I would love to have the option to donate to a mod creator, but paid mods are a horrible idea for a hundred different reasons. Luckily I think that fiasco on Steam taught Bethesda to steer clear.

Disagree slightly with he first point. Look at the Sims Community. But paid mods can ruin SOME communities. I think it would this one, due to mods having been free for so long.

Agree on the second point though.

This is the only way most players would pay for a mod. And the creator should get a fair percentage of the money charged for it.

Beth should talk to modders of popular mods and bring out an official expansion based on them or groups of mods, as they could group mods up to form an expansion pack sized product. (after they bug fix it).

And if the season pass included these officially released mods, I see season passes giving far more value.
And becoming far more popular.

It also seems to me the ps4 and Xbox one mods are going to have to be more closely monitored than PC mods ever are, so an official system for releasing of mods approved by Beth along side private mods, for all systems is not a massive stretch of the imagination, and if a private mod gets used for an approved mod the designer should get some money if they so wish, (if the official mod is not free). if that encourages more and better mods its win win for us all.

But it would be great if they put official mods, under the umbrella of the season pass holders......

With Beth controlling all mods that may attract a small fee this eliminates the small change to existing mods problems, That others have pointed out.
so private mods are all free, but if you want an official mod version it may carry a small fee that may also filter down to the mod creator.( I can see Beth wanting some cash for bug fixing mods if nothing else)
And it should be transparent what money the mods original creator is getting if any......

over the years of playing Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV, i have never paid for mod, but yeah i have donate to some that are super good. So i agree about donations, but no full paid, since i have at least download A LOT of mod that arent worth 1cent

Hey, if some people put in a lot of work into their mods and they would like to be compensated for their work then I don't see what the harm is. If you don't like it, find another mod. Though I do think it should work like a donation system so that people can give you money if 'they' want to, rather than a paywall to even get access to it.

I want mods I can donate to if I so choose.

I do not want a paywall.

Being that I'm on console, I have no problem paying for the mods that are made available there as long as they are priced fairly, and, more importantly, curated and approved by Bethesda. I don't generally mod my games at all besides things like graphics enhancers for old games, but I would be more likely to do so if some came with a Bethesda seal of approval.

I think community created mods should be free but I wouldn't be opposed to Bethesda picking some of the cooler, most popular and lore friendly mods bug testing them and releasing them in paid a bundle. I wouldn't mind paying a little extra for the quality assurance that it's not going to glitch out and break my game, so long as a percentage of the profit goes to the modders themselves.

As said above, paid-for mods aren't going to happen for Fallout 4. This was confirmed in an interview with Todd Howard (haven't got the link to hand, but I could go hunt it down), but as an interesting topic of discussion for the potential future, these are my thoughts.

I think there ought to be another voting option; "Only If..."

As far as I'm concerned, I see no problem with paid for mods, but Only If...

1. The modder receives a more generous proportion of the price. Yes, technically they are profiting from use of Bethesda's tools (the game and the Creation kit) and so Bethesda deserve a reasonable share as compensation for their investment. I believe Bethesda were getting 40%, the industry standard for a toolset developer. However, as Bethesda would have made that investment anyway and did not make that investment in a commercially available game engine or toolset (by which I mean a game engine and toolset commercially available to developers), then 40%, while the industry standard, was way too high. The share going to the distributor are another matter - they bear cost of storage and bandwidth, those have to be paid for.
2. No paid for mod could ever contain assets from, or be dependent upon, any other mod unless that other mod was explicitly uploaded as a modders' resource for use by paid-for mods.
3. Paid for mods would have to be curated, accepted as fit for sale by the publisher (or the distributor, or whoever actually takes the payment), and the customer's rights would explicitly be the same as if they had bought any other piece of commercial software. For example, under UK law it is the duty of the retailer to offer repair, replacement or refund if software is faulty, not the developer, and that is for up to 30 days. If the distributor doesn't explicitly acknowledge the law in different territories, then paid-for mods shouldn't happen.

[edit]

Oh, yes, one of the points made during the whole paid-for mods fiasco, is that modders see practically nothing by way of donations. I think one modder who had poured months of work into a high quality mod over several years pointed out that over those years, and many hundreds or thousands of downloads, he had got maybe the price of a couple of beers in donations - or some similarly tiny sum. Donations shouldn't be held up as the right way for modders to be rewarded if it is felt modders deserve to be rewarded at all.

Paid Mods blew up in Bethesda's face even bigger than Horse Armour back in the day. And hell, Horse Armour is still for sale, even though something like it has never happened again. Paid mods were the biggest misstep by far, and I really doubt that it's going to happen again, even outside of Bethesda.

First they picked the idea and Modding tools from somewhere else, if they want being paid they could make something by themselves and not stealing genius ideas.
Second modds normally aren't compatible and cause terrible bugs, aren't compatible or aren't available in all languages game has. If we install them is because are freeware.

You can mess up your save game really hard if you mod the wrong way. One of the things im worried about with mods coming to consoles, since even though its been confirmed that it makes a hard save before the addition of any mod you can still cause a lot of damage later down the line which could result in a lot of anger and bad press for Bethesda among console gamers who haven't had experience with this stuff before.

