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[BurnedToast]

Me and every other major modder who has posted in this topic, alongside pretty much anyone who thinks of modding cathedral-wise, so many major mod tool developers.

Free mods aren't going away. Nobody is going to force you to charge, the workshop remains free to use if the author chooses to keep his mod free. "cathedral" modders can continue to make as much free content as they want.

Why is it a problem that people who wish to charge for the work they do are able to?

(again, set aside the possibility of theft which can hopefully be sorted out, and the cut valve is taking, because we both know that's not what this is really about)

It will create a nightmare of compatibility and copyright issues, and the mod developers will still have zero accountability for fixing their broken shit. That is acceptable for a free service, but not for a paid one.

If the system sucks, people stop buying mods and it fades away. Why is it a problem again?

Free mods aren't going away. Nobody is going to force you to charge, the workshop remains free to use if the author chooses to keep his mod free. "cathedral" modders can continue to make as much free content as they want.

Except they are, because authors are taking them down because Valve does not vet the submissions and no one is under any requirement to source or credit a mod. As pointed out by the Steam EULA, once it's on the Workshop, they own it.

If there were any sort of way to protect people's content, a lot fewer people would be upset. But Valve has basically declared open season on everyone's content, who others can now take and attempt to profit from despite doing no actual work themselves.

And that's totally setting aside the effect of Valve offering to pay people to host their mods on Steam does to mod communities as it divides them between people who are doing it for a hobby and for the love of it, and those who are doing it from profit. Taking the above example, it's essentially encouraging modders to stab each other in the back for Valve's dollars. Unless you have a 100% "don't care what you do with my work" attitude, this is a problem for pretty much everyone.

I assume at some point valve gets their shit together and starts policing it, if not now then after the first time they get sued. Again I said setting aside mod theft, which I understand is a real problem and I agree if they *can't* solve it and it becomes rampant, then they should probably not sell mods at all.

If you don't like the workshop agreement, don't put your mods on the workshop - use nexus mods or some other site. Don't complain when you sign an agreement that says anyone can use your stuff for any purpose, then someone uses your stuff for something you don't like.

As for the "hobby vs job" thing, I don't see how this is significantly different from video games in general. Some people make games for hobbies, some people make them for a job. Some people as a hobby that gives them some extra spending money.

I wouldn't bother arguing, Putnam.  Toast was obviously posting for reaction and he's getting it.  To anyone who has been keeping up on things understands what's going on, and this is just an attempt to obfuscate that.  It's become pretty standard practice to any push that happens these days until any such push/movement/etc. becomes co-opted.

Dismiss me as a troll because I have a differing opinion then you. That can work, but I think it's a poor debate tactic.

Exactly. BurnedToast, how would you feel if you spent months working on something, only for someone to re-upload it as their own work and demand payment for it? It's already happening with this new system.

I said twice so far (and a third time in this post) that mod theft is a problem that needs to be solved, and that my whole argument was setting that aside because I believe valve will eventually get it sorted out.

[Putnam]

I wouldn't bother arguing, Putnam.  Toast was obviously posting for reaction and he's getting it.  To anyone who has been keeping up on things understands what's going on, and this is just an attempt to obfuscate that.  It's become pretty standard practice to any push that happens these days until any such push/movement/etc. becomes co-opted.

Dismiss me as a troll because I have a differing opinion then you. That can work, but I think it's a poor debate tactic.

I wouldn't listen to that argument regardless, but it's not hard to believe when you're just repeating points already gone over and refuted in this topic and calling all those who disagree with you "entitled and selfish".

[AlleeCat]

Aaaand the paid-for mods are now on TPB. Along with mediafire, dropbox... It's a brand new world and it sucks.

* Allee dusts hands

Welp. Time to go pirate some horse genitals.

[nenjin]

I assume at some point valve gets their shit together and starts policing it, if not now then after the first time they get sued. Again I said setting aside mod theft, which I understand is a real problem and I agree if they *can't* solve it and it becomes rampant, then they should probably not sell mods at all.

Yes, because Valve did a bang up job fixing Greenlight. "Pay us money to submit." There is technically no way to police this except by reputation, unless Valve is willing to hire QA to crawl through mod submissions and either make qualitative calls, or examine actual code/scripts. But Valve is using the sheer weight of its influence to pretty roll over that problem like a gelatinous cube.

If you don't like the workshop agreement, don't put your mods on the workshop - use nexus mods or some other site. Don't complain when you sign an agreement that says anyone can use your stuff for any purpose, then someone uses your stuff for something you don't like.

