Mod Mountain - A Modern Addon and Script Marketplace [Beta Launch] - Developers

Mod Mountain is an innovative and modern marketplace where addons can be bought and sold. You can check it out at [url]https://modmountain.com[/url] but I suggest you read some more of this post before you do so. [B]Why another addon marketplace? There's tons already![/B] I decided to create Mod Mountain after being fed up with the alternative. Although I never published any addons, I was repeatedly contacted by server owners who bought addons that were broken. Now, when I say broken, I don't mean "X didn't work". We're talking segfaults-on-startup levels of brokenness. Contacting the developer rarely yielded any help and they came to me so I could patch them up. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it happened once or twice; but unfortunately I patched over 40 different addons, some of them top sellers. My frustration with the current paid addon community led to me designing and creating a marketplace that encouraged high quality content. That marketplace is Mod Mountain. [B]What sets Mod Mountain apart from the competition?[/B] We're just launching into Beta today (June 5th, 2015) but we still have a fair number of unique features available. Here's a quick list: - Centralized payments (see below). - Cheaper developer fee ($10/monthly) and you don't pay it if you don't make a sale during that month. - Featured addons. If we think your addon is super cool we'll feature it on the homepage for everyone to see! - Coupons. Developers can add coupons to their addons and track their usage. - Free addons, supported by donations (no developer fee charged). - Friendly chat community, based on top of Slack. Just add your email to your profile to get an invitation. - Much more that I'm forgetting and plenty in the development pipe. [B]What are centralized payments?[/B] Rather than having customers pay to your PayPal account directly, customers will instead pay Mod Mountain which then pays you. By centralizing payments we are able to support tons of different payment methods and many ways to withdraw money. Centralization also removes much of the risk off of developers and lowers to the barrier of entry for those who cannot sign up for certain services, such as PayPal. We understand that most developers are used to decentralized payments and might be worried about trying a new system. We promise to hold your hand (in a good way!) and help you through this new system, ensuring a smooth experience. [B]What about jobs?[/B] Some of you might be wondering if we offer "jobs" and the short answer is that we do not. The long answer is that the current state of job posting is pretty awful and we want to make sure that we do it right the first time. As such we've held back from implementing jobs until we get a good look at exactly what people want out of them. This is the part where your input is extremely important, so expect lots of questions and maybe even a survey related to jobs. [B]How can I get started?[/B] Head to [url]https://modmountain.com/login[/url] to create your account, then go to the addons tab on your profile and submit your first addon. We'll get in touch with you to help make sure that it's up to our standards and ready for public eyes. We're also willing to help those who aren't native English speakers with their spelling and grammar. Once you're done uploading your first addon, we suggest you take a look at [url]https://modmountain.com/codeofconduct[/url], our Developer Code of Conduct. All developers are required to abide by these simple rules, to ensure that the quality of Mod Mountain stays as high as possible. If you have any issues with the CoC please feel free to bring them up. [B]Anything else?[/B] - Our issue tracker is located at [url]https://github.com/sirsavary/modmountain-issues/issues[/url] and exceptionally helpful users may be rewarded with bug bounties. - If for some reason Slack is giving you difficulties, let me know and I'll invite you manually. [DEL]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/DEL] [B]Some screenshots for those who don't want to click through[/B] Homepage, with no featured addons currently [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/7cKKUb5.jpg[/IMG] Users page [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Z474BNM.jpg[/IMG] More to come as people upload things :) [DEL]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/DEL] [B]Planned Features:[/B] - Payment by Bitcoin and PayPal (June) - Rich addon statistics (June) - Alma, the automated addon scanner (June) - Gamification (June) - Job posting (July) - Secret stuff we want to keep hidden from competitors (June, July, and August)

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ScriptFodder/CoderHire competitors have always failed because there is no pertinent reason to switch. SF has treated its monopoly with grace and equality. Until that changes, SF will always hold a majority. I will give you credit for the alliteration in your name, though: it's appealing to say.

