$28 bucks on sale!!!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=429226887
That just means I stop using the workshop altogether. Nexus will presumably remain active.
I’m going to put a spacebar mod up. Hit your space bar in Skyrim, and it might do things.
$1.99, but a .99 launch sale.
Weeeee!
Sorry I am not joining in with the old timers sitting on the porch harumphing about the status quo changing. ;-)
I am not saying it will definitely be a smashing success either, just wait and see and let the market sort it out for a bit. It is certainly fraught with some complexities, but is an interesting idea.
I guess that I don’t have such a negative knee-jerk reaction since I have had some great experiences paying for mods (or former mods) in the past including Dear Esther and CS:GO map packs/weapon skins. I would happily pay for the Black Mesa mod in a heartbeat to reward that team for that amazing accomplishment.
-Todd
Based on what I’ve seen of Steam and paid content creating, Skyrim Nexus is screwed. I mean, there will be holdouts that charge nothing for high-quality mod work, but that’s going to slowly become a rarity. When a bunch of knuckleheads can slap together a sword skin and charge 99 cents for each of them, the guys that put in hundreds of hours of work on good mods are going to figure out that they’re missing out.
Things like Falskaar and Black Mesa are not the norm. The norm is already looking like $1-$5 for a single weapon or armor mod.
The only way this stops is if the Skyrim players wise up and say ‘this is nuts’ and buy nothing. This won’t happen either. So yeah, call it knee-jerking but you can kiss the Nexus goodbye.
Too many Steam users have more money than sense.
This is going to be such a clusterfuck for Skyrim, with mods overwriting parts of one another. I wonder who’s gonna handle the support and interoperability testing for all the mods on sale, heh.
You will. You have 24-hours to figure out if something breaks your game. After that - caveat emptor!
But seriously, FUCK Valve for doing this. Where do I sign up for Rachel Brown’s Valve hate club?
I think the idea behind it is good - reward content creators so there is more content being created. There isn’t anything wrong with that. But when you give the keys to the inmates, nothing good comes of it.
Agreed. The concept is fine, but there’s just no way I see the implementation as being a net good.
Maybe part of the problem is that they are starting this model with Skyrim which even with all free mods is already a clusterfuck of mod-soup, load orders, compatibility, and shared assets. It is a game that people like to bolt on 63 different mods creating a Frankenstein like monster that threatens to come apart at the seams.
A revenue model for mod/content creators has already been successfully implemented in other communities like CounterStrike: Global Offensive and that model is heavily moderated including instances where stolen content was identified and punished. That model has been active for years and works really well. The best map and skin makers receive some revenue and their creations are highlighted and bundled during major events.
A more straightforward example that could work well might be Total War games where one may just add a Darthmod package and be done with it without needing to worry about conflicts or dependencies with other mods.
Revenue-sharing for mod creators was an inevitability with the path that Valve is on with hats, trading cards, inventory, gems, badges, etc. Skyrim will be a tricky place to start, but I am curious to see how that plays out in the long run.
-Todd
I think “heavily moderated” is the key difference between this and the CS:GO/Dota 2/TF2 paid mods.
Giving modders the option to charge is fine, making modders charge for everything would not be good. Let the customer decide is always better. As long as I have a choice between free mods and pay mods I’m okay, since I can focus on the free ones if I’m not interested in paying. From the modder point of view, they get a choice too. Get paid if that’s your thing, knowing that you’ll lose a lot of interest in your work that way. Or go free, knowing more people will see your work. It’s up to each modder to decide on his or her priority.
“Content creators” are already “rewarded”, they don’t need money for it. I say this as someone who did create a popular mod for FO3 among other things. People in general don’t mod to earn money and this shouldn’t be the motivation. It’s about sharing with the community and making something great(er) and the reward is the feedback you get (yes there will be negative stuff too but who cares) as well as just having fun doing modding.
There is of course some place for donations and similar stuff (I also took them for my big projects to pay for websites, boards, servers etc.) but leave that to the modders/community because there is really no need for every small mod or single item to request some sort of compensation.
I don’t get the urge to monetise everything people do/put effort into. “Free” stuff should be encouraged and I loathe the idea behind this whole thing because it goes totally against the spirit of modding. Can’t we leave the cash grabbing to greedy game companies? I just don’t want that attitude to infect the modding community, so many games I enjoy were greatly improved by modders and I don’t want a future in which modding is corrupted by greed.
You are mistaken if you think this is about modders or creativity. This is about enhancing profit, nothing more. If modders benefit, its just a side-effect.
Wow, so a modder does all the work, steam makes 75% profit. In return for that they might get more visibility being on Steam (obviously) and the easy of use of the mod workshop.
looks for the underpants gnomes profit plan
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
You guys are just a bunch of fuddy-duddies sitting on the porch.
You’re all clearly afraid of new ideas. Or something.
(For the record, I’m very much in favor of new ideas, just not ones that seem to have been hatched opaquely and in a way that’s incredibly unfriendly to consumers.)
It sounds low, but some content creators for CS:GO/Dota 2/TF 2 make six figures a year on the same 25% terms.
I know Chivalry and Dungeon Defenders have paid workshops as well, but they are curated much like the CS:GO system. I don’t know if people are making mad money in those markets.