- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
Seems like Bethesda wants another go at this
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Paid mods is almost never a good thing for the game itself.
Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game. Good game studios look at what’s popular and either pull those features into the base game, or work with the modder to do the same.
Adding a paid mod system changes that cooperative relationship into an adversarial one, where modders see their revenue stream attacked by the game maker.
(Except maybe the make everyone nude mods)
In addition, mods always end up in a situation where someone’s work was stolen, which no one cares about when it’s free. Everyone’s just using everyone else’s stuff because it’s all working to make a better ecosystem
That all changes when people get paid, justifiably
In addition, mods always end up in a situation where someone’s work was stolen, which no one cares about when it’s free. Everyone’s just using everyone else’s stuff because it’s all working to make a better ecosystem
Taken from https://creations.bethesda.net/en/creators/bethesdagamestudios
Creations can range anywhere from simple cosmetics or gameplay tweaks to entire new quests and encounters - it's up to what you can conjure! Our internal document available to Verified Creators has some specifics, but in general: Creations must be standalone, so it cannot depend on other community releases, free or paid. Creations must be all-new to qualify for release. You cannot re-purpose older releases – or work by other authors, unless contracted.Yeah, that’s sure stopped content mods being ripped off and reuploaded to paid platforms.
This happens every time someone tries paid mods. Someone rips somebody else’s work and profits from it.
Might not stop it, but having an approval process for developers and clear rules will make it harder.
They’ve had those before and it hasn’t worked. Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’ve never seen an official supported modding marketplace exist without a significant number of free mods being sold as paid by not the original developer
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’ve never seen an official supported modding marketplace exist without a significant number of free mods being sold as paid by not the original developer
Which games has this been a problem for?
Skyrim itself for 1
I’ve seen it with minecraft too, when mod distribution was centralized there was a lot of issues with people reuploading other creators work
so, it won’t.
reference: every single marketplace that lets anyone upload things that in some way drives revenue back, from app stores, to youtube, to music platforms.
Yes, I’m sure that will stop it
Bethesda’s goal, as usual, is rent-seeking. They can’t penetrate more markets, so they need to make new ones, and what better way to do this then to hire what amounts to contractors doing gig work. They don’t even have to pay them except in commission, which is a really scummy thing to do.
Some people see this as a way for mod-makers to make money, but mod-makers already have those! Every mod I’ve seen and every modder I’ve talked to has a donation link you can send money to, and the ones who didn’t had organizations and charities you could send your money to instead.
Bethesda’s goal, as usual, is rent-seeking. […]
It’s not exactly that, yes they want to get fees/rent that I agree, but this at least the current idea is not a walled garden, devs can decide not put it in there, or put it there but free. Of course if that changes in the future, and that might be the plan, then that’s another topic.
Every mod I’ve seen and every modder I’ve talked to has a donation link you can send money to, and the ones who didn’t had organizations and charities you could send your money to instead.
Yeah but they cannot enforce it or totally make it a paid mod. A Bethesda implementation would be more enforceable, well maybe not so much on PC, due to piracy… but at least on consoles. So if somebody said, look this is good content I am not giving it for free, they cannot currently do, (in part maybe due to EULAs too… not sure, but not just that).
It is exclusively about money for Bethesda. You can tell by looking at the last time they implemented paid mods, where they took a 25% cut for doing nothing. They offered no quality control, no resources, and boy howdy were a lot of paid mods stolen content, but they didn’t care because they wanted that money.
As to the modders, the only offer Bethesda can give is a wider customer base, but the assumption that you will make more money offering your mod for a price isn’t founded. We will see a large amount of shitty mods clogging the store using asset flips to maximize returns, because that’s what makes big money on mobile right now. Mod quality isn’t going to be enhanced by this: Mods will remain the same. You will just more of the bad ones. $99 horse dicks, anyone?
It is exclusively about money for Bethesda.
Of course I didn’t say otherwise.
Just feels like a nightmare for the devs too. If you push out an update that breaks a mod are you required to fix it?
Well, Minecraft marketplace for example shows that paid mods can work and be accepted by customers.
I am not a fan of paid mods but there are examples for it working.
Almost every mod out there is addressing some (real or perceived) deficiency in the base game
Emphasis on “perceived”. In my experience, the vast majority of mods are for things that I would never have asked for or expected from the developer.
Like Thomas the Tank Engine being everywhere. Or the other day I visited a friend and he was playing Civ 6 as Luigi from Mario. Or adding guns to Skyrim. Or adding tons of sexual content.
Should that content just not exist (licensing issues aside)? While I’m grateful to the noble people making and giving away mods for free, if I could start a decent side gig with it I might start making mods myself.
