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[wierd]

I find the idea abhorrent. I will leave it at that. Bethesda can hire people that make good content, and can pay them a living wage for their contribution to their portfolios. Otherwise, they can piss off.

/my take.

[Retropunch]

Absolutely the only way I can see this going is that Bethesda (and other devs soon) will start making smaller, less complete games and expect modders to fill in all the blanks.

As Wierd has said, it basically allows them to get this for super cheap. The modders will be paid a pittance in comparison to their actual content creators and I'm 100% certainly they'll have no control over their product.

Which brings me on to the worst part. A lot of people misguidedly feel like this will somehow mean we'll see better quality mods - I feel the opposite will be true. Everyone will have to dance to Bethesda's tune or not get paid.  At the very least this will mean homogenised mods, but I wouldn't be surprised if it meant 'no overhauls on systems we have in place (ala skyrim UI), and steer clear of anything we might want to include as propriety content'.

[Putnam]

The creation club is out and I still don't know of any arguments against paid mods besides "modders don't deserve to be paid"

[CABL]

100 credits = 1$
Hellfire Armor (one Enclave armor which you can find in FO3 GOTY) = 500 credits AKA 5$. Quality = Might as well sell giant flaming dildo sword for such money. Also, you can wear it in Fallout 3 GOTY, which isn't expensive at all these days.
Gun Runners' Arsenal (small DLC with 38 (!) tools for murder and 15 new types of ammunition) for Fallout: NV = 2$ at the INITIAL RELEASE. Well, it's 4$ on the consoles, but it's still below 5$... Quality = Steal for 2 or 4 dollars (depending on your gaming system). Worth alone for explosive rounds for Anti-Material Rifle and also Katana.
Mudcrab Armor = 100 credits aka 1$ dollar. Quality = Shouldn't be sold for money; everyone who's patient enough to learn 3D modeling and modding can do the same thing. Not being worth even 1 cent, this is basically Bethesda saying "Pay for our shitty-looking Dwarven Mudcrab, just so we can get money and make more shitty Mudcrab skins like that".

The creation club is out and I still don't know of any arguments against paid mods besides "modders don't deserve to be paid"

Yeah, great overgeneralization of the category of the people who care about gaming industry (/s). I personally afraid that it'll allow Bethesda to get away with really awful bullshit, like Fallout 5 where there's only 3 types of weapons, all dialogue options will be cut to binary "Yes or No", environment will be just as uninspired as FO4, and an amount of bugs which will rival Daggerfall and New Vegas combined. It'll be sold for 60$, and the modders will have to fix MOST of the problems with the game, because Bethesda will be busy bathing in money from paid mods. Hell, FO4 and Skyrim both are pretty mediocre games without the mods, and now Bethesda wants to get them behind the paywall. No, thanks, I'll go and play my modded New Vegas instead, which is objectively superior to Fallout 4 in many ways.

[Putnam]

That's not an argument against paid mods, that's an argument against Bethesda.

[CABL]

That's not an argument against paid mods, that's an argument against Bethesda.

It is, read what I've quoted below; I listed mods' quality/price and compared it to the quality/price of a DLC to New Vegas. The fact that someone would charge 5 dollars for a single armor/gun, while DLC with 38 guns is only 2 or 4 dollars is a huge middle finger to a customer. Oh, you want the reason why modders shouldn't get paid? Because mods are like pepper and salt in restaurants; they're not a meal (read; product) by themselves, they are here to make your dish saltier/saucier (read again; change the video game in some way), to add some flavor. But unlike salt/pepper, mods are not a natural/industrial products: They're virtual content, they have no place on real-world market, and they shouldn't be behind the paywall. Also, I'm pretty sure that the most modders are more than capable of working, so go and contribute to a REAL society, not some online community.

P.S And yea, argument against Bethesda = argument against paid mods, since they're the ones who made this crap.

