Steam to start selling fan mods of games on the Workshop.

[NeoCracker]

A Video from Boogie2988 discussing the good and bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du7oIjBMY3Q

I tend to like the idea, but I agree right now it's on pretty shaky grounds.

25% is way to low for the mod creator, and Steam is going to need to up its quality control in order to make this thing run smoothly.

Also, I do hope people who wish to do it for free can continue to do so without hassle.

[Loony BoB]

25% goes to the person that does the work? Yikes.

Haven't heard about this and can't watch videos at work, so all I have to go on is your post. :p

Fan mods should be free or else full profit should go to the person who does the work. Steam is being a glutton to do things in this way. 25% is absurd.

[NeoCracker]

As distributer, I do think Steam has some rights to a cut. Same with the people who made the game, as you are creating using their IP and profiting off of it. Regardless that number is nuts.

Perhaps....

75% Creator, 20% to the IP owner, 5% steam?

[Loony BoB]

Oh, sure, I don't mind distributors getting a cut, but personally speaking I prefer the previous model of "fuck off Steam, everything is free or else you can donate if you wanna." In other words, 100% of profit to the person who makes the mod because they don't need Steam to distribute it.

[Slothy]

Honestly, 25% is probably more than your typical development company makes off of a retail game so whatever. Aside from that this announcement isn't overly interesting to me. Just another way Steam workshop will allow content creators to make rather obscene amounts of money if they're good at what they do.

[Bolivar]

25% for a derivative work, without needing to go to the rights holder first, is highway robbery in the IP licensing world. They're lucky the Workshop implemented this at all.

Steam Workshop has always been an inferior experience for anyone serious about modding their games, so on the one hand, I want to believe this won't have a huge impact.

But the pessimistic part of me thinks it absolutely will. If people expect to get paid for streaming games on Twitch, obviously the very talented modders in the community will as well. Its already stifling free mod development, as a Skyrim modder (isoku, creator of Wet & Cold) has withheld a major update to a popular mod for a long time, now releasing it for a premium, much the ire of the community. I can't imagine what this will do to total enhancement guides, when many of the top tier mods across various categories are premium. This could have the positive effect of incentivizing people to spend more effort creating larger, higher quality, and less buggy mods. But if the basics start charging premiums, such as the script extenders, mod organizers, and unofficial patches, I might really have to step away from the hobby. That would be an extreme scenario, though.

[Shauna]

I would say it that it could work as long as there's decent quality control, but...

*looks at Steam Greenlight*

:erm:

[NeoCracker]

25% for a derivative work, without needing to go to the rights holder first, is highway robbery in the IP licensing world. They're lucky the Workshop implemented this at all.

Steam Workshop has always been an inferior experience for anyone serious about modding their games, so on the one hand, I want to believe this won't have a huge impact.

But the pessimistic part of me thinks thinks it absolutely will. If people expect to get paid for streaming games on Twitch, obviously the very talented modders in the community will as well. Already a Skyrim modder (isoku, creator of Wet & Cold) has withheld a major update to a popular mod, now releasing it for a premium, much much the ire of the community. So its already stifling free mod develoment. I can't imagine what this will do to total enhancement guides, when many of the top tier mods across various categories are premium. This could have the positive effect of incentivizing people to spend more effort creating larger, higher quality, and less buggy mods. But if the basics start charging premiums, such as the script extenders, mod organizers, and unofficial patches, I might really have to step away from the hobby. That would be an extreme scenario, though.

This is something for the people buying mods to sort out what they are and are not willing to pay for. I get the feeling a lot of the modding community sees this coming already, so I think anything to extreme will get shut down early on.

[Skyblade]

Can't post it from my phone, or I'd link to TotalBiscuit's video on the subject.

The move definitely has its perks, but there are some really worrying aspects.

First, lack of quality control. You get no protection for what you buy. If you buy a mod and a future update breaks it, you are boned.

Second, lack of legal protection. Apparently there are already people pulling mods off sites and selling them as their own content. There's also the illegal state of mods based on third party IPs, such as the Skyrim LotR mod. They're qlready in questionable territory when free, and selling them is a strict no-no.

Finally, there's Valve's exploitation and extortion. We don't know what portion of the income goes to Valve and what goes to Bethesda, but the number we have, Valve withholding 75% of the profit, is complete BS, since it isn't their game, nor are they doing the mod work.

Valve is making a clear run at cornering the mod market. They already are running incredibly monopolistic practices in the PC gaming market. Giving them control of mods as well is NOT a good idea.

[Yeargdribble]

I'm just irritated that there can't be a legitimate discussion about this. The entire conversation everywhere I turn is people saying mods should be free. Modding should be a hobby. We shouldn't have to pay for crappy mods. Free modders can have their stuff stolen and that's unfair.

Basically, I'm seeing a lot of entitlement and strawman arguments which pretty much prevents any real discussion on the issues. I obviously think that people who do a lot of hard work deserve at least the option to get paid.

My biggest concern is that Steam is a monopoly and so modders don't have a lot of other options. It gives Valve too much power with mod monetization. There's also the issue that of quality control that we've already seen on Steam in general and it may make looking for quality mods difficult.

[Bolivar]

I'm just irritated that there can't be a legitimate discussion about this. The entire conversation everywhere I turn is people saying mods should be free. Modding should be a hobby. We shouldn't have to pay for crappy mods. Free modders can have their stuff stolen and that's unfair.

Basically, I'm seeing a lot of entitlement and strawman arguments which pretty much prevents any real discussion on the issues. I obviously think that people who do a lot of hard work deserve at least the option to get paid.


A lot of this narrative is actually coming from modders themselves.

The community's hobbyist culture is a necessity - a healthy mod scene requires collaboration, it involves borrowing code, salvaging abandoned projects, building on top of completed ones, independently-developed companion plugins but above all, compatibility. Once you install a threshold number of mods, you become much more reliant on compatibility utilities such as mod organizers, LOD generators, and custom patching tools - it's going to be unfeasible for anyone to develop these if they first need to purchase all of the currently existing mods to test it. The only way around that is if Bethesda includes and maintains these utilities in in their next game. But it's unlikely, given the way they abandon their games once their next project exits pre-production.

While this is a massive roadblock, I think it actually hurts Valve most of all. It ensures that the Workshop will remain a subpar experience, compared to the open source culture of the Nexus. The thing we really have to fear is if Bethesda makes their next game only compatible with mods from the Workshop.

[Fox]

I'll keep my thoughts on this brief as Valve own 75% of this post, but what a catastrophe this is shaping up to be. Valve don't understand subtlety do they?

Couldn't they have announced their plans ahead of time, let people prepare and discuss? Couldn't they have started with a donation system, help people adjust to the concept, before putting content behind a solid paywall? Couldn't they have accepted some responsibility to ensure that paid for content functions to a minimum acceptable standard, considering they are taking three quarters of all the money generated for none of the work?

And what are they even doing with al this money? At least when EA pulls horrendous exploitative nonsense you get the sense they're spending that on making more games.

[escobert]

I was just reading this article about a guy who ended up getting into a fight with Valve about his paid mod. I'm not a big fan of the whole idea of paying for mods but, that's because I'm cheap.

http://www.pcgamer.com/creator-of-removed-paid-skyrim-mod-gives-his-side-of-the-story/

[Skyblade]

Couldn't they have accepted some responsibility to ensure that paid for content functions to a minimum acceptable standard, considering they are taking three quarters of all the money generated for none of the work?

From the same guys responsible for this?

63949

Yeah, that's not going to happen.

[Fox]

I've been reading through the Skyrim mods subreddit today. It's so sad; this community of passionate creators and fans has been suddenly ripped apart by this little experiment. Too big a change, too sudden, everyone messes up, gets angry, deletes their accounts...

Good going Valve, Bethesda. Well handled.

