This is a completely different issue. Mods are the equivalent of fan art, nothing more. You pay for fan art only if you want something specific made exclusively for you. Modding is not "work", there never was an expectation or promise of payment. It's a hobby. People did it only for the sake of the game itself and community, maybe to get a job experience doing something they like.
No, actually. It's the exact same thing.
You're deciding what people should be paid based on what *you* think their motivations should ideally be.
This is not in any way different from thinking I should be happy to work for pennies because my primary motivation should be my undying love of art.
If you dont want to pay for mods then fine, god knows I'm not going to. But your logic is still broken.
quick question (because i haven't been following properly).
does this stop people being able to load mods outside of steam? can people (in the case of skyrim) just load them from the nexus instead?
You can still use mods from wherever you want. Mine are probably half manually installed from Nexus, and half Steam. The only negative consequence I've seen is that a lot of Steam modders took theirs down, so they're no longer subscribed. The mod files are still on my HD however, they just wont auto-update and I had to re-activate them manually from the Skyrim launcher (like a normal mod).
I think people are ticked off that some mods are now dependent on mods that have converted to a paid model, like Wet And Cold. What they're missing though is that many of those mods still have the free version available, it's just no longer being maintained.
Edit: One issue arises when a modder decides to change their mod to a paid version, but doesn't change the name. E.g. "MyMod: Gold Edition" If the paid version uses the same name as the free version once had, other mods that use this mod as a dependency suddenly require the paid version as a dependency as well. Unfortunately Steam allowed mod creators to change the name of mods they've already released. E.g. my version of "Wet and Cold" is now "Wet and Cold (Free)". Any mod that depended on Wet and Cold will no longer work until I install the paid version, which has the proper name. This justifiably annoys users.
Unfortunately the issue is getting distorted into "Valve is forcing people to pay for mods." when really it's the modders forcing people to pay for mods either on purpose or by accident. People are complaining that modders now have that choice.
I don't think that everyone complaining about this thinks that mods should be free forever and anyone trying to make money off them is a sellout. There are certainly some people who think like that, but I don't think it's the majority.
I think the key problem is that from the point of view of mod users, the only thing that is new is a pricetag. Nothing in this announcement promises anything that wasn't already being provided free of charge. So from their point of view the deal is skewed. They are expected to pay more, but are not getting anything new in exchange.
I certainly do understand that producing high quality content takes time and effort. But if you want to compete with something that used to be free, you best be sure that you're offering something extra.
I don't think that everyone complaining about this thinks that mods should be free forever and anyone trying to make money off them is a sellout. There are certainly some people who think like that, but I don't think it's the majority.
Have you seen reddit? The "discussion" on this topic (or lack thereof) is very vitriolic and they definitely as a whole seem to completely against the idea of modders being able to make money off their work, demanding that this all be free forever.
Have you seen reddit? The "discussion" on this topic (or lack thereof) is very vitriolic and they definitely as a whole seem to completely against the idea of modders being able to make money off their work, demanding that this all be free forever.
Seriously.. the thread about the SkyUI developer literally calls him a "sellout" in bold capital letters.
Why are people saying Beth games aren't broken out of the box without unofficial patches?
Blue Palace had bugs as far as a couple of months ago that constantly crashed mods which stored items in it, fixed by the community, and Papyrus still spits out errors about Blue Palace due it script calling your character even if you aren't in the area. There is a reason modders avoid touching that area like the plague or that questline with Sheg.
Expressions on NPC's were broken when it came to modding and even sometimes in default games, was fixed but then got broke again, was only fixed thanks to a exposure of said expression values from a MNC mod (which ironically, started for the whole purpose other sexy purpose).
Red Eagle quest is another one, with specific events leading up to it, if not done, wouldn't work and you had to console command yourself in it that had nothing to do with the quest.
Barbas questline is another, no character distance limit from NPC they have to follow around half way through the quest, and has a broken marker which won't update if you lose the dog from your sight.
There isn't a single graphical assets on characters that didn't have some kind of UV/Mesh issue that people had to fix. Half of the rocks in the games might as well have a 128 texture, and those are supposed to be hero pieces, we all hate UV mapping, I get that, but really, you coudn't even bother UV mapping an auto generated rock that is going to be on the main road of the game, where 70% of the scenery is rock?
HD graphical pack is broken, especially on large array of AMD cards with fog and skyboxes making it look like your GPU was overheating, as well a few armors having weird paint streaks in places they shouldn't have.
There are still quests that break if you bring a companion + animal with you, like break break, you can't continue them, have to console command.
Creation Kit got updated and broke several things to version check packages and didn't fix the current 'mesh viewer per asset' window on AMD cards, you know this, and you know it well. Modders were forced to use a virtual directory to use an older version (which you can't do LEGALLY with Steams forced update system).
Don't even get me started on the Creation Engine fiasco. New engine how? The fact that shadows were about as accurate as a sundial in a cave and the options menus didn't actually allow you fix them outside of editiing INI files, is such a lazy effort on anyones behalf.
You guys didn't fix any of that after 1.9.32, and even broke stuff recently, why? For you guys, it was essentially a weeks worth of effort, instead, because ZeniMax didn't end up getting the WoW figured with their cheap online version of TES to compete against Blizzard, decicded to essentially go GameWorkshop on Steam.
It's always for the same reason, because you guys keep on threating like everything exists in a Vacuum in relation to external influence, you did this with TES Online (ei; community for older demographic on paying game isn't important to quality, relying on younger demographic with no money to carry you through, hence high entry fees and double tapping from consoles subs vs. older games which have all of that like WoW, ergo, no entry incentive) and now here.
I guess finding modders and hiring them as part of your DLC team for small period of contract work is too much, like the old days of Quake and Unreal, clearly that moola needs to be made no matter how at the rate of chicken feed for those that work on your engine that can barely render shadows on a characters forehead.
If you do any digging on these guys and their mod comments on reddit and Nexus, you will see they never cared for anything and NEVER planned for UI5 in the first place, it wasn't until Valve contacted them with money that they suddenly hopped on with an update, and apparently, this is during a time when the one of the twins was 'mountain climbing and isn't available easily'. How the hell do you have time to make an update with a full revamp in less then a month while mountain climbing mate? Oh yeah, the 2 month plus update that certain authors were notified for.
Have you seen reddit? The "discussion" on this topic (or lack thereof) is very vitriolic and they definitely as a whole seem to completely against the idea of modders being able to make money off their work, demanding that this all be free forever.
Call me crazy but outside of Steam community pages I haven't really seen anything that's not business as usual. People are pissed off and loud about it but that's nothing new on the internet. Maybe I just read too many comments on news articles to be bothered by this anymore.
Keep in mind that we're seeing potentially thousands of people commenting on the same, controversial topic at the same time. Of course things will get a bit over the top. But that's hardly surprising when everyone is trying to outdo one another.
My point is that if you sift through all the anger and garbage people do raise some valid concerns.
You can still use mods from wherever you want. Mine are probably half manually installed from Nexus, and half Steam. The only negative consequence I've seen is that a lot of Steam modders took theirs down, so they're no longer subscribed. The mod files are still on my HD however, they just wont auto-update and I had to re-activate them manually from the Skyrim launcher (like a normal mod).
I think people are ticked off that some mods are now dependent on mods that have converted to a paid model, like Wet And Cold. What they're missing though is that many of those mods still have the free version available, it's just no longer being maintained.
