A mod bundle where mod makers get negotiated fees as part of a contract with Bethesda not only would be handled easily by current IP law, but it would also mean official support for what becomes official content, instead of charging money for completely unsupported stuff that can break the shit out of everything.
I think this is somewhat off the mark. Modders have a contract with Bethesda in the game's EULA and a contract with Valve in the workshop's EULA. They also have negotiated fees. The negotiation in this case is "take 25% or don't sell your mods" because modders have no right to make much less profit off of mods without Bethesda's blessing anyway. It's also not true that Bethesda is charging money for unsupported software: the modder decides to charge, and the modder decides whether and how much to support the product. None of these arrangements are particularly revolutionary from a legal standpoint.
The notion that Bethesda has any sort of principles to uphold in "not promoting some modders over others" is, in light of this nonsense, total bullshit. They want money. And in this case, they want money for content they didn't even make, which is pretty sleazy.
A mod bundle where mod makers get negotiated fees as part of a contract with Bethesda not only would be handled easily by current IP law, but it would also mean official support for what becomes official content, instead of charging money for completely unsupported stuff that can break the shit out of everything. If Bethesda actually gave a shit about mod makers, they would treat and pay them in a way that at least resembles how they handle actual employess, instead of shitting on them and calling it ice cream.
And with mod bundles? Bethesda would have cheap, quick content they can sell to that 92% of the market they claim never uses mods. Skyrim has sold in excess of 20 million copies; if Bethesda can't manage to make a fat chunk of cash from volume sales with a market that big, they're incompetent as well as underhanded.
What? The idea of an open market without curation definitely fits the idea of not promoting some modders over others. It just also promotes the idea of Bethesda getting money from their mods. The two aren't mutually exclusive, just like your idea of "make mod creators pseudo-developers" isn't exclusive with Bethesda making money. You can have multiple philosophies in play that aren't inconsistent.
Yes, officially supported mods would be better for a certain subset of modders, though only through volume sales since it's doubtful they'd get a better cut for using up more of Bethesda's resources. It would also be "worse" for a lot of modders who would not have the option to make any money from their mods. Acting as if this is an objective improvement simply because the current system is bad is ridiculous. Also, again, Bethesda is not the person who is choosing to put up shitty, unsupported products on the marketplace; the modders are. Yes, Bethesda has OK'd this process, but that feels like getting a bad haircut at a strip mall and only being angry at the land owner; maybe they should assure quality, but you would also be justified in being mad at the dude who sold you a shitty haircut.
I mean, if it makes the modders money approaching tf2 item levels, I personally don't see the problem.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
Finally, DLC doesn't sell that well.Only half of consumers buy any DLC in a given year. 8% mod usage when only 14% of your players even play on PC is actually pretty solid given that, and simply releasing it as official DLC would only affect consoles, which requires more effort to cross develop.
I will bet you a paid DLC that far more than 14% of Skyrim's players are on PC. Did you get that number by looking at the sales percentage of physical copies within the first two days of release?
Finally, DLC doesn't sell that well.Only half of consumers buy any DLC in a given year. 8% mod usage when only 14% of your players even play on PC is actually pretty solid given that, and simply releasing it as official DLC would only affect consoles, which requires more effort to cross develop.
I will bet you a paid DLC that far more than 14% of Skyrim's players are on PC. Did you get that number by looking at the sales percentage of physical copies within the first two days of release?
You are correct, the source did say retail sales. I am not sure why they would fully exclude digital sales or even include PC sales at that point.
Finally, DLC doesn't sell that well.Only half of consumers buy any DLC in a given year. 8% mod usage when only 14% of your players even play on PC is actually pretty solid given that, and simply releasing it as official DLC would only affect consoles, which requires more effort to cross develop.
I will bet you a paid DLC that far more than 14% of Skyrim's players are on PC. Did you get that number by looking at the sales percentage of physical copies within the first two days of release?
You are correct, the source did say retail sales. I am not sure why they would fully exclude digital sales or even include PC sales at that point.
