I wonder if this will do anything about VALVe's most recent (and retarded) move.
First they kill communities by implementing their own servers and chosing them over community hosted servers, now they kill the creative community by allowing mod's to charge for their creations.
I don't think it's terrible that people are selling mods, but Valve's approach is just awful. The modders only get 25%. The moderation is going to suck, in other words people can download somone's mod from a site then sell it on steam. Where are they going to stand on people selling mods based on other mods?
It's a shame that Skyrim's review score is the target of the aggression, when really it should be on Valve, but there are no real channels for consumers to show outrage if you don't count spamming Volvo's facebook page.
Either I don't get how the workshop works or this is completely unenforcable. Mods have always been distributed in .rars that you get from some website and stick somewhere in your game folder. Like, that's the definition of a mod. What did the workshop do to change that? Do mods have DRM nowadays? If their legitimacy is being enforced by some sort of online-connection dependent checking process then isn't it just official DLC at that point? If mods have DRM at what point do they become the intellectual property of the modder and not that of the people who's game they're modding? Is pirating mods a thing, as crazy as that sounds? Can it even possibly be a thing by definition? At that point isn't paying for a mod effectively the same as choosing to donate the creator, which we could have done anyway?
Giving us a way to support content creators is fundamentally a really cool idea, as TF2 proved by giving us ways to give back to mappers and hat makers. But the way this is implemented and the focus on you having to do this rather than making it optional is turning it into a bit of a shitshow, not to mention dangerous for the future of one of the single best things about PC gaming.
[SpA]JuncoPartner wrote:
It's a shame that Skyrim's review score is the target of the aggression, when really it should be on Valve, but there are no real channels for consumers to show outrage if you don't count spamming Volvo's facebook page.
Our only option is to boycott L4D2 again
_________________ ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless
Seems to me that it's no different to before, except now you purchase instead of subscribing, so no DRM at all. The workshop will just download the mods into the right file paths when you start up the game. Wouldn't take a genius to repackage and torrent them
Seems there have been a few thousand more reviews since this fiasco. Last night Skyrim had 104,(something) steam reviews, and now it's currently at 106,854. It's lost it's 'Overwhelmingly Positive' tag and is now tagged as just 'Very Positive'.
To be completely honest, when I heard of this new "feature" I was kind of okay. People are just taking advantage of it even after a few days. I wish Valve had done a review process for the mods, to verify that they actually had content and wouldn't just be a quick cash grab or contain viruses. It seems as if they're just letting people upload whatever they want and set the price. This on top of the policy that people need to have over $10 USD worth in games in their account to do anything other than play TF2 basically, it looks like they're trying to get as much money as possible.
_________________ Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill.
-Christopher Parker
Valve are deffinetly becoming a money farm, but the removing features from free accounts was to tackle the bot and scammer spam. A lot of people were getting constant adds from people trying phish logins or scam their items from them. Hasn't been too bad for me, but there was that one week I had like 10 throwaway accounts adding me. If anything it took them waaay too long to address that, especially with how many people I seen complaining about it.
Its a good idea just done really fucking badly, it feels either a) really fucking rushed or b) they just don't give a fuck and they want 'dem nickels and dimes.
Given that a month ago Bethesda updated the workshop to allow for mods bigger than 100mb, I'm leaning towards B.
In my view It shoulda been set up as a donation system - modder sets up a page on the workshop showing the stuff they've made and you can donate to them if you want. People are pretty generous when it comes to paying for optional extras as we've seen with f2p models that do shit right.
Maybe you get some shit for donating, like Sven Coop did way back when. Sven Coop was a free half life mod that was pretty darn fun, you could play the half life campaign online with other people, or a bunch of maps that people had made for the game. If you donated you get some ingame stuff, I think it was golden uzis and an electrified crowbar if I remember rightly.
But then again, this idea would require Valve or whoever to actually put some fucking effort in to creating the system. So yeah it'll probably never happen.
_________________
gold4ever wrote:
i throath fuck gods of people like you and trow them in to a fucking jail. good bye your self. further more i will skulfuck your god and fuck him in his ass hes a fucking idiot.