[Vyk]

Not going to pretend I know the whole story, and haven't ready any articles on it. So take my opinion with a grain of salt. But I wouldn't point any fingers at Bethesda right away. If they were asked if its okay if modders make money off of working on their game, and they said yes, fans can make money off of our game. That's honestly pretty badass on their part. Unfortunate if it's not handled very well by Valve though. Which yeah. If they put the same amount of effort into it that they do with Greenlight, that's really just sad. I used to be under Steam's spell just like every other PC gamer. But having a gaming girlfriend has helped me need to look elsewhere for my games so we don't have to buy them twice, and it's sort of disenchanted me with Steam overall. I like Steam for it's great prices and convenience, but that's really just it and mostly only at face value. Their marketing leaves a bit to be desired. In that regard, I adore GOG way more. They bend over backwards to make sure everything is as good as it can be for all parties involved

[Spuuky]

I like Steam and think it's perfect for what I want, which is an easy way to have all my games tied together. There are obviously situations that it isn't great but none of them apply to me.

The Skyrim mods subreddit, like any passionate group of people, is automatically going to violently resist change as a whole. That should not surprise anyone.

[Yeargdribble]

I don't understand why people don't think Valve and Bethesda deserve such a large cut. You're using Bethesda's game and tools. Surely some of you do some creative things and have an idea how much it costs to get access to AutoCAD, or Maya, or Photoshop, or Premiere, or ProTools. These premium creative tools can cost ridiculous amounts of money even on their subscription models.

Bethesda is giving their game, and their TES Construction kit for a ridiculously low price by comparison. Oh, and did I mention it's their game?

Valve is providing a distribution platform seen by millions. It gets your wares in front of the eyes of tons of people and cover costs of hosting and bandwidth.

Obviously both Valve and Bethesda deserve a huge cut of what modders make.

People want to blame Valve and Bethesda for the destruction of community. They are only a small player in that. The community has proved to be ridiculously toxic. They are acting so entitled. They have shifted slightly in the last 24 hours thankfully. Yesterday they were saying they don't think anyone deserves and compensation. Now just a few are saying they think the issue is too little compensation. Some are even saying that we should start donating to modders.

So here's some of the numbers of on that. One modder mentioned getting 1 donation in over 1 million downloads. Durante (of DSFix fame) mentioned he got donations from 0.17% of people who used his various mods. Nobody has been donating in all the time. When you're getting those numbers getting 25% from Valve seems fantastic.

Chesko has been burned at the stake. He was one of the most notable modders in Skyrim (Frostfall was probably his most well known). Everyone was calling him a miserable sellout and even far less savory things. This is a guy that has no doubt spend 100s of hours on his mods. But the community turn on him hard. He's announced that he's basically leaving the community and the community is blaming Valve.

Really, it's Valve's fault entirely? No, gaming is a toxic place. We threaten people in online games. We threaten women on twitter. We call modders sellouts for wanting to make any money. Just watching how acerbic the comments have been in the Skyrim modding community, I think the blame lies almost entirely on the community itself.

Sure, paying for mods sucks. I've been an obsessive TES modder for a very long time. I binge on mods like crazy and this will probably curb that. It's an inconvenience in my life, but that doesn't mean I should abandon all reason and say that all these people are pieces of crap for wanting to get paid for their work.

Maybe it's that I'm unique in working in a field that most people do as a simple hobby. Maybe it's because people believe that a job is something that is supposed to be miserable and soul crushing, not something you enjoy. They resent those who get paid to do something that is also enjoyable. I know I've been the target of that plenty as well, so I identify with modders. I think people just need to stop being so entitled.

[Skyblade]

I don't understand why people don't think Valve and Bethesda deserve such a large cut. You're using Bethesda's game and tools. Surely some of you do some creative things and have an idea how much it costs to get access to AutoCAD, or Maya, or Photoshop, or Premiere, or ProTools. These premium creative tools can cost ridiculous amounts of money even on their subscription models.

Bethesda is giving their game, and their TES Construction kit for a ridiculously low price by comparison. Oh, and did I mention it's their game?

Valve is providing a distribution platform seen by millions. It gets your wares in front of the eyes of tons of people and cover costs of hosting and bandwidth.

I don't blame Bethesda at all. I blame Valve almost entirely. Honestly, if Valve came out with the numbers and showed that they were receiving 5-10% of the total, I'd be fine with it. Any more than that, and I think they are blatantly extorting their position of market dominance.

The 75-25 split is fine with me, as long as that split is with the people who are actually make the games being modded. I don't mind Bethesda getting a massive cut. They poured far more resources into the original product, and the mod work is derivative.

Valve is doing diddly squat here. They're "hosting the content". Something with has zero oversight, zero quality control, zero long-term investment, and costs next to nothing. They don't deserve a massive cut of the profits. I'm pretty sure, however, that they're receiving at least half of that 75%, if not more.

[Ayen]

25% sounds reasonable to me considering they were making zip before. The others getting 75% doesn't surprise me considering their position. Don't know if Value plans to show the numbers or not, but I wouldn't hold my breath. They're kind of not obligated to. This has little to no impact on me since I seldom play PC games, and when I do I don't use mods for anything.

Letting modders choose whether they want to give their mods away for free or charge them seems the best way to go about it. Not gonna stop people from troutting on those who choose the latter.

[escobert]

The owner of Nexus, Dark0ne, responded to Chesko on Reddit:

"Hmmm, the reason we're positioned there is because (1) I don't want to charge for mods and (2) even if I wanted to, I can't. Valve approached me about being a service provider, where I could take up to 5% of their cut of things and it was seen as the Premier League paying a very, very tiny amount towards grass roots football. Which is handy, because it'll end up paying about 10% of the cost of upgrading and running the forum server in light of the increased traffic we have right now, which adds nothing to the upkeep of the Nexus sites. Every little helps, right?

It was offered as a gesture of thanks, directly from Valve, to Nexus and several other tools and sites in the community for the continued work done within the community, and is accepted as such, with the stipulation that it wouldn't stop me from forming my own opinion and sharing said opinions openly and publicly. And I said up to 5%, so if a mod author selects 5 service providers, each service provider gets 1% of Valve's cut. I knew this was coming since they messaged me a few weeks ago, but I had no idea when. I was under no NDA, though, and a few mod authors approached by Valve have said the same. Wasn't for me to get involved, I'd already made my news post pre-empting everything.

Not really too worried about that one biting me in the ass.

I'm sorry about what has happened to you. I've been watching the events unfold and it's been horrific to watch. My Skype is available in the private mod author forums if you would like to chat. A lot of mod authors have been privately talking to me about what they think, some even apologising to me for some reason for contemplating using the service and I've told them all the same thing; I cannot and will not begrudge you for wanting to make money from your work. This backlash was always, ALWAYS going to happen. I told Valve as much, and they said they knew. I'm not entirely sure they knew it would be THIS bad, however.

Edit: With a bit more clarity on how service providers work. It's not hidden, it's on their service provider listing at the bottom of this page (https://steamcommunity.com/wor..., which explains how it works. Mod authors select service providers who they think helped them in their modding, and in turn, the service provider gets between 1%-5% of Valve's cut of their profits, depending on how many service providers were picked by the mod author.

So the mod author opts in to it themselves, and the money comes from Valve's cut."


hopefully that clears a couple things up.

[Bolivar]

Maybe it's that I'm unique in working in a field that most people do as a simple hobby. Maybe it's because people believe that a job is something that is supposed to be miserable and soul crushing, not something you enjoy. They resent those who get paid to do something that is also enjoyable. I know I've been the target of that plenty as well, so I identify with modders. I think people just need to stop being so entitled.

