Valve Introduces Paid Mods; Good Idea Or Bad Move?

[geniusprime]

"From what I've seen Skyrim is barely *playable* without mods. " This statement is asinine and ignorant. Please stop.

 

[Pedasc]

I think the sentiment is good but I do not like the idea and the more I think about it the less I like it.

Modders use assets from all over and the bigger the mod the more they borrow from other sources and other modders. Even disregarding the outright theft that could happen, this completely wrecks the community aspect of modding. How do you ensure everyone gets a fair share even within the 25%. If someone re-textures someones model how do you make sure the mesh creator gets his cut especially if the new 'mod' is more popular. What if someone uses that re-textured model and adds custom effects, and another person puts that into a larger content mod? Right now you just ask for permission and it is pretty much universally given. How quickly do you think that will change once money is involved? Does anyone thinks Falskaar would have even got off the ground at all if everyone had to negotiate their cut?

What if someone 'borrowed' from another source? One big example, think about the number of Star Wars themed mods in games that no one currently cares enough about to sue over. How quickly do you think lawyers will be involved once someone makes $50K by recreating a lightsaber?

No I'd rather keep this being done by people who love it in their free time and keep money out of it.

 

[bluestar2k11]

From what I've seen Skyrim is barely *playable* without mods. They certainly should benefit from players fixing their mistakes.

Skyrim is plenty playable without mods, much like Morrowind.
You're thinking of Oblivion, that needed about 40 mods just to be decent enough to bother with, and 100 mods to be worth the cost, average in how many mods people use in this game, and to get customized, you're likely already around 300 for Oblivion.
Worst I've seen said for Skyrim was a bit over 200 mods.

 

[JackC8]

Hat's off to Valve for admitting they made a mistake - there's virtually nobody in the video game industry who would admit anything is their fault. Not these days at least.

I think the main problem is that the internet is full of ripoff artists who would put some garbage mod out there, advertise it as the greatest thing ever, and as long as they made a few bucks before Steam shut them down, they'd be back the next day and the next doing the same thing under a new user name and a new ISP.

 

[Jarmo]

This could have been a good thing.

Now, I wouldn't pay a dime for a standard skyrim "epic sword" mod,
but I would gladly pay a a few dollars for Warbands "Prophesy of Pendor" total conversion. Or for "Stainless Steel" conversion for Medieval 2 Total War.

I'd love an easy way to support an author who spends thousand hours building something fun for me.

And I'd love to see an incentive for publishers to make their work easily moddable. There currently (almost) isn't one, so current Total War games are not worth my time really.

 

[mnivek]

This article was largely a puffy "Pro" editorial for purchased mods. I read a lot of arguments in favor of the concept here - I saw no real discussion around the rationale of those arguing against it

Which makes the Update (having to acknowledge Valve actually saw REASON and stopped the idiocy) all the more interesting. "It seems..." even in recognizing the reality, the writer of this piece is STILL defending the concept. This is not a news story - it's marketing copy for Valve. It should be displayed as such on Tom's Hardware.

 

[Alec Mowat]

There are a few communities that view this as a betrayal of sorts. Funny though, as so far the two biggest complaints are the 25% cut and content curation.

25% should not be something for the average Joe to complain about, as this fact only affects modders that intend to monetize. Even then, though, there are quite a few modders who currently find that split worth the transition.

As for content curation, this has already proven to work fairly well with the multiplicity of app stores. Too much to manually approve. Rating systems and reporting tools help weed out the bad eggs.

As far as I can see this will only increase the amount of mods we have. Some of them paid, most of them free. Some of them bad, some of them good. We won't see another Falskaar for a while, but when one becomes available for $9.99, plenty of people will happily pay.

The biggest issue with Paid Mods is quality control and content control.

If a mod breaks on the next patch, the mod maker has no obligation to fix it.

The next is content control. No one owns mods, that's why they are free. They are free to use, share and modify. There's nothing to stop people from recoloring someone else's mod or just stealing them and selling them. You can't protect your work in anyway.

 

[mapesdhs]

I agree with Bluedrake42's comments on all this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaKrSqq6pJA

Perhaps they can try again in the future in some other way; I hope so.
There needs to be some way mod creators can benefit from what they do.

Ian.

 

[spartanmk2]

If someone decides to sell a mod, that's their business - I'll just pass. Game quality has diminished over the past decade and I wont support giving kickbacks to the devs/pubs for their false promises.

 

[torka]

There would be nothing wrong with a donate model, so if someone really thinks the author deserves the money then great.

Giving the modders the option to charge, however, is never a good idea for this kind of community.

 

[ddt529]

Let's note that both DOTA 2 and TF 2 are free to play games. You don't add paid mod support to a game that is a few years old and then think the community is going to get excited for it when it was free the entire time. I'm happy that Valve decided to end this horrible idea.

 

[sonofhendrix]

Falskar was terribly boring.
As for mods yes they absolutely need to be paid for, so that people with skill to make them can earn a living and continue to survive in the real world.
As for Skyrim, Bethesda have waited all this time to step up to the plate and allow paid mods, but i dare them to allow paid mods on a newly released game. IMO this will never happen.
As for the people that complain, petition and moan about paid mods, those are the people that have no skill no talents to make a mod themselves and somehow expect everything handed to them on a silver platter, and are afraid of that being taken away from them.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Let's note that both DOTA 2 and TF 2 are free to play games. You don't add paid mod support to a game that is a few years old and then think the community is going to get excited for it when it was free the entire time. I'm happy that Valve decided to end this horrible idea.

TF2 is now F2P. I paid for it on release.

That said, the idea is solid. The problem was the implementation of it, which normally VALVe learns from it then makes a better version.

I am all for modders getting support. I have a friend who makes maps for TF2 and L4D and he is very talented. Right now he is in college so financial help would be great, not that he would demand it as he enjoys doing it anyways.