For folks who didn't remember the fiasco few months ago before Fallout 4 E3 showcase. Bethesda/Zenimax and Valve though it was great idea to make money of mods on Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Giving 75% profit to Bethesda/Zenimax & Valve and leave 25% profit to the modders. The community was divided into different sides. Some liked it and some didn't liked it at all.

It felt impassive greedy to see Bethesda/Zenimax made this agreement with Valve. Well Valve have done this many times, most notable be the Half-Life mod "Counter-Strike 1.6" and that Team Fortress 2 | Dota 2 | CSGO have cosmetic items which already exist on the person's harddisk.

Anyway back to the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim fiasco, the problem was that any lazy indecorous person who wanted make a quick buck could just copy paste mod from original modder without permission. Some in the community had alternative suggestion to give the modders 100% profit which they called "donation button". Same problem there, anyone could just bundle mods together and add a donation button cause nobody knows if it's legit or not. And the last problem was what happen if someone copy paste content from Nintendo? lawsuit hell.

I understand these companies Bethesda/Zenimax and Valve have capitalist root and knows that the customers yell "HYPE, shut and take my money". But it's not the companies or the customers who should decide if mod community should put price tags on mods. It's up to the modders themselves to decide if they want share their creation for free or get paid for what they do.

Will be interesting to see if Bethesda/Zenimax thinks paid mod is a great idea for Fallout 4. And I also would like to hear your opinions as well.

I view modding as something that should just be free for everyone to enjoy, it's been that way since the earliest days of modding maps into Doom and Wolfenstein.

This may not end well....

*begins building flame-proof shelter*

I'm sorry, but I would never pay for any content that has not been tested by the parent company. In this case it's Bethesda.

With websites like the nexus paid mods on steam would be pointless unless they built fo4's modding system around the steam workshop which I very much doubt. Only time I would pay for a mod would be if a game dev made it and it would have to be good.

Well since Todd already mentioned mods be free on consoles it be kinda silly to make them pay for anywhere else, so its kinda indirectly confirmed there be no paid mods for Fallout 4

You just know it's coming. Mods and modders are beautiful, unexploited lands and you can imagine how the publisher need to spread their 'enlightenment' to the savages. Plus money like woah.

as someone has already said, Todd Howard has already said they wont be doing paid mods.

Yeah, I think they tried to float that boat and it went down like a led zeppelin.

The modding community is based on mods being free and with the amount of mods out there, I would never pay for one. They are mostly full of bugs, can't play with other mods or crash your game in some way. It would be a stretch to charge for something like that.

If a modder makes a particularly amazing mod, sell it to Beth and have it released as official DLC. I can see this happening, a lot a smaller DLC, created by modders, tested and published by Beth.

That would certainly make me want to buy the Season Pass =)

Forever Free

I don't mind paying someone for their hard work. Hard work should be free only by the choice of the modder.

On one hand I am sure modders would love to get something more than a thank you for their work, but on the other hand it is open to exploitation just as we saw back when Skyrim tried this. Some people are going to steal mods, never bugfix or update when Bethesda patches, and don't get me started on advertisemant Midas Magic tried to pull with the free version of their mod.

It was never a forced thing anyways.

You still had the Nexus, you still had other sites. it was purely optional. If a modder wanted to put their mod up on Steam only and charge for it, it was their fault if nobody wanted it anymore and used other mods. Plus give the community some credit, somebody copy/pasting a popular mod would get caught out very quickly.

Donations were always the better option anyway.

However, there are still idiots on Workshop posting stupid text images declaring war against paid mods and taking up half the comments box on mod pages. And when you check their profile, they don't even have Skyrim.

Could not hit that "no" button hard or fast enough.

LOL. Well said and agreed.

Free or not at all, for me.

No I don't want to see paid mods ever again. So I voted no.

Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2 are not even the same types of mods that are sold like the way VALVe allowed mods for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to be sold on the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Steam Workshop.

Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, etc are total conversion mods.

*takes 5 seconds to change 1 game setting*

*uploads to Steam*

"Ok... that will be $5 please, 90% of that goes to Valve by the way"

Paid modding won't return, and even if by dumb luck it does then it will just burn brighter and hotter in the rekindled flames of that led zeppelin Phoss mentioned earlier

"Here's a re-skin of a sword that's already in game. That'll be 99 cents."

"Here's a weapons pack. That'll be 2$"

God, that whole thing was a fiasco on hot toast...

I wouldnt pay for any mod DLC not produced and vetted by Bethesda, you might as well start trying to charge me to buy (in real coin) paints for my cars on Forza - if its user generated content it should be free.

"Here's a new low-res decal for your power armor that took 10 mins to create...."

"Your soul please"

Look no matter which side your side your on you can agree that what they did kind of hurt the modding community in a bad way. It pitted modders against each other and as a result we lost a few good modders from the community. I would even argue that their decision WILL have reasonating impact in the new modding community in fallout.

They handled it poorly and as a result may have done permanent damage to their "golden goose". They were never in it to help modders, they were in it to get paid more than they already were with major sales 4 years after the game released. It was a greedy move and they lost out.

Im all for donating and helping our mod community, but that wasnt it.

EDIT id also like to note that I really cant pay even 1 dollar per mod I download, I must have used around 300 mods in skyrim(not all at once) and I cant just throw around 300 dollars. Infact some mods werent even 1 dollar they where more.

How many of those came from the workshop though?

As I pointed out, they weren't suddenly going to force Nexus and other mod sites to shut down nor was every mod on the workshop going to be paid.

Note: I do think it's a bad idea and was handled badly, But I also feel there were some people who reacted well out of proportion. Many of whom had never made a mod in their life and just wanted to enjoy the work of others and wouldn't even entertain the idea that some mod makers might like a little compensation for their hard work even if it had been handled well.

edit: I've even seen some people complaining about the (Completely optional) donation on Nexus. One perosn even said it was disgusting that a modder should expect something for providing mods.

Most mods for the pc is ben free and it should remain free for consoles too, but if Microsoft & Sony have control over it...and we no both companys are greedy that might change...micromanage us for every penny we have?

Introducing charges into a community will only lead to it's destruction.

Money does not bring out the best in people.