Steam opens up paid mods for Skyrim.

Funny, this isn't first time that Valve started charging for a mod.

I wonder if Valve and Bethesda absolve the legal liability away from modders who opt in as paid.

Their system pretty made for shameless "modders" more easier to abuse creativity and IP rights.
Won't be long, regardless who is profiting from assets belonging to other games / media will get the attention of an entity with deep pockets.
Valve going to get the blame.

 

Saw this on Reddit.

 

never really used mods before now I have absolutely a better reason not to use mods

 

I vote me for CEO of Valve.

 

Chris Roberts is the CEO of multi-million dollar CIG operating under enormous public pressure and scrutiny, not unlike one Valve not too long ago. He isn't so much a developer anymore as he is an executive/entrepreneur/marketer/hype man. I doubt he works on the actual development of Star Citizen as much as, say, he worked on Wing Commander back at Origin Systems before he left for the movie biz.

But still, I'd reckon he's one of the few industry icons with 30+ years of game/film experience who's still held in esteem by most of the gaming community, although Star Citizen will certainly make-or-break his reputation.

True: http://store.steampowered.com/app/280740/

Exactly. I hope Valve and Bugthesda are ready when the DMCAs start flying and they start getting phone calls from the lawyers of these massive global media conglomerates. Can you imagine if Disney/Time Warner/Comcast/News Corp/Viacom took itty-bitty Valve and Zenimax to court? ROFL.

And what about when Autodesk and Adobe start taking notice over student versions of Maya/Max and pirated copies of Photoshop being used to create mod assets that are then being monetized?

 

The worst part of all of this is that it will ultimately create a rift within the PC gaming community that it may/may not ever recover from.

 

I should have specified; I meant that it would worry me if he were to take over Valve in its current state, what with all the controversy and all. Valve needs some drastic changes soon if they don't want to lose the support of the gaming community (In fact, you could argue that it already has).

True. And even though I'm not really into flight sims, Star Citizen looks really promising.

 

I"ll second that. Can we put it to vote?

 

I thought Portal started as a mod as well, no? Yeah, all the more reasons that Valve charges for mods, but at least they are full games, unlike the current situation.

 

Counter-Strike and Team Fortress started as mods too, back in the day.

 

The point is that they started as free mods and turned into full fledged projects worth spending money on.

 

Desert Combat begot BF2. Red Orchestra and Killing Floor also started as mods for UT2K4.

 

Ham sandwich:

 

This makes total sense now:

 

And that's where donation comes in.

 

In his Reddit AMA, GabeN said "our goal is to make modding better."

Clearly, you have succeeded

Oh and you know what's a thing now? Mod piracy. That's right. You can get a refund on a purchased mod while still keeping the mod files. InB4 mod DRM.

 

I'm pretty sure stuff like this can still be found on loverslab for free...

Yes, that's exactly what I'm afraid the most, mod DRM. It will be the worst nightmare for PC gaming world.

 

They must have a wild bestiality section

GabeN is literally Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

 

Oh you have no idea... But better letter leave it at that, trust me, you don't want to know more...

Oh c'mon, even Darth Vader wasn't that evil!

 

He's at least cut off a hand that feeds him. Working on the rest of the limbs... (merely a flesh wound).

And the entire "paid mods" for Skyrim are wrapped up in a nice little package on tpb.

I also learned that modders only get paid once your mod total reaches $400, or basically $100 in your account at $0.25 on the dollar they're paid. So if you sell $350 for your mods, you may never get a dime of your money. Even for popular modded games like Skyrim, That's 400 sales at $1 each or 800 sales at $0.50 each, just to make $100. I'm sure some of the more popular mods will do well, but still, if you have heavily modded your game and have 12-15 mods that you all of a sudden have to pony up another $50 or more for to play the same game you have been. I'd be pretty ticked off.

 

PSA: If you have reviewed Skyrim, don't forget to change you review to negative.

Most PC players of Skyrim have the mods in mind when buying the game, so to charge for mods should reflect on the review of the game as a whole.