Edit: One issue arises when a modder decides to change their mod to a paid version, but doesn't change the name. E.g. "MyMod: Gold Edition" If the paid version uses the same name as the free version once had, other mods that use this mod as a dependency suddenly require the paid version as a dependency as well. Unfortunately Steam allowed mod creators to change the name of mods they've already released. E.g. my version of "Wet and Cold" is now "Wet and Cold (Free)". Any mod that depended on Wet and Cold will no longer work until I install the paid version, which has the proper name. This justifiably annoys users.
Unfortunately the issue is getting distorted into "Valve is forcing people to pay for mods." when really it's the modders forcing people to pay for mods either on purpose or by accident. People are complaining that modders now have that choice.
Paying for mods is against the spirit of free game modifications.
Who made this one of the Ten Commandments of Game Modding? I see this popping up everywhere but I don't get who made you, or anyone else on the internet, the king of mods? The reason money wasn't in mods before was because the back in the days of Quake, the mod scene was young. There wasn't nearly the amount of money or infrastructure in the industry to allow for mod creators to get paid AND for companies to turn a profit. Sure, donations work, and thats completely up to the creator, but to say that a modder should NEVER get paid for their work is completely insane and unfair. Valve wasn't the powerhouse it is now, but now they can afford to pay modders like TF2 and Dota2. The percentage split is a whole other issue so I won't get into that.
I know plenty of people who mod in one way or another for their full-time job. Be it TF2, Dota 2, CS:GO, Unity Asset store, Turbosquid, etc. The reason we have jobs as game developers is because we LOVE it, AND we get paid! Why shouldn't that same logic apply to modders? They do it because they love it. Is it because they're aren't technically employed? Thats just arguing semantics in that case.
Sorry, this is a big issue for me, because I know people that this directly effects. And I can't stand to see people and mod users dictate what modders can and can't do with their OWN work. Don't you want to support your fellow game devs?
People are complaining that modders now have that choice.
1. People are complaining that they now have to pay for things they got for free before
2. People are complaining that they are being paywalled from essential things like
Sky UI (Bethesda shameless bringing a console UI to PC, and Sky UI fixes usability p.Ex.)
3. People are complaining that Bethesda is getting paid for other people fixing
their mistakes
4. People are complaining that Bethesda could literally not care about things because "modders will fix it anyways" (!!!) and get paid on top of that
5. People are complaining about being thrown into a new competitive market
that demands new worlds of management and brings tons of issues with many things, such as licensing, copyright, student software etc etc
6. People are complaining about valve erasing links from pages, containing donation
links, (which apparently is just an automatic link eraser, still causes outrage)
7. People are complaining about tons of stolen mods being uploaded all over the place
8. People are complaining that everything is a giant mess, as many mods depend on others and nobody knows what is going on
9. People are complaining that Valve and Bethesda do not offer any protection from any kind of problem. Its like anarchy, only that you average modder can get potentially sued to hell. They profit, but in terms of rights, its 100% modders risk.
10. People complain about the cocky monetization of things they knew as free, such as "Early access mods" and Mod bundles and sales. But this can be disregarded.
11. People are complaining that this will inevitably lead to killing off mod platforms such as Nexus. Anyone knowing his stuff will tell you that it would be downright
dumb to keep free mods alive if you have such a platform. Nexus will likely be bought, then killed off at a later point, unless they fear the backlash too much.
12. People are complaining about a downright insulting share of 25%, without any risk coverage, quality control of the marketplace or assistance. "Minions you now have the privilege of working for my gain! You even get something out of it!" - style
13. People are complaining about the classic 100$ payout rule, which would affect small priced mods a lot. They would have to make 400$ to see any money, effectively increasing profit margins of Valve and Bethesda by a LOT again.
So every 100$ made by a modder has a good chance that the next 1-99$ is never paid out and 100% kept by Valve/Dev.
14. People are complaining that you get a nearly criminal 7 day ban on the Marketplace after you refund a mod (which usually has a high chance of being unstable)
15. People are complaining about shameless censoring on Steam, hiding ratings, and banning people for voicing their opinion. (likely a lot of flaming going on, still censoring)
Then theres a lot of personal stuff about specific modders and whatnot, but this pretty much covers it.
Thanks for the list Shrike, really helped me understand the situation better. Personally, I like the idea of having a donate or "pay what you want" button only. This allows for less of a requirement for filtering and approval by valve since the donations are completely based on community reception and support.
Good list. I still feel like a lot of that is negated by simply releasing your mod for free, or understanding that releasing commercial content comes with a certain amount of accountability, some real, some not. Mods have been released commercially before, like Counter Strike, and I think people are just in shock at the change in climate when a modder has that option. Still, it's nothing that wasn't possible before.
There are respectable ways of releasing a paid mod:
One would be to release a free version and a gold version, both with the exact same content, but with "donation" options on the gold version.
I would probably release a free version, and then a paid "Dev's" version, with source files like high poly sculpts, substances, etc. Things that a player wouldn't care about, but another modder or student might really appreciate.
I think that modders are either going to remain very casual, or have to become more aware of the business aspect of things when they want to generate revenue. It's just how the system works and in a way, it offers a better bridge from modder to indie dev for those who want to pursue it seriously.
I kind of dug through the thread...I'm confused....did they take away the ability to make free Mods completely?
No, they're just giving modders the ability to charge for their mods if they want to. The free mods and steam workspace still function as usual.
Most concerns seem to be stemming from free mods being dependent on other mods that might go paid, a possible splitting/rift between the modding community (sharing versus not sharing, competition, etc.), worried about people stealing content others make and reselling, an influx of shitty mods and modders who are just there to make a profit (remember apple's App stores), the idea that the revenue only being 25% for a modder on whatever they actually charge for their mod further encourages making quick simple mods versus quality, is anyone responsible/how can they be responsible if a mod no longer works that was purchased due to an update or conflicting mod etc.
I guess I'm neutral-positive-yet-cautious-pessimistic after thinking about it some more. I mean it doesn't sound terrible, there's some excellent modders who produce amazing work and literally spend years on some projects. If they can actually get something in return for all of those countless hours spent then yay.
Though it'll definitely open up the flood gates to being steam and modding communities being filled with a lot of crap and issues. Hopefully they'll rethink their strategy and regulate it a bit better than they did with greenlight.
This is train wreck, you can't lie to the internet and hope to get away with it, especially for a hobby. As the old saying goes, "take my job and I can put an end to my life, but only after I put an end to yours for my hobby".
First mistake was even attempting to silence the community on the Workshop. Thats like telling people in Libya to GTFO, and then acting all surprised when France gets in on it because people vented to someone else as external force.
Apparently modding was always about the money...how can Valve, the same company that made it's name on modding, and knew the division between royality work a la DOTA and TF2 suddenly claim Modding is the same, especially from their CEO? This is bad as people telling others to eat cake when they don't have money for water.
It seems like after the quick 'hour break' Gabe took, he's giving more concrete answers, such as allowing ACTUAL donations without a bottom limit like the name implies. Seems some actual information is being given to the community, but again, it's more of damage control, lets see the weekend roll over.
Apparently Valve also got 'service benefits', ei; 5% is given to Nexus if you mention them. There is heavy implications that with what is written in EULA of the workshop, this is all a form of grooming and curating authors.
INGAME MOD POP UPS IF YOU USE THE FREE VERSION OF THE MOD. The author removed the free version after they realized they couldn't make it a limited pop up thing, because...they couldn't do it? I don't know at this point.
