Paid Modding is gone... or is it?

[Adam Jensen]

 

 

 

 

 People don't buy Bethesda games for the quality of the writing, engine, development or anything else they buy PC games for; they buy them because they can be modded and FIXED for free.  What happens when 'free' is taken away?  Their games tank in the market because they are a joke without mods and no one is going to pay to fix something that should work out of the box in the first place.

 

I don't think that's quite right, considering a substantial amount of Bethesda's sales come from consoles where there is no modding scene. Many of the PC purchases were due to console players seeing all the cool shit that was happening in the mod scene, and re-purchasing the game and it's DLC. If it weren't for modding, I'd certainly still buy the games, but I doubt I'd have spent as much time with them as I have. I think therein lies part of the problem. Bethesda is not only competing against other game companies for a share of the market, they're also competing against themselves. A customer who's too busy downloading and playing the latest Skyrim mods isn't going to be as interested in buying Dishonored, or whatever other new IP they're bringing out. People who wait to purchase their next TES/FO game until the mod scene is established hurt their brand, because it's those first few months sales that the shareholders are really going to be scrutinizing.

 

The mod scene has definitely put a lot of money into Bethesda's pockets, but when viewed from another angle, it's also taking money out of their pockets by over-extending the shelf-life of their products. Skyrim's popularity, and the size and talent of it's mod scene which greatly extended it's longevity, I think took Bethesda a bit by surprise and forced them to turn up the contrast on that fuzzy line of where they're actually making money - and where they're losing money - by being so open and free with the mod scene. Paid mods were merely a way for them to generate continued revenue off of Skryim if their players weren't going to move on to their other products.

 

To clarify for some people, most businesses see the loss of potential profit as the same thing as a loss of actual profit. Whether you're losing money you already have, or losing money you could have had, your business is still poorer for it - less well able to invest in new projects and advertising - and less well able to compete against other companies for the same marketshare. "If you're not growing and expanding, you're dying". Which often just comes off as greed to the customers, which it is, but a justified greed as other companies follow the same principals. I've had enough middle-managers pound this idea into my head during monthly/quarterly employee "motivational round-ups", and I'm sure Kendo that you've heard the same lines before too.

 

I'm not justifying their decision to try to force paid modding on the community, but I can understand the rational behind the decision.

 

 

Find it strange myself everybody hates vanilla skyrim since generally speaking if i hated a game i wouldn't have played it long enough to become aware of the modding possibility.

 

Think its like hating windows, its fashionable

 

 

 

Agreed. I played vanilla Skyrim for like a 100 hours before I ever modded it. If I didn't enjoy the original experience, I would had never bothered with modding it in the first place. I modded it, because I loved the world so much, that I wanted to have more reasons to keep coming back to it. 

[Dudemanguy]

I don't know about you guys, but I bought Skyrim for the mods. That god-awful interface was more than enough to get me to go to google for a replacement. Oh and I do hate Windows and no, I don't use it (on Linux here).

[jacques00]

Honestly, seeing this pro commercialization attitude in people who have benefited from free things for so long, really discourages me to help or share anything anymore. One day you'll probably look back and think about the good old days of modding.

Oh yes, be all doom and gloom about it and act as if the entire modding community revolves around you. That's the ticket! How self-centered can you be? All this talk about it being a passionate personal hobby and efforts through volunteerism and you buckle just because there are some people who have a differing viewpoint than you do. Really illustrates how much you care about your modding community.

 

I've thoroughly looked at this topic from both ends and I can see the pros and cons of paid modding. I think I'm a rational person, so when I weigh the costs and benefits, it seems like the benefits of a paid system just doesn't pan out, at least on the scale Valve and Bethesda was trying to implement it on. This doesn't mean that a paid model will never work or that it can never be an option. We all should know it's an inevitability, so we can either make the best of it or let it eat us alive.

