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Paid Bethesda Mods on Steam. Again.


Ernest Lemmingway

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There's only one question that matters and one answer that matters: 'Does it help me make more money?' and 'Yes.'

 

Gabe Newell talking about fairness and who deserves money and who doesn't is just a way to make more money for himself. After all, you wouldn't believe valve wouldn't take a cut from every mod that might be sold through steam in future, do you. That's some more money you can make for free, profiting on someone else's work while doing the absolute minimal amount of work yourself is always a smart decision.

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Will be the death of people sharing things and spending their time doing it. Game industry looks like shit anyway from the view of a consumer, whatever comes out of andromeda will be a good indicator of just how shitty things are getting. Steam won't die it will be there until the very end since it is so well connected to everything. Hopefully origin and ubisoft die soon I hate those things lol who doesn't?

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sigh :-/  It looks like Gabe just won't give up will he? Is he talking about monetizing the whole PC game modding or just Bethesda games? Well it doesn't matter which since if one game has found success on paid mods and eventually it will spread until every game that's on PC that are easily modded monetized.

 

Some people might asked why would Gabe do this !?

 

Well... the reason is pretty simple Valve has the power to monopoly it and that means more money for Valve for little effort or none at all. Valve is trying to attract modders by saying you can earn money or steam wallet credits :P by selling mods on steam and then trapped them with the "Steam Tax" taking majority of it lol

 

Like the CSGO monetization market isn't bad enough with the whole scammers joining in doing gambling shit. This same thing will happen on the Paid Mods Market but even worse

 

Probably the only one developer/publisher who still understand about the PC gaming is CD Projekt

 

 

 

If i owned a game company, and fans of my game made some really amazing mods that i really like i would straight away offer them the opportunity to work for my company if they would like to. If not then i would like to give them a award for their creation, like maybe a achievement trophy.

 

I can tell you that if this really happens then it gonna be really really terrible. Modders will be less willing on sharing information on how to fix something that's related to modding, like example "why blender aren't loading my .nifs?" Why share when you can sell? makes a simple tutorial packed in .zip and upload to Steam Market and sell it!!

 

We have already seen garbage like DLCs,Microtransations,Online Pass,Season Pass, Pay Online Service Fee (consoles) Pay To Play Few Days/Weeks Earlier Than Others Fee. and you still wanna add Paid Mods to the list? There's no doubt that Steam subscribing fee is around the corner, since the top 3 consoles giants already done it.

 

So what's next? maybe this "How do i defeat this NPC?" Shut up pay me $5.99 then i tell you. Selling tips on how to play the game =.=

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Gabe cares about Gabe.  The notion that he and Valve are the champions of mods and modding is a joke.

 

Most likely he understands that Bethesda won't be releasing another A-list title until around 2020...and even then that time line is sketchy.  It took Bethesda 8 yrs to make FO4.  That was with an existing engine, a scripting scheme they had already used once before, and a bare-bones story.  It took them 8 yrs to make a linear shooter and look at what they gave their customers.

Both Hines and Howard have already stated there won't be a FO Boneyard or New Orleans.  They also confirmed that what they want to do with the next game isn't possible without a new game engine.  It took them 8 yrs to make that shit-show FO4 with stuff they already had so how long will their customers have to wait for a new game with an engine Bethesda hasn't made yet?

 

Back to point...Gabe is looking for revenue and bilking customers and milking modders is his way to get the money.  I hope he goes through with it.  I hope Bethesda gets behind him 100%.

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There is a big difference between paid-mod and modders getting paid.  Objective of the former is to maximize profit and the latter is to strive for fair compensation.  Clearly Gabe Newell doesn't care about the latter, otherwise he wouldn't outright dismiss any donation or crowd-funding modder compensation scheme (both are closer to the modding spirit but neither has the economics to generate commercial scale profits streams).   Saying the difference between his "community" and Skyrim's was the cause of Skyrim paid mod failure is as alt-truth as Uber is about "sharing".  His "community" is not really modding but outsourced freelancers for Valve's pay-to-play games.  They are as much a community as the people in Glengarry Glen Ross.