This is why MASS Commercializing of mods is bad. You give them an inch, and the few rotten apples will take a mile, before pressuring those around them to do the same and ruin everything because of malevolent competition (yes, this is actually a thing).
Also, hilarious to see so many DOTA2 workshop artists acting butthurt about the entire thing and being unable to make proper money (even threatening they will go back to DOTA2 and won't share their almighty 'unique' skills with the Skyrim world) because it reminds me of this:
Capitalism Ho! Lets hope those pennies and shillings are soft enough to sleep on when no one remembers your name.
Ace man, you need to seriously calm down a little bit.
I'm honestly curious, what is the difference between damage control, and trying to improve something based on community feedback?
By saying it's damage control you are pretending you know the intentions of the people and companies. All we know is they are trying to improve a system based on feedback, and that is what is important.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
All jokes aside, I can't believe some here are seeing Valve's setup as a good setup. There can definitely be a paid mod system, but Valve is going about it all wrong.
You want a good example of a community making a living income with mod making, look at Second Life. The model the have going on over there is correct.
Honest question, why does Valve have to take 75%? When something like Second Life only charges $1 and still maintains a multi million dollar company.
Every other content creation program we have seen so far, that is meant to promote the content creators themselves, take the smaller cut. Look at how Epic is handling their Unreal Engine. They are giving their Engine away for free and if you start making money, Epic takes only 5%!!
Gumroad is the hot spot for us right now, they only take 5% and zero fees!
So why does Valve HAVE to take 75% for doing nothing?
EA tried this for Sims 1-3, it did not work well for them.
They are taking the smaller cut. Compared against the whole, at least.
They take 30%, which is pretty typical. The problem is that Bethesda then needs a second cut of 40%, and then they have a bizarre system of having you choose who to give the other 5% to.
I mean it may be Bethesda's game, but they're doing LITERALLY NOTHING here. If anything, they probably deserve the smallest cut. Not the largest.
And neither of them deserve more than the actual modder.
I agree that neither deserve more than the modder, I'd even say a three way split sounds fair with the extra % to the modder, but really I feel they should get at least 50%.
Bethesda does a LOT for modders, any dev that releases a creation kit does. It involves taking a massive in-house tool, which tend to be rough around the edges, and making it into consumer grade software. Then they have to document the whole thing. Setting up the game so files can be overwritten easily (dropped into the data folder) is also done with modders in mind.
I agree that neither deserve more than the modder, I'd even say a three way split sounds fair with the extra % to the modder, but really I feel they should get at least 50%.
Bethesda does a LOT for modders, any dev that releases a creation kit does. It involves taking a massive in-house tool, which tend to be rough around the edges, and making it into consumer grade software. Then they have to document the whole thing. Setting up the game so files can be overwritten easily (dropped into the data folder) is also done with modders in mind.
They did a lot initially, and that's why they deserve a cut. But since they're doing absolutely nothing now, it's purely passive income without any effort at all. As such, they don't deserve a particularly large cut compared to the people actively working with the mods. Including Valve, who at least maintain the workshop and handle payments.
Ideally, I'd say it should be 30% Valve (with 5% diverted to where you choose), 20% Bethesda, and 50% to the modder. Or 35% Valve, 15% Bethesda. Something like that, anyway.
I mean it may be Bethesda's game, but they're doing LITERALLY NOTHING here. If anything, they probably deserve the smallest cut. Not the largest.
And neither of them deserve more than the actual modder.
Full access to their IP within the game, nearly no questions asked. This is something that would cost you percentages in the games industry, or likely wouldn't happen at all.
I don't like the percentage but I don't think it's crazy out of this world.
but the modification of the content is only allowed within the context of all participants having purchased their own copies of the game, and submissions deemed too damaging to the brand will likely be taken down
I would just add, that it's not like bethesda isn't getting anything out of modding even without paying mods.
The more people use skyrim mods, free or otherwise, the more skyrim life is extended, meaning more people will buy it, they could even make new addons or dlcs or such and profit based on it.
So, it's just my opinion, but one of the big selling points of TES series was always moding. So bethesda has profit from it already from that, and not a small one either.
So huge share like that, imo again, is not justified. They should take some share, but much smaller one.
I would just add, that it's not like bethesda isn't getting anything out of modding even without paying mods.
The more people use skyrim mods, free or otherwise, the more skyrim life is extended, meaning more people will buy it, they could even make new addons or dlcs or such and profit based on it.
So, it's just my opinion, but one of the big selling points of TES series was always moding. So bethesda has profit from it already from that, and not a small one either.
So huge share like that, imo again, is not justified. They should take some share, but much smaller one.
Indeed, anyone saying Beth deserves even close to the percentage they are getting seemingly aren't thinking of the indirect profit they have already made from modding. All those people who bought the game on pc after getting it on console for the mods, all the people who probably wouldn't even buy the game if it was unmoddable, all the people who are hooked on the series because mods make it possible to keep playing long after normal single player games die. A huge amount of their pc sales are probably directly attributable to mods in the case of TES.
I don't have a problem with paid mods, you can always steal them elsewhere if you really must or just not buy them. Once again steam is making you pay for a convenient service, auto updating and subscription and there are now more opportunities for artists to sell their virtual wares. The percentages however seem utterly rediculous, and reek of monopoly.
My main issue with the Bethesda and Valve cuts is that they take the brunt of the money but don't take any responsibility. This paid mods program should be fully curated and checked for quality and legality. Refunds should always be possible if the mod doesn't work anymore aswell not just within first 24 hours.
Bethesda does a LOT for modders, any dev that releases a creation kit does. It involves taking a massive in-house tool, which tend to be rough around the edges, and making it into consumer grade software. Then they have to document the whole thing. Setting up the game so files can be overwritten easily (dropped into the data folder) is also done with modders in mind.
Yes, and they get a LOT of Skyrim sales as a return. Its an investment, no charity.
Exactly, but it's a bit of a risk too. Skyrim is kind of an outlier in that its modding community is so strong, but there's no way CD Projekt Red made their money back on the dev kit for The Witcher 2, or Larian for Divinity: OS.
The whole point of this is to help remedy that and encourage other devs to start doing the same. Still, I think the modder should get at least 50% for their work.
but there's no way CD Projekt Red made their money back on the dev kit for The Witcher 2
You're way to narrow-minded and everything isn't about money, you've gotta think about the future.
Let's just sum up what they earned from releasing their mod tools for Witcher 2.
+Goodwill from the Witcher community.
+A small mod community that are used to their engine.
+A new employee!
+A learning experience.
-Lost money and time
But let's see to the future now, what happens now when they release RedKit 2 for Witcher 3? Well they've already got a small community that are already used to their engine that can make mods and write tutorials for all the new people coming to mod Witcher 3. They've used RedKit for Witcher 2 as a learning experience so they don't fumble around when they release RedKit 2 for Witcher 3 and can avoid a lot of the traps that way.
Anyway, the reason more devs aren't doing that is because it takes time, which means money to support mods the way those developers have. If there's less risk involved, hopefully more developers will be inclined to. Very few can afford that kind of effort.
Whatever the case is, I am betting it's here to stay, or if not, it will be back in a different form. I personally think it's great, the world is a changing place, and we are heading toward one where virtual wares created by someone have value.
