Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Oh, I've seen mods that are very worth paying for and that I WOULD pay for, but it is the principle of the matter. And you are correct, if every modder decides hey we're ALL going to put our mods behind paywalls, I will walk away from the vast majority of them. Also--I did literally say the same thing in the post.

It's not about a mod being worth something. EVERYTHING could be worth something, hell you can certainly find people who would pay for dirt. The problem is this: a.) there is a certain amount of amateurism expected in modding, you're really not expected to be working full time on a mod. and if you are, the question has to be begged, why not just make a game? Seriously. If you're JOB is making a mod, why are you not making your own game? b.) a mod is, by definition, a highly derivative work. Unlike other products which modify the use of some other product, you're not USUALLY actually expanding what you can do in the game. You're slapping a new skin on it, really, or changing the scenarios around a bit, but the core mechanics, the engine, the rules and limitations of the game stay the same.

Heck, it's the difference between Darthmod and Ultimate General.

Also, no fuck that, it's a slippery slope to NOT come down on the companies. Fucking Christ, we've been slipping down the corporate greed slope in gaming for a decade now. It can get a lot fucking worse too. If companies think enough idiots will pay extra as to positively affect their bottom line you better believe they're going to get worse. What extra fees are we going to pay next? huh? it's already over the top.

[da_nang]

Aside from monetary and compatibility issues, my main beef is and will always be the paywall breaking the community in two and lowering the overall quality of free mods.

And this isn't just old modders jumping on the bandwagon. New talent that would've modded prior to paid mods now has an option to gain money off of it. New potential modders' taking that path would reduce the talent pool inflow for the free community and that's not good for a healthy community.

When green gold lies on the table, the old social dynamics get thrown out the window.

[George_Chickens]

... 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.

Fallacy fallacy! Checkmate :^)

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Very well, if you wish me to provide concrete evidence of the gradual decline of corporate morality within the gaming industry and how that relates to paid mods, it'd be my pleasure.

[Rolan7]

Nah, George is saying my argument against you is invalid because I dismissed some of your statement as a fallacy.  If I was dismissing all your statements based on one fallacy, he would be correct.  But it's also worth noting that he included a smiley and a meme, which made me chuckle, and we're all cool here

I'm not denying that DLC practices have gotten really scummy, and corporations are often scummy in their money-making (that is their purpose, but calling them out on it can be helpful).  I think that's separate from paying hobbyist modders, though. 

While you acknowledge that some mods are high quality products, you keep insisting that mods ought to be free in general.  I don't follow your argument, there.

[scriver]

I'm not denying that DLC practices have gotten really scummy, and corporations are often scummy in their money-making (that is their purpose, but calling them out on it can be helpful).  I think that's separate from paying hobbyist modders, though.

It's not, because according to the actual systems implemented so far you aren't paying the modders more than a pittance, and the corporations earn the big percentages. Thus charging for mods is just another scummy practice by the latter, exactly like bad DLC stuff. Except it's worse, because here the corp hasn't any of their own money behind the creation like they would've had if it was an official DLC.

[Dunamisdeos]

Guys you aren't paying the modders. You are paying the producers.

When you spend a dollar on a skin the dollar does not go to the modder. Part of it does. I doubt its a 50/50 split, either. Additionally, the producers are providing literally nothing for their share. The distribution system for mods already existed in the forms of steam workshop and nexus etc etc. They aren't creating mods, because when the producers produce additional content for their game and charge you for it that's called DLC.

They want modders they didn't pay to make content for their game, and then they want you to pay the modders for the content the producers are selling you. Once this becomes accepted it would absolutely progress to them expanding their ability to outsource work for no actual pay because from their perspective why would you not do that.

The difference between an unpaid modder and something made by a producer is that the modder wants to improve your game experience. They have no other motivation. The Producer wants to part you from your money, and that's it.

EDIT: If they provided a paid mod system that verifiably guaranteed, say, 90% of the profits to modders, I would support that.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

WALL OF TEXT INBOUND.

Nah, George is saying my argument against you is invalid because I dismissed some of your statement as a fallacy.

I am the stupids.

I'm not denying that DLC practices have gotten really scummy, and corporations are often scummy in their money-making (that is their purpose, but calling them out on it can be helpful).  I think that's separate from paying hobbyist modders, though. 

While you acknowledge that some mods are high quality products, you keep insisting that mods ought to be free in general.  I don't follow your argument, there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hm. How to perhaps frame it more understandably? Part of my reluctance to pay modders is because mods are, historically speaking, labors of love. Would you pay for fan fiction? Would you pay for fan art? Would you pay then for a fan-made mod of a game that is, theoretically, complete without it? In theory, no.

Now, there are mods SO GOOD, that they really do improve the base game to the level of making vanilla unplayable (I.E. Soulstorm's Ultimate Apocalypse) and with anything of high quality, you'll pay for it. It doesn't mean you should be paying for, but you're willing to hash it because it's so damn good.

Part of the expectation of a mod, is that the person who made it wanted to make for fun, and that it was a good experience for them that they completed on their own time that didn't fuck their normal life over. I'm not gonna pay for your weekend hobby, when professionals actually make really good stuff that I enjoy. But again, if it's good enough. Ya, i'll pay you a little for it. At the end of the day though, no matter high quality your stuff is, you're still a hobbyist and not a professional.

and then there is, of course, the problem of being SO derivative. Let's look at this convenient definition of what a game is:

-- "a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck."

