Valve allowing modders to charge for mods

[JR98]

Valve are allowing modders to charge money for Skyrim mods on the Steam Workshop and plan to expand to more platforms.





I have no objection to modders getting paid for their work but putting a pay wall behind it AND TAKING A 75% CUT is not the way to do it.

 

[PletdeKoe]

Yes it is the way to do it, you just don't like it.

 

[RacerPaul]

At the end of the day it's the same as any other product

You weigh up how much it costs against how much you want it, then make your decision

I'd like everything to be free, but it ain't happening

 

[JR98]

Yes it is the way to do it, you just don't like it.

At the end of the day it's the same as any other product

You weigh up how much it costs against how much you want it, then make your decision

I'd like everything to be free, but it ain't happening

I get that modders deserve to be paid, the Valve taking 75% of it is the problem.

 

[RacerPaul]

Indeed. 50/50 is about as far as I'd fancy going if I was a modder. Which raises the question...

Why don't modders just cut Valve out and sell direct? Easily done nowadays I'd have thought?

 

[Jawehawk]

Just another step on the way to the complete ruin of PC gaming. Good job Valve...

 

[JR98]

Indeed. 50/50 is about as far as I'd fancy going if I was a modder. Which raises the question...

Why don't modders just cut Valve out and sell direct? Easily done nowadays I'd have thought?

And it will destroy GMOD as most, hell, ALL servers rely on mods from the Steam Workshop so what about those who haven't purchased the mods? And what about mods we have already subscribed to? Do we just lose them?

 

[David]

I'm at work so I don't know what is covered in the videos in the OP but...

Is Valve really taking 75% for itself like the greedy company you all make them out to be? If they are letting modders charge money for their work and effectively make a profit off of another company's base IP, then I'm guessing that a large part of that number is actually fees paid out to the IP owners. That would be why this is starting with a specific game/company in Skyrim and Bethesda. Agreements will have to be made with various companies.

Valve isn't destroying anything, and the modders who just want to do it for the good of the community are able to continue making free mods to their hearts' content. As for Valve's actual cut of the money, they are providing content hosting, a delivery system that makes installing mods easier than it has ever been, and a massive audience that they have cultivated.

Everyone calm down.

 

[JR98]

I'm at work so I don't know what is covered in the videos in the OP but...

Is Valve really taking 75% for itself like the greedy company you all make them out to be? If they are letting modders charge money for their work and effectively make a profit off of another company's base IP, then I'm guessing that a large part of that number is actually fees paid out to the IP owners. That would be why this is starting with a specific game/company in Skyrim and Bethesda. Agreements will have to be made with various companies.

Valve isn't destroying anything, and the modders who just want to do it for the good of the community are able to continue making free mods to their hearts' content. As for Valve's actual cut of the money, they are providing content hosting, a delivery system that makes installing mods easier than it has ever been, and a massive audience that they have cultivated.

Everyone calm down.

But still, if you took hours, weeks or even months to make something for a game would you like Valve to take 75% of what you should be earning from you?

 

[David]

Again... Valve isn't taking it just for their own profit. Ever read about what recording artists get from song plays on streaming services or purchases on iTunes?

Most of the modders have been doing it for free for all of these years, because in most cases they could have been sued by the IP owners for profiting from their work. Valve is now facilitating agreements that let modders make some profits for their time that they would not otherwise be allowed to make money from.

You are free to throw your mod up on any number of file hosting sites and pray that someone sees it or reads about it online.

 

[Jawehawk]

Making mods cost money is absurd. If modders want to be paid for their work, they need to either get hired within the industry, or ask for donations. This sets a dangerous precedent for the future of modding. Ruining one of the best things about PC gaming in the progress...

And as per usual. People will defend Valve out of blind trust for a company that has an alarming amount of control over the PC gaming market.

 

[David]

So we have half the room that thinks modders shouldn't be able to get anything for their time and the other half of the room who disregards everyone else's property rights and thinks the modders should get more money.

I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of people releasing plenty of free mods, or using the "pay-what-you-want" model (pretty sure Valve said this was one of the pricing options) that has worked so well for humble bundles and the like.