Can we stop with the monetization of Garry's Mod already. Scriptfodder is fine enough. This is the like, fourth Coderhire reincarnate. Your scrolling is broken on the main page as well. Also, "centralized payments" sounds sketchy as fuck. You have no reputation in the community, and you expect people to allow you to handle their transactions. It's a nice gesture, but really, we don't need it.

[QUOTE=StonedPenguin;47889014]You've failed before you've even started. If even you can get over the hurtle of not being well known you've got a lot of work to do to have anything even remotely better then ScriptFodder. Let alone something good enough to make people want to switch.[/QUOTE] Google wasn't the first search engine and Facebook wasn't the first social network. There's absolutely zero risk to trying Mod Mountain -- it's completely free to until you make a sale. What's stopping you from giving it a shot? [QUOTE=code_gs;47889015]ScriptFodder/CoderHire competitors have always failed because there is no pertinent reason to switch. SF has treated its monopoly with grace and equality. Until that changes, SF will always hold a majority. I will give you credit for the alliteration in your name, though: it's appealing to say.[/QUOTE] Thank you for the compliment. See above for the rest of your comment. [QUOTE=Lolcats;47889018]Can we stop with the monetization of Garry's Mod already. Scriptfodder is fine enough. This is the like, fourth Coderhire reincarnate. Your scrolling is broken on the main page as well. Also, "centralized payments" sounds sketchy as fuck. You have no reputation in the community, and you expect people to allow you to handle their transactions. It's a nice gesture, but really, we don't need it.[/QUOTE] Monetization isn't going to stop, not for Garry's Mod or any other game. Might as well make it better rather than trying to fight it. Can you give me what browser and operating system you're using? I'd like to investigate the scrolling issue. I'm aware that people will be afraid to try centralized payments, after all I don't have a big reputation around here. I'm hoping to alleviate this by getting good words out from the first people that try things and by holding live coding / QA sessions over something like Twitch.

[QUOTE=SirSavary;47889053] Can you give me what browser and operating system you're using? I'd like to investigate the scrolling issue. [/QUOTE] Windows 8.1, Chrome, 1920x1080 resolution. Scrolling to the very bottom results in an immediate bounce upwards so I can't see your bottom bar. I'm not here to debate, so I'm not going to bother with the rest. I'm sure you'll catch enough flak around here from the other more regulars. Also, going to anyone's profile results in you being "signed in" as them. For example [t]http://files.catbox.moe/2015-06-05_21-16-28.png[/t] None of the buttons for Dashboard or Staff work, you need to be properly authed by Steam login.

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[QUOTE=Lolcats;47889079]Windows 8.1, Chrome, 1920x1080 resolution. Scrolling to the very bottom results in an immediate bounce upwards so I can't see your bottom bar. I'm not here to debate, so I'm not going to bother with the rest. I'm sure you'll catch enough flak around here from the other more regulars. Also, going to anyone's profile results in you being "signed in" as them. For example [t]http://files.catbox.moe/2015-06-05_21-16-28.png[/t] None of the buttons for Dashboard or Staff work, you need to be properly authed by Steam login.[/QUOTE] Thanks for the reports, both have been patched. [QUOTE=StonedPenguin;47889099]No one uses it, no one will use it, I don't want to send you my money and your rules are laughable.[/QUOTE] So be it. I hope that in the future I will be able to change your mind and convince you otherwise.

My concern is that you seem to want to take on the world. You want to be a middle man with your centralized payments in order to apparently remove some risk for the end-user. While that's reasonably respectable, I am most worried with your code of conduct ending with "I will always contact Mod Mountain when I need assistance and will never take the law into my own hands". I don't know you, but at a glance you seem to want to help people, but you don't understand that you may be helping [I]too[/I] much. There's a reason why CH shut down. If you really want to put more responsibility on yourself, you better make sure you can handle it.

