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Of Videogame Modding and Money
Suriko
AustraliaRegistered User regular
AustraliaRegistered User regular
What's all this fracas about, then?
In a nutshell, Steam now allows mod creators to charge for their mods.
How much money are we talking about here?
- Mod creators can choose the amount. Most are running $2-$5, though joke prices of $99.99 have been seen.
- Donation links set up by modders themselves are being removed from mod pages by Valve; you go through their system to ensure the mandated split.
- Payment is split 75% / 25% for Skyrim mods, with 25% going to the creator, and 75% to Valve and Bethesda. This is one of the bigger controversies about all this business.
Which games are in on this?
Bethesda has signed on with Skyrim (and presumably future Fallout/TES titles), and Garry from Garry's Mod has expressed interest as well..
There'll still be free mods though, surely?
Yes. But.
Nexus has confirmed at least 40 mods have been hidden for fear of people taking their mods and rehosting them on Workshop as paid mods. This isn't an unreasonable fear, as exactly this has happened. Some free asset creators, of whom give their content away for use in other mods, have announced they're stopping, since their work would be part of commercial mods. An additional problem is mods (free or otherwise) with dependencies on paid mods.
So how will problematic content being sold be handled by Valve?
They will take down content upon being legally compelled to do so via DMCA takedown. How effective this will be is unknown, and can only be policed after the fact.
What if I buy a mod and it doesn't work?
You have 24 hours to get a refund. After that:
What about mods that are already free? They're safe, right?
Haha, no. Some have been pulled for future monetisation, while others have stayed up with in-game popup ads to incentivise buying the paid version.
Additional reading:
The Valve page explaining the scheme
An informative Reddit post from Chesko, who was the first to pull a monetised mod from Steam.
Fantastic Forbes overview of the situation.
In a nutshell, Steam now allows mod creators to charge for their mods.
How much money are we talking about here?
- Mod creators can choose the amount. Most are running $2-$5, though joke prices of $99.99 have been seen.
- Donation links set up by modders themselves are being removed from mod pages by Valve; you go through their system to ensure the mandated split.
- Payment is split 75% / 25% for Skyrim mods, with 25% going to the creator, and 75% to Valve and Bethesda. This is one of the bigger controversies about all this business.
Which games are in on this?
Bethesda has signed on with Skyrim (and presumably future Fallout/TES titles), and Garry from Garry's Mod has expressed interest as well..
There'll still be free mods though, surely?
Yes. But.
Nexus has confirmed at least 40 mods have been hidden for fear of people taking their mods and rehosting them on Workshop as paid mods. This isn't an unreasonable fear, as exactly this has happened. Some free asset creators, of whom give their content away for use in other mods, have announced they're stopping, since their work would be part of commercial mods. An additional problem is mods (free or otherwise) with dependencies on paid mods.
So how will problematic content being sold be handled by Valve?
They will take down content upon being legally compelled to do so via DMCA takedown. How effective this will be is unknown, and can only be policed after the fact.
What if I buy a mod and it doesn't work?
You have 24 hours to get a refund. After that:
Yeah...A. Sometimes one mod may modify the same files as another mod, or a particular combination of mods may cause unexpected outcomes. If you find that mod has broken or is behaving unexpectedly, it is best to post politely on the Workshop item's page and let the mod author know the details of what you are seeing.
What about mods that are already free? They're safe, right?
Haha, no. Some have been pulled for future monetisation, while others have stayed up with in-game popup ads to incentivise buying the paid version.
Additional reading:
The Valve page explaining the scheme
An informative Reddit post from Chesko, who was the first to pull a monetised mod from Steam.
Fantastic Forbes overview of the situation.
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Gopher's bit about it, sharing because people like me pay attention. Short but informative.
I put forward that a good idea with no possible good implementation is not, in fact, a good idea.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
This is where I'm sitting right now. I don't see any way to prevent fraud the way Valve has this set up.
Conversely, how long does it take you to figure out if a mod is the best thing since sliced bread?
On one hand, I've played/used a number of mods that clearly took a lot of time and effort and were great. Hell, there are literally games out there that are trash/unplayable in vanilla form that the modding community has turned in to fantastic gems. I honestly wouldn't mind tossing a few dollars to those kinds of things.
On the other hand, everything else about this.
I guess my biggest concern (as far as Bethesda games go) would be the fate of those sweet compilation mods. Y'know the ones that have a hundred different mods all hand tailored to play nice with each other so all you have to do is download one thing and BAM you got all the "must have" mods without having to build a Dark Altar to an evil God to get it all to work.
edit- I reached a verdict! Modders should stick to having a "Donate" link. Nothing good can come of this.
edit 2- Jesus, Steam can't even police all that early access garbage on their store. How the Hell did they expect to handle something as nebulous as mods?
A lot longer than 24 hours at least. Mods should be a labor of love and contribution should be voluntary. All this opens up for is cash grab attempts and an overall worse and fragmented game community.
It seems like Steam has been going downhill for long time now. Non existent customer service and poor quality control aside it really seems like GOG are the superior choice now.
As this is though. What about the next Bethesda game? WIll it cost $60 to have it crash over and over again because you need to buy a RAM bugfix in the workshop effectively making getting a usable game more expensive?
If the idea is "we should enable modders to receive compensation for their efforts", then couldn't some kind of tip jar be a workable implementation?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Modders have been doing the donation thing forever already without Valve and BethSoft trying to get a cut.
Yes, that's true. But not on Steam.
The idea is for "Valve to enable modders to receive compensation for their efforts."