Either way this is a win-win as far as I'm concerned. Modders who choose to can make a bit of extra cash with their hobby, the original development company expands the profitable life of their product.

 

[Anthony]

My worry is that sooner or later all the high quality mods for any given title will become pay-to-use. I mean, if you can design something that is so good no one else can replicate it, and that is also highly attractive for the playerbase, it only makes sense to charge money for it. Mods will effectively become like official add-ons or DLCs.

 

[sesselpupser]

I have no objection to modders getting paid for their work but putting a pay wall behind it AND TAKING A 75% CUT is not the way to do it.

What is the way, though? It seems like the only response to this is "Donations", but Nexus has donation links, if they were an effective solution (and you'd have to be extremely naive to believe a significant number of people donate anything at all) then people wouldn't be pulling their mods from there to sell on Steam. Let's not forget that Valve has built the platform for selling games on, 25% of the very best possible sales figures of your mod is still a hell of a lot of money - almost literally an infinite amount more than a donation jar that gets used maybe once for every thousand downloads (if that).


There are a lot of specifics that need to be worked out, such as how to implement paid mods in a game that is under active development so they don't keep breaking (I don't think that's really possible) and the messy, messy world of licensing - how many mod authoring tools have "not for commercial use" clauses if you download them for free? How many modders use legitimate, fully-licensed copies of Photoshop to make textures? What's going to stop people from trying to sneak all sorts of licensed content into their mods? etc., etc. - but on the whole, I think this is a good move. Good modders can feasibly make a career out of producing mods and have a financial incentive to be good at it, rather than "well, no one else was going to make this but I can't be bothered to make it really, really good, so have this half-arsed work-in-progress", bad modders will of course give it a shot but just as with games and DLC, bad stuff will be called out and they'll either stop or get filtered out by Valve, I'm sure.

On the whole, there are certainly a lot of pros and cons but on the whole I think this is a pro. Hey, it worked for flight sims, tons of mods have become games (Valve made a lot of money that way, remember) and people didn't mind paying for them and payware mods have technically existed on Steam for ages anyway - some DCS World modules are made by third parties. No one cared, though, because it's not Skyrim.

And if it turns out to be a bad idea, it'll just die. It's not as if Valve can possibly go under because of the failure of paid mods, modders themselves aren't multi-million dollar corporations (yet) and it's entirely free for publishers anyway... I'm also guessing Valve's legal team have all the bases covered in case of copyright infringement, too.

 

[JR98]

What is the way, though? It seems like the only response to this is "Donations", but Nexus has donation links, if they were an effective solution (and you'd have to be extremely naive to believe a significant number of people donate anything at all) then people wouldn't be pulling their mods from there to sell on Steam. Let's not forget that Valve has built the platform for selling games on, 25% of the very best possible sales figures of your mod is still a hell of a lot of money - almost literally an infinite amount more than a donation jar that gets used maybe once for every thousand downloads (if that).


There are a lot of specifics that need to be worked out, such as how to implement paid mods in a game that is under active development so they don't keep breaking (I don't think that's really possible) and the messy, messy world of licensing - how many mod authoring tools have "not for commercial use" clauses if you download them for free? How many modders use legitimate, fully-licensed copies of Photoshop to make textures? What's going to stop people from trying to sneak all sorts of licensed content into their mods? etc., etc. - but on the whole, I think this is a good move. Good modders can feasibly make a career out of producing mods and have a financial incentive to be good at it, rather than "well, no one else was going to make this but I can't be bothered to make it really, really good, so have this half-arsed work-in-progress", bad modders will of course give it a shot but just as with games and DLC, bad stuff will be called out and they'll either stop or get filtered out by Valve, I'm sure.

On the whole, there are certainly a lot of pros and cons but on the whole I think this is a pro. Hey, it worked for flight sims, tons of mods have become games (Valve made a lot of money that way, remember) and people didn't mind paying for them and payware mods have technically existed on Steam for ages anyway - some DCS World modules are made by third parties. No one cared, though, because it's not Skyrim.

