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Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Beskargam on April 24, 2015, 01:07:51 pm

Title: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Beskargam on April 24, 2015, 01:07:51 pm
Edit:fone derp
Another topic that I didn't see.
Anyway steam has now introduced the ability for modders to charge money for their creations in the steam workshop.
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent/

This being a mod community I though you guys would have some interesting perspective on the matter. I'm not of the opinion that this idea is inherently heretical and evil, but I think some of the nuts and bolts of it are pretty bad. Valve also takes 75% of each sale which is absurd. Anyway TotalBiscuit pretty accurately summarizes my feelings :

Seems the first big game promoting this is skyrim.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: BirdofPrey on April 24, 2015, 01:27:41 pm
I think the concept is sound.  Getting paid for work regardless of what sort it is is perfectly fair.

That said, the absurd level of trash that has popped up for Skyrim is irritating, and I think it is similarly absurd that Valve is taking so much of the money for themselves.  That's just pure greed right there to abuse their near monopoly on digital distribution, and I hope they get brought up on anti-trust real soon.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Lorric on April 24, 2015, 01:54:13 pm
Fixed that video:


The sheer gall and audacity to expect 75% of the money from something they didn't lift a finger to help with is absolutely unbelievable.

Some mods for things are at the level of an expansion pack so in some cases payment is certainly valid, and people would be happy to pay for the product and it could help drive up quality of mods. But there'd also be a lot of cheap money grabbing going on too I expect.

However, I would hope no one uses this particular platform. 75% is absolutely ridiculous. The lion's share should be going to the creators and it's a slap in the face.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Beskargam on April 24, 2015, 03:15:57 pm
Heh, oopsie. Thanks guys for fixing my yt links in both posts
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 24, 2015, 03:25:58 pm
The Unreal Tournament community has already been dealing with similar issues, since Epic's Marketplace downloads can be monetized and may include addons for the new UT. There may have been some interesting discussions from there (idk since I haven't been active there for a while). Although I think Epic gets a much smaller cut from things sold on the Marketplace- like 30%.

TB raises some good points, as always: well-implemented monetization could encourage skilled modders to create more high-quality work, and modders being paid for work is in principle a good thing.

OTOH, given the existing problems with Skyrim's modding scene in particular, this could lead to some egregious money-grubbing on the part of greedy modders (Steam Workshop is already filled with stuff stolen from Nexus, hopefully monetized mods will have more oversight here). Not to mention that, as TB brought up, users have no recourse whatsoever for refunds after 24 hours. It's acceptable an even expected that some mods be buggy and even broken at times - this is much less acceptable when the mod is a paid product.

Also, something TB didn't mention but I've seen talked about, not entirely sure if it's true: but monetized mods on Steam would have to make $400 gross before the mod author sees any money ($100 at that point) at all. Considering that many authors will attempt cheap cash-grabs like a single sword model for 99¢, which may not be downloaded by many people, they may not get any money from it at all - it would go entirely to Valve/Bethsoft. On the whole the system seems very exploitative both of users and modders.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: TrashMan on April 24, 2015, 03:48:24 pm
It's not 75%..
Most of it goes to the developer AFAIK.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: headdie on April 24, 2015, 04:15:02 pm
It's not 75%..
Most of it goes to the developer AFAIK.

my understanding is that Valve grabs 75% and then apportions the agreed rate of that money to the publisher/dev
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 24, 2015, 05:01:01 pm
It's not 75%..
Most of it goes to the developer AFAIK.

The split for Skyrim is 45% Bethesda, 30% Steam, 25% mod author from what I've heard. The mod author definitely gets 25% which is a fairly small amount considering the work that goes into some mods, and the fact that Bethesda and Steam have already been paid for people to own the game.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: An4ximandros on April 24, 2015, 05:38:29 pm
I hope Epic does not **** up their shot at this. Seriously.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 24, 2015, 06:01:46 pm
Hilariously, one of the modders Valve contacted to make the first paid mods has now taken his down because he used assets from another mod without permission, and Valve told him this was totally OK. A lot of mods that have been converted for sale also apparently look significantly worse than the free versions which use modified assets from other free mods. This is so toxic, it's amazing.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: StarSlayer on April 24, 2015, 08:03:35 pm
Is this for non IP based mods only?  I don't see how for example Valve's agreement with Bethesda to allow modding of Skyrim keeps owners of said IP from dropping the CD on them profiting off their stuff.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: headdie on April 24, 2015, 08:12:54 pm
Is this for non IP based mods only?  I don't see how for example Valve's agreement with Bethesda to allow modding of Skyrim keeps owners of said IP from dropping the CD on them profiting off their stuff.

thats one of the points TB covers in his video that if you create say a Lichking armour set for skyrim and put it behind a pay wall you are going from borrowing Blizzard's IP for fun into profiting from Blizzard's IP without permission or compensation to Blizzard... potential to get very nasty.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: StarSlayer on April 24, 2015, 08:44:37 pm
Well he talked about the implications not so much the mechanics, is Valve actually doing any content review or are they playing it as fast and loose as it appears on the surface?  Having an agreement between Valve, the Publisher and the Modder is fine and dandy but I doubt that means diddly squat to a IP owner.  Especially if the IP Owners have more money to throw at the problem the Valve.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Dragon on April 24, 2015, 09:57:10 pm
I think that as long as the modder only gets a measly 25%, we don't really have to worry about this. :) Mods can't cost too much, or no one would buy them, and 25% of not much would likely not be enough for most modders to risk backlash from monetizing their mods. It could also get ugly fast if the licensing issues came into play. In the end, I don't think that it will be a common practice to monetize mods. Too much backlash potential for too little gain.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: NGTM-1R on April 24, 2015, 10:56:11 pm
Well he talked about the implications not so much the mechanics, is Valve actually doing any content review or are they playing it as fast and loose as it appears on the surface?  Having an agreement between Valve, the Publisher and the Modder is fine and dandy but I doubt that means diddly squat to a IP owner.  Especially if the IP Owners have more money to throw at the problem the Valve.

Apparently some stuff got through that probably was infringing IPs of actual companies already, so it seems things are really as bad as they appear.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: StarSlayer on April 24, 2015, 11:06:53 pm
I really don't know how the heck they thought this would work if they didn't police the content.  Who do they think IP holders are going to come after if they just let it be the Wild West?  Not the sheriff turning a blind eye and getting most of the kickbacks apparently.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Scooby_Doo on April 25, 2015, 12:25:20 am
I remember the ****storm with Sims 2 and paid stuff.... there was even a ftp website for the payed stuff for free. 