Never expected this to escalate quite as much as it has, people are furious and it's really damaged their trust in Valve. Gabe is a cool guy, and it's good he's talking, but I don't see any good outcomes for this purchasable mods debacle.
From what Gabe is saying is that they're using data from the overall larger consumer base as feedback, rather than the more involved people who take an interest in the state or gaming and game culture. The first ones to react to things like this. Really it should be a balance, because the masses aren't going to be very invested, and they do stuff like upvote dreadful items on the workshop, or spam ASCII images
Gabe takes literally 3 seconds to quickly answer a random question and everyone's like STOP DODGING THE QUESTION YOU DASTARDLY PR FUCKFACE (reddit pls ) even though there's only so much he can say without consulting the rest of Valve, lawyers, Bethesda etc. The expectations right now are too high given there's already an agreement with Bethesda in place: the people want to hear that Valve are gonna drop the paid model and make it donations only, but surely a public commitment to that is like telling Bethesda "yeah fuck this contract we just signed with you" and nobody can reasonably expect him to do that on the fly.
Very interested to see him have this conversation. At the very least it looks like Valve will now try to justify their actions rather than go down the "gimme ur money and shut up lol" route.
_________________ ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless
I heard that they are offering refunds for mods as well. At least within a 24 hour period. If they are going To offer refunds on mods they should put refunds on games as well. Since it's an open source anyone can put any game up there that they want which could have a virus of some sort, and if someone is stupid enough to buy it then bam they are hit with a virus.
Seems there have been a few thousand more reviews since this fiasco. Last night Skyrim had 104,(something) steam reviews, and now it's currently at 106,854. It's lost it's 'Overwhelmingly Positive' tag and is now tagged as just 'Very Positive'.
So I've been watching this, and had a quick browse to compare scores on other games. For an 'overwhelmingly positive' score a game must have 95% positive reviews or more (and enough reviews otherwise it will just say positive). The number of reviews currently for Skyrim is at 120,381 and when Saint made this thread Skyrim had more than a 95% score, that score now sits at 85% so it's rated as 'Very Postive' still. The highest review score I've found for a game with a 'Mostly Positive' score is 78%, which it's likely going to hit and that's pretty significant. What's more if is it somehow manages to drop even further then it will be scored as 'Mixed' which would cut deep. The mixed review threshold starts somewhere around 68%.
It's over! Or at least it's over for now. Paying for mods has been removed and those who paid for anything have been refunded.
Wouldn't be surprised at all if they re-introduce something like this at some point, I just hope the implementation isn't terrible next time round.
_________________ ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ã¡ã‚ƒã‚“gamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless
It's sad really, because I would like to see modders paid for their work, they deserve it. Youtubers and streamers are paid for just playing or reviewing games. The workshop already pays out to content creators. However charging for mods is just so messy and could have such a negative impact. The way Valve implemented it aswell does not help much.
Bethesda also released a statement, pasting it here so you don't have to choose your language and put in your date of birth just to read
Update: 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.
Original Post: We have a long history with modding, dating back to 2002 with The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. It’s our belief that our games become something much more with the promise of making it your own. Even if you never try a mod, the idea you could do anything is at the core of our game experiences. Over the years we have met much resistance to the time and attention we put into making our games heavily moddable. The time and costs involved, plus the legal hurdles, haven’t made it easy. Modding is one of the reasons Oblivion was re-rated from T to M, costing us millions of dollars. While others in the industry went away from it, we pushed more toward it.
We are always looking for new ways to expand modding. Our friends at Valve share many of the same beliefs in mods and created the Steam Workshop with us in 2012 for Skyrim, making it easier than ever to search and download mods. Along with Skyrim Nexus and other sites, our players have many great ways to get mods.
Despite all that, it’s still too small in our eyes. Only 8% of the Skyrim audience has ever used a mod. Less than 1% has ever made one.
In our early discussions regarding Workshop with Valve, they presented data showing the effect paid user content has had on their games, their players, and their modders. All of it hugely positive. They showed, quite clearly, that allowing content creators to make money increased the quality and choice that players had. They asked if we would consider doing the same.