I get that you want to see your peers get paid for their work but you're misconstruing this as "the community vs. modders." Some of the most vocal opposition is coming from within the modding community, most notably Chesko himself. He writes in his post (http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33qcaj/the_experiment_has_failed_my_exit_from_the/) that he isn't leaving the scene, just the Workshop, in part because of how infuriated he is with how Valve is handling this. Steam has had tremendous success with its Content Creation initiatives but it's not something that translates well when shoehorned into a modding community, especially TES modding, as I'm sure you're well aware of yourself. For anyone who wants to know more about this topic, and why there is legitimate opposition to it within the modding community, not just gamers being toxic, should read the post on Nexus Mods by its founder (http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/news/12454/?) (starting with the section "Permission changes regarding paid mods").

The first "mandatory" mod has announced it is joining the paid workshop - SkyUI (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3863/?tab=4&&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fcomments%2F%3Fmod_id%3D3863%26page%3D1%26sor t%3DDESC%26pid%3D0%26thread_id%3D499516&pUp=1). For anyone who doesn't know, it's an absolutely essential plug in, recommended on nearly every major guide. It reconfigures the interface to make the game much more manageable with mouse & keyboard. It's a great example of the interconnected problem, in that it relies on other mods and other mods incorporate it in turn. Suffice to say, people are having metldowns about this, including the team members who helped to create it and do not want their work being sold. The irony here is that Bethesda is being rewarded for screwing up so bad on the PC interface that their fans had to fix it for them.

[Yeargdribble]

I think many of the issues concerning the community collapsing are really being blown and exacerbated by the community. We're not ever 48 hours in at this point. I think time will allow for the inter-connectivity to work itself out the same way issues of DLC compatibility or version comptability did. Things will take a while and then they will start to settle out.

The top quality mods will float to the top. When the community is done being super angry, they might realize that $1 for something as quality as SkyUI is a steal. It's likely the new versions of SkyUI will slowly get incorporated into more mods and we'll all just get over it. Ultimately, people will probably stop buying silly single armor packs and only things with reputable modders behind them will really be bought.

It'll be a lot like the way apps work on phones and tablets. The market kinda sorts itself out by the reputation of the developers and the quality of their apps as well as how hard those devs work to keep the apps updated and working in tandem with other apps they are meant to cross support with.

It's funny, we all freaked out about some of the first DLC, ironically enough, Horse Armor in Oblivion, but to a degree it has worked itself out. There's good DLC and there's terrible cash grab DLC out there by all sorts of different studios. Some people have wised up and while there will always be people stupid enough to buy worthless DLC, informed gaming consumers have started being more selective about the DLC they by. They are getting wary of the early access games they buy, the Kickstarters they back, and the pre-orders they place... myself included.

Once everyone is done throwing a hissy fit, I think this could be a great thing for modding in the long run. People getting paid to make something are more likely to polish it up and less likely get burned out by an entitled mass demanding improvements on a free product.

I think we just have to move past the weird psychology that binds us all. We all sort of balked when you started seeing phone games for $2 or $3 instead of $1. Even if it was a better product, we didn't like the idea. Some of us drop $5 or $10 on a whim every frequently on other dumb thing, but are hesitant to pull the trigger for a $5 app. Some people go to Starbucks every day for a something super transient, but won't spend $10 on a high quality app that will get used every single day and improve their lives.

I guess I just finally figured that out for myself long ago and stopped being a miser about $10 apps that I would literally use daily when I so flippantly spend equal amounts of money on much more trivial things.

I've also realized that ultimately, I'm renting everything. You buy a nice piece of electronics or a computer and you pay a lot and you like the idea of ownership and you do own it, but what you're really paying for is the limited shelf life of that product. My iPod Touch 4 cost $300 and barely functions now, but I got several years of great use out of it, so why should I be that angry that it no longer is super fantastic?

I just really think once people get over the psychological hurdles and the community stops being butthurt, we'll probably move on to having even more polished mods that people will gladly pay for and even with the interconnectivity, people will find interesting ways to deal with all of that. Perhaps people who making modding resources could sell licenses to people who plan to use them in mods that go up for sale.

It's quite similar to music and what you can do with it for free versus if you plan to make money off of it.

[Fox]

I don't understand why people don't think Valve and Bethesda deserve such a large cut. You're using Bethesda's game and tools.

Which the modder has already purchased.

When Bethesda buy a license for a tool like Maya, they pay an up front fee and that's generally the end of it. Sometimes you might get small royalty agreements here and there, but Autodesk are not going to take 75% of every copy of Skyrim sold. Bethesda made the game, they have already been paid for the game, Valve have already taken 30% of that sale. Now they're taking 75% between them of content they either a) did not create at all or b) have already been paid for. It's fine that they take a cut but this isn't a cut, it's 3/4 of the entire revenue stream.

[Slothy]

I don't understand why people don't think Valve and Bethesda deserve such a large cut. You're using Bethesda's game and tools.

Which the modder has already purchased.

When Bethesda buy a license for a tool like Maya, they pay an up front fee and that's generally the end of it. Sometimes you might get small royalty agreements here and there, but Autodesk are not going to take 75% of every copy of Skyrim sold. Bethesda made the game, they have already been paid for the game, Valve have already taken 30% of that sale. Now they're taking 75% between them of content they either a) did not create at all or b) have already been paid for. It's fine that they take a cut but this isn't a cut, it's 3/4 of the entire revenue stream.

The comparison to Maya doesn't really work since you aren't just using a tool to make something you sell for money and thereby entitled to all, or even necessarily a large amount of money. You're using someone else's intellectual property to make your mod and sell it. If paying for Maya also came with the entire game made and IP developed for you to integrate your work into you'd have a valid comparison then. But 25% for making and selling content that builds on and relies entirely on the work of others to even be relevant? That's pretty fucking generous. You won't get a deal that good anywhere else in the industry for that kind of work. And if people get over themselves enough for it to actually take off to some degree then congratulations to the better modders out there because Valve just made them millionaires if the payments people have received for user made content in other games is any indication.

If anyone really wants to complain about that not even two days in when we've yet to see how everything will shake out then they're crazy. And if anyone wants to call Valve evil, stupid,or whatever else for giving more content creators the opportunity to get in on the millions they've already paid out to people for things like TF2 items and CS: GO skins then I have to wonder what sort of world I'm living in.

The only legitimate complaint that I think has fallen out of this is concerns about quality control, but even then, I think Valve has wanted to move more and more to community curation for years with a large part of it being because Steam is simply getting too big to manage effectively with how relatively small they are and because they don't want to be gatekeepers deciding who can and can't put their stuff on Steam. They may not be there with games yet, but there's more than enough community rating and commentary features to root out the scammers and the shoddy mods right now making it extremely easy for those not willing to blindly spend a few bucks trying a mod to stay informed and spend their money wisely.

[Slothy]

I don't understand why people don't think Valve and Bethesda deserve such a large cut. You're using Bethesda's game and tools.

Which the modder has already purchased.

When Bethesda buy a license for a tool like Maya, they pay an up front fee and that's generally the end of it. Sometimes you might get small royalty agreements here and there, but Autodesk are not going to take 75% of every copy of Skyrim sold. Bethesda made the game, they have already been paid for the game, Valve have already taken 30% of that sale. Now they're taking 75% between them of content they either a) did not create at all or b) have already been paid for. It's fine that they take a cut but this isn't a cut, it's 3/4 of the entire revenue stream.

The comparison to Maya doesn't really work since you aren't just using a tool to make something you sell for money and thereby entitled to all, or even necessarily a large amount of money. You're using someone else's intellectual property to make your mod and sell it. If paying for Maya also came with the entire game made and IP developed for you to integrate your work into you'd have a valid comparison then. But 25% for making and selling content that builds on and relies entirely on the work of others to even be relevant? That's pretty fucking generous. You won't get a deal that good anywhere else in the industry for that kind of work. And if people get over themselves enough for it to actually take off to some degree then congratulations to the better modders out there because Valve just made them millionaires if the payments people have received for user made content in other games is any indication.

