% never actually redeemed the card they received (cards like playstation cash, xbox points, runescape membership, etc). You'll find out quickly (though I'm 100% sure you know) the behavior of users on websites make no sense most of the time and you'll see a good bit of people who will have a lot of points and just never do stuff with them for years, so the auto donation for charity is a brilliant idea I think. I imagine you'll see other bizarre stuff as well the longer this system is in place. just thinking about takes me back to the early 2010's.

[DtheHun]

That side pool would raise the value of the scarce non-Bethesda downloads significantly. I like it! Edited June 13, 2018 by DtheHun

[tonycubed2]

Awesome ideas and incentives! Love the way you think and share. I do agree please be open to,adding more non profits. I think we all have our favorites legit causes due to many reasons, such as sick loved ones.

 

The reports are amazing, with my crazy number of mods I can see at a glance what users care about. Very very helpful.

[Valyn81]

Cool. Thank for the update.

 

@Nexusmods I play lots of the games you have on here but only Bethesda has made modding easy by providing the Creation Kit. While games like 7D2D, The Witcher, etc require you to learn much more time intensive and complicated ways of modding their games.

- If the other games had mod authors as abundant as Bethesda, they would have just as much going toward them. I do not see why you should have to 'segregate' the games by Studio/popularity. It is not Bethesda's fault that they have several MAJOR title games (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, Doom) millions of people love and want to mod. Their games give us the tools to make mods for them, unlike other game devs that just give you the option to mod if you can figure out how.

- Also Many of the game like Terraria, Sims, etc, have direct mod downloading from steam via their workshop, so almost no one wants to take the time to upload the mods on nexus, much less download them from nexus.

- Starwars Knights: KotR and KotR 2 has a dedicated modding community with thousands of mods already, few MA still actively work on mods for that game and few are willing to moving their mods to nexus just to get points.

- Sims: Well that is a series of games that has another modding community of its own.

 

You have hundreds of games, some very old, with a small mod base. Some popular but full of mostly cosmetic mods. I am sorry to say; but, Bethesda games seem to be the majority of your mod base simply because NEXUS has ALWAYS been the go to place for Bethesda games. And the fact that you allow 'adult' mods, which was not always the case, even Lovers lab is not as popular as nexus.

 

In the end, I guess it does not matter. We make mods because we like doing it, so i guess the points being segregated by game studio does not really matter

[gorshkov]

Comment on the monthly report .... When you issue it, you know the number of DPs involved (obviously), but you ALSO know how much was in the pool. We don't.

 

What about including the monitary value as well? eg, 997 dp($1.12 US) or something similar, so I know if I at least have a timmy''s in my future?

[astrathefluffyderg]

gotta say love the site for it's ease of use compared to steam. i had a little trouble getting use to the current layout and i am making my own mod that i intend to keep as a nexus exclusive and Skyrim;LE exclusive as i have no intentions of getting special edition any time ever because of the creation club and other things that they did. any future mods i make after the one i am slowly making will have the same stipulation as this mod i am making. if it comes down to it i will keep skyrim LE alive if i have to. i may use the rewards system eventually, but i don't know yet.

[JosephRussell]

In response to post #60940507.

gorshkov wrote: Comment on the monthly report .... When you issue it, you know the number of DPs involved (obviously), but you ALSO know how much was in the pool. We don't.

What about including the monitary value as well? eg, 997 dp($1.12 US) or something similar, so I know if I at least have a timmy''s in my future?

1000 dp is always equal to a dollar :) So when they put $6000 in for May, that resulted in 6 million dp being distributed. Next month it'll be $8000, plus whatever they raise from the Patreon! Edited June 13, 2018 by Treacleman

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #60940507. #60941607 is also a reply to the same post.

gorshkov wrote: Comment on the monthly report .... When you issue it, you know the number of DPs involved (obviously), but you ALSO know how much was in the pool. We don't.

What about including the monitary value as well? eg, 997 dp($1.12 US) or something similar, so I know if I at least have a timmy''s in my future?

Treacleman wrote: 1000 dp is always equal to a dollar :) So when they put $6000 in for May, that resulted in 6 million dp being distributed. Next month it'll be $8000, plus whatever they raise from the Patreon!

We've issued it. That's what the point of this news post is; to let people know we've issued the report for May and to provide some stats and information based off of it.