Kendo 2 Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 I remembered about some old news but related for comparison about philosophies In the recent events how Beth & Steam had tried to sell mods (75% for them) and the whole philosophy of Beth selling DLC's and the original game with huge amount of bugs there are other companies in the opposite philosophy http://thewitcher.com/news/view/867either we like the game or not the philosophy is the winner. WOW.
mkprovince Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 I remembered about some old news but related for comparison about philosophies In the recent events how Beth & Steam had tried to sell mods (75% for them) and the whole philosophy of Beth selling DLC's and the original game with huge amount of bugs there are other companies in the opposite philosophy http://thewitcher.com/news/view/867either we like the game or not the philosophy is the winner. WOW. Even better still http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-and-batman-arkham-knight-free-with-selec/1100-6427098/?utm_source=gamefaqs&utm_medium=partner&utm_content=news_module&utm_campaign=hub_forum
Kendo 2 Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 Who was stupid enough to pay for mods anyways? XD Dark0ne, Gabe from Valve, and about 20 modders willing to blindly trade their modding souls and the goodwill of their fans for 25 cents on the dollar. Then there's the sheep at Nexus who'll believe whatever Dark0ne tells them to believe, and the Steam-tards who are too stupid and lazy to do more than click 'download' for an auto-install mod. EDIT: Don't get me wrong, paid modding is feasible and with the right corporate approach it could even be successful. BUT Bethesda and Valve trying to ride on the backs of the modding community as another source of revenue will end in failure, IMO.
Zor2k13 Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 I actually had this dream last night that I was sitting in the lobby of a police station somewhere and judge judy was sitting next to me with a BIG stack of paper documents all related to paid modding arguments! She asked me to read through them and then go fetch one paper she left in another room which she then asked me to help her fill out. Something to do with a relative of her trying to get paid for modding. As I thumbed through the papers I could see images of waifus wearing tacky clothing printed out in black and white with some pages looking like printouts of web pages. After we talked for a while about paid modding she asked me to fix her busted laptop.
Guest endgameaddiction Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 Who was stupid enough to pay for mods anyways? XD Dark0ne, Gabe from Valve, and about 20 modders willing to blindly trade their modding souls and the goodwill of their fans for 25 cents on the dollar. Then there's the sheep at Nexus who'll believe whatever Dark0ne tells them to believe, and the Steam-tards who are too stupid and lazy to do more than click 'download' for an auto-install mod. EDIT: Don't get me wrong, paid modding is feasible and with the right corporate approach it could even be successful. BUT Bethesda and Valve trying to ride on the backs of the modding community as another source of revenue will end in failure, IMO. With the way CD Projekt and GOG going, I think Beth and Valve are gonig to have to sit down and rethink this P2M. It was initially a bad start on their part and I don't think in any way in the future it's going to help them implement it one way or the toher. You know for a corporation, they both are really stupid. And they'll always be the laughing stock about it.
Lovely Rose Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 Who was stupid enough to pay for mods anyways? XD Dark0ne, Gabe from Valve, and about 20 modders willing to blindly trade their modding souls and the goodwill of their fans for 25 cents on the dollar. Then there's the sheep at Nexus who'll believe whatever Dark0ne tells them to believe, and the Steam-tards who are too stupid and lazy to do more than click 'download' for an auto-install mod. EDIT: Don't get me wrong, paid modding is feasible and with the right corporate approach it could even be successful. BUT Bethesda and Valve trying to ride on the backs of the modding community as another source of revenue will end in failure, IMO. If they ever actually fully do pay for modding. I simply wont play them anymore. I'm surprised G.u.network doesn't charge for the mods, they seem to worship dragbodys shit work enough. lol I think modding will die down or alot of underground websites will become popular if nexus and steam become pay to mod.