And if it turns out to be a bad idea, it'll just die. It's not as if Valve can possibly go under because of the failure of paid mods, modders themselves aren't multi-million dollar corporations (yet) and it's entirely free for publishers anyway... I'm also guessing Valve's legal team have all the bases covered in case of copyright infringement, too.

You have a point, well, alot of solid points, and while there is no "right way" to go about it, it would be nice if every mod was a pay what you want as I've seen some mods go for over $20. You also have the issue of online modding. Garry's Mod servers use huge amounts of mods so what happens if a server you like is using a mod you haven't payed for? Do you get locked out of the server? Does the game crash? Do you just not see the mod (Like the hexagon textures and stuff)?

 

[Lucas]

Disgraceful.

1) Mods are NEVER perfect. And most of the time they conflict with other mods.
2) Even official DLC isn't perfect (or vanilla game for that matter), but at least you got bugfixing mods for that (which are incomplete at worst).
3) And they are putting a price tag on these imperfect mods, which may be or not of low quality, and you can't even test them to your heart's content before making a decision.
4) And Valve takes 75% of the cut.

Disgraceful.

 

[JR98]

Disgraceful.

1) Mods are NEVER perfect. And most of the time they conflict with other mods.
2) Even official DLC isn't perfect (or vanilla game for that matter), but at least you got bugfixing mods for that (which are incomplete at worst).
3) And they are putting a price tag on these imperfect mods, which may be or not of low quality, and you can't even test them to your heart's content before making a decision.
4) And Valve takes 75% of the cut.

Disgraceful.

1: Totally agree
2: Exactly
3: It's up to the modder if they charge or not, which is justified as these mods take up alot of time and money
4: The worst thing about it

 

[AudiMan2011]

Charging for mods would've had less of a backlash if there was a pay-what-you-want or donation system and the mod creators got a bigger cut of the profits. Valve taking 75% of the cut for selling mods when they've done next to naff-all except hosting the content on the Steam Workshop, just goes to show that corporate greed isn't confined to console gaming but is affecting the PC market too, which some people seem to forget.

 

[Lucas]

1: Totally agree
2: Exactly
3: It's up to the modder if they charge or not, which is justified as these mods take up alot of time and money
4: The worst thing about it

3) That's true, still, I would like to be able to fully test a mod before deciding on buying it or not. And that's a big problem considering that what you may like one day, the next day you will hate it. For example, I play New Vegas and downloaded a mod called Painful Injuries. The first 30 minutes I thought it was pretty cool, but later on I decided it was terrible for different reasons, not because it was broken or anything like that. Those were only 30 minutes because it is a small mod in its scope, but other mods take ages to explore completely before you realize there's something broken about them.

 

[JR98]

3) That's true, still, I would like to be able to fully test a mod before deciding on buying it or not. And that's a big problem considering that what you may like one day, the next day you will hate it. For example, I play New Vegas and downloaded a mod called Painful Injuries. The first 30 minutes I thought it was pretty cool, but later on I decided it was terrible for different reasons, not because it was broken or anything like that. Those were only 30 minutes because it is a small mod in its scope, but other mods take ages to explore completely before you realize there's something broken about them.

Exactly.

 

[David]

Yes, I'd be so angry too if I just ignored all the facts and needed reasons to be angry about potentially having to pay others for their hard work.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent

 

[Techy]

There's a reddit thread up with Gabe Newell himself hosting it. He's answering some stuff about the whole issue... http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/
I'm thinking Gabe is just doing damage control at this point and time now.


Additionally, there's a Forbes article that sums up why this whole system will be a disaster.

 

[tankuroded]

Related: In PC sim-racing titles like rFactor and Assetto Corsa, some mods requires you to pay for it. Are these situations really the same? 💡

 

[sesselpupser]

You have a point, well, alot of solid points, and while there is no "right way" to go about it, it would be nice if every mod was a pay what you want as I've seen some mods go for over $20.

Yes, but the modder sets the price. They can set the minimum price at $0 and let people donate more if they wish - basically PWYW.

