[STEAM] Paid For Mods Gone!

[Space Cowboy]

Article:

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

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

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

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

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.

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


Additional statement from Bethesda:

"After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop. Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want. Your support means everything to us, and we hear you."

 

[Temet Nosce]

>Steam releases intentionally shitty and unwanted feature
>Global butthurt from the masses
>Everyone protests and agrees it sucks
>"fat pigs after my money"
>Steam withdraws feature
>Everyone is suddenly happy
>"Lord Gabe listens and cares!"
>Steam gets positive rep
>Gabe Newell buys a new diamond covered Ferrari with the money he rakes in and some strippers

get yer tin foil hats ready boys

 

[Space Cowboy]

Here's Bethesda's original blog post before the released the quote above:

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/


In a nutshell, they called it revenue sharing and trying to treat modders like developers that weren't officially part of the staff. They wanted to give inspiration through incentive, to keep the awesome mods coming along.

Now, without a doubt, without Bethesda's amazing toolkit releases in creating these mods, we probably wouldn't have half of the stuff we've seen. Still, to have the community pay for things the community makes? The modders make these for fun, and perhaps as a part of their portfolio. A cash grab wasn't their intention, and neither was that the intention of the devkit releases with half of the TES game releases.

 

[Dervish]

Wow, this didn't last long.

I'm all for mods having a bit old donation button, and I think a lot of people are happy to contribute to big projects like that, since mods are how a lot of people get into the industry. I'm glad Valve listened to popular opinion and talked about it before deciding to reverse the decision, although I hope this leads to Valve checking with its customer base before implementing changes like this in the future. I'd like to see more big developers kind of having some open forums to pitch ideas and get some good feedback.

 

[unanun]

Who are the community to say the modders can't charge? Clearly, the game developers and Valve OK'd it. I nearly barfed at the thickness of entitlement on reddit. "It should be free!" What do you mean, should?

 

[Windsong]

Didn't we already have a thread where this was posted?

Oh yeah, we did.

Now we just wait and see how bad the damage to the community was. Modders that now think their shit is worth some money or the ones who will return to business as usual.

Who are the community to say the modders can't charge? Clearly, the game developers and Valve OK'd it. I nearly barfed when at the thickness of entitlement on reddit. "It should be free!" What do you mean, should?

Because they've always been free. Modding has always been a huge thing for Elder Scrolls games. Even Developers used to give out free maps in days-gone-by, now it's "BUY THE NEW DLC MAP PACK, 15 DOLLARY-DOOS! NOW WITH ONLY TWO MAPS FROM OLD TITLES!".

Modding is a labor of love. People never expected to go into it with hopes of money. Maybe if you put effort into it a Dev studio might notice and pick you up, that was always a modders dream.

 

[unanun]

You don't get to tell the modders what they can or can't do.

Also, it's deliciously ironic that there's a nice fraction of them folks raging on reddit that probably bitch about unpaid internships all the time. The parallels are obvious.

 

[SlamifiedBuddafied]

It sounded like a good idea, but in reality. Well. Yeah.
I love modding Skyrim and Oblivion immensely, seeing what immersion I can bring about while traversing the worlds of TeS. Now I get it, it'd be nice for modders to have more time to work on polishing up mods, making more and improved mods and et cetera. Yet, it's always been something free. And @Windsong stole the words out of my mouth, "it's a labor of love." It seems a lot of people do appreciate the donations but many as it seems just do it because it's something they love to do and share.

 

[Hecatoncheires]

I wouldn't be against them trying something like this again: modders deserve compensation for their efforts, after all. This scheme was just kinda horribly implemented and open to abuse. Hopefully they can find a better way of doing it.

Seriously, though, this whole thing was embarrassing. A lot of modders have gone MIA cos of the amount of shit getting thrown at them, and they could well not be coming back. We can't blame Valve or Bethesda for that, it's on the entitled cunt contingent within the gaming community.

 

[Kestrel]

Didn't we already have a thread where this was posted?

Oh yeah, we did.

Now we just wait and see how bad the damage to the community was. Modders that now think their shit is worth some money or the ones who will return to business as usual.


Because they've always been free. Modding has always been a huge thing for Elder Scrolls games. Even Developers used to give out free maps in days-gone-by, now it's "BUY THE NEW DLC MAP PACK, 15 DOLLARY-DOOS! NOW WITH ONLY TWO MAPS FROM OLD TITLES!".

Modding is a labor of love. People never expected to go into it with hopes of money. Maybe if you put effort into it a Dev studio might notice and pick you up, that was always a modders dream.

Back. Back in your cage.

Modders provide you a service. That they have been free is a privilege. And I'm trying to say that word with my most straight, non-tumblr-sjw-face possible. The way most services work is simple, you trade some of your assets for someone else their assets. If someone offers a service for free, that is fantastic. But by no means do they in any way owe you. Regardless of history. That's not a valid argument. I mean fuck. What if I used the same argument about slavery?

"Well, I'm used to having slaves, why should I hire this black man as an employee with all the encompassing rights and respect, if I'm used to paying for nothing but some shitty food and keep them in check with the whip?"

Different scenario, same baseline. InB4 obvious "wow did u just really compare not paying modders to slavery." bs someone is going to fret about. It is the same sentiment, the same train of thought, but with a different severity.

Times change. I can bring in a dozen of dumb entitled arguments. I'm not used to women voting and altering politics that influence me. I'm not used to people in my environment having a different sexuality that makes me uncomfortable. I'm not used to someone believing something different than me.

These are all dumb entitlement issues that hold no ground. We all agree about that, even on the circle jerk parts of our community. So why use the same argument for mods?

