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

[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 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] To be fair donation models never worked out for mods before because it was a legal grey area. In essence getting donated to (and promoting donations/trying to get people to donate) is revenue, and is profiting off of modifying someone else's work. Which is okay if that someone else sanctions it, but it never is sanctioned when done behind the scenes. The only time I hear about donations not biting the dust for a mod is when the donations go to serve infrastructure rather than to the team. I.E. paying for servers/webhosting.

[QUOTE=megafat;47615035]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 the vast overwhelming majority of people in the other thread are adamantly against modders getting money at all?

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615186]...Because the vast overwhelming majority of people in the other thread are adamantly against modders getting money at all?[/QUOTE] We must have been reading different threads because I seem to recall a lot of people, myself included, being all for donations.

[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] I don't know, it couldn't possibly be related to the amount of time I saw someone say it.

I dont know much about the patreon system but it sounds like that would the best for this. I mean what if you was a patreon member for the mod and you got the content earlier than other people or updates faster. Idk just a thought.

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615186]...Because the vast overwhelming majority of people in the other thread are adamantly against modders getting money at all?[/QUOTE] Did you see someone say that they don't like the system that Valve setup and just assumed they were all talking about not wanting to not give modders money and not the fact that Valve executed this terribly?

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615186]...Because the vast overwhelming majority of people in the other thread are adamantly against modders getting money at all?[/QUOTE] People were by and large against a nonsensical market place that was supposed to target them, but failed to in every way imaginable. People were against it because they were afraid of the obvious slip in quality that game developers would have with paid mods they benefit from more than the modding community. Think about it, a game launches with bugs. Paid patch like the Unofficial Skyrim Patch comes out. Now, the game developers are benefiting off of their own shoddy work. How is that fair for anyone? How is that remedied in any way by any thing you've ever brought up?

I wasn't sure Valve would listen to the community on this one, hopefully this will be the first and last time they try to pull this stunt. What a great birthday present [img]http://freebieindia.com/forum/images/smilies/emoticon-00123-party.gif[/img]

I think the idea of a modder not being able to be compensated for their hard work is just silly, but at the same time, putting mods behind a paywall will only result in the fragmentation and dissolving of a community. Having the ability to charge for mods is one thing I both love, and hate, about the new Unreal Tournament, for example. I love it because it's a game that's being made by the community and Epic, so it makes sense to compensate those community members who contributed, but I hate it because it could result in a future where you can't play on a server with your friends simply because you haven't paid $5 for the next map in the rotation. Hopefully this whole debacle with paid Skyrim mods will serve as material for Epic in order to figure out their system for the long run. I think all of us can agree that compensating the mod creators should be optional, never a requirement, and there should never be any incentives to "persuade" people to donate either. Whether or not you donate to a modder/team of modders should be based on the merits of the mod itself. Yes, most people won't donate to the mod authors, but that's just humans for you. If we can get something for as little effort and cost as possible, we'll gladly take it and sometimes not consider the plights of others. Same even applies to video games or other forms of media, which is why piracy is such a big deal for some devs. Personally, if I was a modder or game dev, I wouldn't care if the person did or did not give me some form of compensation for my work. I'd honestly be happy enough that they at least showed some amount of interest in my passion and hard work. I would love it if they did consider throwing me a bone, but that's totally up to them.

[QUOTE=megafat;47615268]Did you see someone say that they don't like the system that Valve setup and just assumed they were all talking about not wanting to not give modders money and not the fact that Valve executed this terribly?[/QUOTE] No, I read and participated in about ten pages of 'giving modders money will ruin everything because everyone will compete' but now apparently that doesn't apply to competing for donations at all for some reason and I'm not even going to try to understand the imagined distinction.

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615298]No, I read and participated in about ten pages of 'giving modders money will ruin everything because everyone will compete' but now apparently that doesn't apply to competing for donations at all for some reason and I'm not even going to try to understand the imagined distinction.[/QUOTE] "because everyone will compete" what? no one talked about that, at all, from what I've read pretty much everywhere.