If anyone really wants to complain about that not even two days in when we've yet to see how everything will shake out then they're crazy. And if anyone wants to call Valve evil, stupid,or whatever else for giving more content creators the opportunity to get in on the millions they've already paid out to people for things like TF2 items and CS: GO skins then I have to wonder what sort of world I'm living in.

The only legitimate complaint that I think has fallen out of this is concerns about quality control, but even then, I think Valve has wanted to move more and more to community curation for years with a large part of it being because Steam is simply getting too big to manage effectively with how relatively small they are and because they don't want to be gatekeepers deciding who can and can't put their stuff on Steam. They may not be there with games yet, but there's more than enough community rating and commentary features to root out the scammers and the shoddy mods right now making it extremely easy for those not willing to blindly spend a few bucks trying a mod to stay informed and spend their money wisely.

[Fox]

The comparison to Maya doesn't really work since you aren't just using a tool to make something you sell for money and thereby entitled to all, or even necessarily a large amount of money. You're using someone else's intellectual property to make your mod and sell it. If paying for Maya also came with the entire game made and IP developed for you to integrate your work into you'd have a valid comparison then. But 25% for making and selling content that builds on and relies entirely on the work of others to even be relevant? That's pretty smurfing generous. You won't get a deal that good anywhere else in the industry for that kind of work.

I'd say that using a game engine is pretty similar. Unity, Unreal, all come with pre-made assets, scripts, AI, tools, and so on and so forth. Modding Skyrim is not all that far removed from building something in a commercial game engine. Some of those are royalty free licenses, some of them require royalties. But they don't take 75% of your revenue.

Let's turn it around and look at it another way: Bethesda did not build a commercial game engine. They built a game which they released at a certain price and must be purchased by everyone before they can even start to think about installing mods. Bethesda have already been paid for their development work - that's what buying the game does. And if someone only wants the game so that they can play a particular mod, they still have to buy the game. So Bethesda have been making money from mods even when they were free, as every mod made for it increases the value of the game which attracts more buyers.

What we have here is basically 3rd party DLC. I develop a game. I release it and I get paid for it. Somebody else then develops new content for it at zero cost to me. I am not entitled to take three quarters of the revenue from that content. A cut, yes. It is my IP, I've graciously allowed them to use it for their own financial gain, it's fair I see a small percentage of that money. But the person who actually created the content deserves the largest slice of that pie.

[Bolivar]

Yearg, everything you said is reasonable and makes sense but again, it just doesn't fit well when you try to apply it to the culture of modding and why it's become as awesome as it is. I'm not sure what you mean with time working out the interconnectivity issues out on its own. Because many mods overlap and edit the same thing, it takes actual work to create a master load order and I just don't see how it's feasible if a team would have to go and purchase every mod to make a worthwhile sorter. It would no longer be feasible to run complementary or even a large number of mods because there's no way to sort out conflicts. As I said in my first post, maybe Bethesda could sort that out but they publicly abandon post-launch support once their next project ramps up.

This just isn't the same as DLC or cosmetic skins, build on top of the product without conflicting, and I think that's where some of Vivi's confusion is coming from.


The only legitimate complaint that I think has fallen out of this is concerns about quality control, but even then, I think Valve has wanted to move more and more to community curation for years with a large part of it being because Steam is simply getting too big to manage effectively with how relatively small they are and because they don't want to be gatekeepers deciding who can and can't put their stuff on Steam. They may not be there with games yet, but there's more than enough community rating and commentary features to root out the scammers and the shoddy mods right now making it extremely easy for those not willing to blindly spend a few bucks trying a mod to stay informed and spend their money wisely.

This is one of the most self-defeating aspects of the entire experiment. The community cannot police for quality control unless they buy the mod first, and they can only receive a refund to their Steam Wallet, meaning Valve gets their cut for your participation, no matter what. The community has to pay in order to be allowed to curate and control content. The same goes for modders wanting to make sure that they work is not being pirated - that's the part really mortifying the top modders, causing them to take down their content even from the Nexus, for fear that others are going to profit from it.

This entire thing just doesn't work and it's not worth trying to fix it when it obstructs what makes the community even viable to begin with.

[Spuuky]

I love how humans can be utterly mortified that someone else might profit that something they aren't profiting from.

What's more "fair," me giving Valve + Bethesda a combined 75 cents and you 25 cents, or me giving 0 cents to both of you? Obviously, the latter. Which is "better"? Well, for me as a consumer, it's the latter, too. But for Valve, Bethesda, and you? Are you really going to say that 25 cents is worse than 0 cents, just because someone else gets a different amount? Is that the actual argument I am seeing?

[Fox]

I love how humans can be utterly mortified that someone else might profit that something they aren't profiting from.

What's more "fair," me giving Valve + Bethesda a combined 75 cents and you 25 cents, or me giving 0 cents to both of you? Obviously, the latter. Which is "better"? Well, for me as a consumer, it's the latter, too. But for Valve, Bethesda, and you? Are you really going to say that 25 cents is worse than 0 cents, just because someone else gets a different amount? Is that the actual argument I am seeing?

No, 25 cents is not worse than 0 cents. But is it worse than, say, 50 cents. Or 90. Which would in my view be a much fairer distribution.

[Slothy]

I'd say that using a game engine is pretty similar. Unity, Unreal, all come with pre-made assets, scripts, AI, tools, and so on and so forth. Modding Skyrim is not all that far removed from building something in a commercial game engine. Some of those are royalty free licenses, some of them require royalties. But they don't take 75% of your revenue.

Except it is since it's not making an actual game, it's making modifications to a game someone else already spent millions of dollars making and selling so you have the audience for your mods in the first place. One person spending a few weeks/months in their spare time making a mod for a popular game is so far removed from making a game from scratch it's not even funny. It's a bit like comparing people build drums from scratch, making all of the shells and hardware, applying the finish, and assembling themselves to someone who just buys some shells and hardware, drills a few holes and calls it a day. Nothing against doing the latter, but calling them a drum builder would be a bit of a stretch. Just like comparing someone modifying a game to the team of a few hundred who built it from the ground up is a bit of a stretch.


Let's turn it around and look at it another way: Bethesda did not build a commercial game engine. They built a game which they released at a certain price and must be purchased by everyone before they can even start to think about installing mods. Bethesda have already been paid for their development work - that's what buying the game does.

They've been paid for a copy of the game and a license for someone to play and enjoy it. They haven't been paid for the right to even make content for it, but that's something they generally let slide because they know it's beneficial to the community and by extension their bottom line. But they absolutely have not been paid for the privilege of making money off of content made for the game. Now I'm a strong believer in community content, and the rights of people to make money on their transformative works, but to say that Bethesda making most of the money is unfair when they did most of the work that allows a modder to make anything at all is still silly.


And if someone only wants the game so that they can play a particular mod, they still have to buy the game. So Bethesda have been making money from mods even when they were free, as every mod made for it increases the value of the game which attracts more buyers.

In my more than 25 years of playing games I can think of one instance where people actually bought a game in large numbers just to play a mod. This is not a thing that happens frequently.


What we have here is basically 3rd party DLC. I develop a game. I release it and I get paid for it. Somebody else then develops new content for it at zero cost to me. I am not entitled to take three quarters of the revenue from that content. A cut, yes. It is my IP, I've graciously allowed them to use it for their own financial gain, it's fair I see a small percentage of that money. But the person who actually created the content deserves the largest slice of that pie.

