Valve cancels paid mods for Skyrim

[LaP]

I have no doubt it'll return eventually, it's too profitable a business model for modders and game developers, the only people complaining were those who didn't want to have to spend money.

 

I think the main mistake was implementing this in an old game having an established modding community used to free mods.

 

It should have been implemented with a new game having no mods already done.

[Shadrack]

I honestly have no issue with paying mod creaters for their work if it is significant and good. I've been mostly away for a week, so I missed the whole drama surrounding this -- my understanding is that it was a system primed for abuse. Folks were selling mods they didn't make, and terrible mods that were game-breaking in the current version were being sold.

 

When I play Falskaar Skyrim 3rd party DLC, I think that this guy deserves support. Its as massive of a content mod as Bethesda's own DLC Dragonborn and Dawnguard. Would gladly pay $5 - $20 for content like that and would like to encourage other developers to get on it as well.

 

The first two Quake Mission packs back in the 90s were basically paid mods sponsored by Id software but ultimately done by 3rd parties. They were both terrific and added a lot to the game. I think Mod folks should be comfortable with asking for money for their work without it having to be by donation only, personally.

 

In other words -- from what I can tell Steam failed at this last week because of poor execution. I don't have anything against the idea, so long as it is executed well.

[Shadrack]

Good! I was most disgusted by the prospect of SkyUI becoming payware. Since many mods depend on it. Thank you Gabe for realizing what a horrible idea this was.

 

Authors of mods are more likely to get money by asking for donations. Perhaps offering an incentive like if you donate above $XX you get to name an NPC or get your name put in the credits, etc. 

 

Yeah, SkyUI developers could have really banked on it. It is just that useful. It is the essential Skyrim mod -- even if you want to play "vanilla".  I'm not even sure you can get SkyUI properly installed through the Steam Workshop. It requires the SkSE script extension. Overall Steam Workshop is just terrible for Skyrim mods.

[francescob]

They should have made a Greenlight for mods first, also it's time they find some way to separate quality mods from all the garbage.

[+E.Worm Jimmy Subscriber¹]

i bet it is the horse genitalia mod for $99 that got their attention and made them pull the plug.

[francescob]

i bet it is the horse genitalia mod for $99 that got their attention and made them pull the plug.

 

I think it was this horribly blaspheme image instead.

[LaP]

i bet it is the horse genitalia mod for $99 that got their attention and made them pull the plug.

 

Why?

 

That was the best mod and it was sold at a fair price XD

[Doli]

Wow, this could have revolutionized the gaming industry, but a bunch people who are afraid of change ruined it for everyone else.

 

I don't know if it would have revolutionized the gaming industry but people were not afraid of change the problem was how Valve was handling it. They should get more input from modders, game developers and gamers and try again. 

I don't like that if there is a game update that breaks a mod you are SOL after the 24 hour return window if the modder doesn't want to update their mod or cant. Official Mod tools from the game's developer can help but still cant force someone to update their mod that people bought.

[Luc2k]

They should have made a Greenlight for mods first, also it's time they find some way to separate quality mods from all the garbage.

Yes, because when someone thinks Greenlight, they think of quality games, not shovelware. The amount of people willing to pay 100$ to put their waste on Steam is amazing. The amount of people that vote this excrement through for a free key or for the hell of it is also amazing. Steam Greenlight is like trying to hold liquid crap in the palms of your hands and hoping it doesn't slip through.

 

I recommend you go watch some Jim Sterling videos to let that horror sink in.

/rant

 

i bet it is the horse genitalia mod for $99 that got their attention and made them pull the plug.

Nah, it was probably GabeN's genitalia mod that did it.

[francescob]

Yes, because when someone thinks Greenlight, they think of quality games, not shovelware. The amount of people willing to pay 100$ to put their waste on Steam is amazing. The amount of people that vote this excrement through for a free key or for the hell of it is also amazing. Steam Greenlight is like trying to hold liquid crap in the palms of your hands and hoping it doesn't slip through.

