Vapourware Steam is (NO LONGER) charging for mods now lmao

[Gangrelrumbler]

25% modder
45% Beth
30% Valve
100% Your dignity

Well I've never implied that actually buying a mod is anything but stupid.

 

[Alienman]

Full circle finally with the entitlement argument

Edit:

Did someone get purged?

 

[vonAchdorf]

From Gabe's AMA:

We would be reluctant to force a game developer to do "x" for the same reason we would be reluctant to force a mod developer to do "x." It's just not a good idea. For example we get a lot of pressure to police the content on Steam. Shouldn't there be a rule? How can any decent person approve of naked trees/stabbing defenseless shrubberies? It turns out that everything outrages somebody, and there is no set of possible rules that satisfies everyone.

 

[Naraya]

Interesting read, albeit long: http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/news/12459

 

[Spectacle]

I don't see how Bethesda and Valve are at fault here. They are just allowing modders to be total Jews, that's all. Blame them, not Valve. It's not like it's something new to release a mod by a big company. ID charged money for some community Doom maps ages ago.

If your neigbour invites a tribe of gypsies to camp in his garden, would you say he's not at fault when they inevitably trash the neighborhood? Large groups of people behave in predictable ways, and when you enable an activity you share responsibility for the consequences.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I don't see how Bethesda and Valve are at fault here. They are just allowing modders to be total Jews, that's all. Blame them, not Valve. It's not like it's something new to release a mod by a big company. ID charged money for some community Doom maps ages ago.

If your neigbour invites a tribe of gypsies to camp in his garden, would you say he's not at fault when they inevitably trash the neighborhood? Large groups of people behave in predictable ways, and when you enable an activity you share responsibility for the consequences.

But they are not trashing they neighbourhood, they are trashing mods they've developed themselves. Of course Valve knew what would happen, but they still did nothing wrong. They've just allowed people to make a decision about the content they make. Perhaps you should also blame them for allowing devs to sell DLC on Steam, or not lower prices on them.

@Bruticus
Fuck off, with your pathetic memeposting.

 

[Redlands]

I think one of the big problem with this, DLC, freemium gates, etc., is the belief (justified or not, I don't know) by people within the industry that game development costs have increased, but game prices have not, so they're having to recuperate their costs via other avenues.

Let's assume that this is true, and is genuine and not just down to greed from the devs/publishers. Who's fault is it? Theirs. They're the ones who go out hyping graphical advances, fully-voiced dialogue, etc., as desirable features in the first place. They're the ones that set the prices for the games, or allow them to be set without grouping together and putting a case forward that those prices are no longer tenable. They're the ones making clone game after clone game until markets get over-saturated and die out due to sheer boredom.

This is just another way to get more money: now they don't have to pay their employees to make DLC, they'll just leave that up to the mods, and get away with paying essentially no wages for the same thing (or better, in some instances), making their customers even more like the pay-into QA department. The same thing might happen with patches, at least with the likes of Bethesda who have enough shitty blind fanboys to do it and professional shills to get away with it. Naturally, the moron TotalBiscuit didn't mention this in his video about this being a good thing for "content creators", because giving companies incentives to outsource more and more of their employed content creators is a great thing for them.

That's not even touching on the intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation factor.

 

[Bruticis]

I wonder what's so incredibly confusing about the concept of for profit organizations.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Fuck Gabe Nevell and his fucking Steam abomination. I swear to God, the fucking Uplay and Origin aren't as much dipped in shit and spunk as this piece of ass. The idea of mods was that they were always free to play, an alternative to official expansions and DLC's. Well it seems that some people become more cuntish with each passing year.

The custom of mods being free has nothing to do with caring for parasites and everything to do with developers/publishers forbidding them to sell their work.

That's another thing. How the hell will they be able to take money for the mods, if the game's makers won't recieve a cut? Isn't that illegal?

 

[Stainless Veteran]

On the one hand, this whole story is incredibly unsavory and will hurt both modding community and gamers in the long run. Also legal fiction that modder presumed to have made his mod with legal tools and/or by obtaining legal permissions for using other's work is really shoddy (from continental law standpoint, dunno about US/UK practices). 75% cut is debatable too, since even if we take into an account that modders work with ready-made tools which come with the game itself (and that's not always the case), even if they changed EULA accordingly, it's still stands on the one leg (depending on a mod's scope and nature, of course, but still).

On the other - I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks or more (15-20$) to some modders from NWN community (ADwR, Aelund Saga, Bastard of Kosigan, Hex Coda. and some others). Sadly, current gen games don't have neither tools nor community like those NWN had. So we'll probably get Horse Vagina HD Premium Modules instead. What a shame.

 

[Khorne]

I wonder what's so incredibly confusing about the concept of for profit organizations.

I have this crude picture of something that happened long ago in a galaxy far away.

Spoiler

It is made from memory, so it may not be entirely accurate.

 

[Kingston]

where are your heroes now

 

[vonAchdorf]

Well, the first tweet is true. And authors even get less, maybe 5-7% from the book retail price.

The other tweets don't seem to apply to the situation. Yeah, capitalism ftw, but mods aren't really a market good.

 

[Rezz]

Spoiler

So he doesn't know how modding works. Modders are going to keep their content/knowledge/help to themselves for fear of others making $$$ off their work. This is going drastically drop the quality of mods overall. That is already a reality, many from the Nexus have hidden their files and the workshop is already filled with shit (money grubbers/protest mods).

 

[Ulrox]

@Bruticus
Fuck off, with your pathetic memeposting.

He's like a child having a temper tantrum, just put him on the ignore list, doesn't have anything interesting to add to the conversation anyways.

