Valve allowing modders to charge for mods

  • Thread starter JR98
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There was no need for this, nor is it a good idea in the slightest. There's already a massive rift in the modding community because of this, and if it continues I'd give it maybe a month before there's a site dedicated to reuploading mods from the Steam Workshop so that people don't have to pay for them.

Valve's business practices have been really sketchy recently. First the whole Greenlight fiasco and now this - it all reeks of an attempt to make money solely off of other people's content, which would be fine if their content control wasn't awful in terms of which games do and don't get in (it's even worse that ANYONE can make their mod a paid mod).
 
There was no need for this, nor is it a good idea in the slightest. There's already a massive rift in the modding community because of this, and if it continues I'd give it maybe a month before there's a site dedicated to reuploading mods from the Steam Workshop so that people don't have to pay for them.

Which is only natural, as soon as (or even before) someone starts selling anything, people want to figure out how to get it or something similar for free or cheap. Valve knew mod piracy would be a thing, it's pretty much a given.

Valve's business practices have been really sketchy recently. First the whole Greenlight fiasco and now this - it all reeks of an attempt to make money solely off of other people's content, which would be fine if their content control wasn't awful in terms of which games do and don't get in (it's even worse that ANYONE can make their mod a paid mod).

This is quite a good explanation of why Greenlight came about and Valve's aims for Steam in the future. They've already added user curation. I'm not sure if the bookmark I pasted in worked or not, if not 43:39 is where it gets relevant to your post (the rest might be relevant but 43:39 onward is).



It seems they eventually want to be entirely hands-off in the curation process, allowing people to sell their mods is just another type of product they want to sell alongside games, DLC, non-game software, TF2 hats and weapons, DOTA gear, trading cards, emoticons and so on. They of course have to make money off of everything they sell, they're not communists after all and they're providing a lot for their cut of the profit - not least the 9,472,012 peak concurrent users (that's not even all the active registered users, just the highest number of concurrent logged-in users) to whom publishers, developers, modders and other content authors can sell directly to.
 
Looks like Valve is going to retract their payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. Here's a cut of their response:

We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.

But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.
 
Looks like Valve is going to retract their payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. Here's a cut of their response:
I never thought they would do that. At least they are closing it right and giving everybody their money back. I know it's probably not the best idea but just put a donate button on every mod linking to their steam wallet or bank account or paypal or something (Whatever the modder chooses) so that at least people have the option. Yes, most people probably won't donate but still.
 
As much as I think modders do deserve to be paid for their work, should they want to sell it... this was the right thing. It would be very, very, very nice if Bethesda proposed to hire modders whose mods have a considerable amount of endorsements. In the end, those are the only mods worth paying for (Frostfall, Wet and Cold, Requiem, Climates of Tamriel, etc.).
 
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?
Valve provides DRM services. (digital rights management) keeps people from using pirated copies online.
 
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