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[penguinofhonor]

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[wierd]

Most of the really good modders (the ones producing the DLC quality offerings) are modders that have been in the community since Redgaurd, or earlier.  Sending the attack trained lawyers after the people producing the free toolchains (that circumvent the paid mod system) would annihilate a LOT of the talent base, leaving the remainder in a significantly less proficient state.

People dont get to be good at churning out models, producing weighted meshes, rigging and animating creature and armor models, etc-- just over night.  They hone those skills for years.  That's what the TES modding community is.  Enthusiasts with 20+ years of experience.

[Neonivek]

I always find it insane when a company tries to make their game unmoddable intentionally.

[UXLZ]

I agree with that. I don't think a "pay per mod downloaded" system is inherently bad, but it needs to be designed to benefit the modder as much as possible. This one was pretty clearly designed with profit for Valve+Bethesda in mind.

I also think they shouldn't have changed a free modding community into a paid modding community. That seems like such an obvious legal clusterfuck I don't know how nobody stopped them before it went public. If they were going to launch this, it should have been alongside a new game. That way nobody has to worry about the community they're invested in changing suddenly, or that community's treatment of existing free mods changing (the art theft thing).

Well, I don't think a pay-per-mod is inherently inherently 'bad', but for that to really work it would need a massive amount of quality control (if only to stop the good mods from simply drowning out the bad a la early access), and I don't think that's logistically all that feasible. I think this would have been less negatively received if it didn't so obviously screw the modders over, but it's still hard to tell what would happen.

Truth be told, the only way I can really see it working is definitely as something announced pre-launch, no community is going to react well to having this sprung on them. That will help deal with the 'stealing other's work' but there are still going to be massive logistical issues.
I dunno though, I disagree on things being sold as incomplete products so inherently I'm going to be against these kind of things for the most part. At least the way Valvthesda tried to implement it, my first thought was basically 'early-access third-party DLC with no quality control oh god the end times have come.'
My only real issues in that statement are 'early-access' and 'no quality control', so if those issues were somehow dealt with I'd be a lot more open.

So, to summarize, the biggest issues I can see with paid mods in general:

Logistics issues. (< - No idea here.)
Legal issues. (< - Potentially mitigated by the game supporting paid mods from the start.)
Quality issues. (< - Community-regulated will probably really only be a band-aid. My largest worry is everything being swamped with early-access style tripe, drowning out the truly worthy stuff.)
(Reasonable) Completion assurance. (< - If the devs of the original game are supporting the paid mod scene from the start, they can potentially force the devs of the mod to at least complete everything in their manifesto. Still not sure how this would work.)
Over-saturated marketplace. (< - Essentially, there are 1000 stores in a town with only 50 people. There simply aren't enough community members even in a game like Skyrim to support that amount of third-party content. There are mods on the Nexus with something like 300 downloads, and they're free. If they cost something, I'd imagine that number to be significantly less if not 0. Might be fixed by dev-support, but that's assuming the original game has Skyrim-level popularity, which it probably won't be suffice to say.)

So, I dunno, I guess it's technically feasible in an ideal world, but there are just so, so many problems.

[Neonivek]

Quality control has a big overhanging issue UXLZ

Mods are not obligated to keep up with the different versions of the game.

What would happen if a mod suddenly stops working but was the #1 mod for a while... but the developer doesn't keep up with it?

[wierd]

Those that do (make games intentionally unmoddable), are just choosing that particular route to actively enforce their intellectual property rights.

A mod is essentially a derivative work of the original- (assuming it uses ANYTHING in the story, art, or system program model of the original game, that is.  A COMPLETE TC, that totally replaces everything but the game engine itself, would be another story.) As such, if the company does not give permission to make derivative works, then making mods violates their property rights, and they need to at least make a token effort to say that they tried to protect those assets if they ever want to go to court. (See Laches, Estoppel, et al.)

Bethesda gives permission to mod, but buries it inside an actually rather scary reading EULA, that basically gives them absurd levels of control over your derivative works. (Including straight up appropriation. Go read their creation kit EULA some time. That's why I endorse the free tools, created through legal reverse engineering. They are not so encumbered.)

If Bethesda has a direct monetary interest in their walled garden mockery of the mod community, they will NOT tolerate a free open-collaboration community creating tools that circumvent their control over their intellectual property. They WILL release the lawyers.

[Neonivek]

This is of course ignoring that the EULA in my country have no legal power.

Oh Canada

But Valve is an American company... so....

[UXLZ]

Quality control has a big overhanging issue UXLZ

Mods are not obligated to keep up with the different versions of the game.

What would happen if a mod suddenly stops working but was the #1 mod for a while... but the developer doesn't keep up with it?

I was mostly speaking in context of a game that actively endorsed paid mods from the start. Or rather, I'd imagine it be something more like the game is released for three months wherein free mods are allowed to test the stability-waters and general capability, after which the gates are unlocked. (The company would have to stress from the start that paid mods were going to be a thing later on down the track.)
However, this once again falls into logistics. Would it really be worth doing that? Even assuming the game has Skyrim-level popularity I find it hard to believe.

Oh, and the game would have to be one that wasn't fairly terrible in and of itself. (A la Skyrin.)

[Neonivek]

It definitely needed to be done much better than it currently was.

The ultimate issue with paid for mods is the lack of liability.

[UXLZ]

Pretty much, it's unfeasible for the devs to take liability themselves (unless they personally screen every mod, which also has logistical issues.)