If we are going to look at it as 3rd party DLC, no company hired in the industry would get 25% of the revenue if they were hired to make DLC for a game. They'd actually be lucky to see any of the revenue and not just get a fixed payment maybe with some bonuses thrown in for performance, meeting deadlines, etc. You're basically arguing that modders deserve more money just because. There's no basis for deciding what's fair here aside from the fact that 25% of revenue is way better than anyone in the business would usually get for similar work, but considering Bethesda could have just told everyone to fuck off and that no one could make any money from their mods, this makes them especially generous if you ask me. Aside from Valve I can't think of any other companies where anyone can make any money off of any mods they make. Get a job if there work is really good maybe, but that's about it.


This is one of the most self-defeating aspects of the entire experiment. The community cannot police for quality control unless they buy the mod first, and they can only receive a refund to their Steam Wallet, meaning Valve gets their cut for your participation, no matter what. The community has to pay in order to be allowed to curate and control content. The same goes for modders wanting to make sure that they work is not being pirated - that's the part really mortifying the top modders, causing them to take down their content even from the Nexus, for fear that others are going to profit from it.

This entire thing just doesn't work and it's not worth trying to fix it when it obstructs what makes the community even viable to begin with.

You've just described one of the problems with capitalism in general. I fail to see why people having to buy something before they can warn others away from the junk is a problem in this one instance when literally everything that gets produced in the economy has the exact same problem. People seem to act like the idea of community curation in the digital world is a horrendous idea that will bring about the death of gaming and digital distribution but everyone's already been relying on it in every industry for centuries.

[Spuuky]

No, 25 cents is not worse than 0 cents. But is it worse than, say, 50 cents. Or 90. Which would in my view be a much fairer distribution.
OK, but modders were making 0 cents before. This is a change from 0 cents to 25 cents, not a change from 50 or 90 cents to 25 cents.

You've just described one of the problems with capitalism in general. I fail to see why people having to buy something before they can warn others away from the junk is a problem in this one instance when literally everything that gets produced in the economy has the exact same problem. People seem to act like the idea of community curation in the digital world is a horrendous idea that will bring about the death of gaming and digital distribution but everyone's already been relying on it in every industry for centuries.Including the actual video game industry.

[Bolivar]

You've just described one of the problems with capitalism in general. I fail to see why people having to buy something before they can warn others away from the junk is a problem in this one instance when literally everything that gets produced in the economy has the exact same problem. People seem to act like the idea of community curation in the digital world is a horrendous idea that will bring about the death of gaming and digital distribution but everyone's already been relying on it in every industry for centuries.

Because companies in the real world are generally responsible for ensuring their products work - it's called the implied warranty of merchantability. Here, Valve is putting the onus entirely on the community to discern which products are completely inoperable, corrupt save files, or break things to the extent that users have to reinstall the game.

Also, you get an actual refund in the real world. Here, you get Steam Wallet credit but Valve still gets paid for the broken mod.

[Fox]

If we are going to look at it as 3rd party DLC, no company hired in the industry would get 25% of the revenue if they were hired to make DLC for a game.


No, but then the guys hiring them wouldn't be getting that DLC for free. In that scenario, Bethesda are commissioning someone for a particular piece of work, probably a couple of million bucks or so to pay everyone's salary for the months they work on the content. With paid mods, they aren't paying anyone's salary - the only income the content creator now gets is from the revenue share.

Given that Bethesda have already been paid for the content they created when the people who wanted to play their game bought their game, the people who wanted to make mods bought their game, and the people who wanted to play mods bought their game, then yes I think the modder deserves a bigger chunk of the revenue share. Bethesda put it most of the work to make the initial game mods are derived from - yes. But they've also already taken money from everyone - every asset used by a modder is an asset they've already compensated Bethesda for in their purchase of the game.


In my more than 25 years of playing games I can think of one instance where people actually bought a game in large numbers just to play a mod. This is not a thing that happens frequently.

No, but people buying a game in large numbers to play mod(s) is fairly common. Games like Skyrim, Starcraft, Cities: Skylines, Fallout, ArmA, Mount and Blade - modding increases the user base and keeps these games selling far longer than usual.

Having said all this, I think my biggest issue is with Valve. The issue is not so much that Bethesda are taking 45% (although imo that's still a bit on the steep side given what we've discussed), it's that the modder is only getting 25%. And where's that other 30% going? Valve. And they didn't create a single texture.



No, 25 cents is not worse than 0 cents. But is it worse than, say, 50 cents. Or 90. Which would in my view be a much fairer distribution.
OK, but modders were making 0 cents before. This is a change from 0 cents to 25 cents, not a change from 50 or 90 cents to 25 cents.

And I have no issue with the concept of modders making money - just the execution of it. If you're gonna pay someone, pay someone fairly.

[Skyblade]

In my more than 25 years of playing games I can think of one instance where people actually bought a game in large numbers just to play a mod. This is not a thing that happens frequently.

I think you're referring to people buying ARMA 2 in order to play Day Z. The only other mods I think that had that sort of draw were DotA and Counter Strike. But both of those were for games that already had massive customer bases.

[Yeargdribble]

I'm happy to see the general conversation moderating a bit. The community at large has gone from saying they are completely against modders getting paid at all to just arguing that the terms need to be better. So I'm glad the reactionary crap has slowed down, but I feel like the biggest damage was done by the community against its own members. Luckily, some of the big names in the scene (Gopher in particular, but also Brodual) have put out very measured responses that don't claim the sky is falling and just discuss the pros and cons. Their consensus mostly lines up with mine. Ultimately, this isn't going to be the catastrophe people are thinking in the long-term.

We've had fear-mongered speculation about dozens of things in gaming and while there are still tinfoil cappers most people who originally claimed a given change would be the downfall of all games realized they were completely incorrect. I'm hoping the same will happen here as people continue to moderate their opinions.

[Skyblade]

I'm happy to see the general conversation moderating a bit. The community at large has gone from saying they are completely against modders getting paid at all to just arguing that the terms need to be better. So I'm glad the reactionary crap has slowed down, but I feel like the biggest damage was done by the community against its own members. Luckily, some of the big names in the scene (Gopher in particular, but also Brodual) have put out very measured responses that don't claim the sky is falling and just discuss the pros and cons. Their consensus mostly lines up with mine. Ultimately, this isn't going to be the catastrophe people are thinking in the long-term.

We've had fear-mongered speculation about dozens of things in gaming and while there are still tinfoil cappers most people who originally claimed a given change would be the downfall of all games realized they were completely incorrect. I'm hoping the same will happen here as people continue to moderate their opinions.

I'm still of the opinion that Valve is massively exploiting their position of market dominance and moving to monopolize the PC platform, which is going to be absolutely devastating to the PC gaming market in the long term.

[Spuuky]

I'm still of the opinion that Valve is massively exploiting their position of market dominance and moving to monopolize the PC platform, which is going to be absolutely devastating to the PC gaming market in the long term.What large game can you buy on Steam but anywhere else, other than those made by Valve?

[Bolivar]

I'm still of the opinion that Valve is massively exploiting their position of market dominance and moving to monopolize the PC platform, which is going to be absolutely devastating to the PC gaming market in the long term.What large game can you buy on Steam but anywhere else, other than those made by Valve?

Skyrim.

[Skyblade]

I'm still of the opinion that Valve is massively exploiting their position of market dominance and moving to monopolize the PC platform, which is going to be absolutely devastating to the PC gaming market in the long term.What large game can you buy on Steam but anywhere else, other than those made by Valve?

Not many.

How many large games can you not install except through Steamworks? 90% of those titles not released by EA.

[Spuuky]

Yes, good old EA; perpetual thorn in my side for forcing me to install yet more installers and platforms, instead of just running on my one unified platform like everything else, and then having those platforms constantly fail when new products come out. Ah, well, at least they aren't Ubisoft, who still insist on their own authentication servers for some reason despite running on other platforms.