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615298]No, I read and participated in about ten pages of 'giving modders money will ruin everything because everyone will compete' but now apparently that doesn't apply to competing for donations at all for some reason and I'm not even going to try to understand the imagined distinction.[/QUOTE] donations and pay walls are so different it's shocking you don't see the differences for yourself without them being spelled out to you. When peoples work earns donations, they don't feel like they're competing because they're not. They're just earning money for doing their hobby and doing it well. That's obvious to them, and me, maybe not you. When their work is paid for only, they are in a directly competitive scene that no longer benefits from them sharing their work amongst each other for larger projects to be created. How does a larger project get created when it cannot take the work of other modders that would have consented due to the lack of money on the table? They have to do everything from scratch. I don't know about you, but I've worked on projects before, and the term "Scope" and "Scale" come to mind when you start saying you have to reinvent the wheel for everything you're doing. You say "They'll figure it out" whenever anyone brings up the difficiulties this will have, but will they? Did the minecraft modding scene? No. Will all modding scenes that implement this manage? Only if the most mature and level headed people there manage to have the loudest voices. Do you think that always happens? I don't.

I still find it funny how this was announced only hours after Bethesda's official response, as if it was an uncoordinated decision by Valve against Bethesda to cut it.

[QUOTE=Rufia;47614254]Modders are still working with Bethesda's code, resources and IP. If anything they have more of hand in these mods than Valve does.[/QUOTE] Valve would be hosting the mods, and the "resources and ip" are already in the fucking base game, an auto mechanic doesnt need to pay 50% to the original car maker because he changed something.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;47615354]Valve would be hosting the mods, and the "resources and ip" are already in the fucking base game, an auto mechanic doesnt need to pay 50% to the original car maker because he changed something.[/QUOTE] again [QUOTE=catbarf;47614379]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] It is downright delusional to think modders would [i]ever[/i] get most of the revenue from any monetization scheme.

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615379]again It is downright delusional to think modders would [i]ever[/i] get most of the revenue from any monetization scheme.[/QUOTE] Then how can they make a living off of it unless they're charging prices that the market doesn't support? [editline]27th April 2015[/editline] A question you've never answered.

What if this was all a really elaborate April Fools joke that just released on Valvetime

Just make a fucking donate button, its not rocket surgery or brain science. Also nobodys mentioning that because of the ToS, modders lost control over their assets when they monitized, they were not allowed to remove the mod and Bethesda was ultimately getting control of the content. Putting a donate button there instead makes things much simpler where modders can receive most of the donation and valve takes a very small % for processing

[QUOTE=Sableye;47615397]Just make a fucking donate button, its not rocket surgery or brain science[/QUOTE] They can't take cuts from donations and honestly I think that's the entire reason why they aren't doing one.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;47615383]Then how can they make a living off of it unless they're charging prices that the market doesn't support? [editline]27th April 2015[/editline] A question you've never answered.[/QUOTE] I never answered it because the answer should be obvious if you read what I just quoted, unless you're under the impression that nobody makes a career out of writing or game development. 50% of gross revenue would be a better take-home than most game devs get. If someone can't make a living off that then they ought to find another profession.

[QUOTE=Vipes;47613482]Just make it so it's donations only. Is it really that hard?[/QUOTE] What's the stop people from doing it in the first place? All you got to do is put a link somewhere on your page or in the mod's description.

[QUOTE=Elspin;47614006]Putting something up for sale is not "nickel and diming you" any more than shit games being put on steam's store is. True statement: -paid mods were attempted to be sold for too much money for too little content, so they were not worth buying False (borderline delusional) statement: [B]-in a free market, if you don't deem something to be valuable it should not be allowed to exist or be sold[/B] to be clear, I think the blatant lack of moderation and profit split were horrendous but more often I'm just seeing a bunch of illogical nonsense being spouted[/QUOTE] Do I need to repeat my rant about how the free market doesn't suddenly make what has been traditionally an egalitarian market work better? It might actually *GASP* make it fucking worse.

