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[Eagleon]

For music, at least, 25% cut is actually pretty substantial. I would negotiate a smaller cut with anyone interested in collaborating. The real question is what standard modders will set their work at. If everyone lowballs, the system is doomed.

In music, you have game developers thinking that music is a hobby, and so their music budget should be 0%. You're expected to work for free, or sometimes they'll say they'll pay you if your work is "high quality." You finish the asset, they say they don't like it, and suddenly you're facing a loss - you can either capitulate and let them use it for free so that you at least get the exposure or go home with nothing. How much is exposure worth to someone that can never get paid work and can never get anyone to do more than pirate their work? This is pretty well standard now for game companies at entry level. There is no inroad without using professional sample libraries considered gold standards at larger game companies, there is no using professional sample libraries without spending thousands of dollars or doing the illegal. There's no doing the illegal without getting noticed, because samples nowadays are watermarked and you face litigation if you ever reach any kind of commercial success.

I might not be part of the 'industry' but I do need to eat, and minimum wage is kicking my ass. This is my only established talent, I've done it for upwards of eleven years (more than that with conventional instruments,) so I'm just supposed to ignore this potential revenue stream because I don't like how much Bethesda is taking? I like Bethesda. I can't even afford to pay for any of their games, in fact I play all of them from my brother's steam library. In my shoes I can't really see the problem here, it's their game, they can make whatever kind of agreements and restrictions on their modding community that they want, and since no one is telling us that we can't not charge for mods, since no one is telling you that you have to buy mods, what possible violation is occurring here?

[Araph]

If you think the idea is stupid, talk with your money. Don't pay for mods. Don't like the idea of modder making a career out of it? ...Okay. The only thing that matters is whether or not modders can make a living out of it, not whether or not you like it.

As for the long and proud tradition of modding, that's not dying out. There are a whole lot of reasons for going into modding, and some of them have been very mercenary. In case you've forgotten, a lot of major titles were once mods (Team Fortress, DOTA 2, Garry's Mod). This is just the next step of that. That doesn't mean that everyone subscribes to that idea. Most modders are still going to be releasing their pet projects for free because they love doing what they do.

...modders are in no way shape or form members of the game development industry...

They are now.

Actually, they have been for quite some time. I just wanted to ominously say 'they are now'.

Mods have been a major draw for the Elder Scrolls games for a very long time, to the point that Bethesda heavily relies on community content to increase the replayability of their already highly replayable games. It doesn't matter whether or not modders have a 'right' to monetizing their work. The act of profiting off of a mod proves they have the capability of monetizing it.

[BoredVirulence]

... I now have my doubts they'd have solid legal grounds to stop them.

Valve couldn't, but Zenimax could. In this case Valve is allowed to do this by Zenimax, and in turn Zenimax makes money too, competing services would likely need to enter into an arrangement with Zenimax. But that may be able to be fought too. After all, if a mod proves to be completely original content, its just content and its use with a product that Zenimax provides is irrelevant. You aren't selling the framework, just selling your own pieces that someone else can use with that framework...
But even fighting that might be difficult.

This is pretty ridiculous. I can't imagine that many people would actually indulge in this. Particularly with a Bethesda product, they're so broken you need mods to fix them anyway.

[Sonlirain]

[Araph]

One other thing to consider is competing mods. Suppose the Unofficial Elder Scrolls patch was monetized. How many seconds do you think it would be before someone starts working on an identical (and free) patch? In 'vital' (ish) cases, the community will regulate itself.

[ChairmanPoo]

You accept these kind of sheanigans when you accept DRM-intensive platforms like Steam. It's not like there aren't alternatives. As Araph said: talk with your money.

[Araph]

It's not like there aren't alternatives.

Nexus is still free. If it ever stops being free, there'll be a new repository up within a week.

[Graknorke]

Steam isn't all that DRM-intensive. Like, at all. You can even run Half-Life 2 without Steam, which as far as I am aware is basically the game it was created for.

[Putnam]

You accept these kind of sheanigans when you accept DRM-intensive platforms like Steam. It's not like there aren't alternatives. As Araph said: talk with your money.

Skyrim requires Steam.

