Valve's Gabe Newell responds to paid for mods negative feedback

[HEXUS]

Introducing paid for mods doesn't seem to have had the desired effect so far.

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[Ttaskmaster]

Colour me unsurprised... Always happens when you bring money into this!

[Gerrard]

TB's video covered most of it pretty well: -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k

However, I don't remember the problem of building on someone elses mod, or using parts of it, and then selling it being raised, but he did bring up people grabbing free mods and then registering it themselves to sell.

My biggest gripe with this is the 75% commision Valve takes; I think that is hideous!

[Allen]

Interestingly the developers only get 25 per cent of the money from their mod sales, Bethesda/Valve gets the rest.

This. Is. Disgusting.

"The option for paid mods is supposed to increase the investment in quality modding, not hurt it".

Yeah? So why are you taking 75% of the sale for your own already PHAT pockets?

Good grief, this has riled me up good and proper. Not only do devs release full price incomplete games with added DLC, sometimes on day one, to make more money, they are now going to be lazy enough to sit back and let modders MAKE their game and rake in the profits from that too.

Hey everyone, Elder Scrolls 6 has been announced, the initial games lasts 1 hour and costs £50, 1 hours worth of DLC will be released every day after release for £10 each, and player made mods are £5 each (of which we will steal £3.75 from each sale). LOL, look at us with our gold lined swimming pools in our £1bn mansions on our private islands, with private airports.

[Ttaskmaster]

I may have to go back through all of Saracen's posts about Steam and read just a little closer, now...

[LSG501]

Paying a small fee for a decent mod, I can live with that, as can everyone else I suspect.

I'd say the issue here is the sheer amount of greed on the part of Valve/Bethesda. I understand there's a cost involved in hosting etc but 75% is beyond a joke really. Even Apple who to put it bluntly are rather premium in their prices are only at 30%...

Obviously there is the 'copyright' issue of who did the mod first etc but that's an issue that should be covered by t&c's etc.

[edzieba]

My biggest gripe with this is the 75% commision Valve takes; I think that is hideous!

Valve gets 30%, Bethseda gets 45%, mod creator gets 25%.
Percentage split between Bethseda and the mod developer are set by Bethseda. Valve's 30% cut is the same as it takes from all content sold through Steam.

I'm kind of on the fence about the whole thing. 'Paid mods' aren't exactly new (many games have made the transition from mod to full-fledged release), but these are often standalone total conversions. When a paid mod relies on a freely available 'base' mod things are only slightly more complicated depending on whether you have a dependency manager or rely on some sort of bundling.

The Open Source community would probably be a good model to look at for the interaction of paid and free (both as in speech and/or as in beer) content. Licensing is the key: GPL is transitive and requires derivatives to also be open, whereas MIT or BSD do not.


This could definitely have been handled better, with more forewarning to the mod community to figure out how to handle derivative mods (and time for mod creators to get licensing in place).

[Biscuit]

If its being sold then its a product and it should be held up to the same expectations of quality as any full game. I like the idea that modders can be paid for their work, however if they are going to take money they have to be prepared to maintain their projects and meet certain levels of quality. I don't understand why Valve think that its acceptable to place a statement which essentially says, 'if it stops working then tough luck'.

If Valve wants us to take this seriously, and wants to show some justification for that ludicrous 75% handling fee, they need much tighter regulations and testing procedures to ensure customers are not being fleeced.

[suedenim]

Is Steam rolling out an ingame/inmod advertisment system soon?

Lay down some rage for an in your face pay system and then in a grandiose gesture offer the same crap system you get in apps - ads everywhere, lets just pause your fun to bring you this advertisement - but the mods are free again.

Steam trying to be the google of gaming.

[edzieba]

Is Steam rolling out an ingame/inmod advertisment system soon?
Lay down some rage for an in your face pay system and then in a grandiose gesture offer the same crap system you get in apps - ads everywhere, lets just pause your fun to bring you this advertisement - but the mods are free again.
Steam trying to be the google of gaming.

There are actual issues with the current system Valve have in place. Making up things that aren't actually happening then complaining about them is merely a waste of perfectly good electrons.

[YazX]

i think the 75% is Bethesda's fault, since steam cut is 30% on everything, so Bethesda demanded 45%-50% cut from mods, hence to that the whole thing went up to 75% which is ridiculous, Valve should lower their cut and do something about the developer cut as well to be like max 25% for both. but for now the modder work his ass of to create something and those greedy Mofus STEAL 75% of his hard earned work.

to be honest, Bethesda is a greey mofus, they sold the game and gathered millions of dollars but yet they are after modders as well which is disgusting.

