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.
We also don’t think we should tell the developer what to charge. That is their decision, and it’s up to the players to decide if that is a good value. We’ve been down similar paths with our own work, and much of this gives us déjà vu from when we made the first DLC: Horse Armor. Horse Armor gave us a start into something new, and it led to us giving better and better value to our players with DLC like Shivering Isles, Point Lookout, Dragonborn and more. We hope modders will do the same.
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 then he made in all the years he asked for donations.
jacobvandy wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:06:Creston wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 18:52:
In reality, you (Bethesda) just wants to make money off all these mods, because the ten million copies of the game those same mods have sold isn't enough.
I don't understand how you can still cling to that accusation of generic evil corporate greed in the face of the facts they're presenting. They aren't spending millions of dollars to support mods (and losing millions when modding forces your game to be rated M instead of T, interesting tidbit there) for 8% of their audience. That doesn't make good business sense, and is certainly not what a heartless, money-grubbing monster of a company would do.
clint wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:29:
True, but what if the main reason is not to bring modders to the scene, but bring in big developers to be steam excusive.
CJ_Parker wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:30:NKD wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:58:
But like I said, Valve does deserve a decent cut for hosting, listing, and handling the business end.
Do they though? They are already selling the game via Steam and getting 30% of every sale. Many people might not even buy the game if it weren't for the (free) mods. The workshop is also great advertising for Valve and giving people an incentive to prefer Steam over other DD services. Does Valve really deserve more money on top of that? What for? And why now and why hasn't free hosting been an issue before?But as I said, my main issue is BETHESDA'S cut. Which is many times higher than what they'd get licensing their tools and IP to a mainstream developer.
Yeah. Bethesda should not get another cut either just like Valve. They sell the game for over three years and it includes a "free" (not really since it's part of what you pay for) modkit for people to do as they please. Changing the rules mid-game and supporting Valve's greedy cash grab attempt to charge for mods is very lame indeed.
I can visually imagine the fat bloated red face of GabeN after a few glasses of wine and a similarly fat bloated red face of a Zenimax exec and how they dreamed up their new mod cash empire at some meeting at a convention. They probably thought of themselves as the greatest geniuses of all time as they repeatedly slapped their fat knees in laughter and choked on the wine.
An absolutely disgusting display of greed on all sides. I can't do much to boycott Valve as I have too many games on Steam unfortunately but I sure as hell won't buy the next Bethesda offering at anywhere near full price (if at all).
Quboid wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:53: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.
jacobvandy wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:24:NKD wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:58:
But as I said, my main issue is BETHESDA'S cut. Which is many times higher than what they'd get licensing their tools and IP to a mainstream developer.
Joe Schmoe modder is not a "mainstream developer," though. You're unproven in talent, reliability, discretion, demeanor... Otherwise you wouldn't have to submit your stuff through a system like this, and could go straight to interviewing at the company.
NKD wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:58:
But like I said, Valve does deserve a decent cut for hosting, listing, and handling the business end.
But as I said, my main issue is BETHESDA'S cut. Which is many times higher than what they'd get licensing their tools and IP to a mainstream developer.
jdreyer wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:27:descender wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 18:57:
Musicians get 8%. Actors get 10-15% at best. Why do we think the modders with no power and no voice will get a better deal?
One could also argue that Steam is taking a smaller cut than they deserve for the potential bandwidth costs of hosting of a popular mod. I can understand the gripes with the 66% that Bethesda is taking. That does seem like... a lot... but I don't get the gripe that the modder's 25% is unfair in any way. 25% is a lot more than 0%.
Would they prefer it go back to 0%? Or should they take what they can get now and bargain for a better deal later? (obviously the latter)
Not really comparable to actors and musicians, both of whom benefit enormously from studio resources from equipment to marketing. Modders design, build, test, publish, and promote on their own. Bethesda already made their money on the base game, and modding has been shown to increase sales (DayZ says "Hi") so they're already making more than they normally would. If the goal is truly to attract good, full time-modders to the scene, they should give a more generous split.
descender wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 18:57:
Musicians get 8%. Actors get 10-15% at best. Why do we think the modders with no power and no voice will get a better deal?
One could also argue that Steam is taking a smaller cut than they deserve for the potential bandwidth costs of hosting of a popular mod. I can understand the gripes with the 66% that Bethesda is taking. That does seem like... a lot... but I don't get the gripe that the modder's 25% is unfair in any way. 25% is a lot more than 0%.
Would they prefer it go back to 0%? Or should they take what they can get now and bargain for a better deal later? (obviously the latter)
clint wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:24:jdreyer wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:21:Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:07:
Valve's announcement on pulling the plug.
I came here to rewrite the announcement in a "what they really think" style, but I guess there's no point in pouring water on a fire that's already gone out.
.
Definitely a case of "What the hell were they thinking?"
NKD wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:58:
But as I said, my main issue is BETHESDA'S cut. Which is many times higher than what they'd get licensing their tools and IP to a mainstream developer.
Kajetan wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:55:
When you start selling mods, you are no longer an amateur. You now have a business. You have expenses. You have to licence tools and software, which were free for non-commercial use. You have to pay taxes. You have to make sure to not violate someones copyright. You probably have to pay other mod team members.
Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 20:07:
Valve's announcement on pulling the plug.
descender wrote on Apr 27, 2015, 19:48:
NKD, the models aren't different. The modders (artists) want to sell their content (music) in Steams (label) market... that's exactly what I described and exactly why the cut's those type of artists should be relevant (at least in regards to Valve's cut I suppose). Content distribution, marketing and advertising... those are the things the label (Steam) takes money from the artist (modder) for. Calling the bandwidth costs "background noise" is just trying to handwave away factors that are actually important. One of the modders in another thread was talking about more than 6GB per month of downloads through the Nexus, that's not cheap and the audience and possible number of downloaders on Steam is 100000x what the Nexus offers.
I do agree, the Bethesda cut is high... I would have expected the Valve cut to be higher though, or that it at least be 50/50 between them.
I still think that anyone complaining about the 25% is absolutely nuts. Is it low? Sure. Is it the worst deal ever? No, of course not. Yesterday you were making pennies, now you are making .25 on the dollar over thousands of sales with millions of potential customers. They should just take what they can get and worry about getting a better deal later when they can get organized (modders unions?).
Obviously Valve/Bethesda have backpedaled on this now and rightfully so. Dropping this into the middle of an existing mod community and allowing modders to charge for existing mods was a recipe for disaster. They should have waited until they had a new 3rd party game to launch with this modder payment plan or at least forced them to produce new content to charge for. Then they could have slowly rolled it back into existing markets like Skyrim rather than let the modders make fools of themselves in the eyes of the community.