
Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers - gkwelding
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32493895
======
erikb
Let's not underestimate what Valve has done here. At first they tried to give
passionate content providers a way to also make some money. That's a huge
thing. Most modders can tell you about it. Then they screwed up, which can
happen if you try something the first time. I think it's okay, but I
understand why people are pissed. Then the boss himself comes and talks to
people on reddit to see what is going on. He gets informed first, includes
peoples ideas in his opinion, before making a decision. We know many big
companies who wouldn't even thing about such a move. Finally they decide to
shut it down as a failure and give back the money. All in all a very strong
move. This at least made me believe in Valve again, after the last months
slowly shipped away on my support for them. Kudos!

~~~
michaelt

      At first they tried to give passionate content providers
      a way to also make some money.
    

Given that the "passionate content providers" only make 25% of what users pay,
I think that's a very generous interpretation.

Edit: It doesn't matter if it's Valve or Bethesda or the tooth fairy that
takes the remaining 75% - the fact is this system does little to accomplish
the goal of "giving passionate content providers a way to make some money" \-
indeed it's so wide of the mark it's hard to believe that was seriously the
intention.

~~~
ux-app
I haven't been paying extra close attention to the whole fiasco, but there's
something that I don't understand.

Are people really more in favor of modders getting 100% of $0 rather than 25%
of $X?

Is there more to this debate that I'm missing?

~~~
kedean
The core of the issue came down to the effects on the modder community.

1\. Modders are hobbyists, not professionals. Many modders came right out and
said they would no longer make mods under this system, because the pressure to
charge means it becomes a job. They no longer would have the option to just
walk away from the mod. 2\. Piracy. Modders have explicitly made their mods
available for free. Once you have a system where they can be charged for, you
have freeloaders putting someone elses mods on steam to make money. Steam
provided no protection against this, the only resolution would be filing an
individual complaint or invoking DMCA, and Steam was leaving that entirely up
to the mod owners to figure out. 3\. This was seen as a hostile move towards
Nexus, the biggest provider of mods for the games in question. As soon as this
was announced, mod makers began removing their products from Nexus out of
concern that they would be dishonestly put on the Steam store. As Nexus is an
ad-supported service, fewer mods means less income, and it would not be due to
a capitalistic business reason.

In the end, most modders don't WANT to be paid for their mods, because it's
not a profession. I saw plenty of support for a donation system, however.

~~~
ux-app
_In the end, most modders don 't WANT to be paid for their mods, because it's
not a profession._

That's an interesting perspective. Sounds like there are some valid criticisms
of the system Valve has put in place.

To me it seems that gamers have cut off their nose to spite their own face in
this regard. It seems to me that a paid modding ecosystem would be a big win
in favor of gamers.

If lone hobbyists can improve a game so much, can you imagine if a studio of
5-10 could make a viable living from modding?

~~~
Vraxx
I think another valid pov from most of the gamers is the dislike for the
system that has been growing where once you purchase a game there are usually
a series of other purchases associated the game to get all of the content that
somebody else has been playing. It's extremely frustrating to many of the
players to have to continually purchase little bits of the game, and this
trend has been started by "day one DLC (downloadable content)" and persisted
with "pay to win" freemium models. In the end it seems most people saw this as
a cash grab by valve, pushed by Bethesda to milk even more money out of their
players. They see the charitable donations currently being given and want to
translate that to earnings that a game can make, and this doesn't sit well
with the fans.

~~~
chc
That POV doesn't seem very valid in the general case. It's extremely similar
to "I already bought a ticket to Avengers, so why are they charging me again
for the rest of the story?"