Valve's been pretty cagey with sales numbers, historically. I think the paid mods might be the first time they've freely listed how many units an item has sold.
Finally, DLC doesn't sell that well.Only half of consumers buy any DLC in a given year. 8% mod usage when only 14% of your players even play on PC is actually pretty solid given that, and simply releasing it as official DLC would only affect consoles, which requires more effort to cross develop.
I will bet you a paid DLC that far more than 14% of Skyrim's players are on PC. Did you get that number by looking at the sales percentage of physical copies within the first two days of release?
You are correct, the source did say retail sales. I am not sure why they would fully exclude digital sales or even include PC sales at that point.
Valve's been pretty cagey with sales numbers, historically. I think the paid mods might be the first time they've freely listed how many units an item has sold.
Not just Valve. It seems to be the exception when a company releases online sales figures outright.
We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.
To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.
But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.
Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.
I really do think Skyrim was still the right test subject for their particular brand of data-driven analysis. It just turns out the data said the PR blowback wasn't worth the gain. Still, at least this will settle the issue down for a while.
I ate an engineer
+3
Options
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Smart move.
If nothing else, its given them a lot to hopefully (re)think about with Fallout 4.
Hopefully when they bring it back for that, the whole idea will be heavily overhauled in some areas.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I'm both surprised and impressed they pulled the system. I'm not inherently opposed to the idea what they claim to want to do, but they definitely need to really think about this a lot more.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
Heh, for once I'm actually proud of the gaming community. Hopefully we'll now start pressuring them to add a donation button for mods, and hopefully Valve/Bethesda's tax on that is as close to 0 as possible.
+4
Options
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I'm both surprised and impressed they pulled the system. I'm not inherently opposed to the idea what they claim to want to do, but they definitely need to really think about this a lot more.
Indeed. I give them a lot credit for not digging in on this for months like a lot of companies would. Its damaged my viewpoint of Valve and Bethesda abit (well intentions or not, god..what a clusterfuck) in the long run and I'm abit more wary of them going forward but it still counts for something.
At least this proves their intentions were good
To me, that remains to be seen in how they reintroduce the system for the next game.
Fallout 4 I imagine won't be out until the very end of the year or early 2016 so they've got months to fine tune it and mull over the mountain of feedback and thoughts at least.
So did the modders that put up the stuff on steam lose all their profits or what
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
0
Options
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I'm gonna be more sad when Gabe Newell steps down as managing director
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
Any other company and the shareholders would be setting fire to the building. Just because they reversed course on what could be a major decision. Companies don't do that.
0
Options
MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
edited April 2015
I'm not at all surprised to see this killed off. Valve is a generally savvy company, but it's clear that they (and given the discussions I've seen about this around the internet, most everyone else) didn't understand how the TES community functions. But, again, Valve is pretty savvy, and it was pretty clear that this wasn't going to work in its current form. Maybe with a more complex marketplace with support for dependencies and resource packs, a delivery service that isn't roundly inferior to its free alternative, and a stabler game that doesn't necessitate the community to hack its own fixes and backend toolsets. Maybe.
Any other company and the shareholders would be setting fire to the building. Just because they reversed course on what could be a major decision. Companies don't do that.
Valve has remained privately owned specifically to avoid dealing with that kind of shit.
Heh, for once I'm actually proud of the gaming community. Hopefully we'll now start pressuring them to add a donation button for mods, and hopefully Valve/Bethesda's tax on that is as close to 0 as possible.
If you're proud of the gaming community right now, I highly suggest you go read the response to Gabe's post. It was vile, and sick. There as nothing to be proud of there. Getting your way because you threw a toddler tantrum is nothing to be proud of. For every reasoned, well thought out, piece of criticism there were ten go die/go kill yourself/I hope your family dies/I hope you get cancer posts.
There were valid, serious concerns with this system...but if we have to act like small children as a community to get our way, it's not worth it, and it's not something to be proud of.
