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[SalmonGod]

I'd like to call your attention to this bit.

".....stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here."

They intend to try again. Be watchful, they're going to start slower next time. They're not interested in donations to the modders, they're interested in making profit off of mods.

And if they find some way to do this that provides real benefit to the modding community and the health of their games, then I won't begrudge it.  I'm not hopeful that they'll find a way to do this, but that doesn't mean I should be angry at them for exploring the idea.  I may react with suspicion and worry that they'll fuck it up, but I won't get angry at a company for trying to wedge monetization into new territory.  It's what this society obligates people to do, and no-one deserves automatic criticism for it.  And I'm probably the most anti-capitalist person on the forum.  I'll save my anger for when they settle on a methodology that benefits them exclusively to the detriment of the community, and ignore protest.

[Flying Dice]

Agreed, rip in pizzas.

At least they removed it within days of launch, as opposed to blindly trucking ahead despite the backlash. That's an impressive turnaround for a games publisher, and I think they deserve credit for that.

I'll roughly repeat what I said in response to the announcement:

No. Do not praise them. This is how things are supposed to operate: when a company tries to bend you over a table, scream and shout and struggle until they release you. Once they have, don't turn around and apologize for fighting back while telling them how grateful you are that they let you go! Look the fuckers in the eyes and make sure they know that they can't pull things like that. The fact that they responded to massive negative backlash does not make them 'good', it makes them 'rational and reasonably intelligent', or as we gamers like to describe it, 'not EA'.

Look at all that hyperbole.

All I said was that it was impressive that they, you know, listened to feedback, something that a majority of companies (not just game developers and publishers) fail to do on a regular basis. I'm not apologizing for anything or thanking them for anything.

Eh, sorry, I'm a little bit desensitized by how quickly people did a 180 so that they could start licking GabeN's shoes again.

That said, I stand by what I meant: this is something that we should be happy about. This is not something that Valve or Bethesda should be vocally and widely praised for, because it sets a pretty pathetic scene if "responds to overwhelming community feedback, albeit somewhat grudgingly" is our standard for AAA gold star 11/10 companies.

[jocan2003]

That's the most direct "Sorry - Yes, we were wrong" announcement I think I've ever seen from an organization of this stature.  I think they deserve credit for that.  The only contradiction they threw in was "We still think there's a useful feature in here somewhere," but that's pretty weak.

I've been an unashamed Valve fan-boy for many years now, and I was genuinely re-thinking my perspective on them after this.  But I think they've recovered some grace here.

Ditto here, it was soo direct and strong that i nearly tought it was a joke or something.... As far down they fell when doing that they at least manage to climb the pit a little bit with this uncensored annoncement.

[Bauglir]

Given the degree to which people have gotten worked up into a crusading froth over this, I'm not really inclined to be too happy about the conduct of anybody involved. There's been a lot of portrayal of Valve and Bethesda as being a lot more evil than I think reality gives us any reason to believe they were. They made a move to earn extra money, some of which gets siphoned off for modders as a PR move, and they did so without considering the consequences.

I can't actually believe they were trying to sabotage the modding community or anything for the sake of a quick buck; I think they made the old established-industry habit of assuming basically nothing would change. Looking at mod downloads and going, "Yeah, so just multiply that by however much people charge for them, maybe scale it down by half or something, that's how much money there's going to be." Like when content distributors estimate losses to piracy. That there could be any kind of social side effects like people taking mods down for risk of theft probably never entered their minds, no matter how obvious it may seem to you. I'd wager their thought process about how it would impact the modding scene went as far as, "Where there was once no money, now there will be some at all, and that's better than nothing. And it'll incentivize additional competition!" Because that's how industries work, and that's what they're used to navigating.

Given that, I actually am pretty happy with this response, because it means they're capable of learning from a fuckup. And when they try again, I hope that what they learn is "Maybe it should be in the form of a voluntary donation button instead". But I'm not going to prejudge them on that. If I'm just going to assume that everything they do is inevitably going to be evil, then there's not much point in talking about it.

C'mon, let's avoid devil shifting our opponents as much as we can. As anybody who followed my posts between this thread and the other one may already be aware, I'm far from okay with the paid modding system they attempted to introduce. But I do feel that a lot of this reaction is the same old righteous drive for vindication that gets the WBC out of bed every day.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

people have been quick to condemn valve and bethesda and modders, it's true, but i really can't STRESS ENOUGH (and I have a couple of times now) how slippery of a slope this. If the response by the community had been any weaker this situation would have deteriorated quickly. Look at DLC, that happened so slowly and the negative response was so gradual that it happened and now companies publish half finished games and publish the other half as DLC later and no one bats an eye. No, the response was right, it's the kind of severe backlash that FORCES a company to pull the concept.

[Rose]

All I know is if I could sell a skylines building for 10 cents a piece and keep at least half of that, I'd love it, and would do my best to make some quality buildings that people would want to pay for.

On the flip side, I wouldn't be able to afford to mod my game because I'm poor.

[Zangi]

I like how we are discussing this in 2 threads.