There are some cases where companies have been overly greedy and compromised
the core game to sell mods, but the general hatred toward expansion content
seems to come mainly from a desire to get things for free rather than a
rational complaint about harm they've experienced from expansion content.
You'll also see a lot of gamers suggest that charging $60 for a game is
morally questionable (unless you're Nintendo). The freak out over paid mods
seems to be that variety to me — it's really hard to say that the existence of
community mods devalues the core game. People just don't want to pay money for
things.

~~~
Vraxx
It's definitely that in part, I would have to agree with you. This generation
of gamer grew up with the relatively easy ability to pirate games instead of
pay for them and steam sales on PC. So there is some resistance to paying for
it even if it's not outspoken. My own personal reasoning (now that paying for
a game isn't saving weeks of allowance) relies more on resistance to change on
the way things have always been, with a bit of skepticism on the way they are
monetizing the mods with the split amount.

After playing multiple games by Bethesda that have been relatively unpolished
compared to what the modding community has done, I see the move as a cash grab
by Bethesda in releasing a game and cashing in on people who just want the
game to be more playable by selling the mods to other players as free
generated DLC content. I understand that the modders have a lot of a headstart
on the work as well, given to them by Bethesda, which is why I wouldn't
support modders selling mods on their own. I think the free + donate model has
worked very successfully in the past in both motivating and (I assume, but
can't be sure in generalizations) compensation.

My last note on the issue is that at the very least this move should not be
implemented on a fully developed modding ecosystem where the mods have already
intertwined to a degree that this causes a single person decisions to need to
be made by multiple mod developers. With mods using other mods, it would be
acceptable to have to buy the used mod if that was a design decision by the
original modder, but that information was not present as the ecosystem
developed and I think it introduces a great deal of harm. As a source I cite
all of the trauma that Nexus experienced in the wake of this system being
released.

------
gkwelding
I think Valve/Steam (and Bethesda) really screwed up on this one. Although the
idea of modders being fairly compensated for their work is a great idea the
execution was poor at best.

Only 25% going to the content creators? Really?

And a poor returns mechanism, getting a refund gets you banned from the steam
store for 7 days to stop abuse. That's a poor returns policy when you're
buying things like mods that might be of really poor quality once you start to
use them.

~~~
nailer
Ditto. I'd quite happily pay for mods - they add value, there's more a chance
of bugs being fixed, Steam would make installation less of a hassle. But 25%
going to the authors is awful. The game's original creators - who already
benefit from increased sales - additionally get more of the revenue than the
actual mod creator.

~~~
madez
It's an example for the perfectly accepted greed in the corporate world.

Valve claims that 30% share is fair while having one of the highest income per
employee of any company. That means that their share is too high.

It's more than what the government demands from you, while the government is
_much_ more important than Valve is for any business.

The CEO of Valve argues that money steers the community. That's true, and it
leads to slavery, drug trafficking criminal organizations and war if the
government doesn't regulate. Commercialization does not only have good
consequences. Though being able to extort more money out of the masses might
skew your vision on that.

Just because it sells doesn't mean people like it. It might be lack of
alternatives.

I'm not in principle against money. If you really think that you should,
offering a service to make payments to the authors easy might be good. But
among many things, DON'T BE RIDICULOUSLY GREEDY.

Let's suppose now that to develop the infrastructure for your service was
really expensive and the market volume is not big enough to get the investment
back with small percentages.

This is an interesting situation because even if you are "forced" to offer it
with 25% share for the author some authors will use it due to lack of
alternatives.

Right now I don't have a good solution to this problem. Maybe lower your cut
according with the return you already got until you arrived at a fair share?
Maybe the best would be if you didn't offer your service at all...

~~~
Tenhundfeld
Apple takes 30% of app store purchases, in-app purchases, and iAd revenue.
Google takes 30% of Google Play purchases and in-app products. 30% is a
reasonable share for the maintainer of a network to take.

As for the 25% to the author of the mod, that does seem unfair, but I don't
think that was Valve's decision. I think they left that up to the game
producer, Bethesda in this case. Bethesda chose how to split the remaining
70%.

As an aside, Valve's income per employee is totally irrelevant. Their 30% fee
is set by market forces. If they lost billions of dollars this year or if they
hired 10,000 people to handle support calls, the "fairness" of a 30% fee is
not affected. It wouldn't become more fair just because their income per
employee ratio changed.

That 30% is set by market forces. It's what we've all generally agreed a
marketplace can charge for operating the infrastructure. In this case, Valve
has a challenge, because there are multiple parties splitting the remaining
70%. So they might need to lower their fee to let the game producers and the
modders take larger slices of the pie.

~~~
madez
You say a share is fair when it's what the market currently offers.

That's obviously a remarkably stupid definition of fair.

~~~
nailer
Generally on HN we like to say why we think something is bad, rather than
merely labelling it as stupid.