Thinking about it more clearly, I don't think game programmers can ever get the moonlighting gig on the scale of artists, graphic designers, mapmakers, voice actors, sound designers, musicians, and everyone else that makes a modular asset that doesn't have complex clockwork components. Once you record voice lines for a game, you're done. You can sell it. People can't reverse engineer it. It's simplicity to implement. Therefore, you can put that up on a workshop, and it will make mad cash. You don't have to pull the midnight shift at Burger King to make up for it.
Programmers don't enjoy that luxury. All they can do is make their own game from scratch as much as possible, as a team if possible, and with a bunch of startup money to buy all those modular assets we expect from games. They have to be business managers even if they're not the director of the game, because they have to make their idea, make their idea work with everyone else's ideas, defend their idea, make others understand their idea, sell their idea, and continue to refine their idea pretty much as long as other people are interacting with it.
That's why there is a lot of great public license code but not a lot of public license music or models or voices that are any good. It's much easier to monetize your talents on the side if you are anything but a programmer in terms of game design, so you don't need to share.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
Thinking about it more clearly, I don't think game programmers can ever get the moonlighting gig on the scale of artists, graphic designers, mapmakers, voice actors, sound designers, musicians, and everyone else that makes a modular asset that doesn't have complex clockwork components. Once you record voice lines for a game, you're done. You can sell it. People can't reverse engineer it. It's simplicity to implement. Therefore, you can put that up on a workshop, and it will make mad cash. You don't have to pull the midnight shift at Burger King to make up for it.
Programmers don't enjoy that luxury. All they can do is make their own game from scratch as much as possible, as a team if possible, and with a bunch of startup money to buy all those modular assets we expect from games. They have to be business managers even if they're not the director of the game, because they have to make their idea, make their idea work with everyone else's ideas, defend their idea, make others understand their idea, sell their idea, and continue to refine their idea pretty much as long as other people are interacting with it.
That's why there is a lot of great public license code but not a lot of public license music or models or voices that are any good. It's much easier to monetize your talents on the side if you are anything but a programmer in terms of game design, so you don't need to share.
Aren't relatively simple apps and mobile games a way for programmers to make a buck off the clock if they choose?
Heh, for once I'm actually proud of the gaming community. Hopefully we'll now start pressuring them to add a donation button for mods, and hopefully Valve/Bethesda's tax on that is as close to 0 as possible.
If you're proud of the gaming community right now, I highly suggest you go read the response to Gabe's post. It was vile, and sick. There as nothing to be proud of there. Getting your way because you threw a toddler tantrum is nothing to be proud of. For every reasoned, well thought out, piece of criticism there were ten go die/go kill yourself/I hope your family dies/I hope you get cancer posts.
There were valid, serious concerns with this system...but if we have to act like small children as a community to get our way, it's not worth it, and it's not something to be proud of.
Nope, still proud. Horrible people will act like horrible people, children will act like children, surprise surprise. Those should be ignored accordingly, they won't invalidate any of the reasoned, well thought pieces of criticism raised, as you said yourself. For once the community stood up against the bullshit companies keep pushing on the consumers, and guess what? It worked.
I'm surprised Valve backed down on the issue, but I suspect we'll see this program or a program like it again in the future. Even this brief experiment showed that there is a market for mods that could be profitable for modders, distributors, and ip-holders. Valve just has to go back to the drawing board to find ways to cut down on consumer backlash. Some people will always be opposed to this idea because they're used to getting quality mods for free and don't want that to change, but others could be swayed if modders are offered a better deal or if a system of paid mods is established for a new game pre-launch (to avoid changing paid/unpaid dependencies).
Thinking about it more clearly, I don't think game programmers can ever get the moonlighting gig on the scale of artists, graphic designers, mapmakers, voice actors, sound designers, musicians, and everyone else that makes a modular asset that doesn't have complex clockwork components. Once you record voice lines for a game, you're done. You can sell it. People can't reverse engineer it. It's simplicity to implement. Therefore, you can put that up on a workshop, and it will make mad cash. You don't have to pull the midnight shift at Burger King to make up for it.