 

EDIT: When I said "they" in reference to Glengarry Glen Ross, I don't mean people who mod Valve games but the kind of interpersonal relationship resulted from such compensation schemes. 

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Currently, my patreon supporters add up to approx. $50,- per batch of content I put out. That's about 2 months of work if I work on it full time (which I don't at the moment). I doubt Steam could net me that amount.

As for modders deserving compensation, I always like seeing hard work rewarded. But if I get 10 people thanking me for amazing work, that's a reward in and of its own, the financial support is an amazing addittion to that. Granted, I have a job as my main source of income, so I don't rely on modding for my income.

 

All in all, Bethesda shouldn't even attempt paid mods again. It doesn't work. And the argument they made about "invading the existing Skyrim modding community" doesn't hold up, as the Skyrim community is part of a decade old Bethesda modding community. No way they'll stand for it. Hell, Nexus even has specific perm checkboxes you can tick if you don't want anyone using your assets in paid mods, even if you make it publically available for other modders to use, that goes to show how much modders despise it.

 

And let's not even get started on the witch hunts on modders who "sold their soul". I think some of them have a tainted name to this day because they pulled their mods from the public and barred it behind a paywall.

 

If they're gonna go through with it, it's probably going to crash and burn once more, and they'll come with another apology. The only way paid mods could ever work is if they have a monopoly on spreading, and Bethesda.net as well as the Steam workshop don't nearly compare to Nexus in sheer size and traffic.

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yea thanking and helping bug check is way more beneficial i find as i can improve my skills 10 fold, alot faster which gives even better mods. me personally i dont do it for the money i do it for the fun and to keep the brain active if a few people like my mods then great stuff. your feeling rich then i aint going to mind either way.

 

 

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If Valve and/or Bethesda wants to take another stab on Curated Workshop, then that's their business. What bothers me are their Workshop systems.

 

- Using a platform with autoupdate feature for game that bakes script data to save files is far from optimal. It was a bad call in 2015 and would be equally bad call in 2017. Bethesda should know their own game better and Valve really should reply to issues that their forum regulars have raised. They seem to be answering with silence, despite how many channels Skyrim forum regulars have tried to use.

 

- Steam Workshop has been bugged since early 2015. Bug causes it to loose mod data and break mods that you have subscribed in to. It does not affect all players, but seems to be able to struck any player and has relatively high change to become persistent. Valve and Bethesda did not fix what they broke during CK/Workshop update for Curated Workshop, which (among with issue mentioned above) was one of the main reasons why so many Steam forum regulars opposed the idea. They didn't oppose Curated Workshop itself, but the fact that Valve and Bethesda had left severe issues in it and never fixed it. It still haven't been fixed and has been suffering from even more problems lately.

 

- Bethesda's own Workshop seems to suffer from similar issue with Steam Workshop. Lack of autoupdate makes Bethesda Workshop less dangerous, but bug is equally annoying.

 

I have hard time to trust paid mod content for Valve and Bethesda, when they are unable to build and manage proper platforms for their current content. Both companies are too interested of managing and controlling the distributed content, to loss of their own reliability to do so. dodgy.gif

 

Curated content might work for some other games, but doing it right for Skyrim would require that some guys in those companies would send their consults to vacation and reach out to community itself. I have watched how these companies work long enough not to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

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This is just another attempt to use something that looks and sounds good while making you feel like a good person for supporting it to get their hands on more shit. Like a free flags for orphan bill that has a rider tacked on that gives congress a pay raise. They hope you don't notice, and if you do, the fact that it looks good on the surface will make you the object of ridicule for opposing it.

 

Do modders "need" to be paid? No, they don't. Do they "deserve" to be paid? Again, no. Unless they're made actual, proper employees of Bethesda and/or Valve, they don't need or deserve to be given a cent. Now, if people WANT to give them money, then that's a whole other thing, because somebody values what a modder makes to the point where they'll give money for it. And if they don't, then oh well. But today, everybody is told that effort is to be rewarded, and usually said reward is money or an item. To them, they think that their time and effort is of instant value to anybody, when it really isn't.

