Paid Mods on Steam Discussion

[JFD]

Mmm, an interesting post. It certainly did answer some of my questions on the subject. (I found the reference to the Touhou doujin community rather interesting, particularly given ZUN's adamant stance against commercialization of Touhou.)

I still have to admit to a certain amount of cognitive dissonance at the whole "doing something for the love of it is good, doing it for the money is bad!" philosophy, though... because I'm pretty sure that everyone who espouses it still goes off to a job and does it for the money, as opposed to going into work and telling their boss they don't need a paycheque because they'll do their job for the love of it from now on. I know people that make a living off of doing art, so it gets really weird. Are they bad for getting paid to do art? Or is it okay since they're getting paid to do what they enjoy? That may be getting a bit off-topic, however.

Well, the things that would hold me back from particpating, should such a thing shift over to Civ V, has nothing to do with because I think I should only mod for the love of it - I'm a poor student with little prospect of getting and holding a job anytime soon, as my issues with social anxiety can be so severe that they make such simply impractical, so earning something from my modding would be fantastically useful (and could prove that my skills have value to future employers), and my principles are really not higher than my comfort, so I can deal with the backlash from strangers. However, it is a simple fact of the matter that none of my mods would be half as decent without contribution from other mod authors - especially Jan - to whom I am beholden, by my own volition, to honour any wishes that they have to keep their work away from a paywall.

That said, I still think the best option would've been a middle-ground of implementing a direct-to-donate feature on one's mod creation; at least the phase in paid modding.

 

[Gedemon]

It would be interesting to see if one could draw parallels with the modiquette -- if I post a mod here, I believe I'm tacitly giving other people permission to use the content I post in their own mods. Most people ask for permission anyways, out of politeness, but it could be argued that by posting something, the modder is typically giving up the rights to it...?

You give other modders the permission to use what you've done in their own mods, but you do not abandon the rights on what you've made.

 

[JFD]

This discussion has risen the dead! Case in point: YnAEMP v23. YnAEMP is still Gedemon's mod, even if I've modded it.

 

[GPuzzle]

Weird situation, really. I've seen a lot of arguments from both sides that just feel wrong or that are just completely weird in a sense.

Ultimately I feel like a modder is doing that work not seeking fame and fortune, but because he likes the game and he wants to expand on it. And whether or not he wants to be paid is the modder's decision. Having a fixed value wouldn't be exactly my first choice, I think that a "pay what you want starting from 1 dollar!" like the Humble Bundle would work. It allows people to pay what they want for mods, and an hour and a half on TF2, DotA 2 or CS: GO will easily net me around 20 cents of Real through selling things on the Steam Market.

Personally, that's how I'd do.

But then again I'm not a modder, a member of a Game Dev team or a VALVe employee, so...

 

[DoctorMcGann]

You give other modders the permission to use what you've done in their own mods, but you do not abandon the rights on what you've made.

Oh my God it's Gedemon

 

[janboruta]

You give other modders the permission to use what you've done in their own mods, but you do not abandon the rights on what you've made.

Praise Helix! Also, that's what I've been meaning all the time.

However, it is a simple fact of the matter that none of my mods would be half as decent without contribution from other mod authors - especially Jan - to whom I am beholden, by my own volition, to honour any wishes that they have to keep their work away from a paywall.

Any differences can be resolved through talk anyway, and a fair agreement is always within reach - provided both sides want to come up with one. I'd agree with the overall idea of encouraging donations, instead of fixing a mod's price. Outright selling the mod might turn modding into a career - and while it isn't nothing bad by itself, it just feels weird to consider it at this point in time. Furthermore. considering the consumer backlash, the interest in paid mods would be too insignificant and breed too much hate to consider such a career viable. Too little profit for too much stress and effort. We might revisit the idea in a few years though; but then, who of us will still be there modding? We might get real jobs by that time.

Granted, you don't get any profit when modding without a paid system. But without such system, you don't even expect to get paid.

 

[JFD]

Ultimately I feel like a modder is doing that work not seeking fame and fortune, but because he likes the game and he wants to expand on it. And whether or not he wants to be paid is the modder's decision. Having a fixed value wouldn't be exactly my first choice, I think that a "pay what you want starting from 1 dollar!" like the Humble Bundle would work. It allows people to pay what they want for mods, and an hour and a half on TF2, DotA 2 or CS: GO will easily net me around 20 cents of Real through selling things on the Steam Market.

