Paying for mods

[thecrazyscot]

It's kind of naive to assume that all that would happen under such a system is that some hobby modders would start to be paid for their hobby. The field would be flooded with professional or semi-professional modders, with all the changes to the community that would entail.

I disagree. Many modders would continue to make stuff for free - sure, there might be a large amount of mods being charged for, but there will also be many that are free.

Some modders who would charge for some of their work would probably also release other mods for free.

Like I said, though, I think the framework needs to be correctly set up for it to work, and I think it would only really work well on a new game without a long established modding community.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

That's really simplistic. First of all, while editors and stuff are nice to expand your modder base, "providing mod tools" is mostly about disclosing the source. Which is their IP.

As a paid modder, you also profit from:
- an already existing player base that can number millions
- no need for marketing / spread of awareness
- lack of skill in one area can be "outsourced" by relying on the base game (what I mean by that is that you cannot make a quality standalone mod if you're bad at graphics design, but as a modder you have tons of assets already at your disposal)
- a well established fictional setting you can rely on, which is often its own IP

There's a lot of resources that go into producing a commercial game that go beyond coding it, and you're effectively benefiting from all of them.

Realistically, given the same amount of skill and work invested, I can see a paid mod making four time the money of a standalone game. Especially within the scale of most mods. Which makes this a fair percentage in my book.

That may all be true, but I think misses the point somewhat. Yes, a lot goes into producing a commercial game. And Bethesda is compensated for that when everyone buys the game. Considering they released the mod tools completely free of charge and have always done so for their games, any income they make from mods is bonus income, not something they were counting on to make the game profitable in the first place. Bethesda already made major bank on the sales of the game, of which modding tools were one of the key selling points, so then to say "and we also want 50% of what modder's make" smacks of serious double dipping, since those modders already paid them for the privilege of being able to make mods in the first place. It would be like Adobe demanding a percentage of all sales of videos that were edited with their software. This comparison is not exact, because with mods you are not just using Bethesda's editor, but their IP and such, so I think a percentage to them is fair, but I think 45% is too high and 30% is much more reasonable.

But people can disagree on that number without me being offended, to me Valve's cut is the far more unreasonable of the two and as long as that was diminished I would be a lot happier with the numbers. Considering Valve was doing no curation at all and is infamous for their complete lack of customer support, they were literally just providing a platform and bandwidth, and 30% is an absurd number for providing those. If they want to take that much they need to earn it by offering some kind of service that isn't already offered free at sites like the Nexus, some quality assurance or customer support or something.

 

[Leoreth]

I disagree. Many modders would continue to make stuff for free - sure, there might be a large amount of mods being charged for, but there will also be many that are free.

Some modders who would charge for some of their work would probably also release other mods for free.

But as I said before, in that event it's likely that the modding community will be split in half with little interaction between both worlds. Which in turns makes many kinds of free mods more difficult or completely impractical to create.

Like I said, though, I think the framework needs to be correctly set up for it to work, and I think it would only really work well on a new game without a long established modding community.

Nah, it's the other way around. That they were even considering it for Skyrim is because of its active modding community. If you rely on no community being there the whole thing will be dead in its tracks. Look at Civ5 modding to see what happens if the developer doesn't care for their modding community.

That may all be true, but I think misses the point somewhat. Yes, a lot goes into producing a commercial game. And Bethesda is compensated for that when everyone buys the game. Considering they released the mod tools completely free of charge and have always done so for their games, any income they make from mods is bonus income, not something they were counting on to make the game profitable in the first place. Bethesda already made major bank on the sales of the game, of which modding tools were one of the key selling points, so then to say "and we also want 50% of what modder's make" smacks of serious double dipping, since those modders already paid them for the privilege of being able to make mods in the first place.

What, no, sorry, but that really misses the point.

I mean nobody reads the EULAs, but you have paid Bethesda to play their game only. Making a mod based on it for your own profit is a clear infringement of it. If Bethesda wants to enable you to do it, they can change the agreement at their own discretion and demand whatever they see fit. They're not taking anything away that was already yours.

And it's not really a credible argument that "they've already made enough". Why should they give their IP away for free so modders can make money? You're basically asking them to give modders a free ride on all the infrastructure and pre-existing advantages I enumerated. What for? If there's still money in their game and its franchise, its legitimately theirs to make it, adequate compensation of the modder for their own creativity, work and innovation provided.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

What, no, sorry, but that really misses the point.

I mean nobody reads the EULAs, but you have paid Bethesda to play their game only. Making a mod based on it for your own profit is a clear infringement of it. If Bethesda wants to enable you to do it, they can change the agreement at their own discretion and demand whatever they see fit. They're not taking anything away that was already yours.