Free market value is a common measure of fairness. You might disagree (eg, you
could argue Steam has a monopoly on PC gaming, likewise non-official app
stores are rare on cell phones, so it's not a free market), but you should
state why.

~~~
madez
And I like HN for demanding explanation. Shout-out to all the skeptics!

I focused the problem with his argument into one sentence that made it
intuitively understandable. Then I stated my opinion. I thought that'd be
enough explanation.

Free market value is often obviously unfair.

For example, in many companies the highest managers receive a hundred times
the average salary in the company. Nobody works for one hundred persons. They
just get so much because they can take it.

Prices in the market are heavily distorted by - among many things - incomplete
information, time delay, entry barriers, racism, stereotypes and criminality.

That digital distributors agreed on taking 30% doesn't make it necessarily
fair. It is fair if it includes so much work such that so much money is
necessary. However, I doubt they have so much cost to make their income per
employee fair.

Why is it not fair if they earn so much? Because they don't do so much more
for the society than for example the average firefighter and therefore
shouldn't earn so much more money.

~~~
nailer
> For example, in many companies the highest managers receive a hundred times
> the average salary in the company. Nobody works for one hundred persons.

I don't think anyone's actually making that argument. Rather they'd say the
highest managers may be providing 100x or more value to the company.

------
skizm
I'm a little disappointed in the gaming community. I think this was a step
forward. I mean, modders cannot legally get paid for their work now (donations
at the moment amount to little to no money even for top modders), this would
change that. 25% seems small, but when you realize that the modders are using
an engine, assets, and pretty much everything else produced by another company
and then just adding on to it, the cuts don't seem that unfail: 30% to valve,
45% Bethesda, 25% to modders. I mean, in reality Bethesda did most of the
work, and Valve is just taking their normal 30%. Also, the reason you're
content is popular is because it is an add-on to a popular game. Which means
your product comes out pre-marketed by Bethesda. Marketing budgets for AAA
games usually amount to about the same as development budgets. Also, there is
a free option. Use it if you want! I see nothing wrong with this, in my
opinion.

~~~
Raphmedia
> in reality Bethesda did most of the work

Yes, but no. Sure, they made the game, but why should they take such a big cut
of someone spending 6 months modelling 3d models, coding features, recording
sounds, etc.? A lot of games are still alive right now thanks to their modding
community and the hard work of modders.

Those people are not creating a product off the back of the big games. They
are modifying the current game to make it better. They owe nothing to the game
developer. If anything, the game developer owe them for fixing their game.

Take a look at the community patches of various games. Some of them fixes up
to half the bugs of a game, some fix all the bugs of a game. Why should the
game company take a big cut from that? "Thanks for fixing our game! Here, we
will sell your patch, now take 25% of the profit of your work!" ... Makes no
sense.

The game companies should be the ones getting a small cut. They are getting
free content, free support for their game, free bug fixes, free publicity.

I would rather work for free than get the wool eaten off my back.

~~~
skizm
Bethesda did not ask for the fix. They have no obligation to compensate them
financially.

Also, the amount of work one developer did in 6 months modding the game is
probably still only an insanely small fraction of the work that went into
coding the game engine being used. Which is probably written by dozens of
programmers for months if not years.

Last, if you don't want them to make money on your mod, mark it free. This is
totally an opt-in feature. No one is forcing modders to do anything.

~~~
Raphmedia
> Bethesda did not ask for the fix. They have no obligation to compensate them
> financially.

This is why this isn't about Bethesda paying or not paying modders. This is
about why the hell should Bethesda get 75% of the profit out of a modification
that was made on someone's own time and sold through a third party. It's not
as if Bethesda was doing quality control, providing support, hosting the mods
or providing a marketplace. Steam is providing the hosting for the mods and
providing the marketplace, so it makes sense they get that small cut.

Bethesda shouldn't be getting such a big part of the pie.

This is not about some mods being free while other are paid. This is the
community saying "No, we don't accept that. The modder getting 25% of profit
for something that was done independently, without their support, is
unacceptable."

The game company is getting free content, free publicity, free developers.
They shouldn't also get the majority of the profit.

edit: fixed some numbers that were wrong (75% profit by company vs 25% profit
by modder)

~~~
skizm
If the community didn't accept it, they wouldn't sell the mods. Just mark them
all as free. This is opt-in.

Also, for the record, Bethesda only gets 45%, Valve get 30%, and the modder
gets 25%.

> The game company is getting free content, free publicity, free developers.
> They shouldn't also get the majority of the profit.

