Paid Mods on Steam Discussion

And as such they should -- Those opposed to the idea have now essentially achieved victory. They have gotten what they wanted -- A feature that likely was no small effort to create and implement was rescinded in just three days, and over a weekend no less. It's time to calm down and heal the communities which were fractured by distrust and conflicting opinions.

The idea of supporting modders financially is nothing new, and is not a "bad idea" in and of itself. It's the implementation that was completely ridiculous.

If anything, this image posted to the Workshop conveys exactly what they should have done. Very aptly, the person who uploaded that image entitled it: "This is the button you are looking for."

I only hope this remains as a lesson and precedent for the future, when this system is invariably reviewed and adjusted for re-introduction.

JFD said:

And now comes the part where people start to cool off, state "it's not such a bad idea," and readily forgive Valve and Bethesda for this upheavel

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I never thought it was a horrible idea as an idea, I thought it was a horrible execution. Ill-concieved, ill-constructed, and released and made public in a manner essentially guaranteed to have no effect on the mod-community into which it was introduced except those that actually appear to have occured. And on top of all that it was a marketing disaster for both companies, in terms of trying to convince the gaming community that they love mod-makers and would like to help see them prosper -- wrongly or rightly, it was seen as a massively corrupt land-grab.

I found the announcement made by Bethesda (that JFD linked) troubling in the extreme in that it seemed to me to demonstrate an incredible naivete on the part of Bethesda. The whole thing, in the end though, seems to be the product of massive failures to fundamentally understand the people within the 'modding-community' (producers and consumers alike) of a particular game, and to understand that feeling confident that you have your finger on the pulse of Community-A gives no real insight into having your finger properly located over the pulse of Community-B.* Game modding communities are not punched out in cookie-cutter molds, and what works in the community for GameA does not necessarily work for GameB.

Statement from Valve

Also on Reddit.

DarkScythe said:

And as such they should -- Those opposed to the idea have now essentially achieved victory. They have gotten what they wanted -- A feature that likely was no small effort to create and implement was rescinded in just three days, and over a weekend no less. It's time to calm down and heal the communities which were fractured by distrust and conflicting opinions.

The idea of supporting modders financially is nothing new, and is not a "bad idea" in and of itself. It's the implementation that was completely ridiculous.

If anything, this image posted to the Workshop conveys exactly what they should have done. Very aptly, the person who uploaded that image entitled it: "This is the button you are looking for."

I only hope this remains as a lesson and precedent for the future, when this system is invariably reviewed and adjusted for re-introduction.

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My point was more about the vindication for Bethesda that this development has produced. People previously claiming they would never buy from Bethesda again, or how they'd lost their respect for them, are going to now so freely give their forgiveness, as if Bethesda hadn't conceived of the idea of profiting from free content in the first place. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't believe for a second that they rescinded this matter because they were concerned for what it was doing to the modding community. Of course, I was still on the fence before the matter got pulled, so it doesn't really matter.

DarkScythe said:

If anything, this image posted to the Workshop conveys exactly what they should have done. Very aptly, the person who uploaded that image entitled it: "This is the button you are looking for."

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Good for them. CivFanatics doesn't allow that sort of thing, however.

Oh, I totally agree that they only rescinded the program because it would impact their wallets. I probably misunderstood which aspect you were referring to, since I wasn't going to beat that side of the dead horse again. My only concern was, and is, the modding community itself.

As for my link, it wasn't intended to insinuate that CFC ought to do it, but rather that Steam placing such a button on the Workshop pages would've been exactly what would have made every modder happy -- Donate if you want, it's up to you, but here's your content. Steam's platform would provide a much larger visibility of such donation functions than the Nexus, or any other similar site, and would also make it very easy to do so.

Yeah, I know you didn't. The resolution (i.e. drop everything - though they may come back with adjustments) to this matter has left me feeling a little bitter, that's all.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is excellent as always.

For, the excellent time is after that.
Glad to hear those news, BTW.

Right or wrong and there are many good points on both sides of the coin, the mods I think are gonna need packaging to look more professional ie a fancy installer package, so if any are interested in going down the paid mod road, I can "build installers" for you and damn good ones too. have alook at hulfgars mods on his front page there are a couple there I built for him that look just awesome going through the setup process and of course the novice who has never used mods or just can't be bothered with the hassle doesn't have to manually do anything. Small fee or percentage would apply for paid mods of course

JFD said:

Good for them. CivFanatics doesn't allow that sort of thing, however.

