Which is a completely uneducated statement. While Steam is no doubt a cash cow, without actually knowing the figures we can’t really say that they “make enough”. Think about all the infrastructure Steam needs to have in place for its community aspects. Server and bandwidth may be cheap in bulk, but they aren’t free. And with Steam’s Download-as-often-as-you-wish approach, I don’t want to see their bill.
For example, I could imagine that workshops like GMod or Goat Simulator barely break even (costs of community/game/workshop infrastructure vs. game sales cut). Sure, other things like Team Fortress 2 may be huge in the profits because of microtransactions, but one has to look at each game individually.
Otherwise, we can make all sorts of absurd statements if we just take some superset, look at it, and then say “Well, works for everything in it right.” Each game has to be profitable, not just the whole.
No one can say ‘You should give it for free’ as long as the maker has put even some slight effort in the content/product
Most people have no idea how much work it is to create most content.
lets put my Mod as a example.
The Muthical Creatures is a mod that’s planned to be a Mega Big mod (even though it tiny at the moment)
even right now, i’ve put in 2hours per animation witch is if i’m correct; about 30 hours, and that’s not even counting the time i used to make the models and solve all the problems that will probably more then double that time (pluse all the time that Drotten i putting in te time to code it? i can’t even say how much time)
See, i’m a creator on the art type and people often underestimate the time i have to use to draw anything
to be honest, i’d like to be paied in some way or another for some of my creations like art and even the mod somethimes because i know that ‘i’ and the peopel that helped me out – have put it quite an amout of effort to create that one big blob or a mod
and to be honest, if you could say "you should give it for free"
you could just go to a restaurant and ask the owner “do you like to cook?” and if he says ‘yes’ just say “then you should give it to us for free, i’ll give you only the price of the ingredients”
i know that’s quite the extreme of it, but i think the basics is the same
what i want to say is probably that
i think the… ‘power’ that’s around a mod and payment has steps(?), some higher and some lower.
the original creators being the heights and the moddes being the second and the consumers being the lowest
witch means that the moddes should follow the creators… restrictions such as"'you must have more then this much content if you want to be payed" and copyright stuff and ect
and the consumers have to follow the modders decisions with content and payment.
and i doubt the modders will charge like… 20 dollars or more, at-least not most of them.
the consumers will decide if the mod is worth the pay, and the modder will decide the mod by default with payment and content.
i think my point is that, this argument shouldn’t even be a thing. it was theres to decide all along, and as RepeatPan said, the good content will live while the bad ones die, it’s always been that way with mods and even games themselves
Ps: btw this is all my personal opinions, if you think this argument is worth it, well, i have nothing against you
The issues of capitalism are probably beyond the scope of this particular topic…
I could definitely see myself paying for mods. I understand the amount of work that goes into them, and I feel that, if you make something, you deserve a chance to profit from it. Pretty simple.
I think that Valve handled it extremely poorly, and it blew up in their faces to everyone’s detriment. Modders lost a new avenue to explore, and Valve lost a chance to help make their platform THE destination for PC gaming. (Arguably, it still is, but that is neither here nor there)
I get a lot of the arguments that people have about cuts, and I feel those are really the only legitimate ones to say paid mods are bad. The whole ‘love of the game’ thing is rather silly, as is the ‘get a developer job’. They just really don’t make sense.
If it had been discussed beforehand, and if there wasn’t such a massive proportion of the profits going into Valve and Bethesda’s pockets, I would not have any real feelings about the subject. Maybe Radiant could make it work, but they shouldn’t poke that bear with a ten-foot pole til the game is 100% done.
@RepeatPan My issues are not with spending money! I have no issue buying stuff in games (guilty of spending to much in games!) The only issue i have is most mods dont add enough content to justify spending money on it! (yes some mods add alot and i guess i would pay something to them)
I just cant see it working out! Just like on steam there are to many legal issues that i dont see radiant wanting to deal with!
But i guess its all up to radiant in the end and we will have to see!
The market would work that out fairly quickly. Releasing horse armor for 5 bucks probably wouldn’t fly, but 25 cents? Or as a large package of weapon and armor mods?
One of the reactions people had was that all mods would suddenly charge, when that obviously would not be the case.
