Patreon: Obligation and Entitlement

[A.J.]

16 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

The real question is competency, ie. how well I can make something in comparison to the base game or other MAs. Right now, I don't feel confident at all in this regard.

I hear you, and agree it's not something easy to come by. But again, pretty subjective: I've seen some stuff earning a lot of money, but if it was mine I would have never put that online not even for free, maybe just as "modder resource".

[KoolHndLuke]

18 hours ago, Kimy said:

if you're making naughty stuff, most traditional marketplaces don't even allow that kind of thing on their platforms. Steam is the only one that does, and they made that change only very recently.

If you don't mind me asking, given the fact that you and Hugh Reckum are making games (and not just mods), will you offer your game through Steam? And how much would the game cost? Making money through Patreon now will help with dev costs, but what about after it is (more or less) a finished product?

 

I ask because I am really excited to see new AO games available to a much wider audience and all the possibilities that come with that. Users could finally buy what they've wanted all along. I'm envisioning AAA quality games (close anyway) that have all the sweet, gratuitous, sweat- slathered, cum-drenched sex as a MAIN FEATURE! WHOOP- WHOOP!

 

I understand that to develop anywhere near AAA quality games it takes a helluva lot of time, work and plenty of investors. But the investment side of things could be helped through Patreon or similar. I would contribute myself, but I just don't have the spare money right now. And yes, I'm dreaming. I've been dreaming of adult oriented games without restrictions for 30 yrs.

[KoolHndLuke]

16 hours ago, 27X said:

Depends entirely on the work and the want of that work.

 

BBoy earns about 14 an hour to >rent< his load order for two programs he didn't spend a second writing, and is essentially getting 6K a month for having written an 8K text file.

 

FOW got 2.1 million using pirated blender and gmod and sfm rigs and assets, though if they're smart they'd be redoing that and actually buying licenses.

 

 

 

And no one call them out on that? Seems sort of a scummy thing to make money off of someone else's hard work that they gave away for free. Of course the people making the money would probably say that they were unduly gracious to give stuff away in the first place. What a fucking conundrum!

[27X]

Sakimichan is legit, yeah her art is almost 100% other people's property almost to a fault, the caveat being that's what people pay her to make, so she does.

 

As for the other two sure they've been called out for their behavior, but until someone with actual legal clout calls them on it, Patreon/Kickstarter/Fig is more than content to skim off their cut until a lawyer bites them in the ass, and we haven't covered all the dudes making actual new licensed and registered digital properties and promising all platform access and then selling out to the Epic Game Store. Kind of hard to cite amateurs as assholes when people like Tim Schafer and Feargus Urquhart are doing the same damn thing. Hell, Feargus has his daughter on Obsidian's payroll as a full time employee with full insurance coverage. She's in grade school. :shrug: Paytreon via Patreon isn't an isolated phenomenon. Greed is ubiquitous and once you got a taste, you can damn near justify anything given enough rope and time.

[terrorofmorrowind]

Since modding is a gray market hobby/job (depends how you look at it) people are free to give to a modder how they see fit. It really depends on what you are making though. I have made some stuff over the years (REALLY small stuff compared to you guys lol) and apparently some people liked it enough to download it. I never really made these for the community perse. I just felt that there was something missing here and there or felt like making it myself and if anyone else felt the same that's a bonus. Others I just made because I wanted to store it somewhere in case bad stuff happened. None, of these mods I consider valuable enough to even dare ask something for because it's stuff you could easily do yourself in a few hours.

 

If a mod is on the levels of new dlc's, animations, textures, meshes (that are not edited vanilla assets but actual new stuff) then I consider it being worth to get a patreon page for and only then for people that want to throw something my way. I still consider modding to be a hobby. No way would I ever try to make it a job because then it becomes boring. (Like KoolHndLuk said I just drop it as soon as it gets boring)

[terrorofmorrowind]

17 hours ago, 27X said:

BBoy earns about 14 an hour to >rent< his load order for two programs he didn't spend a second writing, and is essentially getting 6K a month for having written an 8K text file.