Skyui is one of those to go pay...  :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
This will do a ton of damage to the modding community.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Aesaar on April 25, 2015, 02:04:15 am
Meh.  I expect that the more useful mods that go pay to download (like SkyUI) will just end up on pirating sites.  Bethesda games are popular enough for it, and individual modders certainly don't have the money to follow through on threats of legal action.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Beskargam on April 25, 2015, 07:29:40 am
Regarding steam not policing stolen or IP infringing work. Have they ever practicing any effective of content curation? Nope
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: TrashMan on April 25, 2015, 07:32:12 am
A lot of gamers are sadly thinking they are ENTILTED to get free stuff - including mods.
If the creator wasn't to give it for free, fine.
Otherwise, no.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Beskargam on April 25, 2015, 07:37:14 am
Agreed. I have no problem with modders getting paid for their work if they want in theory. But this system is a mess.

Also derivative works need new and updated legal framework
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Aesaar on April 25, 2015, 07:54:10 am
A lot of gamers are sadly thinking they are ENTILTED to get free stuff - including mods.
If the creator wasn't to give it for free, fine.
Otherwise, no.
Sure, but it'll be really funny when people realize that those who buy mods are actually entitled to something, same as any customer.  Can't really use the "it's free so quit *****ing" defense when it's no longer free. 

God this idea just gets worse and worse the more you look at it.  You think gamers act entitled now?  Just wait.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2015, 08:06:42 am
You just know that they're going to act like they're entitled to unwavering praise and also your money. The drama is going to be thermonuclear.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: TrashMan on April 25, 2015, 08:07:30 am
Of course.
You need to mantain the mod and fix any bugs.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Aesaar on April 25, 2015, 08:14:17 am
What's the incentive for doing that?  Money-back policy applies for one day only.  Let's say I make a mod, release it on the Workshop, and it works fine at first.  People buy it, people like it, all that.  Then I decide to update it and the update breaks compatibility with another paid mod, and I don't feel like fixing it, and neither does the other guy.

Valve, Bethesda, and myself have been paid, and the return policy prevents users from getting their money back, so who cares about the users?  Let them complain all they want. 

Valve have already shown they don't care about that sort of thing, as proven by the Steam store's return policy (or lack of it).  No reason to expect mods to be treated any differently.


I'm so tempted to go into how this could affect drama-prone modding communities like Skyrim's.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: NGTM-1R on April 25, 2015, 08:45:12 am
I really don't know how the heck they thought this would work if they didn't police the content.  Who do they think IP holders are going to come after if they just let it be the Wild West?  Not the sheriff turning a blind eye and getting most of the kickbacks apparently.

The thing is, I'm not sure that even if they tried to police the content it would help. Lots of stuff will slip through (has been slipping through, for ages, on the free setup; and there are plenty of places that can still get you sued, like Germany) that nobody happened to recognize at that moment.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2015, 08:48:29 am
They're probably going to work like every other content distributor and take anything down the second an IP owner looks at it askance but otherwise do nothing.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: deathfun on April 25, 2015, 01:15:10 pm
What's the incentive for doing that?  Money-back policy applies for one day only.  Let's say I make a mod, release it on the Workshop, and it works fine at first.  People buy it, people like it, all that.  Then I decide to update it and the update breaks compatibility with another paid mod, and I don't feel like fixing it, and neither does the other guy.

If I'm a modder and I want money, typically speaking I want a following which will buy and use my mods. What sort of ****ty business strategy is it to go "Meh" and not fix things that go wrong? People will then immediately stop buying that mod, and any of mods you make in the future

Secondly, modding has always run the risk of conflicting with someone else's mod or breaking with an update. Anyone who changes their game knows that this may happen (unless you're ignorant). Updates are also fairly common and known to cause issues with a whole plethora of stuff given the nature of *changing the game's files*

This comes down to "buyer beware". Do the research, see if the guy you're buying from is active and updates frequently to keep up with dev updates, and take the risk buying the product. It's no different than buying anything anywhere in life, games or otherwise.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 25, 2015, 03:44:04 pm
So, if my sources are correct, Midas Magic now has a paid version. The free version has a low chance (like 4%) to display an ingame message (a messagebox popup that you have to click out of) advertising the paid version, every time you cast certain spells.

(http://i.imgur.com/8bWavUv.gif)
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: pecenipicek on April 25, 2015, 03:53:45 pm
So, if my sources are correct, Midas Magic now has a paid version. The free version has a low chance (like 4%) to display an ingame message (a messagebox popup that you have to click out of) advertising the paid version, every time you cast certain spells.

(http://i.imgur.com/8bWavUv.gif)
well, we can kiss nexus goodbye :D


[edit] Robin actually wrote a pretty good piece about it there (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12459/?)
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Aesaar on April 25, 2015, 09:03:23 pm
If I'm a modder and I want money, typically speaking I want a following which will buy and use my mods. What sort of ****ty business strategy is it to go "Meh" and not fix things that go wrong? People will then immediately stop buying that mod, and any of mods you make in the future
But it's the other guy's fault, not mine.  The conflict isn't my fault and I'm not going to fix it.  Complain at him. 

Also I'm done with Skyrim modding, so I don't give a **** about my reputation.

Quote
Secondly, modding has always run the risk of conflicting with someone else's mod or breaking with an update. Anyone who changes their game knows that this may happen (unless you're ignorant). Updates are also fairly common and known to cause issues with a whole plethora of stuff given the nature of *changing the game's files*

This comes down to "buyer beware". Do the research, see if the guy you're buying from is active and updates frequently to keep up with dev updates, and take the risk buying the product. It's no different than buying anything anywhere in life, games or otherwise.
Yeah, that's the theory, but it won't happen that way.  Even now, people complain about how "mod X broke my game, and it must be it because it's the last one I installed".  It's going to become even worse when those idiots have actually paid for the mod they think broke their game.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2015, 09:18:00 pm
The modders have done an amazing job of proving that all this move can accomplish is lowering the quality of mods across the board as everything is made into a venal cashgrab.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: deathfun on April 25, 2015, 09:40:22 pm
Quote
But it's the other guy's fault, not mine.  The conflict isn't my fault and I'm not going to fix it.  Complain at him.

Also I'm done with Skyrim modding, so I don't give a **** about my reputation.