Kendo 2 Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 If they ever actually fully do pay for modding. I simply wont play them anymore. I'm surprised G.u.network doesn't charge for the mods, they seem to worship dragbodys shit work enough. lol I think modding will die down or alot of underground websites will become popular if nexus and steam become pay to mod. Well, the future of paid modding (if it can be called a ‘future’) will hinge on Bethesda’s one-sided EULA that only protects them and allows them to stake claim on anything created with their software. Since they don’t recognize intellectual property rights they’ll be able to basically rob people of any improvements or game concepts made using their software. That’s how things are right now and that won’t change in a paid-to-mod environment. They ‘own’ esps/esms regardless. What Bethesda and the supporters of paid modding are not taking into consideration are the game modifications to replace the default character bodies packed with the game. Like it or not, the most popular and most downloaded mods are nude adult female body models, textures and the outfits for them. If a body mod uses any Bethesda vanilla assets, Bethesda does in fact own the model; they own something they do not want or endorse people using. But that is another issue entirely. In a paid modding environment, meshes and textures are not free. For a quality body mesh and the associated textures be prepared to pay around $400.00 for the product and the 3rd party license that allows users to sell any content derived from them. That’s the reality. Another reality is corporations like Bethesda and Valve cannot claim ownership, since the content would be prepackaged with a fully binding EULA of its own that would supercede anything Bethesda/Valve stakes claim to. In an effort to control modding as a market Bethesda would have two reasons not to allow nude body replacers: (1) their corporate culture frowns on it; (2) they’ll never own the rights to it. In other words, the most popular mod content in existence would not be allowed if the market is controlled by Bethesda and Valve. And nude models are the most profitable for sites like Nexus, since they are the most popular and generate the most income from pop-up views. Imagine Dark0ne’s Nexus without the multi millions (literally) of downloads for content like Oblivion’s HGEC, FO’s Type3, and Skyrim’s UNP and CBBE. Imagine the content you’re left with and imagine Bethesda owns all of it and Valve determines who can get it and where they can get it. THAT is the future of paid modding with the licensing in place right now and Valve controlling the market. Okay, no nude body mods...BFD. Now look at the existing fan base for mods and their habits. They look for adult mods and while on that site browse other content, and they download that too. To a lesser degree there are follower and quest mods that require nude body replacers, and those mods have other requirements too. SSKE, SkyUI, official DLCs, etc. All of this in intertwined and if one part gets no exposure then the other parts start to suffer. @GornGrimm The horse isn't dead. Bethesda and Valve just put it in the barn so they can hide that's it's being abused.
Lovely Rose Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 So basically the future of modding is all shit? What i figured. lol Like i said, if it comes to paid modding, i simply wont play there games anymore.
Guest Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 So basically the future of modding is all shit? What i figured. lol Like i said, if it comes to paid modding, i simply wont play there games anymore. same here, the only reason i play skyrim are the free mods. otherwise i would play other games.
Lovely Rose Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 So basically the future of modding is all shit? What i figured. lol Like i said, if it comes to paid modding, i simply wont play there games anymore. same here, the only reason i play skyrim are the free mods. otherwise i would play other games. Well i also make mods here and there and as much as i support Beth, I probably wont support the payments for mods. IF ANYTHING, why don't they just sale the G.E.C.K and CKs for the games? instead of charge per mod?
Chaos63 Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 I remembered about some old news but related for comparison about philosophies In the recent events how Beth & Steam had tried to sell mods (75% for them) and the whole philosophy of Beth selling DLC's and the original game with huge amount of bugs there are other companies in the opposite philosophy http://thewitcher.com/news/view/867 either we like the game or not the philosophy is the winner. This is the kind of thing that makes a pirate take out his wallet and actually pay for the game. No wonder Projekt RED is everybody's sweetheart nowadays, while EA is globally despised.
Guest endgameaddiction Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 Modding is never going to go away. Modding started out like hacking. Unbreaking locks and tweaking games to their advantage and sharing stuff with other people and expanding it to what is now a mod scene. Modding will never die. Ever.