Spoiler: Quoted stuff (click to show/hide)

100 credits = 1$
Hellfire Armor (one Enclave armor which you can find in FO3 GOTY) = 500 credits AKA 5$. Quality = Might as well sell giant flaming dildo sword for such money. Also, you can wear it in Fallout 3 GOTY, which isn't expensive at all these days.
Gun Runners' Arsenal (small DLC with 38 (!) tools for murder and 15 new types of ammunition) for Fallout: NV = 2$ at the INITIAL RELEASE. Well, it's 4$ on the consoles, but it's still below 5$... Quality = Steal for 2 or 4 dollars (depending on your gaming system). Worth alone for explosive rounds for Anti-Material Rifle and also Katana.
Mudcrab Armor = 100 credits aka 1$ dollar. Quality = Shouldn't be sold for money; everyone who's patient enough to learn 3D modeling and modding can do the same thing. Not being worth even 1 cent, this is basically Bethesda saying "Pay for our shitty-looking Dwarven Mudcrab, just so we can get money and make more shitty Mudcrab skins like that".

[martinuzz]

Paid mods just widen the gap between the rich and the poor. It's not like games aren't expensive enough as is already.
That kid with poor parents that has to work in a supermarket every evening to afford a single game once every two years is just not going to be able to pay for mods.

[wierd]

Here is how I think paid mods should be done, if at all.

Game company licenses the content from the mod maker.

Game over. Nothing else.  Instead, the game companies want to say "you want to use our tools, even if you make all your own assets, you have to agree to give us your IP for nothing." (seriously, read the EULA on the toolkit.)

The way I see it, that should change. The game company should not get carte blanc like that, and should license the content from the modder, clean it up, and then sell it. The mods original maker should get a small royalty for creating the IP.  Game company can leverage their publisher for exposure. Everyone wins.

instead, the game company wants to fuck everyone over.  Fuck that.

[Retropunch]

The creation club is out and I still don't know of any arguments against paid mods besides "modders don't deserve to be paid"

The argument isn't that modders don't deserve to be paid, it's that companies don't deserve to be paid for the work modders do.

This, many people believe (myself included) will lead to companies do bad things, like;

• Shaving content off the base game because they know they'll get paid for it in mods later on.
• Making it harder for non-paid mods to get exposure/work (or more support to the paid mods)
• Only approving certain mods to be paid mods that fit their vision/framework (especially the case if they were going to release a DLC similar in the future)
• That this is a stepping stone to a 'mod subscription service' where you have to continually pay to keep playing your mods

The stock counter-argument is 'well I just won't buy a game that does that', but unfortunately I think these things are too insidious to notice - it'd be hard to know how much they were shaving for paid mods, and how much they were blocking mods that didn't fit their ideas.

I'm NOT against paying modders, I just feel it can be best done through donations or one of the other alternative payment methods (patreon etc.).

[Reudh]

My favourite part of this is apparently the content comes already downloaded (that's what the 2.3GB update was to Fallout 4, not any bugfixes or anything, straight up just the content of Creation Club, you're only paying for the .esp to activate it, basically.).

So, reportedly, you have the .ba2 files already existent on your hard drive (the F4!Creation engine version of .bsa, itself a proprietary archive format for Oblivion, Skyrim, F3, and FNV); what this means is you can feel free to make an .esp of your own to put the files contained in the .ba2 archives into your game, free of charge. I wouldn't even say that constitutes piracy, provided you don't redistribute the files yourself; in my opinion it's no different to something like Arthmoor's "Cutting Room Floor".

[penguinofhonor]

snip

Just so you know, modders get hardly any money from donation models, so if you're saying they have to resort to that then you are saying they don't deserve to get paid much. If I recall correctly, this skyrim mod with unique gameplay changes, hundreds of thousands of downloads and great reviews earned its owner about $12 total in donations. Anything less popular or extensive than that and you're counting pennies.