What if I say anyone can use my stuff except for profit? How long before my work gets copted by someone's else mod, who then gets opted by someone else who sells it all on the workshop? Where are my wishes being respected? Do I have to police Steam, a business, against my content being stolen because they can't or won't police it themselves? Valve has always taken a "meh" attitude to enforce, but now it's about actual theft and that's not something they can handwave. If content has value like this, it is a good and a property they are obligated to protect, or not sell.

As for the "hobby vs job" thing, I don't see how this is significantly different from video games in general. Some people make games for hobbies, some people make them for a job. Some people as a hobby that gives them some extra spending money.

You're willfully ignore where Valve has deliberately blurred the line between the two.

[Propman]

Me and every other major modder who has posted in this topic, alongside pretty much anyone who thinks of modding cathedral-wise, so many major mod tool developers.

Free mods aren't going away. Nobody is going to force you to charge, the workshop remains free to use if the author chooses to keep his mod free. "cathedral" modders can continue to make as much free content as they want.

Why is it a problem that people who wish to charge for the work they do are able to?

(again, set aside the possibility of theft which can hopefully be sorted out, and the cut valve is taking, because we both know that's not what this is really about)

This is exactly what this is about, as it represents a major breach of trust between fellow modders. How can I be sure when I hand out a resource with the explicit notation that you not sell the derivative for profits that said person I'm handing it to won't simply disregard my wishes and sell it anyway at the expense of my own work? Do I have to manually buy his mod in order to sift through and make sure my works aren't in the final coding, propigating a system I'm against? Do I just assume he means well when the rest of his works are already on sale? Why do I have to police other modders 24/7 to make sure that my wishes are being respected? He's effectivley a different class of modder then I, and we can't colaborate with each other due to this difference. Payed modders end up isolated and their work suffers from this.

In addition Free mods are also going away for this reason as fellows close up shop to prevent thieves from exploiting us for profit. Valve has stated openly they are not willing to go beyond the bare effort needed to police these actions, expecting the community (those "gamers" you're cross about) to do the work for them on top of the modders themselves.

The reason we're opposed to this is because not only are the gamers who we rely on for feedback and inspiration being turned against us like you yourself stated (when they really should be against Valve), but it's pitting modders against other modders at the expense of the community of a whole.

Those cutom weapons, their models, the textures behind them; those are all objects usually made by seperate people and grouped and coded into a coherent mod by a scripter, if not several scripters. If each model, each texture, each individual script starts to cost money as their individual creators put them up, suddently you have to purchase all those little mods yourself in order to complete your work, assuming they even allow you to use them in dirivative works in the first place. This ends with payed mods being limited by budget, which in turn means that they'll suffer from hurdles that were previously unheard of in the system.

The most popular modders might scrape a living out of it, but at the expense of the rest of the community as a whole. You're inserting a class-based system to setting where it really shouldn't apply.

[BurnedToast]

I assume at some point valve gets their shit together and starts policing it, if not now then after the first time they get sued. Again I said setting aside mod theft, which I understand is a real problem and I agree if they *can't* solve it and it becomes rampant, then they should probably not sell mods at all.

Yes, because Valve did a bang up job fixing Greenlight. "Pay us money to submit." There is technically no way to police this except by reputation, unless Valve is willing to hire QA to crawl through mod submissions and either make qualitative calls, or examine actual code/scripts. But Valve is using the sheer weight of its influence to pretty roll over that problem like a gelatinous cube.

If you don't like the workshop agreement, don't put your mods on the workshop - use nexus mods or some other site. Don't complain when you sign an agreement that says anyone can use your stuff for any purpose, then someone uses your stuff for something you don't like.

What if I say anyone can use my stuff except for profit? How long before my work gets copted by someone's else mod, who then gets opted by someone else who sells it all on the workshop? Where are my wishes being respected? Do I have to police Steam, a business, against my content being stolen because they can't or won't police it themselves? Valve has always taken a "meh" attitude to enforce, but now it's about actual theft and that's not something they can handwave. If content has value like this, it is a good and a property they are obligated to protect, or not sell.

As for the "hobby vs job" thing, I don't see how this is significantly different from video games in general. Some people make games for hobbies, some people make them for a job. Some people as a hobby that gives them some extra spending money.

You're willfully ignore where Valve has deliberately blurred the line between the two.