Yeah, that's the theory, but it won't happen that way.  Even now, people complain about how "mod X broke my game, and it must be it because it's the last one I installed".  It's going to become even worse when those idiots have actually paid for the mod they think broke their game.

Can't argue that given how finger pointing is very alive in politics and everywhere else.
I gotta remember that people are idiots. This is also why I won't bother paying for mods (unless said mod ended up becoming its own game ie DayZ, Insurgency). Afterall, that is an option. Don't buy the mods and stick to official releases.

As Phantom pointed out, people will make things and put them up as a cashgrab.

This whole system would benefit from someone at Bethesda going through all the mods put up for Skyrim and either approving or nixing
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2015, 10:13:13 pm
They're not just making things as a cashgrab, they're taking existing, established mods and making them worse so that they can charge for them.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: An4ximandros on April 25, 2015, 10:47:44 pm
(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/954/715/0db.png) Holy crap, it has been years since I've seen a community so pissed off
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on April 26, 2015, 03:13:49 am
http://wryemusings.com/Cathedral%20vs.%20Parlor.html

Somebody posted a link to this on IRC and I'm surprised it hasn't turned up in this thread yet, but it very clearly lays out the two major approaches to modding (especially in the context of the Elder Scrolls series).

(Worth noting is that in comparison with the Cathedral/Bazaar terminology for describing approaches to open source software, this "Cathedral" and that "Cathedral" have basically opposite meanings, which might cause some brief confusion.)
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Polpolion on April 26, 2015, 02:41:01 pm
(Worth noting is that in comparison with the Cathedral/Bazaar terminology for describing approaches to open source software, this "Cathedral" and that "Cathedral" have basically opposite meanings, which might cause some brief confusion.)

Yeah, that had me pretty confused. As far as paying money for mods goes, I can't say that I'm sold on the idea. If modders charged for the mediaVPs, for example, I think you would fundamentally change the community here. And I doubt it would be for the better. I don't want to make it seem like I don't value your hard work, but adding money into the equation seems like it changes what modding is about. If you're going to charge for your mod I'm going to evaluate it as a commercial product, not as a product of your passion and creativity.

All this said, I haven't put much time into Skyrim, and I've invested even less into the Skyrim modding community (ie, none). I only care about the current steam situation for its implications about modding as a whole and games I actually care about.

edit: missed a word
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: The E on April 26, 2015, 04:11:49 pm
Yeah, that had me pretty confused. As far as paying money for mods goes, I can't say that I'm sold on the idea. If modders charged for the mediaVPs, for example, I think you would fundamentally the community here. And I doubt it would be for the better. I don't want to make it seem like I don't value your hard work, but adding money into the equation seems like it changes what modding is about. If you're going to charge for your mod I'm going to evaluate it as a commercial product, not as a product of your passion and creativity.

Yeah, that's pretty much my stance too. I have absolutely no quarrel with someone making a mod and putting up a tip jar; I do like to express my appreciation for work well done, after all.
But turning mods into paid add-ons? No. At least not in the way Valve is handling it right now.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on April 26, 2015, 04:22:41 pm
If modders charged for the mediaVPs, for example, I think you would fundamentally the community here. And I doubt it would be for the better.
Also, it would be illegal.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Beskargam on April 26, 2015, 06:33:00 pm
All this just makes me wish steam a decent competitor. Origin is only alright and doesn't have as much market, and I actually like steams originazition, library, friends list etc as opposed to just the game from gog.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Cyborg17 on April 26, 2015, 10:46:51 pm
The fact is that steam has a lot of potential to be truly excellent.  Like Beskargam is saying, they do well with the library and friends list, but my experience besides that is that they don't really care about streamlining the user experience (like when it comes to browsing games and searching for good mods).  The fact that they are also using this to cash grab doesn't help their case.  They could be really excellent if they had the consumer in mind instead of pretending that they had the consumer in mind.   
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 26, 2015, 11:13:12 pm
Apparently totalbiscuit will be following up his video with some interviews with prominent modders. Looking forward to some more sanity on this, the initial reaction from modders and gamers alike was a bit arrowkneejerk.

Also, people have been quality-checking the paid mods on Steam and it's really quite hilarious. There's an OP staff whose mod also adds a door sticking out of a Riverwood house, an armor you have to add with the console... actually, just read the whole thing here (http://imgur.com/a/bqcla?gallery). (The author admits that he pirated the mods he reviewed - if an admin or moderator has a hissy fit about that I'll take it down, but the review in its entirety is quite lulzy.)

In short: the paid mods on Steam are incredibly buggy and lackluster. This is almost worse than what you'd expect from the average mod, and these are paid products. Modding culture is usually very DIY, so buggy and even broken mods are to be expected since they're free mods, made in some nerd's free time. Not very surprising to see that carrying over to paid mods but it really needs to stop if paid mods are to be taken seriously.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: deathfun on April 27, 2015, 12:19:49 am
Apparently totalbiscuit will be following up his video with some interviews with prominent modders. Looking forward to some more sanity on this, the initial reaction from modders and gamers alike was a bit arrowkneejerk.

(http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/steven-universe/images/5/5f/I-see-what-you-did-there-rage-face-meme.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141129055134)



In regards to that last paragraph Shivan, it makes me wonder whether or not the initial reason behind this pay-for-mods implementation came about with *only* the good mods for the game in mind (as well as mods that became standalone versions of games)

Also, that's an interesting question. Is pirating mods you pay for technically pirating since they're a mod and not an actual game. Where does all the copyright on that stuff go? Looks more like a legal nightmare
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 27, 2015, 12:36:54 am
Meh, I imagine it's in the same area as pirating ****ty overpriced games. I certainly wouldn't pirate any of these mods but that's mainly because they're not even worth the HDD space.

I'm sure Valve's vision for this project was the DLC-sized quest mods and things like Immersive Armors that add tons of high-quality content. A lot of the modders behind these projects are averse to the idea of receiving money for it though, and even if a few were you'd probably need a team consensus on it- and these are usually the work of very large teams.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: MP-Ryan on April 27, 2015, 01:51:33 am
Without stringent quality-curation, this is an awful idea.

Strike that, this is simply an awful idea.

Free enterprise works because product has to overcome overhead to keep producing product. Businesses can fail. Under this model, there is no incentive for junk modders not to flood the Workshop with garbage. Without any warranty of recourse, people will also rapidly become unwilling to pay for it.  Finally, there's the matter of how mods frequently share credited assets, and this just Balkanizes the community.