Programmers don't enjoy that luxury. All they can do is make their own game from scratch as much as possible, as a team if possible, and with a bunch of startup money to buy all those modular assets we expect from games. They have to be business managers even if they're not the director of the game, because they have to make their idea, make their idea work with everyone else's ideas, defend their idea, make others understand their idea, sell their idea, and continue to refine their idea pretty much as long as other people are interacting with it.
That's why there is a lot of great public license code but not a lot of public license music or models or voices that are any good. It's much easier to monetize your talents on the side if you are anything but a programmer in terms of game design, so you don't need to share.
Aren't relatively simple apps and mobile games a way for programmers to make a buck off the clock if they choose?
Not a good way. In the end, for people that want to make games, the version with the best art assets wins.
The moral is if you wanna bootstrap into the games industry, be anything but a programmer. Well, maybe not a writer either.
Edit: also a beta tester. Anyone who really doesn't have the support to work with stuff they enjoy and earn money at the same time.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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'm surprised Valve backed down on the issue, but I suspect we'll see this program or a program like it again in the future. Even this brief experiment showed that there is a market for mods that could be profitable for modders, distributors, and ip-holders. Valve just has to go back to the drawing board to find ways to cut down on consumer backlash. Some people will always be opposed to this idea because they're used to getting quality mods for free and don't want that to change, but others could be swayed if modders are offered a better deal or if a system of paid mods is established for a new game pre-launch (to avoid changing paid/unpaid dependencies).
I mean in a system that works out alright there's really nothing wrong with the idea of paid mods. It isn't a pure example of rent-seeking behavior like people are arguing (i.e. having paid mods does theoretically generate value, not just charge people for value that already exists), and the unfairness of the cut has been overblown because of the hands-off nature of the system and people not realizing what value IP is typically considered to have. The infrastructure was just poor and the hand-picked and curated mods the community claims to want clashed with the laissez faire "let the best mods sell well" attitude Bethesda had.
The Reddit posts (which I'm using as a microcosm of the angry vocal minority) are still pretty obnoxious and pretty clearly in favor of "never sell mods, just put a donate button up that I can ignore," which is to be expected. Steam didn't even remove donate links like they said, they just removed URL shortened links to donation sites (which they do on Steam in general, URL shorteners are used by steam scammers constantly and near exclusively).
I can't believe I bought into that without doing my own research. That 4chan screenshot should have tipped me off. Drat.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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't believe I bought into that without doing my own research. That 4chan screenshot should have tipped me off. Drat.
Reading between the lines in Gabe's AMA, it was pretty clear his attitude was "Valve shouldn't and probably isn't censoring marketplace message. I'll look into that and fix it, but it's probably not actually happening." I think any censoring was either automated scam prevention systems that, or people being removed for spamming "reasonable" complaints, with far more airquotes around "reasonable" than a forum message can provide.
Wow, that was fast. I was expecting for them to keep it going for a bit longer, see how it panned out. Can't say i'm not pleased with the outcome though. If nothing else this had the benefit of encouraging the Nexus to make donations a lot more visible on mod pages, and hopefully Valve will do something similar for Workshop pages.
Heh, for once I'm actually proud of the gaming community. Hopefully we'll now start pressuring them to add a donation button for mods, and hopefully Valve/Bethesda's tax on that is as close to 0 as possible.
If you're proud of the gaming community right now, I highly suggest you go read the response to Gabe's post. It was vile, and sick. There as nothing to be proud of there. Getting your way because you threw a toddler tantrum is nothing to be proud of. For every reasoned, well thought out, piece of criticism there were ten go die/go kill yourself/I hope your family dies/I hope you get cancer posts.
There were valid, serious concerns with this system...but if we have to act like small children as a community to get our way, it's not worth it, and it's not something to be proud of.
