Valve adds paid modding
- Thread starter Droigan
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Derpa
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"Valve has confirmed to me that publishers/developers get to decide the amount of revenue they take from mods if they choose to let players sell them. Valve, meanwhile, takes "the same share of sales as any other microtransaction sale."
Steam Users See Big Problems With Charging For Mods
Steam Users See Big Problems With Charging For Mods
hodj
Vox Populi Jihadi
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Charging money for mods seems like a violation of pretty much every EULA on the planet, since they tend to explicitly forbid making a profit by altering the software, but those don't carry that much weight, so whatever.
Cantatus
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I do wonder how people would've reacted at this if the modder got a much bigger cut. It's hard to buy that Valve is doing this for the good of modders when a majority of the money is going into Valve and Bethesda's pockets. It looks less like rewarding modders and more like Valve just carving out a new revenue stream for themselves.
But overall, I don't see this as too surprising. Gabe has talked a lot in the past about wanting to reward content creators, which we've already seen in TF2 and DotA2. This is them basically taking the TF2 hat model and applying it to other games, but I think the backlash is understandable. Not only is this move a lot more transparent than previous things Valve has come up with (eg market for cards and emotes), but mods are something that have been free for decades. The ironic thing is for as much as Valve has done to combat pirating with Steam, this is a move that will likely push people back to pirating as they look for copies of mods that used to be free. And how does Valve police that really?
I suppose the one upside to this is it might encourage more developers to start include modding tools in their games.
But overall, I don't see this as too surprising. Gabe has talked a lot in the past about wanting to reward content creators, which we've already seen in TF2 and DotA2. This is them basically taking the TF2 hat model and applying it to other games, but I think the backlash is understandable. Not only is this move a lot more transparent than previous things Valve has come up with (eg market for cards and emotes), but mods are something that have been free for decades. The ironic thing is for as much as Valve has done to combat pirating with Steam, this is a move that will likely push people back to pirating as they look for copies of mods that used to be free. And how does Valve police that really?
I suppose the one upside to this is it might encourage more developers to start include modding tools in their games.
Derpa
Trakanon Raider
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My fear of that is "why fix or make more content when modders can do it for us"
Zaphid
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I only had a few hours of sleep, so let me rant a bit:
Valve is monetizing something they don't offer support for past the 24 hours after you bought and the "support" consists of getting your money back and I'd be surprised if it's full refund instead of just steam wallet money. There's zero quality control, which is terrible, as shown by the mobile market. Saying that you can report infringing mods is bullshit, you can't leave yet another aspect of selling them to the community - policing that you sell legal content. For this system to be fair and not to be ran to the ground by those seeking to exploit it, modders have to play whack a mole with those trying to make 100 $, while Valve has no responsibilities. I repeat: if you are a modder for a game that has paid workshop, you have to deal with another layer of bullshit to not be exploited. Now don't get me started on mods that were made by several people, or spawned off of other people's stuff.
There is also no guarantee that what you bought is even going to work together, unlike TF2/Dota 2 where the stuff is rather small and self contained. Who is going to give you your money back when the mods update and break the delicate chain you created, not to mention how is this shit supposed to work without SKSE/Mod Loader, which exist for almost every game that's heavily modded. The workshop is extremely limited when it comes to the breadth of tools most games get on top to make mods work. I'm sure whoever made this decision will get nice review in Valve for making them money, but it's 50 shades of bullshit. The cut modders get is the smallest part of the problem, but to see somebody charge 75% cut for what amounts to adding a cash sign next to your stuff is not helping.
Valve is monetizing something they don't offer support for past the 24 hours after you bought and the "support" consists of getting your money back and I'd be surprised if it's full refund instead of just steam wallet money. There's zero quality control, which is terrible, as shown by the mobile market. Saying that you can report infringing mods is bullshit, you can't leave yet another aspect of selling them to the community - policing that you sell legal content. For this system to be fair and not to be ran to the ground by those seeking to exploit it, modders have to play whack a mole with those trying to make 100 $, while Valve has no responsibilities. I repeat: if you are a modder for a game that has paid workshop, you have to deal with another layer of bullshit to not be exploited. Now don't get me started on mods that were made by several people, or spawned off of other people's stuff.
There is also no guarantee that what you bought is even going to work together, unlike TF2/Dota 2 where the stuff is rather small and self contained. Who is going to give you your money back when the mods update and break the delicate chain you created, not to mention how is this shit supposed to work without SKSE/Mod Loader, which exist for almost every game that's heavily modded. The workshop is extremely limited when it comes to the breadth of tools most games get on top to make mods work. I'm sure whoever made this decision will get nice review in Valve for making them money, but it's 50 shades of bullshit. The cut modders get is the smallest part of the problem, but to see somebody charge 75% cut for what amounts to adding a cash sign next to your stuff is not helping.
Cantatus
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I'm mostly wondering how this will impact the collaborative nature of the modding community. Now that there's profit involved, they've all essentially been put in competition with each other. Why share my work with another modder if that results in a mod that might undercut my own?
radditsu
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hodj
Vox Populi Jihadi
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Yeah this is just one huge clusterfuck. Sometimes Valve's model of having no functional leadership simply leads to people going "hey, this is a great idea, I bet we'll make buckets of cash!" and then no follow through on actually considering the broader implications.
Paying for mods seems like a stupid as shit idea across the board to me.
Big Phoenix
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This doesn't sound like an absolutely terrible idea, the execution however seems to be way way fucked. They probably should have worked with Nexus and other mod sites to port an "official" list of the best mods, have a curator/greenlight system, have a lot of failsafes, and obviously, not take 75% of the fucking money. And even then, making money out mods that might not only break one copyright, but several(like any game mods that converts stuff into another franchise stuff, say lotr, starwars, all the anime shit and so on) sounds like the stupidest fucking idea. How are they not gonna get tons of complaints from the original creators of the content for reusing it in games and getting paid for it, did none of the lawyers, and I assume they have a lot at Valve, figure that out?