You have it backwards, the modder is getting free content (the base game),
free publicity (Bethesda spent $100m+ advertising Skyrim) and free developers
(everyone who developed the engine/assets/etc.). The modder is getting way
more free stuff than Bethesda.

~~~
Raphmedia
Your argument makes a lot of sense for developper that would create their mods
for profit and profit only. They would get free publicity for their products.
In that sense, yes, the game company is providing them with free ressources.

However, from my point of view, most mods are not seen or developed as
products to be marketed. Most are work of love, personal projects, team
projects. Fans getting together to fix a buggy but otherwise good game. In
that sense, those developer couldn't care less about the fact that the game
company is providing the game for free... they are fans, and all that they
want is to make something cool. They add content to existing games for the
sake of making the experience better.

Those are the ones that would rather work for free than being insulted by a
25% cut.

I believe the modders should get the majority of the pie. Steam should only
get a cut for the hosting, support and mod store. The game company should only
get a small cut. They already get a community and free content creators from
the modding community. They shouldn't expect to make money out of thin air.

Should EA get money from old Battlefield 2 mods? Should Bohemia Interactive
get money from Arma 1 mods? In my eyes, no. The only reason people are still
playing those games is because of the modding community. Do take advantage of
the presence of those players. Create events, contests, hire modders to create
official content. But don't simply get the big part of the pie for simply
being the creator of a game you don't even support, release bug fixes or
content for.

That being said, I understand that there is a legal side to all of this and
the game company must still get money for the use of their game. I however
believe that 25% is too small a cut for the modder.

~~~
skizm
You can't charge based on the modder's intent. If a mod was made out of love
vs. money grab is irrelevant. If people want to pay for it the question is how
much money should the modder get?

You're saying the 25% is a raw deal. Maybe it is, but that's the mass-market
deal. If you're mod is awesome, then maybe the publisher is willing to buy it
or pay for it. Counter Strike was a mod that Valve bought and made into a
standalone game. If it is shitty, well then you get the mass-market deal or
nothing. Everything is a negotiation. If you think the company is treating you
like shit, then don't do free work for them that they didn't ask for.

~~~
Raphmedia
How would you do it? Be glad the that some of the money is send to the modder
when you purchase a mod and have modders abandon games that take too big a
cut?

From my point of view, if this happens, it would simply hurt the modding
community as a whole. Big games like Skyrim will get a big quantity of low
quality mods that sells for lower and lower, driving the market down, making
the modder already small cut even smaller.

Damn, this situation is complicated. I understand why Steam pulled the plug
while they think about it more.

~~~
skizm
Bethesda/Valve will do some A/B testing with different games to see what the
optimal pricing/payout scheme is, but right now modders get absolutely nothing
(donations are near 0 even for top modders) so I just don't see how adding the
option to get paid (even a small amount) is a bad thing for the community.

As an aside, I actually think the way the payout scheme was pretty fair. I
mean valve is taking 30% of everything sold on their marketplace no matter
what, so if you write that out and only count the money that could go to the
publisher the split was actually 65/35 publisher/modder.

That said, I can understand people arguing too much or too little. All I am
saying is that I think, overall, paid mods are a net positive once they shake
out the kinks.

------
danr4
Ha! They actually caved! Incredible.

I've been following the evolution of the situation very closely, as i'm
actually a big believer in paid mods.

Valve's problem, I believe, was trying to take an existing ecosystem/market
that wasn't geared towards financial rewards, and tried to force it on it.
Even if 75% would have gone to the mod developers, the community would still
resist the change, since that's what the human mind is programmed to do, and
tight communities like those operate like a hive-mind, causing the outburst to
be exponentially stronger.

Edit:

Forgot to add, all the talk about "open collaboration cannot happen in an
ecosystem with financial incentives" \- I call BS.

Compare this to the world of software development and open source - which is
thriving. Mega corps & the little guy/girl building production quality
libraries and systems which generate big ass revenue streams.

What's the difference between a mod's code and an [insert your favorite
package manager here] package? Right, there's graphic assets, but maybe
someone's missing a collaborative graphic design market?

Game development is heading the same directions as the start-up world - from
an industry where only the big boys can play, to a collaborative effort where
the execution matters & creativity thrives.

~~~
bane
> Compare this to the world of software development and open source - which is
> thriving. Mega corps & the little guy/girl building production quality
> libraries and systems which generate big ass revenue streams.

Open source software companies rarely generate money from software, it's
almost all in services. Games don't have an equivalent services model e.g.
"Hire iD rep to come to your house to install the latest Quake Mods $175/hr,
minimum engagement 6 months FTE"

~~~
danr4
I'm not talking about open source software a-la Postgres, I'm talking about
libraries and frameworks a-la Angular/React/Bootstrap and it's ecosystem.