 

Personally, though I'm neutral on the principle, but I'm all for the freedom of choice. Be it choosing to deliver a mod for free, donation, premium, paid, etc. I think these choices should be available, and if they are, we should be smarter about them--not slap them down willy-nilly. People are attracted to the "free" label because it has the least amount of legal complication, accountability, and overall personal responsibility, I get that. But there are some people out there who are responsible, who understand legal ramifications, and who take accountability and agency seriously enough to weigh in and actually sell something worth selling. They may be rare if you are talking pure numbers, but they are out there. Don't silence these people because you have a preconceived notion that any form of money-making is evil and that it will end an entire community (an established community at that). If you want to weed anyone out of a system, start with the ones who can't own up to their mistakes instead of targeting those who are trying to turn a negative system into a positive one.

 

 

Because I am not charged each time I click the play button.

As for video monetization vs. mod monetization--if you really want them to be on equal grounds, let's just allow constant in-game ad pop-ups when you play your game. If "free" cellphone/tablet game trends are any indication, everyone wants that, right? Honestly, an option to pay for a mod is the less painful experience.

[pinky6225]

I've thoroughly looked at this topic from both ends and I can see the pros and cons of paid modding. I think I'm a rational person, so when I weigh the costs and benefits, it seems like the benefits of a paid system just doesn't pan out, at least on the scale Valve and Bethesda was trying to implement it on. This doesn't mean that a paid model will never work or that it can never be an option. We all should know it's an inevitability, so we can either make the best of it or let it eat us alive.

 

It depends what your paying for, if you are paying for the mod in isolation with no support/updates etc i think the pay model is very weak, if purchasing a mod then means that support and updates have to be provided then its a different matter.

 

Modding skyrim from the workshop is incrediblely easy so everyone i know who has skyrim who has tried this has been able to get it to work

 

Modding skyrim from NMM/MO is not so simple so friends of mine who have wanted to mod their skyrim to be like my dirty adult modded skyrim have tried and then i've spent hours explaining what they need to do to get this mod to work or that mod to work or why they are crashing at the beth logo or why when they strip of their character the game suddenly CTD and so on and in most cases i've been able to get it to work for them but they just haven't been interested enough to go through the learning curve to be able to do/fix it themselves.

 

If the option was available for them to pay a fee to have everything installed, configured etc for them i'm pretty sure they would do this

 

I remember seeing a few threads awhile ago about why are their no all in one mod packs for skyrim so users can just install everything they need and go and under a paid model stuff like mod packs would be viable as their would be a incentive for hosting such a huge file and getting everything to install correctly

[Kendo 2]

Let’s look at an established pay content system and see how it works.

 

Renderosity has paid content and people participate in making products and paying to get them.  The big difference between that market and what Bethesda and their chosen platform can do is the licensing for 3rd party users and content developers.  Daz, Poser and Renderosity make no claims on content made using their software or content hosted.  As long as people don’t violate the TOS and the license they don’t care.  On the other hand, Bethesda and Valve claim to own everything, from the code needed to get the content into the game to the files hosted.  The Bethesda/Valve market model is not content developer friendly, and it never will be.

 

In the Renderosity market free content is in fact free, from the instance of upload to the time it is installed on the end users’ computers.  Renderosity free content can’t be used for third party sales.  Even people with a Daz Developer’s license can’t take things someone else made and resubmit them for sale if it violates the original license.  They agreed to that when they installed the software.

 

Transversely, practically every modding tool around is protected by a EULA that prevents people from making a profit with the content made using it.  Even if the program itself doesn’t have that proviso in its EULA, the software used to make it in the first place does.  PyFFI’s, win32-helpers and EVERYTHING ELSE is protected in form or another.

 

The infrastructure to get paid for modding a Bethesda game simply isn’t in place.  It doesn’t exist and people are pretending it does.

[pinky6225]

 

Let’s look at an established pay content system and see how it works.

 

Renderosity has paid content and people participate in making products and paying to get them.  The big difference between that market and what Bethesda and their chosen platform can do is the licensing for 3rd party users and content developers.  Daz, Poser and Renderosity make no claims on content made using their software or content hosted.  As long as people don’t violate the TOS and the license they don’t care.  On the other hand, Bethesda and Valve claim to own everything, from the code needed to get the content into the game to the files hosted.  The Bethesda/Valve market model is not content developer friendly, and it never will be.