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True, at this moment it's considered as "advertising" if you put a "donate" link anywhere on CFC (post, signature, profile, etc...)

Still I think that we'll have to face the paid mods situation again at one point or another in the future, we better be prepared for that.

Money in any form is something I would keep far away of the modding community if I had the choice, but in the end donation may be the lesser evil so I suppose we can debate that point.

I'm pretty sure that a donate button linked to a mod would be illegal (making money from a game without the consent of the developer/publisher) and would still raise some issues about sharing assets and who made what.

I suppose that the first point could be solved by the game's owner, but the second point is my biggest fear.

Maybe a donate button linked to a modder and not any work in particular, which means no donate button in threads or download pages, but on that member's profile, may solve both issue.


That said I still feel that the benefits will not compensate for the problems money in modding will raise... maybe I'm thinking more as a moderator/mediator than a modder here, but let's be realistic, say if people were giving me 10€ instead of clicking on the "like" button on all my Steam's mods (and it does not take much time or effort to click on a button to support someone's work, right ?), it would not be enough to replace any job.

Don't get me wrong, it would be a nice bonus and surely a great help for some of us, and to be honest I would not be the last to get a shiny button if money wins in the end, but I think it's important to keep things in proportion here.

Gedemon said:

I'm pretty sure that a donate button linked to a mod would be illegal (making money from a game without the consent of the developer/publisher) and would still raise some issues about sharing assets and who made what.

Maybe a donate button linked to a modder and not any work in particular, which means no donate button in threads or download pages, but on that member's profile, may solve both issue.

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No, it wouldn't. It is at the discretion of the donater what they're donating to, regardless of where that donate button is - so long as an author does not incentivise donation toward one particular thing or another.

Doubt it. People that can and are willing to donate just don't want to take the effort. You might as well not have it if the intention would be to hide it away on someone's profile.

Gedemon said:

That said I still feel that the benefits will not compensate for the problems money in modding will raise... maybe I'm thinking more as a moderator/mediator than a modder here, but let's be realistic, say if people were giving me 10€ instead of clicking on the "like" button on all my Steam's mods (and it does not take much time or effort to click on a button to support someone's work, right ?), it would not be enough to replace any job.

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Of course not, but it could help to ease any financial costs involved in modding (limited internet data plans still exist in, at least, this part of the world , and PCs with the means of keeping mods supported need maintenance), and, if you're looking for a job with which to apply your modding skills (and assuming you were donated to), it would act as an incentive for employeers to hire you. And then, of course, its immensely gratifying to think that someone would offer their money for something you've created on your own volition.

And let's not pretend everything about modding is fun. There are not only hundreds of bugs to fix but thousands of bug reports to address - and most of them (I've found) derives from a problem on the user's end (mod incompatbility, lack of DLC, pirated copy of the game, not RTFM, etc.). I deal with that when my conscience gets the better of me, or when a bug is explictly stopping me from doing the things in modding that I do enjoy, but otherwise I don't want to deal with it for the sake of a hobby. However, there are clearly people who do not only want me to deal with it, but some that expect me to. If you introduced money into the mix then that would establish both an obligation and a justification on my end to accomodate (and tolerate some of) these people. Even if modding is a choice, there is a lot of undue attention and stress that you never necessarily expected or signed up for.

Of course, there are issues. Legal, ethical, and financial issues. But a more prominent donate system solves most if not all of the issues that were brought up over sticking mods behind a paywall.

To me, when a site like the Nexus encourages users to not only endorse the mods they use, but to consider donating to the mod authors that made them, it makes the Civ modding communities feel a little shafted, and second class to communites like those that mod TES titles - as if Civ mods weren't worthy of donation, or as if our communities weren't mature enough to handle the introduction of donations.

Gedemon said:

(and it does not take much time or effort to click on a button to support someone's work, right ?)

