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Luk3us

Paid mods

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So steam is now letting people sell their mods for money on steam! Only for Skyrim at the moment but it'll probably expand in time...

 

ROFL what a cluster**** of **** they have unleashed. It'll be interesting to see what happens in a few days when all the **** dies down. I predict disaster.

 

 

The future! :D

 

G0O2R0b.jpg

 

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I fear this will be coming, to counter against Desura. The worst scenario could be some of the biggest mods of all time, especially to GTA IV and V mods.

 

Even my KW Reloaded mod for C&C3 isn't worth a single penny selling into Steam, but maybe for Renegade-X, Rise of the Reds, C&C Shockwave, Tiberium Essence, C&C3 The Forgotten, Mental Omega and Twisted Insurrection. :mellow: :mellow: :mellow:

Edited by zocom7

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Guess what, a petition is now on the line to make Valve get rid of it: http://www.pcgamer.com/petition-against-paid-mods-on-steam-draws-34000-signatures-in-a-day/

 

Sorry, but it really needs a million signatures to make Valve get their attention.

 

Also a Skyrim mod was removed from Steam due to permission issues: http://www.pcgamer.com/paid-for-skyrim-mod-removed-in-a-matter-of-hours/

 

Last but not least an opinion about this: http://www.pcgamer.com/paid-mods-wont-kill-modding-and-might-make-it-better/

Edited by zocom7

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This is a cluster**** of a discussion to have tbh.

For one i believe in supporting small time dev's or one man studios. Otoh i do believe the indie game scene is the correct place to do that, not a the modding community. And i can understand that some of the want-to-be devs will jump at this to bring in some cash flow. It can suck if all you want to do is make games but don't have the resources or manpower(if need be) to transition into be coming a indie dev or let alone get hired/move to a genuine dev studio.

 

The problem comes that some mods are a hell of a lot better then some of the greenlight early access indie/crowd funded garbage that comes out these days. So if people pay 20 euro/dollars plus for that crap, why can't they pay 5 for my mod thats alot better?

 

People make mods for 2 reasons: one they are fans of the ip they mod on, two they want to use their mod as a portfolio item. And some rightly or falsly so transition into the indie scene.

 

Valve and companies that will support this (remember valve gets arround 75% of the revenue, guess how much of that goes to bathesda and other companies who own the ip?) are basicly spiking both the modding and indie scenes.

Usually (if done right and with some selfrespect) a mod that goes indie ups his development lvl to push out even better content, but why bother now if you can get payed for your current work?

 

I feel that petitioning wont do much, human greed is a hard thing to root out, both from those enabling it and those hoping to make a quick buck out of the payed mod system. In a cruel way(to some devs/modders on the other side of the line) this will work alot better as a community solution, "shun" payed mods: don't play them, don't pay them, don't help them(change licencing on free public models, etc). Modding and actuall payed game development should stay seperated imo.

 

Also mods(modders) started off somewhere, a forum to get help with code, a 3d max tutorial, some photoshop tutorial etc...in a way those people/community are/were part of your dev team for your mod....i doubt you will go back to those people and pay them once you rake in some cash. Are you actually comfortable charging the community that supported your mod all these months/years? To me that feels like having your parents stay with you but charging them for rent, for a large part you got where you are because of them.

 

My two cents, modding communities are alrdy a endangered species, they should protect them selfs/be protected from things like this.

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The backlash is pretty huge. People are making a joke of it and it's exposing Bethesda as one of the crappiest developers out there. I'll say it: The Elder Scrolls is ****ing overrated, Skyrim especially. The worst part is that Valve allowed this and it's split a good community right in half because some people sold the **** out instead of saying no. I'll say this now, as someone who mods other games, you are not entitled to make a cent for your work no matter how much you put into it. If you want to get paid, make your own game but if you're working on a derivative work, you deserve jack ****. Maybe I'm just someone who works for the love of the game instead of making a profit.

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TaleWorlds, the developers of the Mount&Blade series, are big supporters of modding. In fact, they treat their base games as just the default "mods" for the engine. A couple of mods were impressive enough that TaleWorlds wanted to make them official. They didn't allow the modders to sell their mods, they hired the modders to rebuild the mods as official DLC. The original mods are still free mods, the DLC remakes are sold for money. If you look up the Mount&Blade series and see the DLC Napoleonic Wars and Viking Conquest, those were built by modders.

 

This, in my opinion, is the right way to allow modders to make a profit on their work.