 

In the Renderosity market free content is in fact free, from the instance of upload to the time it is installed on the end users’ computers.  Renderosity free content can’t be used for third party sales.  Even people with a Daz Developer’s license can’t take things someone else made and resubmit them for sale if it violates the original license.  They agreed to that when they installed the software.

 

Transversely, practically every modding tool around is protected by a EULA that prevents people from making a profit with the content made using it.  Even if the program itself doesn’t have that proviso in its EULA, the software used to make it in the first place does.  PyFFI’s, win32-helpers and EVERYTHING ELSE is protected in form or another.

 

The infrastructure to get paid for modding a Bethesda game simply isn’t in place.  It doesn’t exist and people are pretending it is.

 

 

As you seem to be quite knowledgeable about this subject of the tools simple question, are there any paid for license tools that could be used instead of the ones that have the free usage license agreement? If not how big of a market would there need to be for it to be viable to create licensed tools?

 

admittedly i'm an optismist but i think its a bit silly to totally discount any potential of a good path which in this case would be money travelling back up the chain from the modders who can afford to purchase tools as they have had X amount of sales and so on

 

 

To digress slightly the hated pay to win model that some MMO's have/fight not to have was present in MMO's well before any of them had any sort of offical shop. I remember playing necron one of the very first first person shooter MMO's and people would buy expensive end game gear for real cash (i.e paying to win) they were just doing it without the game makers knowledge which if anything was worse as having a black market pay to win hurts confidence in the game/community more than having a obvious pay to win sitation where atleast you can see when someone has whipped out their credit card to gain an advantage

 

so back to topic i'm sure that paid for modding already happens although at a much lesser extent its just not done in plain sight and without any protection for the purchaser

 

[jacques00]

The infrastructure to get paid for modding a Bethesda game simply isn’t in place.  It doesn’t exist and people are pretending it does.

I'm under the impression that those kinds of things can change over time if the market and business demands it.

 

Ultimate solution: Whore out the Donation button as much as possible.

 

[aqqh]

Find it strange myself everybody hates vanilla skyrim since generally speaking if i hated a game i wouldn't have played it long enough to become aware of the modding possibility.

 

Think its like hating windows, its fashionable

Hardly surprising as there are plenty of things in vanilla skyrim that sucks bigtime.

Guess i endured maybe like 10 hours before i've lost my patience to how brilliant vanilla horses are and decided that "there is no way that no one have made a mod to improve that idiocy..."

which led me to nexus.

[bob11]

Hate? No.  Meh? Yeah.  I'm still waiting for the day when Daggerfall will rise again.

 

 

 

 

 

Find it strange myself everybody hates vanilla skyrim since generally speaking if i hated a game i wouldn't have played it long enough to become aware of the modding possibility.

 

Think its like hating windows, its fashionable
 

 

 

[rylasasin]

I do know what Chesko hoped for.

 

 

And i can only imagine what Falskaar author went through.

 

As for signing up - no idea whats that supposed to be (if it's even real) but i fear that i've never bothered to release anything on nexus so i guess i do not qualify.

 

 

 

Problem is, people like Chesko don't know how the market works. Or what selling a product entails, or take into account that thing called competition. Or cost, or investment vs payout, risk, or... anything really. They saw the way the free community worked, and thought it would work the same way for paid modding.

 

It doesn't.

 

What people like Chesko (if he even believed anything he said about taking modding to the next level) saw for paid modding is a pipe dream. They saw themselves, they saw their mods, and that's it. They don't see everyone else around them or what that the rammifications of that is. They didn't consider the concept of competition or bother to do 10 minutes worth of research and observation into how markets work. It is simply worth much more time and effort to flood the market full of cheap mods than it is to work on a large project. And with everyone doing this, your mod regardless of how good it is, is going to get buried under 90 pages of crap real quickly.

 

Hell we already see this with the clusterfuck that is the steam workshop. How anyone thought it was going to be different for paid mods is beyond me. 

 

I know some apologists will try to frame the issue into some bullshit emotional argument about how passion doesn't put food on the table, or how modders "deserve" to get paid for their "hard work". I also know some counter-apologists will try to frame the issue into a moral argument about how it should remain a hobby.