 

 

 

What! O_O I wouldn't even dare doing such a thing. I guess there's more worth in my stuff then i thought. I mean they are actual mods that are functional and don't crash your game.

[KoolHndLuke]

2 hours ago, terrorofmorrowind said:

Like KoolHndLuk said I just drop it as soon as it gets boring

Well it gets boring for different reasons. One I had put about a week of work into when I stumbled across an existing mod that already pretty much did what I was working on. Two more I couldn't get the permissions I needed/wanted because I couldn't make the assets myself (or not nearly as good). Another just wasn't good enough in quality for me to want to continue. The other two just turned out to be a lot more work than I wanted to invest in- you know, you think it needs this and that or to include more to be better and before you know it the scope of what you are trying to do just becomes way, way bigger and a huge pita.

 

Trying to carve out a niche in the modding community is not as easy as it seems. I really think I need at least a few more years of practice before I even think of going through Patreon. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about using other people's stuff to make money. I agree that if I put in the time and work that I should ask for something, but a lot of what I do now is dependent on others- and I don't really like that.

[winny257]

no offense, this is the EULA Creation Kit!

 

https://store.steampowered.com/eula/eula_202480

 

all the which mods for Skyrim selling, move themselves on thin ice!
Websites which enable that, should be prosecuted.

 

only my opinion. 

[Kimy]

Beth has never moved to stopped people from paywalling mods, despite they must be aware of the practice. This can have exactly two reasons:

 

1. They don't mind.

2. They know that their EULA is so grossly overreaching and unreasonable (particularly the part where they actually claim ownership over mods created with it) that any court would toss it out inside 5 mins.

 

Take your pick.

[DoctaSax]

Must be like the 4th different license I've seen for the same game.

[MilkyTabboo]

On 5/29/2019 at 5:06 AM, 27X said:

pirated blender

 

pirated blender? ?

 

But its already free

[27X]

25 minutes ago, MilkyTabboo said:

 

pirated blender? ?

 

But its already free

Some addons are, some addons aren't. Some materials are, some materials aren't; same for tutorials and walk throughs. Porn patreon is srs bsns, and doing shit for free is something plebs and old people do, and that includes peripherals and side apps.

 

The environment you enjoy right now probably isn't going to be around for TESVI, so enjoy that gratis tip flow while you can, cause assuming the next rig, behavior suite and sets of 3rd party tools are gonna be free is just that, an assumption.

[t.ara]

This patreon-debate is here coming up again and again?...not needed to be discussed anymore-you patreon-participants struggle around with the sponsoring always around a legal grey-out-zone and that´s it. There´s no "laissez-faire" of bethesda concerning the use of creation-kit and it´s use. Creation -Kit-jobs are not allowed for selling mods. Easily is their EULA telling: Modding into Bethesda games is simply staying always a bethesda game and all additions have to be licensed and offered for free. Stuff behind a paywall, which has been made with Creation-Kit is in that case not anymore in the gray-zone and that´s the problem, the break against their eula. Those mods are not in harmony with the creation-kit´s license and their "owners" are by agreement of that eula not alowed to use the CK any longer.

 

 

 

[t.ara]

10 hours ago, winny257 said:

no offense, this is the EULA Creation Kit!

 

https://store.steampowered.com/eula/eula_202480

 

all the which mods for Skyrim selling, move themselves on thin ice!
Websites which enable that, should be prosecuted.

 

only my opinion. 

not an opinion, it´s the existing license while using Creation Kit.

[Kendo 2]

9 hours ago, Kimy said:

Beth has never moved to stopped people from paywalling mods, despite they must be aware of the practice.

That's not true.  The modder Omnimotus was contacted directly by Zenimax with a cease and desist for asking for donations for his mods.  And the modder Madmole was contacted directly by the Zeminax attorney/dmca hitman JGillespie about the Oblivion vampire overhaul mod he made after he paywalled it.  'Continue and we'll sue you.'