 

Greenlight absolutely needs a complete overhaul but things could be far worse without it. Paid mods should be limited otherwise the store would just get filled with garbage (e.g. like the Win8 store where devs repackage the same software dozens times and spam keywords to attract users).

[Luc2k]

Greenlight absolutely needs a complete overhaul but things could be far worse without it. Paid mods should be limited otherwise the store would just get filled with garbage (e.g. like the Win8 store where devs repackage the same software dozens times and spam keywords to attract users).

They were better before Greenlight happened. How should pay mods be limited and by what criteria? If Valve doesn't bother vetting games, what makes you think they would have cared for mods?

[theyarecomingforyou]

I think people would have much preferred a 'donate' button than suddenly charging for mods that were previously free. People want mod creators to be compensated but they don't want the modding community destroyed by greed.

[francescob]

They were better before Greenlight happened.

But I wasn't comparing it to before Greenlight happened, but rather with anybody being able to submit paid mods with no restrictions. If mods were put on hold for voting and scrutinizing then those mods plagiarizing other people contents would likely have been stopped.

 

Anyway having the games hand-picked by expert people (like it was pre-Greenlight) had certainly more consistent results than letting the games being chosen by a community that can be easily manipulated. But what is really important in an online store is the organization and search, you could even let anybody publish anything they wanted if the store organized things properly (but how to do that in a fair manner is nowadays still pretty much a mystery).

 

How should pay mods be limited and by what criteria? If Valve doesn't bother vetting games, what makes you think they would have cared for mods?

That's the answer they should have looked for before rushing something like this without being cautious. I think they should have some of their employees reviewing the submissions for final approval but I think it's pretty much impossible for the community to accept that.

[francescob]

I think people would have much preferred a 'donate' button than suddenly charging for mods that were previously free.

They said a 'free offer' option was in the works but I doubt anybody would have been content with the dev only getting 25% of a donation.

 

People want mod creators to be compensated but they don't want the modding community destroyed by greed.

Devs of paid mods want money, devs of free mods want popularity (or recognition) but the two things aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe Valve could have kept the stores separated and compensated the free mods with more visibility (~= more popularity/recognition)?

[theyarecomingforyou]

They said a 'free offer' option was in the works but I doubt anybody would have been content with the dev only getting 25% of a donation.

I think a 25/25/50 (Valve/Publisher/Creator) or 30/30/40 (Valve/Publisher/Creator) split is fine. The creator should get the largest cut.

 

Devs of paid mods want money, devs of free mods want popularity (or recognition) but the two things aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe Valve could have kept the stores separated and compensated the free mods with more visibility (~= more popularity/recognition)?

I'm sure Valve will reintroduce paid mods with a new game, like Fallout 4. That way it will be present from the start, rather than people's favourite mods suddenly costing money. If not then they'll push a donate button. I don't think is the last we've seen of the concept, though it might be a while until it's brought back.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

So now that it's all said and done, modders are starting to talk about the existing situation, and what paid mods could have offered them. SkyUI for example, downloaded 4.4 million times, earned the creators a grand total of $500 over 4 years, which is one of the reasons why they basically abandoned it in the first place, another modder had 200,000 downloads of their mod, and received 2 donations from it.

Basically, optional donations are great for mod users, because they don't have to spend any money, but awful for mod developers who actually want support from the community for making mods. That's what mod developers have learnt from this debacle, the community doesn't want to spend any money to support them.

[spaceelf]

That's what mod developers have learnt from this debacle, the community doesn't want to spend any money to support them.

 

If that's what they want to take from it so be it.  As I said, I'm not averse to spending money on projects if the creators actually get anything out of it.  If my money would all go to the hosts...no.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

They did get money out of the Valve deal, much more than they ever would have from donations, that's what is so funny about all the outrage.