Well, that's the issue being presented. Now that the opportunity is there to seek fame and fortune (or whatever equates here) via modding, priorities may shift, and new modders may enter the scene, or old modders may be motivated/able to devote more time and effort to modding. Remember, there's a lot to deal with as a modder besides just creating a piece of content and learning how to get better at it - there's maintenance (some of it to ensure compatibility with other people's mods), hosting, and dealing with people - sometimes nasty, ungrateful, entitled people. Not everyone's willing to deal with all of it, but the potential for being paid may balance those cons out. Up until now, people have been maintaining their mods out of a sense of moral or reputational obligation, which is tenuous at best and gives little power to those who use their mods. A financial obligation is good for competition. Of course, that doesn't mean we necessarily want modding to be a competitive marketplace - especially as mod-makers who at least begin this as a hobby.

Granted, you don't get any profit when modding without a paid system. But without such system, you don't even expect to get paid.

And that's the main issue here. Valve has spooked a giant elephant in the room, yet they don't seem to fully appreciate just how big and messy elephants can be.

 

[GPuzzle]

Which is why it's a tenuous question.

The fanbase hates it, the modders consider it, the executives enjoy it.

Ah, human nature. How unpredictable.

I feel I have no opinion on it right now. It is a great incentive to modders - but if nobody buys it then they don't get their mods released - but some are willing to support the modders because they like their mods and think they are high quality or because they like the modders - but those are just going to be a meager part of a larger area and most money would be going to corporations anyway - but modders have the possibility of actually getting money, this allows them to be paid to do things that we like to play with and use them more!

And so on.

I just don't know at this point.

 

[Velvet Elvis]

Having never seriously looked at modding anything in civ beyond my own game, I've never really looked at the policies for mod distribution here. Can I get a quick link to where they are posted?

No forum policy can require you to make your work available for others to use in a commercial product.

 

[JFD]

Which is why it's a tenuous question.

The fanbase hates it, the modders consider it, the executives enjoy it.

Ah, human nature. How unpredictable.

I feel I have no opinion on it right now. It is a great incentive to modders - but if nobody buys it then they don't get their mods released - but some are willing to support the modders because they like their mods and think they are high quality or because they like the modders - but those are just going to be a meager part of a larger area and most money would be going to corporations anyway - but modders have the possibility of actually getting money, this allows them to be paid to do things that we like to play with and use them more!

And so on.

I just don't know at this point.

AFAISI, it's not a bad idea, but it's just been implemented badly. However, we don't know if it's actually possible to implement good-ly in the first place That's just the nature of a big business trying to do it for us.

Having never seriously looked at modding anything in civ beyond my own game, I've never really looked at the policies for mod distribution here. Can I get a quick link to where they are posted?

No forum policy can require you to make your work available for others to use in a commercial product.

Here you go

 

[Velvet Elvis]

Someone made an informative and straightforward post on the nature of modding and copyright, if anyone's interested or wants more info.

From the reddit post:

The only entites to blame here are valve and Zenimax, because modders are not supposed to be ing lawyers and company like valve ing KNEW about it.

This gets at what really disgusts me about it. Once you open a modding community up to commercial sales, modders really do have to start worrying about the law. All of a sudden people have to start worrying about license terms and copyright law and people get into big fights over legal issues. It can kill a community and just make everything not fun. It robs a community of its innocence.

True, CiV doesn't have that many mod dependencies, but CIV did and there's no telling what might happen in future games. Imagine a component in something like BAT suddenly becoming paid and think about how that might play out. It's practically an extortion scheme waiting to happen. Everybody using a mod containing those components would either have to pay up have their games break.

I've been active in the open source community for quite a while and learned the importance of proper licensing from that, as well as what can happen when somebody screws with the license of of a project other projects depend on.

 

[TPangolin]

However, we don't know if it's actually possible to implement good-ly in the first place

Simple. Pay what you want, starting at $0. If you do pay, the following parties get a minimum 15% (or 25%) cut:

- Game Developer/Publisher
- Valve
- Modder

From there on in, you decide where exactly your money goes. This way, you can decide if you want to give up to 55% (or 50%) of what you paid to the modder (or if you feel so inclined the Publisher/Valve).

