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

[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 smurf 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.