Steam Paid Mods

[Ryusen]

There are two different ideas here that need to be analyzed separately.

Should content creators be paid for their content? Should modders expect, and do they deserve, to be paid for the work that they do? Absolutely! They spend time and effort working on projects, time that they could be spending working a traditional job or enjoying free time, and devote that to an interest. While mods traditionally have been free in most every respect (save for a flashing “Donate here!” button), I don’t believe it is a sign of selflessness and charity on the part of modders. Rather, there has never been a system put in place that would reliably allow them to receive payment for their work. Modders have always existed in a sort of grey area, where they are modifying copyrighted content (usually) without the permission of the copyright holder. Allowing them to make money from this is very risky in traditional styles, and something like Valve’s marketplace allows them to receive payment, legally, for their work. This is definitely a good thing! It will attract more skilled modders to the community, encourage them to finish and update their mods, and improve the overall quality of the final product. Instead of some guy working in his spare time, he could afford to spend 40+ hours a week on this project to polish and perfect it for the end user. Paying modders for their work is a good thing, no matter which way you slice it. It may be a non-traditional job, but so was Youtube, and the monetization of that has led to content creators being able to focus fully on their channel and produce some wonderful and amazing content. Why should it be any different with mods?

Is Valve’s Marketplace the right test bed for this idea, and are they doing it properly? Absolutely NOT! There are a lot of issues to discuss here, so I’ll just keep the ideas short and sweet.

• Valve receives a 75% cut of the sale. 75%! That’s absolutely ludicrous! They do not own the game in question (See: Skyrim, and soon others), nor did they assist in making the mod in any way. They simply provide a platform to sell it. Is that worth something? Yes. Servers are expensive, R&D is expensive, they have costs and bills to pay, and I understand that. But why on earth did they believe they are entitled to ¾ of all money earned simply because they have an effective monopoly on this market? It is just shy of extortion and reeks heavily of greed, exploitation, and disrespect towards the community that we would stand by and accept this. They have no excuse to charge that much, for any reason.

• What happens if the developer releases a patch that breaks a mod? We have a 24-hour refund timeframe, but who really thinks that will cover any realistic problems? What if the modder can’t fix the mod? Through no fault of them, or us, the money we spent to legally purchase this mod is wasted, and it can no longer be used in the game we also paid for. All done through Steam. All we can do is ask nicely for the modder to fix it, and he has every right to say “no”. What if a mod I purchased interferes with another, and breaks? We can’t expect all mods to interact perfectly, and issues may not come up for days after installation. We are just out of luck.

• What about Copyright Infringement? Can I make a mod using weapons, armor, songs, ideas from another series? From a show or game? What happens with those mods? What about mods that borrow from other mods? What about compilation mods?

• We already have issues with people stealing mods, uploading it themselves, and literally taking money out of the modder’s pockets. With Valve’s supremely sub-par customer service, do we really believe this is something they will be able to fix quickly or easily?

Valve needs to take a look at the community response and re-evaluate what they are doing and why they are doing it. Ultimately, the marketplace will decide if this kind of service will succeed. And while paid mods are going to eventually emerge, it does not need to happen here or now. Valve jumped the shark, and they are seeing an absolutely massive community backlash, and it is well deserved. This is too much of a change, and it happened too quickly. Valve needs to listen to the community, take feedback, and adjust. While their idea was good, their implementation was horrendously bad. This has the potential to be a great thing for modders and end users, but it cannot succeed and flourish in the current environment. And Valve are the ones that need to realize this and change accordingly.

[Nuff]

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

Sorry but I'm going to heavily disagree with this. They reasont he community lost one of it's best modders is because the community is made of entitled disgusting [censored] that would send death threats and throw a hissy fit over someone trying to make a little bit of money off something they slaved over tirelessly. Honestly forum users that go on a triade of hate and whiney self entitlement and some of the worse human beings we have to deal with.


I can answer a few of your points Ryusen

• What about Copyright Infringement? Can I make a mod using weapons, armor, songs, ideas from another series? From a show or game? What happens with those mods? What about mods that borrow from other mods? What about compilation mods?

You can't make money from them without permission from the holders of the copyrights, so in 99% of the cases you can't make money from them. However there are plenty of avaialble mods on th emarket for free that have sopyrighted material such as Link's shield from the LoZ games.

• We already have issues with people stealing mods, uploading it themselves, and literally taking money out of the modder’s pockets. With Valve’s supremely sub-par customer service, do we really believe this is something they will be able to fix quickly or easily?

Currently mods have to go through a Valve checking process before they can be sold. The ones they had problems with were delt with rather quickly i.e. within 24 hours.

Valve can't really look at the response of the community when the community acts like a spoilt [censored] child. Most of the issues aren't about the application of it or even remotely constructive but instead rants about how mods should be free and then a campaign of hate towards any modders that would dare to try and make money from their hard work. It's going to take a very long time until the retard [censored] dies down and the constructive and useful information can be extracted.