 

[GPuzzle]

I still wonder why the bigwigs don't consult people more - we know what we want, and we will tell you, don't act like you know what we want!

 

[JFD]

Simple. Pay what you want, starting at $0. If you do pay, the following parties get a minimum 15% (or 25%) cut:

- Game Developer/Publisher
- Valve
- Modder

From there on in, you decide where exactly your money goes. This way, you can decide if you want to give up to 55% (or 50%) of what you paid to the modder (or if you feel so inclined the Publisher/Valve).

Yeah, but we don't know why Valve didn't do this in the first place, so we don't know if it's possible. In my mind it would be the better solution, though. It wouldn't create such a black and white rift in the Workshop.

 

[bouncymischa]

I still wonder why the bigwigs don't consult people more - we know what we want, and we will tell you, don't act like you know what we want!

Because companies aren't servants (or slaves). Admittedly, publicly-owned ones have to answer to their shareholders, so they're the ones who get the final say. But a privately-owned company belongs to its owners, and they're the ones who get to make the decisions.

Sure, you can have a company that decides it's most profitable to find out what the market wants and provides it. But I've seen enough independent businesspeople and small business owners who go, "Hey, this is the way I'm running my business. You don't like it, you go buy your product somewhere else." So I can't see any reason why larger companies wouldn't ultimately do the same, especially if they've been built up from nothing by single (or small groups of) individuals.

If nothing else, look at the "civ requests" thread, and think about all those modders who keep making the civs they want to make, instead of making the civs the public is demanding!

 

[Gedemon]

This discussion has risen the dead!

A powerful incantation, indeed

Some very quick thoughts (as a modder) on the subject...

I agree that it could be a bigger motivation to make good, bugs free mods, and if it works, it will be an incentive for (more) developers to provide (better) modding tools with their games.

But, on the other hand we'll have less sharing and locked assets.

And that is a major problem IMO, I'm really afraid it will outweigh the benefices, by far, I couldn't have made R.E.D. or YnAEMP without shared units/maps for example.

It's also a can of worms... what happens when a new patch is released after a few months and broke paid mods non longer maintained ? and shouldn't tutorials authors get a share if paid mods are based on them ? and do you remember how painful it was to debate about copyright in mods when money was NOT involved ?

 

[Velvet Elvis]

A powerful incantation, indeed

Some very quick thoughts (as a modder) on the subject...

I agree that it could be a bigger motivation to make good, bugs free mods, and if it works, it will be an incentive for (more) developers to provide (better) modding tools with their games.

But, on the other hand we'll have less sharing and locked assets.

And that is a major problem IMO, I'm really afraid it will outweigh the benefices, by far, I couldn't have made R.E.D. or YnAEMP without shared units/maps for example.

It's also a can of worms... what happens when a new patch is released after a few months and broke paid mods non longer maintained ? and shouldn't tutorials authors get a share if paid mods are based on them ? and do you remember how painful it was to debate about copyright in mods when money was NOT involved ?

This should be required reading for anyone following this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/33te7h/the_monetization_model_for_the_upcoming/

 

[ls612]

This should be required reading for anyone following this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/33te7h/the_monetization_model_for_the_upcoming/

I think there is a big conceptual difference with selling user-created cosmetics in multiplayer games where there are hosted servers by the publisher and you are paying for swag essentially. That is not at all similar to what Civ modding is like, or Skyrim, or pretty much any primarily single player game which has modding capability.

 

[Velvet Elvis]

I think there is a big conceptual difference with selling user-created cosmetics in multiplayer games where there are hosted servers by the publisher and you are paying for swag essentially. That is not at all similar to what Civ modding is like, or Skyrim, or pretty much any primarily single player game which has modding capability.

I agree. I'm not sure everyone at Valve realizes it though. I'm not sure what Bethesda was thinking.

Skyrim was one of the worst modding communities they could have picked to try this with first. Granted, CIV would have been worse.

As long as Firaxis and Paradox manage to avoid falling into the same trap I'm not going to sweat it.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Frankly, if (when) this hits the Civ 5 Workshop, I will pull all of my mods off of it on the spot. I am interested in modding being a community, not a competition.