Nope, still proud. Horrible people will act like horrible people, children will act like children, surprise surprise. Those should be ignored accordingly, they won't invalidate any of the reasoned, well thought pieces of criticism raised, as you said yourself. For once the community stood up against the bullshit companies keep pushing on the consumers, and guess what? It worked.
This proves that consumers have the most power. Then Valve. Last, modders. Now take your victory and donate to the modders that just lost an opportunity. That's what I'm going to do as soon as I get home.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.
To me, this is close to the heart of this particular case. The general perception, IMO, in the industry is that both Valve and Bethesda don't know what they're doing, and/or don't care, when it comes to putting out a product that works from the start and then providing ongoing support for it. They've relied on past goodwill and the efforts of others to carry them and fix or at least paper over the rough spots. And that goodwill has now evaporated.
Would we have seen the same reaction if most of the money was being taken by hypothetical companies that can be expected to manage and maintain the service in a professional manner? To actually earn their cut, rather than just collecting it? Consider EA; a lot of people think they and/or Origin are basically the Antichrist, but if there's one other thing people agree on, their support is (usually) top notch.
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.
To me, this is close to the heart of this particular case. The general perception, IMO, in the industry is that both Valve and Bethesda don't know what they're doing, and/or don't care, when it comes to putting out a product that works from the start and then providing ongoing support for it. They've relied on past goodwill and the efforts of others to carry them and fix or at least paper over the rough spots. And that goodwill has now evaporated.
Would we have seen the same reaction if most of the money was being taken by hypothetical companies that can be expected to manage and maintain the service in a professional manner? To actually earn their cut, rather than just collecting it? Consider EA; a lot of people think they and/or Origin are basically the Antichrist, but if there's one other thing people agree on, their support is (usually) top notch.
That's because they don't let freelance (or even free) contributors into the mix. They can stay professional, streamlined, and closed.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.
To me, this is close to the heart of this particular case. The general perception, IMO, in the industry is that both Valve and Bethesda don't know what they're doing, and/or don't care, when it comes to putting out a product that works from the start and then providing ongoing support for it. They've relied on irrational goodwill and the efforts of others to carry them and fix or at least paper over the rough spots. And that goodwill has now evaporated.
Would we have seen the same reaction if most of the money was being taken by hypothetical companies that can be expected to manage and maintain the service in a professional manner? To actually earn their cut, rather than just taking it without actually doing any work? Consider EA; a lot of people think they and/or Origin are basically the Antichrist, but if there's one other thing people agree on, their support is (usually) top notch.
Battlefield 4 was in such bad shape at launch that EA was sued by its investors, and the most recent SimCity may have tanked the franchise in addition to clearing the way for Cities: Skylines to claim that market. The worst thing I've heard about Origin is that it isn't Steam, but on a putting-out-finished-products basis I don't think EA is much better than Bethesda to be honest. Actually the only AAA developer I trust at this point to put out a complete, bug-free game every time is Nintendo.
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.
To me, this is close to the heart of this particular case. The general perception, IMO, in the industry is that both Valve and Bethesda don't know what they're doing, and/or don't care, when it comes to putting out a product that works from the start and then providing ongoing support for it. They've relied on past goodwill and the efforts of others to carry them and fix or at least paper over the rough spots. And that goodwill has now evaporated.
Would we have seen the same reaction if most of the money was being taken by hypothetical companies that can be expected to manage and maintain the service in a professional manner? To actually earn their cut, rather than just collecting it? Consider EA; a lot of people think they and/or Origin are basically the Antichrist, but if there's one other thing people agree on, their support is (usually) top notch.
That's because they don't let freelance (or even free) contributors into the mix. They can stay professional, streamlined, and closed.
We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.
To me, this is close to the heart of this particular case. The general perception, IMO, in the industry is that both Valve and Bethesda don't know what they're doing, and/or don't care, when it comes to putting out a product that works from the start and then providing ongoing support for it. They've relied on past goodwill and the efforts of others to carry them and fix or at least paper over the rough spots. And that goodwill has now evaporated.