 

If I make a chair on my own time for my own fun, does that mean I "need" or "deserve" to be given money for it? Of course not. Now if somebody looks at that chair and thinks it's nice and they offer me money, well that's just icing on the cake.

 

At least Valve has a slightly decent claim to some of the money due to the fact that it's on their servers and using their bandwidth to store and distribute mods via the workshop, But of course, they'll just take as much as they can, rather than just offset the cost because that's just free money for doing exactly nothing.

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I've found myself wondering about this...

As a modder, yes of course i'd like to get money for modding work

But at what price?

 

Are you suggesting "paid mods" in a world where mods become private and it enables the rising of that breed of modders who emerge as the assholes they always were, plus a bunch of resented people because they refuse to pay for those mods?

Or perhaps a more civilized solution where modders get paid by the system itself and also by contributions?

 

If the system were to pay modders for their work, that IMHO, would be the most fair thing that could ever happen

After all, its because of mods that they continue to sell copies and keep their games alive

But this isnt a fair world is it?

There's not a chance in hell that the big companies are gonna "hire" modders and pay them from their own pockets

No... what they want is what they always wanted. That the little guy puts their own hand in their own small and humble little consumer pocket and pay modders from their own money. Why? because they implement the system in which that is possible and of course they get their own big cut, that's why.

Dont bullshit me about good intentions. These people know the system and the flows of money better than any of us ever could. There's always a loophole or some trick that will make them richer. They dont play dice or act out of the kindness of their hearts. There's always a purpose in every decision they make.

So "a champion voice for the modders"?

Bitch, please...

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It's quite simple: paid mods = less people using them (and will descend even more over time).

Besides, like 95% of modders themselves refuse this idea, what makes them thing this time it would sink in? 

When a businessman is greedy and wants to earn the most money possible, he/she would come with the best scheme for doing so. It almost looks like Valve and/or Bethesda haven't learned anything at all.

 

This is all straight up stupid.

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the funny part is the last time they tried this crap "Mod Piracy" immediately became a thing.

anyone that paywalled there mods ended up as the biggest mod theft victims in history.

 

Indeed why was that ?? also what is going to stop a modder from being attacked when it's mod is not working right ??? Bethesda is just driving a wedge around modders now modders get attacked for a broken Bethesda game who will be blaimed now when the game is not functioning right ?? Bethesda for creating a buggy game or a modder that made the game more buggy ??

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Can't license something you don't own the IP to.  If a mod is derived from anything Bethesda made then the modder doesn't own the mod to begin with.  Can't re-license it or restrict Bethesda's use of it.  And let's face it, the vast majority of mods being made today are derived from Bethesda IP.  This included processes that rely on an exiting and licensed process...like a mod for a game.

 

The way the FO4 and now rewritten Skyrim EULAs are worded Zenimax/Bethesda owns any content made to work with those games.  They can dispose of them how they see fit.  Everyone agreed to that when they installed the games or when Valve updated the games' original UPI.dlls.

 

If Bethesda was to license a 3rd party designee (like Valve) to charge money for mods then they can.  Compensation to the modders is not required.  It is what it is.

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[...]

 What makes The Sims 3 different is that there isn't a load order, or a over reliance on other mods to make a mod work. 

 

In this regard Beth. games are very different.

 

I also doubt that Beth or Valve would ever support the kind of mods done on this site. tongue.png

But here’s the deal, you need mods like nraas errortrap and overwatch and several more to make the game playable because EA is as lazy and shortsighted as Bethesda. But because several people invested time in fixing errors and making tools the rest of the modding community had the chance to make a plethora of content.

 

Also there were paid mods for TS3, creators even opened their own shops and that also generated piracy, bad blood and several other issues. Nobody seems to remember now but I can assure you it wasn’t pretty.

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[...]

 What makes The Sims 3 different is that there isn't a load order, or a over reliance on other mods to make a mod work. 

 

In this regard Beth. games are very different.