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Well, IDK. But on every one of my mods something like less than 10% of the people who are currently subscribed have rated it up or favourited it - in fact, sometimes the favourites significantly outweight the upvotes, which simply baffles me Taking a few random examples:

Roosevelt: 424 (Favourites)/25575 == 1.6% | 201 (Upvotes)/25575 == 0.7%
Prussia: 656 (Favourites)/39709 == 1.6% | 338 (Upvotes)//39709 == 0.8%
Scotland: 214 (Favourites)/16352 == 1.3% | 213 (Upvotes)/16352 == 1.4%

Personally, I would say it is somehow too much effort to click on any buttons to support someone's work (exacerbated by the workshop's culture of easy access to mods), or 99% of the people subscribed to my mods don't actually like them but for whatever reason keep them. In fact, I was being generous with that 10% estimate

Just bear in mind that on Steam "Favorite" mods merely mean that you've done the Steam version of bookmarking them. Which I have only ever done on a mod I want to take another look at later but don't at that time want the hassle of the Steam downloading system. To me, at least, the "favorites" one has on their mods means just not a whole lot. Nor actually so far as I can tell does the up/down voting since people who have never subscribed or used the mod can up/down vote it. There seem to be a boatload of fundamentally broken mods that also seem to have a lot of favorites, and some of them have an outrageously high rating from the up/down voting system.

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Examine very carefully a lot of one-off mods (that are on Steam) by authors that have never offered any other mod: compare the # of subscribers, the # of favorites, and the ratings (when available). Then download the mod and look at it. This exercise in CIV5 mods highlights all the problematical issues with a pay-4-mods system (whether paywalled or donative) wherein there is not some minimum 'gate-keeping' as to whether a specific mod should be eligible for such a paywalling/donating system.

I am not ecstatic about a curated system, because I think such a system is potentially open to abuse-via-cliques and clique-forming with the evolutionary result of 'old hands' being allowed anything they want while newer talents must jump through ridiculous hoops to be considered 'worthy'. But I think the sort of free-form open-ended no-real-rules-in-any-useful-sense that was just attempted and abandoned is far worse in actual fact than the potential abuse that might possibly arise in a curated system.

But that's as far as my thinking on it has taken me so far. And of course, this is really not anything that has much relevance to what would/would-not-be appropriate for this forum.

Ah, I never realised what the point of the "favourite" thing was. Thinking about it, I suppose it doesn't make much sense to have two forms of rating do the same thing. Still, the point is that there is no consistent means of evaluating the ratio of mod-users that appreciate mod authors and show that appreciation in some way to those that do but don't.

it's unfortunate that a fair way to make money from mods cannot be established. I had toyed with the idea of designing real AI improvements to Civ V, but that would require so much work there is no way I would do it for free. And no way I would accept working for only 25% while making 100% of the investment (my time & effort).

Cheers

Yeah, it would be pretty silly for them to get 75% of the money from fixing their broken AI.

I personally have no problems with people voluntarily donating money to other people, it is mainly a matter of legality/site policy as to why it is forbidden.

I guess the problem is that although modders are making 100% of the investment in the modifications themselves, they aren't making 100% of the investment in the modding tools, the file hosting, store position, etc.. When such other factors are accounted for, it would seem just as unfair for the modders to receive 100% as it is for them to receive only 25% - in each case someone is getting less than what they've put in. So an equitable distribution surely falls somewhere in the middle.

You Know My wife writes Ebook in different formats epub mobi etc etc and to have them put on the likes Kobo or Amazon they take a 30% cut and she get the other 70%
So if steam or whoever else is hosting, distributing a mod and wants a 75% cut, that just damn wrong IMO anyways

I think for this to work, the developers and publishers need to create a gap between the emotions and schemas people have around the word 'mod.' Leave 'mods' free, available in the same location they are now, and create a new category, interface, and graphical design for the area where projects are sold. Maybe call it community DLC or something. That would also carry the psychological benefits of offering something new, rather than taking something away.

I see a massive amount of potential in the PC gaming industry that is being wasted by market inefficiencies. Why are there games being developed by just one or two companies? What a crazy amount of unnecessary risk to take on! Wouldn't it be better if there were companies that specialized in just AI, where one game engine has different AI implementations by completing businesses? Not only that, but AI systems being developed to work across multiple games, so that the wheel isn't being reinvented over and over? On the flip side, companies developing other parts of game engine would have a financial incentive to maximize modularity in order to attract more implementations of the game. And wouldn't it be good for competition if the barrier to enter that market were minimized?

There is a lot more to this than just paid "mods." I don't really see this as being about mods at all, but rather working out the logistics of dividing up gaming development. The mods that exist for free now would either return to being free after the market adjusts to a paid system, or somewhere very close to free. What would cost actual money in the long term are features that don't exist right now.

I'm writing this while half asleep, so hopefully it makes some coherent sense.