Buddy Christ Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 @GornGrimmThe horse isn't dead. Bethesda and Valve just put it in the barn so they can hide that's it's being abused. Well, if the friggin' horse is only resting, then so be it. But I think it doesn't make sense to keep going on about the last try. We should instead regroup, gather our strength and prepare for another try instead of wasting our fury on the first wave we defeated. Keeping this topic going at the moment is more a thing of playing into "their" hands, because it devides the community. It is like we are still firing, after defeating a Banzai charge that we stopped dead in its tracks. When the time comes, we shall rise again, this time hopefully in a more civilized manner, without death threads to fellow modders etc. They might try it again with the release of either the next TES game or FO4. But I, for my part, will wait a.) before buying it, making sure that modding is not hindered by a mandatory workshop and b.) stay vigilant and follow all the news provided for the next release. But still talking about their first and failed attempt takes away the resources to consolidate the force of the modding community. Having the modders still argueing among themselves only helps Beth/Valve, since it will split the community sooner than later. Embracing the ones that went down the "dark path" back into the community might be a good thing. They were burned by the community and left hanging out to dry by Valve/Bethesda. So they might be the strongest voice against paid mods in the future. If we put them to the firing squad, we might lose a good asset in future battles. The whole topic should be done for now and we should regain our strength and movement for the future battles. I know, I said that I am out of this debate, but actually seeing this all still boil up all the time makes me sad. We can debate about their foiled plan, but we do not know their future plans. So instead of hyping us up by still debating this, we should wait for the future schemes they come up with.Right now, Skyrim and Fallout seem to be safe. If they plan to change the modding community with their next release, we can decide with our wallet. Imagine a new TES or FO game coming out with mods through a mandatory workshop. What do you think the sales figures will be, after the modding community has been sensibilised to the whole matter. I, for my part, think that at least Bethesda has learned the lesson that they won't sell that many games if modding is restricted in any way. If Valve tries it with another game, I think, those modders have to stand up as well. The Skyrim Modding Community could lend support there. But we really, and I mean *really* should stop bickering about it and watch the next moves of the industry vigilantly. Sorry for this long winded reply to just one sentence @Kendo2, I am not always eye-to-eye with your opinions about modders and people that use mods, but I really do respect you for your work. You might be a rude special snowflake sometimes, but your work is something that goes beyond my personal opinion. But I would like you to remember, people start out as "stupid folks" that install a mod and mess up their Skyrim installation because they didn't follow the instructions. I am one of them. But work like yours and other modders made me want to create something myself. So I made a (for some probably "shitty") mod, just to give something back to the community. Don't be too harsh on the people that only download mods to use them. There might be a gem amongst them
Kendo 2 Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 I didn't know I was bickering or debating. I thought I was making points and observations about how paid modding COULD work won't and why it WON'T with the status quo. And I don't think it's a waste of time continuing to talk about paid modding in a reasonable and sane manner. The facts and opinions I've posting here might help someone in the future make an educated decision about paid modding and not rely on the type of internet knee-jerk reaction of a few weeks ago when this sort of thing happens in the near future. And about my demeanor; It's not my fault some people are stupid and uninformed. I just have the bad manners to point it out.
Lovely Rose Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 i thought you was just making points and observations. Didn't think it was bickering or debating. XD
Buddy Christ Posted May 5, 2015 Posted May 5, 2015 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/debate So yeah, there is still a lot of debating going on If you think, I was referring to *general* you with the term "bickering", you might want to reflect on that. @Kendo2: It is not bad manners to point out that some people are uninformed, but calling them stupid is going a bit too far for me. There are two ways to cope with people that are uninformend: Insult them, or enlighten them Sorry if you guys prefer to feel attacked/Insulted by my post. I guess I just let you beat the carcass and leave again. At least the meat should be tender after a while and I actually like horse meat.