We need every last re-vote we can get to change it to mixed.

 

Is that so? Heh, support modders my butt.
But with bigger mods I do see it possible to make money. If we take top 100 list on Nexus, those mods have around million of unique download, so even with a price of 1 buck and that ridiculously low cut that still results in a nice sum. And if we take SkyUI, which is basically the mod of the mods for Skyrim (most of them require it to run), it has 4+ mil of unique downloads. That's quite something. Obviously with new system these numbers will change, because there are people like me, who before buying a Bugthesda title look at available mods on Nexus, and only after that decide to buy it or not. When their next game comes out and if so happens that most of better mods are for sale, I don't think I will buy it, so I kinda see those numbers going down.

Speaking of SkyUI, I read something somewhere that author gave it away to Valve, and I think SKSE was the same.
Is that true? Because it has a potential to turn into something ugly. Very very ugly...

 

Well I hope if SkyUI was given away to Valve that there was at least some fine print not allowing Valve to sell it for profit, yadda. I'm curious though, if you already own mods are you forced to now buy them? Or is this grandfathered in? I'm not clear and don't have any Skyrim mods, so don't know and it isn't clear to me.

The other thing is those mods you mention with millions of downloads, are those unique downloads or just downloads, because I know I download mods, patches, whatever numerous times because sometimes I'm too lazy to back them up or just want to make sure I have the latest version. Also do you think there would be that many to support such mods if they cost $5 each? Probably not even close I'd say.

 

That's exactly what I meant when I said the execution is flawed. When I said 'concept' I suppose what I meant to say was 'the idea behind/the ultimate aim/the goal of/the purpose of etc.'. Poor choice of wording on my part.

I see no issue with modders having the option to monetise their creations, if QA and copyright issues are dealt with properly. As long as they aren't unfairly pressured into doing so.

No, you keep all free mods for as long as you have them installed. The paid versions are being uploaded as separate versions and the old free versions are just being removed from the Workshop but not people's accounts.

 

Thanks Cakefish. So if you install on another computer, or do a clean Windows install, you lose your free mods to use in Steam then? You will have to buy them?

 

Hard to say, I never used Steam Workshop for Skyrim.
I heard that you get automatically unsubscribed from mods which went from free to paid. I'm not sure if that's the case, since Cakefish is saying otherwise.

The way mods used to work (well they still do, but Skyrim is sort of exception now) on Steam before was that as long as you're subscribed to one or another mod, every time you delete and reinstall the game, subscribed mods get installed as well. I'm guessing once you delete the game and mod gets removed, you won't get it back.

 

Is Skyrim Steam exclusive? =\

 

It's a Steamworks title, so yes.

 

Yep, just another example of the unscrupulous shafting by Valve. It's almost as if Valve is doing as much as it can to pay modders as little as possible...

 

Would be fun if modders were allowed to spend the cash on Steam Games... exclusively. =)

 

Modders getting paid in Steam store credit only? Brilliant!

Valve please do this. I double dare you.

 

Why stop there? Why not pay them in trading cards? Oh, I think we're up to something here!

 

The whole idea for forced paid for mods is horrible and flawed. All valve had to do is implement a donation button using the same security encryption used to purchase games. What is this world coming to ?

 

Not only that, if you make a return in Steam, you are not allowed to sell anything in Steam for over a week. I bought GTA V then found it a lot cheaper, so I did a return and they refunded my money as Steam credit. That's fine. Well, you know how you get trading cards for playing? I always sell mine, I have no need for them. Well I couldn't sell them for over a week because I made a return. What kind of BS is that?

 

This happened to me as well, though I didn't return anything. Bough some TF2 keys to exchange for some game, and then noticed that I couldn't trade them for a week. The hell, Valve, the hell?!?

 

Found this on the front page of Nexus.
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65034/?