(I say that, then I remember the cost of really generic item skins on the DotA 2 market and I cringed a little inside)
I stand by this “completely uneducated statement”. I truly believe Valve has enough money to cover these costs, they just choose not to budget it correctly. Instead of having a lot of money go towards the executives salaries, they could be using the money for upkeep/maintenance. But no, people are far to greedy to give up money in there salaries that they do not deserve, instead they milk there users and community mod makers. I hope your not too naive to see that.
I would approach this issue from the other side – not from Valve’s and Beth’s, but from the mod makers’. I think it’s enough to say that getting 25% of what you actually earn is too little, especially considering that the mod itself will most likely not cost very much to start with. Valve can figure out how much to cut on their own, so long as it’s not suffocating the mod makers.
I will say, however, that this sort of pricing is more or less standard in content distribution networks. My father creates vector images for stock photo websites, and he gets anywhere from 10% to 70% of what his images actually earn. I’ve recently made an online store for him so that he can both sell his images cheaper and get more compensation in return; both his customers and he end up better off than if he were selling it through stock websites. Of course, this would be problematic in the context of game mods, as it screws the game company (Radiant in this case) out of their cut. Of course, another question is whether Radiant will even insist on taking a cut…
I think these questions should be asked early in the game’s development cycle, so that we don’t end up with a Steam-level of disaster 3 years down the road.
It’s a very simple functional mod. If you have no idea of modding, it’s probably a lot like “It adds a button and a new tool, so what?” to you, so let’s roll with that. What do you put its value at?
Personally, if I was to sell Remplace, I would do it for probably a dollar, maybe up to three dollars per license. I think that, albeit it’s a small mod that has “only” taken two afternoons to create, it adds something to the game. It makes a player’s life much easier by dealing with the whole furniture replacement business. I think that’s worth a dollar or two, given the minutes (or hours) you will save by using it.
What’s it worth to you, though? You may say that such functionality should be included in the base game and therefore, it should be free. By that logic, and with little to no limits to what should be included in the base game, you could argue that every mod ought to be free. Let’s not take that road, because it’s leading straight to fundamentalist road where a discussion isn’t really possible anymore.
You may agree with my price and there’s the perfect match, we have a mutual beneficial transaction. You give me money, I give you functionality. In this case, we could even argue that it’s less about buying something than buying a service. The same way you’re not really buying a cinema ticket, but rather the permission to occupy a seat for two hours and access to overpriced snacks.
You may disagree with my price, either because it’s too high or rarely because it’s too low. If you think it’s too low, you value it higher than I do. The usual thing, I would say, to do is just gift it to your friends too, or do some PR - helping indirectly.
If you disagree with the price because it’s too high, however, we have a little issue. Because as I’ve said, everyone values stuff different, it’s ultimately the creator’s right to choose what “value” it has. You’re not going to a supermarket and then negotiate with Nestlé because you think your Nesquik was way too pricey. I mean, nobody prevents you from doing that, but nobody will take you serious either. In the end, it’s the creator’s right to set the price and the customer’s right to refuse the service/product if there’s any sort of disagreement.
If you don’t want to pay for it, you don’t get access to it. That’s how the world works, and probably will continue to do so for a very, very long time.
Yes, sure, Valve has all that fancy executive salary thing. I suppose you also want them to give you every second game for free because they can afford it and after all, nobody needs to pay the content creators. Or do they?
Of all the publisher evils that are out there, I seriously believe that Valve, even with their recent mishaps, is still far from being the worst and probably around the best. But I’m sure you can ignore the statements from several independent developers that are claiming that. I bet they’re bought by Valve, too. Probably with hat money. Those bastards.
One thing that did make this experiment as clear as day is that every party involved is just as greedy as hell.
Bethesda, 45% cut without even policing it, where I bet that they made more money from people buying the game because of modding than the construction kit did cost to make (which they even used themselves to make the game in the first place).
Modders asking several euro’s for a sword.
‘Consumers’ who don’t want to pay for content because it must be free. Or add a donation button (which is basicly the same. > 90 % of the people don’t even bother to give a ‘like’, so I am sure they won’t bother to donate ever. Nexus had the same problem how to get people to endorse mods.
It is a bit like having addblock on youtube for example. Even free is not cheap enough.