 

Well guess what? None of that shit matters. What you or I want is irrelevant. That's just not how the market operates. The market doesn't give two fucks about your need to put food in your mouth. The market does not give two fucks about your idealism. The world doesn't revolve around what you or I want. It doesn't revolve around starry eyed dreams of "quality=profit". It revolves around material reality. And the material reality is that once you introduce the profit motive it becomes a race to the bottom to gain more money more cheaply, not a race to the top to make better products. This has been proven over and over and over and over and over again, yet people still plug their ears, sing this stupid song of how their mod are going to be the next big thing, and refuse to see things for how they are.

 

The low payout rate is a red herring that only served to exacerbate a pre-existing problem. The bullshit they pulled to censor criticism on their mods were only the nails in the coffin.

 

As for "quality control", the fact that you have a system that is so intrinsically broken requiring constant nannying to keep it on life support only proves my point. Besides, who's going to enforce that? The whole idea of the paid modding scheme was so Beth and Valve could make a quick profit with low risk, you don't want to have to hire people to artificially enforce this thing if your goal is to make a quick buck. Turns out that risk was higher than the marketing execs thought it was.

 

At the end of the day:  Free modding works. Paid Modding does not. It really is that simple. 

 

Also, Falskaar authors. People like to forget that projects like these are not one-man efforts (despite how certain media sites like to frame it).

[Kendo 2]

As you seem to be quite knowledgeable about this subject of the tools simple question, are there any paid for license tools that could be used instead of the ones that have the free usage license agreement? If not how big of a market would there need to be for it to be viable to create licensed tools?

That would be a monumental task.  For the sake of argument let’s use ‘Blender’ as an example.  Blender is 100% free to use, from the program itself to the software and added scripts that drive it.  If the Blender Foundation decided they would let their end users make pay-for content with their program, Blender would in turn have to contact SourceForge and get them to agree to it.  SourceForge would then have to contact the developers of the software they used and get THEM to agree to it.  IF everyone agreed then the notion of Blender being used as a free software that people could use to make paid-for content could go forward.  That’s not likely to happen, no matter what developer name you replace ‘Blender’ with.

 

Something else that people are not considering is licensing to mod for cash and then having people actually pay for content.  Depending on the software used to make the content every mod would need it’s own EULA identifying; the original software developers, licensees, end users, 3rd parties, the terms of use, preexisting licensing, provider liability, relief, arguments and everything else.  If that sounds confusing; it is and it’s over the heads of most modders.  They might be able to read a EULA and understand it, but they wouldn’t be able to author one and have it stand up to legal challenge.

 

Going back to Daz/Poser/Renderosity; they have their own EULAs people are subject to, but they are worded to protect the vendors and the buyers as well as the corporations.  The Bethesda/Valve EULAs only protect them.  For modding-for-cash to work, Bethesda would have to rethink its EULA and Valve would have to relinquish interest in uploaded content that isn’t identified.  In other words, their game forum bullshit mentality would no longer apply and they would be held accountable for not only the content uploaded, but also the welfare and financial interests of their vendors.  ‘Because we said so’ would no longer be valid.  As with the ‘Blender’ scenario, I don’t see that happening.

[Kendo 2]

 

I'm under the impression that those kinds of things can change over time if the market and business demands it.

That means changing corporate culture for the company involved.  Bethesda isn't going to change unless there is a major internal shake up to remove the current decision makers and replace them with free thinkers.

 

Ultimate solution: Whore out the Donation button as much as possible.

That's not paid for modding and we already have that.  It's not a solution.

 

[Maviaux]

The way I see it; There isn't a solution for this specific problem, not one that can be easily applied anyway.

 

Now I'm not a naysayer, pessimist, or some dubious asshole looking to take down corporations, this is just my point of view on it.

 

To solve this problem would mean solving the issues behind some of the issues that come with human nature; greed, curiosity, entitlement and ignorance. No matter the solution, there will always be those that are pissed off mods are being sold, those that want to make money selling mods, and those that will buy mods that are sold as well as those that boycott companies cause of it. You can't please everyone and there's no easy button for a subject like this, a bit obvious to some but not so much to others.