 

[Riso]

Real developers get either financed by publishers and/or get distribution and marketing/ip licensing taken care off by them. These things are valid costs but Bethesda here grabs 45% without doing anything.

 

[Drowed]

where are your heroes now

Who is this guy and why should we care?

Quick edit: It seems he did the 'Mafia' games and the 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance' thing.

...Again, what?

Spoiler

So he doesn't know how modding works. Modders are going to keep their content/knowledge/help to themselves for fear of others making $$$ off their work. This is going drastically drop the quality of mods overall. That is already a reality, many from the Nexus have hidden their files and the workshop is already filled with shit (money grubbers/protest mods).

Oh, yeah, capitalism solves everything:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/economic-inequality-it-s-far-worse-than-you-think/

But wait, after all, all the problems comes from:
liberals

 

[Ulrox]

Its quite hilarious to watch how skyrim is getting negatively reviewed on steam and metacritic all of a sudden. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/user-reviews?page=0

note the first page are all 0's and a few 1's and 2's.

Edit: wrong link, heh.

 

[Alienman]

Well fuck him then. It seems he was also pro always-on drm for Xbox one. Just lost a sale there.

And what the shit:

But I dont agree that this will kill free modding community. That is one stupid leftist bullshit. Open source community works pretty well

I know he is from a former soviet state but please..

Too much entitlement these days

Some guy responding with that... Jesus fucking Christ. How can someone seriously think that believing modding should be free equals entitlement? No one if forcing anyone to mod.

Entitlement is to expect getting payed for doing shit like this:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=432793523&searchtext=

 

[Raghar]

Spoiler

So he doesn't know how modding works. Modders are going to keep their content/knowledge/help to themselves for fear of others making $$$ off their work. This is going drastically drop the quality of mods overall. That is already a reality, many from the Nexus have hidden their files and the workshop is already filled with shit (money grubbers/protest mods).

Vavra is idiot.

 

[Raghar]

Well. According to traditions, nobody sued modders because they did it on it's own volition, and would do it illegaly anyway. And they were too poor to get more money from them than trial costs.

On the other hand NOBODY allowed modders to earn money from theirs work.

I personally think it's amoral to earn money from modding. (If companies want to hire them as subcontractors, they should. In fact they should hire skilled persons even before they become modders. Work for cheap, deliver excellent quality, have nearly no fame for that. Well, it was tradition of game industry.)

 

[Bester]

Spoiler

 

[vonAchdorf]

Spoiler

Mentioning Greenlight as a working solution to a problem is trolling

 

[Goat Vomit]

On the other - I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks or more (15-20$) to some modders from NWN community (ADwR, Aelund Saga, Bastard of Kosigan, Hex Coda. and some others). Sadly, current gen games don't have neither tools nor community like those NWN had. So we'll probably get Horse Vagina HD Premium Modules instead. What a shame.

IIRC Bioware had big plans for that kind of stuff with the premium modules and stuff and NWN2 got Mysteries of Westgate which was essentially a paid mod. Thing is that the modules were very similar to regular expansion packs and the sole mod that got sold for NWN2 was officially published and got proper bugtesting and stuffies so it was essentially a third party expansion pack, which is ideally what a paid mod should be, nobody gets mad at third party expansion packs being sold. It would have been bretty cool if some of the cream of the crop of NWN modules had gotten that treatment and I would have happily have paid for them, especially heX coda which now is unfinished thanks to Bioware abandoning their premium module program thingy.

Many total conversions have also gotten published as full games as noted in many posts in this thread. What is particularly bad about steam selling mods is that that there's no real quality control and the mods are small things like items and stuff like that or fixes like SkyUI. Instead of getting fanmade expansion packs of commercial quality for games the race to rock bottom has already begun. Not to mention this way it also shits on collaborative efforts and the sharing of stuff in the mod community. Instead of modders aspiring to reach a quality that is publishable they will instead try to outjew each other. It's the same issue that is present in the DLC market that made people forget how meaty and good expansion packs used to be and lowered the standards to item packs and short expensive content packs only worse since they have zero quality control when it comes to mods.

Spoiler

where are your heroes now

Maybe Vavra should make a medieval Skyrim mod instead then if it's so lucrative.

 

[Turjan]

How can someone seriously think that believing modding should be free equals entitlement?

The entitlement argument is pretty moronic in this context indeed. The modding scene for Bethesda games has been free for 12 years now. Having to pay for this now is taking away something, even if that is not illegal. Nobody likes to have stuff taken away from him. All those pulled mods or mods that switched to a paid model are things taken away from someone.

In some countries, you even have things like customary laws. For instance, in Germany, if you own a house and have people live in there who don't pay any rent, you cannot just go and charge them suddenly or kick them out. If you let them live there for more than a year, it's their customary right to live there free of charge, so you better let them know you want to see money early, not after they enjoyed living for free for years.

Of course, the example doesn't fit completely, as you cannot force any modder to work for free. He also has rights, and here particularly the right not to work for free if he doesn't want to. So I don't see anything implicitly wrong with him trying to charge either, as he has now the possibility.

The main problem here is that this hit a game that has this long backlog of free mods that can be abused by others to make money of, without any means of getting a cut. And the biggy, this has been free for years. Let's be clear, I don't like this "paid mod" business at all, but if you are really keen on doing this, to switch over an established model from free to paid is bound to produce lots of headaches. Not sure why they did not start this with a new game. This would still have produced lots of outcry, but without all the collateral damage we see now. Although, the idea is probably to avoid any negative impact on a game in its main sales phase.