Donation Points Stats and No Ads for Mod Authors

[MsDarmeris]

i love u senpai u litterally the best company i've been living on and off on the nexus since 2008 <3

[ThatSpartacusGuy]

I am already premium so I never noticed that a No Ads for Mod Authors thing was implemented.

It is WE who should be thanking you, Nexus, not the other way around.

Without a common place for us to share our work, most of us probably wouldn't have tried becoming authors in the first place.

 

Thank YOU, Nexus Staff.

[Thumblesteen]

This is laughable, you didn't make the donation points to give something back to us. We had paypal links, and we got decent money. You made the donation points system for the same reason anyone invents a credit scheme - you wanted a cut of money that didn't belong to you.

[RangerDulann]

In response to post #74406048.

Thumblesteen wrote: This is laughable, you didn't make the donation points to give something back to us. We had paypal links, and we got decent money. You made the donation points system for the same reason anyone invents a credit scheme - you wanted a cut of money that didn't belong to you.

Decent money? Maybe 0,1% of the modders. I've been active since 2014, with 49 mods and never received 1 donation.
I think the DP is very useful. We get something back for our hard work. Other than eternal gratitude, which is also nice ofc.
Edited October 26, 2019 by RangerDulann

[DaedalusMachina007]

In response to post #74126918. #74127723 is also a reply to the same post.

DaedalusMachina007 wrote: My 'Daedalus Mega ModPak' is approaching ~4000 combined total downloads but I received no such ad-free notification. Oh whelp. :P

Pickysaurus wrote: That's because you already had the notice. It has a timestamp of 05 Apr 2019, 3:05PM (GMT+1) :)

Just saw this reply, tyvm for checking.
My personal belief is that modding and modders in general are modifying copyrighted material, so monetization of any of that is always a very tricky balancing act. Unlike other people I'm super happy to have an alternative to PayPal links due to my severe dislike of PayPal as a company that tends to scam creators.

I greatly appreciate Nexus hosting our mods on a much better site than the alternatives. I also greatly appreciate Nexus being more than just 'the place with Bethesda mods' especially in light of the continuing dumpster-fire that is Fallout 76 & the associated hemisphere around it..

The bad PR that Bethesda gets does not seem to have detrimentally affected the mods here. I would only like to strongly request ONE feature be added to the site if it isn't here already: Please provide a prominent notification if a mod has been deleted rather than having the page just redirect to main site or 404 or something. The notification page can remain for like 10 seconds before it auto redirects to the main home page if you like. If this is already in place then that's awesome.

Best way to reach me btw is via the Nexus Mods discord. I don't login to the main site as often ;)

[acidzebra]

This is laughable, you didn't make the donation points to give something back to us. We had paypal links, and we got decent money. You made the donation points system for the same reason anyone invents a credit scheme - you wanted a cut of money that didn't belong to you.

 

Um, DP are based on downloads, those don't magically turn into money. The Nexus actively donates money to it.

Also, if you were making money on the paypal links (paypal takes a cut btw) that's great, but I don't think that was a very common experience.

[Thumblesteen]

In response to post #74406048. #74411398 is also a reply to the same post.

Thumblesteen wrote: This is laughable, you didn't make the donation points to give something back to us. We had paypal links, and we got decent money. You made the donation points system for the same reason anyone invents a credit scheme - you wanted a cut of money that didn't belong to you.

RangerDulann wrote: Decent money? Maybe 0,1% of the modders. I've been active since 2014, with 49 mods and never received 1 donation.
I think the DP is very useful. We get something back for our hard work. Other than eternal gratitude, which is also nice ofc.

That's called social conditioning, you're putting the cart before the horse. The reason we don't get donations anymore is because people assume the donation points system is working. Reality is, we generate thousands of pounds in ad revenue to this site, spend hours, days, even years keeping this place running, and they give us what? An Amazon voucher? This is a PR move, a platitude. It's just watered down scrip. Hardly a new idea, and hardly honest.

EDIT:

Not to mention that prior to this, people made mods because they liked it. Since then we've gotten for-profit modding, spearheaded by one DDProductions. Who, instead of helping modders, kept trade secrets and insulted people, and what did the moderators do? They let him get away with it for ages because of some excuse of ''meritocracy.'' In truth, it was about the ad revenue. That was the first corruption scandal, and there's many to come for as long as the same incentive and reward is given for doing it. Edited October 28, 2019 by Thumblesteen

[steve40]

 

In response to post #74406048. #74411398 is also a reply to the same post.

 

 

 

Thumblesteen wrote: This is laughable, you didn't make the donation points to give something back to us. We had paypal links, and we got decent money. You made the donation points system for the same reason anyone invents a credit scheme - you wanted a cut of money that didn't belong to you.

RangerDulann wrote: Decent money? Maybe 0,1% of the modders. I've been active since 2014, with 49 mods and never received 1 donation.