I can’t imagine myself ever buying a mod, but it seems like opening the platform up to allow creators to monetize is better than closing the platform entirely, or relying on the generosity of a few enthusiasts. Seems like this closes a gap on the spectrum from making your own indie game, getting a job as a developer, or using some DIY creator like Dreams.
Paid mods is almost never a good thing for the game itself.
Are there other examples of games having paid mods that you can point to for the issues you are concerned about?
I can’t think of any off the top of my head, mainly because so few games provide any supported tools for mods in the first place.
Edit: People are downvoting for asking a question? I honestly want to know if there are previous examples.
This is the second time Bethesda has done this.
This is the second time Bethesda has done this.
Kinda true in two ways.
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There was initial paid mod attempt that they walked back due to player outcry, not because the paid mods themselves caused any problems. Which doesn’t really work as an example of “paid mods are almost never a good thing for the game itself”.
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The Creation Club has been around for years, so technically speaking “paid mods” have been around in Skyrim for a while. Which maybe suggests that paid mods aren’t going to cause problems if they’ve been in place for this long?
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If you want examples of games where the situation with mods is much worse than it is for Skyrim, you could look at literally any other game that exists. For one indication of that, if you look at the front page of nexusmods.com right now it appears to list the games it covers in order of mod files downloaded. Skyrim is #1 (SE) and #2 (LE) on the list. The next three are other Bethesda games. Skyrim Special Edition is ahead of the first non-Bethesda game on the list by an order of magnitude. You will not find a game anywhere else offering anything like the quantity, quality, and diversity of mods that Skyrim has, and this is a large part of the reason it ranks among the best-selling games of all time.
They’re mad to try and mess with the model that has proven itself more successful than anything else for more than a decade.
I would argue that had much more to do with the fact that Bethesda is one of the very few companies who provide a decent SDK alongside their games.
I have an example, most of DCS World’s content is made by external people, each “mod” that adds a new aircraft priced at full game price, and is actually worth the money.
Bohemia is trying to do something similar to Arma, with some community mods being sold as essentially DLCs.
I can’t say I don’t like the model, if the content is big enough. No microtransaction crap though like the first iteration of paid Skyrim mods. Those sucked.
Yeah great /s
I prefer donations to the modders. Not paying 30% of it to steam for doing… Nothing much. And also being forced to pay for a mod.
Modding made so many mediocre games fantastic. The community is always a blast. People doing it for the “fame” or just for fun, and also getting occasional donations as a heartfelt “thank you” as a cherry on top.
I can’t imagine paid mods to do anything good for the scene. When does money ever…
Because this worked so well last time…
They gotta figure it out fast before they release that Starfield mod kit.
Well fuck this, broke my modlist again. I give up. I’m not buying Tes6, theyve burnt the goodwill with me.
if you want i can tell you if youve missed anything in the 10 years itll take to release
Will humanity even exist then?
It broke skse. Rip
So, I’m not sure if skyrim is right for this because it’s had a certain modding community built up, and for whatever reason, corporate execs seem to love burning down organic communities with no idea of the damage they’re doing.
However, if a game was built from day 1 to have support for paid mods, I’d probably consider making assets for mods as a side gig, as would a lot of people who work in tech or are budding game developers, because its far less of a commitment than making a full game.
The closest things that do this currently are roblox, which does everything in it’s power to prevent you from withdrawing money from it, and second life, which is near dead and only still going because of furies and perverts.
If a true platform-esque game, like Skyrim or Arma, were to come along with a shop that would let you do things like build a dungeon and charge a dollar for it, that would suddenly look attractive to a lot of people to get involved.
As soon as you started, I knew you were going to mention roblox. I wish they would release an adult version with a different aesthetic, SO BAD. I like LUA, but I will admit they’re pretty predatory with their payments.
If you want a gig like that, costume clothing, furniture, wallpaper and flooring for Sims 4. While there is somewhat of a community thing and the TOS about only having paid early access of a reasonable time, a lot of creatures don’t, and big chunks of the community will bend over backwards to defend it. So if you put out some paid stuff a lot of people will pay for it. If you don’t reales it for free after some time, big parts of the community will be mad at you, but many creators don’t follow that code and you can choose between putting up with it or just release it for free after sometime frame you are comfortable with, community stand is a month but ones again a lot of people don’t follow that and have lots of people buying their stuff.
And also if you just put out relatively good stuff, you will get a huge bonus over other people, even if you are paid only or have longer than community standard times. Because a lot of Sims 4 cc (in the Sims community moded assets are called cc while just mod/mods means gameplay mods) is really bad, with chep asset flips, theft and just really badly looking and functioning stuff and that includes quite a lot of the paid only scene. So you know the bar ain’t that high.