------
Laremere
An interesting anecdote from Gabe Newell in the reddit thread:

 _So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That 's like 1% of the cost
of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I
mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of
days)._

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_ste...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqojx8y)

------
UK-AL
I just don't think gamers understand, if you pay for high quality mods, your
gonna get more high quality mods.

It's a bit like the crazy excuses people make for pirating games.

~~~
pdpi
Clearly, that's a simplistic view of the world. The iOS app store (and, I
expect, Play too) is choking on shit-quality shovelware, while I pay zero for
Ubuntu and a whole range of other high-quality open source tools that have
tons of volunteer contributions.

Adding financial incentives to a community built on a share-and-share-alike
mentality skews things a lot. I can see this whole paid mod thing working, but
it's going to take a much gentler approach than what they did here.

~~~
dogma1138
You pay zero for Google products also but it just as does canonical has plenty
of full-time paid developers on their payroll.

In fact I can't think of a single real high end open source project which it's
development isn't fully supported by an army of paid developers.

------
cupofjoakim
I actually think that most people missed the big issue with paid mods. If
anyone can upload a mod to steam, that means that it would force modders of
free mods to upload these as well - otherwise they're in danger of someone
else uploading their content and earning money on it.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
You also enter into a Looney Toons lemonade situation where someone can
release your exact mod for slightly cheaper.

------
carlmcqueen
One thing I haven't seen written about this yet is where does the nickle and
diming stop?

As an adult I shrug of 1 dollar for this hat, 2 dollars for this shiny hat but
I remember well being younger with a very limited budget and trying to decide
which 50 dollar game to get knowing full well I would most likely not even
play the game I didn't choose.

These mods are on top of expensive games, when a sword is a dollar and a horse
skin is a dollar and the sky UI which is required for 80% of other mods is 3
dollars.. how can most afford this?

I worry about kids ability to understand budgets when a few dollars seems so
small now but adds up at the end of the month, at the end of the year.
Especially when it is now extending into the modding community.

------
SimpleXYZ
They should have probably made tiers.

0-1,000 downloads = nothing

1,001-100,000 downloads = donate button

100,001-1,000,000 downloads = big donate button

1,000,001+ downloads = set your own price, 50% share to modder

~~~
Zren
It's very easy to abuse ratings/downloads when there's no paywall.

------
Vaskivo
I gathered my thoughts in a comment on the Bethesda blog post:

[http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-
skyr...](http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-
on-steam/comment-page-2/#comment-418942)

TL,DR: Bethesda doesn't deserve the 45% of the sale, specially when they are
charging 60$ for the game. IMO, they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing
(and were already paid for the game/tools). And mods had value to the game,
and increase it's lifetime.

Two problems with paid mods:

1 - most modders are heavy modders (about a hundred mods _at a time_ ).
Knowing that, I can see some players realizing they will spend more than 100$
in a game.

2 - This can becomes Bethesda's business model. It can lead to a Elder Scrolls
6 with lackluster content, waiting to be filled with (paid) mods.

I don't have a problem with paid mods. I just think Bethesda is getting
greedy. Does adobe get a cut from Photoshop plugin sales? Does Unity get a cut
from Unity developed games?

How to implement paid mods:

\- Help modders choose a copyright license

\- Help track/prevent copyright infrigement. Many mods use other mods or are
"mod compilations". And track unauthorized mod uploads to the market.

~~~
vacri
_they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing_

Not true at all. They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism
for modding. They should get some percentage, like a royalty, but taking twice
as much as the people who write the mods is patently ridiculous.

~~~
smackfu
>They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding

Isn't that what paying the $60 for the game pays for?

~~~
Lancey
The $60 pays for the game, but to develop a mod for it, you're using tools
they've made for the game. They didn't have to provide those tools, they're an
additional service that Bethesda offers. Bethesda also added workshop support
in the first place. 45% is outrageous, but a 10% cut would be acceptable and
help fund the development of better tools and improvements to the mod
community.

------
orng
Although I think people should be rewarded for their work I don't really don't
like where this is headed. As others have noted the statement from Valve reads
as if paid mods are definitely coming in a not so distant future. Modders
getting paid is all well and dandy until you consider the way mods often
evolve and build on top of each other.

