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.

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 "smurf 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*

[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 really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking. 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 really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking. 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-re...-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?

ss_b208def4d78a761118a0a79ed9f9d93992d831c4.600x338.jpg

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.