Of course. It’s not the modder’s IP, it’s Bethesda’s.
I love how you paraphrase my posts! Please don’t monetize it since you are reusing my assets. ;-)
-Todd
Q. What happens if a mod I bought breaks?
A. Sometimes one mod may modify the same files as another mod, or a particular combination of mods may cause unexpected outcomes. If you find that mod has broken or is behaving unexpectedly, it is best to post politely on the Workshop item’s page and let the mod author know the details of what you are seeing.
So pretty much once you buy it, there is nothing in writing saying it will be supported should it stop working after the 24 hour refund window.
I can see a game being patched, and a boom a ton of mods stop working that people paid for.
Also I don’t see anything in place for preventing creators from abusing the system of say making a item like MAGIC SWORD NUMBER ONE, but that mod/item stops working when a new patch comes out , say patch 1.11 , so the mod maker decided to make a new item and call it MAGIC SWORD NUMBER TWO that does work with patch 1.11. And the only way to get it is to buy the new item/mod…
This seems worse than Early Access…
Based upon my experience with mod authors in the past, I’m sure that asking politely will fix things. ;)
And yeah, the iteration on existing elements and charging as if they were a new item seems problematic.
What’s really a bummer is the thing that others have touched on. The mod community for Skyrim has been exactly that: a community. Now there’s going to be a whole lot of mistrust, animosity, and everything else between authors.
Has the potential to stifle mod development, more than it does to encourage it.
I think the Skyrim Workshop not being curated by Valve or Bethesda is where this breaks down for me. In the other Workshop markets, someone has to actually vet submissions and work with the mod authors to make sure everything works and is of good enough quality to charge for. If a user-created gun skin causes crashes or a Dota theme breaks, someone is responsible for it. This is just the Wild West.
I wonder if everyone asks for HL3 politely, we will get it. :D
Maybe that has been the secret all along!
Random person named Foffyon GAF made a good point:
What I fear here is people are going to run on this entirely as a money train, ruining the sincerity of what it’s supposed to do. The race to get the paper will create problems, for sure. For example, it will promote a situation where members on the community don’t cooperate as much, as they’re now going to be fighting for pieces of the pie. You’ll have people who keep tools and tricks up their sleeve, seldom sharing them with the community.
So this could actually hurt mod/content creators! D:
Yep to both of you. That this isn’t Valve-curated, and that it will wall off creator sharing are bad outcomes that seem entirely too plausible here.
If it’s truly uncurated that might still work out better than the Dota2/TF2/CSGO model where only a handful out of thousands of artists make decent money. There’s a whole ecosystem of parasitic middle men companies who only pay artists a tiny flat fee, slap their logo on the item, pocket the profits and then find another naive artist to exploit.
Well, this is an interesting wrinkle.
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoppaymentinfofaq/
Q. Do I need to provide bank information even though I don’t want to receive revenue share on the item(s)?
A. Yes, you will need to provide valid bank information regardless of whether your item is a paid item or a free item.
Also, I hadn’t thought about it, but Arma 3 will be another game community that will go ape if BI goes for this.
So to allow paid mods/content to be posted in a game’s workshop , VALVE and the GAME DEVELOPER must approve?
Q. What happens if a mod I bought breaks?
A. Sometimes one mod may modify the same files as another mod, or a particular combination of mods may cause unexpected outcomes. If you find that mod has broken or is behaving unexpectedly, it is best to post politely on the Workshop item’s page and let the mod author know the details of what you are seeing.
This is a terrible idea.
Of course the developer has to approve. It’s their game assets and IP being used.
I would imagine that legally, yes, you’d need the permission of the publisher and Valve.
Now, someday Valve may just flick a switch and publish blanket permission for every game publisher to turn on the paid content workshop if they want it, but technically, they’re still giving permission.
I wasn’t sure , thats why I asked. I hope this paid crap doesn’t hit Cities Skylines.
So iNeed for skyrim was free, its now pay what you want, asking price of $3.99, but it can be raised or lowereed depeding on what you want to pay.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=429360318
Best part is the creator now wants you to remove the free version he had uploaded.
Interesting tidbit - you can see how many people have bought a particular mod by the number of subscribers.
For example, this one has 131 buyers, currently.
I think this is awesome. To clarify, I’m a game developer with games on steam. I’d love people to make paid mods of my games. Why wouldn’t I? It will make my game a more attractive proposition. I am time-limited. I’d love someone to do a fantasy-themed or futuristic or developing-world total conversion of Democracy 3. That would be cool.
And as a gamer, I also approve. If there are people prepare to make paid Company of Heroes 2 mods with new tank and troop variants, my wallet is here for you!
I’m not sure why anyone could argue that a pro level designer should be paid but someone making equivalent quality work who is a modder doesn’t deserve any money.
When I see stuff like this, my first thought is this: “Well, there goes my main reason for playing a lot of games on PC.”
Next Fallout or Elder Scrolls, I’ll be playing it on console, because I won’t be paying for UGC, at least not with this model as it currently exists.
Makes me wonder if other PC-firsters will feel the same impulse. Perhaps not. But that’s the feeling I take away.
Except none of those are, at all, good examples of what should be monetized.
Black Mesa is a mod full of love, which is one of the reasons it shouldn’t be monetized by such round-about methods. The other is that Black Mesa mod is also a response to the crap copypasta job Valve themselves did in porting HL1 to the Source engine when they could have done so with the same quality as the Black Mesa team with arguably less effort. Hell, they could’ve actually monetized it more justifiably had they done so, which beings about the next point.
The basic dynamic of what you put as the status quo is one that Valve established themselves, ironically: it should be Valve paying the authors of Black Mesa for keeping HL1 relevant, and heaven knows they have the resources to do so. In fact, their basic MO since the episodes failed (due to their own lethargy, no less) has been to hire other established indie teams to essentially do the work for them. Valve – supposing they have no interest in actually putting any effort into supporting their own legacy – should be the ones supporting those who are.
Now it appears that they want to leapfrog that system to one where they literally put no effort at all into monetizing the work of other community parties while still taking the lion’s share of any potential revenue. That’s bullshit. Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, or any other mod would not exist – and therefore Valve wouldn’t exist – if this were the environment that existed at the time of creation for those mods. And that’s a span of decades in PC gaming. The feeling, if not fully articulated because it requires the reference of the Quake-to-Valve eras of PC gaming, is that the ecosystem we have now would not even exist to be monetized like this if it had been monetized like this at any point prior.
Apologies for cherry-picking this one out of the post, but it illustrates in my mind the other reason this is bogus: It’s been a good while since Valve was known for making their own games instead of monetizing really stupid crap in their own games… which at this point still comes from hiring other teams of established modders.
One of the test run modders posted a blog about this:
At the beginning of March I was approached by Valve on behalf of Bethesda. I was asked if I would be interested in contributing towards a new workshop feature for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This new feature allows community members to sell their creations directly through Steam. As a huge Elder Scrolls fan I jumped at this opportunity.
I think modders getting paid for their work (if they want) is great. Not sure I think the implementation with something as heavily modded like Skyrim is workable from a consumer standpoint. Too much overlap and incompatibility it seems to me. And with something as large and complicated as SR a mere 24 hour return policy doesn’t seem adequate.
First off I’m much more likely to Not try a random mod for a buck or two. This seems obvious and it only really a problem in that my choices are now more limited.
Can I download a mod with a ‘pay what you want’ button, pay nothing up front, then go back and pay later when I’ve confirmed it works? This seems to me like the best way for things to work as I would end up paying more for mods I used and not have to worry about Mod A for $5 screwing up Mod B for $4 and end up being out $9 for two mods I have no way of using.