I enjoy the fact that an artist is now able to have almost complete artistic freedom and still make money, maybe at some point even a living. This is quite amazing for an artist, as I am sure most of you enjoy making fancy armor sets, or castles etc, more than creating 50 iterations of a rock model or tree.
Literally my biggest gripe is the distrubution of money, basically both the artist is getting shafted by not earning much, and the consumer is getting shafted by paying more than he should, all because steam is in a monopoly position. Part of me would enjoy it if Nexus somehow came to a deal with bethsoft for paid mods with a fairer ratio. They already provide a better service than steam and have a lot of exposure for skyrim mods.
Yeah, I don't understand why Bethesda wants such a large cut here. These mods prolong the lifetime and sales of their game and fuels enthusiasm for sequels ... why wouldn't they want to get out of the way of that and let it flourish instead of trying to turn a nickel or two?
I also think the better mods will end up on steam for money, made by professionals and not hobbyists.
I'm not so sure about that; getting a 25% cut is pretty damned harsh for a professional project. If you have the competency to build one of the larger scale mods, you probably have the competency to invest time working on something that doesn't net you such a small cut.
Money doesn't bring in any quality when it comes to DLC, let alone a proper game for 60$, why would a modder do the same for 0.25 cents and requires to sell 400 copies to get that payout with tools that don't work and have fallen behind and only have been here thanks to the community?
Also, how greedy do you have to be to ONLY want to enter a modding scene for money? So let me guess, you don't play the game, nor like, but want to only get on it for the money? Stop doing that, stop entering a scene just for the money and cocking it up. Look at what happened with Sims and Poser, it ruined everything because of this attitude and infact brought the standard down in 2003. Thank you so much for that people, and I'm alreading seeing this attitude in DOTA2 and CS:GO and I'm not liking it one bit on how the professional scene has became a 'trading ring' of sorts.
Don't forget one more thing, IT IS A MOD, it's NOT DOTA2, you're not making money off MARKET TRADING like DOTA or TF2, you sell it once and done, and your MOD is also affected by Steam Sales, you're hoping to see maybe 1-5K a year from a years sale. LEARN YOUR MARKET and HOW IT WORKS.
Look at the Nexus, the most popular mods have around 4 million download IN TOTAL, they claim to be unique persons, but I know I have downloaded those mods sometimes dozens of times, with a dynamic IP, that easily eats in to the numbers if several thousand people do.
What would be the payout here, over the course of 4 years? And mind you, these are BIG mods, with several dozen people, so unless you're a total asshole that gets your friends to work for literally no money, you're gonna have to split. Don't even get me started on Piracy, that also eats into the number, and no person in their right mind will pay you 5 bucks like they do for a DOTA2 cosmetics when Skyrim itself costs less then that by todays value. I'm not gonna pay you 5 bucks when Skyrim costs 5 bucks itself, thats 1:1 value. Are you crazy?
You have one hell of a scene, both culturally and heritages wise to fight and hope to get anything out of it even as a professional.
I don't know how else to make it clear. Leave the MASS COMMERCIAL of modding alone, there are plenty of ways to make money, why you do you have to muck with modding? Cheese is cheese, I don't want meat and meat will only poison the industry.
You can freelance, you can find a job, you can do DOTA2, CS or TF2. You can become a content creator on a plethora of sites of 3D assets, you can do donations pages, create new content and sell privately with a small public free release or Patreons, HELL YOU EVEN HAVE THE UPCOMING UNREAL GAME WITH A FAIR SYSTEM!!
GAME IS FREE, but you can make content, meaning any money I pay is support Epic and YOU, I'M OK WITH THIS HERE, plus, offence meant, but AT LEAST EPIC PROVIDES WORKING TOOLS AND DOESN'T BREAK THEM A COUPLE OF MONTHS BEFORE RELEASE and then has the galls for ask 45% + Tax because their ace in the hole MMO failed due to double dipping on console cost memberships. They did fixing on Normals for static meshes for pete's sake, they are trying.
Also, Epic never witheld bonuses from Obsidian when Fallout New Vegas didn't make 85% on Metacritic, such a shitty moment for the industry, stuff like this gives games more of a bad name then any amount of online harrasing people will ever do.
If you guys are in it for the money, then don't complain about not being able to monetize mods out of all the things when you have all the options above and something that is a hobby. You can't enter an industry who's demographic is young people who don't even have a car for their name, and act all surprised when you can't afford a Ferrari from nickels and diming everything, and act all proud when you broke it during the process as if they 'owed' you something..
Take that shit back to lawyer school or something, but even then I have seen more humble lawyers then game artists with integrity nowadays.
Money doesn't bring in any quality when it comes to DLC, let alone a proper game for 60$, why would a modder do the same for 0.25 cents and requires to sell 400 copies to get that payout with tools that don't work and have fallen behind and only have been here thanks to the community?
Also, how greedy do you have to be to ONLY want to enter a modding scene for money? So let me guess, you don't play the game, nor like, but want to only get on it for the money? Stop doing that, stop entering a scene just for the money and cocking it up. Look at what happened with Sims and Poser, it ruined everything because of this attitude and infact brought the standard down in 2003. Thank you so much for that people, and I'm alreading seeing this attitude in DOTA2 and CS:GO and I'm not liking it one bit on how the professional scene has became a 'trading ring' of sorts.
Don't forget one more thing, IT IS A MOD, it's NOT DOTA2, you're not making money off MARKET TRADING like DOTA or TF2, you sell it once and done, and your MOD is also affected by Steam Sales, you're hoping to see maybe 1-5K a year from a years sale. LEARN YOUR MARKET and HOW IT WORKS.
If there is no money to be made in Skyrim, nobody will go there to make money. All the "paid" mods will die out eventually. Simple as that
EDIT: Also, it is unfair to compare making a game to creating a few items. Yes, the scale must be taking into consideration if there is to be a fair distribution of revenue. But small mods, like a bundle of items, it seems alright.
When creating a game in unreal, you'd have to do more work, maybe with even more people. Which then you'd have to split revenue. Programming, Level design, story, 3d modeler, textuerer, sound, particles, animation. Eventually you'd have less revenue split than the steam workshop. (assuming project was divided by royalties rather than direct money).
Another thing is that when a game is published, it has a higher chance of making more money than a mod or any dota/tf2 asset can make by itself.
ace angel: chill, nobody is getting hurt. stop pointing fingers just because something changes a bit.
what is happening right now over a bunch of items which cost basically nothing, is absolutely horrible. Doxing peoples data, death threats... really? Are those guys out of their damn minds? Speak with your wallet, don't buy the stuff. Let people who want to buy whatever they want. You don't have to agree to the terms by bethesta or valve, thats fine.
But nobody is forcing you on anything, so stop projecting your ideals onto everyone...
I'm sure people will continue to mod Skyrim without steam. I'm sure the non-Steam Skyrim community will continue to thrive.
I also think the better mods will end up on steam for money, made by professionals and not hobbyists.
What makes a professional vs a hobbyists in the realm of mods? Seems like splitting hairs. Anyhow as an example, the money incentive has worked so well on greenlight and EA with the professional titles we have gotten. Grass Simulator, Kavkaz Bloodbath, etc.
Money is a multiplier. It gets you more of everything
Steam greenlight and the appstore are proof of this.
You get more quality, but along with it you get a lot more crap. But overall the crap doesn't matter except for discoverable, but having more content is usually a win.
Also well done Ace, you've made it into my mental list of crazy people who preside on poly-count. Which is quite an achievement.