1. 100% of the greenlight submission fee goes to charity, and it pretty much completely solved the problem. I don't think it's unfair to ask people to donate $100 to get access to by far the biggest distribution platform in existence. It seems like a good solution to me.

2. As I said, they need to get mod theft sorted out. If you genuinely think they can't or won't sort mod theft out and that's the reason you oppose this then fine - I concede that point, that is a valid reason to dislike it. My own opinion is that they've managed to (within reason) stop theft of actual games, and I don't believe mods will be any different - but I guess we will see in time.

3. I don't understand what you mean here - my point was that games in general have a hobbyist community, a professional community, and a blurred line inbetween and eveything seems to work just fine anyway. Why are mods different?

[GrizzlyAdamz]

This is just the start of the monetization of a community where such a thing was anathema.
Forget just taking down the stained glass window, some modders are trying to sell it back. Do you really not understand the backlash?

Further, this change will attract people who previously had NO interest in giving up their time and effort to improve both their and the community's experience. These new people will come to make money, and they'll bring their opinions and attitudes with them.
This influx of people with starkly different views will split the community and flat-out dissolve the old culture.

This doesn't even take into account more predatory, aggressive business practices that will emerge to take advantage of this new exploitable asset that is -modders-, as leyic put it.

Free modders WILL be pressured out by their new competitors, (and their beneficiaries). This cash grab is far too cash-grabby to pretend free modders will have a friend in Bethesda/valve, the gatekeepers.

[Leyic]

As for the "hobby vs job" thing, I don't see how this is significantly different from video games in general. Some people make games for hobbies, some people make them for a job. Some people as a hobby that gives them some extra spending money.

The difference would be in the expectations of quality. No one expects a hobbyist's work to meet any standards, so the hobbyists are free to do what they want when they want. Once you start charging for that work, you now have customers who expect the product they purchased to be of satisfactory quality. Those customers generally won't be very patient or willing to put up with the modder's whims, so there's the potential for a lot of angst and hate to be generated. Case in point: Several Kickstarters that failed to deliver the expected product on time. Your typical hobbyist isn't ready for this.

What's worse is when the modder is motivated by the profit potential and not by a passion for modding. Quite a few modders have already shown a renewed interest in their supposedly finished work because they can now make money off of it. If they no longer actually enjoy the work enough to put up with the additional hassle of being a small business and having customers, they'll burn out, and any trust the community has in these modders will fade (just like with Kickstarter fatigue and apathy). That lack of trust can bleed out of the paid community into the rest of the modding community, so everyone can be affected by this: paid modders, free modders, resource developers, and players alike all stand to lose the broader community that's been developed over these past several years.

[BurnedToast]

This is exactly what this is about, as it represents a major breach of trust between fellow modders. How can I be sure when I hand out a resource with the explicit notation that you not sell the derivative for profits that said person I'm handing it to won't simply disregard my wishes and sell it anyway at the expense of my own work? Do I have to manually buy his mod in order to sift through and make sure my works aren't in the final coding, propigating a system I'm against? Do I just assume he means well when the rest of his works are already on sale? Why do I have to police other modders 24/7 to make sure that my wishes are being respected? He's effectivley a different class of modder then I, and we can't colaborate with each other due to this difference. Payed modders end up isolated and their work suffers from this.

In addition Free mods are also going away for this reason as fellows close up shop to prevent thieves from exploiting us for profit. Valve has stated openly they are not willing to go beyond the bare effort needed to police these actions, expecting the community (those "gamers" you're cross about) to do the work for them on top of the modders themselves.

How do you know someone won't steal your content to use in an actual game right now?

Those cutom weapons, their models, the textures behind them; those are all objects usually made by seperate people and grouped and coded into a coherent mod by a scripter, if not several scripters. If each model, each texture, each individual script starts to cost money as their individual creators put them up, suddently you have to purchase all those little mods yourself in order to complete your work, assuming they even allow you to use them in dirivative works in the first place. This ends with payed mods being limited by budget, which in turn means that they'll suffer from hurdles that were previously unheard of in the system.

The most popular modders might scrape a living out of it, but at the expense of the rest of the community as a whole. You're inserting a class-based system to setting where it really shouldn't apply.

If I make a script, why do you think you are automatically entitled to use it for free? If I want to sell it, should't that be my right?

This is the exact attitude I'm talking about. You feel you are entitled to use the stuff I made without paying because... reasons?

If you want a script for your mod, and don't want to buy the one I made... find a free alternative or make your own?

