The Vacant Lot

[cornbreadtm]

This isn't a rant threat or a long discussion thread, just my personal warning to my fellow modders.

 

A lot of people are angry about paywalls and at Steam workshop and what have you, but personally I'm more worried about the modders. I feel like a lot of modders don't respect the integrity of their work.

 

When someone offers to pay you for your work it's a good think it means it's worth something. But when they own your work and you don't get a respectable cut based on how much work you have preformed it becomes obvious that you are either confused or don't respect your work.

 

Bethesda decided that they should receive 40% of the profits of any mod made for their game. Which is outrageous. 5% is a more reasonable number. Modders should be getting 75% of the profits, 25% going to licensing, distribution, advertizing and hosting.

 

When I first saw this I instantly thought of the empty lot episode of Hey Arnold. The kids cleaned up an empty and abandon lot so they would have somewhere safe to play. Adults instantly saw all of their hard work and decided to profit off of it. Sound familiar?

 

Bethesda hasn't touched Skyrim in years. No new patches to fix still recurring errors, no new DLC. The USKP team fixed those and modders made the new DLC. Bethesda hasn't earned 40% they ran away and came back to take the credit.

 

Even the Pokemon company are still releasing bug fixes for the X&Y version even though the newer and updated ORAS versions are out. From a business stand point letting the bugs stay and using them as a reason to upgrade to the newer version is a good idea but the Pokemon company has integrity. Bethesda doesn't and there for doesn't deserve 40 of any money made from your work and Valve doesn't deserve to own your hard work.

 

I could go on about the subject for 10,000 words but I'd rather give an visual example and let modders make their on decision. Enjoy.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U5Wln5ltAs

[Jexsam]

This... this is a wonderful analogy.

[Coopervane]

*slow claps*

 

 

Well done, Cornbread

[SquirrelDash]

your point about the UKSP team fixing the bugs may be moot, as I think that the latest unofficial skyrim patch is now a paid mod.

[cornbreadtm]

your point about the UKSP team fixing the bugs may be moot, as I think that the latest unofficial skyrim patch is now a paid mod.

 

How is it moot? Bethesda didn't hire them to fix it and haven't been paying their bill these past 10 years.

 

That's like building a home for your family for 10 years. Then having a guy with the deed to the land come along and gives you 500 bucks. Walks in and locks you out.

 

Imagine how much you'd make doing even half the work they've done on Bethesda games, if you worked for Bethesda. You'd be the golden child in their company. Hard working with a permanent position and benefits. 25% isn't an even trade.

 

Everyone is scrounging for scraps, forgetting what their work is worth. It's sad.

[NNS10]

I don't think the argument against the workshop should be on price, because I think that's not the real issue (what if the percentages change? Would you suddenly be for it?).

 

The real issue is about the nature of modding and the sharing of assets and content. It's like the open source community. If you try to monetize it, sharing suddenly becomes stealing, and sharing is what enables high volumes of high quality mods without assembling giant modding teams (like you would for other games).

 

I'll just quote myself from another thread:

 

The argument against paid mods shouldn't be centered around price, greed, or whether it's okay for mod authors to receive compensation. The real issue is modding, especially with Skyrim, is a community activity.

Many mods borrow from others or have dependencies on other mods. It's like open source coding--through borrowing and re-using existing work, the wheel doesn't need to be re-invented, and mod authors can focus on new features. This open atmosphere of sharing content and resources is what allows the creation of high volumes of high quality mods.

Once you try to monetize that, re-using resources is no longer considered sharing, but stealing. And most major mods re-use resources to some extent. Gameplay mods probably use SKSE, SkyUI (MCM), FNIS, or some other framework. Some also borrow assets like item models. NPC mods generally borrow texture mods, hair mods, body mods, clothing mods, etc.

The modding community for Skyrim is undoubtedly one of the most active modding communities out there, but it's also one of the most interconnected. The sheer volume of small mods is amazing, and that creates a giant pool of content to share and build off of. But attempting to monetize mods will destroy the inherent nature of sharing in the community, which is what makes Skyrim modding so successful.

 

Anyone who saw Chesko's paid version of the Arissa mod will know what I mean when I mention the link between sharing and quality. For the paid version, he had to remove all the body mods, texture mods, clothing mods, etc. from the original Arissa mod. The result looked pretty bad (a polite understatement).

[Gameplayer]

UKSP? paid?

 

What?

 

also 100% agree that since sharing is now gone the quality will go down hill.

 

Sharing is what has made so many copies of Skyrim sell, otherwise we all would have been like meh.