I spent a lot of my time as a young teenager on the custom ladder in Warcraft
3, where people played home made maps which essentially amounted to mods. This
was the birthplace of Dota and the place where many of us were introduced to
tower defence. Every time someone uploaded an original or fun new map people
would take their map and tweak it in some fashion or another and slowly the
maps would evolve. The versions of Wintermaul that people were playing years
after the original were definitely improvements upon the original.

If new maps/mods on the custom ladder had cost money this would never had
happened. I'm sure Duke Wintermaul wouldn't have been happy with all the
remixes of his vastly popular mod if he had been selling it himself. And,
although he might have updated his mod to improve balance and the such he most
likely would not have come up with several of the features that were included
in the late versions made by others.

I see people saying that modding is for hobbyists and I have seen several
modders claiming that they will never charge for a mod and that may very well
be the case. For now. Once paid mods are released they will slowly seep into
the community and the modders of the future will have been raised with paid
mods instead of free ones. Once upon a time video game companies would sell
their games in retail and then support it for free, now they charge for the
support cost through subscription fees, dlc or microtransactions. If customers
are OK with paying for it, why should they give away their work for free? The
same thing goes for modders.

~~~
existencebox
First; I wanted to just nerd out a little with you, because the custom ladder
you describe were the crucible of my gaming habits as well (geek cred, I think
I even have some screenshots somewhere of when I was playing a Wintermaul
clone with duke himself, from decades ago) :)

Second, I wanted to echo that there's a concerning parallel between paid vs
free mods and free to play gaming. In both, I think the proposed solution
_COULD_ be better. Some mods are ridiculous. (Skyrim on Morrowind? Some of the
system shock 2 total overhauls?) I would _love_ easy, consistent, and safe
channels to compensate the authors, and some sort of paid system seems fair in
that sense. Similarly, if a game can be released free and keep passive costs
going through balanced means (Path of Exile comes to mind) you CAN walk the
line of "ethical microtransactions" or whatever the hell you call it nowadays.

But it's SO EASY now to point out failures in the f2p model, games that just
gave up any attempt at legitimacy to pursue profit (which can be far more...
subversive, in a f2p environment as opposed to selling traditional games, e.g.
zynga). The worst part to this, to me, is that it's becoming the norm, as you
say. People "are OK with it", and it eventually becomes accepted practice, and
games that were once pillars of buy to play (guild wars 1 comes to mind) have
sequels that essentially let you whip out a credit card for most of the end
game gear, and fans who will _FIGHT_ you if you suggest this in any way moves
towards "bad f2p".

I see a lot of potential for the cornucopia of modding creativity and
availability we saw to fade in preference for monitization, and the true
impact of this may not be seen for decades. (Is there really a difference in
gamers who grow up being inspired by and playing with the hilariously
accessible mods all over the place, and those who just play box products, or
mods blackboxed so they behave as such? Selfishly, I can't but think so.)

~~~
orng
> I think I even have some screenshots somewhere of when I was playing a
> Wintermaul clone with duke himself

Now _that_ is cool.

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cbg0
The idea of compensating content creators worked extremely well for Valve for
games like Team Fortress 2, CS:GO and Dota 2, since they can get access to a
large talent pool with no investment. You have people creating assets for
these games and getting a cut of profits, which is pretty cool, but on the
other hand this means that Valve doesn't have to invest many man hours to
create their own content for these games, effectively letting the community
handle voting for new assets and approving the popular choices.

This can become pretty dangerous for games that will start popping up with
relatively limited amount of content in them but with 'Infinite possibilities
through modding', developers leaving it up to fans of the game to provide
additional content, either free or paid. What happens when these assets or
mods aren't maintained by the 3rd party that created them? Will the game
developer simply remove these or maintain them?

~~~
lsaferite
Actually, in abstract the idea of a game with no 'game' but just engine with
full mod support sounds interesting.

I guess that's what things like second life covered though.

One game that I love that has very little in the way of story is Don't Starve.
It has a great mod system that uses Lua to provide so pretty amazing mods to
the base game. Basically the entire game is written using the mod system with
only the lowest level engine parts being compiled code.

------
bmh100
I feel that it's appropriate to draw parallels to Twitch.tv streamers here.
Twitch streamers basically follow a patronage model. The main video stream is
free, though sometimes higher quality options are not. In exchange for a
monthly subscription, usually $4.99, viewers gain access to premium features,
such as the ability to chat when chat rooms are restricted to subscribers,
exclusive emoticons that can be used in any Twitch chat room, and even
benefits with other websites and services.

It is not hard to imagine that this business model could have been used with
mods. Mods would be prohibited from being paid-only, and an opt-in
subscription could be implemented. Users would sample mods risk-free
(financially at least) and could support the development of mods they deemed
worthy.