It's not inappropriate for Valve to take a piece, since they are hosting files and moving funds. I think a lot of people don't see it as problematic that the company that made the modded game receive something, although that's likely a smaller number than the first group. The actual percentages that Valve launched the service with, though, aren't making consumers happy.
You could just as easily say, "Modders have been making their mods available forever without Valve getting involved." But folks generally saw Valve integrating mod support into the platform as a positive. At least I don't remember this much teeth-knashing when the benefit rolled out. Is the idea of a company receiving some level of compensation for providing a service so anathema in itself?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Sticking to the example of just Bethsoft games, that won't work if mods for their next game(s) are only able to be installed via the Workshop, as Valve has already begun to make people remove donation links from Workshop pages, telling them to get with this new scheme instead.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I mean, are you having trouble seeing what the difference is here or what? This set up is of negative benefit to consumers, limited benefit to content creators, and infinite benefit to Valve and BethSoft.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It doesn't matter either way, since the 'refund' is actually a steam wallet refund Valve gets your money weather you like the mod or not.
This is just so stupid on so many levels. They should be kissing the ground the modding scene walks on. Sigh.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
http://i.imgur.com/Pqn91pv.png
There's a shitstorm a'comin'.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I will say I've had a good laugh looking at some of the joke stuff that keeps popping up on the workshop.
Wow, dude's pretty direct. But I do find myself agreeing with a lot he's saying. I like that he he specifically addresses the possibility for abuse as well.
- If modders want to continue to mod for the love of modding, they have that option.
- If modders want to continue to mod and to receive donations, there's Nexus.
- If modders like being paid for it, and feel that they could receive more money from using Steam's system than from using donations, there's that option too, and I'm fine with that.
- If users are mad that they now have to pay for mods that they have for free or had donated for in the past, then they should take it up with the modders who've chosen to be paid for their mods.
- If users are mad that modders are only getting 25% of the cut on Skyrim, they should take it up with Bethesda - as I understand it, Valve is taking a 25% cut (basically, the same as they'd take on games) and Bethesda is taking a 50% cut.
The only people in this I have a problem with are modders who are stealing resources from other modders for monetary gain or to reduce the monetary gain of others. We'll see how well that works out. Hopefully, with tarring and feathering.I'm going to assume that people have the best of intentions when they say that they think that modders would make more money through donations than through paid mods, but I strongly suspect that the majority of people who use mods don't actually donate. I suspect that the well-known and popular mods being some of the early options on the new model indicates that the creators have done the math comparing downloads to donations and that they feel that they'll make more money this way. I could be wrong. People might be more generous and altruistic than I'm willing to give them credit for in this situation. But my strong suspicion is that most modders will make more money on their hobby this way, or believe that they will, and that's the primary reason for their choice.
What are the odds that the Midas Magic person has made $25,000 on his mod through donations? $10,000? $5,000? I could easily see a scenario where Midas Magic could lose 75% of its user base and still make more for the person at 25% per sale than it could via donations.
Adding a "donate" button to the workshop page and taking 10% of the cut would have accomplished the stated goal without all the greed. The current scheme smacks more of some corporate executive's money-making scheme than any kind of boon to the modding community.
These days I'm a bit worried about the future of Steam. I've invested so much money in games on that platform that I'm basically stuck there, so any changes in the way things work, especially conversion of free services into paid ones, are very concerning.
I mean, once you start deciding to charge for things, where does it end? In 2025 am I gonna be paying a dollar per friend request and ten cents per Steam message? These features all have a non-zero upkeep cost, so that right there justifies Valve in trying to recoup their expenditures in any way possible RIGHT? </slipperyslope>
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Like, maybe going forward the community will adapt to the changing environment and this will be less of a problem, but right now loads of mods have dependencies on other mods along shared code and assets.
And once you start putting a price on that, the subject of "who should this money go to" gets super weird. Like Valve and Bethesda are going to take their cut as the platform owners, sure. But just in terms of people who created and contributed towards that mod, which up until now may well have been a very casual and open thing where nothing more is needed than something like "shout out to this dude who let me use this thing in my mod", now becomes a financial matter.
I don't really know where that goes from here honestly, and I think that no matter what the Skyrim paid mod landscape is going to be crazytown just because they laid this payment infrastructure on top of the boiling chaos that was already there. This shit was not even simple BEFORE money entered into it.
What I'm really interested to see is how the modding community handles a game where the paid mod infrastructure is there from the word go. I think that's going to be where the real story is.
They already have a solution. It's called "throw your hands up in mock helplessness and point at your army of lawyers then smirk and shrug".
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I can see a situation where one modder finds out their content has been appropriated by someone commodifying assets months down the road - what happens to the folks that've purchased that product? Steam wallet refund I assume, but what happens if that product is substantial enough that disabling/removing it starts messing up purchaser's saves?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Well normally the protection for people who unknowingly purchase stolen property is "none".
Anyone with a modicum of care or knowledge of the scene would know this is the case. The cut also seems incredibly bogus to me.
I have a nice Steam collection, and of course I'll keep playing the games I already own on it. But for future purchases? I'm cutting Steam off over this. I fully expect Fallout 4 to be 3rd party DLC only through the workshop, which is a betrayal from Bethesda more than anything, but there you go.
I gueeeeess... So should valve be all pawn-shop levels of content identification to protect the buyer than? Gah the whole thing is so weird.
That last line is damn near prophetic.
It's amazing that even on an internet forum full of nerds this kind of stupid, reductive stereotyping still takes place.