If a mod doesn't change one of those things, then it's not actually adding to the gaming experience. Aesthetics are not the core experience. Heck, we have issues with professionals charging for aesthetic options. So why would you pay an amateur for the same thing? The problem then is the fact that if you change the rules of the game and/or the skills required to play, then it is in fact, not the same game and you've drifted apart from what a "mod" is.

But then it gets even more muddied. Within any good game there is a core gameplay mechanic, and if you're not changing that, then you're not REALLY changing the game, and if you're not REALLY changing the game, what am I paying for? Rebalancing? Aesthetics? Additional Features? A new story(while both important to any game and an enticing addition, still not part of the core gameplay mechanics)? Those are all items that any good gamed developer should address in the game itself.

DLC is in some sense more acceptable because it's developer saying, "Hey, we had some extra time and money and made this stuff for you guys to enhance the gameplay experience. You don't need it to enjoy the game, but if you do buy it, we promise that it WILL enhance the gameplay experience." Keep in mind that there was a time when NOT EVERY GAME had DLC, DLC was something that happened when a game was popular enough or the devs had a significant amount of ideas that they didn't have time to implement into the base game. At one point, this didn't mean the game didn't get finished or wasn't polished on release, it was EXTRA.

And that's how I view mods. Extra stuff. Except, in theory, unlike DLC there is no guarantee that it will be any good (not that DLC is good these days, developers exploiting that trust for bales of cash)--as, in the end, modders are not a truly reliable resource. Game Developers are professionals, they run a business, and are technically beholden to their consumers. Modders on the other hand, they do what they, they quit when they want, and they're not worse off for it. If they choose to go the extra mile, that's great, but you're still going to have the modder's mark.

It's not like that's purely theoretically either. There are two great examples that showcase it brilliantly, one negatively, one positively. The first been the Magna Mundi game that the modders turned devs got way over their head in, and then there's Ultimate General, whose dev went from Darthmod to Actual Game in spectacular fashion. There IS a big difference between professionals and modders. It's not necessarily a skill or passion thing, but a difference in the way a professional and semi-professional football club work. The expectations are different, because one cannot accomplish as much as the other. That's not to say that the semi-pros cannot transform themselves into pros with hard work and dedication, or that the pros can't slack off and get booted, but that both are part of, for better or worse, a tiered system that ultimately defines what they are capable of.

When a club over performs in the lower leagues what happens? Do they win the whole league system? Can they shoot ahead of three league levels at once? No. They earn promotion and have to do it again at the next league level. The same logic can be applied to most business promotion situations. If you are a modder, you are an amateur. That's just how it is. I'm not denigrating your level of commitment or skill, but you do have to start at the bottom, and you don't get paid until your club turns professional, which means getting a job at a game development firm or starting your own and making a game--because at the end of the day, even a shitty game is going to make more money than a great mod.

And that's why I am against paying modders. It's the principle of it.

[Paxiecrunchle]

This is fascinating, I don't know how to feel about this yet.

[Retropunch]

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"?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that they're rolling in cash or even receiving their fair share, but as others have stated they're definitely not going to be getting that from paid mods either. If platforms like steam had easy donation buttons for instance, I'm positive that'd make a difference. There are other methods too - have a small amount of all special editions of games go to modders, add a patreon type system to steam etc. etc.

It's also a bit ironic saying donations can't work, on a forum for a game fuelled completely by donations (that does pretty damn well!)

More than that, for 20 odd years, there was never the expectation that modders would get paid and they did just fine. It seems to be the producers that are pushing the 'poor modder who has tried so hard' angle, rather than the modding community itself. Before all this came about, I never heard any of the great modders complaining about not getting paid - it wasn't something that happened because there was an expectation before you started that it wasn't going to be a commercial venture.

[Dunamisdeos]

That is because, as I posted earlier, the motivation for making an unpaid mod is solely to improve the game experience for oneself and others.

A mod involving profit is absolutely no different from DLC, except the publishers spend nothing and get a free product that they then get to sell to you.

[helmacon]

Personally, I think a model that would work well is sponsored mods. The company decides the threshold on release of the game. They say, if any mod developed for our platform receives x many downloads( downloads would actually be a terrible way to track that) is found running on x many unique versions of the game over y time, they will provide some sort of compensation to the developer. This could be anything they are willing to give. Straight up money, other games, special recognition. They don't even have to do this if they don't want.

This way companies could attract talented modders to extend the lifespan of their game, modders can have more reliable compensation, and just downloading the mod is helping that developer get compensated.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah see, something where modders are compensated for their work rather than the company being compensated for the modders' work.

[Egan_BW]

Personally, I think a model that would work well is sponsored mods. The company decides the threshold on release of the game. They say, if any mod developed for our platform receives x many downloads( downloads would actually be a terrible way to track that) is found running on x many unique versions of the game over y time, they will provide some sort of compensation to the developer. This could be anything they are willing to give. Straight up money, other games, special recognition. They don't even have to do this if they don't want.

This way companies could attract talented modders to extend the lifespan of their game, modders can have more reliable compensation, and just downloading the mod is helping that developer get compensated.

This is similar to the creation club deal, except it treats mods as free patches rather than as paid DLC. Which is probably more accurate, in the case of most mods.

[Dunamisdeos]

It is dissimilar in the important point that the company is profiting from things it did not make.

In other news I can find no information on how much a modder gets paid on the dollar. I do note that Zenimax is allowed to move and edit any mod content as they see fit and removes all liability from themselves for any action they feel like taking.