Quisling Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 I, for my part, think that at least Bethesda has learned the lesson that they won't sell that many games if modding is restricted in any way. If Valve tries it with another game, I think, those modders have to stand up as well. The Skyrim Modding Community could lend support there. But we really, and I mean *really* should stop bickering about it and watch the next moves of the industry vigilantly. Dunno... if no-one's talking about it, they might think the problem's gone away. I mean, paid mods are already working for Valve - supposedly earning modders $57 million since 2011, and I've seen reports some individuals have got a decent wage out of Dota 2. But Dota 2 mods are necessarily limited due to it being multiplayer. Meanwhile, looking at SteamSpy, Skyrim is either the 7th most purchased game on Steam (13million), or has the 6th most active players (1.25m). The only non-Valve game with more players is GTA5. It is basically the only proven game in town for anything more than cosmetic modding, so they'll likely be back when they can.
Gameplayer Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 I, for my part, think that at least Bethesda has learned the lesson that they won't sell that many games if modding is restricted in any way. If Valve tries it with another game, I think, those modders have to stand up as well. The Skyrim Modding Community could lend support there. But we really, and I mean *really* should stop bickering about it and watch the next moves of the industry vigilantly. Dunno... if no-one's talking about it, they might think the problem's gone away. I mean, paid mods are already working for Valve - supposedly earning modders $57 million since 2011, and I've seen reports some individuals have got a decent wage out of Dota 2. But Dota 2 mods are necessarily limited due to it being multiplayer. Meanwhile, looking at SteamSpy, Skyrim is either the 7th most purchased game on Steam (13million), or has the 6th most active players (1.25m). The only non-Valve game with more players is GTA5. It is basically the only proven game in town for anything more than cosmetic modding, so they'll likely be back when they can. ROFL, Its just a small vocal minority of "C" people. ( C must be cunt idk ) Gawd I want to laugh in their faces when I hear them say stupid shit. So few people even mod Skyrim as it is. Psht wut?
BoozeJunky Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 To just throw out my subjective experiences, My first TES game was Morrowind on the original Xbox, and after the hassle of buying multiple copies of it for the DLC, I switched to the PC version of Oblivion when that released. Not long afterwards, I started seeing screenshots and reading forum posts on "mods", and I became interested in seeing what they had to offer. I came across a popular mod site (I'm not sure which anymore) which hosted a lot of really good looking mods. However, the site was not free. You had to pay for the bandwidth you used, so while I was dissapointed, I figured I'd try it out and see how it went. After spending 10 or 20 for a month of access, I started grabbing everything that looked good to me. Unfortunately, I had a lot a problems getting mods to work correctly, or work well together. Those that did, often completely unbalanced my game or added very little aside from minor cosmetics. The offerings I came across (limited mostly by my slow download speeds and the horrible interface for browsing the available mods) were amateurish and often incomplete. So I made the decision that this wasn't worth a subscription fee - and given that most consoles by then allowed you to download DLC directly (rather than having to buy a new disk), I left the mod scene behind. When I built a new PC a few years ago, I was subscribed to GameFly who was offering free game downloads to members. Soon after, I downloaded Steam to see what all the fuss was about - and decided to buy Skyrim again since I had given my Xbox disk to a relative and it didn't look like I was going to get it back any time soon. When I looked up mods this time, however, they were completely free. It didn't take long for me to abandon the horrible and limited Steam Workshop interface for sites like Nexus, Loverslab, HaloFarm, etc. Without the mods and communities behind a subscription paywall, I was able to sample much more of the works out there - as well as get support for conflicts and errors to make them work together nicely. It wasn't long before I was downloading mod tools like NifSkope, TESEdit, and CK/GECK to make edits/improvements to mods I used often. Then 3DS Max to make/edit my own assets. Eventually, I started to release some of these to the Nexus as a way to give back to the community which provided all the great mods I had been enjoying. And while I haven't really made much of note (and then, pretty much just for Fallout 3), I wouldn't have joined or contributed anything to the community had I still been stuck behind those paywalls and without open access to the mods other people have made for inspiration, problem solving, and assets I was unable to create myself. TL:DR, I dealt with paywalls when exploring the modding scene for Oblivion, and all it did for me was to turn me off of modding for the next 8 years.