~~~
VLM
I like the idea of listing analogies of existing economic models.

How about minecraft? Tee shirts, lets play videos, outright donation buttons,
last but not least advertising encrusted download sites.

Something not discussed here, that did arise in the MC community discussions
about the valve store, was synergy, which usually is a four letter corporate
word, but it actually applies this time where a modpack project like feed the
beast has 115 mods, and the compilation is stronger than the linear
combination of any individual mod. Also if each FTB mod charged a modest $3
that means a working FTB modpack would be about $345, which suddenly isn't so
modest. Its basically impossible to get an individual mod designer out of
Ramen Noodle territory without making modpacks expensive enough to destroy
them.

------
Lancey
I really think Valve as a whole has been making bad decisions for a while.
They've been neglecting to push for the more innovative ideas that they're
known for and have instead been adding a lot of shady features to Steam and
their games that make them the most money. It's good to see that Valve still
listens to the community, and I hope this is the start of them moving back to
being fan-oriented rather than turning into another faceless corporation.

Not going to trust Valve as much as I used to until they start being
constructive again, of course. It's one thing to recognize a bad decision and
backtrack on it (something most video game publishers would never do), but
it's another to not make the bad decisions in the first place. Valve tends to
be heavily concerned with testing and user acceptance, and it seems weird that
they'd push a feature like paid mods without going over it with a fine tooth
comb first.

To me, paid mods seemed like an experiment in self-publication on Steam. Like
how Valve used Team Fortress 2 as a testbed for many features that would
eventually be used in Dota 2, it seemed like paid mods was a test of something
a lot larger, especially considering their stance on the existing Steam
Greenlight. Setbacks like this will probably mean we won't see what they were
planning from the beginning for a while.

------
belorn
The idea to sell unofficial third-party add-ons for third-party products sound
generally a dangerous concept, and doing so without any quality control or
responsibility sound to me as inviting destruction. If you pay for a product,
and it randomly breaks at a later date because of a patch, someone is going to
have to take responsibility. If its not the game developer (they didn't get
paid), and its not the mod developer (its not their fault that the game got
patched), its likely going to be the store who pocked 75% of the money. Add to
this the infinite ways mods can interact with each other, or mods that depend
on other mods, and the legal requirement to sell mods created by private
people seems impossible in the best of lights.

Donations, Kickstarter, and Patreon on other hand is currently already working
to provide compensation to passionate content providers. Valve could have gone
this way and made it easier to donate and support modders.

------
zyxley
The weirdest part of this whole affair is that they started with Skyrim, when
Skyrim's mod support through Steam Workshop is fundamentally flaky.

All the really thorough mods (AV, SkyRE, PerMA, Requiem, ASIS, DSR, FNIS, etc)
use third-party patchers and automated load order management, which Steam
Workshop can't handle at all since all it basically does for Skyrim is dump
files in a folder.

At least for it, it all adds up to "even if there are ones worth purchasing,
why would I buy mods through Steam Workshop when I have to manage them all
outside of Steam Workshop in the first place to use a large number of mods at
once?"

------
t4nkd
So, I was personally involved in a HL mod called The Opera, which for some of
you who may vaguely remember, is a mod based on the high action shoot 'em up
films by John Woo, also known as the Hong Kong Blood Opera genre. The game was
the first ever example of animated fabric(trenchcoats) in Half-Life, a tech
that carried over to Action Half-Life.

At the time it was kind of a big deal, but I also remember another big deal
during that time: when Valve bootstrapped Steam and forced everyone to start
picking up Counter-Strike updates through the software. Of course, mirrors
were provided a few hours after the main release, but, Steam was the first
place where the data was available.

This was a time when the main features of Steam were "preventing hacking" and
providing a better CDN. The little known game Day of Defeat managed to be
scooped up by Valve and the community couldn't wait to see what happened when
Valve and the Steam platform supported a game out of the gate -- Team Fortress
2 looked a lot like Firearms mod with sentries, and the communities were on
fire talking about Valve meddling with the mod community.