[BurnedToast]

As for the "hobby vs job" thing, I don't see how this is significantly different from video games in general. Some people make games for hobbies, some people make them for a job. Some people as a hobby that gives them some extra spending money.

The difference would be in the expectations of quality. No one expects a hobbyist's work to meet any standards, so the hobbyists are free to do what they want when they want. Once you start charging for that work, you now have customers who expect the product they purchased to be of satisfactory quality. Those customers generally won't be very patient or willing to put up with the modder's whims, so there's the potential for a lot of angst and hate to be generated. Case in point: Several Kickstarters that failed to deliver the expected product on time. Your typical hobbyist isn't ready for this.

What's worse is when the modder is motivated by the profit potential and not by a passion for modding. Quite a few modders have already shown a renewed interest in their supposedly finished work because they can now make money off of it. If they no longer actually enjoy the work enough to put up with the additional hassle of being a small business and having customers, they'll burn out, and any trust the community has in these modders will fade (just like with Kickstarter fatigue and apathy). That lack of trust can bleed out of the paid community into the rest of the modding community, so everyone can be affected by this: paid modders, free modders, resource developers, and players alike all stand to lose the broader community that's been developed over these past several years.

This is not a problem with paying for mods - you said yourself, kickstarter has the same problem.

Valve should probably have a page that explains to people that they will be expected to support the mods etc (maybe they do, I don't know) and another warning page for customers that says the mods may stop working at any time so buy with caution.

As long as both groups know what they are getting into, I don't see why this is a problem for selling mods.

[Putnam]

Hi, I'm actually a person who makes said scripts and I agree wholeheartedly with Propman.

[Frumple]

3. I don't understand what you mean here - my point was that games in general have a hobbyist community, a professional community, and a blurred line inbetween and eveything seems to work just fine anyway. Why are mods different?

It's largely because mods generally have a very significant degree of interrelation, and to a very extreme degree have reached the state they're in now because of just that. You don't have many games regularly borrowing code and content from other games, whereas that is (was, if this keeps mucking things up as badly as it seems to be) standard operating procedure for modding. That makes everything involved with this significantly more complicated, and the way valve has gone about this has inserted some very poisonous incentives into the general community.

Basically, mods exist as robustly as they do now more or less strictly because there wasn't a professional community worth any note. There was no line to blur, and by and large the modding scene flourished because of that. Now there's a line to blur, and it was introduced in a bloody terrible way.

And yeah, if the game developer allows it, it's the modder's right to ask for payment if they so please. There's just, y'know, consequences for that that a lot of people are finding unpleasant. You can call it selfish, but when people have spent literally decades building and supporting a community that didn't have those consequences, and did so under the (perhaps naive, sure, whatever) expectation that they weren't going to exist, well... I'm not quite sure that's the right word for it.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

If I make a script, why do you think you are automatically entitled to use it for free? If I want to sell it, should't that be my right?

This is the exact attitude I'm talking about. You feel you are entitled to use the stuff I made without paying because... reasons?

If you want a script for your mod, and don't want to buy the one I made... find a free alternative or make your own?

Ignoring them is exactly what happened.
Trying to charge was considered, *gasp*, really greedy in an enthusiast community based on derivative, (& therefore unmarketable), works and where sharing was the norm.

Problem is now they have backing from two giants in the industry: 1. Steam, and 2. Goddamn Bethesda, the original producers.
And they have an interest in paid mods doing well.

How long before DRM? How long before free modders who specifically undercut the biggest sellers get blacklisted/forced to withdraw their work? How long before someone introduces a 'minimum price' for all mods?


And maybe, just maybe, we don't want modding to suffer the same fate as kickstarter, (or worse).

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Propman]

How do you know someone won't steal your content to use in an actual game right now?

Because the mods in question rely on the content of the existing games they're based off of in order to run. If you manage to strip off enough of my input to make it function as part of a standalone game, all you really have are a bunch of engine-specific strings that are simple enough to be public domain.

If I make a script, why do you think you are automatically entitled to use it for free? If I want to sell it, should't that be my right?

This is the exact attitude I'm talking about. You feel you are entitled to use the stuff I made without paying because... reasons?

If you want a script for your mod, and don't want to buy the one I made... find a free alternative or make your own?

I feel entitled to not pay for your mod because your are entitled to not pay for my mod, and in theory we're supposed to be working off of each other in order to better ourselves. Regardless, would you like it if I payed for your mod, and then rereleased it alongside my own work as free content?

It's an uncircumventable wedge between modders.