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Paid mods for skyrim.

Guest Suited Prawns

By Guest Suited Prawns,
in Skyrim General Discussion

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Lurker1236

Lurker1236

Posted
Posted

Unfortunately, do not be shortsighted by this move as limited to only Skyrim.  The huge back lash may deter some authors from posting their mods on the paywall, but valve/bethesda opened up a whole new set of playground for any of their future creations.  Imagine they create a bare backbone Fallout or another ES and then rely on modders to fix/add contents for them.  All the while they are earning money from modders instead of paying for professional game developers.  They take 75% of the cut for doing absolutely nothing.  This is a huge profit margin compared to releasing DLCs or expansions.  Moreover, it will be exponentially more expensive for the users to financially support their modding habits for these open-world games.  Furthermore, how do I know that my new paywall mods will run well with the others?  The modders have no responsibilities whatsoever to ensure your mods work along with others.  If they work at the start, there's no guarantees that future updates will be compatible.  This will limit us users from trying out and testing new mods due to the paywall. 

 

It would also destroy the modding community since amateur modders cannot use assets of others to improve the existing framework or fix bugs.  I'm sure I'm not the only one to learn from modding by using the work of others as a template and mess around with the different options.  Now that it's behind a paywall, I will not release the work due to copyright b.s.  Likewise, someone else will miss out some of the good ideas I had for their new mods.  The cycle continues and eventually we are left with only a few "professional" modders with their inflated prices since they have a monopoly.  This reduces the creativity of the community and is only detrimental overall to the health of the game. 

 

I also support the petition posted by PFK just to preempt the loss of the moddding scene in the future and put a limit to valve's greed.

 

Edit: The idea that Nexus or this site materials are not affected is wrong.  They will be affected since modders will pull their work from the site slowly as time goes on if others are making a profit for posting it on steam.  It will cause the deaths of "legalized" sites and we all will have to find some ways to "pirate" these mods.

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JBloggz

JBloggz

Posted
Posted

As a small time music critic who's put out a large amount of mostly unnoticed work, I can only dream of having this sort of access to actual money in the work I do. 

 

As someone who mods and downloads mods, I feel like I've just been hit in the chest by Donald Trump wearing a Bethesda branded T shirt. 

 

I get that people value mods, I certainly do, but instead of FORCING people to buy potentially DRM based DLC that isn't even properly compatible with the base game, do what they did with City Skylines: Get a modder who makes mods constantly, have the company set up a Patreon, the Patreon funds more mods. Simple as. The Nexus has had that system for a while as well, its just not as integral to the site and nobody ever expects to paid for hobby-content (its just nice when it happens).

 

But why should people really be enraged? Two reasons:

 

1. Bethesda already tried this, it was called Horse Armour. Lest we forget. 

 

2. Its a symptom of the increase in corporate interest in mobile gaming business models. Pay £10 if you want to actually do things in the game that will take 5 hours of real time otherwise or something completely horrific. Suddenly, all this amazing content is now completely cornered off from those who don't have the money for constant micro payments or those who play with mods precisely because other games (whether mobile or even mainstream AAA games) force these unethical business practices on consumers.   

 

Now, I'm not really anyone of importance in this community, but I know there's enough people who like reading my silly stories and looking at silly screenshots and so on to be just a bit afraid. My fear is that I don't know if I'd even be able to continue if all the mods or requirements for mods became blocked off by actual money and DRM assuming all the really popular mods just decide to hop over to the Workshop. But I always fear the worst. 

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MonkeyShoulder

MonkeyShoulder

Posted
Posted

Ok so this is how I see this playing out.

 

Some modders might want to charge a little for a massive mod. A few modders will try to charge $5 for a stick. 

 

Publishers on the other hand will see $$$$$$$$.

 

Mods are, at the end of the day, third party FREE DLC.  If a publisher can make a buck off a modders work they will, at least some will.

 

I foresee a change in T&Cs on mod tools, present and future stating that all mods must be hosted only through the workshop and must be paid for.

 

There is no way publishers like EA and Ubisoft are not going to milk this for every penny.

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Eleglas

Eleglas

Posted
Posted

TotalBiscuit on the subject:

 

 

A 75% cut for Steam? Sign me up!

 

As much as I greatly respect TB and his opinion. He doesn't know what he's talking about. You can't compare this to Youtubers, no viewers ever pay to watch a Youtube video except via donations if they want to, they get their money from ads. This is a direct payment for something you might not even like. I've downloaded countless mods then found I didn't like it then uninstalled it, that's how it works.

 

I think it's better to compare paid mods to early access games on Steam... and lord knows he hates those.

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NNS10

NNS10

Posted
Posted

You can't compare this to Youtube because the income mechanism is different. Ad-based income mechanisms don't require the user to do anything and so incentives are not affected very much.