 

This latest fiasco showed us one thing; people don't change, doubly so when it's a notion set in stone. Paid modding is a concept very few people will come to grasp, if they ever do. Mods have always been free, that's just the rule that's set in stone like a cultural tradition and to break it is sacrilege to many - which led to this sad business of several modders being chased and threatened right out of the modding scene like witches running from the witch hunt. Even if Skyrim had been released with paid modding I honestly feel this same issue would have come to pass eventually as people began to complain about the very same things they complained about this time around; shoddy work, requirements to actually make the game playable, advertisements (cough), the list goes on forever and ever, there was a lot of complaining.

 

I don't believe for a second this is our last scrape with paid modding, but I'm not going to say this is the end of the community or modding in general, that's a silly and over dramatic generalization. Paid modding came and went and for the most part the community is still here, mods are still being made, and while we lost some very talented individuals, it just makes way for some new talent to come forth and blow our minds with some potentially awesome creations.

 

While not quite a solution, but more of an acceptance; It happened, big whoop, it's gone for now and people are worrying about the 'what ifs' instead of the 'now what'. Everyone learned from this; Modders, mod users, Valve and Beth, and no one here can pretend to know what anyone other than themselves plans to do with what they've learned until it's tested whenever paid modding creeps up again.

 

TL;DR: Lesson learned, dumb shit happened all around, no one can see into the future and the best we can do is wait.

[pornphile]

That would be a monumental task.  For the sake of argument let’s use ‘Blender’ as an example.  Blender is 100% free to use, from the program itself to the software and added scripts that drive it.  If the Blender Foundation decided they would let their end users make pay-for content with their program, Blender would in turn have to contact SourceForge and get them to agree to it.  SourceForge would then have to contact the developers of the software they used and get THEM to agree to it.  IF everyone agreed then the notion of Blender being used as a free software that people could use to make paid-for content could go forward.  That’s not likely to happen, no matter what developer name you replace ‘Blender’ with.

Blender is GNU GPL license. You completely own the files you make and can do as you wish with them. What does Sourceforge have to do with this?

 

https://www.blender.org/about/license/

[guk]

Good, so everyone decided the repeat the same arguments. Then let me at least bring the spotlight back to 2 issues that you have so conveniently ignored, or deliberately mis-interpreted to suit your arguments.

 

__________

 

1. What is the reason why certain mods are so extremely well done?

 

Hand-painted but photorealistic textures which were perfected after 1 single person was working ONLY on this texture for several years. How many artists that get paid per hour or per finished product can afford to spend so much time on 1 single object? How many revisions can you make on an existing product, while you should be working on the next one?

 

And the reason why so many of you are here: SexLab.

Which paid author would bother to work on a Framework for years, fighting against the countless bugs and incompabilites while trying to improve and add new features? We're not talking about designing a game engine from scratch (that would be the case for actual stand-alone crowdfunding products), but squeezing something into a game that was never meant to do anything like this.

 

---> All these mods are of such high quality, because their authors could work on them for an infinite amount of time without any form of financial or temporal pressure.

It doesn't work if you reverse the logic, claiming that these mods MIGHT THEORETICALLY be even better if they only could afford to pay beta testers and hired artists and licenses for resources. These products wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the hobby factor.

 

 

__________

 

2. Unfortunately any form of Sexual content is 100% banned on Steam.

 

And while some companies circumvene this by directly giving their customers an external link with a Nude Patch, do you guys think that Bethesda would tolerate this for their product? You are not a company with its own rights when you use any of their distribution channels. FFS you don't even have any rights on your mod as soon as it enters the Workshop.

 

 

---> Any publisher/studio-controlled commercial mod market WILL be the end of adult modding in the magnitude like we have it for Skyrim right now.

Don't argue that "DRM-locked Mods" are a conspiration theory - this will absolutely be implemented in the future, otherwise they would defeat the purpose of their own business model.

Or why is nobody using the "shareware" system from the 1980's and 90's anymore? Because if something doesn't even have a copy protection, the users will treat it as freeware and copy it without any legal concerns. Same like not locking your bike on the train station - people without criminal energy steal it just because it is so damn easy and convenient.

