Steam opens door for paid mods to enter Steam Workshop, starting with Skyrim - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE=BOXHOUND;47585674]The Facepunch community is outraged at the idea of charging money for a mod. This irony - I cannot handle it.[/QUOTE] 1) I didn't come here for GMOD, albeit I got it later for different reasons 2) I also didn't like that Garry decided to sell GMOD 10. 3) After so many tweaks and designs, Gmod has easily become it's own game. To be honest, a lot of reasons why Gmod is okay to sell itself im just cba to list at least 5 more.

To me, the greatest value of the modding community is everyone's willingness to share their creations freely. It's what makes the modding communities of any game so widespread and so easily accessible. It's part of why PC gaming communities last so much longer compared to games on consoles. I'm not against modders wanting money for their work, and after what Valve just did, who can blame them? It's just disheartening to see that some of these modders [i]expect[/i] payment, barring the level of accessibility that mods had when it was just people sharing their work with others. Again, can't blame them for wanting money, but I just hope that it isn't a slippery slope and that the majority of modding changes into desperate people charging money for trifling additions to a game. Thank fuck Beyond Skyrim and Skywind say they will stay free. Funny, since those are mods that I would gladly support with my wallet.

[QUOTE=Lunik;47590359]To me, the greatest value of the modding community is everyone's willingness to share their creations freely.[B] It's what makes the modding communities of any game so widespread and so easily accessible.[/B][...][/QUOTE] I'd argue that this makes it even more accessible for creators as now professionals can afford to spend time creating content for other games. It could mean a huge boost for the amount of quality content. The fact that you'll see some folks selling garbage doesn't matter to me at all... just like, not buy it then? I'm really not seeing the problem. [url=http://garry.tv/2015/04/24/paying-for-mods/]Garry sums it up nicely[/url].

[QUOTE=Clavus;47590396]I'd argue that this makes it even more accessible for creators as now professionals can afford to spend time creating content for other games. It could mean a huge boost for the amount of quality content. The fact that you'll see some folks selling garbage doesn't matter to me at all... just like, not buy it then? I'm really not seeing the problem. [url=http://garry.tv/2015/04/24/paying-for-mods/]Garry sums it up nicely[/url].[/QUOTE] I will admit that this sort of makes me optimistic about opening the way to some more quality content, because more serious and professional people will come along. Money is a great way to get people to take their work much more seriously and support it more. But I meant accessibility for the consumers. I mean, take the DOTA 2 sword mods for instance. If they were free, people would go, "Hey, look! Sange and Yasha! Haha, check it out they're in Skyrim!" But now it's just, "Why would anyone want that? It's stupid that they're a dollar each." I guess to me it's just the loss of this ideal that people could just freely make and download whatever mod they wanted, without any aspect of money getting in the way of sharing the content.

[QUOTE=Clavus;47590396]I'd argue that this makes it even more accessible for creators as now professionals can afford to spend time creating content for other games. It could mean a huge boost for the amount of quality content. The fact that you'll see some folks selling garbage doesn't matter to me at all... just like, not buy it then? I'm really not seeing the problem. [url=http://garry.tv/2015/04/24/paying-for-mods/]Garry sums it up nicely[/url].[/QUOTE] You're forgetting the part where mods build off of other mods. That will no longer happen if paid mods are a thing. If FNIS, BodySlide, SKSE, or SkyUI cost money, a very large number of Skyrim mods would not exist. Paid mods sound nice for solo efforts, but larger mods are almost never solo efforts. Plus, how do you divide the money even if you get a group project going? What if Morroblivion was a paid mod - how would you divide the money? What if a mod agrees to let another mod build off of it if the new mod pays a percentage of the profits to the older mod? How will that be handled? Will Valve even allow that? There are so many problems with paying for mods that completely undermines how modding communities function. Not every mod is just a texture or mesh created by a single graphic artist. Modding is a community effort, and adding money to the equation turns it into a competitive one.

[QUOTE=Dark RaveN;47590182]Why is Origin shit?[/QUOTE] On Steam my average download rate is 12-15mbps down, on Origin I'm around 2-3mbps down. At the same time, Origin is mostly for EA titles Like FIFA, Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims, etc. None of which I play. So, in my opinion, it's shit.