 

I also doubt that Beth or Valve would ever support the kind of mods done on this site. tongue.png

But here’s the deal, you need mods like nraas errortrap and overwatch and several more to make the game playable because EA is as lazy and shortsighted as Bethesda. But because several people invested time in fixing errors and making tools the rest of the modding community had the chance to make a plethora of content.

 

Also there were paid mods for TS3, creators even opened their own shops and that also generated piracy, bad blood and several other issues. Nobody seems to remember now but I can assure you it wasn’t pretty.

 

 

However, EA was successful in changing its customer behavior.  Sims players today are far open to the idea of paying incrementally for content.  Yes many if most do bitch about it but many do pay.  Case after case has shown that a small percentage of players is responsible for 70-90% of micro-transaction revenues.  Once you change the culture the money will come.

 

Just look at Loverslab.  There are far more Bethesda mods and players here but Sims Patreon are generating far, far more money for their authors.  There is far less push back in the Sims community in regard to pay-to-play. 

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That's a straw man.  EA didn't change anyone's behavior.  Maxis/EA doesn't involve themselves in the day to day grind of Sims 'pay me' modders and them soliciting Paetron/Paypal donations.  Bethesda/Valve wants to insert themselves directly into the process and control it so they can profit from it.  An independent douche charging for mods is not the same as an officially sanctioned douche collaborating with Bethesda.net or Steam so they can charge for mods and turn a profit.

If EA and Origin decided to team up and attempt to control Sims modding in a way that they could make money while prohibiting anything that undercuts them...there would be a huge backlash.  EA/Origin haven't ran the monetized mods gauntlet but Bethesda /Valve has, and they obviously didn't learn their lesson.

 

And Bethesda/Zenimax IP can't be placed behind a pay wall.  Having a free version of a mod and a better version only available to donors is just begging for legal trouble.  It's a direct violation of every Bethesda game license since Oblivion's.

 

AND the Sims content editors aren't made or controlled by Maxis/EA.  They were made by individuals and without them there isn't any Sims modding at all.  TSR Workshop, Sims 4 Studio and the Sims 4 Package Editor were all made and are maintained by private individuals and the software have their own licensing.  Maxis/EA doesn't control them in the manner that Zenimax/Bethesda controls the Construction Kits...software that they made.  And the licensing for the Construction Kits clearly state that Bethesda owns anything made with them.  Legally Bethesda could contact Dark0ne, Ashal and any other forum owner and slap them with a cease and desist order to remove all Bethesda IP from their sites, and they would have to comply.

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The first time DLC showed up people should have resisted it instead they bought into it and now look where we are. The problem is people will never do what they should well, maybe a small minority will resist but when they see everyone else going along with it they eventually give in. Human nature strikes again, and again and again.

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The first time DLC showed up people should have resisted it instead they bought into it and now look where we are. The problem is people will never do what they should well, maybe a small minority will resist but when they see everyone else going along with it they eventually give in. Human nature strikes again, and again and again.

 

Yeah, well, people should have done the same with DRM and Bethesda and their badly made games, but they didn't.

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[...]

 What makes The Sims 3 different is that there isn't a load order, or a over reliance on other mods to make a mod work. 

 

In this regard Beth. games are very different.

 

I also doubt that Beth or Valve would ever support the kind of mods done on this site. tongue.png

But here’s the deal, you need mods like nraas errortrap and overwatch and several more to make the game playable because EA is as lazy and shortsighted as Bethesda. But because several people invested time in fixing errors and making tools the rest of the modding community had the chance to make a plethora of content.

 

Also there were paid mods for TS3, creators even opened their own shops and that also generated piracy, bad blood and several other issues. Nobody seems to remember now but I can assure you it wasn’t pretty.

 

 

However, EA was successful in changing its customer behavior.  Sims players today are far open to the idea of paying incrementally for content.  Yes many if most do bitch about it but many do pay.  Case after case has shown that a small percentage of players is responsible for 70-90% of micro-transaction revenues.  Once you change the culture the money will come.

 

Just look at Loverslab.  There are far more Bethesda mods and players here but Sims Patreon are generating far, far more money for their authors.  There is far less push back in the Sims community in regard to pay-to-play. 

