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[Neonivek]

Works for the modders quite well.

It isn't their fault you don't do your homework

 

that implies content creators don't deserve a choice

Well... Imagine if YouTube implemented a system where anyone could just decide to make their videos paid content.

Even well done it would probably completely change what YouTube is. (Ignoring that YouTube sort of has paid for videos)

Putnam said in the WTF thread, he never got donations through his link

Then the market spoke. A lot of content creators I like don't make a lot of money... While some I hate make tons.

---

Edit addition:

To highlight what I mean about YouTube.

I'd perfectly accept an argument that Steam shouldn't have paid mods simply because that isn't the type of community or environment they want to foster.

I don't go to Newgrounds to pay for videos but by all means the content creators deserve the money... But I would be against them starting up their service.

In fact I'd sympathize anyone who argued based on that. I certainly don't want to be harassed with paid content every second of everyday. What was once a nice way to spice up for games has now become purely commercial.

Because everything can be bought and sold!

---

Actually you know what...

I think I am on that hypothetical person's side.

Paid Mods would make the modding community unbearable and just flat out unlikable...

Instead of "Popular mods" being a suggestion steam uses to try to improve your experience it is "Hey! BUY THIS! I know your in your library but I think you would like that!"...

It would have mod reviews, score harassment, accusations thrown left and right... We would go through microtransactions once again.

And I bet Steam being Steam would have it set to paid content by default and weight paid content more heavily because that is what earns Valve money.

Games would advertise paid mods inside because the company gets a share (and Valve).

I mean... Forget the fact that it is going to be a terrible system in its own right. Even if paid mods worked 100%... that isn't a Steam I want to log into everyday.

You can have paid mods, make your own site. Move it somewhere else where it doesn't have to be the constant weight around the community's neck. Somewhere that can support it much better.

---

Except we know that won't work... because people don't like paid mods in general... Steam is the only way to force people to accept them isn't it? It needs to be shoved down people's throats because they won't swallow.

Will it even have a system to circumvent the paid mods? As in... shut them off completely so you never see them again? Probably not.

[Retropunch]

More than the Donate button

Patreon works very well for modders to the extent that I bet most people here aren't even aware of which mods they use actually have patreon (For example I know a few of my Xcom 2 and Rimworld mods have one)

You're saying Patreon works so well that we often use mods without being aware they're on Patreon.  That sure works for *us*, but what about the modders?
And like Putnam said in the WTF thread, he never got donations through his link.  (Though not to misrepresent him, he was vehemently against paid mods on Steam).

Fact is, some modders want to sell their work.  The *best* arguments start at "But we shouldn't let them sell through Steam, because X consequences".  The worst arguments are "Modding is a labor of love!" and "Steam just wants money!", because that implies content creators don't deserve a choice.

The modding scene has always been free though - because what you're doing is just a derivative of someone else's work. Most people aren't happy with you monetising off the back of what is mostly their work. Steam is obviously trying to change this, but there are many, many pitfalls that stem from this - how do you monitor content, how do you deal with conflicting mods/keeping stuff up to date etc. etc.

That being said, I'm all for supporting and donating to modders if they've provided a good service - I just don't think buying a 'product' of a mod is a good idea in any way, shape or form

[Frumple]

Eh, if the mod's base's creators don't care about the monetization, modders can want to make money of it as they please, really. They just... probably shouldn't expect much support for it, if it's in the ways and means valve's been trying to push. Or much like it.

... and by not much support, I mean probably a great deal of vitriol towards the people that are doing things that have been consistently destroying modding communities both for the users and, to a fair degree, especially the content creators. Y'can call it selfish of the users et al to protest the desires of those mod makers that want to monetize, but you can also call it selfish -- and impacting a great deal more people -- of those mod makers when it's a practice that has a very strong tendency to wreck the modding community for everyone else involved. Doubly so when it's freakishly uncommon for said mod makers to not have benefited greatly from that community before coming in and kinda' pissing all over it in the name of dosh. Lotta' take there, and not exactly the most equitable of give. Can't really blame folks for being a bit up in arms about stuff like that, heh. Particularly when there's alternatives, yeah.

[Rolan7]

Uh, aside, I thought *I* had an editing problem...  Neonivek's original post was literally just this:

Works for the modders quite well.

Though I'm still not going to go through it, because this:

It isn't their fault you don't do your homework

Makes me think it wouldn't be productive

Though, Youtube is a great example because people do monetize their videos.  Sometimes through theoretically-unskippable ads but also, straight up, for money through Youtube Red.
Most content creators choose not to do that, instead offering their videos for free/donations, or bundled with ads.  The market speaks on Youtube:  Most people aren't willing to pay, so most creators don't charge.  But there are exceptions.