You forgot Blizzard, though. They make some pretty big games. Do people complain that Nintendo monopolizes the market when publishers agree to exclusivity to their platform for a game? It just all feels like a big double-standard to me. All I want is to be able to play every game that I want to play, have them work, and ideally not having 10 different support infrastructures running in the background.

[Yeargdribble]

Yeah, everyone loved Valve and acted like they were the second coming for nearly a decade and now within 3 days everyone seems to think they are more evil than EA over something that's honestly quite petty.

I just don't feel the need to think so black and white about this. I think Steam is a great service, but I don't think they are infallible. But I also don't think that they are evil, nor do I think they are going to turn completely evil and destroy PC gaming with their monopoly. I'll admit, their monopoly makes me a bit nervous about a lot of things, but I just haven't seen anything that gives me any serious worry about them... not even this modding thing.

I honestly believe (even before Gaben said so recently) that this was done with good intentions. There's a community of hardworking and talent modders. Maybe we could find a way to use our position to act as a licensing middle-man and find a way to help those modders get paid and incentivize a higher quality of modding.

Are you going to tell me that Youtube videos now are of lower quality since Youtubers were able to start getting paid ad revenue? You'd be lying. The quality of content on Youtube has skyrocketed.

People also seem to think that people will just make a ton of tiny, crappy little cash grab mods rather than large scale, high quality mods like Frostfall. Once again, looking at the Youtube model, I don't think that really proves to be the case. The cream rises to the top and people who consistently put out quality content are doing better. Reputations build and word gets around. Most of the best modders already are intrinsically motivated to make high quality products and will continue to do so and will just have the incentive and potentially the ability to make them better quality.

I make a living playing music. If I didn't get paid to do it, I couldn't spend all day polishing and practicing. I'd spend 8 hours at a "normal" job and try to find a tiny amount of time to improve my playing if I wasn't tired and defeated after work. Then I'd show up to a crappy gig where they are "paying me for exposure" only to have a bunch of patrons complain about my playing or the lack of music selection I'm playing, and I'd probably say screw it.

That sounds a lot like a modder's life. Making a mod in your spare time, then fielding 100s of complaints about content, quality, compatibility, load order, etc. Everyone says you need to do it for free forever and the only way you should get paid is if you "make it big" like the Falskaar guy.

And that's the problem... that's how everyone thinks of working in creative fields. You either "make it" or you don't. They don't realize how much of a lottery that BS is. There are tons of people just quietly doing quality work behind the scenes. It's easier to hone your skills when you can at least make some of your income doing it. Otherwise, only the most privileged will ever have a shot because mommy and daddy are sitting around helping nurse little Trust Fund Jr.'s little hobby for a decade until he gets good enough to make it big.

Ultimately, I think Valve had good intentions and the entitlement of the community (most of them mod users rather than makers) is what soured it. We all live in a world where we want constant entertainment of ultra-superior quality, for free and without ads and view artists as not contributing anything practical to the world... they are people who need to get "a real job" or they should just do it out of the love and passion or they are sellouts.

Love and passion don't pay the mortgage and buy groceries.

[Bolivar]

Yes, good old EA; perpetual thorn in my side for forcing me to install yet more installers and platforms, instead of just running on my one unified platform like everything else, and then having those platforms constantly fail when new products come out. Ah, well, at least they aren't Ubisoft, who still insist on their own authentication servers for some reason despite running on other platforms.

You forgot Blizzard, though. They make some pretty big games. Do people complain that Nintendo monopolizes the market when publishers agree to exclusivity to their platform for a game? It just all feels like a big double-standard to me. All I want is to be able to play every game that I want to play, have them work, and ideally not having 10 different support infrastructures running in the background.


Not sure what your experience was with Origin but when I finally used it to play Crysis 3 a few months ago, I found it very minimalist, quick to respond, and stayed out of the way of me and the game. Much more so than Steam.

Your other examples aren't particularly on point - Nintendo is a small player in the console space and it's fine for them to dictate their own platform because they paid for it. The big multiplatform games typically launch on every platform out of necessity but Valve is actively paying for that not to happen on PC. Even when I buy a disc for cheap off a retailer, I can't interact with it at all other than through Steam. High profile titles like Skyrim and Cities Skylines are being paid not to launch on other services - some of which offer consumer friendlier pricing and DRM restraints, while Valve leverages nothing but it's deeper pockets to marginalize them. CD Projekt just can't match that spending and all but the most hardcore apologists will admit it - that sucks. When Steam first launched, most of us in the extended Half-life community bitched about it but we accepted it over time because of how convenient it was. But if they actually succeed in DRM-ifying mods, they'll have materially limited one of the pillars that makes PC unique as an open platform.

As poorly-implemented as this has been, it doesn't bother me so long as it don't change the real Elder Scrolls modding scene over at the Nexus. But if the next TES' creation tools are only compatible with the workshop, I'll have to seriously consider whether to buy the next game or to hold off until it all inevitably blows over. I'll definitely start giving more business to Amazon, Origin and GoG. Amazon in particular has been giving me better digital game deals than Steam for years now.

[Spuuky]

The Origin platform isn't really EA's big problem, it's the constant debacles of game releases like Sim City.

There are MANY games in the history of consoles where a platform owner (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc) has paid large dollars to not have it released on the other platforms. It was par for the course forever, and still happens sometimes now. I really just still don't see how that's any different.

[Skyblade]

Yes, good old EA; perpetual thorn in my side for forcing me to install yet more installers and platforms, instead of just running on my one unified platform like everything else, and then having those platforms constantly fail when new products come out. Ah, well, at least they aren't Ubisoft, who still insist on their own authentication servers for some reason despite running on other platforms.

You forgot Blizzard, though. They make some pretty big games. Do people complain that Nintendo monopolizes the market when publishers agree to exclusivity to their platform for a game? It just all feels like a big double-standard to me. All I want is to be able to play every game that I want to play, have them work, and ideally not having 10 different support infrastructures running in the background.

See, I remember a time when I didn't need ANY "support infrastructures" running in the background. When I could buy and install a game and actually just get the stupid game.


Yeah, everyone loved Valve and acted like they were the second coming for nearly a decade and now within 3 days everyone seems to think they are more evil than EA over something that's honestly quite petty.

Um, I've hated Valve and Steam since I first bought a non-Valve game, with no online interaction, from a brick and mortar store, and it told me I had to install Steam in order to use it. Steam is nothing but DRM, and a LOT of people hate it.


I just don't feel the need to think so black and white about this. I think Steam is a great service, but I don't think they are infallible. But I also don't think that they are evil, nor do I think they are going to turn completely evil and destroy PC gaming with their monopoly. I'll admit, their monopoly makes me a bit nervous about a lot of things, but I just haven't seen anything that gives me any serious worry about them... not even this modding thing.

I honestly believe (even before Gaben said so recently) that this was done with good intentions. There's a community of hardworking and talent modders. Maybe we could find a way to use our position to act as a licensing middle-man and find a way to help those modders get paid and incentivize a higher quality of modding.

Are you going to tell me that Youtube videos now are of lower quality since Youtubers were able to start getting paid ad revenue? You'd be lying. The quality of content on Youtube has skyrocketed.

People also seem to think that people will just make a ton of tiny, crappy little cash grab mods rather than large scale, high quality mods like Frostfall. Once again, looking at the Youtube model, I don't think that really proves to be the case. The cream rises to the top and people who consistently put out quality content are doing better. Reputations build and word gets around. Most of the best modders already are intrinsically motivated to make high quality products and will continue to do so and will just have the incentive and potentially the ability to make them better quality.

I make a living playing music. If I didn't get paid to do it, I couldn't spend all day polishing and practicing. I'd spend 8 hours at a "normal" job and try to find a tiny amount of time to improve my playing if I wasn't tired and defeated after work. Then I'd show up to a crappy gig where they are "paying me for exposure" only to have a bunch of patrons complain about my playing or the lack of music selection I'm playing, and I'd probably say screw it.

