Skyrim paid mods - what's your stance?

[CrazyCrab]

Hi everyone,

So, it's possible to sell mods on Steam Workshop right now. Eh, and here I was, thinking that the workshop is the best thing ever and well, if it was done well, I'd be quite cool with the whole idea, but as it is I'm completely disappointed about the whole thing.

If you don't know what it's all about, here's some stuff that explains it pretty well:

- Article on Nexus Mods http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12449/?

- A video if you don't feel like reading:




Anyway, here's why I'm not too happy about it:

- The cut is ridiculous! Why is it 75% to valve? They're not doing anything! I thought that they're not such a greedy company with all the sales, but now I find it hard to believe... if it was 25% I'd be cool with it, but c'mon, 75% is absolutely crazy. I think it's time to move onto other services, always found GOG to be much nicer and fairer.

- There is no moderation, people steal mods from other people and websites and then host it themselves! Heck if you go to the mods section there is so much bullcrap like ''golden potato mod'' (10 euros) and other useless crap that was clearly made overnight to make some extra cash as soon as it was announced. It's just attracting greedy people and trolls, I can't imagine how bad things will get now with all the spammy ''premium mods''.

- Mods are not always compatible and rarely bug free. I find it insane to sell them as ''DLCs'' when there is no way to be sure that it will actually work and trust me, most of the time it takes ages to get multiple mods to work. Yeah, there is that refund policy, but where do the funds go? Your Steam wallet I suppose. So in the long run Steam doesn't lose money, you'll have to spend it on something. Only the modder will lose their cut I suppose.

Do I think that some mods are as good as or even better than expansion packs / DLCs? Of course, but this is not the way to go about it. They should've just taken the more ''worthy'' (maybe top 100?) mods and helped improve the compatibility so that they'd actually work like actually DLCs that will never conflict with each other. Right now there is absolutely no way I'm buying anything when I can't actually be assured that they will work well. Also, 75% goes to Valve? No thanks.

This is bound to be interesting, I'm wondering what will happen next. 
What's your stance on the whole idea? And seeing how this is a controversial concept please keep is civil.

EDIT: Huh, that was quick. https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop

It's not even been a day yet. Man, this is going to be one of the biggest gaming controversies this year for sure.

 

[Kvich]

I don't think this is going to end well for anyone.

Personally I wouldn't pay a single cent for a mod for skyrim, so it's not going to affect me in any way,  but I'm using the workshop for my projects on RPG maker, and if that ends up being a place to sell ones projects as well, I will immediately remove everything on it, to give no others access to my hard work, for their wallet, and pack my projects and use dropbox for sharing it.

 

[Silenity]

No bueno

 

[Andar]

As I said in a similiar topic, I really doubt that Degica will go to this for the RM-Resources: The licencing for the RTP and similiar things would make the inclusion of any RTP-Edits in such a sale a very big problem.

- The cut is ridiculous! Why is it 75% to valve? They're not doing anything! I thought that they're not such a greedy company with all the sales, but now I find it hard to believe... if it was 25% I'd be cool with it, but c'mon, 75% is absolutely crazy. I think it's time to move onto other services, always found GOG to be much nicer and fairer.

While I admit that 75% is a bit high, you should not forget that any merchant has to make 50% as a minimum to be able to show profit after taxes, rent and other costs.
Check any shop around you that has been open for longer than a few months - they will always tell you that they have to double the selling price from what they paid themselves at minimum, or they can't stay in business and still pay their own living costs.

 

[Warpmind]

I... have mixed feelings about this.

Granted, mods like Extra Apple and Golden Potato are probably not going to be approved (seeing as they are in the Under Review category) for being, well, BS, really.
But then there are mods which add something fairly significant to the game - new armor designs, new dungeons, new and balanced spells and weapons; things which actually take some effort to create - I can't really argue those mods don't deserve a modest compensation.
And then there are mods which add entire campaigns and areas to the game, on par with official DLC - Falskaar and Wyrmstooth come to mind, for example - which I think really DO deserve some compensation.

From where I'm sitting, it's not so much about the money in terms of making a profit of the work as it's about seeing a concrete form of recognition of one's work. If I make something, it's nice to see that others enjoy it; it's even better to see that people think my work is good enough that it's worth making a personal effort (however miniscule; even a cost lower than that of a cheap candy bar IS an effort, as such) to access.

I do suspect, though, that this'd require some curation; pretty strict as such, too, to make sure mod authors don't overcharge obscenely for, well, a golden potato.

 

[Zeriab]

The video brings up some interesting points.

TF2 has a sort of Curated workshop where the game devs themselves add items manually into the game themselves. Much more control that way, but it scales badly I guess.

Ignore the valve cut thing btw. 75% cut to Valve and 25% cut to the modders implies Bethesda get a whooping 0% split. (Yes, definitely wrong information).

*hugs*

 - Zeriab

 

[CrazyCrab]

Ignore the valve cut thing btw. 75% cut to Valve and 25% cut to the modders implies Bethesda get a whooping 0% split. (Yes, definitely wrong information).

*hugs*

 - Zeriab

Sadly that's exactly how much the modders are getting, from the Steam page: ''When an item is sold via the Steam Workshop, revenue is shared between Valve (for transaction costs, fraud, bandwidth & hosting costs, building & supporting the Steam platform), the game developer (for creation of the game and the game's universe, the marketing to build an audience, the included assets, and any included modding or editing tools), and the item creator (including any specified contributors). The percentage of revenue an item creator r'receives from direct sales of their item in this Workshop is 25%, as stipulated in the Supplemental Workshop Terms. Your individual share may be smaller if you have added other contributors that share in the royalty payments.''...

