Mods and Money!?

[Kimy]

7 hours ago, komotor said:

Nope, My point of view is exactly the same as for SFMFUTAFAN case..
It's steal stuff, even if some look ok with that.. Not me, and also why I not allowed the port of my stuff, because I was sure that is going to happen from ya..

 

If it's so easy to get money, I drop all creations, and convert all the animations of the other into a mega pack, I get all the patrons of these creators with their work. And  I get more than all of them...
And I touch my balls by doing nothing...

Some are really dumb here and as said, talk about work for what is not.. Stop the joke..

Except that he asked for permission to do that, and is nowhere going to claim that he made the stuff. Your example isn't even remotely comparing to that.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Kimy said:

Except that he asked for permission to do that, and is nowhere going to claim that he made the stuff. Your example isn't even remotely comparing to that.

SFMFUTAFAN claiminig also that is not his work, in meantime he had about 500 patrons while most of the artist used in his videos haved between 30 & 70 patrons..

Ask to to any artists touched by that, ask to the 3dx guys what they are going to say.. 

The guy behind SFMfutafan I'm sure that he passed more time to compile his video than pfiffy to convert the pack btw...

 

It's just insane and steal.

You can be sure that many are going to remove the right to share their mods or packs, I already talk with some animators right now.. They are Oo ...

You hate Skyrim GTX, it's the same here.

[Pfiffy]

6 minutes ago, komotor said:

Nope, My point of view is exactly the same as for SFMFUTAFAN case..
It's steal stuff, even if some look ok with that.. Not me, and also why I not allowed the port of my stuff, because I was sure that is going to happen from ya..

 

If it's so easy to get money, I drop all creations, and convert all the animations of the other into a mega pack, I get all the patrons of these creators with their work. And  I get more than all of them...
And I touch my balls by doing nothing...

Some are really dumb here and as said, talk about work for what is not.. Stop the joke..

That's  a con, I guess... Well, I have stated my thoughts about opening a patreon before, and they haven't changed in the mean time. I just asked a hypothetical question. Your statement shows, that I'm not wrong with my fears about the outcome if I do so. Thank you for that.

[Diziet]

Hey everyone,

 

Just wanted to give my two cents about this from a users perspective.

 

I am using mods as a consumer, I have no intention of spending countless hours learning to code or to create animations. I have downloaded and tried a shedload of Mods on LL, Nexus and other sites. Some were ok (ish), some were meh, others were a total clusterfuck, but quite a few turned out to be absolute gems to the extent that some of them have become a staple in all of my setups.

Now here's my point: the way I see it, the authors whoms mods I use pretty much all the time have given me what: hundreds? thousands? of hours of fun playing the game. To me, by  giving them a tip, I would not feel like I was buying something from them, it's only a way to show my appreciation and say thank you, same as I would buy them a drink or two if I ran in to them at the local pub.

The timing of this thread is spot on, as I've created a patreon account only this morning I'm currently trying to make my mind up about whom to buy a drink for first. (don't tell Kimy, guys, I want it to be a surprise ?)

 

I also want to take the opportunity to thank ALL the people who spend their precious time working on mods for us numpties out here to enjoy, even the clusterfuck creators...

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

That's  a con, I guess... Well, I have stated my thoughts about opening a patreon before, and they haven't changed in the mean time. I just asked a hypothetical question. Your statement shows, that I'm not wrong with my fears about the outcome if I do so. Thank you for that.

Before I Create I patreon I have worked more than a full year to gain serious skills, when I opened a patreon I was able to build stuff from scratch and made serious work..
Over hundreds and hundreds of hours... Now I can count in thousands and thousands of hours the time I passed and still pass on my work.

It's not to see a little guy without skills took all this work to reshare/resell that by doing few minutes of convert.
Do that you can die for me.. And I'm not going to hide that I pee on your face.. 
I made rarelly mistake about people and I was sure that I could put you directly in the bag of the skyrimgtx, sfmfutafan & company..

[Azengar]

7 minutes ago, komotor said:

Before I Create I patreon I have worked more than a full year to gain serious skills, when I opened a patreon I was able to build stuff from scratch and made serious work..
Over hundreds and hundreds of hours... Now I can count in thousands and thousands of hours the time I passed and still pass on my work.