Money is a multiplier. It gets you more of everything
Steam greenlight and the appstore are proof of this.
You get more quality, but along with it you get a lot more crap. But overall the crap doesn't matter except for discoverable, but having more content is usually a win.
Also well done Ace, you've made it into my mental list of crazy people who preside on poly-count. Which is quite an achievement.
When does too much content become white noise? More content is fine, but without some sort of base quality control in place, it just floods these markets with crap. Crap that because people like to complain, downplay the respect of the whole venture. So even those companies striving to use and create content correctly now have an upwards battle to even get noticed. More so than before when there was a some sort of gatekeeper.
This is true. White noise will always be a problem.
But this is why humanity invented critics. Critics are supposed to be people who have a job of sorting through the crap, but through some bizzare turn of events are mostly used to confirm or contradict peoples beliefs on things they already know about.
Not really saying that it as an argument for anything though.
Simply that with more people making things regardless of motivation, you end up with more of everything, both shit and good.
So let me get this straight, you make all the content on your own, put your blood and sweat into it and only get 25% whilst the other parties get 75% for doing auto pilot work.
So if you hit the jackpot with your product and earn $100,000 you only get $25,000 the other $75,000 Poof, gone!
Oh and then the $25,000 would get a Tax which is the goverment's share.
Sign me up, this is what it's all about, making others rich!
I'm thinking in all honesty and fairness a clean cut 50-50% would be a tough but decent split, at worse it should be a 33% three way split, but it isnt good enough for them if they arent screwing you over.
In short all they are saying is hey modders instead of doing this for free and for the love, let's sell it, and here sign over 75% of the ownership to us. Oh and by the way it's royalty base!
to be fair, by any other approaches, be it unity assetstore, unreal marketplace, turbosquid or clients you will NEVER get paid as good as having an asset in the workshop.
Yes, they do take a lot of the cake, but considering how much you make with the proper userbase (i fear skyrim in general might be too small by now), you still get a better cut than anywhere else.
50% of nothing is still nothing, 25% of A LOT is still quite a good deal.
Not that i would mind getting a bigger cut for the assets we did for the dota workshop, but seriously, no client would pay me as much as I can make with the workshop. Ever.
I haven't seen it said here so i'll throw it out there.
The whole Bethesda/Zenimax cut of 40%? is pretty brutal, but you're essentially buying into their market. Steam says "we'll put you infront of 10mil clients, but we'll take a cut" then Bethesda says "we'll put you infront of 1mil, but we'll take a cut too". Its basically remunerations for them investing in that market.
One of the annoyances with this is, it essentially drives a shovelware microtransaction model. No one is going to invest big in producing a TC* because the potential losses are massive. I mean can you imagine if something like; Dota, TF, CS, Dayz, Red Orchestra was built on this model. Big business would be laughing. I heard once Blizz (no idea if true) basically put some clause in their ToS that they would retain ownership of anything produced with their games, to prevent another dota affair.
*Not that TCs are in vogue anymore, i can't remember the last one i saw (Dayz i suppose). If you have those skills you go indie these days i guess.
I do understand that both Beth & valve puts you in front of big market.
And you can call me naive, and i do understand and agree that since it's investment for both of them, that they need to get some share, sure.
But personally, i'm a little tired of hearing all these stories where huge companies get like most of the money, and only tiny share goes to those who actually create something. And that simply because that big company gave market to them.
That may be reality nowdays, but i still think things could and should be better. Actual creators should have bigger share. No matter what beth and valve thinks, at the end, by far the biggest work was done by actual moder. And as we already talked, both valve and beth already get some of the share back by simply selling more TES coppies. Which means valve also gets more money as a result.
It's just my opinion, mind you, but it seems to have worked for Beth when it was all free just fine, so i have my doubts that all of suddent, valve and beth will be at worse by having "just" say, 50% instead of 75.
Yeah, I don't buy the "We put you in front of a big market" thing, modders already had that, there was just no money being made. I still think Bethesda and Valve should get a slice, but If you look at the split like a negotiation (not that it is) I think most people would pass.
Replies
does this stop people being able to load mods outside of steam? can people (in the case of skyrim) just load them from the nexus instead?
You're deciding what people should be paid based on what *you* think their motivations should ideally be.
This is not in any way different from thinking I should be happy to work for pennies because my primary motivation should be my undying love of art.
If you dont want to pay for mods then fine, god knows I'm not going to. But your logic is still broken.
You can still use mods from wherever you want. Mine are probably half manually installed from Nexus, and half Steam. The only negative consequence I've seen is that a lot of Steam modders took theirs down, so they're no longer subscribed. The mod files are still on my HD however, they just wont auto-update and I had to re-activate them manually from the Skyrim launcher (like a normal mod).
I think people are ticked off that some mods are now dependent on mods that have converted to a paid model, like Wet And Cold. What they're missing though is that many of those mods still have the free version available, it's just no longer being maintained.
Edit: One issue arises when a modder decides to change their mod to a paid version, but doesn't change the name. E.g. "MyMod: Gold Edition" If the paid version uses the same name as the free version once had, other mods that use this mod as a dependency suddenly require the paid version as a dependency as well. Unfortunately Steam allowed mod creators to change the name of mods they've already released. E.g. my version of "Wet and Cold" is now "Wet and Cold (Free)". Any mod that depended on Wet and Cold will no longer work until I install the paid version, which has the proper name. This justifiably annoys users.
Unfortunately the issue is getting distorted into "Valve is forcing people to pay for mods." when really it's the modders forcing people to pay for mods either on purpose or by accident. People are complaining that modders now have that choice.
I think the key problem is that from the point of view of mod users, the only thing that is new is a pricetag. Nothing in this announcement promises anything that wasn't already being provided free of charge. So from their point of view the deal is skewed. They are expected to pay more, but are not getting anything new in exchange.
I certainly do understand that producing high quality content takes time and effort. But if you want to compete with something that used to be free, you best be sure that you're offering something extra.
As far as I understand it, nothing is stopping players from using Nexus to load mods. <Deleted sentence, see edit.>
EDIT: Equanim beat me to it. I guess you can use mods from both Steam and Nexus
Have you seen reddit? The "discussion" on this topic (or lack thereof) is very vitriolic and they definitely as a whole seem to completely against the idea of modders being able to make money off their work, demanding that this all be free forever.
Oh, it gets a lot worse than that. Take a look at the comments that are being left on the developers' steam pages.
Blue Palace had bugs as far as a couple of months ago that constantly crashed mods which stored items in it, fixed by the community, and Papyrus still spits out errors about Blue Palace due it script calling your character even if you aren't in the area. There is a reason modders avoid touching that area like the plague or that questline with Sheg.
Expressions on NPC's were broken when it came to modding and even sometimes in default games, was fixed but then got broke again, was only fixed thanks to a exposure of said expression values from a MNC mod (which ironically, started for the whole purpose other sexy purpose).
Red Eagle quest is another one, with specific events leading up to it, if not done, wouldn't work and you had to console command yourself in it that had nothing to do with the quest.
Barbas questline is another, no character distance limit from NPC they have to follow around half way through the quest, and has a broken marker which won't update if you lose the dog from your sight.
There isn't a single graphical assets on characters that didn't have some kind of UV/Mesh issue that people had to fix. Half of the rocks in the games might as well have a 128 texture, and those are supposed to be hero pieces, we all hate UV mapping, I get that, but really, you coudn't even bother UV mapping an auto generated rock that is going to be on the main road of the game, where 70% of the scenery is rock?