 

9 hours ago, Kimy said:

1. They don't mind.

Actually they most likely do, but it's a case of picking PR battles they can win.  Every game before FO76 had an established and free modding community.  But now there's the Bethesda.net Launcher, the Creation Club and microtransactions.  They control it all and they ban people for changing the FO76 base game files.  That doesn't sound like "They don't mind."

 

10 hours ago, Kimy said:

2. They know that their EULA is so grossly overreaching and unreasonable (particularly the part where they actually claim ownership over mods created with it) that any court would toss it out inside 5 mins.

Nope.  They'd stall litigation, swamp the opposing attorneys with pretrial motions and generally siphon dry anyone they go up against.  The killshot for them is anyone who downloads and installs their software agrees to their crooked and shitty terms by default.  They have two arguments; no one is forcing people to buy and download their games.  They can also argue their games are services since the only way to get them is through a service like Steam or Bethesda.net (no physical copy on a disk).  Their games aren't products, they're electronic services and they can ban whoever they want, whenever they want.  They're already doing it.

 

The next Bethesda release is going to be locked down tight; must be connected to their launcher to run the game, Creation Club only, no free mods.  It's coming and when it does people are gonna flip the fuck out.  But it will be too late; whatever toolkit they release will be months after the game's release.  The community asks 'Can we mod it?' and they say 'Suuurrre...'  Just like they did with FO4, but this time it won't be on Steam and they'll be watching.

[KoolHndLuke]

Yeah, but Beth ain't the only game in town, or at least they won't be for long because other devs are slowly starting to open their games for modding (CDPR, THQ Nordic, Indies). And as long as no one is "pay-walling" their mods, I don't see a problem with them asking for donations. Technically, they're not asking for money in exchange for mods made for Beth games or It's not always specifically stated anyway. If they do state that, then they're kinda foolish to do so and put themselves in direct violation of the agreement.

 

I'm guessing that if CC ultimately fails, then they will start cracking down harder.

[Guest]

There is no doubt that a mod created with the CK or other programs and sold is Illegal. I do not think there is a argument there, but its a loop hole when it comes to Patreon, or other forms of payment/donation, and by no means am I against donating/paying for a mod (Or to be more specific, paying someone for their time on creating a product they I will use)

 

So here in Maine, Marijuana is legal to grow but very much illegal to sell. When harvest comes around and you end up with 15 to 20 pounds, and you do not smoke, well there arises a issue. Since it is illegal to sell, we do not sell it, we sell the plastic bag for 150 dollars or to be more specific, we take a donation of 150 dollars for the bag, and the marijuana inside the bag is free. Loopholes

 

Or the man out of the city that for 2 years now delivers marijuana to your home, an ounce at a time. The marijuana is free but there is a 200 dollar delivery fee.

 So Patreon could be considered the delivery truck for a "free mod" that I am paying the modders the delivery fee.

 

I am not trying to justify why or why not people should or shouldn't support a Modder, I am all for supporting modders, but lets be clear to why Bethesda hasnt come after anyone:

1. Any half ass lawyer could find a loophole of how to get the case thrown out real quick
2. Skyrim would have NEVER (along with other Bethesda games) made it this far, this strong, without the modding community

There are a handful of modders ( a couple of them posting here, T.ara and Kimy) that have put more time into thier mods then most people have worked in thier RL job over the past few years. No matter where each of them, or others for that matter stand on this issue, I believe the should be compensated for thier time because of the way certain mods impact a game, making the game seem unplayable without the work they have done!

Could you imagine a Skyrim without the ability to shove a ball gag into Mjolls mouth to shut her the fuck up? Personally I cant

 

[Kimy]

7 hours ago, Kendo 2 said:

That's not true.  The modder Omnimotus was contacted directly by Zenimax with a cease and desist for asking for donations for his mods.  And the modder Madmole was contacted directly by the Zeminax attorney/dmca hitman JGillespie about the Oblivion vampire overhaul mod he made after he paywalled it.  'Continue and we'll sue you.'