You might know this already - some people are okay with the pittance modders get from donations - but the vast majority of pro-donation arguments I've seen boil down to "Modders can make a good living off donations because I would like that to be true."

This misconception is so prevalent partly because it's hard to find information on modder incomes - ever since the paid mods drama began, modders saying they don't make much money have been the target of harassment and death threats from the totally-not-entitled modding community. That alone has made me pretty suspicious of any generosity-based model like donations - how can that work when so many mod users seem to view their relationship with mod creators as "you give me free stuff, if you have a problem with that then shut the fuck up and die"?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

This thread is back? Goddamnit.

Y'know what, I AM against paying modders. Because that is what mods are man. Mods. They're not games. If you make a full blown game, I will pay you. But a mod is literally by definition an alteration of a pre-existing (hopefully) fully realized package. You can split hairs all you want about how much content is in the mod and how complete overhauls change everything, but the same quality as a finished game is just not there. It just isn't.

If you choose to develop a modification using such time as you need to be paid to survive, that's your business. But mods are the equivalent of fanfic. Some of them are great, some are trash, but ultimately they're fanmade labors of love.

... and thats just the paying modders stuff. The whole paid mods thing is REALLY about corporate greed and an increasingly scummy and exploitative AAA gaming industry--would I actually pay a couple cents on the dollar to use dfhack + therapist? Ya man. I would. Large developer/producer companies NEED to be come down on with severity or otherwise it is going to get very out of hand. Not every company is so slimy, but a really sadly large number of hitherto legendary development houses have of late fallen under the sway of less-than-admirable business practices. Gamedev giants get booted out the door with no concern for their body of work and series after series of venerated games have trailed off into trash. Paid mods are really, really exploitative in any form when we talk about big AAA companies.

[Enemy post]

I don't like paid mods.

You people better not pay me or I'll bite your kneecaps off and sell them to a merchant.

[Rolan7]

This thread is back? Goddamnit.

Y'know what, I AM against paying modders. Because that is what mods are man. Mods. They're not games. If you make a full blown game, I will pay you. But a mod is literally by definition an alteration of a pre-existing (hopefully) fully realized package. You can split hairs all you want about how much content is in the mod and how complete overhauls change everything, but the same quality as a finished game is just not there. It just isn't.

If you choose to develop a modification using such time as you need to be paid to survive, that's your business. But mods are the equivalent of fanfic. Some of them are great, some are trash, but ultimately they're fanmade labors of love.

If you've never seen a mod that deserves any money, that's kinda a shame.  But fine- if a modder ops in, decides to charge a few cents, what's that matter to you?  Just walk away, if it's not worth it.  They're choosing not to give it to you for free, and you're choosing not to pay.  They think their work is worth literally anything, and you're disagreeing.  Where's the problem with that?

I can't stress enough:  There was never any indication that modders would be *forced* to charge for their work.  It was completely optional.  The only difference was that they would have a choice.

... and thats just the paying modders stuff. The whole paid mods thing is REALLY about corporate greed and an increasingly scummy and exploitative AAA gaming industry--would I actually pay a couple cents on the dollar to use dfhack + therapist? Ya man. I would. Large developer/producer companies NEED to be come down on with severity or otherwise it is going to get very out of hand. Not every company is so slimy, but a really sadly large number of hitherto legendary development houses have of late fallen under the sway of less-than-admirable business practices. Gamedev giants get booted out the door with no concern for their body of work and series after series of venerated games have trailed off into trash. Paid mods are really, really exploitative in any form when we talk about big AAA companies.

Slippery slope and a trail of unsupported invective.

[scriver]

The creation club is out and I still don't know of any arguments against paid mods besides "modders don't deserve to be paid"

When modders are paid more than scraps for their work and the producer/studio isn't taking home the majority of the profits, then we can talk about what mods are worth. Until then, "modders are worth pay for their work" isn't even an argument, because they aren't getting paid. The producers are.