It's not to see a little guy without skills took all this work to reshare/resell that by doing few minutes of convert.
Do that you can die for me.. And I'm not going to hide that I pee on your face.. 
I made rarelly mistake about people and I was sure that I could put you directly in the bag of the skyrimgtx, sfmfutafan & company..

That's the thing I dislike about patreons and such. When money get involved in communities, it often gets really dirty, and I'm not taking side here.
Although, I wholly agree about good mods & modders getting compensated for their hard work, I'm not always sure what's the good way to do it.

[Pfiffy]

2 minutes ago, komotor said:

Before I Create I patreon I have worked more than a full year to gain serious skills, when I opened a patreon I was able to build stuff from scratch and made serious work..
Over hundreds and hundreds of hours... Now I can count in thousands and thousands of hours the time I passed and still pass on my work.

It's not to see a little guy without skills took all this work to reshare/resell that by doing few minutes of convert.
Do that you can die for me.. And I'm not going to hide that I pee on your face.. 
I made rarelly mistake about people and I was sure that I could put you directly in the bag of the skyrimgtx, sfmfutafan & company..

Well, I have a reason, why I added the patreon links of (all? have to check that) modders to the ports I have made.... And removed one after he pm'd me to do so.

I don't have a patreon and I will never have one. I'm doing what I do to get SE going, with my limited abilities. The interesting thing is, that just a little question is enough to put this in question.  

[winny257]

2 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

Since Arthmoor was mentioned, I might as well give you how many donations on Patreon he receives: https://www.patreon.com/arthmoor/overview 49! for all the work he has done over the years, maintaining a website (AFKMods), helping others, etc only 48 others choose to donate. 

and what is that?

 

$150 of $250 per month
Anything from here on up will go toward funding car repairs and other things.

 

For me, this website sounds criminal!
if this website requires monthly contribution, then I ask myself, why 16 Ads and some of them lead to dubious websites (Trojans)!
this page (Patreon) should becoms closed! 
 

[Guest]

Well everyone thanks for the convo, i hope it continues in a civil debate (mostly ?) I have to leave this convo for a few days do to traveling, but I have learned a lot of things that never crossed my mind before, have a great weekend everyone!

[winny257]

19 minutes ago, Alkpaz said:

So you're right Winny, mod authors should start locking updates, maybe all those posts you have done will finally see some monetary return. Seriously, how can you be a member since 2011 and NOT support LL? You know those "ads" go right away when you become a Patreon supporter, right? 

A free website such as LL or Nexus is financed by advertising. 
but Patreon is not a free website, so advertising is superfluous and above all no contaminated advertising. 
 

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Alkpaz said:

From what I have noticed so far, most of the people commenting are Skyrim modders (which have the least amount of donations than other sections) Oblivion modders like Gregathit, Fejeena, Galgat, etc are not mentioned and do not have Patreon accounts (I asked), yet the ones making the most money from donations are The Sims modders. Maybe the approach Komotor has in terms of his Patreon updates is a better way to go. The masses seem to agree otherwise they would not be forking over gobs of money to Wicked Whims/Kinky World for even the smallest of updates. The "donations work" idea doesn't seem to fly with Skyrim, much less Oblivion/FO or Stellaris/CK2/Starbound/etc. 

 

So you're right Winny, mod authors should start locking updates, maybe all those posts you have done will finally see some monetary return. Seriously, how can you be a member since 2011 and NOT support LL? You know those "ads" go right away when you become a Patreon supporter, right? 

The problem with this is that it would shrink the "community". Skyrim LE has reached the height of modding because of the open sharing of knowledge and pooled resources.

What happens when the individual creators no longer share? 

 

Look, I am not opposed to modders asking for money. But we need to make sure our eyes are open when we discuss this......As we have seen in this thread, there are always points that someone didn't think about.

 

Not everything is bad about getting paid for modding, but it's also not all good either.

[pinky6225]

1 minute ago, winny257 said:

A free website such as LL or Nexus is financed by advertising. 
but Patreon is not a free website, so advertising is superfluous and above all no contaminated advertising. 
 

