Coming soon: 5000 spam copes of the same relabelled, stolen mods by every single scammer in existence
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Gaming
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sounds like the steam store already
As with the several times they tried this before, this is a train wreck of an idea for so many reasons. While I do love the idea of mod creators getting to make money doing what they enjoy, from the consumer perspective this is bound to be awful.. I don't want to have to get nickel-and-dimed by what are essentially third party micro-transactions.. with no grantee that the product I just bought will even work with the others I bought or that they will continue to be supported if the game gets patched a year later. Not to mention virtually zero quality control, leaving users to trust in reviews, AKA other customers who put their money on the line.
And from the mod development side of things, this is going to make building off other mods a complete mess. Think of how many mods you have installed that have had other mods as requirements to work. Are those mods going to need to be bought by the user too? And are the mod creators going to have to set up some kind of revenue sharing with those dependency mods? What happens if a mod developer uses a free mod as a dependency, is that fair to the other mod creator? Do moders have the rights to request their content not be used by other mods? And if so what does that process look like and who arbitrates it? Having seen this tried before, it makes a mess and long term it will stifle collaboration leading to weaker mods.
I think those are all good points, but I think they're also potentially surmountable ones; I think the key would be to be as restrictive as necessary for which mods are allowed to charge. If only a small fraction of the most clear cut and expansive mods can charge, maybe even hand-picked by the developer, I think that's still a better state than it was before.
Some potential examples: a mod isn't allowed to charge if it has any mod dependency. Games supporting paid mods must support opt-out updates (steam already supports this easily via "beta branches) and mods have at least one version available to consumers that are guaranteed to work. Depending on the mod, it could be possible to do some automated regression testing, similar to how the Steam Deck verification works.
This will be epic in terms of the cluster fuck it can generate.
Mod makers making more than the game creators, commercializing someone elses products, asset and mod theft and monetezation, revenue split...
Lemme grab my popcorn.
There's a lot of negativity here, and a lot of it is pretty justified. But I don't hate the idea of paid mods. Like if there's a way for authors like the ones the made Enderal or other really big mods to make some money off of it that's really great. Is Bethesda going to be fair about them? Probably not. Is Bethesda going to be competent with the system? Probably as competent as they are at anything else (derogatory).
But at least it's a way that you can make some money back for your work where you don't have to worry about chargebacks from trolls costing you more than the donations they were originally giving you. And this can be a pretty big problem for donation driven works. Someone donates $1, 200 times. Then charges them all back. Paypal charges you $15 processing fee for each chargeback. And you can contest it but who needs that? If Bethesda can be the entity brokering all of it, then they are the ones that take the chargeback risk.
So in theory, I don't hate it. But it will all depend on the implementation and competency of Bethesda (not looking good here).
My problem with it last time around, which was not the problem most people took with it, was how much of a cut Valve and Bethesda took before the mod maker saw any of that money. It's Valve's store and Bethesda's IP, sure, but if Bethesda was going to take that much of a cut, they should at least be spending some of that money on policing the bad actors in the paid mod scene to make sure it's all legit so that they earn their cut.
Also if I pay for a mod and they release a patch that breaks it (seems unlikely but we've already gotten about two or three more patches than I expected), I would expect them to fix the mod or pay the creator to do so.
Oh and I would expect them to magically resolve conflicts between paid mods.
If a free mod breaks and never gets fixed, or a free mod breaks another mod, fair I have no expectations there. But once I fork out money that's not a mod, that's a product now. And if Bethesda is taking my money, they are responsible for the product.
As long as you can easily turn individual mods on and off, I personally wouldn't have the expectation that one mod must not break another mod. I also don't mod much, but that's why I see potential in paid mods. What's out there the way things are now usually doesn't float my boat, and I'd like to see what we get when people can support themselves in producing mods.
and they still dont seem to be interested in offering the full toolchain for the engine, including official mesh and anim import/export plus documentation for the formats
Yep! Like I said, a lot of the negativity is pretty justified. I just wanted to provide one positive for people to see.
Don't give them even an inch. They are not doing this in good faith for the sake of the modders.
That is exactly the point. "Hmmm, maybe it's fine if some high quality mods can make some money" no! This is "it's just cosmetics" all over again. Give them a finger, they'll be taking the arm and suing you for the other one soon. Don't! Just don't! If you want creators to make money, donate.
If you're looking for monitary returns, make a game not a mod. Otherwise you're building your foundation on sand and owe the lack of monitary return on nothing but your own choices. Having Bethesda broker this is just a horrible idea and will lead to a cesspool of fraud, exploit, and death to genuine creative love works and passion projects. Not everything need be made for profit, and often it's better for it.
Someone donates $1, 200 times. Then charges them all back. Paypal charges you $15 processing fee for each chargeback
Don't use PayPal. That's a good policy in general.
I think Flight Simulator has paid mods and I've seen ambivalent or slightly positive opinions of it. It is definitely doable and is actually a good idea, but something about Bethesda and their way of doing it always seems shady.
mods made by more than a few people are impossible to monetise with this scheme, way too many creators to pay so you would make next to nothing over just making it free and putting it in your resume
and then we have bethesdas aversion to new dialog (and localising it) in these official mods, which really kills the vibe in many of them
I hate this.
It's wild how many people who do not have mods published on nexus/workshop/bethesda are happy to speak on the behalf of modders.
I have mods published on the Nexus, and I feel confident in saying paid mods are degenerate and so are everyone who supports them.
Sucking on that tit.. there's a lot more milk in there
On the one hand I'm not opposed to mod creators getting paid for their work. There are a lot of great Skyrim mods, released and upcoming, that I wouldn't mind paying for. Total conversions like Enderal, giant content expansions like Beyond Skyrim, and especially a lot of the great companion mods. The pay what you want option seems like a good way to let people support mod creators while not creating a paywall. On the other hand I just don't trust Bethesda to deal with all of the issues this is going to create and it's hard to see how it doesn't end up negatively impacting the wider modding community.
I am not paying extra so that Bethesda can push the burden of fixing their 12 year old broken game that I already paid full price for onto random people.
I will be pirating paid mods and you will not change my mind.
Goddamn it, I literally just reinstalled and got my mod list playing nicely together LAST NIGHT.
Bro just bring back the creation Club