Would we have seen the same reaction if most of the money was being taken by hypothetical companies that can be expected to manage and maintain the service in a professional manner? To actually earn their cut, rather than just collecting it? Consider EA; a lot of people think they and/or Origin are basically the Antichrist, but if there's one other thing people agree on, their support is (usually) top notch.
That's because they don't let freelance (or even free) contributors into the mix. They can stay professional, streamlined, and closed.
Spore? The Sims?
Fair point. But where are the mods?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? 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.
Posts
I think this is somewhat off the mark. Modders have a contract with Bethesda in the game's EULA and a contract with Valve in the workshop's EULA. They also have negotiated fees. The negotiation in this case is "take 25% or don't sell your mods" because modders have no right to make much less profit off of mods without Bethesda's blessing anyway. It's also not true that Bethesda is charging money for unsupported software: the modder decides to charge, and the modder decides whether and how much to support the product. None of these arrangements are particularly revolutionary from a legal standpoint.
What? The idea of an open market without curation definitely fits the idea of not promoting some modders over others. It just also promotes the idea of Bethesda getting money from their mods. The two aren't mutually exclusive, just like your idea of "make mod creators pseudo-developers" isn't exclusive with Bethesda making money. You can have multiple philosophies in play that aren't inconsistent.
Yes, officially supported mods would be better for a certain subset of modders, though only through volume sales since it's doubtful they'd get a better cut for using up more of Bethesda's resources. It would also be "worse" for a lot of modders who would not have the option to make any money from their mods. Acting as if this is an objective improvement simply because the current system is bad is ridiculous. Also, again, Bethesda is not the person who is choosing to put up shitty, unsupported products on the marketplace; the modders are. Yes, Bethesda has OK'd this process, but that feels like getting a bad haircut at a strip mall and only being angry at the land owner; maybe they should assure quality, but you would also be justified in being mad at the dude who sold you a shitty haircut.
Finally, DLC doesn't sell that well. Only half of consumers buy any DLC in a given year. The volume of sales is unlikely to drastically increase by implementing paid-mod DLC.
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 bet you a paid DLC that far more than 14% of Skyrim's players are on PC. Did you get that number by looking at the sales percentage of physical copies within the first two days of release?
You are correct, the source did say retail sales. I am not sure why they would fully exclude digital sales or even include PC sales at that point.
Valve's been pretty cagey with sales numbers, historically. I think the paid mods might be the first time they've freely listed how many units an item has sold.
Not just Valve. It seems to be the exception when a company releases online sales figures outright.
Wow.
If nothing else, its given them a lot to hopefully (re)think about with Fallout 4.
Hopefully when they bring it back for that, the whole idea will be heavily overhauled in some areas.
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.
To me, that remains to be seen in how they reintroduce the system for the next game.
Fallout 4 I imagine won't be out until the very end of the year or early 2016 so they've got months to fine tune it and mull over the mountain of feedback and thoughts at least.
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 imagine those who created something by request of Bethesda/Valve are kind of pissed right about now if not.
But I think its safe to say the refunds are probably coming out Valve or Bethesda's pocket.
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.
Any other company and the shareholders would be setting fire to the building. Just because they reversed course on what could be a major decision. Companies don't do that.
Now Bethesda? They should've known better.
Valve has remained privately owned specifically to avoid dealing with that kind of shit.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
If you're proud of the gaming community right now, I highly suggest you go read the response to Gabe's post. It was vile, and sick. There as nothing to be proud of there. Getting your way because you threw a toddler tantrum is nothing to be proud of. For every reasoned, well thought out, piece of criticism there were ten go die/go kill yourself/I hope your family dies/I hope you get cancer posts.
There were valid, serious concerns with this system...but if we have to act like small children as a community to get our way, it's not worth it, and it's not something to be proud of.
