Victory for paid mod boycotters: Valve removes payment feature from TES: Skyrim area of the Steam Wo - Polidicks

Now it's that awkward as fuck moment where we have the devs that shat all over the community that didn't want to pay have shown themselves. "You are all faggots! Donate to my mod, by the way"

[QUOTE=itisjuly;47614343]How about some new games?[/QUOTE] Fucking seriously. I want a new game from Valve that isn't a multiplayer focused microtransation fueled game that ends up breeding yet another toxic online culture. Give us a fucking single player game with the same quality story writing as Half-life 1.

[QUOTE=itisjuly;47614343]How about some new games?[/QUOTE] You have to realize though this isn't the same Valve that developed Half-Life anymore. Their focus is now placyer-created content markets, competitive multiplayer games, and such. It definitely isn't single-player games anymore (Portal 2 was pretty good tho), and it [I]definitely[/I] isn't making new games . From a business standpoint, why make a new game? They're already making bank off what they currently have. The only reason they would do it now is to reaffirm that they're a company that cares about people's interests (well, in a way they already do, but only the market/competitive communities)

[QUOTE=usaokay;47613619]Modders are now more aware that they should gain some stipend for taking the time to create mods. Some of which will lock out an update of their most popular creations behind a paywall because they know people want it. Valve already removed the Skyrim workshop payment system from their store, but those modders will find a way to get some money.[/QUOTE] If modders get anything from this debacle, it should be to learn to [url=https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html]properly license their work[/url] before it gets ripped off and used in someone else's commercial project. [QUOTE=J!NX;47614118]even 75% to modders would be fair, since even at 80% this would be hugely profitable to valve/bethesda. But ehh, that's a bit low.[/QUOTE] Commercial writers get 25% revenue on completely original works. Amazon offers a service where people can write essentially fanfiction using an existing IP, and get 15% for it. Restaurant franchises skim 30% off the top just for the privilege of using the company's name. Steam itself takes 30% from all sales, and if you license an engine for your 100% original game the pricing on something like Unreal is another 20-40%. If independent game developers licensing an existing engine and selling on Steam only get 30-50% of their gross revenue, there is no way in hell modders licensing an existing game and selling on Steam will ever get 75%. Not gonna happen.

[QUOTE=Octopod;47614328]They're still [I]working[/I] on it. There's been steady updates and maybe the occasional content update. I don't know if I'm wrong but I think they're considering making another map to play on. The term "release" is getting meaningless these days. Fuck, Minecraft has been getting massive content updates after their 1.0 release. Development hasn't changed much since beta.[/QUOTE] Working in one game doesn't stop them from doing something else at the same time. And what's there to work anyways, recent news have been an incoming patch of changes, and a few tournaments. And no there hasn't been something about a new map, and if there is a map, it might be just for a temporal event like the last time.

[QUOTE=Nightfury;47614380]Working in one game doesn't stop them from doing something else at the same time. And what's there to work anyways, recent news have been an incoming patch of changes, and a few tournaments. And no there hasn't been something about a new map, and if there is a map, it might be just for a temporal event like the last time.[/QUOTE] Not disagreeing with you, there's likely a split at Valve where there's the Dota 2 team, CS:GO team, etc. At this very moment they might have another team working on some secret project that nobody knows about yet. Facepunch (Studios) has a similar structure. They have the Rust team, the usual GMod team, and a bunch of other employees working on their own small (possibly secret) projects. Arcade and Before were both games that have been kept secret until just recently.

I don't see the point of talking about donations. Modders have spoken in length that they rarely receive any kind of monetary donation when they have systems in place like paypal to receive them. People say they will, but they don't. It's not about the button being easy to find or whatever other excuse. As it is now, mod makers will never be able to make a living off of donations because of the mindset the gaming community has about their work and how it should be free. We get complacent with mods and their free status and just think that mod makers 'graduate' to game development when they want to make money, but that isn't always an option.

