Maniacal
the green Napoleon
I suspect that major overhaul compillations aren't as common for Skyrim because some modders (and not just for Skyrim) hate sharing their stuff too 
I sure hope you like paying for your mods
- Thread starter Oruc
- Start date
I suspect that major overhaul compillations aren't as common for Skyrim because some modders (and not just for Skyrim) hate sharing their stuff too
There's actually quite a few of high quality and content. The more troubling aspect is that the bigger part of the community is that a lot of mods depend on each other for performance or content. Wet and Cold is a perfect example of one which relies on other (non-profit) mods' content. Then of course there's also mods like Expanded Towns and Cities, which if they ever went paid, would be relying on a bunch of restoration and texture work done by other mods. The reason this is so divisive for the community is that modders in the Skyrim community constantly cooperate and even go out of their way to make sure their mods are compatible with other mods.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Oh, huh, must've had a brain fart.
Don't remember what exactly I was going to say, but I suddenly remembered something.
Here's what one of the modders on the CKII GOT mod team said on one reddit thread:
Lots of legal grey area. I know that a Skyim mod that wanted to do some LotR overhaul had to deal with Warner Bros' lawyers.
And, to add to what I said earlier about mods relying on other mods, same modder on the reddit thread added later on:
Shocking that companies want to make money.
And again, you can always host your mod elsewhere, and keep it behind a donation wall or whatever.
I think again it is ludicrous how many of you guys are upset about the "screwing of the community". I don't think any major company gives any care about its community at all except for their potential as future customers. Some independent game makers have a bigger respect and desire to help the community, but again, this isn't some situation where you and Bethesda are buddies. You are buying a product from Bethesda, and Bethesda is trying to get more money out of you any way it can.
Don't like it? Don't buy it.
And again, you can always host your mod elsewhere, and keep it behind a donation wall or whatever.
I think again it is ludicrous how many of you guys are upset about the "screwing of the community". I don't think any major company gives any care about its community at all except for their potential as future customers. Some independent game makers have a bigger respect and desire to help the community, but again, this isn't some situation where you and Bethesda are buddies. You are buying a product from Bethesda, and Bethesda is trying to get more money out of you any way it can.
Don't like it? Don't buy it.
trader/warrior
Deity
I know I won't.
A company screws you over by changing their buisness practice for more revenue and less content to the end-user and the logical action for the consumer is to not complain? Riight.
Bro it's called capitalism. The goal isn't to deliver more content to the end user, the goal is to make more money. If you consider the gaming industry in particular, a majority of their money is made in the first two weeks of being released (also the reason for Day 1 DLC). Any way to make more money out of your investment must be done.
Of course people will complain. People will always complain if they have to pay for things they used to get for free. But one might argue it never should have been free in the first place.
For me, I actually play Skyrim completely unmodded. And I am happy for what I paid for Bethesda versus what I got from it. Again let's keep in mind this is NOT Bethesda charging you for mods. Moders are charging you for mods. And if you actually enjoy the hours of work/art/ect. that they put in, isn't it fair that you pay them? People keep saying the donate thing, but for most people, donations are so very rare, it's impossible to be consistent.
I see one of the arguments people keep saying is that modders will use this as a quick cash grab. What if instead though, we see modders, now that they are paid and given a good price for their mods, can become near full time modders like a part time (or even full time!) job? More mods, better mods, that's what I see for the future because of this.
Of course people will complain. People will always complain if they have to pay for things they used to get for free. But one might argue it never should have been free in the first place.
For me, I actually play Skyrim completely unmodded. And I am happy for what I paid for Bethesda versus what I got from it. Again let's keep in mind this is NOT Bethesda charging you for mods. Moders are charging you for mods. And if you actually enjoy the hours of work/art/ect. that they put in, isn't it fair that you pay them? People keep saying the donate thing, but for most people, donations are so very rare, it's impossible to be consistent.
I see one of the arguments people keep saying is that modders will use this as a quick cash grab. What if instead though, we see modders, now that they are paid and given a good price for their mods, can become near full time modders like a part time (or even full time!) job? More mods, better mods, that's what I see for the future because of this.
Spontaneous1 @ Paradox said:
What a shock. I'm really surprised.
Gabe Newell has also alleged that the last two days have generated 'just' $10,000 and cost 100x that simply in staff costs for handling the 3,500 emails he received.
For me personally its not about the screwing of the community. Its more about modders getting their work stolen by others and the fact that collaborative work cannot happen anymore. I dont mind modders getting cash, but it needs to be done in the right manner. And this isnt it.