And it's not really a credible argument that "they've already made enough". Why should they give their IP away for free so modders can make money? You're basically asking them to give modders a free ride on all the infrastructure and pre-existing advantages I enumerated. What for? If there's still money in their game and its franchise, its legitimately theirs to make it, adequate compensation of the modder for their own creativity, work and innovation provided.

And had you bothered quoting the rest of my post, you'd see that I agree with that. I agree that Bethesda taking a cut is appropriate and deserved, and have said so multiple times in this thread and elsewhere. I merely think that the percentage was too high.

 

[Mise]

I simply don't accept the argument that, because you're using Bethesda's game, Bethesda are entitled to a share of your revenue. Bethesda have sold you a copy of the game. And anyone who uses your mod also has to pay Bethesda for a copy of the game. So Bethesda have already been fully compensated for having developed the game. What is missing? What extra have Bethesda done, in between selling the game to modders and gamers, and a mod being created and released, that they need to be compensated for?

 

[Leoreth]

If you don't accept the concept of intellectual property that's of course alright.

 

[ummmm........]

I simply don't accept the argument that, because you're using Bethesda's game, Bethesda are entitled to a share of your revenue. Bethesda have sold you a copy of the game. And anyone who uses your mod also has to pay Bethesda for a copy of the game. So Bethesda have already been fully compensated for having developed the game. What is missing? What extra have Bethesda done, in between selling the game to modders and gamers, and a mod being created and released, that they need to be compensated for?

Wow that took me back.

I was going to log in just bc this was the top thread and say "No, I don't think I'd pay for a mod bc the base games always give me more than I have time to do" then I see this. It took me back to the virgin days of the internet, where I'd see people arguing things like "We've always made mix tapes, why can't I rip a song off a cd and put it on the internet".

I don't actually care about that.

What does interest me is the thought process of people who come up with posts like that. Is it rhetorical? Or do you not value intellectual labor? Do you also believe that the products of physical labor are ownerless? Do you believe that once something exists in the world -- be it physical or other -- it belongs to everyone equally? If the product of intellectual work is ownerless, why should anyone pursue intellectual work? And, perhaps most importantly, how do you earn your living . . ?

I'm not looking for your defense, I already know you're wrong. I'm honestly curious about how your mind sees these things working out long term, because I like people, and I like understanding how their minds work . . .

 

[Mise]

If you don't accept the concept of intellectual property that's of course alright.

I accept the concept of intellectual property rights as a legal and economic tool for compensating people for (intellectual) work that they've done, in order to incentivise the creation of things that people value. So again, what has Bethesda not already been compensated for? What else are we trying to incentivise by allowing Bethesda to receive 75% (or 50% or whatever) of modders' revenues?

I'm not sure why you think I reject intellectual property in general.

EDIT: Actually, since people seem to want to put words in my mouth instead of engaging with me in good faith, I'll stop asking questions and start answering them myself.

There is already a market mechanism for compensating Bethesda for whatever they provide modders with: the price of the game. A game with lots of mods will sell more copies. Alternatively, a game that is easy to mod will have more mods, which means Bethesda have to do less work to produce the game in the first place (i.e. if they know that modders will make improvements after release). There's nothing missing from this. Paid mods ought to increase the number and quality of mods available (naively, anyway), which ought to increase the attractiveness of Bethesda's current and future games, should paid mods be available for those too, to consumers. This makes Bethesda more money. There is already a market mechanism for capturing whatever it is that Bethesda provide to modders, and that's Price. We don't need a new set of contractual agreements to capture this, because it's already captured. Nothing is missing. IP rights have already done their job, by creating a good whose value can be fully captured through the pricing mechanism. A new set of IP to capture more than this would simply be economic rent seeking, because Bethesda have created nothing new that isn't already captured.

 

[Flying Pig]

I was going to log in just bc this was the top thread and say "No, I don't think I'd pay for a mod bc the base games always give me more than I have time to do" then I see this. It took me back to the virgin days of the internet, where I'd see people arguing things like "We've always made mix tapes, why can't I rip a song off a cd and put it on the internet".

That's a different argument - in that case, the CD maker loses the revenue of selling the track to anyone who downloads it for free. In the case of mods, that doesn't happen. The comparison is totally invalid.

 

[Leoreth]

EDIT: Actually, since people seem to want to put words in my mouth instead of engaging with me in good faith, I'll stop asking questions and start answering them myself.

Sorry, the post was not meant to be dismissive, but pointed. I appreciate that you took the time to write a longer post in response, but I didn't have the time at that moment to go into very much detail, and felt that most of that would have been a reiteration of previous arguments. Sometimes it's easier to propel a discussion forward in this way.

In response to your argument, would you feel the same if I started writing and selling Twilight fanfiction? Is Stephenie Meyer adequately compensated because I already paid for her books when I read them? I mean, what is she isn't doing anything anymore, I'm the one writing the fanfiction.

Spoiler :

Or do I first have to remove all references to vampires, rename the characters and call the book Fifty Shades of Gray?