It's a terrible, awful, tragic idea. I think the modding community can be rewarded for its efforts, and game developers have been recruiting from modding communities for ages. I don't dislike the idea of a tip jar - an optional donation feature that splits in a similar distribution formula if someone wants to chip in to a job well done, but leaving this up to mod authors is horrifying.  I don't tend to use many mods as it is, but this is a sure-fire way that I will pretty much quit altogether without some kind of quality control.

What the **** was Valve thinking?
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: headdie on April 27, 2015, 02:16:36 am
What the **** was Valve thinking?

£,$,€,etc
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on April 27, 2015, 05:06:10 am
What people seem to forget is that any mod available on Steam must be compared against official DLC and I think the majority are going to come up severely lacking. Why would I buy a ****ty, broken mod with the possibility of crappy support if it breaks instead of a game from a well know publisher? I suspect (and hope) that the whole thing will come crashing down to the ground due to a combination of it's own weight and shoddy foundations.


[sliver lining] Well at least our modding community is going to come out of this particular ****storm pretty good. Given that we literally can't participate in this due to the terms of :v:'s licence. [/silver lining]

EDIT:
http://wryemusings.com/Cathedral%20vs.%20Parlor.html

Somebody posted a link to this on IRC and I'm surprised it hasn't turned up in this thread yet, but it very clearly lays out the two major approaches to modding (especially in the context of the Elder Scrolls series).

I should point out that I have repeatedly warned modding teams to make sure they sort out licencing issues. In the case of Diaspora, this is already done and therefore I know that it would actually be breaking our licence for someone to stick one of our mods on Steam and try to sell it. I strongly suggest other mods do the same.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: The E on April 27, 2015, 05:54:03 am
[sliver lining] Well at least our modding community is going to come out of this particular ****storm pretty good. Given that we literally can't participate in this due to the terms of :v:'s licence. [/silver lining]

Not that this question could actually come up, given that Interplay doesn't give enough of a **** about FS to enable Steam Workshop support for the games.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on April 27, 2015, 09:40:10 am
Exactly. So while everyone else is running around shouting about how this is the death of modding we'll just continue to put out cool stuff for free and look good. :D
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Luis Dias on April 27, 2015, 10:59:04 am
There's nothing like a terrible execution of a so-so idea to nuke it to the ground from the get go.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on April 27, 2015, 06:39:29 pm
Well it's nice to see that Gabe Newell is taking things seriously.

By basically telling people there is no problem (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/04/27/gabe-newell-addresses-controversy-over-paid-steam-mods/). :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: StarSlayer on April 27, 2015, 07:24:30 pm
IP based mods typically rely on being free causing the source holder to cast the benevolent blind eye, most cases they get a CnD if the IP holder objects.  I just don't figure how Valve and a publisher expect making money is going to fly when some IP holder gets pissed.   Say somebody makes some high quality GI Joe vs Transformers or Gundam OYW mod for Battlefield and it sells like hotcakes Hasbro/Bandai/Warner Bros. is going to come knocking and I assume with a lot more than just a CnD since corporations now have been making a money off their IP.  What happens if some jack ass throws up someone else's free IP Based mod up on Steam, does the original team get dragged into the fray?  What happens to everyone who already bought the mod?

That refund/guarantee of goods policy is atrocious.  Does Valve fall under the aegis of their local state's consumer protection rights?  I can't imagine Washington's consumer laws are that lackadaisical.

I'm not against the concept but without some proactive quality control on Valve's part I expect this to blow up at some point.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: ssmit132 on April 27, 2015, 07:32:10 pm
Well, that (http://au.ign.com/articles/2015/04/27/valve-axes-paid-skyrim-mods) was fast (http://"http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218").
Quote
We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

Of course, I don't think this will completely extinguish the flames, partly because they're not completely off the idea, but it's nice that Valve realised that they'd bodged this up, instead of trying to keep a sinking ship afloat.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 27, 2015, 07:44:18 pm
There will be some who are resistant to paid mods in principle, but I think 99% of the problem was with the implementation (and the fact that it was dropped on such a large, established modding community). With luck, future iterations will be less ****ty.

In the meantime, though: VICTORY!

[EDIT] forgot to mention:

Quote
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.

Good on them for acknowledging their mistake instead of going "it was ruined by whiny entitled gaaaaamers!", which is probably a narrative that would have been accepted given how parts of the community reacted. It's probably just Valve desperately trying to recover as much reputation as they can, but I support it anyway - being honest to save reputation is still being honest.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Scourge of Ages on April 27, 2015, 07:47:35 pm
That's good news, it shows that they aren't completely blind.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Lorric on April 27, 2015, 08:10:43 pm
[EDIT] forgot to mention:

Quote
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.

Good on them for acknowledging their mistake instead of going "it was ruined by whiny entitled gaaaaamers!", which is probably a narrative that would have been accepted given how parts of the community reacted. It's probably just Valve desperately trying to recover as much reputation as they can, but I support it anyway - being honest to save reputation is still being honest.

I also saw this particular line jump right out at me. The overall picture of this to me has been something they just blundered into without much thought (beyond a quick money grab). So I think they're telling the truth with that and that's a good thing since if they not only correct the mistake but also acknowledge that the reason why the mistake was made was straight up their fault, then hopefully they also will learn from the mistake.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Mr. Vega on April 27, 2015, 09:08:50 pm
Why is it such an inherit disaster for modders to seek compensation for the hundreds if not thousands of hours of labor many put into their works? Seems like what we don't like is the complete lack of quality control. There's no system or compromise that can be created to mitigate this issue?

As for the profits made for mods using shared assets, I don't see how the tip jar system is any better. Much more arbitrary, more like, even if the hands remain clean legally.

Morally, the modders have every right to test the market. The rest is just an interesting design problem. Why is this so unreasonable? Would people have flipped their **** if the people who made Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul charged five bucks for it?
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Scourge of Ages on April 27, 2015, 09:36:44 pm
Nobody's saying that modders don't deserve to seek something more that just kudos, it's just that everybody is saying that the way Steam decided to go about it was a massive oversight. If there were some sort of quality control, maybe like greenlight for mods, it would have gone a lot better.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 27, 2015, 09:45:35 pm
You might not have noticed that very few of us here are actually against the idea of paid mods.

>Seems like what we don't like is the complete lack of quality control.