I heard about them going after people that outright sell mods, but there are dozens of modders here using the "Early Access paywall" approach, and judging by them still operating that way, I assume Beth lets them do that. Maybe that's even the red line for them: Selling gets you a cease and desist letter, but the "Early Access" stuff does not, because it can be argued that they're still releasing the full mod for free when it's "done"? I don't know, but it almost looks like it.

Quote

Actually they most likely do, but it's a case of picking PR battles they can win.  Every game before FO76 had an established and free modding community.  But now there's the Bethesda.net Launcher, the Creation Club and microtransactions.  They control it all and they ban people for changing the FO76 base game files.  That doesn't sound like "They don't mind."

FO76 is an online game. It doesn't compare to Skyrim or FO4, and Beth isn't the only company that doesn't like people modding their online games. They are afraid of cheating, which online is obviously a concern.

Quote

Nope.  They'd stall litigation, swamp the opposing attorneys with pretrial motions and generally siphon dry anyone they go up against.  The killshot for them is anyone who downloads and installs their software agrees to their crooked and shitty terms by default.  They have two arguments; no one is forcing people to buy and download their games.  They can also argue their games are services since the only way to get them is through a service like Steam or Bethesda.net (no physical copy on a disk).  Their games aren't products, they're electronic services and they can ban whoever they want, whenever they want.  They're already doing it.

Service or product, but they can't enforce terms if they are violating the law, and a clause trying to take copyright away from a mod creator and transfer it to them is so blatantly illegal in many countries that it's not even funny.

Quote

 

The next Bethesda release is going to be locked down tight; must be connected to their launcher to run the game, Creation Club only, no free mods.  It's coming and when it does people are gonna flip the fuck out.  But it will be too late; whatever toolkit they release will be months after the game's release.  The community asks 'Can we mod it?' and they say 'Suuurrre...'  Just like they did with FO4, but this time it won't be on Steam and they'll be watching.

That I agree on. You can call me surprised if TES VI will support free modding the way Skryim does. Beth is clearly trying to gain full control over modding, so it doesn't compete with their microtransaction schemes, and they are clearly trying to monetize modding. Modding as we know it is about to die anywhere outsides of the Indie games segment.

[KoolHndLuke]

38 minutes ago, Kimy said:

You can call me surprised if TES VI will support free modding the way Skryim does. Beth is clearly trying to gain full control over modding, so it doesn't compete with their microtransaction schemes, and they are clearly trying to monetize modding. Modding as we know it is about to die anywhere outsides of the Indie games segment.

Who says TES VI will even be worth modding? If FO4/FO76 are any indication of what the next ES installment will be, then I'm not very hopeful for their future titles being all that good. As for modding as we know it dying, I respectfully disagree. Modding is slowly catching on in the gaming world and many gamers are discovering mods for the first time and wanting more. A decade from now, it might be rare to see a game without some kind of modding support.

[KoolHndLuke]

36 minutes ago, Alkpaz said:

I have a feeling that Microsoft will team up with Bethesda and other AAA developers to limit old moddable games like SLE/Oblivion/FONV/etc to simply not work on their updated OS, at least not without extra effort by the user.  Gaming has become very very big business lately, surpassing Hollywood in terms of profits. https://lpesports.com/e-sports-news/the-video-games-industry-is-bigger-than-hollywood I would not put it past them to make deals like that with Microsoft or the owners of Linux. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it has happened in other industries.

I would agree, but why would Beth want to cut into their own potential profits? Those old games sell on pc because they can be modded. People usually see the mods for those games first and then want to buy them. Mods are what keep them fresh and in the public eye. It is one helluva a marketing strategy that will continue to add to their bottom line......so long as they don't fuck it up.

[Kimy]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

As for modding as we know it dying, I respectfully disagree. Modding is slowly catching on in the gaming world and many gamers are discovering mods for the first time and wanting more. A decade from now, it might be rare to see a game without some kind of modding support.

