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[Flying Dice]

The main issue with that sort of hypothetical is that it'll never actually happen with problem-children companies like Bethesda. It's all well and good to pay maybe $15 total for all the mods you'll ever need for a game that retailed at $30 and didn't sell expansions. A game that was $60 + $60 of DLC and which will have an endless stream of paid mods, not so much. A dev like Bethesda wouldn't dedicate assets to helping mod makers, wouldn't bring them on as new talent, and certainly wouldn't give them even a 50/50 split of the revenue. They would, if they could, seize rights over mods out-of-hand, sell them for $10-20 each, and give the authors fuck-all if they thought they could get away with it.

It's already painful enough to have to buy several games worth of DLC in cash just because you know that a lot of the best mods will stop being compatible with the base game. It's only remotely tolerable because you know it will only be two or three of them and then it will stop. I don't play subscription games as a matter of principle, and a game which would see an endless chain of DLC is functionally a subscription game.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I can't read all of this thread without getting severely depressed. Suffice it to say, this whole fiasco turned me off of modding completely, and made it harder to stomach working on music. The idea that we should turn back to patronage ("donations") to support the arts completely ignores the problems that this created for the underclass in the renaissance. In fact I would go so far as to say that patronage manufactured the concept of "talent" wholecloth as an excuse to devalue the work of people who simply could not afford to hone their craft to the levels of the "greats."

By and large, electronic music is hypercommercial as a result of the perception that music is cheap to produce, create, and distribute, where the reality is that the thousands of hours musicians put into learning their craft (yes, including electronic musicians, including the dubstep brosephs people love to hate) represents a heavy cost of its own, and the most successful commercial electronic music groups have dozens of ghost producers in their ranks. If I could spend all of my time working on music, I would. I don't want it to be a hobby. I want it to be my life.

That's just not possible, because people think what I do should be free - my family needs my help, financially, so no, I can't even really justify just scraping by for the sake of this. The stereotypical starving artist bullshit would make me a monster. My family would support me, but I have a three year old niece I would be taking food from if I did not work. And why yes, I do suck. Because I can't spend all my time on music, I'm not where I could be in terms of my skill with composition and my level of practice.

At the same time I'm expected to give away my work for free as a "labor of love," I'm scowled at for being an unsuccessful amateur. Amateur, as in someone who does not make money from their work. I looked at making music in collaboration with other Skyrim modders (making a standalone collection for extending the existing themes was the next step) as a possible out when this first bubbled up to my attention. I seriously geared up to approach it as a possible business - I've loved Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall for its music - and pretty much overnight I saw that collapse into a gibbering heap of greed.

Yes, I would call demanding something I make be given to you for free greed. I simply don't buy any of the problems that were brought up as the real reason so many people were screaming about this, because under it all was that "labor of love" thing, and there was literally nothing stopping Bethesda or Valve from fixing the valid problems such as mod theft with moderation up to disabling accounts. I'm at the point where I'm only sharing my new music with my family, because every single distribution service - Soundcloud, Youtube, even Bandcamp - profits greatly from the belligerent apathy of our culture towards music.

I really thought this could open up so much for artists, writers, etc. Choice of Games comes to mind as something where writers can still make money off of their fiction, despite writing being devalued to the point where we expect journalists to work off of royalties. What is so repugnant about music and art that any similar outlet for them is crushed under this double standard?

I honestly would be in favor of paid mods, but for one particular thing.  Given the current nature of copyright law and the fact that Valve and the game's company get a cut of the money paid for mods, all it would take is one guy putting up a paid mod that is based on a copyrighted work, and then everyone's going to get sued for copyright infringement.  And the companies that claim it will be trying to get every penny they can, so there's a good possibility of Valve and the related company losing a ton of money from being hit by multiple cases.  Worst case scenario, it could deal enough damage that both companies have to declare bankruptcy and eliminating Steam itself.

Unless something is done to prevent this (and given Valve's prior poor implementation of features, I have doubts of something on their end), I think more than donations is kinda a bad idea.

[Reelya]

I wouldn't be worried about that, they have takedown notices for a reason, and the people taking stuff down do get money in the form of advertising etc. We already have systems that cover this sort of thing from Youtube or social media that cover inadvertently hosting copyrighted material.

[Teneb]

Ark dev is paying modders.

In short, 14 mods will be chosen and the modders paid 4k a month to complete them. Though Wildcard, the dev of the game, will be monitoring and analyzing each project to see if people are not just taking the money and slacking off. Another catch is that when they join the program, the modder has to hand Wildcard the mod's source and assets so that if they are removed from the program, or just declare it finished and thus leave this program, the devs can maintain compatibility.

Seems like it might work if no one gets greedy.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Ark dev is paying modders.

In short, 14 mods will be chosen and the modders paid 4k a month to complete them. Though Wildcard, the dev of the game, will be monitoring and analyzing each project to see if people are not just taking the money and slacking off. Another catch is that when they join the program, the modder has to hand Wildcard the mod's source and assets so that if they are removed from the program, or just declare it finished and thus leave this program, the devs can maintain compatibility.

Seems like it might work if no one gets greedy.

