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Steam starts selling paid mods


Zenophilious

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I feel the concept of mods being developed for money is a good thing, but the way Valve has gone about implementing it and the way they think they are going to manage it is entirely wrong. Paying for mods could lead to more professional approaches taken to modding, more interest in modding, and more high-quality mods being made, but already on launch day 90% of the mods released are things most people wouldn't even bother downloading free unless they were in some large modpack, and those mods that people actually use are stupidly overpriced.

 

Valve announced this in the stupidest way possible, and that has killed pretty much any chance of it being a thing. Beyond this launch, I don't think valve would be capable of running a good pay-for-mods market in the first place. This concept succeeding would require those running it to give a fuck, and valve gives no fucks whatsoever.

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If they want to push paid mods on to us they need to be at least at the level of polish of official dlc from whatever game the mod is for. Steam or the game developers themselves need to regulate the mods personally or this will just end up a sludge pit of crap that shouldn't exist. 

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Apparently they're also assuming that we, the users, will police their paid mods for them and inform them of copyright infringement.

'"Newly posted items to be sold must first appear as visible to the community without a purchase option before they can be sold," Vice President of Marketing Doug Lombardi explained. "This will provide some time for the community to help identify abuse or stolen content and report appropriately. It’s also a time that developers can use to review pending items and decide if any intervention is necessary."'

Source

(As of now, there's no voting option, you can just flag and comment, that's it)

 

I've also heard about how if you use their distribution system, the developer/publisher and Valve now own a certain number of rights pertaining to the mods.  I've yet to see any proof of this, however, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

So far, public perception seems to be split in the way you'd expect it to be: content creators are loving it, gamers are hating it.  I personally don't understand how anyone would be eager to accept just 25% of the revenue from their work, but whatever.

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So far, public perception seems to be split in the way you'd expect it to be: content creators are loving it, gamers are hating it.  I personally don't understand how anyone would be eager to accept just 25% of the revenue from their work, but whatever.

100% of $0 is still less than 25% of >$0 and 75% is still greedy as fuck

 

Edit: less is more

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100% of $0 is still less than 25% of >$0 and 75% is still greedy as fuck

 

Edit: less is more

The problem is, people are trying to say that they want to live off of modding.  Modding is not a job, and I really doubt it will ever be one, unless people buy mods en masse, which, judging from the fairly large public backlash so far, isn't going to happen.  I'm not saying that modders shouldn't get money, but in the current system Valve set up, they're readily exploiting themselves when they hear someone jingling a pocketful of change.  A few hundred bucks won't get you much, and they're not likely to earn that very quickly, either.  If that bit I heard about giving Valve and the developer rights to your mod is true, then really, in the long run, they're screwing themselves over for that tiny percentage of profit.

 

If someone is trying to use modding as a decent source of income, then this system will not let them do that.  That's why I don't understand why some modders are endorsing this.

 

EDIT: The mod from the image I posted before got DMCA'd because it used material from someone else without crediting them or giving them a share of the profits.  I've also heard that "stealing" mods (basically just downloading them from Nexus and other free sites) and then uploading them to Steam as paid mods afterwards is rampant right now, mostly because Valve does either next to nothing or literally nothing to protect the actual creators and instead relies on us to do everything for them.

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Sad violin.

 

No but I think Steam just shot themselves in the foot. Steam already got a lot of flaws and this isn't helping them. A stupid move. I agree with Zeno too. Modding isn't a job and you can't live of modding a few games. In that case why am I doing 8 hours of tech support every day for minimum wager?

 

Modding is something you do in your spare time and should't be a paid feature. But I am not angry at the modders. I am angry at Steam and companies because they are so f--king greedy. Nowadays a game is about 4£0 - £60 and let's not stop at that. Let's release DLCs like rabbits multiply. I got some games in my library worth over 150 - 200 euros. All thanks to the DLCs. Europa Universalis 4 and Crusader Kings 2 are probably the most DLC heavy games I ever played. Yes the company is great and they listen and interact with their customers. But the DLCs...

 

I miss the old days. One big expansion or maybe two. Where you actually changed the game in the core and added tons of new stuff.

 

Edit: How could I forget about Total War. Adding blood and fire DLC, £2. Genius.

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The problem is, people are trying to say that they want to live off of modding.  Modding is not a job, and I really doubt it will ever be one, unless people buy mods en masse, which, judging from the fairly large public backlash so far, isn't going to happen.  I'm not saying that modders shouldn't get money, but in the current system Valve set up, they're readily exploiting themselves when they hear someone jingling a pocketful of change.  A few hundred bucks won't get you much, and they're not likely to earn that very quickly, either.  If that bit I heard about giving Valve and the developer rights to your mod is true, then really, in the long run, they're screwing themselves over for that tiny percentage of profit.

 

If someone is trying to use modding as a decent source of income, then this system will not let them do that.  That's why I don't understand why some modders are endorsing this.