Gamers want more, for sure. And the industry responded...by introducing the concepts of DLC and microtransactions. The problem is that modding is competing against these business models, and even "unfairly" so, because mods provide for free what microtransactions try to sell. True is that Indie games and smaller studios consider modding support quite normal. If you pick up a Paradox game, you can mod your heart's content out of it. And Indie studios don't do microtransactions, so their business model is not threatened by modding. Releasing a game like Neverwinter Nights, which was not only supporting modding, but -built- for it, are completely unthinkable for AAA studios these days.

There are still exceptions to the rule that AAA game tend to get less moddable, and I guess there always will be. I don't expect The Sims to ever drop modding support, because EA cleverly bundles content that modders typically make (clothes, hairstyles) with actual game enhancements modders -can't- make, so people buy their packs anyway. But unlike Beth, EA never published the entire game engine for people to develop mods with. They cleverly limited what modders can and cannot do. I expect Beth going down the same road tbh.

1 hour ago, Alkpaz said:

I have a feeling that Microsoft will team up with Bethesda and other AAA developers to limit old moddable games like SLE/Oblivion/FONV/etc to simply not work on their updated OS, at least not without extra effort by the user.  Gaming has become very very big business lately, surpassing Hollywood in terms of profits. https://lpesports.com/e-sports-news/the-video-games-industry-is-bigger-than-hollywood I would not put it past them to make deals like that with Microsoft or the owners of Linux. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it has happened in other industries.

Nice conspiracy theory, but sounds not very realistic to me. First, because publishers don't care about 10 year old games enough to try killing them. Time will do that for them. Second, because Microsoft cares even less. Third, because Linux doesn't have an owner you could conspire with.

[KoolHndLuke]

4 hours ago, Kimy said:

Gamers want more, for sure. And the industry responded...by introducing the concepts of DLC and microtransactions. The problem is that modding is competing against these business models, and even "unfairly" so, because mods provide for free what microtransactions try to sell. True is that Indie games and smaller studios consider modding support quite normal. If you pick up a Paradox game, you can mod your heart's content out of it. And Indie studios don't do microtransactions, so their business model is not threatened by modding. Releasing a game like Neverwinter Nights, which was not only supporting modding, but -built- for it, are completely unthinkable for AAA studios these days.

There are still exceptions to the rule that AAA game tend to get less moddable, and I guess there always will be. I don't expect The Sims to ever drop modding support, because EA cleverly bundles content that modders typically make (clothes, hairstyles) with actual game enhancements modders -can't- make, so people buy their packs anyway. But unlike Beth, EA never published the entire game engine for people to develop mods with. They cleverly limited what modders can and cannot do. I expect Beth going down the same road tbh.

And again I ask why they would abandon what has worked so well for them up to this point? They could have stopped mod support for their games anytime they wanted to in favor of MTX, but they haven't. Why would they scrap a successful business model for something they're aren't sure of? Their plan seems to be to build around (read make more cash from) the modding community they have created for their games.

 

"We like our editor. It allows us to create worlds really fast and the modders know it really well. There are some elementary ways we create our games and that will continue because that lets us be efficient and we think it works best," Todd Howard on FO76, Starfield, and TESVI

[Lupine00]

5 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

And again I ask why they would abandon what has worked so well for them up to this point?

The bean-counters control the money, and they create models that accept only certain inputs. These models always lead to the same conclusions.

There is no understanding of what a game is, or why people buy it, instead they reduce the complexity to some simple tick-boxes.

If your game doesn't tick those boxes, or ticks some boxes they don't like, it usually won't get made.

 

This is a constant that you face when trying to sell a game within, or to, a big publisher. Innovation or originality has no value to these people, it does not tick a box. All they care about is budget, and a broken model for calculating ROI that has never, ever worked for them, yet they persist in using it because it justifies their own inflated salaries and importance within the system.