HD graphical pack is broken, especially on large array of AMD cards with fog and skyboxes making it look like your GPU was overheating, as well a few armors having weird paint streaks in places they shouldn't have.
There are still quests that break if you bring a companion + animal with you, like break break, you can't continue them, have to console command.
Creation Kit got updated and broke several things to version check packages and didn't fix the current 'mesh viewer per asset' window on AMD cards, you know this, and you know it well. Modders were forced to use a virtual directory to use an older version (which you can't do LEGALLY with Steams forced update system).
Don't even get me started on the Creation Engine fiasco. New engine how? The fact that shadows were about as accurate as a sundial in a cave and the options menus didn't actually allow you fix them outside of editiing INI files, is such a lazy effort on anyones behalf.
You guys didn't fix any of that after 1.9.32, and even broke stuff recently, why? For you guys, it was essentially a weeks worth of effort, instead, because ZeniMax didn't end up getting the WoW figured with their cheap online version of TES to compete against Blizzard, decicded to essentially go GameWorkshop on Steam.
It's always for the same reason, because you guys keep on threating like everything exists in a Vacuum in relation to external influence, you did this with TES Online (ei; community for older demographic on paying game isn't important to quality, relying on younger demographic with no money to carry you through, hence high entry fees and double tapping from consoles subs vs. older games which have all of that like WoW, ergo, no entry incentive) and now here.
I guess finding modders and hiring them as part of your DLC team for small period of contract work is too much, like the old days of Quake and Unreal, clearly that moola needs to be made no matter how at the rate of chicken feed for those that work on your engine that can barely render shadows on a characters forehead.
EDIT: For people who are saying 'on noes, they called him a sellout', thats because the author of SkyUI is a sell out if you actually knew their personality since the haydays, just because people like Gopher helped with the project doesn't mean everyone is as nice as him:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33r0r9/a_genuine_appeal_to_the_true_sons_of_modding_the/cqnxye5?context=3
If you do any digging on these guys and their mod comments on reddit and Nexus, you will see they never cared for anything and NEVER planned for UI5 in the first place, it wasn't until Valve contacted them with money that they suddenly hopped on with an update, and apparently, this is during a time when the one of the twins was 'mountain climbing and isn't available easily'. How the hell do you have time to make an update with a full revamp in less then a month while mountain climbing mate? Oh yeah, the 2 month plus update that certain authors were notified for.
Call me crazy but outside of Steam community pages I haven't really seen anything that's not business as usual. People are pissed off and loud about it but that's nothing new on the internet. Maybe I just read too many comments on news articles to be bothered by this anymore.
Keep in mind that we're seeing potentially thousands of people commenting on the same, controversial topic at the same time. Of course things will get a bit over the top. But that's hardly surprising when everyone is trying to outdo one another.
My point is that if you sift through all the anger and garbage people do raise some valid concerns.
Thanks for the detailed response
Who made this one of the Ten Commandments of Game Modding? I see this popping up everywhere but I don't get who made you, or anyone else on the internet, the king of mods? The reason money wasn't in mods before was because the back in the days of Quake, the mod scene was young. There wasn't nearly the amount of money or infrastructure in the industry to allow for mod creators to get paid AND for companies to turn a profit. Sure, donations work, and thats completely up to the creator, but to say that a modder should NEVER get paid for their work is completely insane and unfair. Valve wasn't the powerhouse it is now, but now they can afford to pay modders like TF2 and Dota2. The percentage split is a whole other issue so I won't get into that.
I know plenty of people who mod in one way or another for their full-time job. Be it TF2, Dota 2, CS:GO, Unity Asset store, Turbosquid, etc. The reason we have jobs as game developers is because we LOVE it, AND we get paid! Why shouldn't that same logic apply to modders? They do it because they love it. Is it because they're aren't technically employed? Thats just arguing semantics in that case.
Sorry, this is a big issue for me, because I know people that this directly effects. And I can't stand to see people and mod users dictate what modders can and can't do with their OWN work. Don't you want to support your fellow game devs?
/rant
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/
1. People are complaining that they now have to pay for things they got for free before
2. People are complaining that they are being paywalled from essential things like
Sky UI (Bethesda shameless bringing a console UI to PC, and Sky UI fixes usability p.Ex.)
3. People are complaining that Bethesda is getting paid for other people fixing
their mistakes
4. People are complaining that Bethesda could literally not care about things because "modders will fix it anyways" (!!!) and get paid on top of that
5. People are complaining about being thrown into a new competitive market
that demands new worlds of management and brings tons of issues with many things, such as licensing, copyright, student software etc etc
6. People are complaining about valve erasing links from pages, containing donation
links, (which apparently is just an automatic link eraser, still causes outrage)
7. People are complaining about tons of stolen mods being uploaded all over the place
8. People are complaining that everything is a giant mess, as many mods depend on others and nobody knows what is going on
9. People are complaining that Valve and Bethesda do not offer any protection from any kind of problem. Its like anarchy, only that you average modder can get potentially sued to hell. They profit, but in terms of rights, its 100% modders risk.
10. People complain about the cocky monetization of things they knew as free, such as "Early access mods" and Mod bundles and sales. But this can be disregarded.
11. People are complaining that this will inevitably lead to killing off mod platforms such as Nexus. Anyone knowing his stuff will tell you that it would be downright
dumb to keep free mods alive if you have such a platform. Nexus will likely be bought, then killed off at a later point, unless they fear the backlash too much.
12. People are complaining about a downright insulting share of 25%, without any risk coverage, quality control of the marketplace or assistance. "Minions you now have the privilege of working for my gain! You even get something out of it!" - style
13. People are complaining about the classic 100$ payout rule, which would affect small priced mods a lot. They would have to make 400$ to see any money, effectively increasing profit margins of Valve and Bethesda by a LOT again.
So every 100$ made by a modder has a good chance that the next 1-99$ is never paid out and 100% kept by Valve/Dev.
14. People are complaining that you get a nearly criminal 7 day ban on the Marketplace after you refund a mod (which usually has a high chance of being unstable)
15. People are complaining about shameless censoring on Steam, hiding ratings, and banning people for voicing their opinion. (likely a lot of flaming going on, still censoring)
Then theres a lot of personal stuff about specific modders and whatnot, but this pretty much covers it.
Good list. I still feel like a lot of that is negated by simply releasing your mod for free, or understanding that releasing commercial content comes with a certain amount of accountability, some real, some not. Mods have been released commercially before, like Counter Strike, and I think people are just in shock at the change in climate when a modder has that option. Still, it's nothing that wasn't possible before.
There are respectable ways of releasing a paid mod:
One would be to release a free version and a gold version, both with the exact same content, but with "donation" options on the gold version.
I would probably release a free version, and then a paid "Dev's" version, with source files like high poly sculpts, substances, etc. Things that a player wouldn't care about, but another modder or student might really appreciate.
I think that modders are either going to remain very casual, or have to become more aware of the business aspect of things when they want to generate revenue. It's just how the system works and in a way, it offers a better bridge from modder to indie dev for those who want to pursue it seriously.
No, they're just giving modders the ability to charge for their mods if they want to. The free mods and steam workspace still function as usual.
