Paying for mods

[dutchfire]

How will this work for playtesting? Normally, I'd expect mods to get better since many people play them and give feedback. But if the mod costs money, then there is a higher barrier to entry, so less feedback, so lower quality, so less incentive to buy it.

 

[Arakhor]

We are adding a pay what you want button where the mod author can set the starting amount wherever they want.

So, now the modders can apparently choose to to allow people to get paid mods for free, if they want, which solves absolutely nothing and still is not a donation.

 

[illram]

I am interested to see how this develops. I'll be a fan if it encourages more developers to allow a flourishing mod community with their games, as opposed to a lot of the "closed" AAA titles where devs want to lock players out of making their own content and sell us DLC's, and then let the game die forever once they've moved on to new IP. That seems to the trend even with games where prior iterations allowed mods. E.g. the CoD series used to have a great mod community with community maps, dedicated servers, etc. Just like any good FPS multiplayer should. Then MW2 came out and since then, DLC only (with insane profits).

 

[Birdjaguar]

I like and use mods and would pay for the great ones, but I think the pay balance should be 90% for the modder and 10% for Steam.

 

[GenMarshall]

I've been following the commotion with Modgate2015.

For me personally, I would rather buy a mod if it adds value to my game pay. In the case of Skyrim, would be geared towards the high quality mods like iNeeds, Frostfall, and even questmods like Falskaar and Helgan Reborn. For a mod that just adds a few weapons and armors, not so much as I rather want them for free (or if they're good quality, donate to the modder). A $1.99 for just a sword just cries out HORSE ARMOR!!!! to me.

Myself, I mainly use the Nexus site for my mods (and have been since Fallout 3). The Steam Workshop for mods for Skyrim is way too clunky and would mess up my load order and other wrenches that would make Skyrim CTD when the launcher scans and updates my subscriptions. Inadvertently messing up my load order (Fortunately mitigated with the Nexus Mod Manager). The other beef I have is that the modder would only receive 25% of the profits while the rest goes to Valve & Bethesda. If I want to make a donation, I prefer that 100% of the money goes to the modder. The system that Nexus has is a much better implementation for donation to the modder in question.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I'm really curious to see what would happen if Civ V were to implement paid mods. Here are my thoughts cross posted from a Steam discussion (although why I bother to post in that cesspool I don't know):

1. The best mods will still be free. Why? The best mods are created by highly dedicated individuals or teams who have been modding for years simply because they love the game. Look at JFD, whoward, etc etc. The best mods are also built on a modded foundation (like whoward's modified DLL), which paid mods would not be able to do considering the licenses and permissions involved, which brings me to my second point.

2. Paid mods will be more difficult to make. The modding community builds on itself. Someone will release an excellent mod which quickly become a standard, integrated feature across the board. That can't happen with paid mods, because the original creator would have to agree to have his work used in the paid mod, and I can GUARANTEE you that many of them will not. Paid mods will not be approved if all parties do not accept the payment terms. This means that paid mods will be, for the most part, individual efforts - not group efforts.

3. The most vibrant modding community is not on Steam. Most diehards don't count on Steam for their modding home. Sure, they might download it here, but the community exists somewhere else (Civfanatics, to be exact). This is a community built around the shared love of the game who create for themselves and for each other. This is an established community which paid mods will be largely irrelevant to.

In summary, paid mods will have little impact on the Civ V modding community.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Going forward though, will this stifle future cooperative efforts due to official monetization of something that previously used to be free?

 

[cybrxkhan]

Going forward though, will this stifle future cooperative efforts due to official monetization of something that previously used to be free?

In my opinion as someone with lots of modding experience, including cooperative modding, yes. I have to emphasize that a lot of modder drama comes from permissions, crediting, theft (real or alleged), and interpretations of that. With money, this will make things even more tense. That is not to mention that mods are so interconnected and so many people share so many things it will be hard to figure out who gets what. For example, if I were to charge for my CKII VIET mod, I would have to probably share the profits with over 35+ people if I wanted to be fair, and that's not even accounting for stuff those people took from others that I then took myself.

That does not mean that pole will figure out ways to cooperate, but I think it might be more difficult.

 

[Arakhor]

Paid mods have been discontinued entirely.

 

[cybrxkhan]

And my copypasta from the other thread:

Holy crap! Though this won't make me a Valve fanboy, I will at least give them credit for responding faster than expected.