 

__________

 

[Gameplayer]

Paid modding is not something that is going to happen.

 

It just simply cannot exist alongside the quality mods that the community has put forth for free.  I understand that for some its not easy to grasp but the programs that are used to create unique content have a Terms of use License that winds up meaning you cannot profit from materials made by this product.  You can say well what if said Blender foundation changed its mind well that's not going to happen KendoII already gave a short illustration for why.

 

You can say well what about Dota or this and that game that is using paid modding.  For one the content is of questionable legal nature.

 

Thing is your not looking at it the right way here, Skyrim modding scene attracts way more attention than those games.  Skyrim modding scene has been featured in reputable publications and its success has garnered it far more attention than other titles.

 

In short it would not have lasted long because of the organizations and people that are aware of it and the moment that any of those entities decided they didn't like their products being used for profits or infringed upon legally they would have done something about it.

 

The only way a future game by Beth could feasibly have paid modding is by controlling just how moddable the game will be.  Which will kill off interest in the series.

[Zor2k13]

@guk

 

Second life is full of adult stuff and yes things are different there but adult stuff IS there so it is not going away from skyrim or anything else. People in general like porn and seek it out on a regular basis they just don't like for anyone to know they are doing that at all.

 

 

 

For anyone saying the base game of oblivion/skyrim can stand on its own think again. How many times did the average player go through the game of oblivion or skyrim without mods? I am sure that time is much shorter than the time they spent with mods. Even the basic mods like unofficial patches fixed a lot of things and made it somewhat worth playing again without any other mods. If bugfesta released their next game and NOBODY modded for it for one year not even arthmoor and the other unofficial patch modders, what would the sales figures look like?

 

Most people that get the next call of dookietime game will play the single player portion only once if that even, they will go straight to the multiplayer where all the real action is and after a while, get bored of it and move on. Games with mods last a lot longer because of mods. Games without mods can you remember playing any of those the same amount as other games with mods?

 

The idea implied earlier by kendo 2 and others that purposely made buggy games get people interested in modding for them to fix the games gets mods going for that game is exactly right. It is a dam dirty sales tactic and is what has kept bugfesta going at all in recent years. Bugfesta could keep doing this buggy strategy and then lock down the ck for the next game and rake in a bunch of money which is why they pulled this bs in the first place.

 

People everywhere complained and stopped them for now, but all they will do is try to figure out what exactly it was that got us boiling frogs to jump out of the pot and change that instead of doing the right thing for both them and us. they will simply find the weakpoints in our views and decisions and exploit them to get their way. They know the average consumer is just a dam sheep and won't really boycott anything. The only saving grace we as consumers have is the crap economy making us think more about paying bills right now and less about giving our money to greedy jerks.

[Quisling]

---> All these mods are of such high quality, because their authors could work on them for an infinite amount of time without any form of financial or temporal pressure.

It doesn't work if you reverse the logic, claiming that these mods MIGHT THEORETICALLY be even better if they only could afford to pay beta testers and hired artists and licenses for resources. These products wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the hobby factor.

 

You'll like this commenter on Bethesda's blog:

 

 

 

If I put my full efforts into this, I could foreseeable quit my present job in a year and be making more money. If I build 10 great mods with 50,000 subscribers each year I’d be working full time doing what I love.

 

You’ll never see the level of quality that would have been made without the paid option. The mod market would have stabilized itself in time.

 

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/comment-page-6/#comment-419348

[Zor2k13]

@kendo 2

 

From some pages back about the licensing stuff for each modder...

 

Dam that sucks lol no way would I desire to make an EULA for each mod I released and nobody else would either that would just suck the fun out of modding completely.

[bjornk]

 

If I put my full efforts into this, I could foreseeable quit my present job in a year and be making more money. If I build 10 great mods with 50,000 subscribers each year I’d be working full time doing what I love.

 

You’ll never see the level of quality that would have been made without the paid option. The mod market would have stabilized itself in time.

 

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/comment-page-6/#comment-419348

 

A pathetic daydreamer obviously.