[wierd]

And no serious company would accept that liability, without a MASSIVE degree of control over the process. Otherwise, its like putting a "Sue me!" sign on their backs.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[nenjin]

Seems like you're trading being a soulless design wage slave for being an exploited independent contractor. At least working for Zygna you get health insurance, worker protections etc....what Beth and Valve basically want is to pay people bottom dollar for doing all the work, taking ownership of their work and providing no protections beyond what Steam guarantees.

Put another way, trying to make money from mods on Steam seems like being a Kitchen Knife Salesman going door to door. The dude that hired you tells you can make THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS if you work hard, and of course he has a success story lined up to entice you.

But then you realize you're buying the kit first (let's call that the $400 Valve wanted to take before giving you a dime), no one buys shit door to door anymore (thousands of mods won't ever make enough money to actually reward their creator) and your effort is basically being farmed out by a company who makes its dime off of exploiting people (because who doesn't want a legion of fans creating content and turning it over to Valve to sell, who will deign to give them the smallest cut only after they've made pure profit.)

What bugs me about the system as they envisioned it, is it's a numbers games. They want you to think of SkyUI and be like "That could be me! Selling the mod that literally everyone who plays this game uses!" When in reality, they're banking on thousands of modders making $400 or less in sales. And even if lots of mods were to break that number, it's just more money Beth and Valve make for literally having a store front, and nothing else. Effortless profit. It's a numbers game, driven by participation and the promise of fame. Basically more of the "the internet is you" bullshit.

It is essentially a pyramid scheme, except instead of asking for money, they're asking for your time and creativity and work product.

[Rolan7]

I already mentioned that once you go away from donations to direct pay, you lose fair use and a bunch of other things!!

It isnt like this is some crazy "Oh, I dont like that, URRRGH!" poop slinging thing here.  It's about "Hey, doing that will seriously ruin EVERYTHING because then lawyers HAVE to get involved!!"

No, you don't understand the legal issues, as much as you harp on them.

"Fair Use" is basically irrelevant to modding Skyrim.  Fair use is reproducing someone else's copyrighted materials under certain circumstances.  Examples listed in the law are:

for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research

Even if it was relevant, which it isn't, charging money does NOT automatically disqualify fair use.  It's a factor, much as the amount of material copied is a factor.  If someone used graphics from My Little Pony in their mod, then they would need Fair Use to argue that it's parody or something.  They don't need Fair Use to modify Bethesda's art assets or add new ones, even if they charge.

That thing where Bethesda sued the maker of Minecraft?  Know why they did it? THEY ARE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO, TO PROTECT THEIR TRADEMARK.  Why? Because that's the way the laws are written!

Yes, trademark.  That is also irrelevant here.  If someone made an independent game called Sky's Rim, trademark might be an issue.  If someone makes a Source game and sets it in the Elder Scrolls universe, Bethesda might step in if it gets too large (this happens commonly with Star Wars fangames/mods, for example).  That's protecting trademark.

The attack trained lawyers are what would have fully destroyed the modding community, as everyone would have to protect their IP like a mother hen, or risk losing legal protection of that IP-- Because that's the way the law works. Even when using copyleft licenses, you are STILL having to resort to being a mother hen about it-- because you have to constantly expose incorrect use, and seek remedy from the courts when discovered, or else you lose the legal protection on your IP.  (Look up Laches doctrine, and Equitable Estoppel. If you DONT aggressively go after people who misappropriate your IP, then you cant sue them later, because they can use these defenses to torpedo your suit. That's why the attack trained lawyers ARE NOT OPTIONAL.)

Copyright such as on code and art assets does NOT have to be defended like trademarks.
http://sites.lib.byu.edu/copyright/about-copyright/basics/

This has been a huge misconception the last few days.  But no, if you copyright your code, someone else can't steal the rights.  Even if they charge money.  It's still your code, they're still violating your copyright.  Whether you can stop them is a different issue - but you don't suddenly HAVE to.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

OOOKKKKAAYYY,

first of all people, can I remind you how ridiculously expensive it would be to have to pay for your mods? Is everyone just forgetting that? I mean preposterously expensive, even if everything was priced at a dollar, over time you'd still be paying ludicrous amounts of money if you wanted to get everything. Of course, if you read the statement valve published you'll see they claim to have to wanted to support mods that might eventually turn in to things like DayZ or DOTA (kinda bullshit seeing what game they chose to test this on, if they really wanted to do that should have done it on M&B, or another game, where the engine is flexible enough and the modders are badass enough that whole other games have been pretty effectively made as mods), which I would find mostly acceptable. Secondly, again, mods just SHOULDN'T be paid for. That would be like your friend telling you, hey I wrote this really cool song, but I need you to give me five bucks first before I can play it for you. What!? What people fail to realize is that the relationship between modders and other players is not a provider-customer one. They're all part of the SAME community, where some individuals are using their (mostly, anyways, unless mods are so wildly popular they DO begin generating revenue and get elevated to something like DOTA, DayZ, or Napoleonic Wars) spare time to make content for everyone else. As PC gaming grows, people tend to forget that just because they don't have modder friends (I mean, i've never known a modder who wanted anything more than glory for his/her mods. Of course, they mostly wanted to do game design, but THAT'S what they expected to get paid for, not modding).

also I'm seeing some copyright being thrown around here, let remind everyone that copyright for code is pretty weak, especially if you're working mostly off of a larger game's code.