If it was more I'd be inclined to support some modders, but like this it feels like a joke to me. It just feels like the company went ''Oh, there are better DLCs then ours for free? Well, I want a cut of that without actually making it''... it feels especially terrible if mods like ''The unofficial Skyrim patch'' will be for sale, as it's just ridiculous - someone else is fixing your game and they get the 25% cut? Like seriously?

Skyrim is an old game and there is already a hefty amount of good mods that will probably stay free. 

Want to know what my biggest fear is?

Next Elder Scrolls game / Fallout game: all modding is illegal unless done via the Steam workshop.

I feel like Steam is trying to establish a monopoly and this would be an easy way to do this and get Nexusmods out of business.

 

[Ralpf]

It says right there Bethesda is getting a cut too. So it 25% to the modder,  but there is no way of know how the other 75% is split between Steam and (in this case) Bethesda.

But in any case...I can't see this ending well. As Warpmind said, there are mods out there that are good enough to pay for, but what I'm seeing in the Steam workshop right now definitely are not.

Edit: The funny thing is since last night when I looked at it there have been a bunch of mods added that are obviously a jab at the system. And I was looking through to see if I could find a mod worth paying for, and I did, but it was free....

 

[??????]

Seems to me that if left unsupervised it will just turn into a scam fest - people selling mega basic mods and claiming they do x,y,z and then they barely do anything...

 

[EternalShadow]

The cut is more likely 50% Valve, 25% modder and 25% Beth. Either way, it's too small to make it viable to make a mod.

I like the idea though, way more than the spam brigade on the Steam forums do

 

[AwesomeCool]

This is going to turn into something worse then early-access can ever become.

I hope this NEVER happens for any other game.

 

[Clord]

This is double edged sword really.


One great things about mods is that they often contain stuff that would not be included if they were commercial products. Like that Lich King's armor.


Then other hand it encourages more high quality content.


Anyway I signed a petition that tries to take this thing down.


"Paid content is great but there needs to be control of what content is allowed to be sold and who can sell them. People selling stolen mods is not my idea of good business."

 

[Galenmereth]

Some "sources" tell me that Valve takes its 30% split, then the developer of the game can determine the split of the remaining 70%. In the case of Skyrim, it seems to be they want 45%, so that modders are left with 25%. I won't claim this to be the truth, but it doesn't seem unlikely.

What I find questionable is that free mods with links to optional donation pages had the links removed recently, according to some forums and reddit, likely because they don't want this when money can be made selling it.

 

[Ralpf]

This is double edged sword really.

One great things about mods is that they often contain stuff that would not be included if they were commercial products. Like that Lich King's armor.

Then other hand it encourages more high quality content.

Anyway I signed a petition that tries to take this thing down.

"Paid content is great but there needs to be control of what content is allowed to be sold and who can sell them. People selling stolen mods is not my idea of good business."

That is true and if I were an optimist I would be will to take that risk...but I'm not.

There is one on there that I would be willing to support as of now: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=431174765&searchtext= And the reasoning is the first line is that the free (identical) version is still available, the paid version is there for anyone who would like to give something back, and it's only $.25.

Edit:

Some "sources" tell me that Valve takes its 30% split, then the developer of the game can determine the split of the remaining 70%. In the case of Skyrim, it seems to be they want 45%, so that modders are left with 25%. I won't claim this to be the truth, but it doesn't seem unlikely.

What I find questionable is that free mods with links to optional donation pages had the links removed recently, according to some forums and reddit, likely because they don't want this when money can be made selling it.

That seems reasonable to me, too.

 

[Clord]

There's a paid Crowbar mod.


If I'm not mistaken it's an imported HL2 model.

 

[Caitlin]

My stance on this is that it is going to cause a little ruffle feathers.  We see what happened when selling graphics, became the norm for RPG Maker and the graphics became paid and only a little graphics for free.  I was not extremely happy about this, but I made a choice to release as many free graphics I can.  Yes, there will be people, who will post paid MODs on free websites and yes, there will be lazy people who create lame mods for money.  Will there have to be adjustments to the ratio, yes, maybe.   But I say that we should look at the thing itself rather than judging how much you get paid for it. 

1.  There will be people who release free MODs, because they are not doing it for money.

2.  It is nice to have the option of working on a massive MOD and having the option of releasing it for cash.

But this isn't the first time that they've done this, another game has the same setup and no one says anything about that game.   It will balance, itself, out and it could be a good thing. 

 

[AwesomeCool]

Some of the mods already include STOLEN content (example: Wet and Cold) and Steam is supporting these mods.

I find this to be no more then a scheme to try and get more people to put mods on the inferior steam workshop (it causes issues with lots of mods).

Also, it would be more akin to paying to see youtube videos instead of ads.  The 1-day refund policy will not be long enough for many mods (it takes time for some incompatibilities with other mods, bugs and such to show).

Also, since it is so easy to pirate mods, expect more drm in the future for mods (if this is allowed to continue).

I am for supporting modders (I like to mod games), but this is going to be heavily abused like early-access games already are.

This community-made dlc system will hurt the modding community (unless it is changed to a donation like system).  

 

[Seriel]

In my opinion, just like anything made with RM, people worked hard to make these mods, so it's only fair they should get something back for their effort, however I think there should at least be some kind of checks before Mods become paid, to stop people from being ripped off, or getting money from copyrighted works.

 

[Scythuz]

It looks like things are escalating: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/

 

[Zeriab]

Looks pretty much like they took a model which works pretty well: Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2

And then did a horrible implementation: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Notice the differences. The process of devs having to deliberate add the accepted items for TF2 and Dota 2 seems much more sensible to me. What do you guys and girls think?