You also have the issue of online modding. Garry's Mod servers use huge amounts of mods so what happens if a server you like is using a mod you haven't payed for? Do you get locked out of the server? Does the game crash? Do you just not see the mod (Like the hexagon textures and stuff)?

I have no idea how that would be handled, but I suppose that's why Valve started off with Skyrim - it's a popular, widely-modded game, it has no dependencies or any relation to anything else (i.e. I'm not sure if anything can be made of the common platform between Source games - can you use Half Life 2 mods in Garry's Mod, for example?) and it's also entirely offline. I imagine they're piloting the system with Skyrim first to work out emergent issues regarding compatibility, functionality and also watching the market to see what happens, once all those kinks are ironed out I guess they'll explore multiplayer games.


I was reading on Reddit the other night about SkyUI going paid after so many years of being free. In all the indignant rage I read that:

- The developer had already ceased active development of the mod and moved on to other things. Valve approached him and asked if he'd be interested in selling the mod, he started work on version 5. He didn't pull SkyUI from Nexus and put a price tag on it.
- SkyUI is on Github, i.e. the source is freely available for anyone to download and develop into a spin-off, and it will remain there. Anyone who feels they can do a better job and provide it for free is welcome to use his hard work as a springboard to do so.
- Version 4.1 will continue to be free, and compatibility fixed integrated into version 5 (the paid version) will be back-ported to 4.1, so free users can still use the free version.
- The minimum price is going to be $1... I get that $1 is more than $0, but not much more.
- The free mod has had 4.5 million unique downloads, over twice that in total downloads. How would you feel if you'd made something that popular and then the single biggest game retailer said "Hey, do you want to sell this?"? You'd have to be, like, the Dalai Lama to turn that down.

That is just one example but it's a pretty clear example of how the internet rage machine is just toxically narrow-minded, blind to reason, ignorant of facts and in my opinion completely wrong in this instance at least - who knows how many others? There are valid reasons to be upset about this, of course, I'm not pretending that all is well and we should be happy... But come on, insisting that mods should be PWYW with a $0 minimum or donations-only (a suggestion that comes up several times in every thread I read on the subject) is mind-numbingly naive. Many mods have "if you like this mod please support the author..." notes in the readme, and yet modders are so strongly incentivised by the money they could make through Steam that some have pulled the free versions to re-release for money. It makes you wonder how much support from the community they actually get.


Edit: In addition, the other thing I see being said a lot is "It's not about the monetisation of the content itself, it's about the damaging competitive, closed mindset the money has brought to the traditionally open, sharing mod community". I haven't seen a single modder in the sadly many hours I've spent reading around the subject visibly say this, announce their disgust at Valve, Bethesda or other modders or announce they'll never release a paid mod and will always collaborate with other modders on free mods. I've been looking at the most visible sources, too; you'd think a modder who wanted to vocally oppose this would do so in a visible place, but I haven't seen it. I'm sure such posts do exist somewhere, but they're either buried by gamers rehashing the "Why not just let us donate instead?" and "Boo Valve/Bethesda/specific modder!" or just not posted in visible places.

Maybe I'm making assumptions but given the huge backlash against paid mods, modders also in opposition would like to somewhat ironically capitalise on the opportunity to support the 'against' movement. As it stands, it seems like the people making the most noise don't actually make mods. What does that say about them and modders themselves? To my mind, it says that the people strongly in opposition are using the "but what about the community?" line to push their actual "I don't want to pay for things that used to be free" agenda, while modders themselves are, as any reasonable human being would be, excited that their hobby is potentially going to be a viable career. That's just how it appears to be from the reading I've done, though, it's highly likely I haven't been looking in the right places but I can only comment on what I've seen for myself.

 

[Lucas]

People asking for donate buttons are the same people who won't even donate in the first place, because cheap is cheap, and if you won't pay for a mod to play it, you will most likely not donate to a free mod.

I know because that is how I handle myself, I admit it, but at least I won't complain to modders "YOUR WORK SHOULD BE FREE, DIE IMPERIAL SCUM".