Quality control can only do so much to fix bugs and broken mods, and it cannot fix incompatibilites between mods, the useless refund plan and utter lack of other recourse available for a broken mod, the damage done by introducing paid mods to an established community that is already based on free mods, and the parlor-based (http://wryemusings.com/Cathedral%20vs.%20Parlor.html) design that profit-motivated modding encourages. It also likely will not attempt to fix the low percentage modders are paid for their work, or the fact that the system would be tied to the Steam Workshop which is orders of magnitude worse than the Nexus.

The issue now is to decide what an implementation that fixes these problems would look like, and whether some of them are even fixable. As we've seen, the Skyrim community is too firmly established to not be damaged by the introduction of paid mods, and the move to parlor-based (http://wryemusings.com/Cathedral%20vs.%20Parlor.html) design seems inevitable in any ecosystem that includes paid mods, which would be disappointing to see.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 27, 2015, 10:07:48 pm
IDK, I don't think paid mods are necessarily a good idea in the first place. Modding communities gain a lot from the fact that everyone's volunteering and mod creators don't have a responsibility to their users, I think.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Shivan Hunter on April 27, 2015, 10:21:02 pm
IDK, I don't think paid mods are necessarily a good idea in the first place. Modding communities gain a lot from the fact that everyone's volunteering and mod creators don't have a responsibility to their users, I think.

(edit: quote for new page)

Hmm, maybe not paid mods per se, but rather the idea of modders getting something from their (sometimes thousands of hours of) work. I have heard the point made that donation buttons are woefully underused.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on April 27, 2015, 11:39:19 pm
IDK, I don't think paid mods are necessarily a good idea in the first place. Modding communities gain a lot from the fact that everyone's volunteering and mod creators don't have a responsibility to their users, I think.

I tend to agree. While I'm not against the idea of paid mods completely, I tend to feel that they really don't have anything to do with the rest of the modding community and are largely harmful to said community. If someone posts on here that they are having trouble with their tables or FREDding or texturiing, people are usually willing to spend their time helping them fix the problem. Why not after all? In the end they'll benefit if the campaign is completed. But if he mod is going to be sold, why should I give up my precious free time to help someone when they could (and perhaps should) simply learn how to do it themselves?

Tip jars avoid a lot of these problems.

EDIT: One thing I've not seen mentioned, now that Valve is giving the money back to those who bought something are the modders who stuck their collective dicks in this hornets nest still getting paid?
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 28, 2015, 04:11:28 am
Few if any of them will have made more than the $400 needed to actually get paid.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: potterman28wxcv on April 28, 2015, 11:10:19 am
Steam just cancelled that decision today : http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Lorric on April 28, 2015, 11:20:37 am
Steam just cancelled that decision today : http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218
That was made known on the previous page.

So you made me think they'd gone and reversed that decision and that the paid mods thing was back on. I was thinking "What the hell are they doing?!" before I clicked your link! :lol:
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: qwadtep on April 28, 2015, 03:49:51 pm
I think the real heart of the issue is consumer protection. It horrifies me how many supporters of pay-for-mods immediately jumped on the "entitlement" defense. God forbid the end user dislike sudden and unprecedented changes to a major feature of a product he already bought, let alone things like quality assurance or right to redress; they're just entitled brats who want everything for free, and probably Democrats, am I right?

Yet the move could only be devastating to the modding community. The influx of people copying or outright stealing mods from the Nexus to make a quick buck on the Workshop, forcing authors to pull their works or put draconian usage restrictions upon them. Several of mods that were monetized were critical dependencies of other, free mods. The most popular workshop mod--an assassin armor which was also used in Valve's banner announcing the new system--was a one-piece (despite screenshots to the contrary), broken model, bizarrely classified as heavy armor, and not actually placed anywhere ingame. And the paid mods, like all workshop mods, were incompatible with the tools the community relies on to make mods actually work.

Interoperability is a huge issue in Elder Scrolls modding. You have to make sure your assets and cell changes don't conflict, you have to make sure your scripts don't interfere with another script and send the game into a save-killing spiral, you have to think about the possibility of your fancy magic effect being treated as hostile, you have to account for all the weird edge cases like what if the player is using a custom race and thus all of your dialogue is invalid. It's a nontrivial problem for both the mod creator and the end user; numerous tools have been created just to make everything play nice together. But none of that is possible with paid mods. Even if they weren't restricted by Steam's own software, how are you supposed to test for compatibility when the other fifty or a hundred mods you need to test with all cost money? The cost becomes exorbitant.

Gabe Newell infamously posted in defense of the move that "actually money is how the community steers work," and was promptly shot down. I could write entire essays on how wrong he is and what his AMA reveals about his personality and thought process, but that's irrelevant to the discussion. The fact that the only thing pay-for-mods could steer work towards is retextures and hats, because the concept of pay-for-mods completely undermines the necessary creative and information freedom needed for anything more.

One of the major forces against pay-for-mods was a group called SureAI (http://sureai.net/). SureAI, you see, creates total conversions; Arktwend for Morrowind and Nehrim for Oblivion and currently Enderal for Skyrim. And they went on record in an interview saying that they would lose money from attempting to monetize; they'd need to get licenses and pay employees and so forth. Meanwhile Bethesda and Valve, despite having done absolutely no work and having already taken their cut from the sale of the base game itself, would be bathing in additional microtransaction cash.

Consider the mods here, for our game. Consider how much a mod like Blue Planet would need to pay for redistribution rights to music and lawyers to defend their assets. We'd be lucky to have anything larger than Grizzly Bearbaiting left.

Speaking of which, pay-for-mods is a legal nightmare. I don't know how the hell anybody at Valve or Bethesda thought it was a good idea. I can only assume that they never bothered to actually look at the Nexus, to see the amount of nude, copyright infringing, and other controversial or legally-dubious content, so much that many companies don't even want to touch the place for advertising or support. If they did, the likelihood of somebody throwing a cheap Avengers costume mod on the workshop and Valve and Bethesda, having nullified their safe harbor protection by taking a cut (and such a large cut, too!), sitting opposite the MPAA in court, would have scared them off the idea.

I think that, at the end of the day, we're all better off with the decision reversed. I pray they aren't just waiting to tack it on to the release of Elder Scrolls VI or something.



EDIT: One thing I've not seen mentioned, now that Valve is giving the money back to those who bought something are the modders who stuck their collective dicks in this hornets nest still getting paid?
They aren't getting paid, and have by-and-large had their reputations within the modding community ruined. Some are angry at Valve for backing out. Some are having tantrums and trying to pull all their work off the web, which certain sites are naturally not about to let happen.

