I think it was Sim City 4. I don’t actually do much with mods, but Skyrim and Sim City 4 and Sims have been the exceptions. The Sims have had paid mods or components for a long time now… but they don’t really take from one free mod and then turn around and try and sell it with their paid mod. At least that is my experience. The Sims series is the reason I am not entirely against paid and free. Paid and Free has existed alongside each other in that franchise for what seems like forever, but this whole taking copyright material and selling it, or taking from someone else and selling it… I don’t recall seeing it there and that creates a different more hostile environment.
The OS don’t load the image of programs (Games) unmodified to memory. To have the programs in a state where they can run, are modified by modifying jump address and other task.
OS trivia that may or not be ontopic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loader_(computing)
So you can’t run computer software (except .com files, I think) on things like windows, withouth modifying this software. Modifying (patching) software is neccesary to run it.
So theres nothing wrong with modifying copyrighted programs in memory, lol, because otherwise would not even load in windows, or would need to have all their dependencies statically linked and not have external calls (so no network or file loading)
(This is by memory, so I can be wrong)
Before anyone say “you can’t modify copyrighted programs” I say, “sorry, you have to modify copyrighted programs to run them”.
So the front page of STEAM no longer mentions paid mods… Interesting…
Also this made me smile. :)
If you commit to selling a product, you also commit to supporting it. That’s kind of how doing business works. You can fuss about how “ridiculous” it is that people expect this all you want, but if you don’t deliver that support, you will have angry customers. Guaranteed. And you’re absolutely right that there are a lot of reasons that it’s going to be challenging and work-intensive to provide that support, but then…that’s one reason why trying to establish a business based on working on a game you don’t control and a 25% cut of profits is kind of a bad idea.
So basically they’re setting up a situation where the customer takes all the risk, the developer takes all the blame, and they take all the money.
He’s finally done it. The Perfect Business.
I unabashedly love all the ridiculousness about Steam and how Valve is evil and they’re coming for your games, maaaaan.
My life as a PC gamer is so the fuck much better now with Steam (and GOG) than it was back in the day. I mean, seriously. Do people honestly miss physical disc installs, hunting down patches from the publisher site if they exist at all, and all the other stupid bullshit we used to do?
I guess if information is supposed to be free or whatever Steam is yet another boot stamping on a human face forever, but here in reality things are actually pretty darn good these days.
All this with the possibility of paid mods is the same thing all over again. But hey, don’t let me get in the way of a good pitchfork-and-torches rally.
Gabe taking questions on Steam Mods right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/
I understand that people disagree with him but why downvote him? Do people think they’re censoring him or what?
I laughed really hard at Gabe’s answer when asked how he’s going to prevent modders from stealing (each others) content:
Between us and the community, it won’t work.
Some good lines
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.
After seeing some of that, I don’t think Valve’s gone evil. I do think it’s a combination of structural problems at Valve combined with a case of the stupid. I can see what Valve was thinking, but the drawbacks are pretty damn obvious. Valve needs some hierarchy.
BTW I can easily see the community ripping off paid mods and putting them up as free mods, perhaps with slight changes. Given how little manpower Valve wants to put towards support in general, and the ease of putting up new mods- I can see this becoming an epidemic for a good while.
I just don’t get it how no one at Valve could see the backlash for this being on the scale that it is?
Agreed.
My 300 owned titles on GOG beg to differ about Steam being a monopoly or required or whatever “end is nigh” theories people are laying down. I own more games on non-Steam platforms than I could ever hope to play in 10-20 years. PC is better now than it ever has been, I love it…both Steam and non-Steam options. I am spoilt with options.
-Todd
Is it weird that I’ve no beef whatsoever with Valve in any of this? Steam gonna do what Steam gonna do.
Steam needed someone with a robust modding community to take this plunge. Bethesda agreed.
They’re the ones who really seem to have put their consumer goodwill on the line. They’re likely happy to hind behind Gabe while he takes the heat, though.
Skyrim was probably the WORST game to test this out on. It has the biggest modding community on Steam. The backlash would have been much less if they had implemented it together with a new game release rather than force it on the existing mods.
Imagine the shitstorm once this hits games like Garry’s Mod or Total War.
Those are exactly the games where I believe there wouldn’t be a shitstorm, because exactly because mods for those games are self-contained entities. You don’t play Darth Mod and RTR or Europa Barbarorum at the same time (and there’s no conceivable way you could). The shitstorm would only consist of people not wanting to pay to play, and all the other cultural concerns that I discussed previously don’t come into play at all.
Quality control (they suck at this in EA too), accountability (not good in EA either) and something other half-ass not legal legal advise when it comes to content in mods that don’t belong to you. All of that seems to have been an after thought for Valve or not a real consideration at all. I have an issue with how they approached this. I don’t think it was some evil plot to destroy modding, nor do I have a general dislike for Steam.
This is pretty funny stuff.
First there’s taking this at face value. I don’t want to burst anyone’s worldview here–and as I said, I really don’t blame Valve one bit for their part in this–but a multi-billion dollar corporation NEVER does ANYTHING for ANY reason except that it might end up generating revenue at some point down the line. That’s not evil, either. That’s what companies and businesses do. No fault there.
But…the implication here that “Oh, we knew this wasn’t going to be a money maker. We did this for the modders!” is pretty hilarious. If you’re buying that, see me outside the thread for this great deal I’ll make you on a bridge.
At any rate, though, it’s still a fairly non-good line, because it completely misses the point of what this Skyrim paid mods thing is. If you’re taking it exactly at face value, Gabe’s comment there (I assume that’s Gabe?) sounds deeeeep maaaaaan.
But of course–and others have stated this up the thread–what this really is is a test-run. Oh, tell me again how paid mods that have been available for free for a game that came out in 2011 isn’t raking cash. Who could’ve guessed?
This isn’t about Skyrim, and it isn’t about Steam, I don’t think. Follow the money here a bit. I think this is about Bethesda’s next release. Get this kerfuffle out of the way now, and in 18 months when Fallout 4 comes out and the SDK tools are $14.99 and come with a license to use and distribute via Steam Workshop, well then, we’re used to it. If/when that happens, then you’ve got a new game and a mod community who’d typically be all in on modding it. You’ve got Bethesda, not happy to just have the mod community give their games legs far beyond what other titles enjoy, and instead getting a piece of that mod action as well. You promise mod creators that they can pull Garry money from their creations, so buck up for that Fallout Creation Kit! Everyone wins.
And, I hope so. But man it’s tough to see that good ending. As a consumer, I hope it happens.
The replies of Gaben convince me. What he say is logical with the Valve position.
As for people criticicing Valve stupidity… this is unmapped territory, nobody has done this before so they are going to make some mistakes. Is if they don’t try to solve the problems they create that somebody can criticize them.
The AMA answers from Gabe are pretty much what I expected. A lot of “wait and see” and “we’re working this stuff out, have patience” and no real answers. It’s not like he was going to say, “Gosh, you guys are right. This is fucked up.”
Of course the “Valve is evil” thing is ridiculous. Most companies don’t do bad things because they’re evil. They do them because they’re companies and get caught up in financial decisions.
It’s possible, but there is a significant chunk of the modding community that won’t even post their work to the workshop because they see it as impinging on the territory of the Nexus mods community. I suspect little will change. We’ll all still be using Mod Organizer or the like when Fallout 4 hits, because we like our games to be infinitely more stable and less likely to corrupt our save games.