Programmers don't enjoy that luxury. All they can do is make their own game from scratch as much as possible, as a team if possible, and with a bunch of startup money to buy all those modular assets we expect from games. They have to be business managers even if they're not the director of the game, because they have to make their idea, make their idea work with everyone else's ideas, defend their idea, make others understand their idea, sell their idea, and continue to refine their idea pretty much as long as other people are interacting with it.
That's why there is a lot of great public license code but not a lot of public license music or models or voices that are any good. It's much easier to monetize your talents on the side if you are anything but a programmer in terms of game design, so you don't need to share.
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.
Aren't relatively simple apps and mobile games a way for programmers to make a buck off the clock if they choose?
Nope, still proud. Horrible people will act like horrible people, children will act like children, surprise surprise. Those should be ignored accordingly, they won't invalidate any of the reasoned, well thought pieces of criticism raised, as you said yourself. For once the community stood up against the bullshit companies keep pushing on the consumers, and guess what? It worked.
Not a good way. In the end, for people that want to make games, the version with the best art assets wins.
The moral is if you wanna bootstrap into the games industry, be anything but a programmer. Well, maybe not a writer either.
Edit: also a beta tester. Anyone who really doesn't have the support to work with stuff they enjoy and earn money at the same time.
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 mean in a system that works out alright there's really nothing wrong with the idea of paid mods. It isn't a pure example of rent-seeking behavior like people are arguing (i.e. having paid mods does theoretically generate value, not just charge people for value that already exists), and the unfairness of the cut has been overblown because of the hands-off nature of the system and people not realizing what value IP is typically considered to have. The infrastructure was just poor and the hand-picked and curated mods the community claims to want clashed with the laissez faire "let the best mods sell well" attitude Bethesda had.
The Reddit posts (which I'm using as a microcosm of the angry vocal minority) are still pretty obnoxious and pretty clearly in favor of "never sell mods, just put a donate button up that I can ignore," which is to be expected. Steam didn't even remove donate links like they said, they just removed URL shortened links to donation sites (which they do on Steam in general, URL shorteners are used by steam scammers constantly and near exclusively).
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.
Reading between the lines in Gabe's AMA, it was pretty clear his attitude was "Valve shouldn't and probably isn't censoring marketplace message. I'll look into that and fix it, but it's probably not actually happening." I think any censoring was either automated scam prevention systems that, or people being removed for spamming "reasonable" complaints, with far more airquotes around "reasonable" than a forum message can provide.
Instead we got Horse Armour 2.0.
This proves that consumers have the most power. Then Valve. Last, modders. Now take your victory and donate to the modders that just lost an opportunity. That's what I'm going to do as soon as I get home.
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 am here for discuss.
EDIT: Just saw a post that paid mods were removed. Well then...
Have you seen him? Now you have
To me, this is close to the heart of this particular case. The general perception, IMO, in the industry is that both Valve and Bethesda don't know what they're doing, and/or don't care, when it comes to putting out a product that works from the start and then providing ongoing support for it. They've relied on past goodwill and the efforts of others to carry them and fix or at least paper over the rough spots. And that goodwill has now evaporated.
Would we have seen the same reaction if most of the money was being taken by hypothetical companies that can be expected to manage and maintain the service in a professional manner? To actually earn their cut, rather than just collecting it? Consider EA; a lot of people think they and/or Origin are basically the Antichrist, but if there's one other thing people agree on, their support is (usually) top notch.
That's because they don't let freelance (or even free) contributors into the mix. They can stay professional, streamlined, and closed.
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.
Battlefield 4 was in such bad shape at launch that EA was sued by its investors, and the most recent SimCity may have tanked the franchise in addition to clearing the way for Cities: Skylines to claim that market. The worst thing I've heard about Origin is that it isn't Steam, but on a putting-out-finished-products basis I don't think EA is much better than Bethesda to be honest. Actually the only AAA developer I trust at this point to put out a complete, bug-free game every time is Nintendo.
Spore? The Sims?
Fair point. But where are the mods?
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.