[QUOTE=LegoGuy;47889128]My concern is that you seem to want to take on the world. You want to be a middle man with your centralized payments in order to apparently remove some risk for the end-user. While that's reasonably respectable, I am most worried with your code of conduct ending with "I will always contact Mod Mountain when I need assistance and will never take the law into my own hands". I don't know you, but at a glance you seem to want to help people, but you don't understand that you may be helping [I]too[/I] much. There's a reason why CH shut down. If you really want to put more responsibility on yourself, you better make sure you can handle it.[/QUOTE] I'm going to have to rephrase that last line. It was intended to be "if a situation with a customer becomes something that I cannot handle, I will inform Mod Mountain so they can take over". I'm not a fan of developers posting potentially sensitive user information everywhere out of spite, so I want to make sure they know that there's someone up top that's willing to help them out. As for responsibility, I can't reveal a ton of the work I used to do but all of it was crypto currency related (think Bitcoin). I've managed pools and online wallets, have worked with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of coins before, and even experienced $14,000 USD paying out before my eyes thanks to a bug in an open source pool. I've received death threats, a metric ton of pizza I didn't order, the whole stretch. It's not so much that I want to be the all powerful middleman so much as I know what it's like to want to share your creations with the world and make a bit of money, but be held back by things that are out of your control. Right now things are very simple and I understand that it's going to take time to win over developers, players, and server owners. Fortunately I have plenty of time and I look forward to the day that Mod Mountain is an accepted and trusted alternative.

Alright. Now let's look at this from a more cynical perspective. You said you have dealt with a lot of crypto currency in the past and you have experienced shit, seen the good, bad and ugly and that's cool. I believe you, but in all honesty, all I see is a bunch of text on a screen. The way you're implementing your services, in my opinion, takes more away from the seller than it potentially gives to the end-user. I understand that you want to provide solutions to your problems that weren't available to you at the time, but I am not 100% sure if this is how we should go about it. Anything centralized is sketchy to me.

Another one of these sites?

I do like the ability to donate to free stuff, though. [editline]6th June 2015[/editline] AUTOMERGE

Is it Saturday already? [editline]6th June 2015[/editline] How long does it take to have an addon approved on your site?

[QUOTE=LegoGuy;47889323]Alright. Now let's look at this from a more cynical perspective. You said you have dealt with a lot of crypto currency in the past and you have experienced shit, seen the good, bad and ugly and that's cool. I believe you, but in all honesty, all I see is a bunch of text on a screen. The way you're implementing your services, in my opinion, takes more away from the seller than it potentially gives to the end-user. I understand that you want to provide solutions to your problems that weren't available to you at the time, but I am not 100% sure if this is how we should go about it. Anything centralized is sketchy to me.[/QUOTE] Well, for starters, customers have more payment options. That's a huge plus in my opinion. You've got a lot more ways to bring in revenue. As for payouts, you've got more options there. Right now I'm only offering withdrawals through PayPal but once again, there's plenty of options open for those who need them. I'd like to add direct deposit and Bitcoin in the future. Now, as for a negative, you have to do everything through Mod Mountain. This can be good and bad. If you aren't able to open up a PayPal account, this is good. If you have trust issues, this is bad. In the future I will investigate more options. Something I'm considering is defaulting users to centralized payments but allowing developers to choose "direct payments". They'd have to plug in their own PayPal, or Stripe, or Bitcoin, whatever. I'll do more investigating and see how feasible this is but it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility. [QUOTE=James xX;47889346]Is it Saturday already? [editline]6th June 2015[/editline] How long does it take to have an addon approved on your site?[/QUOTE] Hey James, I was busy uploading Emoji to Slack but I'll review your addon right now. I'm working on an automated scanner that grades addons, once that is done reviewing will be much faster. Edit: moved photo down here [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/MNycRQt.jpg[/IMG] Edit 2: I've been rused [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/P3I1xCs.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=SirSavary;47889451]Right now I'm only offering withdrawals through PayPal[/QUOTE] The french will LOVE this site.