The great irony about all this is that it made a better civil war than the one in Skyrim.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on April 28, 2015, 06:47:07 pm
Yep, that's pretty much what I expected would be the fall out from this nonsense even after they decided it was a bad idea.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: potterman28wxcv on April 28, 2015, 07:03:36 pm
Steam just cancelled that decision today : http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218
That was made known on the previous page.

So you made me think they'd gone and reversed that decision and that the paid mods thing was back on. I was thinking "What the hell are they doing?!" before I clicked your link! :lol:
Damn ; I checked the previous page to see if anyone said it, and I didn't find the message. :P
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: MP-Ryan on April 28, 2015, 08:28:09 pm
The historical problem with paying modders for their work has been that the original creator held the IP rights, and you were not permitted to profit off them.  The barrier has never been distribution, quality, or content.

Unfortunately, Valve/Bethesda addressed the first issue, but made the second set actually worse by allowing the modders piggybacking off the IP to set the price of their work without ensuring any of the normal market controls were in place that ensure quality control.  No modder faced the risk of bankruptcy for putting up a broken mod. The consequences to someone who stole others' work, or put up ****, were nil.

What Valve/Bethesda SHOULD have done is say modders are not allowed to set prices for their work, but they are allowed to receive DONATIONS for their work - even allow them to recommend donations - on the condition that they are purely voluntary.  This would simultaneously reward those who do excellent work, and discourage **** from clogging the workshop.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the model we eventually see.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Lorric on April 28, 2015, 10:08:42 pm
What Valve/Bethesda SHOULD have done is say modders are not allowed to set prices for their work, but they are allowed to receive DONATIONS for their work - even allow them to recommend donations - on the condition that they are purely voluntary.  This would simultaneously reward those who do excellent work, and discourage **** from clogging the workshop.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the model we eventually see.
I wouldn't want them cutting in on 75% of those donations though. Were you thinking they'd be taking a cut or that the modders would take the full 100% of the donations?
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on April 28, 2015, 10:40:54 pm
If I'm going to donate to a modder for their hard work in making a game, I don't see any good reason why I should give a huge percentage of that money to people who weren't already involved in making that mod. I've already given the publisher and developer a substancial amount of money when I bought the game and as far as I'm concerned, a thriving mod scene is a factor in whether or not I buy a game in the first place.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Flipside on April 29, 2015, 12:10:25 am
The thing is, the whole point modders usually get into the thing is because they have downloaded mods by other people and realize the game is a platform that they could add something to with their ideas/work.

A paid-for Mod is DLC of the worst Ubisoft kind, a few new buildings and a new trait in Tropico 4 cost 3 pounds. Greenlight has already got Steam a reputation that this kind of opportunity, when it is inevitably exploited, will simply increase exponentially. It'll kill the Workshop stone cold dead almost overnight.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: TrashMan on April 29, 2015, 05:22:30 am
I see a problem with this line of thinking "you can get paid for mods = problem for mods like BP".
The answer is that such mods couldn't be monetized, because rights/licenses/copyright.
It's not rocket science.
Make sure the assets you are using are yours or can be monetized. Otherwise, don't charge for your mod.

As for donations - people are stingy.
Very few will ever donate and will rather pirate.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Dark RevenantX on April 29, 2015, 10:18:30 am
Speaking from personal experience, donations can be pretty substantial.  Not enough to pay the bills, usually, but they can get you a new rig or two.

Monetized mods only work if the base game and the mods for that game are designed with the intention of having monetized mods.  Adding the system to something else, unless it's some kind of official kickstarter-reward-style donation service, will fail badly.  We've just seen what happens, after all.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: qwadtep on April 30, 2015, 06:51:35 pm
I see a problem with this line of thinking "you can get paid for mods = problem for mods like BP".
The answer is that such mods couldn't be monetized, because rights/licenses/copyright.
It's not rocket science.
Make sure the assets you are using are yours or can be monetized. Otherwise, don't charge for your mod.

As for donations - people are stingy.
Very few will ever donate and will rather pirate.
The problem is that, if complexity and scope result in negative profit, what the hell kind of mods are authors incentivized to create? You can't argue that paid mods encourage quality or guide development at the same time as you're atomizing content. It's the definition of doublethink.

Donations work just fine. There are plenty of Minecraft modders who get by on donations. There are plenty of Twitch streamers who will openly state that it's donations, not the $2.50 a month they get from partnership, that makes ends meet. Valve and Bethesda were just looking for a way to double dip into the customer's wallet.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: NGTM-1R on April 30, 2015, 08:32:55 pm
As for donations - people are stingy.
Very few will ever donate and will rather pirate.

I once had someone offer me 25 bucks as donation for my writing a tiny 1500 thing that took me about two hours. People have tried to commission me to write stuff; I don't take it, because I can't force myself to sit down and write fiction (and most people's ideas of "good story" make me wish I could poop in their shoes), but people have asked.

I am nobody; I don't write anything high-profile, my update schedule is sporadic, I'm usually deliberately operating at cross-purposes from the most popular people in the genre.

They're out there, and willing to give away more money than you think.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Spoon on April 30, 2015, 09:42:12 pm
Where are these mysterious donators and how come I've never crossed paths with any of them?  :p
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: StarSlayer on April 30, 2015, 10:10:37 pm
I offered him 25 dollars to write a fan fic about Richelieu travelling through a time warp to the 21st of October 1805 and winning Trafalgar for Bonnie.  He said he'd do it if I FedEx'd him my shoe, which I did and I promptly received the manuscript and my shoe filled with poop.  Now I have to wear a plastic bag over my foot when I wear those shoes but he really out did himself with the story so in the end it was worth it.  I can't imagine how much research he had to do to really capture the effect of 380 mm/45 Modèle 1935 gun hitting 1800s 1st Rates but he probably could have netted himself a doctorate if it was on a less niche subject.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: NGTM-1R on April 30, 2015, 10:35:18 pm
Where are these mysterious donators and how come I've never crossed paths with any of them?  :p

You never put up tips jar for Wings of Dawn.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on May 01, 2015, 12:05:38 am
Well technically that might actually be against the terms of the SCP licence. What might be nice would be to track where HLP donations come from, so we could see which mods were getting donations.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Dragon on May 01, 2015, 06:51:33 am
Is that really related to the license? As far as I know, "donation button" is completely detached for whatever else is on the page. You're not paying for anything in particular, in theory you could pay even without downloading the mod. The modder is not making money off anything SCP-related, just off being awesome. :) If SCP couldn't be used around anything tangentially related to getting money, we couldn't have the HLP donations or even ads on the front page.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on May 01, 2015, 07:28:49 am
Non-commercial clauses in licences are notoriously vague and getting donations for work based on the SCP would definitely be dodgy, but honestly HLP is so slapdash in general about actually following the letter of IP law that it wouldn't be a big deal if you started accepting them.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Spoon on May 01, 2015, 08:19:34 am
Is that really related to the license? As far as I know, "donation button" is completely detached for whatever else is on the page. You're not paying for anything in particular, in theory you could pay even without downloading the mod. The modder is not making money off anything SCP-related, just off being awesome. :) If SCP couldn't be used around anything tangentially related to getting money, we couldn't have the HLP donations or even ads on the front page.
Yeah, this.

