I'm glad everything on the internet is free....

Edit: I'm more upset about the fact that game companies are starting to remove content from games in order to sell it back as dlc to turn an extra dollar. Destiny is a prime example of a half finished game put on the market where gamers have to pay more money for content that was originally planned and created.

Yeah this is getting a mad amount of backlash. A petition already managed to get 34,000 signatures. This won't see the light of day hopefully.

Quote from Salt

Yeah this is getting a mad amount of backlash. A petition already managed to get 34,000 signatures. This won't see the light of day hopefully.

Technically it has already seen the light of day :p

I think the best way to do this would be a system like Patreon. I wouldn't mind giving a cut to Bethesda through such a system, but 75% to Valve(that didn't even have a part in creating the game) is absurd. Valve is abusing its position as a pseudo-monopoly for a quick buck.
I wouldn't even be completely opposed to the idea of having big mods, take something like Falskaar as an example, behind a modest paywall, as long as most of the profits(75-80% at least) would go to the developer of the mod. Steams implementation of this system is ridiculous.

I think a lot of what I'm seeing in regards to this is reactionary and I highly doubt Valve & Bethesda would back down on this investment unless a reasonable middle ground is reached. I feel like no one is really thinking this whole situation out because it sounds bad on the surface especially with all the shit slinging going around. People just see it as "they're taking what was free and asking money for it!" but there's a lot more to it than that. They're making a great push and taking a great risk by monetizing mods, because for the first time they're essentially sharing their IP and their existing work with the community and allowing the community actually profit from it. I can't really think of a time where it's happened to this scale, where literally anyone can use licensed content and immediately profit from it. I think hard work deserves return, especially when it comes to mods. I would have no problem with something like Falskaar being offered for $5 or something, because a lot of work was put in to it and it's just as good as the official DLCs. The incentive of income for their hard work is great for potential mod authors, it could take modding from a hobby to a full time profession for some people.

That being said the implementation they've gone with is atrocious and doesn't seem very well thought out at all. I acknowledge all of the flaws being pointed out and I'm definitely not defending what they've done. I just think the system itself is not inherently a bad idea and could be very successful for everyone involved if Steam as kind of the third wheel in this equation does their part by offering a service to connect the modders in a way that isn't fucking over anyone.

Quote from Jeff

I think a lot of what I'm seeing in regards to this is reactionary and I highly doubt Valve & Bethesda would back down on this investment unless a reasonable middle ground is reached. I feel like no one is really thinking this whole situation out because it sounds bad on the surface especially with all the shit slinging going around. People just see it as "they're taking what was free and asking money for it!" but there's a lot more to it than that. They're making a great push and taking a great risk by monetizing mods, because for the first time they're essentially sharing their IP and their existing work with the community and allowing the community actually profit from it. I can't really think of a time where it's happened to this scale, where literally anyone can use licensed content and immediately profit from it. I think hard work deserves return, especially when it comes to mods. I would have no problem with something like Falskaar being offered for $5 or something, because a lot of work was put in to it and it's just as good as the official DLCs. The incentive of income for their hard work is great for potential mod authors, it could take modding from a hobby to a full time profession for some people.

That being said the implementation they've gone with is atrocious and doesn't seem very well thought out at all. I acknowledge all of the flaws being pointed out and I'm definitely not defending what they've done. I just think the system itself is not inherently a bad idea and could be very successful for everyone involved if Steam as kind of the third wheel in this equation does their part by offering a service to connect the modders in a way that isn't fucking over anyone.

i think another major problem is the lack of quality control. there's no guarantee that mods will be updated to stay compatible with new versions of the game, there's no way to ensure compatibility between mods, there's no way to know that the person selling the mod is actually the real developer of the mod, and there's no guarantee that the mods you're getting are any good at all.

lack of quality control hasn't been an issue with mods in the past because money wasn't involved at all. there was no risk involved. you could try out a whole clusterfuck of mods and see what works together and what doesn't, and if a mod later became incompatible you could simply remove it and not have lost anything.

now you can only get a refund, to your steam wallet (so valve actually keeps your money anyway), within 24 hours of your purchase. after that you better pray to a higher power that the mod developer keeps it up to date.

isn't it the content creator's choice to monetize his mod?

like wtf why is this an issue. God forbid content creators try and make a little dosh

Quote from Captain Cook

isn't it the content creator's choice to monetize his mod?

like wtf why is this an issue. God forbid content creators try and make a little dosh

i wouldn't give a fuck if mod creators decided to just straight up sell their mods. then it'd just be a matter of who is willing to buy them without any guarantee that they will work as advertised, be compatible with other mods, or be updated (which is still a massive stretch, because mods rarely just work). but nabbing 75% of profits is just a blatant disgusting moneygrab by valve and bethesda.

on top of that, there's also the legal issues that make selling mods at all hugely messy; mod dependencies, copyright infringement, mod theft, and so on.

this is a system that isn't friendly to the consumers, isn't friendly to the mod developer, creates legal problems for OTHER mod developers, and gives valve and bethesda just one more way to take all your money.

a donation system would have been more legally sound, less prone to theft, less risky for customers, and less of a money grab.

There already is a donation system.