GSBmodders Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 So basically the future of modding is all shit? What i figured. lol Like i said, if it comes to paid modding, i simply wont play there games anymore. same here, the only reason i play skyrim are the free mods. otherwise i would play other games. Well i also make mods here and there and as much as i support Beth, I probably wont support the payments for mods. IF ANYTHING, why don't they just sale the G.E.C.K and CKs for the games? instead of charge per mod? they are attempting to attract the pro's such as those that you see at turbosquid, daz3d, smithmicro and freelance animators and game developers. they may very well get a few here and there but for the most part 25% for mod authors is just not going to cut it and it will not attract the vendors they want.
GrimReaper Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 If money plays a role in modding, it will turn into a business, the community will cease to exist for the most part. Modding only really works when people share their knowledge and assets for everyone else to expand upon. Paid modding will mostly be about cosmetic things like armors and weapons because more complex mods require more knowledge and more people working on it, which means you have to do more work but receive less for what you provide because the people in your team want to be paid, too. So it's either 1,99$ for armors and weapons where you get ~0,50$ per sale or a big mod for 29,99$ where you'll get about 7,50$ that you need to split between you and your team. And that's not even taking into account that every modder relies heavily on other modders and their work. So making a big mod will be even harder than it is today because once money is in the game, people won't be willing to share how they do it today. If you ever did some modding, think about what other people needed to do for you to be able to do what you wanted. You rely on external programs like blender and nifskope to manipulate meshes, gimp or photoshop to create/edit textures. You need to know how to export and import shit with these programs, most likely fixing the mesh multiple times between each step otherwise it simply won't work in the game. Now, it's a lot of speculating about slippery slopes, but I'm pretty much certain that this is how it will play out. Before talent and skill become important, it's all about knowing how to actually do something that works. See the really shitty body replacers that were mostly just bad texture edits of the vanilla bodies in the early days of Skyrim. They got downloaded like mad because those were the only replacers available. If it would have been about money back then, those people would most likely had an interest in keeping this status quo as long as possible, preventing people with actual modelling and texturing skills from becoming any competition to their income. Because once high quality becomes available, people will ditch stuff that works but looks like shite real fast. The other thing is that 3D artists aren't programmers and most programmers aren't 3D artists. And most of the time neither programmers nor artists are people with a knowledge of game design or writing a compelling story. And voice actors can't do any of the above, but any of the above aren't good voice actors most of the time. So now that these people are less likely to come together to build something of great beauty and complexity, they will all do their own thing, providing single, simple pieces that they are able to do with their skills and selling them to the masses. tl;dr: Paid modding doesn't work (well).
Shiana Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 paid modding will come back. but there is only a chance for success if they implement DRM. No, not drm. but some kind of security for modders, that their inventions and scripts - if they want it - can be sealed within a file - lets say a bsa - and noone without a specific password can use the items in other mods. This would prevent quick-ripoffs of mods (like taking a free mod, editing a line or two, and then selling it on the steam workshop under a different name). THAT is the biggest problem with the paid mods. not the share of beth and valve, or such things. But getting ripped off as a modder. And the control mechanisms. Currently you (as a modder) had to buy every other mod, just to see if it contains a stolen asset from your mod. thats just insane.
Gameplayer Posted May 6, 2015 Posted May 6, 2015 paid modding will come back. but there is only a chance for success if they implement DRM. No, not drm. but some kind of security for modders, that their inventions and scripts - if they want it - can be sealed within a file - lets say a bsa - and noone without a specific password can use the items in other mods. This would prevent quick-ripoffs of mods (like taking a free mod, editing a line or two, and then selling it on the steam workshop under a different name). THAT is the biggest problem with the paid mods. not the share of beth and valve, or such things. But getting ripped off as a modder. And the control mechanisms. Currently you (as a modder) had to buy every other mod, just to see if it contains a stolen asset from your mod. thats just insane. If that's how the paid modding scene on valve works right now, Darkone can just kiss his own buttocks. That was never going to pan out. Here's another thing about making money. 1st you have to sell a so many mods before you get a check, Then What about TAXES -33% in the States -50% almost everywhere else. Don't spend that $5 all on one can of Monster my friend.
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