That time, a time I fondly remember growing up during, strikes me as strangely
familiar when I look at the conversations around paid mods in Workshop. The
funny thing is, though, _every_ game has paid mods now in the form of DLC. The
silly hat bullshit in TF2 should never generate real world dollars, this is
the virtual equivalent of a mod that your buddy can see you activate. Content
like new guns, maps, skins, models, etc used to _exclusively_ come from the
community, and infrequently in some "expansion pack" release from the game
developers themselves. There's a different problem with game development
companies and the incestious publisher relationship; but suffice it to say
that the primary game publisher, at least (over) a decade ago when I was more
involved with the community, was hugely flattered and took joy when their game
was modded.

Not that running a mod team is easy, it's not. I remember distinctly when one
of the main map builders for The Opera was hired by Raven. I remember too,
when model and skin engineers spent hundreds of dollars on gun rentals and
sound equipment to get the "bang" noise for each gun just right. I wish there
was a kickass way to pay him on the spot for that kind of investment, but now
there are so many "better" ways to run a grassroots development team
(crowdfunding not the least among them) and if you _actually_ kick ass and
produce high quality game content, you'll just get a job in the industry like
other people who kick ass at it. Or the community will bootstrap a development
shop and you can try your hand at running a team "for real".

Instead of trying to open up a bespoke "skyrim mod" shop and peddle high
resolution horse genitals for $3.99/testicle.

~~~
frik
I remember the "The Opera" mod. Good ol times. Only a few commenters in this
thread are/were actual real PC gamers (not Farmville/CoC).

I refused to upgrade to Steam and patched my HL1, CS 0.8 to 1.x with non-
Steam-patches. Valve was such a let down since Half Life 2 fake E3
presentation. HL2 was good, but many levels were cut (e.g. icebreaker) and
after all HL1 was the better game (except the Xen alien levels). Half Life 3
is running gag like Duke Nukem Forever was for 10+ years.

The greed almost destroyed PC gaming around 2006-2009, it revived due to the
casual trend and more players owning a PC/laptop. Nevertheless PC gaming is
still strong in certain countries in Europe and Asia. Sadly, the real-time-
strategy genre is completely dead (except StarCraft2 & clones) - Age of
Empires, Empire Earth, Command and Conquer (3 different series) will be
missed.

------
ryan-allen
Paid mods are fine, they should have led from the back, not the front,
somehow. The rates were bad, and the launch mods were just... crap useless
crap.

The people leading the charge were useless idiots too, they are happy to pay
for Skyrim and not for quality mods? There should be opportunity for content
creators to contribute in a significant way and get paid to do it.

This is just awful execution of a good idea, with the wrong rates for authors
and the delivery mechanism. It should have been 15% Bethedsa, 15% Valve, 70%
Creator.

I lament.

~~~
TheHypnotist
Why should modders get the most? Most of the work is already done for them.
You want a bigger piece of the pie? License the engine and make your own game.

~~~
Raphmedia
Yes and no. For a mod that is essentially changing some variables in order to
change some of the gameplay, yes.

However, if you create a mod that changes all of the game sounds, using your
own recordings, why should most of the profit go to the game company?

If you create a mod that completely overhaul the shader system, why should the
game company get the most of the profit?

If you create a mod that makes all of a game's textures HD, using your own
textures, why should the game company get most of the profit?

If you create a mod that patches all the remaining glitches and bugs of a no
longer supported game, why should the game company get most of the profit?

Those people are already supporting and increasing the games quality. They are
pretty much passionate and talented volunteers. Either you don't pay them, or
you pay them an honestly. You don't establish a system that allow you to piggy
back on their work in order to make profit.

------
ChikkaChiChi
I would try a subscription model similar to Spotify.

Let Bethesda charge 2 dollars a month for access to their workshop. Modders
then get a piece of the kitty for the number of subscribers to their mod.

Quality would increase because modders would want more subscribers, they would
work to keep their mods up to date so that people stayed subscribed to them,
and modders would not have to build an infrastructure to service and support a
customer base as if their entire enterprise was a single mod.

------
skizm
Can someone clarify: Did Valve shutdown the paid mod system, or did Bethesda
just turn off paid mods for Skyrim?

> We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop.

------
fivedogit
Valve... pressure... I see what you did there.

~~~
gkwelding
I'm glad you did, because I didn't... I'll just pretend like I meant to say
it...

------
warbaker
This is why we can't have nice things.

------
bpg_92
In Gaben we trust!