Non-commercial clauses in licences are notoriously vague and getting donations for work based on the SCP would definitely be dodgy, but honestly HLP is so slapdash in general about actually following the letter of IP law that it wouldn't be a big deal if you started accepting them.
Would donating to a mod/tc specifically be any more 'dodgy' than donating to HLP in general?

You never put up tips jar for Wings of Dawn.
True.
I just never had anyone come up to me and go "I want to give you money for the things you've made". Is what I'm saying  :p
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on May 01, 2015, 08:40:58 am
Non-commercial clauses in licences are notoriously vague and getting donations for work based on the SCP would definitely be dodgy, but honestly HLP is so slapdash in general about actually following the letter of IP law that it wouldn't be a big deal if you started accepting them.
Would donating to a mod/tc specifically be any more 'dodgy' than donating to HLP in general?

Well, exactly. HLP gets most of its traffic as a result of hosting the SCP; is it then 'commercially exploiting' the SCP by accepting donations that are coming in as a result of that traffic? It's very much a grey area, and I've seen people recommend avoiding noncommercial clauses entirely because it's so easy to potentially fall afoul of them.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Dragon on May 01, 2015, 12:20:36 pm
How else would you fund a site like that? HLP never actually put effort into using SCP to earn money. It's just a site which has a donation option, and which happens to be hosting a popular open-source project. You can come here for political ramblings and Russian jokes. :) That's the common sense approach, anyway. Lawyers have ways of presenting the case one way or the other, but seeing what we do here, anything SCP-related is the least of our problems if HLP was to have lawyer trouble.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: karajorma on May 01, 2015, 02:05:01 pm
Well, exactly. HLP gets most of its traffic as a result of hosting the SCP; is it then 'commercially exploiting' the SCP by accepting donations that are coming in as a result of that traffic? It's very much a grey area

I think the difference is that the money goes back into the site which supports the community (including the wiki, and all the how to do things threads, etc) rather than simply going in one person's pocket.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on May 01, 2015, 02:13:31 pm
Well, exactly. HLP gets most of its traffic as a result of hosting the SCP; is it then 'commercially exploiting' the SCP by accepting donations that are coming in as a result of that traffic? It's very much a grey area

I think the difference is that the money goes back into the site which supports the community (including the wiki, and all the how to do things threads, etc) rather than simply going in one person's pocket.
Right. If nobody actually makes money off the donations, I'm not sure how it could be even remotely described as "commercially exploiting" anything.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on May 01, 2015, 05:56:47 pm
You prepared to argue that in court? Are you sure the judge will be convinced, against whatever argument the prosecution are spinning? Because that's what it actually comes down to. What people on the internet think is just is essentially irrelevant.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on May 01, 2015, 06:08:29 pm
Find me one person prepared to sue HLP for taking donations and I'll be prepared to argue that HLP isn't commercially exploiting anything.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on May 01, 2015, 07:29:36 pm
If Interplay decided to sue HLP it'd be over before we got anywhere near a court. That is the reality of this community and we gain nothing by lying to ourselves about it.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on May 01, 2015, 07:31:26 pm
If Interplay decided to sue HLP it'd be over before we got anywhere near a court. That is the reality of this community and we gain nothing by lying to ourselves about it.
I concur wholeheartedly. If they were going to sue, however, it would have already happened by now.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Phantom Hoover on May 01, 2015, 07:37:19 pm
And hence my point: mod authors taking donations is probably not any worse than HLP as a whole doing so.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on May 01, 2015, 07:40:01 pm
And hence my point: mod authors taking donations is probably not any worse than HLP as a whole doing so.
Right. Which I agree with.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: qwadtep on May 01, 2015, 08:52:33 pm
I think sites like Curse, Nexus, and ModDB would get sued long before HLP anyway.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Vrets on May 01, 2015, 09:28:59 pm
I erased Steam ~4 months ago to focus on some projects...and never bothered to reinstall when I finished those projects. Looking back, Steam was a terrible service and it can only have been a combination of novelty and Stockholm Syndrome that kept me from erasing it, earlier. Compare Steam to a service like Good Old Games which lets you have the actual, DRM-free game files in perpetuity and free of a creepy facebook-esque "community" feature*. This "paid mods" malarky seems like a natural evolution of the mildly evil suckiness of Steam.

Be free of the mildly evil suckiness, my brothers.

*I remember when VALVe hid the link to the Steam Forums to encourage use of the hideous "Steam Community". They made no announcement and never actually deleted the Steam Forums...they just quietly bricked-up the entrance by re-directing individual game forums to the associated "Steam Community Page" and by taking the Steam Forums link off the main page. You could still find the forums with a google search. VALVe have always been ineffectual, self-loathing dictatorial hipsters.

TLDR: VALVe are sneaky, incompetently dictatorial, ineffectual hipster scumlords

TLDR: irrespective of doing any research into this specific incident, I want to quickly state that Steam is a POS; moreover, it is my view that the non-game-development wing of VALVe are scumlords

Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 01, 2015, 10:14:39 pm
Alakabeth, is that you? Why are you posting as Vrets?
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: AtomicClucker on May 01, 2015, 10:31:55 pm
I already unleashed a bit of an angry tirade at entitlement - not from gamers, but from Modders and Devs of at few places. I've been working with a few newbie devs I hooked up with at a local game jam and were working on a small mod (and they want to keep it under wraps till everything is planned out) when this monster popped.

Call gamers entitled, call them childish, but get it though everyone's heads: gamers download, play, and drive the mods. Entitlement at its finest? Oh I don't work for free. As a creator, that's not only dishonest, it's bull****. Gamers are entitled to a level of actual working content if they pay for it. Seeing as how the mods were not only buggy and a few had stolen content... you can probably understand why I'm not pleased.