 

 

How about content used from different modders do they steal more work or not ? or are all content created from single modder ?? bethesda cant be dervied like sims since allot of modders are using content from differerent makers. and basing there own work apon that. so if a mod author is charging for his mod he should also pay the other modders for using there content in his mod. or else that is considered mod stealing. if everything is your own work then yes you are correct.

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And the licensing for the Construction Kits clearly state that Bethesda owns anything made with them.

Meh, I haven't yet read any beth construction kit license where Beth claims the exclusive copyright to what you make with it, only a non-exclusive. They get to copy from you, but they're not the owner of the mod.

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[...]

 What makes The Sims 3 different is that there isn't a load order, or a over reliance on other mods to make a mod work. 

 

In this regard Beth. games are very different.

 

I also doubt that Beth or Valve would ever support the kind of mods done on this site. tongue.png

But here’s the deal, you need mods like nraas errortrap and overwatch and several more to make the game playable because EA is as lazy and shortsighted as Bethesda. But because several people invested time in fixing errors and making tools the rest of the modding community had the chance to make a plethora of content.

 

Also there were paid mods for TS3, creators even opened their own shops and that also generated piracy, bad blood and several other issues. Nobody seems to remember now but I can assure you it wasn’t pretty.

 

 

However, EA was successful in changing its customer behavior.  Sims players today are far open to the idea of paying incrementally for content.  Yes many if most do bitch about it but many do pay.  Case after case has shown that a small percentage of players is responsible for 70-90% of micro-transaction revenues.  Once you change the culture the money will come.

 

Just look at Loverslab.  There are far more Bethesda mods and players here but Sims Patreon are generating far, far more money for their authors.  There is far less push back in the Sims community in regard to pay-to-play. 

 

 

How about content used from different modders do they steal more work or not ? or are all content created from single modder ?? bethesda cant be dervied like sims since allot of modders are using content from differerent makers. and basing there own work apon that. so if a mod author is charging for his mod he should also pay the other modders for using there content in his mod. or else that is considered mod stealing. if everything is your own work then yes you are correct.

 

 

Perhaps I am looking at this thread differently, and OP's subject title didn't help.  The PC Gamer article is not really about Bethesda but about Valve being adamant of wanting to make money from mods.  Like Gabe Newell said in the article despite his hypocrisy, monetizing the existing Betheda community of modders is not going to happen.  However he was full on alt-truth that this is about modders getting paid and how "mooders" in his community got a better deal than the Skyrim community.

 

The alt-truth is that things are changing the way Valve wanted, not because modders are getting paid but because big publishers have been figuring out ways to squeeze more money from players.  Not long ago pay-to-play is a taboo but after different trials the practice is now universally accepted in multi-player online games.  In Sims we are seeing this change of consumer behavior moving into single player games and unofficial content, mostly due to EA's own business practice of slicing the game into ever smaller pieces.  EA wasn't even the first to try, Valve tried it with Half Life episode but switched into the far more lucrative online pay-to-play just as that project started.  If the money is big enough, or the means of taxing paid mod is cheap enough, EA for sure will exert control of Sims mods.  Valve today is uniquely placed to be able to collect such taxes, or "rent" in economic parlance.  Yes some modders will get paid, but this is a misnomer.  Like "sharing" is now hijacked by companies like Uber, the so called modders in company controlled eco-system are bonus-only freelancers replacing salaried employees.  The companies then call it a "community" to further avoid responsibility to said labor.  Like Uber, there is big money of a business model where profit can be generated by offloading the cost and risk of its production costs. 

 

Does Valve care that such system is naturally degenerating that the ambitious complex mods will likely disappear due to theft and loathing that pretty skins, outfits or maps sell better?  Doubt it.  The saving grace is that there will always be newcomers looking to build reputation by supporting free-to-play mods.  Perhaps CDPR will do so with Cyberpunk 2077 and displace the now establishment Bethesda, or one of the many studios emerging supported by the new game engine license models will choose to support mods and become the next Bethesda.  Modding free-for-all won't disappear even if Valve successfully hijack the word "mod" into their profit seeking practices.

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