This service is the same as Youtube Red, and yet it's supposed to herald the death of modding.  Even though it's completely opt-in on both sides, and offers no-questions-asked refunds, and automatic refunds on stolen-content mods.
The exact same issues with content theft exist, yet somehow Youtube Red isn't killing Youtube.

Where did this supposedly get a fair shake?  It sure wasn't with Skyrim, where bad actors intentionally abused the reporting system as "protest".

[Retropunch]

Though, Youtube is a great example because people do monetize their videos.  Sometimes through theoretically-unskippable ads but also, straight up, for money through Youtube Red.
Most content creators choose not to do that, instead offering their videos for free/donations, or bundled with ads.  The market speaks on Youtube:  Most people aren't willing to pay, so most creators don't charge.  But there are exceptions.

This service is the same as Youtube Red, and yet it's supposed to herald the death of modding.  Even though it's completely opt-in on both sides, and offers no-questions-asked refunds, and automatic refunds on stolen-content mods.
The exact same issues with content theft exist, yet somehow Youtube Red isn't killing Youtube.

Where did this supposedly get a fair shake?  It sure wasn't with Skyrim, where bad actors intentionally abused the reporting system as "protest".

I don't think the content issues are quite the same. A video is a pretty sorta...open format, if you're building on Skyrim, you're using the same modding kit everyone else is.

The problem is, that it's not a completely opt-in from both sides - as soon as you monetise it, modders will have to defend their stuff endlessly or end up getting their work stolen and put out as a paid mod. Do you think Steam is going to have the capacity to deal with that across tens of major titles?

Secondly, How would it get a fair shake if it went live now/ever? Wouldn't the same people do the same stuff?

[MrRoboto75]

I don't understand.  If someone stole a free mod and put it up for sale...  wouldn't people just get the original, free mod?

The problem would be the opposite.  Someone takes a paid mod and put it up for free.

[Retropunch]

I don't understand.  If someone stole a free mod and put it up for sale...  wouldn't people just get the original, free mod?

The problem would be the opposite.  Someone takes a paid mod and put it up for free.

Lets say I (an unknown modder) make 'legendary katana swords' for free, then you (a better known modder/have more time on your hands to promote it and whatever) make 'legendary japanese style swords' as a paid mod which is basically the same but with a few little tweaks.

No one finds my mod, or if they do then they think it's ripped off yours as a knee jerk reaction (without looking into times of posting) or isn't as good or whatever. Now I have to defend my mod, and any others I make constantly.

The reverse is obviously true also.

[Frumple]

Where did this supposedly get a fair shake?  It sure wasn't with Skyrim, where bad actors intentionally abused the reporting system as "protest".

Blizzard had a go at it with SC2, iirc, if you're looking for another example.

It... didn't go over very well, though I forget a lot of the details at this point. It's actually one of the major reasons why I'm personally very much leery about monetization getting into a modding community beyond just easing donations (though I'd love that, mind you. For some bloody reason no one seems to be able to figure out how to stick a donation button in an obvious place.). Things went from WC3's community, which managed to kick so much ass it produced stuff that was literally genre defining for video games as a whole, to SC2's, which... well, better stuff came out for it? Eventually? I think. Some really neat stuff, actually, from what I saw when multiplayer when F2P, for all no one's really heard of much of it and a major revival was basically DoA due largely to what came about 'cause of overt cash getting involved.

There's a number of other games out there that monetize mods to one extent or another, with various results. Closest to a really functioning one that I can recall is one of the train simulators, that I've forgotten the name of, iirc. And it's... staid, near as I can remember. Really detailed models/cosmetic stuff, but not much that does anything interesting with any other part of the program. Think... second life? Or something that was in that direction. Does some stuff, too.

You do have to dig pretty hard to find stuff, though. As is pretty obvious, it's a hella' risky thing to try to implement, both for the initial reaction and what it does to the modding community itself.

[penguinofhonor]

That is not nearly the whole story with WC3/SC2, and if you have any real familiarity with that modding community then it's pretty dishonest to give that as an example of paid mods getting a fair shake.

The modding community in WC3 had already suffered greatly from DotA dominating it to the point where it was difficult to find other custom games. Then the transition to SC2 brought a more advanced map editor, but one that was much more difficult to comprehend, shutting out a lot of beginner map makers. And the most damaging blow by far was the Starcraft 2 custom games lobby, which only sorted maps by popularity on launch, making it much more difficult for new maps to find players.