[spaceelf]

And much less than they deserved.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

There remains the stick web of copying and using content from other mods in one that is resold, as well as the piratability of mods. Without clear definitions of copyright holders, this would get quite complicated rapidly, and many man hours of work would need to go into looking into each incident. Since money is at stake, things would need verification.

[dragontology]

Okay, there are two really huge problems with the paid mods idea that no one in this thread have realized, or at least hadn't mentioned yet. But I want to start by saying that, at first, I agreed with Bethesda/Valve in that modders deserve to be paid.

 

The first one is my own. If you've been following Skyrim news, you might be aware that Bethesda had at least two major expansions planned, one said to be set in the Redguard home of Hammerfell. And one smaller one like Hearthfire. But they canceled these projects to help Zenimax get The Elder Scrolls Online out the door on time. Many gaming blogs redacted or deleted references to the future Skyrim DLC for some reason, and now mentions of them are hard to find. It's amazing how casual we are about rewriting history nowadays. And by amazing, I mean [expletive] terrifying. Anyway, if Bethesda wants to make more money on Skyrim... Why not finish these expansions? I get that making free money off the backs of volunteer modders is easier, but they could make so much money if they made two more $20 expansions and another $10 one (or whatever Hearthfire cost). And, if not even that, how about HIRING people like the SkyUI team, the Unofficial Patch Team, Chesko (Frostfall), and others. Seriously, the Unofficial Patches should be an official update for all platforms. And Bethesda should have fired their UI team when SkyUI came out, as clearly they failed. So Bethesda supposedly approached SkyUI and said they were leaving money on the table. That bugs me. They left money on the table when they abandoned Skyrim to work on TESO.

 

This comes from Reddit comments. It isn't my original idea. I would have to be a modder to come up with this, and I am not. So, as I understand it, when Skyrim came out, the Creation Kit was poorly documented, and the community had to work together to make it work, and to make it work well, and beyond that, to find exploits to make it do things it was originally not intended to do. And, as it stands, even with this collaboration, mods conflict with one another over shared resources. Sometimes it's obvious, like, say, JK's Whiterun and Beautiful Whiterun, ran together, will probably make things act weird as they try to alter the same resources. Now Fallout 4 is coming (we hope) and with it, a new engine. Now, if it includes paid modding, there won't be a community. Because if you're a modder and you figure something out, you're not going to share your knowledge. At first modding will be hugely competitive. A lot of big players simply won't play because they want the camaraderie that comes with figuring stuff out together. Those that do play will find alternate ways of doing the same thing, and then you have mods that conflict, not because they try to do the same thing, but because they exploit resources in different, incompatible ways. The mods will break each other without even changing the same things. It will be chaotic, and only a few decent mods and maybe a couple good ones will emerge. And they won't be compatible with one another. As an end user, you'll probably end up buying a bunch of mods you can't use because they're incompatible with other mods you like more, and it's nobody's fault but your own since you can remove the mods you prefer and use the other ones just fine.

 

All that said, I'm still not saying the paid mods thing was a bad idea. They just went about it wrong. If Bethesda wanted more money, they could go back and release the expansions they were planning. If Valve wants more money from Skyrim, they need to figure out a way to do it in such a way that helps the community. They need to make a mod organizer themselves, collaborate with Bethesda, and do things Nexus Mod Manager and Mod Organizer don't. Mod Organizer begins to address mod incompatibilities, but it only addresses mods that conflict with one another. If it were able to look and say, "Hey, you can't do this because that," that would be a huge step forward. Like, open the game in the lowest possible settings at 320x240 in a window and show you exactly why the mod won't work, and  then possibly get into the mod and patch it on the fly? That would be huge. Maybe not possible, I don't know, but if they could make mods a lot closer to foolproof, then yeah, I could totally see paying. But it has to be done right and everyone has to be doing it for the love of the community and the game, not just a "get rich quick" scheme.