That sounds a lot like a modder's life. Making a mod in your spare time, then fielding 100s of complaints about content, quality, compatibility, load order, etc. Everyone says you need to do it for free forever and the only way you should get paid is if you "make it big" like the Falskaar guy.

And that's the problem... that's how everyone thinks of working in creative fields. You either "make it" or you don't. They don't realize how much of a lottery that BS is. There are tons of people just quietly doing quality work behind the scenes. It's easier to hone your skills when you can at least make some of your income doing it. Otherwise, only the most privileged will ever have a shot because mommy and daddy are sitting around helping nurse little Trust Fund Jr.'s little hobby for a decade until he gets good enough to make it big.

Ultimately, I think Valve had good intentions and the entitlement of the community (most of them mod users rather than makers) is what soured it. We all live in a world where we want constant entertainment of ultra-superior quality, for free and without ads and view artists as not contributing anything practical to the world... they are people who need to get "a real job" or they should just do it out of the love and passion or they are sellouts.

Love and passion don't pay the mortgage and buy groceries.

The ability to monetize mods is GREAT. The ability to only do so through Steam SUCKS.

Steam now has the monopoly on legally profiting from mods. In a few years, the free modding community will largely disappear. There will be no reason to keep making mods for free when you can make them and get paid. Again, this is no problem, except that Valve now owns that entire market.

At that point, Valve can do whatever the hell they want, and everyone has to accept it. When Valve declares that the 75% take is rising to 80%, 85%, or more, modders have no recourse. "Well, you can go back to making mods for free then! Bye!" Valve can dictate prices, market strategy and viability to the modders wholesale.

What's more, they can do the same to game publishers. "Oh, Bethesda? Yeah, you're only getting a 10% cut now instead of the 20% you had been getting. Oh, you don't like that? That's fine, we'll just stop allowing your games to use our service." So Bethesda has to take the cut. Or has to pay extra to get on Steam, or however else they want to do it. And since Steam has such market dominance on the PC console, Bethesda will fall in line and comply.

Companies will either charge more for games, or start slashing features to keep the budget down in order to make up for the increased costs. Modders will start charging more or making lower quality mods that they rush to make with less effort because they are getting less for them. Both of these directly affect the consumer. Who do they not affect? Valve. Valve, who is doing the bare-bones minimalist effort of a middleman and collecting the vast majority of the pay.

Valve is attempting to monopolize PC gaming through their service, and that is going to be bad for EVERYONE. Except Valve, of course.


When this happens, don't say you weren't warned. Don't act as shocked as people were when Amazon began extorting book publishers to pay them or they wouldn't get their titles carried. Monopolies are bad. Period.

[Spuuky]

What's the time frame for how long I have to wait to demonstrate that this won't happen? If it's still fine 1 year from now, will you recant? How about 5 years? I'm just curious.

You always needed support infrastructure. InstallShield has existed since the early 90s. Windows has been required for decades for most PC games, too. Valve is, in fact, doing a lot to break Microsoft's monopoly on the OS used to run PC games with their relentless Linux support. Is that not admirable, or does it somehow not count?

Steam is DRM that has a wide user base largely because it's good for many people. I benefit from it, and my gaming experience would be worse without it. I use Steam because I opt in by choice to it, not because I "have to."

[Yeargdribble]

Um, I've hated Valve and Steam since I first bought a non-Valve game, with no online interaction, from a brick and mortar store, and it told me I had to install Steam in order to use it. Steam is nothing but DRM, and a LOT of people hate it.

Oh yeah, it's totally DRM, but I just choose not view that is purely negative. It's DRM done the best way possible. DRM is not always and entirely a greed based thing done by evil companies. It's a necessary evil spawned by the rampant piracy of entitled consumers. At least Steam has tried to find a balance to make it palatable which is vastly more than most do when it comes to making ridiculous restrictive DRM. Nintendo's region locking and tying games to devices rather than accounts is a much worse version. Steam's version ultimately makes the games better in a lot of ways than the boxed copies. I've rebought so many games on Steam and put my 90s era boxes in the attic for pure convenience sake.



The ability to monetize mods is GREAT. The ability to only do so through Steam SUCKS.

Steam now has the monopoly on legally profiting from mods. In a few years, the free modding community will largely disappear. There will be no reason to keep making mods for free when you can make them and get paid. Again, this is no problem, except that Valve now owns that entire market.

I agree it sucks and the monopoly worries me. But I don't think most people even realize why it's the case. Modders have always been in a legal gray area. Steam has just made it possible for them to finally sell what they do. But rather than people treating Valve as a facilitator, which is really what they are, they are treating them as a greedy villain.



At that point, Valve can do whatever the hell they want, and everyone has to accept it. When Valve declares that the 75% take is rising to 80%, 85%, or more, modders have no recourse. "Well, you can go back to making mods for free then! Bye!" Valve can dictate prices, market strategy and viability to the modders wholesale.

What's more, they can do the same to game publishers. "Oh, Bethesda? Yeah, you're only getting a 10% cut now instead of the 20% you had been getting. Oh, you don't like that? That's fine, we'll just stop allowing your games to use our service." So Bethesda has to take the cut. Or has to pay extra to get on Steam, or however else they want to do it. And since Steam has such market dominance on the PC console, Bethesda will fall in line and comply.

Companies will either charge more for games, or start slashing features to keep the budget down in order to make up for the increased costs. Modders will start charging more or making lower quality mods that they rush to make with less effort because they are getting less for them. Both of these directly affect the consumer. Who do they not affect? Valve. Valve, who is doing the bare-bones minimalist effort of a middleman and collecting the vast majority of the pay.

Valve is attempting to monopolize PC gaming through their service, and that is going to be bad for EVERYONE. Except Valve, of course.


When this happens, don't say you weren't warned. Don't act as shocked as people were when Amazon began extorting book publishers to pay them or they wouldn't get their titles carried. Monopolies are bad. Period.

This just sounds like rabid, tinfoil hat paranoia to me. If it was Comcast, or EA, or even Apple; someone with an actual history to back up this sort of worry, I'd be all in with you. But Valve has a pretty good track record so I'm not going to go in assuming the absolute worst until they give me good reason to. Yes, they have the potential power to do those terrible things, but I just don't see it as being likely. Yes, monopolies are bad, but a lot of companies with relative monopolies aren't exactly destroying people with their corporate greed. Hell, Amazon has a virtual monopoly on dozens of things and they barely make a profit because Jeff Bezos pours anything they make into constantly trying to innovate. Gabe strikes me much more like a Bezos type than a corporate suit bent on dominating for pure financial gain.

It seems a little early to be alarmist.

[Skyblade]

What's the time frame for how long I have to wait to demonstrate that this won't happen? If it's still fine 1 year from now, will you recant? How about 5 years? I'm just curious.

I'm guessing 5-10 years, but I'd say 15 is probably the maximum.


You always needed support infrastructure. InstallShield has existed since the early 90s. Windows has been required for decades for most PC games, too. Valve is, in fact, doing a lot to break Microsoft's monopoly on the OS used to run PC games with their relentless Linux support. Is that not admirable, or does it somehow not count?

Steam is DRM that has a wide user base largely because it's good for many people. I benefit from it, and my gaming experience would be worse without it. I use Steam because I opt in by choice to it, not because I "have to."

That's fantastic. I'm not arguing that Steam hasn't done good things, or doesn't have its benefits. It does. It has a brilliant shop system, some fantastic patching functionality, and does offer good networking.

But it gained the functionality in order to make itself viable against competitors. Without competition, the quality is going to go downhill. It's not going to be fast, any more than Amazon's approach to extortion was fast (in fact, I expect it will be slower than Amazon's shift). But it is going to happen. When there is no competition, there is no need to stay competitive.