[QUOTE=G3rman;47614402]I don't see the point of talking about donations. Modders have spoken in length that they rarely receive any kind of monetary donation when they have systems in place like paypal to receive them. People say they will, but they don't. It's not about the button being easy to find or whatever other excuse. As it is now, mod makers will never be able to make a living off of donations because of the mindset the gaming community has about their work.[/QUOTE] And they wouldn't be able to make a living off of the mod store, either.

[QUOTE=Starlight 456;47614408]And they wouldn't be able to make a living off of the mod store, either.[/QUOTE] Revenue percentage was terrible, yes. But the real issue they would have had in making money is the fact the community isn't willing to dish out any amount of cash for their work in the first place.

[QUOTE=Starlight 456;47614408]And they wouldn't be able to make a living off of the mod store, either.[/QUOTE] I don't want to sound bad or anything, but the only thing stopping modders from making money off what they do is the people. "Mods were given to us for free in the past, so it should always be free" is probably what some of you are thinking. I can understand that in a sense. I'd much prefer mods be always free as they always have but I'm not going to be a dick and stop people from selling what they think is worth selling because I think "mods should always be free" Honestly, there could be some kind of utopia scenario where Steam re-implements the concept and 100% of profits go to the mod creator and it would receive roughly the same amount of hate.

Here's hoping Beth pulls off an incredible E3 conference to make up for this mess :v:

[QUOTE=ProtoMob;47613512]And here I was preparing to migrate to GOG because it would just get worse.[/QUOTE] steam and gog are about as comparable as dota and heroes

[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;47614462]Here's hoping Beth pulls off an incredible E3 conference to make up for this mess :v:[/QUOTE] :v: Fallout 4 paid mods edition pay to fix your shitty interface and fix the endless amounts of bugs

[QUOTE=Octopod;47614449]I don't want to sound bad or anything, but the only thing stopping modders [B]from making money off what they do is the people.[/B][/QUOTE] That's exactly it. You can talk about the revenue split or the quality of the mods, and you will have a valid point, but at the end of the day mod makers can't make their work financially viable because of the community and their driving desire to see mods remain free, no matter the cost.

All this backlash could have easily been avoided if they just added a donate button.

I don't think the problem was the idea of paying for mods in of itself, though nobody should have expected the idea paying for something that was previously free would have gone over well, but the effect monetization would have on the mods themselves.

[QUOTE=Octopod;47614449]"Mods were given to us for free in the past, so it should always be free" is probably what some of you are thinking. I can understand that in a sense. I'd much prefer mods be always free as they always have but I'm not going to be a dick and stop people from selling what they think is worth selling because I think "mods should always be free"[/QUOTE] That's far from being the sole argument against paywalled mods. Any kind of monetary reward other than donations is bound to fracture the modding community and discourage cooperation, ie what made it great in the first place. If you want to see the results firsthand just look at what the Minecraft modding community has devolved into.

[QUOTE=3221drdew;47614478]:v: Fallout 4 paid mods edition pay to fix your shitty interface and fix the endless amounts of bugs[/QUOTE] Let's hope not, and get right back on their booty shorts the moment they try it. Or rather try it haphazardly like they just did.

Lets just ignore that whole donation button idea. no money to be made there, but we REALLY care about them modders.

[QUOTE=Nostro;47614744]Lets just ignore that whole donation button idea. no money to be made there, but we REALLY care about them modders.[/QUOTE] We care about modders, as long as it makes us money!

I had an idea of maybe possibly giving the top modders a job or internship at Valve or the game company they're making mods for. We will see an increase of talents and top quality mods, competition (which can be good or bad) while still being free to the people! Basically what use to happen a lot in the past but was random, is now a guaranteed system! Its a pipe dream I know, but one can wish...