However, I don't think we are quite out of the woods yet. They may return with something similar, but I hope next time if that does happen they'll think it through more properly instead of tacking on a system that may have worked in one situation but was entirely untested in another.

Regardless of what everyone thinks, I do hope that at the least this whole incident has made people more aware of the work and dedication modders have - not just in Skyrim, but in any modding community. The greatest pleasure I've ever received as a modder was seeing people say a kind thank you, post silly screenshots of my work on reddit, or just spread word about my work. In that same vein, I hope more people will take the time to appreciate modders for the work that they do, maybe even donate a bit. After this whole thing, I've now decided to make a little effort in rating/endorsing/giving thumbs up to any mods I come across and like, for instance. Least I can do.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I don't even care if they come back with something similar again, as long as what they come back that is thought through better and solves the problems this implementation had. I never thought paid mods were intrinsically bad, just the way they were doing it was bad. Either way, good news.

 

[Arakhor]

That said, I'd donate £2.50 or so for SkyUI 5.0, as it would then be the most ethical thing to do.

 

[Leoreth]

How will this work for playtesting? Normally, I'd expect mods to get better since many people play them and give feedback. But if the mod costs money, then there is a higher barrier to entry, so less feedback, so lower quality, so less incentive to buy it.

Speaking from personal experience, the amount of feedback is almost never a problem for quality control, but your own time to work on the issues that have already been reported.

 

[trader/warrior]

That said, I'd donate £2.50 or so for SkyUI 5.0, as it would then be the most ethical thing to do.

In cases like the SkyUI guy, it could be a good idea to do a kickstarter or patreon or something to return to developing it.

Edit: Changed wording, previous wording might suggest I have a problem with "inferior" mods seeking donations or funding, which I don't.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Intriguing! I honestly didn't really expect them to change their minds.

I suspect, though, that it will be attempted again at a later date.

 

[Arakhor]

In cases like the SkyUI guy, I wouldn't mind them doing a kickstarter or patreon or something to return to developing it.

I just donated $5 to schlangster for SkyUI 4.1. Hardly anyone on the front line of the mods brawl came out well, but in all fairness, I would happily have bought SkyUI 4.1 as a DLC (even though it shouldn't have been necessary), so it seemed once again that the most ethical thing to do was make a donation and send a note hoping that he will still bring out 5.0 anyway,

 

[cybrxkhan]

How will this work for playtesting? Normally, I'd expect mods to get better since many people play them and give feedback. But if the mod costs money, then there is a higher barrier to entry, so less feedback, so lower quality, so less incentive to buy it.

Speaking from personal experience, the amount of feedback is almost never a problem for quality control, but your own time to work on the issues that have already been reported.

There's an additional hurdle that unlike professional QA people who (assumedly) have to give more detailed and useful feedback, a lot of mod feedback is just useless noise. Sometimes it's kinda dickish statements "UR MOD MADE MY PC EXPLODE U IDIOT I HATE U", but oftentimes it's just vague and unhelpful things like "A few days after I installed this my game CTD's, please help". I don't necessarily blame users, however, for the latter, because oftentimes these people honestly don't know what is going on because they don't have any experience with this sort of stuff. There are of course always a group of helpful players (and often these are players who are also modders themselves, and/or at least know a bit about modding, so they know what sort of things to look out for and how to express them), but they tend to be in the minority.

Intriguing! I honestly didn't really expect them to change their minds.

I suspect, though, that it will be attempted again at a later date.

The tone of the statement, particularly towards the ending, makes me think they're hinting this might be something they'll try in the future.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I will say this, though: the modders who were the guinea pigs for this whole thing sure got shafted. They've been vilified now and won't even have the benefit of making money. The blowback will hurt their free mods.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I just donated $5 to schlangster for SkyUI 4.1. Hardly anyone on the front line of the mods brawl came out well, but in all fairness, I would happily have bought SkyUI 4.1 as a DLC (even though it shouldn't have been necessary), so it seemed once again that the most ethical thing to do was make a donation and send a note hoping that he will still bring out 5.0 anyway,

If I still played Skyrim regularly I'd be willing to donate to the modders that made it. I would NOT be willing to buy it if it was official DLC. Bethesda releasing a game with a terrible UI and then making you pay to fix is the exact definition of BS.

 

[GenMarshall]

This just came into my YouTube subscription inbox:


Link to video.