Paid Mods on Steam Discussion

Im a long time civver (civ 1 onwards) and it has always amazed me that a lot of the official extra content from firaxis (map packs, scenarios with the exception of ww2 on civ 2) are rubbish compared to those i find on civfanatics.... Marlas maps, rhyes mod, AI improvement mods.... ive taken them all from here.

So, should the people get paid?.

In my mind there is nothing wrong with voluntary donations, if i see a great map/mod i want to play and have hours of fun on it then id donate.

I dont like the idea of forced payment particularly- for a start if it turns out to be a rubbish mod i dont like it would be annoying, and secondly those who would not donate voluntarily will simply pirate it.

Gedemon said:

Which also means that to prevent (a bit) code stealing, you may be inclined to not release any "trick" in a free mod, even if you're against the concept of paid mods in the first place.

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It's not even tricks in mods.

Would I invest hundreds of hours writing tutorials to explain game/mod concepts if I knew that information would then be used by others to earn money. No.

twilson1972 said:

In my mind there is nothing wrong with voluntary donations, if i see a great map/mod i want to play and have hours of fun on it then id donate.

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True, I'd agree with this, though, if the current system applies to Civ V as well, then you're basically donating to Steam and Firaxis.

twilson1972 said:

I dont like the idea of forced payment particularly- for a start if it turns out to be a rubbish mod i dont like it would be annoying,

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This could also be the case with games, but indeed, the chances of getting your money back might be lower with mods than with games. To possibly avoid this, they could try to implement some sort of 'trial' for an hour or so (for trying the mod, to see if it actually works).

Avoiding piracy would probably be difficult, then.

There is a 24-hour 'you can return it' period on the current set-up of the way things are on the Skyrim mods system. It seems to get glossed over quite often around the net, but at least Steam (Valve, whatever) understood that the descripton of the mod is not the same thing as the mod, so there needs to be a return method when a player buys a mod only to discover it is guck. Though the money return is to one's Steam Wallet, not to the original payment source.

What you mean 'steam wallet'?
Also, think about people who play with large amounts of mods(like me): I'll end up paying more for mods then why I paid for the game itself. And what would I do if a mod's update breaks it? Would I still get a refund?

For what's it worth JFD, if you were willing to make a mod by my personal tastes & details, i'd flit with the ideal of playing you, then you could release the mod for other people to buy.

Natan35 said:

What you mean 'steam wallet'?

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Essentially, store credit for Steam. They will not refund your original method of payment. And, if some users are to be believed, receiving a refund this way locks you out of using the community market for 7 days!

Vicevirtuoso said:

Essentially, store credit for Steam. They will not refund your original method of payment. And, if some users are to be believed, receiving a refund this way locks you out of using the community market for 7 days!

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So, this means they practically force you, as a modder, to buy their (Steam) products with what you've ''earned''. No, this system is total rubbish in my opinion >_>

Vicevirtuoso said:

Essentially, store credit for Steam. They will not refund your original method of payment. And, if some users are to be believed, receiving a refund this way locks you out of using the community market for 7 days!

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On the page where they go through all the refund 'rules' they mention that any refund request will auto-disable all other portions of the same original transaction for up to 3 days because of being a scambot anti-measure. This in and of itself actually makes sense, but it also sounds like it is possible your entire account gets put into 'further-transaction-hold'. It isn't clear to me from a reading of the refunds-on-mods rules page. All of the content included in that original transaction is automatically put on instant 'hold' any time a refund request for any part of it is submitted by a user -- so don't buy BrandNewGameX and a Mod within the same transaction if there is any possibility the mod is guck or broken, because asking for a refund on the gucky mod means BrandNewGameX will not be playable again for you until the mod refund request process is completed.

Wouldn't suprise me if there's an auto 3-day wait to do anything at all with the refund request except to put the whole transaction on hold (and the rest of the content purchased within the same transaction into limbo), and then another three-day wait while the transaction is being 'processed', and verified and what-not, before the user can get back into the marketplace.

This whole part of the system is simply going to encourage multiple mini-transactions and discourage multiple buys in the same transaction because if you afterwards decide even one item is guck, everything in the same transaction essentially goes into a 'moderation qeue' waiting to be re-enabled. I would not be suprised to find over time that Steam/Valve do/have-to institute a minimum transaction amount for purchased mods.

Well, yeah. It is total rubbish.

DJSHenninger said:

So, this means they practically force you, as a modder, to buy their (Steam) products with what you've ''earned''. No, this system is total rubbish in my opinion >_>

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the modder get paid on his bank account, it's a player that have bought a mod and asked for a refund that will have to reuse the money on another steam product.

Oh really? Thats suprising. I would have expected they'd actually do something like that to the modder as well Still, the entire 75% thing makes it a no-go for me.

Do note that modders will not get paid until they've made a total of $400 in sales (before Valve and Bethesda's cut). So yeah, entirely possible for everything to go to those companies if your mod fails to sell enough!

What sort of prices do people expect will be charged?

Right now id donate for a world map that has hand balanced resources and doesnt need a powerful pc

But once prices got above say £30 for a mod i personally wouldnt pay...

twilson1972 said:

What sort of prices do people expect will be charged?

Right now id donate for a world map that has hand balanced resources and doesnt need a powerful pc

But once prices got above say £30 for a mod i personally wouldnt pay...

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I'll release a mod that edits the Kremlin and renames it St. Basils Cathedral and I'll charge $1,000 for it

kerrigan1603 said:

For what's it worth JFD, if you were willing to make a mod by my personal tastes & details, i'd flit with the ideal of playing you, then you could release the mod for other people to buy.

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The Empire of JFD (and Janboruta) is mercantilist. We do what we do for the glory of the empire, and not by request.

JFD said:

I'll release a mod that edits the Kremlin and renames it St. Basils Cathedral and I'll charge $1,000 for it



The Empire of JFD (and Janboruta) is mercantilist. We do what we do for the glory of the empire

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To be honest, i remember playing a civ ww2 scenario that was fantastic, and rhyes and fall was practically a new game - better than most the firaxis stuff id have definitely donated for that.

And the yet another earth map is clever too, i just cant play the bigger maps at all without massive times mid game..

Are we just talking a fiver or so? if so i dont mind if people charge really

Quote:
Originally Posted by kerrigan1603 View Post
For what's it worth JFD, if you were willing to make a mod by my personal tastes & details, i'd flit with the ideal of playing you, then you could release the mod for other people to buy.The Empire of JFD (and Janboruta) is mercantilist. We do what we do for the glory of the empire, and not by request

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Aww... well it was worth a try.

I've avoided putting my toes into this discussion, although I've made my position on the matter clear to hose who have held private discussions with me.

With that said, and only a short time after JFD posted Bethesda's own response to the whole thing, it looks like the program has been pulled and anyone who's already purchased Skyrim mods will be receiving refunds. No idea what that means for the mod authors who made money, though.

Hopefully the Skyrim modding community heals from the split this experiment caused to them.

Edit:
It's also slightly amusing how unreasonable some of the outrage became -- Every prominent Steam review of Skyrim got switched to a negative rating solely over the mods issue, and not a reflection of the game itself. We'll see if those reviews get reverted again as news of this reversal spreads.

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