Paid mods would make it even worse, since if one of your paid mods is incompatible with another of your paid mods then I guess you just wasted 2.50 dollarpounds.

I spend more time modding Bethesda games than playing (20 to 40 hours a week, no exaggeration). Some of my mods have made it into the game. That is the deal, we get free programs and permission to mod their game and they get to crowd source some cool ideas for their game.

Until they can show how they are going to protect my work from being copied by other persons who did nothing but COPY the work and used to make them money I absolutely do not want to see paid mods.

I do support the idea that modders should be compensated, and that being able to charge money for mods can bring more quality to the table. And I would totally pay for mods from authors I trust, like Arthmoor, spookyfx, or Chesko.

But I don't know if it's worth all the work involved in protecting authors' work (which should be the priority above all) and all of edgelords in Guy Fawkes masks putting up 100$ "bethesda svcks" mods to try and make some epic statement. Or the genuine modders that suddenly get dollar signs in their eyes and start pimping themselves. All the paid mods fiasco for Skyrim really proved was that you can't just free-market this stuff.

Can't really be done...

Only way really is to add a signature of ownership, for example when you first activate the mod and launch the game you get a scripted message "X mod, created by Y" which cannot be altered by anyone but the person who made the mod.

That way anyone using the mod would know the original creator

i like the idea of the modders choosing. look at some of thye mods for new vegas. how many are dlc sized additions or even bigger? they spent their time on that and they should be paid if they so choose. however the money should be split the oppisite way. 75% to the modder the rest to the companys. and yes the companys should get some it is their original stuff.

And who decides how much that mod is worth in $ or ￡?

What if the mod is riddled with bugs or even crashes the game? How does the "refund" work, does it come out of the mod owner's Steam bank?

Let's say the mod works but somewhere down the line you encounter an issue or just have a few questions, do you have customer service? You never know when the mod owner will get back to you if at all.

Then there's the issue of collaborative works, or mods that use free resources made by other authors. I made a mod for Oblivion that adds a few new armor sets - one of them was cut content that existed in the game files already, and the rest were modders' resources I found that gave any mod author permission to use them freely. Now, I wouldn't charge for that mod, or really any mod I can actually make with my limited abilities, but someone might think to.

Example:

You create a mod that costs ￡1, you buy it straight away.

But THEN you learn that the mod will NOT work correctly in game (but can still be active) without ANOTHER mod, but this other mod costs ￡20 and often causes COD.

And it can go on AND ON.

Let's face it, any software can be plagiarised, and there's a reason that there's recourse to law to seek damages - because there's no way of guaranteeing protection. Sometimes plagiarism can only be detected after the fact.

However... if paid-for mods were a closed ecosystem, recognised as paid-for by the game loader, and could only be made dependent on other mods within that closed ecosystem which had the right permissions, then I think it could work. If I had created an asset that I was happy for others to use however, then I'd be happy to upload that as a paid-for asset, perhaps to receive a very modest fee per use. Of course that fee would have to be automatically added to the price of any mod which used it by the store.

Um... you mean modders who make high quality mods that mod users will enjoy, and who market them accordingly? Like, you know, anybody who creates software for sale in a professional manner? Sorry, I'm just not seeing where this 'pimping' idea comes from.

There's nothing wrong with making something that's going to be popular - especially if you're going to be asking for money in return; it had better be something people want!

That's going to depend on consumer law in the different territories where the mod is sold. But, as I pointed out in my earlier post, it had better be clear who's actually selling the mod (The mod author? The owner of the site where it's downloaded from?) because in some territories such as the UK it's the retailer who's responsible for giving refunds or a fix if a product you buy is faulty.

And be in no doubt - paid for mods would be a commercial product for sale, just like a game, an e-book or a downloaded/streamed movie.

The way that I look at it is that mods for some modders is a way to increase their portfolio for getting their dream job. Team Fortress originally started as a mod for Quake and the creators for TF received jobs at Valve for their work on their mod. Modders aren't always that lucky, but a really good mod always looks good on a resume for the video game industry.

Which were those, if you don't mind me asking?

No.

If I find a modder who makes excellent stuff (and isn't that just so subjective and nebulous?) and isn't a Nexus elitist (they exist and I'm talking about the people who refuse to use anything but the Nexus just because "principals") then I would consider donating through something like Patreon.

What I mod is property of Bethesda the moment I release it to the public.

I have always understood that. I also understand that what I mod is probably pretty boring and insignificant to the general public.

However.

I have not, I did not, and I will not..PAY any modder for doing what I did for years..

No matter how large.

Just like no one is forcing you to download any mod.

No one is forcing anyone else to create a mod.

I can just as easily mod on the pc to allow myself to create the mods I want for ME alone

without releasing..To play on the playstation because that is what I prefer these days..

I am sure my Acer Predator is fine for running FO:4.

I won't ever pay..

One word:

Testing

Yah no. It's like paying for a used car part that you're unsure if or how long it will work. And the modders have no incentive to keep things working through updates.

It was quite the garbage idea from a developer standpoint.

As long as they are included in the season pass...