Still doesn't do anything about plagiarism down the line... but I reckon if they lock-down mods to steam workshop only...

[forsaken1111]

All I know is if I could sell a skylines building for 10 cents a piece and keep at least half of that, I'd love it, and would do my best to make some quality buildings that people would want to pay for.

On the flip side, I wouldn't be able to afford to mod my game because I'm poor.

How would you feel if I took your entire catalog of buildings, changed a minor detail such as the color of one wall (or maybe changed nothing at all) and relisted them under my account with completely different names without screenshots. You'd have to pay for them to download them just to see if they're actually the same files, assuming you ever found out at all.

This is one of the unfortunate things that was happening on the steam market.

[BigD145]

All I know is if I could sell a skylines building for 10 cents a piece and keep at least half of that, I'd love it, and would do my best to make some quality buildings that people would want to pay for.

On the flip side, I wouldn't be able to afford to mod my game because I'm poor.

How would you feel if I took your entire catalog of buildings, changed a minor detail such as the color of one wall (or maybe changed nothing at all) and relisted them under my account with completely different names without screenshots. You'd have to pay for them to download them just to see if they're actually the same files, assuming you ever found out at all.

This is one of the unfortunate things that was happening on the steam market.

On other sites people were already copying stock Cities:Skylines buildings and renaming them. Yes, just renaming them. So you could sell a stock building on Steam and it would take users buying and reporting that before you were shut down. Someone has to prove original files somehow first, though. Is a timestamp on Nexus proof in the eyes of a company with no presence on Nexus? Who's to stop copies of ALL THE Nexus mods being sold on the marketplace? Or all the loverslab mods with penises replaced by carrots or something to make them work safe? Monetized mods on Steam was never going to work. Not without micromanagement on the part of Steam that would get more expensive than the income from mods.

[Flying Dice]

Amusingly enough, one of the big arguments trumpeted by non-modders shilling for Valve and Bethesda - the low income from the donation model - is actually one of the best protections against theft; nobody will get any donation income in the timeframe that a stolen mod will exist before people figure it out, and the lack of paygate makes it trivial to check to see if it's stolen.

[Rolan7]

...That doesn't make any sense.  Donations don't have the $400 threshold like paid mods.  And people paid more attention to paid mods, and could investigate them for free due to the 24 hour refund (to steam wallet, but still).

I wish the conversation would finally move out of this thread, though, even though the thread's generally slow...  Just to keep the discussion in one place.

[Shadowlord]

I like how we are discussing this in 2 threads.

Still doesn't do anything about plagiarism down the line... but I reckon if they lock-down mods to steam workshop only...

Out of sight, out of mind.

The other thread is in some forum I never visit, and I, for one, happened to have completely forgotten about it.

[Sergius]

I wonder what logic process is used to make a decision like this:

"Wow, people really like to download mods for free. There's millions of downloads of them! If we charged everyone moneys for getting them we'd have millions of moneys."

[Flying Dice]

...That doesn't make any sense.  Donations don't have the $400 threshold like paid mods.  And people paid more attention to paid mods, and could investigate them for free due to the 24 hour refund (to steam wallet, but still).

I wish the conversation would finally move out of this thread, though, even though the thread's generally slow...  Just to keep the discussion in one place.

Are you being serious right now? Let's break it down:

1a: Donations are extremely small amounts, often spaced out over the course of years, even in the cases of extremely popular mods. There is an arbitrarily small chance of any given mod, stolen or otherwise, receiving a donation within a week or two of being put up. This is literally the exact same thing everyone shilling for Valve was harping on about when they were trying to convince people that paid mods were good because modders would gain more money faster.

1b: $400 threshold, but everybody who gets the mod pays in. Even if it's only $0.99, that only requires a bit over 400 downloads before the uploader starts gaining money, and even terrible piece-of-shit mods can swing that under a free system; a stolen good mod would easily hit that point within a reasonable time period if it wasn't caught early on.

2a: Free mods are vastly easier to investigate, due to being, y'know, free. You download, check the files, check how it looks and acts ingame, done. If it was stolen, you get in touch with the original author and the hosting site, problem solved.

2b: Paid mods require you to pay before you can do that. Regardless of whether the mod was stolen or not, you're either stuck with that out of pocket or have to refund the mod, which is additional hassle and prevents you from trading for a while, IIRC. If it was stolen, you're shit out of luck because nobody with any authority is going to listen to you or respond promptly if at all, and there's no non-customer oversight.

There are fewer barriers to investigation with free mods, donations bring in less income with much longer gaps between payments (unless you'd like to retract comments about donation systems not financially benefiting modders, hah), and the sites which host free mods have a greater incentive to rigorously root out thieves, because they rely on word-of-mouth and user loyalty for the revenue they receive, rather than skimming 30% off of sales.

[Putnam]

All I know is if I could sell a skylines building for 10 cents a piece and keep at least half of that, I'd love it, and would do my best to make some quality buildings that people would want to pay for.

On the flip side, I wouldn't be able to afford to mod my game because I'm poor.

Hey, there's hope for that!

And people really seem to like the stricter slope mod, heh.