Most concerns seem to be stemming from free mods being dependent on other mods that might go paid, a possible splitting/rift between the modding community (sharing versus not sharing, competition, etc.), worried about people stealing content others make and reselling, an influx of shitty mods and modders who are just there to make a profit (remember apple's App stores), the idea that the revenue only being 25% for a modder on whatever they actually charge for their mod further encourages making quick simple mods versus quality, is anyone responsible/how can they be responsible if a mod no longer works that was purchased due to an update or conflicting mod etc.
I guess I'm neutral-positive-yet-cautious-pessimistic after thinking about it some more. I mean it doesn't sound terrible, there's some excellent modders who produce amazing work and literally spend years on some projects. If they can actually get something in return for all of those countless hours spent then yay.
Though it'll definitely open up the flood gates to being steam and modding communities being filled with a lot of crap and issues. Hopefully they'll rethink their strategy and regulate it a bit better than they did with greenlight.
First mistake was even attempting to silence the community on the Workshop. Thats like telling people in Libya to GTFO, and then acting all surprised when France gets in on it because people vented to someone else as external force.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqol9re?context=3
Apparently modding was always about the money...how can Valve, the same company that made it's name on modding, and knew the division between royality work a la DOTA and TF2 suddenly claim Modding is the same, especially from their CEO? This is bad as people telling others to eat cake when they don't have money for water.
Also, wtf is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/33uxz0/please_do_not_do_a_180_on_your_opinion_because_of/cqopxts
Also, hindsight 20/20, Gabe is perplexed about the effort they have to put into recovering PR for the grand total of 10K they made (not sure if Valve alone or total, if it's total, then I can make more by simply working at Costco at this point). https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33utew/mods_and_steam_post_by_gabe_newell_about_paid/cqol1mp
It seems like after the quick 'hour break' Gabe took, he's giving more concrete answers, such as allowing ACTUAL donations without a bottom limit like the name implies. Seems some actual information is being given to the community, but again, it's more of damage control, lets see the weekend roll over.
Also, in relation to SkyUI, news is, it's bundled with the latest version of SKSE. I didn't think too much of it, until this information:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/33ujqo/nexus_was_contacted_by_steam_and_was_told_about/
Apparently Valve also got 'service benefits', ei; 5% is given to Nexus if you mention them. There is heavy implications that with what is written in EULA of the workshop, this is all a form of grooming and curating authors.
People already threating the mod workspace as a Mobile Device Store: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/33t4vl/free_versions_of_mods_now_have_popups_ingame_to/
INGAME MOD POP UPS IF YOU USE THE FREE VERSION OF THE MOD. The author removed the free version after they realized they couldn't make it a limited pop up thing, because...they couldn't do it? I don't know at this point.
This is why MASS Commercializing of mods is bad. You give them an inch, and the few rotten apples will take a mile, before pressuring those around them to do the same and ruin everything because of malevolent competition (yes, this is actually a thing).
Also, hilarious to see so many DOTA2 workshop artists acting butthurt about the entire thing and being unable to make proper money (even threatening they will go back to DOTA2 and won't share their almighty 'unique' skills with the Skyrim world) because it reminds me of this:
Capitalism Ho! Lets hope those pennies and shillings are soft enough to sleep on when no one remembers your name.
I'm honestly curious, what is the difference between damage control, and trying to improve something based on community feedback?
By saying it's damage control you are pretending you know the intentions of the people and companies. All we know is they are trying to improve a system based on feedback, and that is what is important.
-Hanlon's razor
They take 30%, which is pretty typical. The problem is that Bethesda then needs a second cut of 40%, and then they have a bizarre system of having you choose who to give the other 5% to.
I mean it may be Bethesda's game, but they're doing LITERALLY NOTHING here. If anything, they probably deserve the smallest cut. Not the largest.
And neither of them deserve more than the actual modder.
Bethesda does a LOT for modders, any dev that releases a creation kit does. It involves taking a massive in-house tool, which tend to be rough around the edges, and making it into consumer grade software. Then they have to document the whole thing. Setting up the game so files can be overwritten easily (dropped into the data folder) is also done with modders in mind.
Ideally, I'd say it should be 30% Valve (with 5% diverted to where you choose), 20% Bethesda, and 50% to the modder. Or 35% Valve, 15% Bethesda. Something like that, anyway.
Full access to their IP within the game, nearly no questions asked. This is something that would cost you percentages in the games industry, or likely wouldn't happen at all.
I don't like the percentage but I don't think it's crazy out of this world.
The more people use skyrim mods, free or otherwise, the more skyrim life is extended, meaning more people will buy it, they could even make new addons or dlcs or such and profit based on it.
So, it's just my opinion, but one of the big selling points of TES series was always moding. So bethesda has profit from it already from that, and not a small one either.
So huge share like that, imo again, is not justified. They should take some share, but much smaller one.
Indeed, anyone saying Beth deserves even close to the percentage they are getting seemingly aren't thinking of the indirect profit they have already made from modding. All those people who bought the game on pc after getting it on console for the mods, all the people who probably wouldn't even buy the game if it was unmoddable, all the people who are hooked on the series because mods make it possible to keep playing long after normal single player games die. A huge amount of their pc sales are probably directly attributable to mods in the case of TES.
I don't have a problem with paid mods, you can always steal them elsewhere if you really must or just not buy them. Once again steam is making you pay for a convenient service, auto updating and subscription and there are now more opportunities for artists to sell their virtual wares. The percentages however seem utterly rediculous, and reek of monopoly.
Yes, and they get a LOT of Skyrim sales as a return. Its an investment, no charity.
The whole point of this is to help remedy that and encourage other devs to start doing the same. Still, I think the modder should get at least 50% for their work.
You're way to narrow-minded and everything isn't about money, you've gotta think about the future.
Let's just sum up what they earned from releasing their mod tools for Witcher 2.
+Goodwill from the Witcher community.
+A small mod community that are used to their engine.
+A new employee!
+A learning experience.
-Lost money and time
But let's see to the future now, what happens now when they release RedKit 2 for Witcher 3? Well they've already got a small community that are already used to their engine that can make mods and write tutorials for all the new people coming to mod Witcher 3. They've used RedKit for Witcher 2 as a learning experience so they don't fumble around when they release RedKit 2 for Witcher 3 and can avoid a lot of the traps that way.
I enjoy the fact that an artist is now able to have almost complete artistic freedom and still make money, maybe at some point even a living. This is quite amazing for an artist, as I am sure most of you enjoy making fancy armor sets, or castles etc, more than creating 50 iterations of a rock model or tree.
Literally my biggest gripe is the distrubution of money, basically both the artist is getting shafted by not earning much, and the consumer is getting shafted by paying more than he should, all because steam is in a monopoly position. Part of me would enjoy it if Nexus somehow came to a deal with bethsoft for paid mods with a fairer ratio. They already provide a better service than steam and have a lot of exposure for skyrim mods.
I also think the better mods will end up on steam for money, made by professionals and not hobbyists.
I'm not so sure about that; getting a 25% cut is pretty damned harsh for a professional project. If you have the competency to build one of the larger scale mods, you probably have the competency to invest time working on something that doesn't net you such a small cut.
Also, how greedy do you have to be to ONLY want to enter a modding scene for money? So let me guess, you don't play the game, nor like, but want to only get on it for the money? Stop doing that, stop entering a scene just for the money and cocking it up. Look at what happened with Sims and Poser, it ruined everything because of this attitude and infact brought the standard down in 2003. Thank you so much for that people, and I'm alreading seeing this attitude in DOTA2 and CS:GO and I'm not liking it one bit on how the professional scene has became a 'trading ring' of sorts.