After reading some comments in this thead, i have to ask. Why do people think that we were against modders getting money and not the fact that Valve made something that was poorly thought out?

idk maybe it's just me but I see modding as a hobby, not something you get paid for [editline]27th April 2015[/editline] "Oh no, I put so much work into this mod and I'm not getting any dollars for it." Well I mean, you didn't have to make it in the first place. You did that on your own volition.

[QUOTE=megafat;47615035]After reading some comments in this thead, i have to ask. Why do people think that we were against modders getting money and not the fact that Valve made something that was poorly thought out?[/QUOTE] Because people assume that it's the gaming community over-reacting again and are just salty over having to pay for things. (they are mad they have to pay more money, but there's many other reasons.. and I mean, wouldn't you be?) It's basically "looking at it from another perspective" gone horribly, horribly wrong. It's the same old story, people are mistaking looking at it the other way as research.

if you really want to make money by making mods, you should be making mods to pad your portfolio so you can land a job, just like the counter-strike, portal, falskaar guys.

All the same, I hope you guys don't forget the warning these past few days have been. Valve's rescinded their plain for now, which I honestly admit I would never have thought would happen. [b]That said.[/b] This should be the wake-up call that the cult of personality and constant leeway towards Valve has to stop. We've now all realized that they're no better than any other company and that just because they miraculously happened to listen doesn't mean they're suddenly the "good guys" again. What we pulled off this weekend was a major rarity in this industry: the collective voices of over a hundred thousand people saying in unison, "This doesn't go any further," and I honestly don't believe they would've backed down against anything less. It took way more than the uproar over Diretide to fix this, because this was something that Valve had a far greater [b]business[/b] stake in, and that's the key word. We were up against cold, hard [i]business.[/i] What's even more, we've realized just what a tenuous position we've put ourselves in by letting one company have a near-monopoly over the largest - and what should be the most [i]open[/i] - games platform there is, and there are now groups mobilizing against the threat of something like this ever happening again by starting development on projects like an open-source games manager; look no further than the PC Master Race subreddit to learn that. Valve's pulled a lot of douchebag moves over the years and this was the worst yet, but them listening for once and going back on their latest and greatest insult isn't a magical forgive-all move. It's one step among many in an atonement that should come before any reasonable person would start trusting them again. You wanna stop your boycotts for now, you wanna start playing your Steam games again, whatever. Just remember what happened today and think long and hard on that before you ever again blurt out, "Praise Lord Newell!"

[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;47615058]Because people assume that it's the gaming community over-reacting again and are just salty over having to pay for things. (they are mad they have to pay more money, but there's many other reasons.. and I mean, wouldn't you be?) It's basically "looking at it from another perspective" gone horribly, horribly wrong. It's the same old story, people are mistaking looking at it the other way as research.[/QUOTE] I feel like people always view the gaming community getting angry is a bunch of adults acting as babies without even doing basic research to see if there is any truth to them getting angry. I'm getting a little sick of it.

[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;47615058]Because people assume that it's the gaming community over-reacting again and are just salty over having to pay for things. (they are mad they have to pay more money, but there's many other reasons.. and I mean, wouldn't you be?) It's basically "looking at it from another perspective" gone horribly, horribly wrong. It's the same old story, people are mistaking looking at it the other way as research.[/QUOTE] Money breaks communities

I already said this in the other thread, but I guess I'll say it again. I'm not against modders making money off of their hard work, in fact I fully support it. What I am against is companies making money off of it too. They should be thanking modders for expanding the lifespan of their games, not win money off of them.

Gabe made a good point on Reddit - that modders can potentially make more than they would working at a software company - but most users aren't going to pay more than $2 for even a big mod because of the unstable nature of mods, and with only 25% of that going to the modder, it's just not a practical system. I'd be way more behind this if Valve stepped back and let 100% go to the modder. For example; SkyUI has 9,065,934 downloads right now on the Nexus. If they asked $1 for the download (which would be reasonable) and assuming even only 20% of users paid that and the other 80% found a "pirated" reupload, the creator would still be pocketing almost two million dollars.