What most people don’t realize is that free mods need ‘payment’ too. Mods without likes or comments will die out very quickly. The modder just gets "busy with RL"
Translated to money I would say for me:
downloading mod: $0.01
like mod: $0.05
leaving comment: $1,00
actively helping the mod $10,00
Ok so here is another issue. I pay money for a mod, What if they stop updates for it once it no longer works with newer versions of the game? Then im screwed out of the money i spent… Unless they are obligated to continue to update or give full refunds if they dont update. Than I dont see it working out.
Tough luck, the same happens with games. EA shuts down servers three years after the game has been released, disabling your multiplayer or even killing the complete game. Do you have any right to complain? Of course not. If you upgrade your OS and your games don’t work anymore, you can’t complain to the publisher anyway.
Mods would have some sort of “minimum requirement”, which could be “Version X”. If you try to use it with another version, well, you’re screwed. A brilliant example of how to deal with this is Euro Truck Simulator 2: They’ve got Betas for all major versions. So if I have a mod that requires a version from three years ago, I can switch to that version easily and play with said mod.
Not possible, neither legally nor morally. Worst case example: Your modder dies. Who do you suggest fixes the mod? The heirs? In any case, it’s not going to work because of the following example:
Three months after you’ve purchased Neon Colored Ducks!!! [XMAS VERSION], you decide that it was actually wasted money. You claim a refund and, wrongly or not, state that it’s incompatible with the game.
Who’s going to make sure that it is incompatible with the game? Valve’s latest approach has shown little to zero policing over content; you can’t expect them to check thousands of mods with every game update in case one breaks.
It’s opening doors for all kind of abuse. You get tired of a mod? Refund it. You want to play with another mod but that one isn’t compatible with this one? You refund the first one, because it’s a nuisance anyway. There’s another mod that’s cheaper and does the same? You refund the more expensive one.
Where can you refund anything digitally delivered these days? You can’t refund games on Steam, nor any of the “big” platforms, for obvious reasons: You buy it, you don’t test drive it with a deposit.
Valve’s 24h refund policy was a step in the right direction, but it maybe should be expanded. Within 24 hours, you can refund without any reason at all. Within a few months (let’s say 3), you can refund the game if there has been a game update and said mod has been confirmed, by the developer, Valve, or the community (appointed members by the developer) as “broken”.
In any case, refunding money is complicated. Sure, you can just add money on the Steam wallet of the purchaser, but what about the developer? While money to the game developer can probably be withheld with sales, it’s thinkable that somebody could be thousands in the red because there are no other mods being sold by said person. What do you do in this case?
An interesting question has popped into my head regarding a mod store setup. If a modder puts up a mod for sale, and the developer decides to incorporate the same thing into their game, what happens? Is the modder just out of luck? Is the dev infringing on their mod and required to “buy them out”? Will there be lawyers and bailiffs and lawsuits? Oh my…
It’s all about ‘Allowing’ Payed Mod’s. It can’t happen if the Dev team doesn’t want it to until they Officially state it. Well it can happen but those mods before the ‘Allowed Paid Mods’ is in effect will be tossed into “Your out of Luck!”, category. Any Mod’s that are added After the Dev’s officially allow ‘Paid Mod’s’ are pretty much free game. Just with that action (Allowing Paid Mod’s) the Dev’s pretty much are saying they are no longer gonna add additional content for the Game anymore.
If the Dev’s do copy a Mod After allowing Paid mod’s officially, then it can be a fight (only against the Dev’s this time).
Probably won’t happen. If we’re talking about a feature, the mod author is out of luck. You can’t copyright an idea. If I was to create an engineer mod and Radiant added an engineer, there’s nothing I could do.
If I was doing something completely different however, with other visuals and names and all that, and they decided to copy that, then I would maybe have more chances to fight it. But that won’t happen. There’s no scenario on top of my head where I could create something so unique as a mod that it would be protected in some way.
Of course, it’s possible that a developer states that whatever you do with their game, you grant them a license yada yada that allows them to distribute and sell the mod without reimbursement. That way, you could sell them, but ultimately have little control over what the developers want to do with it. So they could try to pull malicious or questionable mods from the internet/community, or integrate mods into the base game without asking.