[DarkTheImmortal]

And now the ranting spreads. I found a protest mod in Civilization V.

[Gotheran]

I feel this is exceedingly relevant.

https://youtu.be/-JPOoFkrh94?t=55s

[bond84]

Only a single reason I refuse to support this.
Valve takes 75% of the income from what I understand.
Everything else I can say if fair game. If a guy mods the game, and makes it better, I feel he deserves at least something.

[DarkTheImmortal]

Valve takes 75%

To add to that, the creator gets nothing until that 25% they get adds up to $400

[Nuff]

Valve takes 75%

To add to that, the creator gets nothing until that 25% they get adds up to $400

source plz

[DarkTheImmortal]

Valve takes 75%

To add to that, the creator gets nothing until that 25% they get adds up to $400

source plz

I don't know their sources, but TotalBiscuit said it, NerdCubed said it (just with a different value than mine), many people on the discussion boards are saying it.

And I'm reading comments on the discussion boards and things on youtube (i.e. NerdCubed), some say the CREATOR has to make the $400. some say the total income (all 100%) has to be $400, all I know is that they're putting a minimum limit before you get payed that involves a 400.

[Nuff]

Would be nice is THEY posted sources too but I suppose that is a little too much to ask. TotalBiscuit is at least in the biz so might have actually seen some contracts mind you. Seen a lot of things that weren't true that were taken as gospel in the past in these kinda witch hunts. Still should it be true it's a standard business practice, although not one I agree with.

[Nuff]

Sorry for double post but some interesting information has come to light. Gabe, Valve CEO, went to reddit yestaday to answer questions on the new 'pay for mods' feature of the workshop. I'll post the link right here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comment ... m/?sort=qa

One of the biggest things that we've seen brought up is the 75% cut that is taken by Valve and Bethesda and the B-Boys seem to have gotten away with pretty much no criticism while Valve is being branded an evil money hungry nazi monster. However it seems that Bethesda are the ones who set the percentage the modders get, not Valve.

The pay-outs are set by the owner of the game that is being modded.

Also another comment chain provided this nice little back and forth which confirmed what was already an option and one that we all will be fond of:

THESALTEDPEANUT: What do you think about a donate button for mods?
GabeNewellBellevue:We are adding a pay what you want button where the mod author can set the starting amount wherever they want.
sunkisttuna: Can they set it to $0?
GabeNewellBellevue: Yes.

[TinyVoices]

I don't actually like the idea of paid mods. It is quite difficult to know for sure what a mod is like from the description and videos. You can get an idea, but the actual quality of it and how it interacts with your game and other mods is something else. So how can I figure that out before forking over $3 for a huge mod compilation? In the past I've found mods that seemed beautiful but won't work with my game. Which is infuriating if I now had to spend money to find that out.

There's also the issue of Nexus mods being stolen, and Valve can't actually go through case by case to handle that situation appropriately. There is also the issue of the 25% cut that modders get. A rediculously low sum, not to mention the $400 cap that has to be made to see any profit at all go to the modder. Which means that it's basically the same as modders for Minecraft who put their mods on adfly or whatever site; they earn pocket change at best. Although unlike that situation, Valve and the respective video company take the rest of the profit. They had no influence on the making of that mod, and yet they get paid for it? Not to mention before all of this it was a well known idea that the reason why PC gaming was so good was the freedom to mod, and that it was great because you can mod to your heart's content. Now you are just paying for DLC that the game company never made.

I also feel like the modder shouldn't be expected to earn money off of these mods. They generally have gone in to mod making with the full knowledge that this was a hobby, and that was it. They would receive no compensation for the mod, unless they put up a donation tab. And for the most part, that has helped create the thriving community we see today. People making mods because they love to do that, not because they want to earn money in this gold rush.

I have seen that Gabe is going to look into it, but overall I'd like to see paid mods removed. Emphasize on donations, but beyond that leave them alone.

Edit: just remembered that if you want to, you can put the mod up onto steam for free. But then Valve takes full rights on that mod. That's right, it isn't your mod anymore whatsoever. I still will stick with Steam, and I want them to correct this blemish, but it just seems too awkward to be true.

[Nuff]

I don't actually like the idea of paid mods. It is quite difficult to know for sure what a mod is like from the description and videos. You can get an idea, but the actual quality of it and how it interacts with your game and other mods is something else. So how can I figure that out before forking over $3 for a huge mod compilation? In the past I've found mods that seemed beautiful but won't work with my game. Which is infuriating if I now had to spend money to find that out.

There is a 24 hour testing period which means if the mod doesn't work for your game you cna get a full refund.