This just sounds like rabid, tinfoil hat paranoia to me. If it was Comcast, or EA, or even Apple; someone with an actual history to back up this sort of worry, I'd be all in with you. But Valve has a pretty good track record so I'm not going to go in assuming the absolute worst until they give me good reason to. Yes, they have the potential power to do those terrible things, but I just don't see it as being likely. Yes, monopolies are bad, but a lot of companies with relative monopolies aren't exactly destroying people with their corporate greed. Hell, Amazon has a virtual monopoly on dozens of things and they barely make a profit because Jeff Bezos pours anything they make into constantly trying to innovate. Gabe strikes me much more like a Bezos type than a corporate suit bent on dominating for pure financial gain.

No, Amazon barely makes a profit because their entire market strategy has been based around driving their competitors out of business. When those strategies failed to achieve their objective in time, Amazon turned to blatantly extorting their market dominance (as it was either that, or they would have to raise prices, thus undercutting their value in the eyes of consumers). They got sued for it, sure, but it happened. And it will happen again.

That's why this isn't just tin-foil-hat paranoia. Name me a SINGLE monopoly that has not shifted to screwing its customers.


It seems a little early to be alarmist.

And, again, I've been alarmist since games stopped offering me Steam as an option. Since it became mandatory in order to play them. This is just me expanding those same warnings.

[Bolivar]

Yearg, there's a lot of problems with your counter-examples as well, namely DRM. The obvious comparison is GOG, which is flat out better than Steam, yet you instead brought up Nintendo. Even then, Nintendo's faults lie almost entirely with their inexperience running online networks for multiple interoperable devices than piracy concerns.

You're also continuing the narrative that Valve is being unfairly villified. You seem really disdainful about the gaming community. By now, almost every major Skyrim modding team, even some from Morrowind, have come out to promise they will never charge for their projects or their successors. While it's great they can charge without fear of suit, I doubt anyone could say the creators were asking for this or it has been worth the divide amongst modders. Maybe a good solution would be to provide an official quest creator and 3D asset submission space like Valves content creation games but keep that separate from the traditional creation tools.


What's the time frame for how long I have to wait to demonstrate that this won't happen? If it's still fine 1 year from now, will you recant? How about 5 years? I'm just curious.


Bethesda Game Studios' next project will be announced at E3 and possibly ship this Fall. If Steam Workshop is the sole resource for mods on this game, you can definitively say Valve has leveraged its monopoly to the detriment of the consumer and further limited the open source foundation of PC gaming.

[Spuuky]

I can say that they "leveraged" it (by saying hey Bethesda, would you like free profits that you wouldn't have otherwise been getting? Just let us be the official mod distributor), but that is not sufficient proof that it's detrimental to the consumer.

How would you view it differently if the situation was completely identical, but Bethesda running the mod shop instead of Valve (not likely in their case, but entirely plausible if it was Blizzard instead, for instance)? Is that suddenly a "monopoly" on mods for that one game?

If you don't like the business practices of Bethesda you're free to not buy their games, obviously. But if you don't like the business practices of Steam, you're free to not buy games that require Steam, too. You will lose the ability to purchase things that are exclusive to them, just like you would lose any PS4 exclusives if you stopped buying Sony products. You certainly won't lose access to all PC games, or any console games; just a certain subset, like with any other vendor.

[Bolivar]

I can say that they "leveraged" it (by saying hey Bethesda, would you like free profits that you wouldn't have otherwise been getting? Just let us be the official mod distributor), but that is not sufficient proof that it's detrimental to the consumer.

How would you view it differently if the situation was completely identical, but Bethesda running the mod shop instead of Valve (not likely in their case, but entirely plausible if it was Blizzard instead, for instance)? Is that suddenly a "monopoly" on mods for that one game?

If you don't like the business practices of Bethesda you're free to not buy their games, obviously. But if you don't like the business practices of Steam, you're free to not buy games that require Steam, too. You will lose the ability to purchase things that are exclusive to them, just like you would lose any PS4 exclusives if you stopped buying Sony products. You certainly won't lose access to all PC games, or any console games; just a certain subset, like with any other vendor.

I'm not talking about the addition of the paid Workshop. If the next games' mods are available only through the workshop, at the expense of the real modding scene on the Nexus or the personal sites of the creators like enbdev.com, Skyblade will be right and the near-Monopoly will have detrimented consumers.

[Spuuky]

So take it up with Bethesda at that point. It's their product. If they choose to license only Valve to use/resell it in that way, that's not Valve's fault, it's Bethesda's fault.

[Bolivar]

Holy shit, Valve just got Xbox One'd:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

[Spuuky]

Definitely seems like a company bent on enforcing a price-fixing monopoly =/

[Skyblade]

Seems to me like a company that overestimated its clout and is forced to try again.

I'm sure Microsoft's new DRM with the XBox One were all in favor of the consumer as well, and were cancelled over a misunderstanding.

If Valve wants to build a system to benefit modders and build a closer relationship with the mod community, they can do that.

Stepping in, dictating terms to all parties, and presenting a done deal is not the way to do that.

Witness the power of the consumer.

[Spuuky]

You have no idea what terms they "presented" to Bethesda. Their initial proposal could never have been announced without their buy-in. This is not a unilateral decision, never was, and never could have been. So stop acting like it was.

[Skyblade]

You have no idea what terms they "presented" to Bethesda. Their initial proposal could never have been announced without their buy-in. This is not a unilateral decision, never was, and never could have been. So stop acting like it was.

You're right, and I do actually regret that last post. It was unnecessary, inaccurate, and childish, and I apologize for it.


I have been making gross generalizations with regards to Valve. I do not think that it is fair to categorize the entire company as being amoral, money-grabbing bastards. There are thousands of people who work for the company, and there are undoubtedly employees, even plenty of high ranking employees with real authority, who were doing this specifically because they were trying to do something good and positive for the community.

I do not feel I was wrong with my predictions of what the results would have been, however. I do not believe that, had Valve acquired a monopoly on paid modding, that the results would have been beneficial for either the mod producers, or the consumers. These policies may have been thought up and implemented by people who were working to benefit the community. However, they would be changed and maintained by those who are looking for profit, the stockholders.

Monopolies are never beneficial. Even if Gabe kept Valve under his iron fist and maintained it as a purely beneficial company for his entire stint with the company, he would be replaced eventually, and the next director might not be as pure. Leaving that much market control in the hands of a single entity is just NOT a good idea. It's too easy to exploit, it's too easy to manipulate.

Long term, it wouldn't even be good for Valve. Without competition, companies stagnate.


but everything you’ve invented you did to fight your sickness. And that’s brilliant. That is so human. But once you get rid of sickness and mortality, then what’s there to strive for? Eh? The Cybermen won’t advance. You’ll just stop. You’ll stay like this forever.

Competition breeds competitiveness. It encourages ingenuity, it encourages innovation, and it encourages companies to continue to try their best to appeal to customers.



There is definitely some merit to what Valve tried to do. There are also a ton of pitfalls that they didn't anticipate that they will need to iron out before they do this again. And they WILL do it again, and I look forward to seeing what their new strategy will be.

But I do not look forward to the day when PC gaming is owned and operated solely by Valve.

[Spuuky]

I don't look forward to that day either; I think that primary difference is that I don't think that will ever happen. Valve is actually extremely dependent on its overall reputation for their continued success, which is probably the main reason they changed courses when they saw the public response to this.

[Skyblade]

So, TotalBiscuit interviewed a few high-profile members of the mod community. Specifically, Robin Scott, the owner of Nexus Mods, and Nick McCaskey, the developer of the Static Mesh Improvement Mod for Skyrim. It gives some good insight into a different perspective on the situation here.

Be aware that it is quite a long listen.

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