I think the DP is very useful. We get something back for our hard work. Other than eternal gratitude, which is also nice ofc.

That's called social conditioning, you're putting the cart before the horse. The reason we don't get donations anymore is because people assume the donation points system is working. Reality is, we generate thousands of pounds in ad revenue to this site, spend hours, days, even years keeping this place running, and they give us what? An Amazon voucher? This is a PR move, a platitude. It's just watered down scrip. Hardly a new idea, and hardly honest.

 

EDIT:

 

Not to mention that prior to this, people made mods because they liked it. Since then we've gotten for-profit modding, spearheaded by one DDProductions. Who, instead of helping modders, kept trade secrets and insulted people, and what did the moderators do? They let him get away with it for ages because of some excuse of ''meritocracy.'' In truth, it was about the ad revenue. That was the first corruption scandal, and there's many to come for as long as the same incentive and reward is given for doing it.

 

 

No, it's called slander, and is completely unsubstantiated and factually wrong.

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #74406048. #74411398, #74469733 are all replies on the same post.

Thumblesteen wrote: This is laughable, you didn't make the donation points to give something back to us. We had paypal links, and we got decent money. You made the donation points system for the same reason anyone invents a credit scheme - you wanted a cut of money that didn't belong to you.

RangerDulann wrote: Decent money? Maybe 0,1% of the modders. I've been active since 2014, with 49 mods and never received 1 donation.
I think the DP is very useful. We get something back for our hard work. Other than eternal gratitude, which is also nice ofc.

Thumblesteen wrote: That's called social conditioning, you're putting the cart before the horse. The reason we don't get donations anymore is because people assume the donation points system is working. Reality is, we generate thousands of pounds in ad revenue to this site, spend hours, days, even years keeping this place running, and they give us what? An Amazon voucher? This is a PR move, a platitude. It's just watered down scrip. Hardly a new idea, and hardly honest.

EDIT:

Not to mention that prior to this, people made mods because they liked it. Since then we've gotten for-profit modding, spearheaded by one DDProductions. Who, instead of helping modders, kept trade secrets and insulted people, and what did the moderators do? They let him get away with it for ages because of some excuse of ''meritocracy.'' In truth, it was about the ad revenue. That was the first corruption scandal, and there's many to come for as long as the same incentive and reward is given for doing it.

Can you explain how the DP system is about taking "a cut of the money" when it's actually us putting money into a system that didn't originally exist, where we take no money at all? It doesn't make any sense, except for obvious tinfoil hattery.

If this is how you really feel, why are you using Nexus Mods at all?

We've been tracking user Pay Pal donations to mod authors since February 2018, exactly for this reason - so we could ensure our system was not affecting the donations or was providing a net positive experience.

February 2018 - October 2018: $42,673.26 donated
February 2019 - October 2019: $37,911.81 donated

So, we've seen a $4761.45 drop in direct donations to mod authors over the same time frame, however, during that time, Nexus Mods gave out the following in DP rewards:

February 2018 - October 2018: $41,587.55
February 2019 - October 2019: $75,442.09

Meaning that mod authors were better off by $29,093.09 this year compared to the same period last year, and better off by $156,000 over the past 2 years compared to when there was no DP system.

If this is honestly how you truly feel about the DP system and/or our actions then I will happily turn it off for you, or better yet, would fully recommend you remove your mods from the site. I'd rather not be paying someone money now, or in the future, who is clearly so indignant towards how we operate.

The choice is yours, I guess. Edited October 29, 2019 by Dark0ne

[FrankFamily]

To me, personally, the DP system is way better than direct donations. I've done some numbers for my period of feb2019-oct2019:

> I've received 4 times as much through DP than direct donations, both because the "pie" to share is larger and because the percentage I've got of that pie (going from the numbers provided by Dark0ne above for that period) is twice as large for DP, that's naturally going to change for other authors. I suppose my mods are not very game-changing so while people use them they are not as likely to donate to me personally as to other authors.

> Since each payment is for a month and therefore, bigger, the average cut paypal gets drops by 30% percent. A lot of the individual donations I get are 5 dollars or lower and in those Paypal is a bit extreme, getting as much as 20% of the transaction and everything counts.

> DP is a lot more stable, individual donations vary a lot month to month, so it's harder to predict. Stability is always good. For example I've found that direct donations are heavily affected by releases I make while downloads and therefore DPs remain at a similar level even I haven't released anything in a while.

 

So, conclusion, even if DPs were to eventually eat all the individual donations and all users that now donate to individual authors donated to the mod author patreon fund instead, I don't think that would be bad for authors. Presumably the DP pool would grow if more people donate the to that, in addition to possible increases of the amount the Nexus puts in it and there's still the 2º and 3º points I've mentioned. Receiving the money monthly is simply better. And, of course, what is happening is that it isn't replacing, it's in addition to direct donations. I, personally, haven't noticed a significant drop in those from before DPs were implemented.

Edited October 29, 2019 by FrankFamily