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TaleWorlds, the developers of the Mount&Blade series, are big supporters of modding. In fact, they treat their base games as just the default "mods" for the engine. A couple of mods were impressive enough that TaleWorlds wanted to make them official. They didn't allow the modders to sell their mods, they hired the modders to rebuild the mods as official DLC. The original mods are still free mods, the DLC remakes are sold for money. If you look up the Mount&Blade series and see the DLC Napoleonic Wars and Viking Conquest, those were built by modders.

 

This, in my opinion, is the right way to allow modders to make a profit on their work.

That is the only way to let modders make a profit, but, unfortunately, that's not what happened. What's even worse is that the people shilling their lame ass paid mods probably won't ever see a dime from their effort. They shouldn't in the first place but a variety of reasons ensure they'll never get anything. First, Bethesda ****s on the modders by taking 45 percent right up front then Valve takes their standard 30 percent, which leaves 25 percent for the asset creator. Unfortunately, before the creator sees anything, they have to sell $400 to $500 worth of product in total and they have to wait for a pay cycle to receive any sort of pay out. The pay cycle is 90 days so if you hit the threshold at day 91, you have to wait 3 months before you get anything. The whole system is a ****ing joke. Bethesda should be burned to the ground for even attempting this **** for their buggy, **** games.

 

Yeah, I'll say it right here and out loud: Bethesda sucks. Easily one of the worst developers out there, right up there with Ubisoft in **** factor. People fawn over Fallout and The Elder Scrolls but they're mediocre, buggy pieces of ****. I want to like them more but the fact I need mods to fix glaring issues is pretty ****ty of them.

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Well so far over 131,000 signed the petition. I am in no support of this in any way, because of what Valve is doing is still trying to end PC gaming once and for all. They once tried to terminate every Half-Life mod to the archives. Why should mods be paid? Indie mods as an original from an original game is merely okay unless it's a complete game with continued support.

 

Besides on the other side of the gaming world, Epic Games is uncertain how to handle the UT marketplace on whether if mods will be free-to-play or for a small cost. So far the Unreal Paris tech demo with luxurious designs doesn't cost a single penny to download, play and view.

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Well, just because Valve cashed in on a few mods (originals of Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and later DotA 2) doesn't mean they have to do so on all of them. I understood the modder gets only a very small portion (was it 25%?) of the revenue, while the rest is split between Valve and the respective game's developer. I try to describe this fiasco to myself, but words fail me.

Edited by Plokite_Wolf

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It doesn't matter now. Valve took paid mods off the Steam Workshop. So I guess the backlash was for good reason and they listened.

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It's too bad Valve's policy how they share the profit from mods isn't 33% to theirs, Bethesda and the mod developers.

 

Anyways, I am glad this is over for now: http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-has-removed-paid-mods-functionality-from-steam-workshop

 

Even "Intense" in Moddb thinks mods should stay free unless the developer(s) wants to sell it for a cost (as long as it has premium quality to sell): http://www.moddb.com/news/the-uncertain-future-of-paid-mods

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It's too bad Valve's policy how they share the profit from mods isn't 33% to theirs, Bethesda and the mod developers.

An even 3-way split is only slightly less stupid than the way they had it.

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Like getting beaten to death with an iron pipe is slightly better than getting beaten to death with a weighted sock.

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Whilst they're taken down paid mods for now they're be back. Hopefully they learned something from this experience, though I'm not sure how exactly you'd make a foolproof system for selling mods. Especially if Valve continues their 'hands off' approach.

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Well this isn't over for Valve because now, Black Mesa is the latest mod to get a Steam Early Access release for $20 pathetic dollars, only for improvements, no Xen chapters, some special features and limited Multiplayer. What a ripoff! :mad:

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/black-mesa-released-to-steam-early-access

Changes: http://www.blackmesagame.com/bms_presskit.pdf

 

Even as of now, the devs have not mentioned what will the future Black Mesa free version will have when Xen chapters are finished, if only most Black Mesa and HL fans will ever wonder if that will be free. I say by 2020, that game will be finished after HL3 is released.

 

The devs have lied when they mentioned this earlier: http://embed.gyazo.com/96587f2cc9b0d161741c0bcc78bad305.png

 

Let's hope that Renegade-X is not to end up in Steam! Remake mods of original games don't need to be paid except for donations. So far as of now, Renegade-X is the best free remake game so far over most free game remakes.

Edited by zocom7

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