The patreon website was setup to allow people to help with the difference between hosting a website like this and revenue generated by the advertising, i'm sure you can guess who out of the kindness of their heart was making that up pre-patreon

[Kimy]

8 hours ago, komotor said:

Before I Create I patreon I have worked more than a full year to gain serious skills, when I opened a patreon I was able to build stuff from scratch and made serious work..
Over hundreds and hundreds of hours... Now I can count in thousands and thousands of hours the time I passed and still pass on my work.

It's not to see a little guy without skills took all this work to reshare/resell that by doing few minutes of convert.
Do that you can die for me.. And I'm not going to hide that I pee on your face.. 
I made rarelly mistake about people and I was sure that I could put you directly in the bag of the skyrimgtx, sfmfutafan & company..

Just before you sink your teeth any farther into the poor guy's skin - he's never indicated any intention to upload mods not made by him to a Patreon page or anywhere else. All the question was about was a "Hey, I am that person who ported a lot of Oldrim mods to SE for other modders. Feel free to tip me if you appreciate that" profile. And I can't see anything wrong with that. For the record, I wouldn't have given anyone permission to upload my mods somewhere else either, but Piffy didn't do that. He converted the mods, gave me the ported files, and I uploaded them to my OWN download page. There is no "stealing" involved anywhere in this process.

[Pfiffy]

13 minutes ago, Kimy said:

Just before you sink your teeth any farther into the poor guy's skin - he's never indicated any intention to upload mods not made by him to a Patreon page or anywhere else. All the question was about was a "Hey, I am that person who ported a lot of Oldrim mods to SE for other modders. Feel free to tip me if you appreciate that" profile. And I can't see anything wrong with that. For the record, I wouldn't have given anyone permission to upload my mods somewhere else either, but Piffy didn't do that. He converted the mods, gave me the ported files, and I uploaded them to my OWN download page. There is no "stealing" involved anywhere in this process.

The case with the anims is a bit different from DD, for the anim packs I made the pages in the SE Download section. So I have the control over the files. With DD the contol is in your hand. And Anims are much easier to port. 

[winny257]

still a little annotation from me, if I download a mod freely, then I have to take the mod as it is, I have no right to make any demands.
but if I pay, then this case is different, then I can say, better yet, demand, that this mod should look like I want him!
the legal situation is clearly here, for money I demand quality.
and for unsatisfied quality, I would demand my money back, in European countries there is a law, 14 day return policy.

[MadMansGun]

Arthmoor is a thief who steals fixes that other people have made and does not give them any credit.

[GrimReaper]

4 hours ago, komotor said:

Before I Create I patreon I have worked more than a full year to gain serious skills, when I opened a patreon I was able to build stuff from scratch and made serious work..
Over hundreds and hundreds of hours... Now I can count in thousands and thousands of hours the time I passed and still pass on my work.

It's not to see a little guy without skills took all this work to reshare/resell that by doing few minutes of convert.
Do that you can die for me.. And I'm not going to hide that I pee on your face.. 
I made rarelly mistake about people and I was sure that I could put you directly in the bag of the skyrimgtx, sfmfutafan & company..

You don't get to make money without a market and the market is ruled by supply and demand, not by how much work anyone has put into anything. If you're a consumer, you're usually interested in the best deal you can find and not interested if everyone gets a fair share of the money. So if someone sells a compilation of stuff I'm interested in, I'll probably buy that instead of hunting down every single thing that might interest me. That's especially the case if I get to save money by buying the bundle.

 

The legal definition of what's your intellectual property or not isn't that clear when it comes to modding and that's why paywalls are disguised as a donation system with benefits - when modding was free it was easy to spot the frauds and scammers because those were the only ones that wanted money in exchange for mods. But today? No one is raising any eyebrows anymore because everyone wants to make some cash on the side. It's expected that you pay for the good stuff. You also can't expect the average consumer to be an expert on the scene that knows what modder does what. A paying customer sees something he or she likes, pays money for it and that's the end of it.

[Halstrom]

Users carrying on like its their right to get it all for free should perhaps look into creating a few mods themselves to see if they would do a thousand hours of work for free and keep supporting it for five years after they stopped even playing that game.