 

EDIT: The mod from the image I posted before got DMCA'd because it used material from someone else without crediting them or giving them a share of the profits.  I've also heard that "stealing" mods (basically just downloading them from Nexus and other free sites) and then uploading them to Steam as paid mods afterwards is rampant right now, mostly because Valve does either next to nothing or literally nothing to protect the actual creators and instead relies on us to do everything for them.

I completely agree that Valve is handling this about as well as it has been handling everything recently... Terribly, that is. But people earn a living making TF2 hats, I don't see why actual modders shouldn't be able to do so as well. Adding some proper fucking curation for mods that want to charge money would be a good start, improving the split would also be a good idea, at least initially, because the market for hats is a bit more active than the one for mods, but if they manage to make it so that the people who make good mods can earn a living making mods, we'll potentially see more good mods in the workshop. And backlash? The TF2 community went nuts when they first added hats (that was actually when I quit the game), but look at it now, people are still buying hats.

All of this is hypothetical of course, but my point is this system has potential... Potential that Valve just wants to ignore, which is how they solve most problems as of late it seems.

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Well hats in Dota 2 is a thing too. But I don't think the makers are earning a significant amount of money. I doubt it.

One guy supposedly made 500k in a yearhttp://www.pcgamer.com/top-tf2-item-makers-making-500k-a-year-we-cannot-compete-with-our-customers/

Sure, not everyone is going to be that successful, but I'm pretty sure you can make quite a bit less than that and still have money to spare.

Kind of like YouTube - no one earns anywhere close to how much PewDiePie does, but that doesn't mean you can't make a living wage off of YouTube.

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It took this much for people to be in an uproar over Valve's practices? Valve is held in an annoyingly amount of esteem, to the point where I got blasted for arguing that yes, they should have a refund policy in place. And just like Greenlight and early Access, this too is going to fall apart into shamble soon, if it hasn't already (I'm not big into Workshop). 

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Valve is also now blocking posters of paid mods from posting links where you can donate directly to them.

Proof (was a picture taken from this paid mod; I can confirm that the text was there at one point, as I saw it myself)

 

They're also either letting admins or the modders themselves take down any negative comments from the mod page, as I posted a comment on a paid mod waiting for approval, stating that I thought they were charging too much, and it was taken down within a few minutes.  Discussion and comment pages are now only able to be used by the modders and the people that bought the mods.

 

EDIT: I kid you not, mod piracy is already a thing.  I will not link to the site, but it's really easy to find.

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Just signed the petition to remove it, steam gets a 75% cut for doing absolutely nothing.... there should be a donate button instead....but the problem with donating is like 0.00001% would donate... Although I use steam for most of my games...I honestly did not expect to be this greedy.. .. We all know Steam are greedy bastards...but this just crossed the line... 

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By the way, Chesko, the creator of the paid fishing mod that got taken down (turns out it wasn't a DMCA, Chesko himself took it down after talking with the person who didn't receive any credit or money for their part) and several other paid mods has now pulled all of his paid and free mods off of the Steam Workshop, made his Steam profile private and posted this statement on /r/skyrimmods regarding his experiences with the program.  It does in fact confirm that Valve essentially owns the rights to do what they want with the mods once they're uploaded and you make a deal with them.

 

EDIT: From the subscriber agreement, section 6B, Content Uploaded to the Steam Workshop:

"You understand and agree that Valve [...] reserves the right, but not the obligation, to restrict or remove Workshop Contributions for any reason."

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i think paid mods are a good idea at a basic level but there are huge problems with the way valve is doing it. first off lets get the biggest one out the way.
 
1) creator verification: mods particularly good ones take a lot of work. they can overhaul performance and even change the game to be fundamentally a whole different product look at dota and warcraft 3 for a good example. there are people cheating the system by claiming they created and listing for sale mods that are not their work there needs to be a better system in place to prevent this.
 
2) profit share: valve is taking 75% of the profit from sale of these mods when they did nothing to make or even promote these mods all they are doing is providing a sales platform and taking a 75% cut for that is greedy and just plain shifty.
 
3) performance and use guarantee: you only have 24 hours to check after paying that the mod does what it is advertised to do and that there is no game breaking performance issues. thats not enough time. what about mods that require you get certain requirements to use like forging recipes, some people may not have enough time to check everything so they should extend this to at least a week long policy.
 
4) IP protected content: a lot of mods use IP from famous franchise that are not legally licensed from the copyright owners meaning i could potentialy buy a mod that uses lord of the rings or starwars or whatever and the 24 limit for reimbursement is over then the license owner dmca force's a take down and im out my mod and my cash.they need to find a way to check copyright liscense with mods before making them available for sale, maybe allowing them to stay a free download while the IP is checked for legal sale. some can get away with fair use by claiming transformative work as long as its not for profit but that becomes a legal grey area when money gets involved.
 
thats all i can think of off the top of my head im sure there maybe other issues, but what i believe in the end is its a good idea. after all modding is hard work and being payed for that should be a option but the systems in place right now are riddled with loop holes and basically setup as a haven for various legal problems and fraud.
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