If you want a in game or developer official option, keep an eye on the upcoming Project Rene it’s the next sims game / sims spin off and while it is not confirmed to have paid cc and mods, there is a high likely hood of it.
The issue Valve had with this was that they weren’t willing to do the basic vetting needed to ensure a mod’s content is legitimately owned. For a full game, made from scratch in Unity, that’s not necessarily easier to verify, but the bar for entry (and to making something interesting for viewers) is high enough that a developer can be harshly penalized for breaking it. And of course, it has still happened, wherein a little Superman game is found to have been completely stolen from someone who put it out for free.
When you have a big complete game like Skyrim, and one mod only needs to do something silly like put Thomas the Tank Engine’s face onto a greathammer, it’s a low bar for entry for something some people might actually want, as opposed to shitty Unity asset flips. Still, the storefront needs to be sure that THAT developer owns Thomas’s face (they don’t) and that they put the work into applying it (they might have just pulled files from some obscure Nexus Mods entry and hoped no one noticed).
Ownership verification is tough. I seriously doubt they’re actually putting the time in.
But do they need to for the copyright case? Aren’t most pages on internet, like “Here is where you can sent us a DCMA request, we will take it down after checking it”.
Then they don’t need to vet it until there is a request, still that is work not gonna lie but they don’t have to check every single upload stuff, plus they probably would have a report system or similar if the issue isn’t copyright but idk that somebody uploaded something illegal somehow.
Of course maybe I am missing something and there is some laws that require active monitoring of each uploaded stuff.
You’re not totally wrong; they could operate that way, wherein victims of theft would report what people have re-uploaded as their own. But the problem is, this puts the onus of policework entirely on mod operators, who have their own lives and livelihoods. Imagine you wrote a mod as a hobby for four years, spent some time abroad, came home, never heard about the mod workshop stuff, and then discovered that your mod blew up in popularity under someone else’s name. Plus, Valve would need to moderate and figure out who is telling the truth (lest a bad actor make a fake claim on a legitimate mod seller). That kind of situation is often unrecoverable.
You can even read stories about the wars that photographers have over this kind of thing - photos are the kind of thing people pass around like candy, even though some amazing ones take tons of expertise and effort for the photographer to take; they often struggle to get websites and magazines to pay the ad revenue they’re due for each time they’re shown. It’s much like the mod workshop would have been - a very “low friction” environment for reuploads.
Valve had no issue with it. They went through with the release until the huge backlash when even the most loyal communities, like /r/pcmasterrace, were suddenly all about getting rid of Gabe from the sub banner and building a new client to replace Steam (1, 2). All of Bethesda’s most recent games were getting heavily review bombed on Steam and elsewhere. These things forced Valve to backtrack.
The review bombing was the form of communication used to inform Valve of what I just described. The prime complaints were based around lack of authenticity in many of the mods that first requested payment - many mod authors saw their work stolen and reposted.
In theory I’m not entirely against the idea of paid mods. I don’t necessarily buy that mods are more “pure” if no one is able to make money from them. And I do like the idea that people might invest more resources in mods than if they are effectively donating their time to the projects.
That said, things can definitely get complicated quickly once you start providing financial incentives. I think it’s smart to require mod makers to go through an approval process rather than just make it open.
The perverse incentives alone can be enough to ruin the whole modding scene for the game
Maybe, but people’s egos alone are enough to causing issues in the mod community, I’m not sure paid mods are necessarily going to make this significantly worse.
One or two egotistical modders don’t ruin the entire community unless those are the only modders in said community.
Greed ruins everything, though.
Not only would once free mods suddenly have a price tag, you’re gonna get a lot of bullshit shovelware mods flooding the scene trying to capitalize on the market.
As long as they don’t take free mods away I’m fine with it.
Apparently it’s broken SKSE, which is required for many many free mods.
Many updates for Skyrim have broken SKSE. That’s not really a new problem. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix it just like they have in the past.
So just wait a couple days after the update like normal?
K.
deleted by creator
No objections here.
These aren’t obligated paid mods. Anyone can still do free mods that rely on Nexus for downloads and stuff.
If anything, this is like FDroid / Google Play Store with FOSS apps. You’ll find dozens of paid foss apps on the play store that are free on fdroid. The play store is for donations and convenience. Auto updates without modding your phone, centralized store, etc.
This is where it starts.
Where what starts?
You think if paid mods work that anyone is going to make non paid mods in the future? I don’t think so
Good then 👍 People should be able to ask to be paid for their efforts and work and time if so they desire.