[QUOTE=BANNED USER;47592117]On Steam my average download rate is 12-15mbps down, on Origin I'm around 2-3mbps down. At the same time, Origin is mostly for EA titles Like FIFA, Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims, etc. None of which I play. So, in my opinion, it's shit.[/QUOTE] Funny how you mentioned bad download speeds, I've heard nothing but praise about them. Not even gonna begin on tech support with living human beings and a live chat and many other things. The only downside is yeah, no games, but that doesn't make it shit, it makes Origin undeveloped.

[QUOTE=Spirit_Breaker;47584826]Origin is superior to pile of shit called Steam anyway.[/QUOTE] Imagine saying this statement 4 years ago. Everyone would think you are fucking crazy. Now, not so much. How the mighty have fallen indeed. [editline]24th April 2015[/editline] I literally makes me furious seeing popular key mods to skyrim's modding experience that have been out for [I]years[/I] being pulled from everywhere and put up for charge on workshop. Fuck anyone who does this, seriously. What sucks even more is workshop is absolute garbage for modding skyrim, nobody who actually runs more than a couple dozen mods uses workshop because it simply can't handle super important shit like level list merging, mods above a certain file size, proper load order management, preventing updates from breaking mods, awkward (if not broken or not possible) support for 3rd party assets i.e. SKSE, etc). I really hope SKSE steps up and says "you can't use our script library with your mod if you charge" and blocks out 80% of the relevant gameplay modifications. I also hope this creates a MASSIVE nightmare for Valve/steam to deal with trying to regulate this massive can of worms so they know just how fucked this is and how stupid of an idea it was. One out of many, many really stupid ideas dones in the past few years.

[QUOTE=Dark RaveN;47592967]Funny how you mentioned bad download speeds, I've heard nothing but praise about them. Not even gonna begin on tech support with [B]living human beings and a live chat[/B] and many other things. The only downside is yeah, no games, but that doesn't make it shit, it makes Origin undeveloped.[/QUOTE] Their live chat is outsourced to India, they are incredibly unhelpful in my experience And from where I am, Origin's speeds are about a third, maybe less the speed of Steam's.

[QUOTE=rinoaff33;47590428]You're forgetting the part where mods build off of other mods. That will no longer happen if paid mods are a thing. If FNIS, BodySlide, SKSE, or SkyUI cost money, a very large number of Skyrim mods would not exist. Paid mods sound nice for solo efforts, but larger mods are almost never solo efforts. Plus, how do you divide the money even if you get a group project going? What if Morroblivion was a paid mod - how would you divide the money? What if a mod agrees to let another mod build off of it if the new mod pays a percentage of the profits to the older mod? How will that be handled? Will Valve even allow that? There are so many problems with paying for mods that completely undermines how modding communities function. Not every mod is just a texture or mesh created by a single graphic artist. Modding is a community effort, and adding money to the equation turns it into a competitive one.[/QUOTE] This. The "no one is forcing you to pay for mods" argument doesn't take into account the very existence of the ability to charge for mods on a very high profile site has an impact on how willing individuals are to share their tools and knowledge to individuals who might use those things to cut into "their market". On the other hand, the idea that an abhorrent 25% cut of the profits is somehow going to attract more quality mod makers is optimistic at best; anyone who could actually make a worthwhile amount of money that way could most likely make far more doing something else in the same amount of time.

If someone wants to earn money for their time and hardwork, I won't stop them or complain. But only 25% for the modders who do most of the work? That's barely enough to justify selling something. This is ridiculous and it's a clear cash grab by Valve and any participating developers. Also, Skyrim is literally the worst game to test out this business model. Some many mods depend on this or that, and sometimes conflict with each other.

[QUOTE=Nak;47589140]Saying the same thing from the other thread. The price-tag shouldn't be seen as a business-model but rather a fair trade for a cup of coffee. A donate option is nice .. but sadly not used that often, if at all. "Something that someone took time to create can now cost money? What a world"[/QUOTE] Yeah, and I too would love spending hours creating something and then only getting a quarter of the money I make off of it. The only cost to me is my freedom of what I want to make, and I even get to be put on a financial leash by Valve!

^ Forget the 25%, this stuff used to be free. From Valve's point of view, they're just using modders as free labor. To them, the mods are simply worth 75% of what they're actually being sold for. They're trying to trick modders into forcing people to buy THEIR mods from Valve. Turning the modding community against itself for a quick buck and trying to pass it off as supporting the community. That is nasty. Seriously. That's nasty. There's really no ambiguity here, I would call that wanton contempt for the consumer. And some people are buying right into this scam. An you know what, two days later and I don't see modders flocking to get their mods behind a paywall. There just doesn't seem to be much in it for us.