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,682
Good, hopefully people keep it up, if it turns into a money pit instead of a profit engine it will get killed real quick.The biggest problem for me is that this will neuter the modding community. I'm not worried about Skyrim, because there are already a lot of quality mods there. I'm worried about future Bethesda games. The truth is that most of the really high quality mods are collaborative projects worked on by a lot of people. A mod like Falskaar requires the work of dozens upon dozens of people. How do you sort out who gets paid what for a mod like that? How do you get permissions from all of those people to charge for their work? If this becomes the norm, large collaborative mods like this will disappear and all we'll see is a sea of "Naruto headband armor!!!" mods.
But this is TOTALLY going to be AWESOME for the mod community, am I right guys?
trader/warrior
Deity
The backlash is just as much part of capitalism. The good part of capitalism.
You COULD charge for mods but that doesn't mean you should. It has been done before with varying degrees of success, in The Sims or some flight simulators for example. We put varying degrees of creative effort and time into our posting on this forum, some a great deal of it over many years. Does that mean we should get paid for it? Or have to pay for our hours of enjoyment reading the forums built on the efforts of others?
Personally, I think if a game developer enters a contract with modders so they can go for-profit and share the revenue between them I at least expect some degree of technical support, guarantee of compatability and functionality, something free mods do not need, and this system by Valve has none of. There are many real advantages to free mods, even business advantages for the game developer, look at Cities Skylines or the earlier Elder Scrolls games and why they became popular, or all the copyright and IP advantages of free modding.
We could use more ways to give great mods some material rewards but this way was not right at all.
There are so many points made on how this will hurt the quality and quantity of mods earlier in the thread I won't repeat them.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
...
*cough*Steamworks*cough*
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
- Messages
- 14,926
They won't. They can't.
How many $.50 swords do you need to sell to make minimum wage? If it takes you only three hours to model a sword using not 3D Max (which I'm 99.99% sure you need to have a commercial license for if you're going to try to sell things), you need about 192 downloads.
In theory.
In practice, it will depend. Steam won't disburse funds unless the item makes about $400 ($100 for you) because it costs money to do so, and if you make that $100 at the beginning of the month, you're going to have to wait a month for your first paycheck.
If the goal was to allow modders to make enough money they can support themselves full time on the process, that's simply a fools errand. The most downloaded item on Nexus right now is SkyrimHD, at 7.3 million downloads over the last four years. Assuming SkyrimHD wasn't already free DLC and charged $3 to price match purity, it would have generated $21.9 million, of which the modder would get $5.48 million, which works out to $1.37 million a year. Not too shabby for a team of one person.
The second most downloaded mod has similar numbers: SkyUI. One problem.
It has three team members and eleven contributors. Even better, there are additional people responsible for the translations. Assuming and equitable division, that's a $57k a year check for everybody involved in some way. The median wage for a programmer is $75k a year.
Furthermore, this is projected revenue for a single project, and all those "sales" did not occur all at once, and these assumptions work on the idea that downloads wouldn't fall off a cliff because they're no longer free.
And these numbers rely on the idea that sales are consistent. There are downloads over the course of several years. If the mod team was trying to make an actual living doing this, it would be extremely risky and the cost advantages of continuing work for a single product over one year may simply not be there. Why update SkyUI over four years instead of creating a SkyUI 2, 3, and 4 over the next few years and charging for each?
Are sales uniform? If you're treating this like a business in which all the profits are flowing back out to the partners, will somebody accept a job where their income will vary heavily from one month to the next?
As I continue to go down the list, the fall in unique downloads is steep, and the large megamods which use dozens of assets do not stand a chance in hell of bringing their owners a lasting, sustainable income capable maintaining a full time job.
As for the threat of cash grabs, it is already happening. Steam is notoriously bad at curation, and the pending paid items reflects this. With so much doubt and uncertainty in the market, as well as low payouts and extreme dismal potential "profits", very few people will be able to make significant money off of modding without pushing out a constant flood of items. The payouts are too low to sustain a large "professional" mod team that wants to do the job full time.
And there won't be more high-quality mods. Very few, if any, of the major overhaul mods could go up on Steam because they're likely using assets from one of several dozen other mod teams.
At least one mod has already been taken off the store and dozens of mods have been hidden on Nexus out of protest or fear that their items can be copied and stolen and sold. Of the 76 mods I have looked at pending on Steam, 23 of them are joke mods.
The barrier to entry is far too low, the Workshop isn't being curated for quality, and unless it is an extremely cheap item, nobody is going to take the risk that that a $4 item is broken.
Some modders are already talking about intentionally making sure their mods aren't compatible with SkyUI 5.0.
When you have Forbes, the poster child of business magazines, saying that implementation is terrible, something has to give. The PR of this has been a nightmare. The actual logistics are burning some of Valve's remaining goodwill, and people already believe this system will be used for Fallout 4.
In short, I don't think we can see higher quality, meaningful mods released because of compatibility, shared assets, and low payouts. For donation purposes, a modder is better off sticking with Nexus because they receive 100% of the donations that way. The low barrier to entry encourages low-cost, low-quality, item spam similar to the Windows Store.