[Gameplayer]

I just read that article or reply whatever you want to call that..........I don't feel or think I'm more informed than I was before.  Very dodgy stuff.

[guk]

@guk

 

Second life is full of adult stuff and yes things are different there but adult stuff IS there so it is not going away from skyrim or anything else. People in general like porn and seek it out on a regular basis they just don't like for anyone to know they are doing that at all.

You realize that you're not even comparing apples and oranges here?

 

Skyrim is a typical game with what, M-Rating?

Base Game content is about torture, murder, decapitations and even cannibalism. But any kind of sexuality is completely banned on behalf of the authors, and they don't tolerate any sexual mods within their control zone.

 

Second Life however has absolutely nothing in common with an actual videogame like Skyrim.

 

 

 

If I put my full efforts into this, I could foreseeable quit my present job in a year and be making more money. If I build 10 great mods with 50,000 subscribers each year I’d be working full time doing what I love.

 

You’ll never see the level of quality that would have been made without the paid option. The mod market would have stabilized itself in time.

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/comment-page-6/#comment-419348

 

Still getting only the german page of Bethblog (which has nothing you quoted), but that's just typical naivity.

May i remind you that for example when the "Real Money Auction House" came with Diablo 3, all these people thought they could make a living by that?

 

Too many cooks, too few customers.

 

__________

 

edit after cooking some coffee:

 

And yes the D3-RMAH comparison seems stupid, because everyone is producing identical goods based on luck so the prices just drop infinitely.

But it is a good asymmetric example because it also was hated by the community, and after a very long time acknowledged as a flop by the developers and removed. It had no positive effect whatsoever for anyone involved, only the people with the most money had the best items while nobody got rich off it.

[jacques00]

Ultimate solution: Whore out the Donation button as much as possible.

That's not paid for modding and we already have that.  It's not a solution.

Of course not, I was being facetious.

 

[Guest endgameaddiction]

Paid modding is not something that is going to happen.

 

It just simply cannot exist alongside the quality mods that the community has put forth for free.  I understand that for some its not easy to grasp but the programs that are used to create unique content have a Terms of use License that winds up meaning you cannot profit from materials made by this product.  You can say well what if said Blender foundation changed its mind well that's not going to happen KendoII already gave a short illustration for why.

 

You can say well what about Dota or this and that game that is using paid modding.  For one the content is of questionable legal nature.

 

Thing is your not looking at it the right way here, Skyrim modding scene attracts way more attention than those games.  Skyrim modding scene has been featured in reputable publications and its success has garnered it far more attention than other titles.

 

In short it would not have lasted long because of the organizations and people that are aware of it and the moment that any of those entities decided they didn't like their products being used for profits or infringed upon legally they would have done something about it.

 

The only way a future game by Beth could feasibly have paid modding is by controlling just how moddable the game will be.  Which will kill off interest in the series.

 

Pay-2-Mod is something that isn't going to be ignored. Right now the battle has been won but the war hasn't. They underestimated the mod community. In other words, Bethesda and Valve have probably made their biggest mistake the way they introduced it. Now their kicking they're own asses over this because they thought they had this all under control. They figured this an easy win like DRM. They got counter slapped is all. And it's costing them they're reputation. They had to fork out some sort of acknowledgement to try to sugargoat it and accept their mistake, but I assure you it's not going to be ignored. It was a real easy loss when you have a community like Skyrim that's been around for 3+ years. Apply this to a new title like Fallout 4 and we are doomed. What they probably will do is offer the GECK free as they have. Months will pass. Once they finish their last official patch, they'll apply this P2M on us. Can't do it before hand. You know why? Real huge mods tend to get broken when a new official patch is released and the author(s) have to release a patch. But what if something happens to that modder and we never see a new update again? Oh, well... Valve will probably hide the file after being outdated so long and you'll never get your money back. Pity... Or they will probably give you a couple of steam credits.

[Gameplayer]

Oh I've no doubt now about Fallout 4,

 

I'm probably not alone in thinking that this "pay-wall" method was meant to be put into place before Fo4 released.  It could be the title is finished and Beth is just going to go ahead and implement a system with that one.