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615413]I never answered it because the answer should be obvious if you read what I just quoted, unless you're under the impression that nobody makes a career out of writing or game development. 50% of gross revenue would be a better take-home than most game devs get. If someone can't make a living off that then they ought to find another profession.[/QUOTE] What we're under the impression of, is that you think the market can support it.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;47615383]Then how can they make a living off of it unless they're charging prices that the market doesn't support? [editline]27th April 2015[/editline] A question you've never answered.[/QUOTE] The way they would make money is by making, a shit ton of mods that can sustain them over time via long term royalties. [B]However, this is a fucking videogame, not a book or a movie. As soon as the code and game become unplayable nor wanted to be played, you get fucking nothing. The royalty system does not work on this kind of model. The free market, does not work on this model.[/B]

[QUOTE=catbarf;47615413]I never answered it because the answer should be obvious if you read what I just quoted, unless you're under the impression that nobody makes a career out of writing or game development. 50% of gross revenue would be a better take-home than most game devs get. If someone can't make a living off that then they ought to find another profession.[/QUOTE] No I don't think that's a viable answer at all. You're conflating one job profession with a potential side profession. Game development is largely salaried and works in official channels through official work. Mods are not that even if they did exist in a monetized atmosphere. Mods COULD make money, but how much money is yet to be seen. You're touting it like it's a potential job as viable as any in the industry. The simple fact is that might not turn out to be true in practice. How are they going to have a viable job when people don't want to buy the things they sell because they are not worth the price? You need to understand, they don't exist in a vacuum and no one is going to buy a mod they see as over priced. A modder, in order to make a viable income as you keep saying they totally would be able to, would HAVE to be selling things at a price that a regular customer WILL NOT PAY. Just simply in order to be viable like you are insisting they can be, that's what they have to overcome. Why is that so easy for you to gloss over and so hard for me to gloss over?

Valve, in all their wisdom, attempted to change that model, or naively think they could. Everyone from modders to consumers, know it won't.

[QUOTE=kariko;47615406]They can't take cuts from donations and honestly I think that's the entire reason why they aren't doing one.[/QUOTE] Why would they need to takes cuts from it? Can't a person donate to a fantastic mod creator without some big company taking profits from it?

[QUOTE=Swilly;47615442]The way they would make money is by making, a shit ton of mods that can sustain them over time via long term royalties. [B]However, this is a fucking videogame, not a book or a movie. As soon as the code and game become unplayable nor wanted to be played, you get fucking nothing. The royalty system does not work on this kind of model. The free market, does not work on this model.[/B][/QUOTE] Well that's just the thing. I've been trying to run the math on this for days. A game like Skyrim has a huge population, but how many of that population is willing to engage with the market on a long term, continuous basis and shell out enough money to actually support modders? Due to the profit split, they'll have to sell them at high prices and they'll have to move a lot of them, so to me, I see this as inevitably a failure for the modding community in that they lose their audience, and they don't actually make any more money than they did previously realistically speaking.

At the risk of sounding crass, what I don't get is why all of a sudden people are saying "But without payed mods, how will poor old modders ever make a living off of modding!?" They won't? Why should they? It's not a job, it never has been. If you want a job making content for videogames, you get a job making videogames. Modding is good practice for game development and if you do exceptionally well, or if you're lucky, it might get you a job in development so that you can get payed for it. Modding has always been a hobby, it's not an art, it's not a job, literally nobody talked about modding being a job, or making a living off modding before this ordeal.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;47615457]Well that's just the thing. I've been trying to run the math on this for days. A game like Skyrim has a huge population, but how many of that population is willing to engage with the market on a long term, continuous basis and shell out enough money to actually support modders? Due to the profit split, they'll have to sell them at high prices and they'll have to move a lot of them, so to me, I see this as inevitably a failure for the modding community in that they lose their audience, and they don't actually make any more money than they did previously realistically speaking.[/QUOTE] There's also the fact he brought books and movies. The movie market is a clusterfuck of this. Get an Agent>Market a Script>Studio is interested>Offer Script>Get lump sum of cash and small change every month>Is the script made? No>Have to resell the script at diminished cost. Is the script made? Yes>Did they ask you to help? No?>GET FUCKING NOTHING. >Did they ask your to help? Yes?>Get TINY AS FUCK royalties based upon performance of movie.