 

My biggest fear is this: when something gets monetized, there is also the incentive to prevent piracy. If they are going to monetize mods, there will be a natural incentive to also prevent mod piracy (mod DRM?).

 

If they try to start locking down mods to prevent mod piracy, that will defeat the purpose of mods. The great thing about mods is being able to go in and edit them, and sometimes great mods result from derivative works. Heck, DreamBurrow's mods are all about retexturing. The greatness of mods is the openness of them. Monetization leads to DRM, and if mods get locked down, that will kill modding.

 

It doesn't matter how individual mod authors approach this. What ultimately matters is the macro-level incentives on companies (e.g. Bethesda, Valve) and impact it will have on how they develop the modding framework of future games (e.g. Fallout 4). Perhaps the future of utilities like ModOrganizer is dead, along with the openness of editing mods.

 

 

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Veladarius

Veladarius

Posted
Posted

I am guessing that the last update was for some sort of DRM scheme, possibly for some sort of secured .bsa file maybe. If this is the case a modder won't be able to create anything for another mod if it needs their scripts since they need to have the source code available and not in a .bsa (not that a lot of Nexus modders include it anyways).

 

 

As for Bethesda they have probably been looking at the Steam Workshop thinking it is a goldmine. If Valve can sell people hats to wear in a fps...

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Setekh

Setekh

Posted
Posted

I'm just waiting for the Nexus to announce their own partnership with Bethesda.

 

Dark0ne has already openly stated that will never happen and the Nexus will always be free from paid mods.

As much as I hate the staff that run that site., Dark0ne has always been level headed about this kind of stuff ans has always tried to do the right thing.

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guk

guk

Posted
Posted

Well my friends, this is the beginning of the end of our beloved hobby.

 

Just wait until they send out a patch that will lock modding to downloads from the Steam workshop (if you haven't noticed, you can't disable auto-updates for Skyrim anymore).

 

Make a couple more screenshots of your modded game while you still can.

 

__________

 

 

BTW i watched that video by Totalbiscuit, who is taking on the "capitalist" approach that everyone should be paid for their work.

 

First off, this is a complete misconception as he doesn't understand the motivation of making mods for other people. This is not work like sitting in an office typing meaningless numbers into a computer, this is a HOBBY that is supposed to make both the modder as well as the user HAPPY. One of the few higher goods that hadn't been commercialized - until today.

 

Second, same with the existing Donation System, this is entirely naive. Did any modder ever quit his job after getting a couple of donations? Hopefully not, because he'd end up homeless not long after the interest in his mod vanishes.

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yatol

yatol

Posted
Posted

One modder shared his work with others, without hiding it behind a paywall: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65021/?If only he had paypal\donation link there at nexus. Logic works, and Valve should stop exploiting it's customers.

 

what are you talking about?

sm2b56R.jpg

 

- you buy the mod

- you download it

- you ask for a refund because your horse don't like it

- and you upload it

 

you'll find all that on chinese sites soon

 

that one put it on nexus, that was stupid, it's already down

 

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MonkeyShoulder

MonkeyShoulder

Posted
Posted

Well my friends, this is the beginning of the end of our beloved hobby.

 

Just wait until they send out a patch that will lock modding to downloads from the Steam workshop (if you haven't noticed, you can't disable auto-updates for Skyrim anymore).

 

Make a couple more screenshots of your modded game while you still can.

 

__________

 

 

BTW i watched that video by Totalbiscuit, who is taking on the "capitalist" approach that everyone should be paid for their work.

 

First off, this is a complete misconception as he doesn't understand the motivation of making mods for other people. This is not work like sitting in an office typing meaningless numbers into a computer, this is a HOBBY that is supposed to make both the modder as well as the user HAPPY. One of the few higher goods that hadn't been commercialized - until today.

 

Second, same with the existing Donation System, this is entirely naive. Did any modder ever quit his job after getting a couple of donations? Hopefully not, because he'd end up homeless not long after the interest in his mod vanishes.

 

I only just noticed that update thing. Cheeky cunts.

 

If they try that shit i'll start using a Bristol accent

 

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Lucy in the Sky

Lucy in the Sky

Posted
Posted

Did they have any idea of how many mods people usually use? Those prices are insane.

 

I'm pretty sure an average skyrim modder has at least 30 mods or so installed... maybe even 50 or so.

 

My load order has 195 plugins running...  (Which isn't counting mods that don't use plugins - Replacers, textures, music, meshes...)... so god knows how many I have installed.

 

 

The prices they are charging look like prices for official DLCs...

 

It looks like that if I want to build a decent 30 mods-wallet I would have to spend several times the price of the full game... 

 

(There's a 17 mods bundle for sale for " only " 27 Euros.... but all the mods are pre-selected.... many of those 17 are mods I couldn't care less about. )

 

This is insane...

 

 

PS: I think it won't hurt if we could get more signatures into this petition.  ( 8.7 k signatures so far )

 

https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop

 

 

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