 

[Mise]

Twilight fanfiction doesn't require someone to have read Twilight first. I mean, if it did -- if the Twilight fanfiction was so dependent on Meyer's prior work that it was impossible for anyone to read unless you have already read Meyer's -- then there wouldn't be a problem, would there? People have to pay Meyer in order to read fanfic, so Meyer isn't losing; in fact, she's gaining by the existence of fanfic, either because fanfic authors are willing to pay more for the book if they are able to make money from it, or because readers are willing to pay more for "book + opportunity to read fanfic" than for the book alone (in reality, it's a combination of both mechanisms, and also via increasing sales rather than increasing price).

But if the Meyer's products aren't necessary in order to enjoy Twilight fanfic, then yes, you would need to create an extra IP right to capture the value of the "platform" or "universe" that Meyer provides to authors of fanfic.

 

[Leoreth]

(In my experience, most fanfiction doesn't really work if you haven't read the work it's based on. It's actually even more similar to modding than I thought when I came up with the example. Fanfic authors also heavily rely on the groundwork that was done for them, and can skip some of the harder aspects of writing, such as characterization and world building.)

Fair argument, so in your opinion a mechanism like you proposed for modding should also be adapted in the literary world? Because that's definitely not how IP rights are usually exercised there. I'm fairly certain Meyer (or her publisher) would sue you if you tried to sell a book based on Twilight.

 

[Mise]

Personally I don't care about the literary world, but yes, that seems more fair to me. I don't think IP rights are particularly well constructed in a lot of cases - they seem to serve the interests of monopolistic publishers, and not particularly the interests of people who create original works. For example, if Meyer did successfully sue a fanfic author who was selling a book based on Twilight, how much of that would go to the publisher? Quite a lot I'd imagine. Now, in the past, where publishing was genuinely very expensive, time consuming, and logistically difficult, such a percentage was probably justified: publishers took on a huge risk whenever they, for example, paid an author in advance of receiving the finished product, or spent time and money editing a book that was not guaranteed to recoup its costs, etc etc. But these days, the cost, difficulty and hence risk is a lot lower, so it's harder to justify the sorts of percentages that publishers are able to command. And the main reason they're able to command such percentages is the way IP laws were set up, for the way that publishing worked 150 years ago. If we're talking about IP law more generally, which we seem to be, then I think we could certainly make broader changes to it, so that a fairer share goes to creators of original works, and less to companies who, in the past, took on a lot of risk, but nowadays take on far less risk, and thus require far less compensation.

 

[Rashiminos]

I don't think anyone intends for them to actually sell. I must admit I hadn't thought of what happens if they do though.

I don't have nearly as much faith in people as this post. Taking advantage of a turbulent new situation to swindle people has a long track record.

 

[ummmm........]

That's a different argument - in that case, the CD maker loses the revenue of selling the track to anyone who downloads it for free. In the case of mods, that doesn't happen. The comparison is totally invalid.

It wasn't really a comparison. One misunderstanding about the nature of intellectual property reminded me of another misunderstanding about the nature of intellectual property . . .

You do make a good point that the first misunderstanding is far less common now than it was when it first became relevant, so it follows that perhaps the second will become less common over time as well. You sir have restored my faith in humanity, and that's not an easy thing to do . . .

I commend you and take my leave

 

[BvBPL]

I don't think IP rights are particularly well constructed in a lot of cases - they seem to serve the interests of monopolistic publishers, and not particularly the interests of people who create original works.

That's an effect of publishers asking their authors to sign over the rights to enforce the copyrights when the two contract to publish a book, not a direct consequence of intellectual property law.

 

[Mise]

That's an effect of publishers asking their authors to sign over the rights to enforce the copyrights when the two contract to publish a book, not a direct consequence of intellectual property law.

Yes I understand that. I'm probably not using the terminology correctly, but tbh I'm less fussed about words than I am about ideas. So to put it in other words, the idea is that IP law that made sense when publishing was very difficult and risky lead to the creation (by necessity) of publishers who have quite a great deal of money and power on one side, and authors with relatively little money and power on the other. Nowadays, the difficulty and risk of publishing is much lower, but the power difference still exists, and is reinforced (or at least, not diminished) by current IP laws. This asymmetry leads to things that, in the past, would have been genuine value creation, but now are straightforward rent seeking.

But this is really beside the point when it comes to paid mods. There isn't anything missing from a functioning market for paid mods: IP rights have entirely done their job, and value is wholly captured through the pricing mechanism. If IP law necessitates (or even permits) the creation of contracts that capture more value for the publishers than the free market would allow, then this is rent seeking.

 

[BvBPL]

Point of information: physical publishing costs have been increasing quite a bit for the last fifteen years, at least on this side of the Atlantic.