[QUOTE=Exploderguy;47889478]The french will LOVE this site.[/QUOTE] Funny enough, I'm actually a quarter French (but don't speak the language). Withdrawals will be handled very carefully to prevent shenanigans.

There are probably less than 5 addons for sale in the entirety of Garry's Mod's community that can abide by your rules.

I tested your website. It's very long to load, and when you try to get on register page I get Connection Timed Out from Google Chrome. I don't know what's happening on your website but anyway it's not working well... EDIT : I also don't like to pay for selling an addon so...

The whole payment thing has put me off, why should we trust our money with you, and how do we know that you're not taking cuts of our sales? also, if you got 1000's of users how would you handle all of the withdraw requests?

[QUOTE=SirSavary;47889053]Google wasn't the first search engine and Facebook wasn't the first social network. There's absolutely zero risk to trying Mod Mountain -- it's completely free to until you make a sale. What's stopping you from giving it a shot?[/QUOTE] ScriptFodder also wasn't first, yet it's most succesful. [QUOTE=SirSavary;47889451]Well, for starters, customers have more payment options. That's a huge plus in my opinion. You've got a lot more ways to bring in revenue.[/QUOTE] And a lot more ways to charge back.

Centralized payments sound pretty easy to abuse...

You know, kudos to a design that isn't just Coderhire/ScriptFodder with a different colour like almost every other script selling site we've had so far However, unless you have coders who are well known and active willing to contribute then you aren't going to have much to offer to customers in the first place and may struggle to take off

[QUOTE=Willox;47889860]There are probably less than 5 addons for sale in the entirety of Garry's Mod's community that can abide by your rules.[/QUOTE] I'm aware that most developers will have a hard time with it but I'm not worried all that much. There's plenty of workshop creators that want a platform to make money from where they don't lose 75% of sales. [QUOTE=Yuri6037;47889895]I tested your website. It's very long to load, and when you try to get on register page I get Connection Timed Out from Google Chrome. I don't know what's happening on your website but anyway it's not working well... EDIT : I also don't like to pay for selling an addon so...[/QUOTE] We're pushing a patch for the users page shortly. We're investigating site slowness but New Relic is having some issues with our web transactions and is recording incorrect data. Once we get that sorted out we'll be able to fix things up. As for your edit, don't you already pay to sell addons? [QUOTE=AIX-Who;47890850]The whole payment thing has put me off, why should we trust our money with you, and how do we know that you're not taking cuts of our sales? also, if you got 1000's of users how would you handle all of the withdraw requests?[/QUOTE] You can figure out exactly where your money is going by looking at the finances page on the dashboard. If your account balance is lower than it should be, shoot us a ticket and we'll figure out why. Very large quantities of withdrawal requests can still be handled. The first request requires manual approval so we can figure out who's trying to make the withdrawal, if they are who they say they are, etc etc. [QUOTE=Netheous;47890915]ScriptFodder also wasn't first, yet it's most succesful. And a lot more ways to charge back. Please, just stop wasting your time trying to compete with ScriptFodder because nothing good can come out of it, you'll only get users that got banned on SF. Why would anyone buy a sub on a website where there are 200 users out of which 190 are known leakers/scammers. I am not trying to be offensive in here just because I am a moderator of SF, but this is getting ridiculous... it's like reinventing the wheel again.[/QUOTE] MySpace wasn't first and had many years of success but was eventually overtaken by Facebook. More ways to pay means more avenues to charge back, sure but it's not a very strong argument. As the total number of paying users goes up, so will the total number of chargebacks and disputes. It doesn't matter if it's 10,000 users across PayPal only or 1,000 users using 1 of 10 different payment methods each, the number of chargebacks will be around the same. Besides, Credit Cards and PayPal are two of the only types to really allow any form of charge disputing. Bitcoin doesn't have this issue, for example. [QUOTE=A Fghtr Pilot;47890940]Centralized payments sound pretty easy to abuse...[/QUOTE] Sure, we could definitely abuse things and make a quick buck by scamming our users. But what does that do in the long run? Destroys my reputation and cuts off any future revenue. Let's not even get into the legality of keeping everyone's money. [QUOTE=NiandraLades;47890995]You know, kudos to a design that isn't just Coderhire/ScriptFodder with a different colour like almost every other script selling site we've had so far However, unless you have coders who are well known and active willing to contribute then you aren't going to have much to offer to customers in the first place and may struggle to take off[/QUOTE] Thank you. We intentionally paid very little attention to competitors to try and make our site as unique as possible. We're currently targeting developers from the Workshop and other communities. It will be hard to convince existing sellers to switch but it won't take much to attract people who aren't currently making any revenue. ~~~~~~~~ When we were designing Mod Mountain, we figured that everyone would be happy with centralized payments. Unfortunately we are wrong and many people want to be in charge of their own payments, disputes, and cash flow. As such we are currently working on implementing opt-in decentralized payments, just like most people are used to. There will be no extra fee for payment decentralization and you will retain all of the other features that centralized users have, other than payment related things of course. Expect this update within the next 48 hours. We're taking time to make sure we do things right.

