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We previously covered Valve offering paid mods in the Steam Workshop. Now, Valve (and Bethesda) have realized that the way they were attempting to implement payment for modders (and themselves) could not stand alongside the current model, at least with the goodwill of the community.
From the article:
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.
We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.
Hopefully they do get a fully-baked donation system implemented (or some other method that makes sense).
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:31PM
I'd be happy with beer money myself, but I do have a major ethical objection to other people enriching themselves from my labor without giving me a fair cut.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:18PM
Yeah, 'dyingtolive' explained the root of the outrage, but I have to admit to being caught off gaurd by the shitstorm.
I quess that's the effect to expect when I'm caught thinking inside my own little box.
I understand your point of view on this, but mine is different.
For myself, I'm going to mod and play the game, 'paid mods' or not.
If you are looking at it from a 'work' perspective, then you are absolutely correct in your comment.
I'm looking at it from a 'play' perspective, and was only thinking:"Cool, get some cash for something I love doing, and am doing for free now? Yeah, why not-who cares about the 'cut', I may get lucky and get enough for DLC for my game, or, or, even enough to get a game! WOOOT!!!"
So in other words, just decorations on the iced cake, not even the icing on the cake, from my POV.
I am glad that Steam listened to the community, and I applaud them for that.(I can be a graceful loser:)
I expect this to come up again with(or if) Fallout 4, or the next Elder Scrolls game.
As long as it is optional, and applied only to single-player/offline games, then I have no problem with 'paid mods' in concept. I guess how much enthusiasim depends on terms, and just as importantly, POV.
It will be interesting, because I think this genie just slipped out the bottle.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 30 2015, @05:13AM
>For myself, I'm going to mod and play the game, 'paid mods' or not.
Absolutely. I've been modding for years, and was fairly active in the Total Annihilation heyday, though I've mostly not bothered to release my various mods for other games (mostly the Elder Scrolls series) since then other than by sneakernet. I'll happily release my mods for free, I'm not in it for the money, that would just be a nice little bonus and maybe a bit of motive to get me to put the last bit of polish on some projects to get them fit for distribution rather than having me personally walk my friends past the rough edges. My objection is not to me not making much money under the proposed scheme, but to someone *else* doing so all out of proportion to their contribution. That, to my mind, is at the very heart of the sickness eating away at the American economy, and I consider to be not just unfair, but actively, banally, evil.
Morally, philosophically, I would much rather give my mod away for free than let someone else reap the lion's share of the profit, and thus encourage their parasitic behavior. But I'm no saint - give me the option to make a little money on the side for no further effort and the temptation will sit there, constantly teasing me with the potential for personal gain if only I am willing to indulge their machinations. And that I don't need that - in fact it might even be enough to drive me away from modding the game at all. Temptation is most easily resisted when absent.