My axe to grind? When you have paid content, there needs to be a level of quality control and technical support (echoing the conversation Totalbiscuit had with a steam workshop modder and the admin of the Nexus). Skyrim mods are free, and it's up to the user how to figure out the hell to make it work. And from my time making Skyrim mods work, it doesn't take long to understand why I almost hit my head on a desk when Bethesda and Valve thought it was a good idea.

Selling buggy stuff that doesn't work? Well good job Valve. And I actually thought monetizing mods could be a good thing: instead, we literally got the worst of it.

Throw money on that, congrats, you got a bonfire. In this case, Valve and Bethesda were smart to take it down. By its nature, Skyrim modding is not only chaotic, prone to breaking, and dear God pointless mod conflicts, there's a damn reason throwing money into this equation ended so badly.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Mongoose on May 02, 2015, 02:25:35 pm
I erased Steam ~4 months ago to focus on some projects...and never bothered to reinstall when I finished those projects. Looking back, Steam was a terrible service and it can only have been a combination of novelty and Stockholm Syndrome that kept me from erasing it, earlier. Compare Steam to a service like Good Old Games which lets you have the actual, DRM-free game files in perpetuity and free of a creepy facebook-esque "community" feature*. This "paid mods" malarky seems like a natural evolution of the mildly evil suckiness of Steam.
That "creepy community feature" is one of the main reasons why I enjoy using Steam; I have multiple gamer buddies whom I only really communicate with out-of-game via Steam chat or community pages.  There's also the massive convenience of having all of the installation and updating duties handled via a single client, which has all but eliminated the patch-file hell of PC gaming past.  Note that GOG is currently working on their Galaxy client, which will act very similar to Steam in most respects; it wouldn't surprise me at all to see social functions added to it too, if they aren't planned already.  Now obviously there's a major difference in that GOG will always still offer the separate individual installer downloads, but it's clearly something that a big chunk of their userbase (myself included) wants to see happen.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: CP5670 on May 02, 2015, 05:42:27 pm
I would much rather have the "patch file hell" than be forced to update games like Steam does. Many people have talked about the mod payment providing incentives for mod creators to keep supporting their mods when they get broken by game updates (common with Bethesda games), but this problem is artificially created by Steam itself as far as singleplayer games go.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Vrets on May 02, 2015, 05:47:44 pm
As to the single client handling "all of the installation and updating duties"...sounds great! Convenience is always good...as long as I can have some reasonable amount of control. I remember that Steam had a so-called "disable automatic updates" toggle, but that certain 'high priority' updates would still be allowed through. This alone should have been enough for me to despise Steam.

Example: It takes me a long time to play through games. My off-and-on-again Crusader Kings II campaigns would continually be ruined by save-game-breaking updates that would be installed against my will when I wasn't looking, even when I disabled auto-updates. I had to hide the game files on my desktop to stop Steam from updating them.

I would much rather have the "patch file hell" than be forced to update games like Steam does.

For me, "Patch file hell" is rarely so bad because I don't usually have interest in more than 2-3 games at any time. It is not as if I'm simultaneously playing and updating all ~100 games that I own. Patch hell might be like a few patches a month; and sure, when I pick up an old game I might want to see if there have been any updates (if I feel like it!). I can accept that if it means avoiding the hassle of a content delivery service that thinks it knows better than me...maybe sometimes it does, but I want a say in what happens to my games instead of "BOOM: YOUR GAME HAS BEEN UPDATED. BOOM: YOU WILL NOW PAY FOR MODS."

Oh, go away Steam. I don't miss you or need you...
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Mongoose on May 02, 2015, 05:57:20 pm
I would much rather have the "patch file hell" than be forced to update games like Steam does. Many people have talked about the mod payment providing incentives for mod creators to keep supporting their mods when they get broken by game updates (common with Bethesda games), but this problem is artificially created by Steam itself as far as singleplayer games go.
I could see that as being an issue in some cases, though I don't think I've ever had a game that I wanted to stop from updating (well other than Minecraft anyway, which is its own ball of wax).  Honestly the situation Vrets describes sounds like it's much more on the developers: no fully-released game should be getting patches that completely break savegames from prior versions.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: Vrets on May 02, 2015, 06:07:27 pm
I disagree. If I were allowed to control which updates were being installed, then I could simply choose when I want to install the save-breaking updates (maybe after I finish my current game). Save-breaking (or otherwise disruptive) updates can be justified by the addition of cool new content. Mandatory save-breaking / disruptive updates are never going to be okay.

edit: deleted pyschotic rant
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on May 02, 2015, 10:02:50 pm
I don't know, I'd probably install new updates as I find them without asking too much questions anyway, and find out way too late that these updates break stuff.

Call it being irresponsible or lazy, but honestly, I've grown a bit tired with the update dependency chain a while ago, with early days counter-strike and DotA being the main culprits. Point is, while there's a fair bunch of things I disagree with regarding Valve's business practices (hello Steam games Quality Control), I'm still willing to accept a resonable amount of services they provide I'm OK with, automatic updates being one of them.

Anyway, it all comes down to individual tastes, and while I'm getting a bit tired by the whole "steam is ebil" line of thought, I can understand where it's coming from, so I won't argue any further in any direction.
Title: Re: Mods for pay; internet declares doomsday
Post by: CP5670 on May 03, 2015, 01:55:49 pm
I would much rather have the "patch file hell" than be forced to update games like Steam does. Many people have talked about the mod payment providing incentives for mod creators to keep supporting their mods when they get broken by game updates (common with Bethesda games), but this problem is artificially created by Steam itself as far as singleplayer games go.
I could see that as being an issue in some cases, though I don't think I've ever had a game that I wanted to stop from updating (well other than Minecraft anyway, which is its own ball of wax).  Honestly the situation Vrets describes sounds like it's much more on the developers: no fully-released game should be getting patches that completely break savegames from prior versions.

Saved games are one thing (for the rare games that even allow you to save anymore), but the developers can't be expected to check compatibility with third-party mods. This is a problem created by Valve, not the developers. If Steam auto-updates were merely an option instead of forced on you, there would be no issue. In a few cases, I had to get cracks for Steam games just so that I could keep using my mod configuration without worrying about an update breaking it. I often return to a game after not playing it for a long time but leaving it installed, and it's really irritating to find that things I spent a lot of time configuring are suddenly broken, especially when I can't even figure out what the update was for besides breaking stuff. :doubt: