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Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

165 points by gkwelding 11y ago

cbg0 11y ago
The idea of compensating content creators worked extremely well for Valve for games like Team Fortress 2, CS:GO and Dota 2, since they can get access to a large talent pool with no investment. You have people creating assets for these games and getting a cut of profits, which is pretty cool, but on the other hand this means that Valve doesn't have to invest many man hours to create their own content for these games, effectively letting the community handle voting for new assets and approving the popular choices. This can become pretty dangerous for games that will start popping up with relatively limited amount of content in them but with 'Infinite possibilities through modding', developers leaving it up to fans of the game to provide additional content, either free or paid. What happens when these assets or mods aren't maintained by the 3rd party that created them? Will the game developer simply remove these or maintain them?
- lsaferite 11y ago
  Actually, in abstract the idea of a game with no 'game' but just engine with full mod support sounds interesting. I guess that's what things like second life covered though. One game that I love that has very little in the way of story is Don't Starve. It has a great mod system that uses Lua to provide so pretty amazing mods to the base game. Basically the entire game is written using the mod system with only the lowest level engine parts being compiled code.
gkwelding 11y ago
I think Valve/Steam (and Bethesda) really screwed up on this one. Although the idea of modders being fairly compensated for their work is a great idea the execution was poor at best. Only 25% going to the content creators? Really? And a poor returns mechanism, getting a refund gets you banned from the steam store for 7 days to stop abuse. That's a poor returns policy when you're buying things like mods that might be of really poor quality once you start to use them.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nailer 11y ago
  Ditto. I'd quite happily pay for mods - they add value, there's more a chance of bugs being fixed, Steam would make installation less of a hassle. But 25% going to the authors is awful. The game's original creators - who already benefit from increased sales - additionally get more of the revenue than the actual mod creator.
  - Jolijn 11y ago
    In business terms, you could consider giving a cut to the modders a marketing expense (you might sell more because the mods increase the value of your game, perhaps?). But you can also consider it as providing a platform that modders exploit commercially, and you can squeeze them as much as is sensible in any commercial relationship. I think the number of people buying a game because of a mod is rather small, so business people will see things more from the second viewpoint.
    - nailer 11y ago
      Really? I'd never buy Half Life 1, since late 90s graphics looks pretty poor these days, but I'd happily pay for it to use Black Mesa. Better yet - from another post here: > "How many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of DayZ? How many copies of Half-life were sold because of Counter Strike? Warcraft 3 and Dota? etc."
  - malka 11y ago
    The biggest issue for me was 'library' mods. ie mods that sole purpose is being used by other mods. SKSE for instance. They were virtually unable to profit of this system. However, if Steam handled mods dependy, they could retribute mods like this. That could actually be very good for AppStore, and free libraries : each sale in the appstore could also profit to the ones that created the basic build block.
  - gkwelding 11y ago
fivedogit 11y ago
Valve... pressure... I see what you did there.
- gkwelding 11y ago
  I'm glad you did, because I didn't... I'll just pretend like I meant to say it...
danr4 11y ago
Ha! They actually caved! Incredible. I've been following the evolution of the situation very closely, as i'm actually a big believer in paid mods. Valve's problem, I believe, was trying to take an existing ecosystem/market that wasn't geared towards financial rewards, and tried to force it on it. Even if 75% would have gone to the mod developers, the community would still resist the change, since that's what the human mind is programmed to do, and tight communities like those operate like a hive-mind, causing the outburst to be exponentially stronger. Edit: Forgot to add, all the talk about "open collaboration cannot happen in an ecosystem with financial incentives" - I call BS. Compare this to the world of software development and open source - which is thriving. Mega corps & the little guy/girl building production quality libraries and systems which generate big ass revenue streams. What's the difference between a mod's code and an [insert your favorite package manager here] package? Right, there's graphic assets, but maybe someone's missing a collaborative graphic design market? Game development is heading the same directions as the start-up world - from an industry where only the big boys can play, to a collaborative effort where the execution matters & creativity thrives.
- bane 11y ago
  > Compare this to the world of software development and open source - which is thriving. Mega corps & the little guy/girl building production quality libraries and systems which generate big ass revenue streams. Open source software companies rarely generate money from software, it's almost all in services. Games don't have an equivalent services model e.g. "Hire iD rep to come to your house to install the latest Quake Mods $175/hr, minimum engagement 6 months FTE"
  - danr4 11y ago
    I'm not talking about open source software a-la Postgres, I'm talking about libraries and frameworks a-la Angular/React/Bootstrap and it's ecosystem.
deleted 11y ago
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cupofjoakim 11y ago
I actually think that most people missed the big issue with paid mods. If anyone can upload a mod to steam, that means that it would force modders of free mods to upload these as well - otherwise they're in danger of someone else uploading their content and earning money on it.
- ChikkaChiChi 11y ago
  You also enter into a Looney Toons lemonade situation where someone can release your exact mod for slightly cheaper.
UK-AL 11y ago
I just don't think gamers understand, if you pay for high quality mods, your gonna get more high quality mods. It's a bit like the crazy excuses people make for pirating games.
- dijit 11y ago
  but 25% goes to creators, 45% to bethesda and valves standard 30% fee for transactions? 25% is awfully low, honestly.
  - pekk 11y ago
    What is the correct number they should have used, and how did you arrive at that number?
    - Vaskivo 11y ago
      It is believed that Valve takes 30% from any commercial transaction (google it, although none of the link I found seemed 100% reliable). IMO, Bethesda should not get any money (see my post) That leaves 70% for the modder. Seems acceptable to me.
      - deleted 11y ago
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    - obsurveyor 11y ago
      15/15/70 Valve/Creator/Mod Creator 15% to Valve for merchant fees(this is already crazy high compared to the credit card processors and other payment processor's fees). They shouldn't get the full 30% they charge for game publishing since they already offer Steam Workshop for free and mods don't have the same visibility as games in the store. 15% to the game creator for on-going royalty fees for re-purposing of assets/technology. They would also receive final say in what mods are or are not allowed in Workshop, paid or free. They retain ownership of their original creation and any use or derivation of it. 70% to mod creator.
  - 11y ago
erikb 11y ago
Let's not underestimate what Valve has done here. At first they tried to give passionate content providers a way to also make some money. That's a huge thing. Most modders can tell you about it. Then they screwed up, which can happen if you try something the first time. I think it's okay, but I understand why people are pissed. Then the boss himself comes and talks to people on reddit to see what is going on. He gets informed first, includes peoples ideas in his opinion, before making a decision. We know many big companies who wouldn't even thing about such a move. Finally they decide to shut it down as a failure and give back the money. All in all a very strong move. This at least made me believe in Valve again, after the last months slowly shipped away on my support for them. Kudos!
- michaelt 11y ago
  At first they tried to give passionate content providers a way to also make some money. Given that the "passionate content providers" only make 25% of what users pay, I think that's a very generous interpretation. Edit: It doesn't matter if it's Valve or Bethesda or the tooth fairy that takes the remaining 75% - the fact is this system does little to accomplish the goal of "giving passionate content providers a way to make some money" - indeed it's so wide of the mark it's hard to believe that was seriously the intention.
  - jobvandervoort 11y ago
    As far as I understood that was a value set by Bethesda, not Valve.
    - efaref 11y ago
      And okayed by Valve.
    - jonlucc 11y ago
      The latest I've seen is that Valve gets 30%, then the publisher decides what the rest of the split looks like. If they had released the exact same system, but said the modders get 75%, I think this whole ordeal would have been avoided. It's interesting to me that it was apparently better to give modders nothing than to give them 25%.
Lancey 11y ago
I really think Valve as a whole has been making bad decisions for a while. They've been neglecting to push for the more innovative ideas that they're known for and have instead been adding a lot of shady features to Steam and their games that make them the most money. It's good to see that Valve still listens to the community, and I hope this is the start of them moving back to being fan-oriented rather than turning into another faceless corporation. Not going to trust Valve as much as I used to until they start being constructive again, of course. It's one thing to recognize a bad decision and backtrack on it (something most video game publishers would never do), but it's another to not make the bad decisions in the first place. Valve tends to be heavily concerned with testing and user acceptance, and it seems weird that they'd push a feature like paid mods without going over it with a fine tooth comb first. To me, paid mods seemed like an experiment in self-publication on Steam. Like how Valve used Team Fortress 2 as a testbed for many features that would eventually be used in Dota 2, it seemed like paid mods was a test of something a lot larger, especially considering their stance on the existing Steam Greenlight. Setbacks like this will probably mean we won't see what they were planning from the beginning for a while.
bmh100 11y ago
I feel that it's appropriate to draw parallels to Twitch.tv streamers here. Twitch streamers basically follow a patronage model. The main video stream is free, though sometimes higher quality options are not. In exchange for a monthly subscription, usually $4.99, viewers gain access to premium features, such as the ability to chat when chat rooms are restricted to subscribers, exclusive emoticons that can be used in any Twitch chat room, and even benefits with other websites and services. It is not hard to imagine that this business model could have been used with mods. Mods would be prohibited from being paid-only, and an opt-in subscription could be implemented. Users would sample mods risk-free (financially at least) and could support the development of mods they deemed worthy.
- VLM 11y ago
  I like the idea of listing analogies of existing economic models. How about minecraft? Tee shirts, lets play videos, outright donation buttons, last but not least advertising encrusted download sites. Something not discussed here, that did arise in the MC community discussions about the valve store, was synergy, which usually is a four letter corporate word, but it actually applies this time where a modpack project like feed the beast has 115 mods, and the compilation is stronger than the linear combination of any individual mod. Also if each FTB mod charged a modest $3 that means a working FTB modpack would be about $345, which suddenly isn't so modest. Its basically impossible to get an individual mod designer out of Ramen Noodle territory without making modpacks expensive enough to destroy them.
t4nkd 11y ago
So, I was personally involved in a HL mod called The Opera, which for some of you who may vaguely remember, is a mod based on the high action shoot 'em up films by John Woo, also known as the Hong Kong Blood Opera genre. The game was the first ever example of animated fabric(trenchcoats) in Half-Life, a tech that carried over to Action Half-Life. At the time it was kind of a big deal, but I also remember another big deal during that time: when Valve bootstrapped Steam and forced everyone to start picking up Counter-Strike updates through the software. Of course, mirrors were provided a few hours after the main release, but, Steam was the first place where the data was available. This was a time when the main features of Steam were "preventing hacking" and providing a better CDN. The little known game Day of Defeat managed to be scooped up by Valve and the community couldn't wait to see what happened when Valve and the Steam platform supported a game out of the gate -- Team Fortress 2 looked a lot like Firearms mod with sentries, and the communities were on fire talking about Valve meddling with the mod community. That time, a time I fondly remember growing up during, strikes me as strangely familiar when I look at the conversations around paid mods in Workshop. The funny thing is, though, every game has paid mods now in the form of DLC. The silly hat bullshit in TF2 should never generate real world dollars, this is the virtual equivalent of a mod that your buddy can see you activate. Content like new guns, maps, skins, models, etc used to exclusively come from the community, and infrequently in some "expansion pack" release from the game developers themselves. There's a different problem with game development companies and the incestious publisher relationship; but suffice it to say that the primary game publisher, at least (over) a decade ago when I was more involved with the community, was hugely flattered and took joy when their game was modded. Not that running a mod team is easy, it's not. I remember distinctly when one of the main map builders for The Opera was hired by Raven. I remember too, when model and skin engineers spent hundreds of dollars on gun rentals and sound equipment to get the "bang" noise for each gun just right. I wish there was a kickass way to pay him on the spot for that kind of investment, but now there are so many "better" ways to run a grassroots development team (crowdfunding not the least among them) and if you actually kick ass and produce high quality game content, you'll just get a job in the industry like other people who kick ass at it. Or the community will bootstrap a development shop and you can try your hand at running a team "for real". Instead of trying to open up a bespoke "skyrim mod" shop and peddle high resolution horse genitals for $3.99/testicle.
ryan-allen 11y ago
Paid mods are fine, they should have led from the back, not the front, somehow. The rates were bad, and the launch mods were just... crap useless crap. The people leading the charge were useless idiots too, they are happy to pay for Skyrim and not for quality mods? There should be opportunity for content creators to contribute in a significant way and get paid to do it. This is just awful execution of a good idea, with the wrong rates for authors and the delivery mechanism. It should have been 15% Bethedsa, 15% Valve, 70% Creator. I lament.
- TheHypnotist 11y ago
  Why should modders get the most? Most of the work is already done for them. You want a bigger piece of the pie? License the engine and make your own game.
  - Raphmedia 11y ago
    Yes and no. For a mod that is essentially changing some variables in order to change some of the gameplay, yes. However, if you create a mod that changes all of the game sounds, using your own recordings, why should most of the profit go to the game company? If you create a mod that completely overhaul the shader system, why should the game company get the most of the profit? If you create a mod that makes all of a game's textures HD, using your own textures, why should the game company get most of the profit? If you create a mod that patches all the remaining glitches and bugs of a no longer supported game, why should the game company get most of the profit? Those people are already supporting and increasing the games quality. They are pretty much passionate and talented volunteers. Either you don't pay them, or you pay them an honestly. You don't establish a system that allow you to piggy back on their work in order to make profit.
Vaskivo 11y ago
I gathered my thoughts in a comment on the Bethesda blog post: http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/comment-page-2/#comment-418942 http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyr... TL,DR: Bethesda doesn't deserve the 45% of the sale, specially when they are charging 60$ for the game. IMO, they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing (and were already paid for the game/tools). And mods had value to the game, and increase it's lifetime. Two problems with paid mods: 1 - most modders are heavy modders (about a hundred mods at a time). Knowing that, I can see some players realizing they will spend more than 100$ in a game. 2 - This can becomes Bethesda's business model. It can lead to a Elder Scrolls 6 with lackluster content, waiting to be filled with (paid) mods. I don't have a problem with paid mods. I just think Bethesda is getting greedy. Does adobe get a cut from Photoshop plugin sales? Does Unity get a cut from Unity developed games? How to implement paid mods: - Help modders choose a copyright license - Help track/prevent copyright infrigement. Many mods use other mods or are "mod compilations". And track unauthorized mod uploads to the market.
- vacri 11y ago
  they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing Not true at all. They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding. They should get some percentage, like a royalty, but taking twice as much as the people who write the mods is patently ridiculous.
  - smackfu 11y ago
    >They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding Isn't that what paying the $60 for the game pays for?
    - Lancey 11y ago
      The $60 pays for the game, but to develop a mod for it, you're using tools they've made for the game. They didn't have to provide those tools, they're an additional service that Bethesda offers. Bethesda also added workshop support in the first place. 45% is outrageous, but a 10% cut would be acceptable and help fund the development of better tools and improvements to the mod community.
belorn 11y ago
The idea to sell unofficial third-party add-ons for third-party products sound generally a dangerous concept, and doing so without any quality control or responsibility sound to me as inviting destruction. If you pay for a product, and it randomly breaks at a later date because of a patch, someone is going to have to take responsibility. If its not the game developer (they didn't get paid), and its not the mod developer (its not their fault that the game got patched), its likely going to be the store who pocked 75% of the money. Add to this the infinite ways mods can interact with each other, or mods that depend on other mods, and the legal requirement to sell mods created by private people seems impossible in the best of lights. Donations, Kickstarter, and Patreon on other hand is currently already working to provide compensation to passionate content providers. Valve could have gone this way and made it easier to donate and support modders.
carlmcqueen 11y ago
One thing I haven't seen written about this yet is where does the nickle and diming stop? As an adult I shrug of 1 dollar for this hat, 2 dollars for this shiny hat but I remember well being younger with a very limited budget and trying to decide which 50 dollar game to get knowing full well I would most likely not even play the game I didn't choose. These mods are on top of expensive games, when a sword is a dollar and a horse skin is a dollar and the sky UI which is required for 80% of other mods is 3 dollars.. how can most afford this? I worry about kids ability to understand budgets when a few dollars seems so small now but adds up at the end of the month, at the end of the year. Especially when it is now extending into the modding community.
SimpleXYZ 11y ago
They should have probably made tiers. 0-1,000 downloads = nothing 1,001-100,000 downloads = donate button 100,001-1,000,000 downloads = big donate button 1,000,001+ downloads = set your own price, 50% share to modder
- Zren 11y ago
  It's very easy to abuse ratings/downloads when there's no paywall.
Laremere 11y ago
An interesting anecdote from Gabe Newell in the reddit thread: So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That's like 1% of the cost of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of days). https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqojx8y https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_ste...
orng 11y ago
Although I think people should be rewarded for their work I don't really don't like where this is headed. As others have noted the statement from Valve reads as if paid mods are definitely coming in a not so distant future. Modders getting paid is all well and dandy until you consider the way mods often evolve and build on top of each other. I spent a lot of my time as a young teenager on the custom ladder in Warcraft 3, where people played home made maps which essentially amounted to mods. This was the birthplace of Dota and the place where many of us were introduced to tower defence. Every time someone uploaded an original or fun new map people would take their map and tweak it in some fashion or another and slowly the maps would evolve. The versions of Wintermaul that people were playing years after the original were definitely improvements upon the original. If new maps/mods on the custom ladder had cost money this would never had happened. I'm sure Duke Wintermaul wouldn't have been happy with all the remixes of his vastly popular mod if he had been selling it himself. And, although he might have updated his mod to improve balance and the such he most likely would not have come up with several of the features that were included in the late versions made by others. I see people saying that modding is for hobbyists and I have seen several modders claiming that they will never charge for a mod and that may very well be the case. For now. Once paid mods are released they will slowly seep into the community and the modders of the future will have been raised with paid mods instead of free ones. Once upon a time video game companies would sell their games in retail and then support it for free, now they charge for the support cost through subscription fees, dlc or microtransactions. If customers are OK with paying for it, why should they give away their work for free? The same thing goes for modders.
- mentos 11y ago
  I think you make a good point and I agree that I think money will corrupt some aspects of the modding community. But I wonder if the net result will improve it overall? Providing compensation may allow teenagers to justify their time spent on mods leading to more time and energy spent and offer them an early and valuable taste of the business world. On the other hand innovation usually comes from the ground up. Look at Valve's most profitable title right now, (Dota) that was a mod of WarCraft. Had it been a paid mod it may have stifled the contributions and evolution of the game. Valve may very well be poisoning the pond they're fishing in?
zyxley 11y ago
The weirdest part of this whole affair is that they started with Skyrim, when Skyrim's mod support through Steam Workshop is fundamentally flaky. All the really thorough mods (AV, SkyRE, PerMA, Requiem, ASIS, DSR, FNIS, etc) use third-party patchers and automated load order management, which Steam Workshop can't handle at all since all it basically does for Skyrim is dump files in a folder. At least for it, it all adds up to "even if there are ones worth purchasing, why would I buy mods through Steam Workshop when I have to manage them all outside of Steam Workshop in the first place to use a large number of mods at once?"
bpg_92 11y ago
In Gaben we trust!
skizm 11y ago
I'm a little disappointed in the gaming community. I think this was a step forward. I mean, modders cannot legally get paid for their work now (donations at the moment amount to little to no money even for top modders), this would change that. 25% seems small, but when you realize that the modders are using an engine, assets, and pretty much everything else produced by another company and then just adding on to it, the cuts don't seem that unfail: 30% to valve, 45% Bethesda, 25% to modders. I mean, in reality Bethesda did most of the work, and Valve is just taking their normal 30%. Also, the reason you're content is popular is because it is an add-on to a popular game. Which means your product comes out pre-marketed by Bethesda. Marketing budgets for AAA games usually amount to about the same as development budgets. Also, there is a free option. Use it if you want! I see nothing wrong with this, in my opinion.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  > in reality Bethesda did most of the work Yes, but no. Sure, they made the game, but why should they take such a big cut of someone spending 6 months modelling 3d models, coding features, recording sounds, etc.? A lot of games are still alive right now thanks to their modding community and the hard work of modders. Those people are not creating a product off the back of the big games. They are modifying the current game to make it better. They owe nothing to the game developer. If anything, the game developer owe them for fixing their game. Take a look at the community patches of various games. Some of them fixes up to half the bugs of a game, some fix all the bugs of a game. Why should the game company take a big cut from that? "Thanks for fixing our game! Here, we will sell your patch, now take 25% of the profit of your work!" ... Makes no sense. The game companies should be the ones getting a small cut. They are getting free content, free support for their game, free bug fixes, free publicity. I would rather work for free than get the wool eaten off my back.
  - skizm 11y ago
    Bethesda did not ask for the fix. They have no obligation to compensate them financially. Also, the amount of work one developer did in 6 months modding the game is probably still only an insanely small fraction of the work that went into coding the game engine being used. Which is probably written by dozens of programmers for months if not years. Last, if you don't want them to make money on your mod, mark it free. This is totally an opt-in feature. No one is forcing modders to do anything.
skizm 11y ago
Can someone clarify: Did Valve shutdown the paid mod system, or did Bethesda just turn off paid mods for Skyrim? > We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop.
warbaker 11y ago
This is why we can't have nice things.
ChikkaChiChi 11y ago
I would try a subscription model similar to Spotify. Let Bethesda charge 2 dollars a month for access to their workshop. Modders then get a piece of the kitty for the number of subscribers to their mod. Quality would increase because modders would want more subscribers, they would work to keep their mods up to date so that people stayed subscribed to them, and modders would not have to build an infrastructure to service and support a customer base as if their entire enterprise was a single mod.

165 points by gkwelding 11y ago

cbg0 11y ago

The idea of compensating content creators worked extremely well for Valve for games like Team Fortress 2, CS:GO and Dota 2, since they can get access to a large talent pool with no investment. You have people creating assets for these games and getting a cut of profits, which is pretty cool, but on the other hand this means that Valve doesn't have to invest many man hours to create their own content for these games, effectively letting the community handle voting for new assets and approving the popular choices. This can become pretty dangerous for games that will start popping up with relatively limited amount of content in them but with 'Infinite possibilities through modding', developers leaving it up to fans of the game to provide additional content, either free or paid. What happens when these assets or mods aren't maintained by the 3rd party that created them? Will the game developer simply remove these or maintain them?

lsaferite 11y ago
Actually, in abstract the idea of a game with no 'game' but just engine with full mod support sounds interesting. I guess that's what things like second life covered though. One game that I love that has very little in the way of story is Don't Starve. It has a great mod system that uses Lua to provide so pretty amazing mods to the base game. Basically the entire game is written using the mod system with only the lowest level engine parts being compiled code.

gkwelding 11y ago

I think Valve/Steam (and Bethesda) really screwed up on this one. Although the idea of modders being fairly compensated for their work is a great idea the execution was poor at best. Only 25% going to the content creators? Really? And a poor returns mechanism, getting a refund gets you banned from the steam store for 7 days to stop abuse. That's a poor returns policy when you're buying things like mods that might be of really poor quality once you start to use them.

deleted 11y ago
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nailer 11y ago
Ditto. I'd quite happily pay for mods - they add value, there's more a chance of bugs being fixed, Steam would make installation less of a hassle. But 25% going to the authors is awful. The game's original creators - who already benefit from increased sales - additionally get more of the revenue than the actual mod creator.
- Jolijn 11y ago
  In business terms, you could consider giving a cut to the modders a marketing expense (you might sell more because the mods increase the value of your game, perhaps?). But you can also consider it as providing a platform that modders exploit commercially, and you can squeeze them as much as is sensible in any commercial relationship. I think the number of people buying a game because of a mod is rather small, so business people will see things more from the second viewpoint.
  - nailer 11y ago
    Really? I'd never buy Half Life 1, since late 90s graphics looks pretty poor these days, but I'd happily pay for it to use Black Mesa. Better yet - from another post here: > "How many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of DayZ? How many copies of Half-life were sold because of Counter Strike? Warcraft 3 and Dota? etc."
- malka 11y ago
  The biggest issue for me was 'library' mods. ie mods that sole purpose is being used by other mods. SKSE for instance. They were virtually unable to profit of this system. However, if Steam handled mods dependy, they could retribute mods like this. That could actually be very good for AppStore, and free libraries : each sale in the appstore could also profit to the ones that created the basic build block.
- gkwelding 11y ago

fivedogit 11y ago

Valve... pressure... I see what you did there.

gkwelding 11y ago
I'm glad you did, because I didn't... I'll just pretend like I meant to say it...

danr4 11y ago

Ha! They actually caved! Incredible. I've been following the evolution of the situation very closely, as i'm actually a big believer in paid mods. Valve's problem, I believe, was trying to take an existing ecosystem/market that wasn't geared towards financial rewards, and tried to force it on it. Even if 75% would have gone to the mod developers, the community would still resist the change, since that's what the human mind is programmed to do, and tight communities like those operate like a hive-mind, causing the outburst to be exponentially stronger. Edit: Forgot to add, all the talk about "open collaboration cannot happen in an ecosystem with financial incentives" - I call BS. Compare this to the world of software development and open source - which is thriving. Mega corps & the little guy/girl building production quality libraries and systems which generate big ass revenue streams. What's the difference between a mod's code and an [insert your favorite package manager here] package? Right, there's graphic assets, but maybe someone's missing a collaborative graphic design market? Game development is heading the same directions as the start-up world - from an industry where only the big boys can play, to a collaborative effort where the execution matters & creativity thrives.

bane 11y ago
> Compare this to the world of software development and open source - which is thriving. Mega corps & the little guy/girl building production quality libraries and systems which generate big ass revenue streams. Open source software companies rarely generate money from software, it's almost all in services. Games don't have an equivalent services model e.g. "Hire iD rep to come to your house to install the latest Quake Mods $175/hr, minimum engagement 6 months FTE"
- danr4 11y ago
  I'm not talking about open source software a-la Postgres, I'm talking about libraries and frameworks a-la Angular/React/Bootstrap and it's ecosystem.

deleted 11y ago

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cupofjoakim 11y ago

I actually think that most people missed the big issue with paid mods. If anyone can upload a mod to steam, that means that it would force modders of free mods to upload these as well - otherwise they're in danger of someone else uploading their content and earning money on it.

ChikkaChiChi 11y ago
You also enter into a Looney Toons lemonade situation where someone can release your exact mod for slightly cheaper.

UK-AL 11y ago

I just don't think gamers understand, if you pay for high quality mods, your gonna get more high quality mods. It's a bit like the crazy excuses people make for pirating games.

dijit 11y ago
but 25% goes to creators, 45% to bethesda and valves standard 30% fee for transactions? 25% is awfully low, honestly.
- pekk 11y ago
  What is the correct number they should have used, and how did you arrive at that number?
  - Vaskivo 11y ago
    It is believed that Valve takes 30% from any commercial transaction (google it, although none of the link I found seemed 100% reliable). IMO, Bethesda should not get any money (see my post) That leaves 70% for the modder. Seems acceptable to me.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - obsurveyor 11y ago
    15/15/70 Valve/Creator/Mod Creator 15% to Valve for merchant fees(this is already crazy high compared to the credit card processors and other payment processor's fees). They shouldn't get the full 30% they charge for game publishing since they already offer Steam Workshop for free and mods don't have the same visibility as games in the store. 15% to the game creator for on-going royalty fees for re-purposing of assets/technology. They would also receive final say in what mods are or are not allowed in Workshop, paid or free. They retain ownership of their original creation and any use or derivation of it. 70% to mod creator.
- 11y ago

erikb 11y ago

Let's not underestimate what Valve has done here. At first they tried to give passionate content providers a way to also make some money. That's a huge thing. Most modders can tell you about it. Then they screwed up, which can happen if you try something the first time. I think it's okay, but I understand why people are pissed. Then the boss himself comes and talks to people on reddit to see what is going on. He gets informed first, includes peoples ideas in his opinion, before making a decision. We know many big companies who wouldn't even thing about such a move. Finally they decide to shut it down as a failure and give back the money. All in all a very strong move. This at least made me believe in Valve again, after the last months slowly shipped away on my support for them. Kudos!

michaelt 11y ago
At first they tried to give passionate content providers a way to also make some money. Given that the "passionate content providers" only make 25% of what users pay, I think that's a very generous interpretation. Edit: It doesn't matter if it's Valve or Bethesda or the tooth fairy that takes the remaining 75% - the fact is this system does little to accomplish the goal of "giving passionate content providers a way to make some money" - indeed it's so wide of the mark it's hard to believe that was seriously the intention.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  As far as I understood that was a value set by Bethesda, not Valve.
  - efaref 11y ago
    And okayed by Valve.
  - jonlucc 11y ago
    The latest I've seen is that Valve gets 30%, then the publisher decides what the rest of the split looks like. If they had released the exact same system, but said the modders get 75%, I think this whole ordeal would have been avoided. It's interesting to me that it was apparently better to give modders nothing than to give them 25%.

Lancey 11y ago

I really think Valve as a whole has been making bad decisions for a while. They've been neglecting to push for the more innovative ideas that they're known for and have instead been adding a lot of shady features to Steam and their games that make them the most money. It's good to see that Valve still listens to the community, and I hope this is the start of them moving back to being fan-oriented rather than turning into another faceless corporation. Not going to trust Valve as much as I used to until they start being constructive again, of course. It's one thing to recognize a bad decision and backtrack on it (something most video game publishers would never do), but it's another to not make the bad decisions in the first place. Valve tends to be heavily concerned with testing and user acceptance, and it seems weird that they'd push a feature like paid mods without going over it with a fine tooth comb first. To me, paid mods seemed like an experiment in self-publication on Steam. Like how Valve used Team Fortress 2 as a testbed for many features that would eventually be used in Dota 2, it seemed like paid mods was a test of something a lot larger, especially considering their stance on the existing Steam Greenlight. Setbacks like this will probably mean we won't see what they were planning from the beginning for a while.

bmh100 11y ago

I feel that it's appropriate to draw parallels to Twitch.tv streamers here. Twitch streamers basically follow a patronage model. The main video stream is free, though sometimes higher quality options are not. In exchange for a monthly subscription, usually $4.99, viewers gain access to premium features, such as the ability to chat when chat rooms are restricted to subscribers, exclusive emoticons that can be used in any Twitch chat room, and even benefits with other websites and services. It is not hard to imagine that this business model could have been used with mods. Mods would be prohibited from being paid-only, and an opt-in subscription could be implemented. Users would sample mods risk-free (financially at least) and could support the development of mods they deemed worthy.

VLM 11y ago
I like the idea of listing analogies of existing economic models. How about minecraft? Tee shirts, lets play videos, outright donation buttons, last but not least advertising encrusted download sites. Something not discussed here, that did arise in the MC community discussions about the valve store, was synergy, which usually is a four letter corporate word, but it actually applies this time where a modpack project like feed the beast has 115 mods, and the compilation is stronger than the linear combination of any individual mod. Also if each FTB mod charged a modest $3 that means a working FTB modpack would be about $345, which suddenly isn't so modest. Its basically impossible to get an individual mod designer out of Ramen Noodle territory without making modpacks expensive enough to destroy them.

t4nkd 11y ago

So, I was personally involved in a HL mod called The Opera, which for some of you who may vaguely remember, is a mod based on the high action shoot 'em up films by John Woo, also known as the Hong Kong Blood Opera genre. The game was the first ever example of animated fabric(trenchcoats) in Half-Life, a tech that carried over to Action Half-Life. At the time it was kind of a big deal, but I also remember another big deal during that time: when Valve bootstrapped Steam and forced everyone to start picking up Counter-Strike updates through the software. Of course, mirrors were provided a few hours after the main release, but, Steam was the first place where the data was available. This was a time when the main features of Steam were "preventing hacking" and providing a better CDN. The little known game Day of Defeat managed to be scooped up by Valve and the community couldn't wait to see what happened when Valve and the Steam platform supported a game out of the gate -- Team Fortress 2 looked a lot like Firearms mod with sentries, and the communities were on fire talking about Valve meddling with the mod community. That time, a time I fondly remember growing up during, strikes me as strangely familiar when I look at the conversations around paid mods in Workshop. The funny thing is, though, every game has paid mods now in the form of DLC. The silly hat bullshit in TF2 should never generate real world dollars, this is the virtual equivalent of a mod that your buddy can see you activate. Content like new guns, maps, skins, models, etc used to exclusively come from the community, and infrequently in some "expansion pack" release from the game developers themselves. There's a different problem with game development companies and the incestious publisher relationship; but suffice it to say that the primary game publisher, at least (over) a decade ago when I was more involved with the community, was hugely flattered and took joy when their game was modded. Not that running a mod team is easy, it's not. I remember distinctly when one of the main map builders for The Opera was hired by Raven. I remember too, when model and skin engineers spent hundreds of dollars on gun rentals and sound equipment to get the "bang" noise for each gun just right. I wish there was a kickass way to pay him on the spot for that kind of investment, but now there are so many "better" ways to run a grassroots development team (crowdfunding not the least among them) and if you actually kick ass and produce high quality game content, you'll just get a job in the industry like other people who kick ass at it. Or the community will bootstrap a development shop and you can try your hand at running a team "for real". Instead of trying to open up a bespoke "skyrim mod" shop and peddle high resolution horse genitals for $3.99/testicle.

ryan-allen 11y ago

Paid mods are fine, they should have led from the back, not the front, somehow. The rates were bad, and the launch mods were just... crap useless crap. The people leading the charge were useless idiots too, they are happy to pay for Skyrim and not for quality mods? There should be opportunity for content creators to contribute in a significant way and get paid to do it. This is just awful execution of a good idea, with the wrong rates for authors and the delivery mechanism. It should have been 15% Bethedsa, 15% Valve, 70% Creator. I lament.

TheHypnotist 11y ago
Why should modders get the most? Most of the work is already done for them. You want a bigger piece of the pie? License the engine and make your own game.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  Yes and no. For a mod that is essentially changing some variables in order to change some of the gameplay, yes. However, if you create a mod that changes all of the game sounds, using your own recordings, why should most of the profit go to the game company? If you create a mod that completely overhaul the shader system, why should the game company get the most of the profit? If you create a mod that makes all of a game's textures HD, using your own textures, why should the game company get most of the profit? If you create a mod that patches all the remaining glitches and bugs of a no longer supported game, why should the game company get most of the profit? Those people are already supporting and increasing the games quality. They are pretty much passionate and talented volunteers. Either you don't pay them, or you pay them an honestly. You don't establish a system that allow you to piggy back on their work in order to make profit.

Vaskivo 11y ago

I gathered my thoughts in a comment on the Bethesda blog post: http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/comment-page-2/#comment-418942 http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyr... TL,DR: Bethesda doesn't deserve the 45% of the sale, specially when they are charging 60$ for the game. IMO, they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing (and were already paid for the game/tools). And mods had value to the game, and increase it's lifetime. Two problems with paid mods: 1 - most modders are heavy modders (about a hundred mods at a time). Knowing that, I can see some players realizing they will spend more than 100$ in a game. 2 - This can becomes Bethesda's business model. It can lead to a Elder Scrolls 6 with lackluster content, waiting to be filled with (paid) mods. I don't have a problem with paid mods. I just think Bethesda is getting greedy. Does adobe get a cut from Photoshop plugin sales? Does Unity get a cut from Unity developed games? How to implement paid mods: - Help modders choose a copyright license - Help track/prevent copyright infrigement. Many mods use other mods or are "mod compilations". And track unauthorized mod uploads to the market.

vacri 11y ago
they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing Not true at all. They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding. They should get some percentage, like a royalty, but taking twice as much as the people who write the mods is patently ridiculous.
- smackfu 11y ago
  >They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding Isn't that what paying the $60 for the game pays for?
  - Lancey 11y ago
    The $60 pays for the game, but to develop a mod for it, you're using tools they've made for the game. They didn't have to provide those tools, they're an additional service that Bethesda offers. Bethesda also added workshop support in the first place. 45% is outrageous, but a 10% cut would be acceptable and help fund the development of better tools and improvements to the mod community.

belorn 11y ago

The idea to sell unofficial third-party add-ons for third-party products sound generally a dangerous concept, and doing so without any quality control or responsibility sound to me as inviting destruction. If you pay for a product, and it randomly breaks at a later date because of a patch, someone is going to have to take responsibility. If its not the game developer (they didn't get paid), and its not the mod developer (its not their fault that the game got patched), its likely going to be the store who pocked 75% of the money. Add to this the infinite ways mods can interact with each other, or mods that depend on other mods, and the legal requirement to sell mods created by private people seems impossible in the best of lights. Donations, Kickstarter, and Patreon on other hand is currently already working to provide compensation to passionate content providers. Valve could have gone this way and made it easier to donate and support modders.

carlmcqueen 11y ago

One thing I haven't seen written about this yet is where does the nickle and diming stop? As an adult I shrug of 1 dollar for this hat, 2 dollars for this shiny hat but I remember well being younger with a very limited budget and trying to decide which 50 dollar game to get knowing full well I would most likely not even play the game I didn't choose. These mods are on top of expensive games, when a sword is a dollar and a horse skin is a dollar and the sky UI which is required for 80% of other mods is 3 dollars.. how can most afford this? I worry about kids ability to understand budgets when a few dollars seems so small now but adds up at the end of the month, at the end of the year. Especially when it is now extending into the modding community.

SimpleXYZ 11y ago

They should have probably made tiers. 0-1,000 downloads = nothing 1,001-100,000 downloads = donate button 100,001-1,000,000 downloads = big donate button 1,000,001+ downloads = set your own price, 50% share to modder

Zren 11y ago
It's very easy to abuse ratings/downloads when there's no paywall.

Laremere 11y ago

An interesting anecdote from Gabe Newell in the reddit thread: So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That's like 1% of the cost of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of days). https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqojx8y https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_ste...

orng 11y ago

Although I think people should be rewarded for their work I don't really don't like where this is headed. As others have noted the statement from Valve reads as if paid mods are definitely coming in a not so distant future. Modders getting paid is all well and dandy until you consider the way mods often evolve and build on top of each other. I spent a lot of my time as a young teenager on the custom ladder in Warcraft 3, where people played home made maps which essentially amounted to mods. This was the birthplace of Dota and the place where many of us were introduced to tower defence. Every time someone uploaded an original or fun new map people would take their map and tweak it in some fashion or another and slowly the maps would evolve. The versions of Wintermaul that people were playing years after the original were definitely improvements upon the original. If new maps/mods on the custom ladder had cost money this would never had happened. I'm sure Duke Wintermaul wouldn't have been happy with all the remixes of his vastly popular mod if he had been selling it himself. And, although he might have updated his mod to improve balance and the such he most likely would not have come up with several of the features that were included in the late versions made by others. I see people saying that modding is for hobbyists and I have seen several modders claiming that they will never charge for a mod and that may very well be the case. For now. Once paid mods are released they will slowly seep into the community and the modders of the future will have been raised with paid mods instead of free ones. Once upon a time video game companies would sell their games in retail and then support it for free, now they charge for the support cost through subscription fees, dlc or microtransactions. If customers are OK with paying for it, why should they give away their work for free? The same thing goes for modders.

mentos 11y ago
I think you make a good point and I agree that I think money will corrupt some aspects of the modding community. But I wonder if the net result will improve it overall? Providing compensation may allow teenagers to justify their time spent on mods leading to more time and energy spent and offer them an early and valuable taste of the business world. On the other hand innovation usually comes from the ground up. Look at Valve's most profitable title right now, (Dota) that was a mod of WarCraft. Had it been a paid mod it may have stifled the contributions and evolution of the game. Valve may very well be poisoning the pond they're fishing in?

zyxley 11y ago

The weirdest part of this whole affair is that they started with Skyrim, when Skyrim's mod support through Steam Workshop is fundamentally flaky. All the really thorough mods (AV, SkyRE, PerMA, Requiem, ASIS, DSR, FNIS, etc) use third-party patchers and automated load order management, which Steam Workshop can't handle at all since all it basically does for Skyrim is dump files in a folder. At least for it, it all adds up to "even if there are ones worth purchasing, why would I buy mods through Steam Workshop when I have to manage them all outside of Steam Workshop in the first place to use a large number of mods at once?"

bpg_92 11y ago

In Gaben we trust!

skizm 11y ago

I'm a little disappointed in the gaming community. I think this was a step forward. I mean, modders cannot legally get paid for their work now (donations at the moment amount to little to no money even for top modders), this would change that. 25% seems small, but when you realize that the modders are using an engine, assets, and pretty much everything else produced by another company and then just adding on to it, the cuts don't seem that unfail: 30% to valve, 45% Bethesda, 25% to modders. I mean, in reality Bethesda did most of the work, and Valve is just taking their normal 30%. Also, the reason you're content is popular is because it is an add-on to a popular game. Which means your product comes out pre-marketed by Bethesda. Marketing budgets for AAA games usually amount to about the same as development budgets. Also, there is a free option. Use it if you want! I see nothing wrong with this, in my opinion.

Raphmedia 11y ago
> in reality Bethesda did most of the work Yes, but no. Sure, they made the game, but why should they take such a big cut of someone spending 6 months modelling 3d models, coding features, recording sounds, etc.? A lot of games are still alive right now thanks to their modding community and the hard work of modders. Those people are not creating a product off the back of the big games. They are modifying the current game to make it better. They owe nothing to the game developer. If anything, the game developer owe them for fixing their game. Take a look at the community patches of various games. Some of them fixes up to half the bugs of a game, some fix all the bugs of a game. Why should the game company take a big cut from that? "Thanks for fixing our game! Here, we will sell your patch, now take 25% of the profit of your work!" ... Makes no sense. The game companies should be the ones getting a small cut. They are getting free content, free support for their game, free bug fixes, free publicity. I would rather work for free than get the wool eaten off my back.
- skizm 11y ago
  Bethesda did not ask for the fix. They have no obligation to compensate them financially. Also, the amount of work one developer did in 6 months modding the game is probably still only an insanely small fraction of the work that went into coding the game engine being used. Which is probably written by dozens of programmers for months if not years. Last, if you don't want them to make money on your mod, mark it free. This is totally an opt-in feature. No one is forcing modders to do anything.

skizm 11y ago

Can someone clarify: Did Valve shutdown the paid mod system, or did Bethesda just turn off paid mods for Skyrim? > We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop.

warbaker 11y ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

ChikkaChiChi 11y ago

I would try a subscription model similar to Spotify. Let Bethesda charge 2 dollars a month for access to their workshop. Modders then get a piece of the kitty for the number of subscribers to their mod. Quality would increase because modders would want more subscribers, they would work to keep their mods up to date so that people stayed subscribed to them, and modders would not have to build an infrastructure to service and support a customer base as if their entire enterprise was a single mod.