This is just a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of ScriptFodder. Scripting marketplaces had been attempted before CoderHire, the only reason CoderHire succeeded because it was done professionally and had a degree of trust because it was ran by a respected member of the community. Now that the market is taken, it's going to be nigh-impossible for anybody to usurp Script Fodder's position. Will people please just accept that you missed your opportunity, you're a year or so late for this. I feel like nobody is learning from the 4-5 previous attempts to compete with Coder Hire and Script Fodder. People have been told time and time again by members of Facepunch that it won't work, it's like you're not even reading the threads of previous attempts. I tried to be somewhat optimistic with previous threads like this, but it's just getting borderline rediculous. You are wasting your time, move on, find another project instead of attempting to start this cash grab. Use your creativity. When ScriptFodder and Coderhire launched, they had no competitors, and the entirety of the marketable server owners jumped onto their website. A developer would be safe knowing that a subscription to ScriptFodder would present them to around 99% of the market, whereas any subscription to your site would give them access to less than 1% of the market. It just doesn't add up. You haven't got the momentum to drive enough users to your website to make it financially viable, in any other situation you'd be called crazy for trying to compete with anybody who held more than 50% of the market sector. As for claiming your developers will come from the workshop, this doesn't make any sense. Any developers who would be willing to join your website would also be willing to join Script Fodder. I know I'm being an arsehole, but you need to be realistic, this project will not work. Failures only make you stronger if you have something to learn, in this case, it can already be learnt without going through the time and effort of setting up this website.