Its not like many of us are expecting to make enough to quit our day jobs and holiday in the Bahamas every month. I'm on a disability pension, with a mortgage to pay and would be happy if I made enough to buy a steak occasionally or upgrade my computer every couple of years. Disability hardware / software can cost thousands.

 

Unfortunately there's no decent optional donation system for adult mods and I'm not going to credit card paywall people with my work, yes its work, its just unpaid work. Sometimes its hard to keep motivated when you hit a coding or bug brick wall that leaves you somewhat despondent about starting 20 hours of fixing or alterations needed. A system where people can see a button to optionally send me $5 when they download my files would be fine by me.

And lets stop all this immature finger pointing and personal attack bullshit. It makes the people pointing and naming look more an ass than the ones they are pointing to. Learn some basic forum manners.

 

[KoolHndLuke]

5 hours ago, Halstrom said:

And lets stop all this immature finger pointing and personal attack bullshit. It makes the people pointing and naming look more an ass than the ones they are pointing to. Learn some basic forum manners.

You kind of expect that here if you've been around awhile. We have some very knowledgeable, talented mod authors and some users around that lack any civility. I will flat out not use someone's mod no matter how "good" it is if I think they are an asshole and they treat other people like shit. I could easily talk to people that know much less about modding than me like they were idiots- but, I don't and never will because I remember that we all started out knowing little or nothing about it.

 

Like someone already mentioned, the modding scene is already pretty competitive without any money involved. Too many bloated egos from what I have seen. Won't see a download or dime from me. Not that any of them care, though.?️

[Guest]

4 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

You don't get to make money without a market and the market is ruled by supply and demand, not by how much work anyone has put into anything. If you're a consumer, you're usually interested in the best deal you can find and not interested if everyone gets a fair share of the money. So if someone sells a compilation of stuff I'm interested in, I'll probably buy that instead of hunting down every single thing that might interest me. That's especially the case if I get to save money by buying the bundle.

 

The legal definition of what's your intellectual property or not isn't that clear when it comes to modding and that's why paywalls are disguised as a donation system with benefits - when modding was free it was easy to spot the frauds and scammers because those were the only ones that wanted money in exchange for mods. But today? No one is raising any eyebrows anymore because everyone wants to make some cash on the side. It's expected that you pay for the good stuff. You also can't expect the average consumer to be an expert on the scene that knows what modder does what. A paying customer sees something he or she likes, pays money for it and that's the end of it.

http://komotor.tumblr.com/post/167946587645/stolen-work

 

4 hours ago, Halstrom said:

Users carrying on like its their right to get it all for free should perhaps look into creating a few mods themselves to see if they would do a thousand hours of work for free and keep supporting it for five years after they stopped even playing that game.

Its not like many of us are expecting to make enough to quit our day jobs and holiday in the Bahamas every month. I'm on a disability pension, with a mortgage to pay and would be happy if I made enough to buy a steak occasionally or upgrade my computer every couple of years. Disability hardware / software can cost thousands.

 

Unfortunately there's no decent optional donation system for adult mods and I'm not going to credit card paywall people with my work, yes its work, its just unpaid work. Sometimes its hard to keep motivated when you hit a coding or bug brick wall that leaves you somewhat despondent about starting 20 hours of fixing or alterations needed. A system where people can see a button to optionally send me $5 when they download my files would be fine by me.

And lets stop all this immature finger pointing and personal attack bullshit. It makes the people pointing and naming look more an ass than the ones they are pointing to. Learn some basic forum manners.

 

There is gumroad for "one shot" paid.
Or use a paypal button for donation.

 

3 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

"Paywall" to me is to restrict a mod completely to a donation system. Oniki Kay (Kinky World) does not do this, but locks some of her current content to those who donate 5+ USD a month, she updates twice a month with a new build and I believe it is about every 6 months or more before she releases the "free version". Her latest build is of May 31st [KW] Build 383, while the public version is from Jan 2018: [image/linkage] I have seen this reproduced with other The Sims mods from animators like mike24, L666 (Lady/Lord) and Amra. Not many people in those sections of this site have problems with that kind of "paywall", and I believe Komotor is doing roughly the same thing. 

 

More or less the same, I keep some stuff for patrons, but I release new stuff for free every month too.
People who support deserve a bit more from my POV.
And yeah apprently that is good for many like that, I mainly keep the more particular and also the more complex work more longer.
Many patrons have already said to me that they like this way of distribution it's fair for them.
And finaly it's fair for everyone, author, patrons, public, loverslab.

[Pfiffy]

I think, I found a solution for my own situation. 

[Kimy]

20 hours ago, Alkpaz said:

"Paywall" to me is to restrict a mod completely to a donation system. Oniki Kay (Kinky World) does not do this, but locks some of her current content to those who donate 5+ USD a month, she updates twice a month with a new build and I believe it is about every 6 months or more before she releases the "free version". Her latest build is of May 31st [KW] Build 383, while the public version is from Jan 2018: [image/linkage] I have seen this reproduced with other The Sims mods from animators like mike24, L666 (Lady/Lord) and Amra. Not many people in those sections of this site have problems with that kind of "paywall", and I believe Komotor is doing roughly the same thing. 

 

Yeah, I guess a lot of people picked up that "partial paywall" model. It's undeniably more successful than the type of tip-jar Ashal or myself are operating. I looked at a few numbers a while back, and paywalling modders seem to get 5-6 times more paying supporters on average than tip jar operators do. Komotor has about 350 patrons, if I am not mistaken. For comparison, I have 66. It's a sad truth that people don't like to pay, unless you force them...

[Reginald_001]

13 minutes ago, Kimy said:

It's a sad truth that people don't like to pay, unless you force them...

And that was the crux of the point I was making in my post.

 

Whatever is 'freely' available will always be seen as something 'amateur'. It's not professional.

As soon as you put your mods behind a paywall you've went professional, you are literally releasing a product and have to adhere to all rules and forms of business conduct.

 

My feeling is that as a modder you need to make a choice: Do I go pro and offer an x-amount of support for this/that mod, do I ensure quality and will I keep it updated with a changing/updating engine and dependancies on other mods, or do I stay 'amateur' and accept the fact that I don't have to adhere to the rules and forms of professional business conduct.

 

To me any other construction seems a bit strange. As if the modder wants it both ways, releasing something for free and then expecting money is not really releasing it for free. This hybrid type of release will never give that modder the results they are looking for in terms of monetary payment. If a modder is expecting any kind of payment, they have only one choice. Release it professional and adhere to all rules of business conduct (e.g. people have to pay that modder if they want to use their work).

[IGotBored]

@pfiffy

I know it was just a hypothetical question but if you wanted to open a patreon then go ahead. Its a person's choice if they want to support you or not. . I haven't switched to SSE yet but when I do I'm happy for the conversions you did. Your still doing more work then most by doing the conversions. If your not pay walling anything then I don't see how your "stealing" as komotor puts it before saying that he pisses on your face. Also if a author has a problem with you doing a conversion and request for you to remove it then I trust that you would go ahead and take it down.

[winny257]

2 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

And that was the crux of the point I was making in my post.

 

Whatever is 'freely' available will always be seen as something 'amateur'. It's not professional.

As soon as you put your mods behind a paywall you've went professional, you are literally releasing a product and have to adhere to all rules and forms of business conduct.

 

My feeling is that as a modder you need to make a choice: Do I go pro and offer an x-amount of support for this/that mod, do I ensure quality and will I keep it updated with a changing/updating engine and dependancies on other mods, or do I stay 'amateur' and accept the fact that I don't have to adhere to the rules and forms of professional business conduct.

 

To me any other construction seems a bit strange. As if the modder wants it both ways, releasing something for free and then expecting money is not really releasing it for free. This hybrid type of release will never give that modder the results they are looking for in terms of monetary payment. If a modder is expecting any kind of payment, they have only one choice. Release it professional and adhere to all rules of business conduct (e.g. people have to pay that modder if they want to use their work).

with which RIGHT? 
Beth is many too good-natured, if they first have licked blood once what modders to earn illegally with of their game, then I do not want to be in the skin of the modder!
small example: Casual.Net provided DANCE Syncronisator freely available.
when the pay shit started, the mod was suddenly no longer free!
and as it seemed, Casual.Net has earned well, but it was enough a telephone call at Beth and Casual.Net was suddenly closed.
now the mod is FREE again!