But it's brilliant when Steam does it, because everyone loves us!
Well said! These forums really do need like a "Support post" button like the new Paradox ones.
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2011
- Messages
- 2,682
I'm glad you changed sides on this, SK, because that was an excellent post.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
- Messages
- 14,926
If it makes a difference, and if I'm calculating this right, if you do end up needing to purchase a 3D Max subscription for the license, you would need to sell an additional 1480 downloads if you're pushing a $.50 sword on top of the earlier 200 downloads to make minimum wage. Since this is a fixed cost, you better pump out items.
Edit: If this was your only item, and you have a real job, it is highly doubtful you can deduct the loss on your taxes. You likely could deduct all income from the hobby if you have things set up just right, but aforementioned programmer making $75k/year would need at least $1500 in expenses a year relating to the hobby before being able to deduct those expenses, and even then, only up to the income from that hobby. Luckily, an annual subscription is nearly $1500. Unfortunately, it takes a certain level of crazy to take $1500 in expenses for only $24 in revenue and $0 in profit if you actually do pay yourself minimum wage.
Edit2: Partnerships, as in the actual business kind, might be able to get ahead a bit becauses losses flow out to everybody regardless of the payout of the partnership. So, if the partnership has $10,000 in losses, you and your partner would be able to deduct $5000 each. I am like, 80% sure though at this point so my confidence level isn't high enough for you to not take this with a grain of salt or two.
Source: I moonlight as a crappy tax accountant every so often.
Edit3:
I don't know if Steam is the one who pays the free of the transfer or the modder. If lmao.
Edit: If this was your only item, and you have a real job, it is highly doubtful you can deduct the loss on your taxes. You likely could deduct all income from the hobby if you have things set up just right, but aforementioned programmer making $75k/year would need at least $1500 in expenses a year relating to the hobby before being able to deduct those expenses, and even then, only up to the income from that hobby. Luckily, an annual subscription is nearly $1500. Unfortunately, it takes a certain level of crazy to take $1500 in expenses for only $24 in revenue and $0 in profit if you actually do pay yourself minimum wage.
Edit2: Partnerships, as in the actual business kind, might be able to get ahead a bit becauses losses flow out to everybody regardless of the payout of the partnership. So, if the partnership has $10,000 in losses, you and your partner would be able to deduct $5000 each. I am like, 80% sure though at this point so my confidence level isn't high enough for you to not take this with a grain of salt or two.
Source: I moonlight as a crappy tax accountant every so often.
Edit3:
I went through the whole registration process, what a hassle to get paid as well, they basically want your first born and you have to register with the IRS and they will withhold up to 30% for US income tax, and they only pay by bank transfer which as anyone that gets those can tell you the bank takes it's cut as well, that is usually a flat fee so not bad on large transfers but I doubt most people will be making millions on their mods. it can also take up to 45 days to get paid., They also have a DMCA system for copyright strikes, which I imagine will be abused in much the way it is on youtube.
I don't know if Steam is the one who pays the free of the transfer or the modder. If lmao.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Hmm. The change.org petition has surpassed 100k signatures. How big is that? I dunno what to compare it to.
I cannot emphasize enough and agree with these reservations concerning how this will affect the modding community's politics and culture as someone who has been approaching this partly from the viewpoint of someone who has experience in modding communities. I don't think many of us here are against modders getting money - but we are concerned that the current system may not be able to work well with the way modding communities have historically worked.
I think that picking Skyrim as the guinea pig was, in a way, an unsurprising choice given that Skyrim was a big "market" but it was kind of old, so it was good for a test run, and I am apprehensive at what sort of things might happen for the future.
The biggest problem for me is that this will neuter the modding community. I'm not worried about Skyrim, because there are already a lot of quality mods there. I'm worried about future Bethesda games. The truth is that most of the really high quality mods are collaborative projects worked on by a lot of people. A mod like Falskaar requires the work of dozens upon dozens of people. How do you sort out who gets paid what for a mod like that? How do you get permissions from all of those people to charge for their work? If this becomes the norm, large collaborative mods like this will disappear and all we'll see is a sea of "Naruto headband armor!!!" mods.
But this is TOTALLY going to be AWESOME for the mod community, am I right guys?
I cannot emphasize enough and agree with these reservations concerning how this will affect the modding community's politics and culture as someone who has been approaching this partly from the viewpoint of someone who has experience in modding communities. I don't think many of us here are against modders getting money - but we are concerned that the current system may not be able to work well with the way modding communities have historically worked.
I think that picking Skyrim as the guinea pig was, in a way, an unsurprising choice given that Skyrim was a big "market" but it was kind of old, so it was good for a test run, and I am apprehensive at what sort of things might happen for the future.