[SquatchHammer]

The big problem I see with this is a lawsuit cascade.

Modder one thinking he can get a quick buck by using a lesser known company's game assets to a mod. Then modder 2 likes some of modder 1's components and uses some of those which has the assets on them. When somebody points it out, either modder 1 will sue modder 2 while getting sued by the gaming company. Then on top of it, the gaming company sues both valve and Zenimax.

Also I look at this at a different way since I am a machinist at trade. I could make anything that someone needs as so long I have the tooling. I can make parts to the spec of anything on any equipment. I CANT sell anything I say I had made saying I designed it and I just barely modified it without A MAJOR LAWSUIT RISK. It is one of the biggest problems I see since the whole shitstorm of copyright mentality among most of the modding community.

[Moghjubar]

Goody, now I can make a horse armor mod and charge $2000 for it.

[Propman]

What makes me weary about this is how rampant plagiarism already is within Steam's system and how I have no doubt that thousands of modders will have their works sold without either their knowlage or compensation. Be it taking a mod from a third party site whole-cloth, or taking models, sound files, and other modders' content and using them as part of paid content at best (and at worst, little more then a mod pack), I see little good coming out of it.

[Felius]

... I now have my doubts they'd have solid legal grounds to stop them.

Valve couldn't, but Zenimax could. In this case Valve is allowed to do this by Zenimax, and in turn Zenimax makes money too, competing services would likely need to enter into an arrangement with Zenimax. But that may be able to be fought too. After all, if a mod proves to be completely original content, its just content and its use with a product that Zenimax provides is irrelevant. You aren't selling the framework, just selling your own pieces that someone else can use with that framework...
But even fighting that might be difficult.

The thing is, depending of the legislation involved it might be that they could do that because monetizing mods for their games at all was not allowed. Now they clearly allow monetizing mods, they just want to maintain the monopoly of the means of distribution, which might not fly quite so easily in legal terms depending of the specifics involved.

[da_nang]

Totalbiscuit released a content patch about the Iron Paywall.

EDIT: I also can't stop laughing around the 10-minute mark.

"The Workshop system is very convenient, it's very useful and has done a lot for the modding scene. [...] You don't have to go to an external website, you don't have to worry about installing things manually [...] all of this stuff is on the Steam Workshop and you just click 'Subscribe' and it's in your game."

[Rolan7]

If you are wondering, I am entirely against this. While I think that modder's should receive some sort of compensation, it's just not fair to the consumer, who, if they want the "full experience" will probably end paying $100+ for the base game, DLC, and now mods. That's preposterous.

I don't see how this is unfair to consumers.  It's offering an option to mod devs.  If a mod dev feels like they deserve to charge, isn't it fair for them to have that option?  Customers were never entitled to these mods, they were generously gifted them.

I think the 75% commission is far too high though, to the point that I'd rather just donate.  I have doubts as to whether this system will work any better than donations, except possibly for the biggest mods.  But it's certainly not unfair to customers.

Not to mention that this might mean that Bethesda, Zenimax or Steam can't shut down people monetizing Skyrim mods anymore, since they themselves created the precedent for it. If someone else, like any reasonable person, do agree that 75% is bloody ridiculous and start an alternative mod selling service that gives the modder a much bigger cut, I now have my doubts they'd have solid legal grounds to stop them.

This is an interesting point, but I don't see how it could work.  It would practically require DRM, something only Steam can reasonably do.
I do think the 75% is ridiculously high, though.  Cynically I think they're betting that customers will assume that the devs receive most or all the profit.

One other thing to consider is competing mods. Suppose the Unofficial Elder Scrolls patch was monetized. How many seconds do you think it would be before someone starts working on an identical (and free) patch? In 'vital' (ish) cases, the community will regulate itself.

I did a quick search for copyright information, and found something halfway down the FAQ for that particular mod:
http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3581-frequently-asked-questions-about-the-project/
In a nutshell, they assert they have copyright on their bugfixes and don't allow people to edit and release their work.  Apparently people were fixing things that weren't broken, and the original USP team were getting a lot of misleading bug reports from those repackaged releases.

I don't see why a mod author wouldn't be able to enforce copyright on their code, under whichever license they released under.