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[Flying Dice]

I think most people have no qualms with stuff like Moonpath to Elseweyr being paid, an example can be found in M&Bs latest DLC, which did turn out pretty shitty, but most importantly people were excited over them.

Mount&Musket/Napoleonic Wars is actually a perfect example of how a great mod can make the transition into DLC without introducing this heaping shitfest that Bethesda tried. It's got to be a vetted, invitation-only thing or it flat out won't work.

[UXLZ]

but handled correctly it might be actually good.

And there lies the problem. What publisher would you actually trust to handle it correctly? The only one I'd even consider off the top of my head is CDPR, and even then I doubt I'd go with it.

[Retropunch]

but handled correctly it might be actually good.

And there lies the problem. What publisher would you actually trust to handle it correctly? The only one I'd even consider off the top of my head is CDPR, and even then I doubt I'd go with it.

Very true. I'd trust Bethesda more than most, just because I think that if they were vetting content (which I'm sure is the way they'd go) they'd have to be pretty picky to make sure stuff lived up to their brand (which is really their lifeblood, especially now they're trying to branch out to new IP).

I still don't think it'll be great, and I think we'll find all the big expansions that used to be free will now be paid for, but I can certainly see that there's a possibility that it'd allow for more regular/varied content DLC for those that can afford it.

[miauw62]

I think many people don't really trust Beth much because they feel like they've sort of ruined their favorite franchises (FO3, Oblivion).

[GiglameshDespair]

To be blunt, nothing that we as a community do - or any internet community does - will ever, ever make a dent in their sales. If you think it would, you vastly underestimate how many people buy their games. Sure, if they tried to roll out a skyrim style paid-for-mods thing just before launch that could make a dent, but a few thousand people not buying in the first week will make 0 difference - especially as they'll probably relent the week after. And Bethesda will know that.

I think really it just needs to be pushed in the path of good modders being official DLCs, and I think that's the closest we're going to get. In a way, I could really welcome that. Things like Moonpath were awesome, and if paying a few credits would create more stuff like that then I'd be quite happy Obviously, they'd need to handle it well - If they started snapping up every popular mod that'd be incredibly annoying, but handled correctly it might be actually good.

Yup.
Consider... the majority of people who played bethseda games never touched a mod at all.
Only 14% of Skyrim's sales were on PC.

A similiar situation for Fallout 3. 4.62m on xbox, 3.63m on ps3, 0.93 on pc.  ~10%.

So the majority of people who buy bethseda games don't do it on PC. If every PC user united and refused to buy Fallout 4 for PC, assuming the trend stays true, it'd certainly be a dent, but that's not likely to happen.

[forsaken1111]

If those numbers are correct, it literally doesn't matter what we do. May as well wait and see.

[UXLZ]

Iirc, those numbers are only for physical stores.

[umiman]

There's no way in hell those numbers are accurate.

[GiglameshDespair]

They don't say if they are or not. Statisticbrain does have a stat on concurrent players on steam, so they have at least looked at digital copies - so that, at least, is a stat I would hesitate towards saying involves digital sales.

If you do find evidence otherwise, post it in here; this was just a quick google of "skyrim total sales" and "fallout 3 total sales". If it's misleading in that way I'll add a correction.

[Graknorke]

Steam Spy estimates 9 million Steam owners for Skyrim. So, more than retail console sales put together.

[Graknorke]

It had a free weekend months ago. It really shouldn't be affecting things anymore. Then there's the players total which is nearly the same number, too.
And hell, played in the last two weeks is 0.9 million, which is over a quarter of the sales reported by statisticbrain. I seriously doubt that more than a quarter of the people who own Skyrim have played it that recently.

EDIT: I mean, if we assume that it was because of the free weekend and statisticbrain is perfectly accurate and counts ONLY Steam, and given this quote from the about page:

If the game had a free weekend recently, it will see a jump in "owned" for roughly 25 million users.

then that means there have been 6 million/25 million = 24% of users who logged in during that weekend who haven't since. Again, completely unreasonable to think.

[Arbinire]

yeah that 14% number was disproven when the initial paid for mods debacle sprang up, using the steam numbers previously posted by Graknorke...before the free weekend to conflate the numbers.  Would take some sifting but I'm sure the posts still exist on steams Skyrim forums(though I doubt any of us really wanna go wading through hundreds of pages of posts to find them).

That said, here in the Bay12 forums we're a pretty small community.  If you really wanted to "rally the troops" concerning this, the best channels would be Reddit, 4chan, and other hivemind communities with vastly larger numbers of people.

[Retropunch]

Regardless, it's a small number. Even if it was 30%, that's 30% over the life time - how many in the first year/before all the sales is difficult to predict. Even so, you're not going to get even fraction of that number to not buy just on the off chance that they might have paid mods.

[Bohandas]

but handled correctly it might be actually good.

And there lies the problem. What publisher would you actually trust to handle it correctly? The only one I'd even consider off the top of my head is CDPR, and even then I doubt I'd go with it.

Very true. I'd trust Bethesda more than most, just because I think that if they were vetting content (which I'm sure is the way they'd go) they'd have to be pretty picky to make sure stuff lived up to their brand

Like they'd make sure the interface didn't work, that kind of thing

[Graknorke]

So hey, would it be fair to say that paid mods give Bethesda an incentive to deliberately break their game? At least so far, people have been willing to forgive them over broken games because community patches are available. It's a bit up in the air how them being charged for would affect that, but given that they've considered trying paid mods again at all I suspect that Bethesda are looking at it optimistically.