There's also the issue of Nexus mods being stolen, and Valve can't actually go through case by case to handle that situation appropriately. There is also the issue of the 25% cut that modders get. A rediculously low sum, not to mention the $400 cap that has to be made to see any profit at all go to the modder. Which means that it's basically the same as modders for Minecraft who put their mods on adfly or whatever site; they earn pocket change at best. Although unlike that situation, Valve and the respective video company take the rest of the profit. They had no influence on the making of that mod, and yet they get paid for it? Not to mention before all of this it was a well known idea that the reason why PC gaming was so good was the freedom to mod, and that it was great because you can mod to your heart's content. Now you are just paying for DLC that the game company never made.

Like I mentioned above the cut is decided by the games dev. In this case Bethesda is being a greedy [censored] and thus the modders are getting stiffed. They are of course entitled to a cut should they let the modders make money from modding their game, think of it as royalites. Valve also deserves a cut too for providing a platform to sell the mod the millions of users, a much large client base then say a modders personal blog or whatever. The 75/25 split is poor though I'm hoping that in the future better devs will be more likely to let a modder take a biger cut. We can only hope. I couldn't find any mention of the $400 minimum thing in the reddit thread so I still don't kjnow how accruate it is. Wish It had been brought up so we could have a Gabe comment on it.

I also feel like the modder shouldn't be expected to earn money off of these mods. They generally have gone in to mod making with the full knowledge that this was a hobby, and that was it. They would receive no compensation for the mod, unless they put up a donation tab. And for the most part, that has helped create the thriving community we see today. People making mods because they love to do that, not because they want to earn money in this gold rush.

People will still make mods for the sake of making mods. If anything having the competetion of possible earnings means that they will put in more effort to make it as great as possible, in fact if they can happily earn enough through modding then they can go full time on it and really make something special and in a more timely fashion than ever. Sure it brings negatives with it but what doesn't? Besides I think people trying to make a quick buck from mods (and not stealing them) will be unliekly to make any money as they will make nothing of worth.

[y7h65]

To throw in my two own two cents, this is a direct rip of a mail I sent to Valve protesting this system's implementation.

First and foremost is preventing stolen content or content using unauthorized resources. Currently, there does not appear to be a way to ensure that mods for sale have received permission to use resources created by other modders. This system, as it stands, allows anybody to sell a mod as if it was their own even when another person created it.

Furthermore, I must question how Valve will protect people that purchase the mods from any issues or conflicts the mod may have with either the base game or other mods. While there is currently a 24 hour grace period that allows for mods to be refunded for Steam Wallet credit, which I find to be questionable in itself, some mods may take more than 24 hours before issues may develop. I, for one, have had first period example where a mod that created and added new buildings in Fallout New Vegas developed issues with a mod that replaced the standard textures with higher resolution textures. I did not enter the new areas until several days after I had installed the mod, upon which the mod attempted to call and load resources which no longer existed and caused the game to crash. While there was a bugfix for the first mod addressing this issue, the modder could have done nothing to fix this issue and there would have been no way for me to have resolved this issue. While this is not a problem with free mods, the introduction of money into this equation quickly muddies the waters. How will Valve protect people from these situations? The creator of the mod is not obliged to fix the mod and, as of standing, if the mod fails after 24 hours, the person who purchased the mod will have paid money for a non-functioning piece of software. Tying this back to my first point, if the mod seller had stolen the mod, then not only is the mod creator not obliged to fix the mod, they are incapable of doing so. So not only is the buyer at a loss here, the reputation of the real version of that mod and/or modder is slandered by the fact that this mod is unsupported.

Finally, I have to ask one last question. How will you ensure that mods are compatible with updated versions of the game? Game version compatibility is always a concern with mods as certain mods may require the game to be certain versions. With the current generation games trending towards post-release bugfixes and patching, how will Valve ensure that the mods featured in its workshop will still be usable? Once again, this is similar to my previous question but I must stress that a game update may very well wipe out multiple previously functioning mods. While most modders are, once again, likely to update or fix their mods, the mods that were released by someone other than their creator may once again cause a customer to be at a loss when their purchases no longer work.

TL;DR: Read the post. Do note I am not against paid mods but I am against the system in which it was implemented as well as a fear that there is inadequate protection for content creators.

Also, reportedly, the refund gets you banned from the marketplace for a week. One guy has stated it so far to be true but I am unwilling to personally test it myself.

[DarkTheImmortal]

So apparently the pay-for section of the workshop is actually gone now. I'm not seeing anything about the paid mods.

It may be temporary, it may be permanent, let's wait and see.

[asphere8]

So basically the Great Gaben was on a plane and someone did a stupid while he was out of contact. They're removing paid mods. Sources below.
Gaben on a plane: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... and_steam/
Gaben's comments on the issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comment ... m/?sort=qa
Valve official announcement of removing paid mods: http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWo ... 5253244218

So in short, victory. For now.