 

Their financial predictions for games achieve no better results than the guessing of a blind monkey playing pin-the-tail, but it's a self-sustaining system, and it won't be changed.

 

They tried this already with their "Club", and they will try it again. Kimy's description of the future of Beth games exactly matches my own predictions.

If there is any provision for modding, they will be trying to monetize it.

 

 

If you like Skyrim how it is, you need to look to a crowd-funded engine, built for modding. There are projects, maybe one will work out, or maybe they will all fail. Idealism and energy can only take you so far, and the game-industry tends to drain people of both pretty quickly. You can only endure 996 working conditions, where you see fantastic projects repeatedly crushed for no logical reason for so long before exhaustion sets in.

 

For example, a few years ago, multiple studios were pitching really excellent demos for sandboxy Western games. They were told that "nobody wants Western games", and their projects killed. Years of work by multiple teams was discarded. Then Rockstar made Red Dead. Their finished game was inferior to the demos being pitched, and yet it made a mint. Similarly, many years ago, a certain egotistical, coke-snorting bully - in a position of some considerable power at a publisher you've probably heard of - told me that "Nobody wants a post-apocalyptic RPG." I knew that was BS, driven by the exact bad-modelling that I'm talking about above. There were no PA RPGs out in the market making money at that time, so the moronic conclusion was that the future revenue from them would also be zero!

 

Then later, we were told Fallout was an anomaly. Then we were told it had a "cult" following - an implication that it wasn't mainstream - and then that it was "only on PC" ... yeah ... refer back to how things went pitching a game like that for a major console? And now we have PA as a major genre with ongoing big releases every year. Now there are revenues, so the accountants believe that the genre can make money. The irony is lost on them. They could have had the first one. They could have owned the seminal IP. They threw it away. That, and so many other could-have-been firsts. Yep, years prior to that I had somebody tell me that you couldn't sell a driving game where you stole cars and stole stuff - that it would simply be banned. I kind of regret not pushing back harder on that one  

 

When you're dealing with people who can be so wrong, and they control the money, you will see many decisions that make no logical sense. No matter what creative people, including producers say, bad decisions will continue because there is a fundamental disconnect between people who appreciate what makes a game popular and the people who decide what projects get investment within the game publishing business.

[KoolHndLuke]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

When you're dealing with people who can be so wrong, and they control the money, you will see many decisions that make no logical sense. No matter what creative people, including producers say, bad decisions will continue because there is a fundamental disconnect between people who appreciate what makes a game popular and the people who decide what projects get investment within the game publishing business.

That is just a sad state of affairs, not just in the gaming industry, but any creative industry. The same corporate bureaucracy that spreads like a disease and then stagnates/destroys everything that it touches. Somebody was saying that the gaming industry needs to crash.....and maybe they're right. Oh well, at least there's still Indies like others have said. On the bright side, maybe sites like patreon would be good for organizing community funding for more indie games- as I'm sure there is a growing number of people unhappy with the AAA games being offered now.

[Kendo 2]

5 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

And again I ask why they would abandon what has worked so well for them up to this point?

Could ask that same question about Star Wars, the MCU, anything EA touches (outside of FIFA), and any other situation where creators and bean-counters say 'Fuck the fans'.  WeTodd Howard is on record saying he doesn't care about what the fans want.  Pete Hines is on record belittling people when they ask basic questions.  Look at the direction Bethesda games are going and look at how they treated FO76 players.  That was the appetizer course in a banquet of Bethesda fans eating shit.  And 'We love the modding community and there will always be mods' doesn't translate to 'free mods for everyone'.

 

I'll NEVER pay/donate for a Bethesda game mod, but I don't care if people do or if modders put their content behind paywalls.  Bethesda and their fan-base relationship is a toxic cluster-fuck anyway.  Modders locking Bethesda IP behind paywalls is as tasty as Bethesda charging for mods themselves.  I'm looking forward to the shit-show that will follow Bethesda's next release.