 

Random assorted mini list of relevant videos:

Spoiler

 

It looks like steam valve has decided to nix the paid mods for skyrim. My sons and make mods as a hobby but no way would I ask for peoples bank cards lol.
http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-has-removed-paid-mods-functionality-from-steam-workshop/

A donation button would have been a much better move. I hope they remove the paid mods from steam completely if they have not done so already.

 

We win!

 

Correct me where I'm wrong: People who got used to get free fun and useful stuff, which takes some time, effort and money for modders to create, do not want to pay for this and call market owners greedy? Who would be talking!
Did they lock from creating Free Mods? - NO.
Do they take too big margin from the price? - STOP COUNTING MONEY WHICH AINT IN YOUR WALLET!

If I called this move unfair, it would be a big disgrace to me.

 

Keep holding your breath for a few more days-I feel like this is not the last of this fiasco. If the whole clockblocking incident has taught us anything, it's that when a company has you by the balls, it's going to take more than a petition and even a retreat to wriggle out of their grasp.

 

GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! [Edit: ...oh, ya already know.]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

 

Well Kudos to Valve for backstepping, granted it took a major incident to make it happen, but I feel someone like EA or UBI would just have continued on and sucked every last penny they could. I still hope they consider a donation system though. I'm all for modders getting paid, but only donation model makes most sense to me. I gladly donate to efforts that are valuable to me. I think collectively we've found this works best.

 

I agree, I like the donation model. And they should also make it perfectly clear how it works. to tell you the truth, I kind of like one of the following options..

1. Make it pick your own amount, minimum $0.50. Explicitly state the rev split: 25% dev, 40% Publisher, 35% Valve.. for example.
2. MAKE IT CHARITY!! And you can split the rev yourself like Humble does..
3. Dev decides the charity split themselves, they could force it to 100% (or as high as valve would allow)

 

I'm all for Valve and the game dev/publisher taking a small cut, but minimums, like minimum 10% Valve, 10% game dev/pub, 80% mod maker, but adjustable like you said. And yeah opt for charity option too. It does cost Valve money to host the mod, I get that, and the game dev/pub does deserve some small cut, but 75% between the two is atrocious, as is the $400 minimum.

 

A simple donate button would have done the job indeed. I think some of the modders should be rewarded with money for what they do but all that happened up until now was a big mess.

 

Made a list of "lessons".

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/618460171326703872/

Lessons from the Paid Mod Fiasco​

1- DO NOT spring surprises like that on PC gamers and/or the modding community again.

2-Mods that ask for cash should not be permitted to be a threat to the free mod community in any way, shape or form. Modders who want to share their work freely should be able to do so without fear that their work will be stolen.

3-Mods that use other mods must have verified permission to use them.

4-Mods should be donated to rather than demand a flat fee. This would solve a lot of tax issues on the modder side. Donations are gifts.

5-Modders should get 50% [...at least]. I know that sounds unreasonable on the corporate side of things, but modder's potential contributes to the original product perceived value at the time of the original sale. Just knowing there will be mods makes the game worth more to the consumer, especially in modding communities that have a couple of games behind it. The developer and publisher benefit from the modder's work before it even happens. Increasing the potential payout will increase the potential size and scope of mods.

6-Donations should be permitted on an ongoing basis to encourage the modder to support the mod after release.

7-Mod donations should be capped at $5 per donation, may donate more than once.

8-I doubt Valve and Bethesda can bug test something in 24hrs, so it's not happening like that on the consumer side either. This is another reason why donating is better than flat fees. There is no refunding a donation and the potential for continued donations would encourage fixing bugs in mods when found.

9-Mods that patch a game should not be for sale, ever. Letting a developer/publisher profit by leaving a game broken shouldn't be tolerated.

10-No in game ads should be permitted in any mod.

 

Why? Can't think of any reason why people who want to donate more shouldn't be able to.

 

I agree. No cap. Probably a minimum based on whatever Valve feels is necessary to at least host the files.

 

...or you can try reading the whole thing.

...you too.

...#7 is not very long, but it is longer than what was quoted.