Steam Paid Mods

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Gotheran
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Steam Paid Mods

#1 Post by Gotheran »

So no doubt this topic will end up somewhere soon enough. Discuss this rather controversial topic here, but please keep it civil. My opinion can be found over here.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#2 Post by DarkTheImmortal »

Like I said in the rant thread, I don't like it. Someone could make one master mod that fixes every single problem in a game, but charge $100, so only those who can afford it can get it.

But I usually use Nexus anyways, so it doesn't really impact me.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#3 Post by Gotheran »

There's the question of if it's going to effect nexus as well. Obviously it will, for better or worse is what we don't know. So far one of the paid mods has uploaded a free version on Nexus. But as I understand it, Gopher made a quick vlog talking about it, and mentioned that Wet and Cold, would now be paid only, the version on Nexus will stay there, but it won't receive updates from what I understand, what happens when some of the larger mods start doing this, then there's the inevitability of incompatibilities between mods, and patches won't be able to be made as quickly, as effectively since now Mods would become small DLC's. As it stands I know a handful of people who haven't and don't want to buy Skyrim's official DLC, how many more people who could make those patches will not do so because they won't/can't buy the mods that need patching?

EDIT: Brodual also has their own video on the subject.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#4 Post by Envy661 »

It already has affected Nexus. The guy who did the Wet and Cold mod already pulled his stuff off Nexus and reworked the entire mod, degrading the quality, in order to put it on Steam Workshop, where it is now the only place it resides.

Here are a few Reddit posts I highly agree with:

In response to someone saying it's a dangerous thing to do:
I agree, once people start paying for stuff they are going to feel very entitled to a working version all the time-not to mention help and support. I think a donate button would've made more sense-this is seriously going to fracture the modding community.
And the response to it:
They can, and should feel entitled. If people are forced into paying for something there are going to be a lot of expectations that come with it.
Everyone keeps talking about how we're not entitled to anything and shouldn't feel like we are, but what else does our money give us apart from entitlement to a working game? Have early access games, early releases and Kickstarter campaigns made everyone think they're investors and not paid owners?
That's a good point. Modders aren't full time developers. If their mods start getting sold, there is going to be some sort of expectation that their content works for the long run. Especially with how finicky the "creation" engine is with the more complex mods that require things to be installed in a specific order.
If modders need to keep track of everything they are making, then they are being literally paid in peanuts for full time work.
What I said:
This issue is avoided entirely with a more basic donation service, however, and something Valve and Bethesda should have supported instead of a paid mods service. Because donations reward good items a lot more, and don't warrant the expectations that come with maintaining the product for a long time.
And what about mods that depend on other mods? Or the Skyrim Script Extender? Do they have to ask for permission before selling their mods?
And wouldn't it be a problem to sell something that can and will cause a lot of CTDs? When you download them for free you are installing them at your own risk, but if you pay for them you expect a certain stability.
This change simply cannot be supported without mods going through professional QA audits by skilled programmers. With a game like Skyrim, scripts can break your mods way through a playthrough and you have to comb your game for the mod that is broken or crashes. That's annoying when the mod is free, when a mod is paid for you expect professional customer support.
This is plain ridiculous. Not even hour in and already over half of the paywalled mods are ripped from Nexus Mods (that are free in case someone doesn't know the site) without permission from the original modders. Was it really hard for people at Valve to foresee this happening?
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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#5 Post by tony1695 »

If it's a mod that radically changes gameplay or graphics, then I can understand charging a small amount (less than $5) to use the mod. After all, this is something someone or a group of people spent hours of their lives upon.

But single weapons or reskins? Yeah, no.
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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#6 Post by Gotheran »

Good thing I have the latest version of Wet&Cold prior to this mess then... This "gifts of akatosh" mod, looks visually impressive, I swear I've seen the sword from it in a standalone mod on the Nexus, or did at one point, might have even been a Brodual video about it...

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#7 Post by DarkTheImmortal »

http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/dis ... 313709437/
This puts why it's bad in better words than I can

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#8 Post by Nuff »

It very much depends a lot ont he greed of th emod creating community. If everything becomes a pay to play mod then that'll be greed taking over and the mod community will be less a mod community and will now be the workshop community. I really like the addition of a PWYW option to buying a mod but the current ones demand a minimum price of what they desired to sell the mods for, which is not PWYW it's tip what you want. If it was £0.01 to buy with PWYW then it'd be much more what the community would want. THough then Valve and Bethesda wouldn't be getting a very nice cut.

I think it can work but like most of the things involving money on steam it'll probably just be abused.

---

EDIT: http://www.pcgamer.com/paid-for-skyrim- ... -of-hours/

and already we have this

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#9 Post by Insomniac »

I'm gonna have to side with TotalBiscuit on this one. It's not exactly a black and white issue, modders should be able to profit from their work, but it has to be done RIGHT.
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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#10 Post by DarkTheImmortal »

http://strawpoll.me/4196433
I made a poll to see where the majority lies. Feel free to vote yourselves, it's all anonymous.
as I am typing this, 100% of the votes are bad. Then again only 9 people voted.

I'm doing this civilly now. I will admit I was pretty mad to begin with.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#11 Post by Gotheran »

Insomniac wrote:I'm gonna have to side with TotalBiscuit on this one. It's not exactly a black and white issue, modders should be able to profit from their work, but it has to be done RIGHT.
I think this is what most people are feeling, there are just those out there who don't want a saturated pay for mod market, especially since even as far back as Morrowind Mods have always been free, and modders made their money from donations, if they were relying on this revenue to live off of, well under Valve's system they wouldn't be making much more, even if people just decided to accept that this is the way things are now.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#12 Post by DarkTheImmortal »

Well, something's going on...

Can't access the pages for the pay-for mods. it says "This item is no longer for sale, but if you have purchased it, you will still have access to it."

Either someone hacked the system or Valve is trying to remove the toxicity it created.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#13 Post by Gotheran »

Just noticed that myself, kind of a shame, while I'm definitely against directly paying for a mod, unless it's a commission sort of deal, I was gunna grab one of em because it looks cool and I do feel a little bad for not having donated to at least one of the like 500+ mods for various games I've used.

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#14 Post by DarkTheImmortal »

and they returned

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Re: Steam Paid Mods

#15 Post by Envy661 »

I just want to say that this has been out for about 24 hours now....

Within that time two of the singlemost endorsed Immersion mods have been severely impacted.

Wet and Cold's latest version is now stuck behind a paywall on steam, with a vast majority of players completely destroying the creator on Nexus as well as Steam Workshop for their decision. Mass uninstalls all around just for the principal of the issue, even though the old version still works on Nexus.

Frostfall, however, while still up, the creator has indefinitely left the modding scene due to copyright issues with another mod which used an animation from Fore's new Idles in Skyrim. Because of this, he received death threats and has been essentially blacklisted from the community.
In a reddit post made by him he goes into greater detail about this, and how he and Fore worked things out on their end, but not before the backlash ensued. He deleted all his Reddit and Twitter accounts, and has essentially disappeared after the incident. The modding community has essentially lost one of it's best modders over this new policy, which would have been avoided entirely if not for what Valve has been doing.

This has, both literally and figuratively, torn the modding community asunder, and caused resonating backlash, the likes of which have never been seen before. This is singlehandedly responsible for all but destroying the outer layer of the moddin community's domain, and will no doubt delve deeper and generate more hatred than any other decision made for PC gaming since the creation of the Microtransaction system.

May God have mercy on us all....
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