So they're pretty much hiring modders to turn their work into DLC?  That honestly sounds like the best implementation of 'paid mods' I've heard of.  It gives modders money, grants their work greater attention, and helps avoid all the legal issues as developers would only pick up the mods that wouldn't have those issues.  Heck, adding a donation button to the Steam workshop could synergize with this a bit, as it would help indicate which mods people would pay for so the companies would know who may be a good idea to approach, while simultaneously giving modders without such contracts a bit of an income.

[Rolan7]

Again, UFO:ET did that for a modder who (singlehandedly?) drastically improved their X-COM-inspired tactics game.  The base game was... okay, had serious interface limitations which it shouldn't have so many years after X-COM.  This guy BMan dramatically improved the game, and they hired him.

[Flying Dice]

Ark dev is paying modders.

In short, 14 mods will be chosen and the modders paid 4k a month to complete them. Though Wildcard, the dev of the game, will be monitoring and analyzing each project to see if people are not just taking the money and slacking off. Another catch is that when they join the program, the modder has to hand Wildcard the mod's source and assets so that if they are removed from the program, or just declare it finished and thus leave this program, the devs can maintain compatibility.

Seems like it might work if no one gets greedy.

So they're pretty much hiring modders to turn their work into DLC?  That honestly sounds like the best implementation of 'paid mods' I've heard of.  It gives modders money, grants their work greater attention, and helps avoid all the legal issues as developers would only pick up the mods that wouldn't have those issues.  Heck, adding a donation button to the Steam workshop could synergize with this a bit, as it would help indicate which mods people would pay for so the companies would know who may be a good idea to approach, while simultaneously giving modders without such contracts a bit of an income.

Not paid DLC, it's worth noting. ARK has already integrated a couple popular mods (Primitive+ mode and The Center map) like that, and both are included for free. Which is, incidentally, an approach I agree with. It rewards modders who do good work, recognizes the importance of good mods for games where they matter, and gives the team access to talent/the budding talent an in to a dev, all without fucking players or mod authors. They've also set good standards for DLC-people bitched about Scorched Earth being released while the game was still EA, but it was genuinely transformative and a breath of fresh air, well worth the cost.

[Putnam]

they're back

my hilarious cognitive-dissonance-filled views on this can be seen elsewhere in this thread as well as in my sig

[forsaken1111]

they're back

my hilarious cognitive-dissonance-filled views on this can be seen elsewhere in this thread as well as in my sig

it pretty clearly says that this is NOT paid mods

[Egan_BW]

Didn't stop twitch chat from screaming about it.
And yeah, it's (partially) community-made content paid for by money.

[forsaken1111]

Sorry, that was an attempt at sarcasm at a far too early hour. Yeah it's basically paid mods but they're 'not allowing refactoring of any existing mods to use it' so you won't lose anything currently out, just anything made in the future which might have been free

[Putnam]

Sorry, that was an attempt at sarcasm at a far too early hour. Yeah it's basically paid mods but they're 'not allowing refactoring of any existing mods to use it' so you won't lose anything currently out, just anything made in the future which might have been free

Or might not have existed at all

[da_nang]

"Imagine what X could have been if we had to pay for it!"
"Oh, I can imagine."

[Dunamisdeos]

This seems like an attempt to crowd out the free modding community. I expect there will be less overhead for them as well if they get outside parties to make content for them rather than getting their main devs to do it.

They are probably counting on the concept of money paid=higher prestige/quality, and they might even be able to churn out higher quality content since they have more resources and review at hand. If they can create a perception that free mods are intrinsically inferior than their paid versions, they can replace the free modding community.

We have a name for paid mods made in a publisher-regulated environment. They're called DLC.

[CABL]

BRB buying Skyrim: Special Edition.

On a much more serious note, that's why it just won't work. For every passionate modder, there will be 50 code monkeys who'll make golden skins for the rifles and Dwarven Mudcrabs, just like there is CoDs and Ass' Creeds for every decent AAA game released yearly. Corporations are all about maximizing their profits no matter what, but that's not the problem: Corporations prioritize money over the actual quality, which is why various media (comic books, films, cartoons, TV series, and most importantly, games) has declined in quality. Putting the money aspect into the modding will make modders care about the money more than actually making a good mod, because individuals with a personality can be corrupted too, and human beings become corrupted insanely easy when the money is involved. Also, what makes modders such a special snowflakes in terms of the "deserved payment"? Pretty much every gamer works hard to afford new game/computer, pretty much everyone can help the community by making guides or by just helping newbs by answering their questions. Did you know that the game guides require effort and time to make, especially if they're actually really in-depth guides? Oh, here's the idea: Valve should paywall some of the Steam Guides! If you want to see a guide on how to become rarest Pepe in the world, pay 1.00$ dollars! And before someone starts talking about so-called "quality assurance", then I gotta say that pretty much every AAA gaming corporation has QA team, and yet Bethesda is notable for their bug-ridden launches... And I can talk about Steam Greenlight QA for days, yada yada, the rant is over.

TL:DR: Money corrupts, and that's what will happen to the modding scene of these two games: Money over quality...

Anyway, anyone thinks that the mudcrab dwarven armor is hawt? I'll probably buy Skyrim: Special Edition just for that mudcrab dwarven armor...