Like wtf I think it's a good thing. If a content creator spends hours on content for a game he should charge you for it, since it's pretty much player-created DLC, and the reason he doesn't do so already is because you can't really charge for mods.

You people are whining because god forbid everything isn't free

Quote from Captain Cook

There already is a donation system.

Like wtf I think it's a good thing. If a content creator spends hours on content for a game he should charge you for it, since it's pretty much player-created DLC, and the reason he doesn't do so already is because you can't really charge for mods.

here's an analogy i liked http://i.imgur.com/3ljVHRA.png

and i want to reiterate that 75% is fucking disgusting. again, i don't care that much if some mod devs make something great and ask people to pay for it. if it's worth the money, people will be willing to spend money on it to support the mod dev. but why fucking bother paying for it when 75% is going to lazy fuckers who couldn't even make a game that is worth playing without mods?

and here's some more arguments from a mod developer's perspective
http://pastebin.com/dneWa0sa

Quote from Captain Cook

You people are whining because god forbid everything isn't free

fuck off. NOTHING is free any more. you have to pay to buy the game. you have to pay to upgrade the game. you have to pay to play the game. you have to pay for microtransactions within the game. you have to pay to have a leg up on other players in the game.

mods were the ONLY THING LEFT that was free.

games used to be developers creating something they're proud of and making money from the finished product, not developers making half a product and selling it unfinished so that players can pay them more later to fix it and get the complete game. people who lie down with their ass up and their wallet out for shit like this are the reason games are getting progressively more shit.

At least pre-steam mods like Rise of the Reds will remain forever free.

Quote from Scarecrow

fuck off. NOTHING is free any more. you have to pay to buy the game. you have to pay to upgrade the game. you have to pay to play the game. you have to pay for microtransactions within the game. you have to pay to have a leg up on other players in the game.

Yeah, of course you have to buy the game. I haven't spent more than $20 on a game in ages because I just wait for sales.
2- I don't really know what upgrading is. Again, that's optional.
3- Yeah, I don't know of microtransactions in any game run by Valve. Skyrim sure don't got em.
4- To get a leg up on other players? Maybe in bad games

Just because bad games do it doesn't mean all games do it.

Workshop mods are creative content, and creators deserve to charge if they want to.

Quote from Captain Cook

3- Yeah, I don't know of microtransactions in any game run by Valve. Skyrim sure don't got em.

Are you kidding have you never even heard the joke about TF2's obsession with hats? Those are microtransactions. Dota 2 and TF2 are some of the worst offenders for microtransactions.

I think you're missing the bigger parts of the argument here. I agree with you in that people should stop complaining about having to pay money to mod authors that deserve it. The problem is that Steam is a flawed platform already and adding this on in it's current poorly planned implementation has just made it worse. A good system I think should be curated, but Valve don't seem to have any interest in hiring staff to handle things like that and customer service. A good system would also be designed to encourage bigger and better mods rather than shitty mods. I believe that giving content creators free access to ALL your dev tools and IP content in exchange for a portion of their revenue would encourage more people to make things like Falskaar that have literally hours of content and are the size of any other Skyrim DLC. Unfortunately the system they put in is nothing close to that, and there's also evidence of them censoring all the negative backlash and dicking around content creators. The problem shouldn't be that they want money, the problem is that it's a horrible implementation.

I seriously recommend reading this post from a mod author (not the one Scarecrow posted earlier, this one is from the author of the first paid Skyrim mods and why he's not doing it any more). It pretty much highlights from an insider's perspective why the system is awful, and it's pretty easy to see how much better it could be. EDIT: It's also pretty clear both Valve and Bethesda don't understand the modding community and didn't bother to do research on it before implementing this system, which as a developer is baffling to me how this could have made it's way from concept to creation without one person taking into perspective the actual people who use mods and what it's like to mod Skyrim. I think this should have been started with a new game that has no existing mod community (Elder Scrolls 6? Fallout 4? Other?) and the modding tools should be created with functionality in mind. Mods aren't stable to begin with, modding tools that don't create dependencies are the better way to go. Being able to create self-sustaining content that even in the future with future game updates wouldn't break is the best way to go about this. Right now there's no guarantee that mods you purchase will still work or work at all when you buy them.

Couple of threads floating around on 8chan about this. The consensus seems to be that this system is bad and Valve should feel bad.

no fucking shit

Quote from GrimmtheReaper

I haven't read this thread or have anything of value to post, so let me just post something so that I seem educated and involved

Good going, kid.

Ask yourself, was what you posted really relevant to the conversation? Did you introduce any new, interesting talking points?

Like jesus fucking christ of course 4chin is upset about it. They're keyboard warriors who play victim when the world doesn't cater to this techno-savvy pirate culture they put themselves into.

I just want to say that in TF2 and other games like that, people would already receive money if their item was added into the game. They would be paid like... 10% of sales on items related to their creation or on the creation itself.
Just having it work with straight off mods is nice and correct me if I'm wrong but you don't have to pay for these mods... u can donate.
My example was kind of a stretch but the basic idea is similar, you get money for something on the workshop...
I find it nice but it kinda looks like they're becoming lazier -_-

Quite frankly I didin't read the 3 pages of responses but it's my opinion.