 

[Hellis]

I wouldn't be against them trying something like this again: modders deserve compensation for their efforts, after all. This scheme was just kinda horribly implemented and open to abuse. Hopefully they can find a better way of doing it.

Seriously, though, this whole thing was embarrassing. A lot of modders have gone MIA cos of the amount of shit getting thrown at them, and they could well not be coming back. We can't blame Valve or Bethesda for that, it's on the entitled cunt contingent within the gaming community.

B-But. Gaming Culture don't have an entitlement problem!

 

[Jorick]

Who are the community to say the modders can't charge? Clearly, the game developers and Valve OK'd it. I nearly barfed when at the thickness of entitlement on reddit. "It should be free!" What do you mean, should?

Yeah, the entitled shits are pretty awful. I like the idea of modders being able to make money with the support of the developers. Just because nobody has tried to monetize mods before does not mean it should not be done.

This implementation of it was pretty bad though. I'd be happy to see the next Elder Scrolls game launch with an overhauled paid mod support system in place. Fairer cut to the modders with no minimum earnings before they get their share, day 1 option to set them up for a donations style payment system, and a vigorous vetting system that isn't just "the community will catch it" would be a grand start. Hopefully this'll act as a learning experience for Valve and Bethesda and they'll do it better when they inevitability try it again.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Well... That's a shame. :/

Don't get me wrong, the way Valve and Bethesda tried to introduce it was completely awful.
But the idea was actually pretty good once you sat down to think about it, rather than simply give a knee jerk reaction to the matter.
More incentive to mod, full time modding, direct support from Bethesda so Mods can access more features?

That would have done wonders to improve the Modding community.
But no, instead we got entitled shits sending out death threats to people who have invested 1000's of hours to modding for free.
And we risk seeing some of our greatest Modders gone for good because of this little fiasco.
And before anyone jumps on me, yes I do know this was a minority of gamers.
I know better than to paint the majority of gamers as something they're not.

Though if Valve does choose to do this again?
For the love of god please let Workshop play nice with Nexus Mod Manager first.
The quality of your mod's don't matter at all if you can't even manage or run them properly.

 

[Protagonist]

While I'm not on principle against the concept, I wouldn't call it entitled to wish that something that's always been free remains free.

As for the slavery comparison, I don't think it works because a slave is forced to work. There's a difference between "Work for free, and we won't punish you" and "Work for free, or not at all". It'd be like if a restaurant started charging for water. While it's technically their right to do so, it'd upset people, wouldn't it?

 

[unanun]

The problem is that people's expectations haven't changed. We used to get awesome mods for HL and HL2 back when things were low-fi and people liked it. But if you want to make a mod now, the amount of effort that goes into content creation is immense. It's simply not as easy to make great mods now - but people still expect them to be free?

 

[Kestrel]

While I'm not on principle against the concept, I wouldn't call it entitled to wish that something that's always been free remains free.

As for the slavery comparison, I don't think it works because a slave is forced to work. There's a difference between "Work for free, and we won't punish you" and "Work for free, or not at all". It'd be like if a restaurant started charging for water. While it's technically their right to do so, it'd upset people, wouldn't it?

It's about an expectation based on habit. Not on the act. I already outlined this previously.

Anyway. This entitlement argument is like saying " hey you're not allowed to participate in the free market cause I'm not used to that." You're telling people they lack a right everyone else has. And for what?

Modders aren't obligated to make things for free in any way. They don't even have to share them. It is nice if they do, but that is where it ends. If you don't think their products are worth your money, the free market has a solution for that too. Don't buy it.

Modders spend time, effort and resources. You spend the time it takes to click and download. It's like barging in a hair salon and demanding a free cut. Sure it's only 10 minutes work. Sure, the hairdresser likes to gossip with you. Maybe they really love their labour. It is still reasonable for them to get a paycheck. Don't like it? Well you can always try to cut your own hair and see how that goes.

At the very least you're paying for skill. If you think you can make your own shit, nobody is going to stop you. In fact, just trying it should teach you respect for modders or hairdressers. They are people who have put their own assets into being good at something. For anything else, be it the fucking 39 cent gum you buy at the check-out, it is completely reasonable to pay for it.

Plus we're dealing with people here. Not machines. Let's not forget that.

 

[Grothnor]

I'm just gonna leave this here....

 

[Dervish]

Well... That's a shame. :/

Don't get me wrong, the way Valve and Bethesda tried to introduce it was completely awful.
But the idea was actually pretty good once you sat down to think about it, rather than simply give a knee jerk reaction to the matter.
More incentive to mod, full time modding, direct support from Bethesda so Mods can access more features?

That would have done wonders to improve the Modding community.
But no, instead we got entitled shits sending out death threats to people who have invested 1000's of hours to modding for free.
And we risk seeing some of our greatest Modders gone for good because of this little fiasco.
And before anyone jumps on me, yes I do know this was a minority of gamers.
I know better than to paint the majority of gamers as something they're not.

Though if Valve does choose to do this again?
For the love of god please let Workshop play nice with Nexus Mod Manager first.
The quality of your mod's don't matter at all if you can't even manage or run them properly.

The biggest problem, I think, is they tried to introduce it on a 3.5 year old game well into its lifespan. There was also the problem with people lifting stuff off of Nexus and uploading it as their own (so I heard), which is a pretty awful thing to do.

Anyways, I think Valve had good intentions and if they tried implementing it on a new title and announced it before hand, it would have been received better. I actually agree with the concept in general, now I've read more about it, and it really is similar to content created for other titles that authors get paid for, like vanity hats and helmets in Team Fortress 2 and Planetside 2.

 

[Hecatoncheires]

TotalBiscuit's suggestion of a Patreon-style way of funding modders actually has a lot of potential, I reckon.