[Frumple]

That is not nearly the whole story with WC3/SC2, and if you have any real familiarity with that modding community then it's pretty dishonest to give that as an example of paid mods getting a fair shake.

Wasn't really saying it was an example of a fair shake. Not intending to, anyway. Just pointing to another example of an attempt.

Though with your note, I do seem to recall a lot of the lobby problem existing in the first place because of the monetization scheme that was being tried...

[Teneb]

That is not nearly the whole story with WC3/SC2, and if you have any real familiarity with that modding community then it's pretty dishonest to give that as an example of paid mods getting a fair shake.

Wasn't really saying it was an example of a fair shake. Not intending to, anyway. Just pointing to another example of an attempt.

Though with your note, I do seem to recall a lot of the lobby problem existing in the first place because of the monetization scheme that was being tried...

IIRC, the system there was that Blizzard automatically owned anything made with the SC2 editor. They were rather peeved they lost Dota to Valve.

[Flying Dice]

And people steal your work, sell it as their own, then exploit the system to stop you from doing anything about it.

Pretty hard to do that unless the original mod creator screwed up the license agreement. And really, it's only a problem until everyone adapts to the new system, closing all those loopholes. Sure, it'll be painful for a while, but after that, the quality of the mods will rise, and probably quite a bit above the previous bar.

There's a lot of similarity between this and the communist-capitalist shock therapy process that countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia and others undertook.

Except that that's literally what happened last time and no move was made to stop it.

If you want to see what it would look like in the long term, look at the state of copyright law in China post-economic reform. Yeah, there's your glorious capitalist system protecting intellectual property rights.

I understand that living in a post-Soviet state gives you an idealized view of capitalism. What you need to remember is that communism would never have even existed if not for the intense, widespread, and nigh-insurmountable evils of capitalism. "One is shit so the other must be great" is fucking stupid, and the exact same mistake made by delusional children in the West who wax poetic about the wonders of communism.

There are sectors where things are best managed by the market, and sectors where things are best managed by the state. There are types of product which are best when freely available, and types which are best when pay-gated. Modding is an example of a thing which benefits the whole community when money is left out of the occasion. Mods rise and fall based solely on their quality and popularity because free mods are mods which are easy to test and evaluate. Modders benefit from collaborative work, from using (with permission) the assets, ideas, experience, and coding infrastructure of others. Adding a pay-gate to mod access completely shuts down the exchange of ideas while providing incentive for scum to rip people off-if mods are free there is no material benefit to cloning mods or stealing assets (you'll get mocked, and most people will be open to you using their work as long as you credit them).

Science would not be where it is if it had been flooded with pay-gates, and the pay-gating of new work is one of the holds on progress in many fields, due solely to the injection of capitalist greed and the opportunity for profit into the journal publishing industry.

And here's another one. The "Cathedral model" is a popular phrase, but how about this? Where would we be, musically, if every tune ever written, all of the concepts inherent to sheet music, all the variations on performance style, all the secondary equipment to use on/alongside an instrument-if all of that had been pay-gated? That's the bottom line. Modding is fundamentally on the creative art/science side of things, not the productive salable good side of things.

And no, capitalism does not make things better. Market-heavy economies fuck people just as hard as command-heavy economies, the only difference is the way in which people are devalued and subjugated.

[itisnotlogical]

aqui

[Retropunch]

In three pages of discussion, we still haven't seen a source for Valve bringing it back, and I'm having a hard time thinking of front-runner games to impose pay-for mods on. Most I can find out of Valve is their spiel about Greenlight and Steam Direct.

So, uh, source please?

Posted it a page back. It's not conclusive but it's pretty clear they're intending to bring it back.

I imagine they'll put it out on one of the new IPs Bethesda is working on. As they acknowledged, TES and Fallout are too long standing for them to just tack on paid mods, so they'll probably try it with a completely new game where there isn't that sort of ingrained sense of 'how it should be'.

That being said, I can't imagine they're completely oblivious to the fact that so many people violently hate it (and that they're messing up what has been 20+ years of tradition), so I think whatever they put out will need to be a pretty robust solution. As such, I can only imagine that they'll go down the 'trusted modders' route, where it basically just turns into outsourced DLC - which is pretty much just as horrifying, but probably be better than a free for all.

[itisnotlogical]

The key points I remember are: there was no (effective) content moderation, so plenty of stolen and derivative mods (and mods using stolen/unlicensed content in general) ended up listed under the paid system; and modders got a really small cut of the profit, I think 20%.