Aero wrote on Apr 26, 2015, 10:29:
I find lots of the uproar disappointing. Valve could be handling it better, but mostly what I hear (more elsewhere than here) is moaning from people who seem to feel entitled to other's peoples work.

This argument would be valid if mods hadn't been free these whole years and if the whole mod culture hadn't been founded in making mods for fun and NOT for profit.

I swear, most of the people who throw this stupid entitled argument are more often than not not modders. Not to mention each time someone uses the entitled word against consumers, they prove to be nothing more than idiotic mouthpieces of corporations that don't care for them. Useful idiots to sum them up.

http://i.imgur.com/cL2NIUy.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/j6DKPUP.jpg

Also, from the mouth of Gabe:

Let's assume for a second that we are stupidly greedy. So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That's like 1% of the cost of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of days). That's not stupidly greedy, that's stupidly stupid.

You need a more robust Valve-is-evil hypothesis.


Sometimes I think PC gamers are the biggest idiots in the world. $10K already in bought mods, holy shit. PC gamers happily buying the death of what makes PC gaming great, one paid mod at a time.

What a fucking clusterfuck this has been. This will not end well, for nobody. Valve is helping destroy what made PC gaming great though I'm glad most good modders have pushed back against it.

Johan, lead designer at Paradox who stated that he personally seems to support this idea, talks about how this may become a nightmare for game developers:

I personally dont see how paid mods could work for our PDS games that are constantly updated.

Keeping large mods up to date after a major patch is ALOT of work, and if people have paid for them, they have much higher demands.

It would also force us to take modsupport into far bigger account, potentially making worse experiences for the users, as we may be forced to not do what we feel is the best design because it breaks some mod.

I mean, I've met @gigau and @myzael they are great people and their mod is really good. However, I don't even consider the impact for them to update M&T when we change or add features in EU4, because my job is to make the best game possible, not a technology-platform.

During this time Valve has:
-Removed donation links of workshop mods
-Removed the option to downvote a mod
-Removed the ability to browse a forum's mod if you haven't purchased it
-Banned anyone with a slight negative comment against paid mods and deleted any and all comments on the matter

This is some serious anti-consumer shit going on. If this was EA or Ubisoft everyone would be up at arms against them.

And now it appears Valve is deleting donation links in the description of free mods. This clusterfuck is very, very bad for PC gaming as a whole.

Verno wrote on Apr 23, 2015, 14:01:
A lot of people mod for attention/cred so there will always be a free alternative, I can't get worked up over this. Some mods I wouldn't mind paying for anyway (SkyUI for example). Modding has become a bit of a lost art in the industry overall thanks to DLC so whatever encourages more of the practice in my book.

True. Perhaps I'm way too cynical since when money gets into the equation, and considering this is the gaming industry we're talking about, I can't help but think everyone will become a greedy cunt. I hope this will really help everyone, modders and gamers, but I'm too cynical at this point not to think this will fuck things up badly in the future. Hope it won't, though.

verybad1 wrote on Apr 23, 2015, 13:44:

ASeven wrote on Apr 23, 2015, 13:42:
IMO this is the worst thing that could happen. I agree that modders should be rewarded but that should be in the form of donations. This will open the door for everyone, good and bad modders, to charge for mods and we'll have no way to know which ones are better.

With this move Steam has thrown PC gaming a lot of steps back. Modders should be rewarded but not this way, this is the wrong way about it.

Try any mod, Risk Free
It's still important to spend a little time learning about any product you are about to purchase. But, if after purchase you find that a mod is broken or doesn’t work as promised, you can easily get a refund of that mod within 24 hours of your purchase. View the full refund policy here.
Free, Paid, or Pay What You Want
With over 24,000 free mods available for Skyrim in the Steam Workshop, there will always be lots to do and explore for free. Now you can also find mods with a specified price, or mods where you can choose how much you wish to support the creators. The price is up to the mod creators

Good luck having a single day trying to find if a mod is for you.

Instead of the buy button, they should replace it with a donate button, that way I don't think anybody would have anything against.

Hell, even EA didn't go this far. Holy fuck.

IMO this is the worst thing that could happen. I agree that modders should be rewarded but that should be in the form of donations. This will open the door for everyone, good and bad modders, to charge for mods and we'll have no way to know which ones are better.

With this move Steam has thrown PC gaming a lot of steps back. Modders should be rewarded but not this way, this is the wrong way about it.

My GOTY so far, already far better than SC4 was at launch (Let's not even talk about the latest SC). This is the game that finally made me migrate from SC4 and it will only get better from here.

So, is this game out of the beta yet, after 3 years?

Best game since SimCity 4, surpassing it in fact if we compare SC4 at launch and CS at launch. And with the base they built with this game they are now able to expand it in any way possible, not counting the brilliant mods out there like the SimCopter mod for instance.

Between this and Pillars, I think I have my GotY already.

Also, this.

It's fucking glorious. Beats Wasteland 2 for my favorite RPG of the year, or past year even.

More reviews in.

First Pillars reviews are in and it appears the game is nothing short of amazing. Seems we have a true classic in our hands.

Glad I backed this up, bye bye social life.

Just FYI, the same people that developed SecuROM are the ones behind the company that develops Denuvo, hence why it is one of the most hated DRMs right now, it inherits all the badness of SecuROM and adds even more on top of it.

Let's talk about actual good games.

Has anyone noticed someone made a god damn flightcim for Cities:Skylines? Holy shit this game is going far.

Got a feeling Visceral is next in line for EA's butchery of studios.

Hardline is such a bland, average game that even as a mod it's bad. That they are charging €60 for this is insulting on so many levels and apparently both the press and users agree with ratings really tanking, especially on the user's review side.

In other news, sales of C:S have passed the 500K mark.

And this is how you fight piracy. No mandatory online shit, no DRM shit, just provide a great service and people will have incentive to buy it.

Not that EA or Ubisoft will ever understand this.