Steam Monetizes Mods - TTLG Forums

Judith on 28/4/2015 at 09:03

Rates for mod creators are horrible and IMO that's the biggest issue here. Not sure how Bethesda came up with 45% as industry standard. Industry standard is a free engine and 30% of the final price for Epic or Unity platform hosting your content. Also Epic gets 5% of your revenue, if it gets above certain amount (10k USD, I think). I understand there is a difference between making all your assets from scratch and e.g. using Bethesda assets to show your gameplay / level design skills, and you have to find some middle ground here in order not to set price differently in every case - now that would actually require hiring someone to do that and cost money. Other thing than that, we're talking about old engine for old but still popular game, and without access to source code (AFAIK). In such case, I guess 20-25% would be alright. With 45% and 30%, Bethesda and Steam support the awful model of modern economy, where increasing number of middlemen who don't create anything, earn a lot on those who actually do something. It is kinda weird, since Bethsoft folks are content creators themselves.

Good thing is, their response on BethBlog is quite calm, and it seems like they're willing to listen, and maybe adjust the rates in the future.

faetal on 28/4/2015 at 09:20

Perhaps it might have been better to discuss it with the modding communities beforehand rather than try to roll something out blind.

Starker on 28/4/2015 at 09:29

Quote Posted by icemann

Quite sad really. Means people wont be able to make careers out for modding (for now atleast), other than the immensely successful ones.

Yeah, Steam would have been a trusted and popular enough platform to possibly make a professional modding scene happen. Not just for people who are looking to make this a career, even. It could also have been an opportunity for a dev to use their professional skills to make some money between jobs. Or maybe even studios/teams between projects.

faetal on 28/4/2015 at 10:03

You've got to give them props for responding in line with their customer base though and properly taking responsibility for the mistake. That ought to form the foundation for them to come back with a better way of achieving something which can work.

WingedKagouti on 28/4/2015 at 10:40

Quote Posted by Fafhrd

(http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218) Well, that's unexpected.

I actually hope that this isn't the end of the experiment, but Valve are clearly going to have to figure out a better candidate than Skyrim for it.

Maybe Cities: Skylines.

For Bethseda it'll most likely be Fallout 4 and TES 6. And they'll probably make sure that you need to use Steam Workshop for mods for at least one of the two.

Ostriig on 28/4/2015 at 15:12

There was an (https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqokoo9?context=3) exchange with Newell suggesting they weren't keen on it, but not their place to rule it out:

Quote:

Hi Gabe, Robin, owner of Nexus Mods here. [...] For example, if Bethesda wanted to make modding for Fallout 4/TES 6 limited to just Steam Workshop, or even worse, just the paid Workshop, would Valve veto this and prevent it from happening?

Hi, Robin.

In general we are pretty reluctant to tell any developer that they have to do something or they can't do something. It just goes against our philosophy to be dictatorial.

With that caveat, we'd be happy to tell developers that we think they are being dumb, and that will sometimes help them reflect on it a bit. [...]

icemann on 30/4/2015 at 07:54

From the sound of valves comments, it sounds like they'll be having it on more recenter releases, rather than for games released several years ago plus. So here's hoping this comes back in some form later.

As the guy who made "Gary's Mod" commented: When he first said he was going to charge for his mod there was a huge uproar. Then it happened and everyone stopped complaining after a while.

Personally I think mod developers should have the full right to charge others for the hours/months/years that they choose to put into making the things we love to play. If people don't want to pay for mods, then they can always stick to the free mods / free versions.

Jason Moyer on 30/4/2015 at 21:40

I've always been a "if people want to pay me for my writing/music/art/etc they can but they can have it for free" kind of guy, but reactions like the one to this mod monetization make me understand why so many people get offended when other people give away their work, because it ends up creating a situation where a.) people expect to get everything for free and b.) their own work is devalued.

zombe on 30/4/2015 at 22:59

Nearly two hours of interesting conversation hosted by TotalBiscuit on the subject with Nexus admin/owner and one of the grand mod authors:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aavBAplp5A)

Having been a modder (of other games) i am sad that this experiment was mishandled so spectacularly and i hope it gets a second chance later after they have put some actual thought into it ... that said i also am very torn on the idea of monetizing mods (note: highly depends on the actual game) - it is just bound to turn into a massive clusterfuck on so many levels.

edit: monetizing - i mean paywalling (ad-walls inclusive). Passive monetizing is fine (and unfortunately fairly worthless).

icemann on 1/5/2015 at 07:01

I'd have gladly payed for the "They Hunger" mod series for Halflife 1, and would pay for the "Skywind" mod for Skyrim. Skywind looks awesome.