[Bane2087]

This is such a bad idea. If modders were in it for the money the modding community never would have got started in the first place. All it will do is bring out the worst cash grabbers and turn Steam workshop into a version of the cess pool that is the Google Play store. There's hundreds of other reasons like this could spell the end of fun mods that utilize assets from other IPs even if they don't charge. And as usual Valve expects their community to police this system instead of actually, you know, hiring people to do it properly.

I still play WoW and use hundreds of mods for it, thankfully even Blizzard in their infinite greed realised that paid for mods are bad and soon shut them down instead of trying to cash in on them.

[shaithis]

I have no problem with the general concept but have a massive issue with the implementation.

I think paid for mods will generate more quality mods. It will also make fraudsters come out of the woodwork and Bethesda fee is a complete and utter

[Jowsey]

i think the 75% is Bethesda's fault, since steam cut is 30% on everything, so Bethesda demanded 45%-50% cut from mods, hence to that the whole thing went up to 75% which is ridiculous, Valve should lower their cut and do something about the developer cut as well to be like max 25% for both. but for now the modder work his ass of to create something and those greedy Mofus STEAL 75% of his hard earned work.

to be honest, Bethesda is a greey mofus, they sold the game and gathered millions of dollars but yet they are after modders as well which is disgusting.

I agree, I think the cut is too large.

However, I don't think this should be seen as stripping money from peoples pockets. Mods were free, like it or not, I believe. Valve has now given mod creators the opportunity to monetise these items. These items which wouldn't be present without the game being around and without the Steam backend to support the distribution/mod management/payment service.

If a dev makes a mod and didn't have plans to monetise it from the start then it's obviously a labour of love and surely he can just leave it as a free mod. Or register it with Steam but have the price set at £0. Aren't all parties here guilty of being greedy? What justifies the dev expecting money because he can now charge for something which , until recently, he couldn't have?

I think this system would be much better if it was implemented as a tip jar sort of system. So if you use it and continue to use it you can 'tip' a suggested £2 or whatever. And it may occasionally remind you that you have mods on that you haven't tipped for yet. However, advertisements are just a sure fire way for a mod to get permanently uninstalled IMO.

Maybe I've just got a weird opinion...

[crossy]

Maybe I've just got a weird opinion...

Actually, I'd agree with what you're saying. If you want to monetize then fine, but heaven help you if you try and monetize someone else's work. And I really like the idea of a "tip jar" to encourage the "for the love of" developers.

Valve could sort this out by some recrafting of the terms. First off ban any in-game pimping of "premium" versions of the mods - heck, I'd actually outlaw the taster mods. Next, take edzieba's excellent suggestion and allow "free" mods to use GPL - surely that'll prevent someone from taking a free mod, changing two textures and feeling they can charge a tenner for it. Oh, and insist that mod makers lodge their code with Valve - so if they cut and run then the code gets released as "open source".

The 75% fee is just plain ridiculous - if it's a mere 30% on games then I can't see any justification for a fee on mods (which are [minor] developments of existing games) to be more than that. Split that 30% evenly between Valve and Bethesda.

Of course, you do realize my compatriots that we have a lot of power in this regard? If you don't like paid-for mods then simply ... don't ... buy ... them - if there's no real money to be made then the whole idea will wither on the vine.

I can't help thinking that the current drug peddler approach to DLC would cease if we weren't so quick to buy it. And yes, I'm as guilty as others in this respect.

[ZaO]

I agree with the general consensus here - the idea is great, but the implementation isn't. The mod creators should get a way higher cut. And yeh, there will definitely be trouble with fraudsters.

But, don't assume people who make mods have never liked the idea of getting money from them. It just hasn't really been an option for them, that's all. It's either a hobby, or something to help get them noticed so it can lead onto a job. Modders are a bit like people who make music. They put it out where everyone can hear it for free. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't like to earn from their hard work, and no reason why they shouldn't if people are enjoying it. It doesn't change the fact that they love what they do. And sure, they'll still do it out of love if they never make money, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't like to.

Now with all that aside - can't people still mod using the Nexus site? I suppose some mod devs will start pulling them off their now and move to Steam instead. It's a shame that Steam's modding system sucks, or at least it did last time I checked!