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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 dyingtolive on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:23PM
Well, that's what I've gleaned as the biggest thing between the Reddit shitstorm and the couple friends I spoke to who followed the deal more closely than I did. I'm sure there were other reasons ranging from well-informed and intelligent to "OMG MOAR MONIES!" (the latter of which is generally about the most coherient thing you can hope for in the Steam forums themselves).
I've heard the multiplayer pay-to-win mod fear thrown out there as well. I'd be a little worried about that one too. Obviously not for Skyrim, but other mod friendly games that are multiplayer. Killing Floor 2 comes to mind, and it's enough of a 'competitive' cooperative game that there'd probably be damage to the community if something like that came out.
Personally, I'd have no problems paying for a mod, but I for damn sure want to make sure that the money is going to who put forth the effort. At least as much of it as possible. I'm semi-okay with Valve getting their cut, long as it's all seamlessly done through the Steam interface and comes out about as little of a hassle as installing a new game. I'm not cool with Bethesda getting more than a couple percent, max. I wouldn't play Bethesda games without the modding community. If anything, they should be paying the modders. :P
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:47PM
Heh. You have a point. :-)
I have been playing the Fallout games since 1996, and they have been my favorite series. The one thing I learned the hard way: SAVE OFTEN!!!
Fallout 1 & 2 were buggy as hell, and a lot of the 'mods' were actually patches to fix glitches and broken quests.
But they were enough fun that we(the fans) put up with the bad, to get the good.
So in all fairness, Bethesda is just in keeping with the Fallout Tradition of Buggy Goodness. ;-)
*Skyrim uses the same game engine that Bethesda used for Fallout 3, so most faults are shared between the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series*
I guess I'm just not as concerned about the 'cut', as it would not really change anything for me. Well, maybe if my 'paid mods' were popular enough, the money would buy me another game, or DLC for one of my games.
Just so I am being clear, I am only speaking of the Skyrim game and this recent 'event'.
In principle, I would only support 'paid mods' for single player games. The only way I would support paid mods for online multi-player games would be if, and only if, the mods conferred no advantage to gameplay. Eye-candy is fine, but no stat changes, for example. I would still lean towards no paid mods except for single player. It has been proven time and time again, that humans can learn to 'game the system', no matter how good you think your rules/security/etc. are.
My guess is that if/when Fallout 4, or the next Elder Scrolls come out, that Steam will try this again, but announce it before launching the game.