A system of contracts between a multitude of authors and publishers is rather unlikely to represent anything other than what the free market would allow, eh? If publishers can consistently negotiation contracts more favorable to themselves than their authors than that consistency is evidence that the free market favors placing more power in the hands of the publisher.

 

[Mise]

Point of information: physical publishing costs have been increasing quite a bit for the last fifteen years, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

Fair enough - as I say, I'm not particularly interested in physical publishing, and I don't know about that industry at all. I was just asked about it in analogy to computer games and mods, so I answered in analogy to computer games and mods. This might be evidence that such laws are still needed in publishing. But I doubt that costs or risks have risen significantly since the 19th century overall. "Quite a bit" could be from a very low base. Again though, I'm not really arguing about physical publishing.

A system of contracts between a multitude of authors and publishers is rather unlikely to represent anything other than what the free market would allow, eh? If publishers can consistently negotiation contracts more favorable to themselves than their authors than that consistency is evidence that the free market favors placing more power in the hands of the publisher.

Sure, given that these rights exist and can be traded on some market, this is a priori evidence that the price of those rights is optimal. But while a Libertarian might take this as axiomatic, economists would say that it's not at all conclusive. You would need to look at whether abnormal profits were being made in that industry. In theory, a free and fair market in one industry would produce risk-adjusted returns on capital no greater than any other industry in which there was a free and fair market. In practice, there's no such thing; but we can say that industries as a whole shouldn't have risk-adjusted ROCEs significantly greater than the average for all industries over the long run. I don't know whether this is the case in developing computer games in general; if an authoritative source told me that there were no abnormal profits in the games publishing industry, I'd believe them, as it's not obvious to me one way or the other.

Whether the same is the case for mod creators is another story. Do modders get risk-adjusted ROCEs greater or less than the average for all industries over the long run? I'd assume it's less, and would still be less under Valve/Bethesda's licensing scheme. Meanwhile, Bethesda get more profit for little to no extra risk, nor extra capital employed. So within the market for paid mods, it seems like Bethesda will indeed be generating abnormal profits under their licensing scheme. This is evidence that the licensing scheme is unduly skewed in favour of Bethesda; thus the market is not efficient, and the price of those contracts is not optimal.

Having said that, I think we need to go back a step. The existence of specific rights (e.g. something like "the right to modify the assets to this game and sell those modifications") is predicated on those rights being necessary for a free market to function. If that specific right, i.e. the right to modify the assets to this game and sell those modifications, is not necessary -- in other words, if the full value created by the modification and sale of a game's assets is captured in some other way -- then that right shouldn't exist, and the efficiency of the market to buy and sell that right, and the equilibrium price on that market, is irrelevant. For example, imagine if there were a specific right to paint a house green. The right to paint your house any other colour is already included in the price of the house, but for some reason, the specific right to paint a house green is defined separately in the law by statute, and can be bought or sold separately to the general property right of the house. The market to buy and sell that specific right might be perfectly free and fair; the price of that specific right might be perfectly optimal; and the housing market might similarly be perfectly free and fair, such that the loss of the right to paint a house green is already priced in to the price of a house.

But that doesn't mean that there should be a specific right to paint the house green, as distinct from the general property right over the house. The existence of a free and fair market for a specific right doesn't justify the existence of the right itself. The right needs to be justified first. Is the right to paint the house green necessary for a free and fair housing market to function? No, it's not; the right to paint the house green could easily be included in the general property right to the house, and the price of the house would adjust such that it fully captures whatever value there is in owning the right to paint the house green as well. In the case of paid mods, "the right to modify the assets to this game and sell those modifications" could be (or already is) fully captured in the price of a game; thus, Bethesda can be (or already is) fully compensated for having sold this right. Selling it again via Valve/Bethesda's licensing agreement is pure rent seeking.

 

[BvBPL]

I don't imagine intellectual property is a free market at all. Copyright is founded on the notion that the state will protect authors' rights to their work. The state involvement means there is no free market.

The various copyright interests are not created by the free market but rather by constitution and statute so the presumption that some or all of those rights should be incorporated into others is not representative of how it works. Instead, each copyright interest should be sold off expressly rather than through an implicit license presumed because the relative value of something for sale supposedly encompasses several of those rights.

I'm uncertain if the return on capital model is appropriate here at all. The benefit to author, and his likely publisher assignees, given through copyright law is intentionally greater than one would receive in a free market because that encourages future artistic production from the same and other authors. Furthermore, most mod creators seem relatively uninterested in profiting from their work at all, indeed given the time involved in creating a mod it would seem that it costs them quite a bit in terms of time that could be used in a more profitable manner.

I'm not convinced that merely because the publisher stands to make a healthy profit on the work of modders that this is impermissible merely because the publisher already made a healthy profit selling its work to the consumer previously because the tenants that underlie a free market and the assumptions about it are largely inapplicable in copyright.