This was in 2012 and we had many questions, but only one demand. It had to be open, not curated like the current models. At every step along the way with mods, we have had many opportunities to step in and control things, and decided not to. We wanted to let our players decide what is good, bad, right, and wrong. We will not pass judgment on what they do. We’re even careful about highlighting a modder on this blog for that very reason.
Three years later and Valve has finally solved the technical and legal hurdles to make such a thing possible, and they should be celebrated for it. It wasn’t easy. They are not forcing us, or any other game, to do it. They are opening a powerful new choice for everyone.
We believe most mods should be free. But we also believe our community wants to reward the very best creators, and that they deserve to be rewarded. We believe the best should be paid for their work and treated like the game developers they are. But again, we don’t think it’s right for us to decide who those creators are or what they create.
Opening up a market like this is full of problems. They are all the same problems every software developer faces (support, theft, etc.), and the solutions are the same. Valve has done a great job addressing those, but there will be new ones, and we’re confident those will get solved over time also. If the system shows that it needs curation, we’ll consider it, but we believe that should be a last resort.
There are certainly other ways of supporting modders, through donations and other options. We are in favor of all of them. One doesn’t replace another, and we want the choice to be the community’s. Yet, in just one day, a popular mod developer made more on the Skyrim paid workshop than he made in all the years he asked for donations.
Revenue Sharing
Many have questioned the split of the revenue, and we agree this is where it gets debatable. We’re not suggesting it’s perfect, but we can tell you how it was arrived at.
First Valve gets 30%. This is standard across all digital distributions services and we think Valve deserves this. No debate for us there.
The remaining is split 25% to the modder and 45% to us. We ultimately decide this percentage, not Valve.
Is this the right split? There are valid arguments for it being more, less, or the same. It is the current industry standard, having been successful in both paid and free games. After much consultation and research with Valve, we decided it’s the best place to start.
This is not some money grabbing scheme by us. Even this weekend, when Skyrim was free for all, mod sales represented less than 1% of our Steam revenue.
The percentage conversation is about assigning value in a business relationship. How do we value an open IP license? The active player base and built in audience? The extra years making the game open and developing tools? The original game that gets modded? Even now, at 25% and early sales data, we’re looking at some modders making more money than the studio members whose content is being edited.
We also look outside at how open IP licenses work, with things like Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, where you can publish fan fiction and get about 15-25%, but that’s only an IP license, no content or tools.
The 25% cut has been operating on Steam successfully for years, and it’s currently our best data point. More games are coming to Paid Mods on Steam soon, and many will be at 25%, and many won’t. We’ll figure out over time what feels right for us and our community. If it needs to change, we’ll change it.
The Larger Issue of the Gaming Community and Modding
This is where we are listening, and concerned, the most. Despite seeming to sit outside the community, we are part of it. It is who we are. We don’t come to work, leave and then ‘turn off’. We completely understand the potential long-term implications allowing paid mods could mean. We think most of them are good. Some of them are not good. Some of them could hurt what we have spent so long building. We have just as much invested in it as our players.
Some are concerned that this whole thing is leading to a world where mods are tied to one system, DRM’d and not allowed to be freely accessed. That is the exact opposite of what we stand for. Not only do we want more mods, easier to access, we’re anti-DRM as far as we can be. Most people don’t know, but our very own Skyrim DLC has zero DRM. We shipped Oblivion with no DRM because we didn’t like how it affected the game.
There are things we can control, and things we can’t. Our belief still stands that our community knows best, and they will decide how modding should work. We think it’s important to offer choice where there hasn’t been before.
We will do whatever we need to do to keep our community and our games as healthy as possible. We hope you will do the same.
It's sad really, because I would like to see modders paid for their work, they deserve it. Youtubers and streamers are paid for just playing or reviewing games. The workshop already pays out to content creators. However charging for mods is just so messy and could have such a negative impact. The way Valve implemented it aswell does not help much.
The modders world is a lot like the opensource world, you don't charge for your creations. You create some, you use some, that's how things work.
Quote:
Update: 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.
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