Don't forget one more thing, IT IS A MOD, it's NOT DOTA2, you're not making money off MARKET TRADING like DOTA or TF2, you sell it once and done, and your MOD is also affected by Steam Sales, you're hoping to see maybe 1-5K a year from a years sale. LEARN YOUR MARKET and HOW IT WORKS.
Look at the Nexus, the most popular mods have around 4 million download IN TOTAL, they claim to be unique persons, but I know I have downloaded those mods sometimes dozens of times, with a dynamic IP, that easily eats in to the numbers if several thousand people do.
What would be the payout here, over the course of 4 years? And mind you, these are BIG mods, with several dozen people, so unless you're a total asshole that gets your friends to work for literally no money, you're gonna have to split. Don't even get me started on Piracy, that also eats into the number, and no person in their right mind will pay you 5 bucks like they do for a DOTA2 cosmetics when Skyrim itself costs less then that by todays value. I'm not gonna pay you 5 bucks when Skyrim costs 5 bucks itself, thats 1:1 value. Are you crazy?
You have one hell of a scene, both culturally and heritages wise to fight and hope to get anything out of it even as a professional.
I don't know how else to make it clear. Leave the MASS COMMERCIAL of modding alone, there are plenty of ways to make money, why you do you have to muck with modding? Cheese is cheese, I don't want meat and meat will only poison the industry.
You can freelance, you can find a job, you can do DOTA2, CS or TF2. You can become a content creator on a plethora of sites of 3D assets, you can do donations pages, create new content and sell privately with a small public free release or Patreons, HELL YOU EVEN HAVE THE UPCOMING UNREAL GAME WITH A FAIR SYSTEM!!
GAME IS FREE, but you can make content, meaning any money I pay is support Epic and YOU, I'M OK WITH THIS HERE, plus, offence meant, but AT LEAST EPIC PROVIDES WORKING TOOLS AND DOESN'T BREAK THEM A COUPLE OF MONTHS BEFORE RELEASE and then has the galls for ask 45% + Tax because their ace in the hole MMO failed due to double dipping on console cost memberships. They did fixing on Normals for static meshes for pete's sake, they are trying.
Also, Epic never witheld bonuses from Obsidian when Fallout New Vegas didn't make 85% on Metacritic, such a shitty moment for the industry, stuff like this gives games more of a bad name then any amount of online harrasing people will ever do.
If you guys are in it for the money, then don't complain about not being able to monetize mods out of all the things when you have all the options above and something that is a hobby. You can't enter an industry who's demographic is young people who don't even have a car for their name, and act all surprised when you can't afford a Ferrari from nickels and diming everything, and act all proud when you broke it during the process as if they 'owed' you something..
Take that shit back to lawyer school or something, but even then I have seen more humble lawyers then game artists with integrity nowadays.
I suggest you watch this if you don't believe anything I said:
[ame]
Calm Down
If there is no money to be made in Skyrim, nobody will go there to make money. All the "paid" mods will die out eventually. Simple as that
EDIT: Also, it is unfair to compare making a game to creating a few items. Yes, the scale must be taking into consideration if there is to be a fair distribution of revenue. But small mods, like a bundle of items, it seems alright.
When creating a game in unreal, you'd have to do more work, maybe with even more people. Which then you'd have to split revenue. Programming, Level design, story, 3d modeler, textuerer, sound, particles, animation. Eventually you'd have less revenue split than the steam workshop. (assuming project was divided by royalties rather than direct money).
Another thing is that when a game is published, it has a higher chance of making more money than a mod or any dota/tf2 asset can make by itself.
what is happening right now over a bunch of items which cost basically nothing, is absolutely horrible. Doxing peoples data, death threats... really? Are those guys out of their damn minds? Speak with your wallet, don't buy the stuff. Let people who want to buy whatever they want. You don't have to agree to the terms by bethesta or valve, thats fine.
But nobody is forcing you on anything, so stop projecting your ideals onto everyone...
What makes a professional vs a hobbyists in the realm of mods? Seems like splitting hairs. Anyhow as an example, the money incentive has worked so well on greenlight and EA with the professional titles we have gotten. Grass Simulator, Kavkaz Bloodbath, etc.
Steam greenlight and the appstore are proof of this.
You get more quality, but along with it you get a lot more crap. But overall the crap doesn't matter except for discoverable, but having more content is usually a win.
Also well done Ace, you've made it into my mental list of crazy people who preside on poly-count. Which is quite an achievement.
When does too much content become white noise? More content is fine, but without some sort of base quality control in place, it just floods these markets with crap. Crap that because people like to complain, downplay the respect of the whole venture. So even those companies striving to use and create content correctly now have an upwards battle to even get noticed. More so than before when there was a some sort of gatekeeper.
This is true. White noise will always be a problem.
But this is why humanity invented critics. Critics are supposed to be people who have a job of sorting through the crap, but through some bizzare turn of events are mostly used to confirm or contradict peoples beliefs on things they already know about.
Not really saying that it as an argument for anything though.
Simply that with more people making things regardless of motivation, you end up with more of everything, both shit and good.
to be fair, by any other approaches, be it unity assetstore, unreal marketplace, turbosquid or clients you will NEVER get paid as good as having an asset in the workshop.
Yes, they do take a lot of the cake, but considering how much you make with the proper userbase (i fear skyrim in general might be too small by now), you still get a better cut than anywhere else.
50% of nothing is still nothing, 25% of A LOT is still quite a good deal.
Not that i would mind getting a bigger cut for the assets we did for the dota workshop, but seriously, no client would pay me as much as I can make with the workshop. Ever.
The whole Bethesda/Zenimax cut of 40%? is pretty brutal, but you're essentially buying into their market. Steam says "we'll put you infront of 10mil clients, but we'll take a cut" then Bethesda says "we'll put you infront of 1mil, but we'll take a cut too". Its basically remunerations for them investing in that market.
Rocket from Dayz elaborates on it better than i can here
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/04/24/dayz-creator-weighs-in-on-paid-skyrim-mods-your-turn-rockstar/
One of the annoyances with this is, it essentially drives a shovelware microtransaction model. No one is going to invest big in producing a TC* because the potential losses are massive. I mean can you imagine if something like; Dota, TF, CS, Dayz, Red Orchestra was built on this model. Big business would be laughing. I heard once Blizz (no idea if true) basically put some clause in their ToS that they would retain ownership of anything produced with their games, to prevent another dota affair.
*Not that TCs are in vogue anymore, i can't remember the last one i saw (Dayz i suppose). If you have those skills you go indie these days i guess.
I do understand that both Beth & valve puts you in front of big market.
And you can call me naive, and i do understand and agree that since it's investment for both of them, that they need to get some share, sure.
But personally, i'm a little tired of hearing all these stories where huge companies get like most of the money, and only tiny share goes to those who actually create something. And that simply because that big company gave market to them.
That may be reality nowdays, but i still think things could and should be better. Actual creators should have bigger share. No matter what beth and valve thinks, at the end, by far the biggest work was done by actual moder. And as we already talked, both valve and beth already get some of the share back by simply selling more TES coppies. Which means valve also gets more money as a result.
It's just my opinion, mind you, but it seems to have worked for Beth when it was all free just fine, so i have my doubts that all of suddent, valve and beth will be at worse by having "just" say, 50% instead of 75.