[QUOTE=KillerLUA;47894826]This is just a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of ScriptFodder. Scripting marketplaces had been attempted before CoderHire, the only reason CoderHire succeeded because it was done professionally and had a degree of trust because it was ran by a respected member of the community. Now that the market is taken, it's going to be nigh-impossible for anybody to usurp Script Fodder's position. Will people please just accept that you missed your opportunity, you're a year or so late for this. I feel like nobody is learning from the 4-5 previous attempts to compete with Coder Hire and Script Fodder. People have been told time and time again by members of Facepunch that it won't work, it's like you're not even reading the threads of previous attempts. I tried to be somewhat optimistic with previous threads like this, but it's just getting borderline rediculous. You are wasting your time, move on, find another project instead of attempting to start this cash grab. Use your creativity. When ScriptFodder and Coderhire launched, they had no competitors, and the entirety of the marketable server owners jumped onto their website. A developer would be safe knowing that a subscription to ScriptFodder would present them to around 99% of the market, whereas any subscription to your site would give them access to less than 1% of the market. It just doesn't add up. You haven't got the momentum to drive enough users to your website to make it financially viable, in any other situation you'd be called crazy for trying to compete with anybody who held more than 50% of the market sector. As for claiming your developers will come from the workshop, this doesn't make any sense. Any developers who would be willing to join your website would also be willing to join Script Fodder. I know I'm being an arsehole, but you need to be realistic, this project will not work. Failures only make you stronger if you have something to learn, in this case, it can already be learnt without going through the time and effort of setting up this website.[/QUOTE] I'm not looking to cash in on the success of Scriptfodder, just creating another project to bolster my portfolio. I'm aware of the reasons why some sites have succeeded and why others have failed. I keep a close watch on the threads for all my of our competitors. Most of the Workshop creators we surveyed haven't signed up to an existing marketplace because they do not want to pay a monthly fee. They would prefer to have a percentage of their sales taken instead. If you believe that Mod Mountain will not work, that's fair. We have plenty of people interested from other communities and are working on bringing several unique features to the market that no one else is offering at the current time.

What I don't get is the fact you still have people posting here about how you might as well quit even though 5 people before them have already posted such a thing, people need to stop posting the same shit over and over again kinda feeling sick reading what feels like the same posts on this thread. This is yes another site however it does look different and rather then saying the same stuff you said on other site threads or even same the same thing the person before said just don't post... Ok so even though there has been a couple of sites before yours most seem to die out when they get loads of posts from people above (some clearly loving sf) how they should just give up and bla bla bla, that or they get exploited and most the time the exploiter is a dick and rather the just pms you they seem to go all big headed on your thread. Hopefully these things don't hold you back and you carry this site on, it seems it could have some potential it has its own design which is nice. I may start my addon back up again and upload it to the site just to give it a go before I make up my mind on your site but like I said the presentation is nice and hopefully it can become a real competitor. Also @StonedPenguin your posts are totally see you next Tuesday-ish

[QUOTE=keensta;47894975]What I don't get is the fact you still have people posting here about how you might as well quit even though 5 people before them have already posted such a thing, people need to stop posting the same shit over and over again kinda feeling sick reading what feels like the same posts on this thread. This is yes another site however it does look different and rather then saying the same stuff you said on other site threads or even same the same thing the person before said just don't post... Ok so even though there has been a couple of sites before yours most seem to die out when they get loads of posts from people above (some clearly loving sf) how they should just give up and bla bla bla, that or they get exploited and most the time the exploiter is a dick and rather the just pms you they seem to go all big headed on your thread. Hopefully these things don't hold you back and you carry this site on, it seems it could have some potential it has its own design which is nice. I may start my addon back up again and upload it to the site just to give it a go before I make up my mind on your site but like I said the presentation is nice and hopefully it can become a real competitor. Also @StonedPenguin your posts are totally see you next Tuesday-ish[/QUOTE] Thank you for the kind words. The only thing that would make our team quit is some sort of freak accident, like a giant meteor crushing our city. We're not going to stop working on Mod Mountain and we're not going to give up because of a handful of cynics. We didn't invest our time to throw our hands into the air when confronted with people who don't think it'll work. As for exploiters, we're constantly monitoring our web transactions for suspicious activity. Since launching, we've had multiple attempted DDoS attacks, people trying SQL injections, etc. Ironically enough the only major issue the site encountered was some bad templating logic, which has been patched.

Uhh, they're trying SQL injections? Are you shitting me? [img]http://i.imgur.com/e8vdTlB.png[/img]

[QUOTE=MadParakeet;47895065]Uhh, they're trying SQL injections? Are you shitting me? [img]http://i.imgur.com/e8vdTlB.png[/img][/QUOTE] Yeah, right? I'm hoping it was just some sort of automated tool, not some script kiddie desperately trying to gain administrative access.