 

[Techy]

I think one aspect I really don't agree with is that modders don't get as high a cut they deserve. 30% of profit is sent to Valve, 45% of profit is sent to publishers, and the rest to the modders. After all, the profit is coming from the modders. There's the game itself (there wouldn't be any mods if there was no game to mod in the first place) which Bethesda made but apart from that they have no incentive in taking that much profit. They already obtained money when you bought a copy of the game.

People asking for donate buttons are the same people who won't even donate in the first place, because cheap is cheap, and if you won't pay for a mod to play it, you will most likely not donate to a free mod.

I know because that is how I handle myself, I admit it, but at least I won't complain to modders "YOUR WORK SHOULD BE FREE, DIE IMPERIAL SCUM".

I advocate for a donate button myself, and admittedly I'm also one who would cheap out anyways. I'm thinking this sort of mentality is one reason why Valve has this system going in the first place.

Related: In PC sim-racing titles like rFactor and Assetto Corsa, some mods requires you to pay for it. Are these situations really the same? 💡

Can you provide a few examples? This isn't a reprimand by the way. I haven't been keeping up with sim-racing mods lately.

 

[Arixant]

Can you provide a few examples? This isn't a reprimand by the way. I haven't been keeping up with sim-racing mods lately.

The UnitedRacingDesign T5, and EGT mods require you to pay for them.

 

[Lucas]

I advocate for a donate button myself, and admittedly I'm also one who would cheap out anyways. I'm thinking this sort of mentality is one reason why Valve has this system going in the first place.

I don't know what got Valve to get this system going, but I'm sure they didn't do it out of the kindness of their hearts for the poor modders. At the moment, 25% is not enough (in my opinion) for the work modders put into, and moreover, considering the modder is the one who puts a price on his mod, he/she will significantly increase the price to get a larger profit, compared to what the mod would cost if he was getting at least a 75% share.

In other words, what could have cost 1 dollar could end up costing 3. Considerably more if we expect high quality mods to cost more than those half-assed mods some users will undoubtedly create in hopes of getting easy money.

 

[Techy]

I find it pretty funny that I cannot view some of the discussions for some paid mods. I just get an error instead...

The UnitedRacingDesign T5, and EGT mods require you to pay for them.

Well, the difference between these mods and Valve's way is that Valve themselves are monetizing mods. As in, a pretty big game distribution platform supporting paid-for mods via their Workshop, compared to these small modding groups.

 

[sesselpupser]

I think one aspect I really don't agree with is that modders don't get as high a cut they deserve. 30% of profit is sent to Valve, 45% of profit is sent to publishers, and the rest to the modders. After all, the profit is coming from the modders. There's the game itself (there wouldn't be any mods if there was no game to mod in the first place) which Bethesda made but apart from that they have no incentive in taking that much profit. They already obtained money when you bought a copy of the game.

Dean Hall aka Rocket aka the guy who made DayZ is actually in support of the current system. I'm sort of unconvinced by the split myself; Of course Valve deserves a cut for providing the biggest possible visibility for the mods, the most widely-used storefront that people trust probably more than any other through which to sell them and all the support that comes with it. Bethesda deserve a cut too; without their hard work - make no mistake, they spent a lot more money and worked much longer hours than any single modder - the mod wouldn't exist at all, and without the huge sales Skyrim achieved there'd be a much smaller market for the modders to sell their mods to, so there's absolutely no question that there's an obligation to pay them too... But 30/45/25? 45% seems a little high given that Bethesda have already more than recouped their costs, but the price of an IP is incalculable next to what they'd charge to just license the engine out. As Rocket says, there's a certain degree of risk on their part by allowing these mods to go on sale - if they were free, they're not accountable for what people make - and there needs to be an incentive for them to take that risk.

So, I don't know. I still think 25% is a lot of money given where it's being sold (a 25% cut of sales on, say... the and apparently the publisher decides how the profit is split (is this actually true?) but it could be higher. I don't buy the "This is just giving publishers a warrant to make half-finished, half-arsed games before letting the community patch it for money" argument either simply because consoles don't support modding and they still need to make good games for those audiences, but it will always make you wonder if a publisher is skimping on detail because the more they put in, the less there is for modders to make...