[Jessica Thomson]

Bethesda's getting something like 40% of the profits, I'm sure he doesn't mind.

[Justin Bywater]

That was beautifully said

[Allison C]

I have been reading reactions to this news almost nonstop since I got home from work. It's late here now and I am tired and sad. But before I head to bed I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of disappointment, for what little that's worth. I am hoping when I wake up tomorrow this idea will have been killed and this will just be an ugly footnote in modding history.

But I doubt it.

[~Sylvia~]

Probably the last mods you'd ever see go "pay to use". They aren't even allowed on Steam currently.

[Lawrence Armijo]

Um, that's exactly what they want you to do. What they did today is the beginning of an experiment. If it's successful, the free option will disappear and then the nexus will be competition, which will need to go away.

How would the Xbox One be today if everyone waited to see how it ended up instead of causing an uproar about it when all that BS was announced?

[Luis Reyma]

Bethesda learn this. Every institution can only grow as it gains more supporters. Market economy requires this to be working. I think you and Valve clearly underestimate how huge the TES modding community is. Unless you changing your whole attitude towards modding, you will not survive this struggle. I'm entirely sure there's a huge amount of people turning their backs on you now. Guess why the big three game developers completely disallowed modding for their products?

I forsee...modding in Beth game will be unprofessional DLC selling in future or completely removed...we see this for other games all over the place. You've outright attacked what made your products big in the first place. I never believed you would let yourself down to something like this. The Nexus nowadays is the motor for still attracting more people to your products, and you simply do not respect the amount of work that Robin has put into this...disgrace! Dumb decissions are dumb. You've reached the peek, now prepare to climb down the mountain...

[John N]

The irony behind all this is that placing MODs behind a paywall will push people to resort to hacks and cracks to regain their 'freedom', even those who would be perfectly willing to pay for the software and maybe they would also be open to the idea of spontaneous donations to the most talented modders.

[Jeffrey Lawson]

He's probably scoping out the Ferrari dealerships getting ready to spend his share of all that sweet modding cash soon to be pouring in . Has Todd Howard ever posted on these forums? I've only seen and heard him on Youtube videos.

[Amanda Furtado]

The worst part of this is that this is Valve and Bethesda. Two of the best publishers/devs in the industry, now taking the low road. Talk about a great team-up for the most awful reasons.

[Kirsty Wood]

An example which hopefully won't evolve into a standard for the rest of the industry when it comes to user generated content.

[Peter P Canning]

Greetings everyone - it has been a long while since I have been on the forums. However it seems like a good day to make an appearance. Everyone is asking for some "official word" from the SKSE team regarding paid mods which use SKSE. We've gotten a ton of email asking for everything from a clarification on the use of SKSE in paid mods to making a change in our license to ban any monetization of mods using SKSE. Lots of folks are angry. Lots of folks are concerned. Everyone feels that this will be a big change in the modding community.

So where do things stand with SKSE? I am going to divide this into two sections: the official stance of the Script Extender team, and then some of my own thoughts.

Officially

1. SKSE (and all of our other Script Extenders) will remain FREE to use for everyone. We will not charge anyone for it. Ever.
2. Creators of mods which depend upon SKSE must make their own choices regarding whether to ask for payment for their mods.
3. We will not receive any partial payment from those sales.
4. Reasons for #2 and #3: See #1.

This is an important point for us. We built the Script Extenders to allow modders to do things that couldn't otherwise be done. We want more mods to do more cool things. We want individuals and groups to be able to build on our functionality. Folks are free to use SKSE to build their mods. What they do with those mods and how they distribute them is up to them. The mod creators will need to deal with the fallout (good and/or bad) from those decisions.

We are working with Valve to get a version of SKSE into the workshop. However it will always be available at our site: http://skse.silverlock.org. We think that by providing SKSE through the workshop we may be able to ease some concerns people have about the software (which has always been an issue) and we can provide an easy way for mods in the Workshop to list us as a dependency. It is early in the process to make this happen, and it may not work, but we are going to give it a try.

Personal Thoughts

I've been part of the Bethesda Modding community since I helped ianpatt kick off the Obilivion Script Extender about nine years ago. I've put thousands of hours into OBSE, FOSE, NVSE and SKSE. ianpatt, scruggsywuggsytheferret and many others have put in thousands of hours more. We've never sought any sort of compensation for that work. Our "payback" was in seeing the fabulous mods that people built on top of our extensions and knowing that we've helped make the modding community even better.

I've never asked for donations to help pay for the servers which host silverlock.org - even from the other team members. They serve a tremendous amount of traffic (SKSE alone averages nearly 6GB of downloads daily) but my hosting service doesn't charge me any extra for it. I would be paying for the sites whether the Script Extenders existed or not, so I never saw the point of asking for donations.

Ian and I also work for software firms with connections to the gaming industry (his much more directly than mine). We simply can't take any money for the Script Extenders, even if we wanted to. Which we don't.

But I understand others wanting some sort of compensation for their involvement making mods. There are expenses and time is always a factor. It is not unreasonable. Back when this all started there was no option - mods were forbidden to make any money. It was only a couple of years ago that folks were even allowed to start taking donations. Today all of that changed again. I am not sure what this will do to our community, frankly. I sincerely hope that everyone will continue to contribute to the community and will continue to support the game - and future games in the series.

My personal preference is that all the mods remain free for everyone to use. Folks who want to contribute to a modder can donate or purchase a mod through the Workshop. I would hate to have all of the great mods go behind a paywall. Some mods themselves are probably worth some money. The large quests and major overhauls over the years have brought so much to the game that giving back to their creators would be a good thing. But I would prefer it wasn't forced on anyone.

Final Thoughts

I know this is not the "valiant stand" that some folks have been clamoring for us to take. They want us to forbid the use of SKSE in any paid mods in the hopes that none of the great mods would ever make it to the paid Workshop. Honestly even if we were inclined to take that approach, I don't think it would work. The Script Extenders themselves are on a fairly wobbly legal footing given what we have to do to make things work. Bethesda has always "looked the other way" as far as that is concerned. Trying to prevent paid mods from happening would be more likely to get the Script Extenders banned than successfully preventing paid mods.

I think that the modding community can continue to be a vibrant place. I expect many of the old guard of modders to continue working (as much as they are) and to provide their mods for free as they have always done. And perhaps - just perhaps, the prospect of some reward for their hard work will allow some new amazing mods to be created for this or future games.

In any case, we're going to continue doing what we do and enable modders to do more. I expect that when the next game comes along (whether TES VI or Fallout 4) we'll be back trying to extend the scripting functionality for modders.

[vanuza]

Betting on a good public image is a perfectly valid marketing tactic, especially when you're the underdog.

Apple built an empire out of this and, company wise, they're probably doing much worse things than everyone's favorite public enemy, Microsoft.

[Bones47]

1. I believe TOS/TOUs are usually legally binding when legitimate. EULA's seem to have a very vague legal history. And in any case I don't know if any mod author is willing or able to go toe to toe with Beth in a court of law.

2. That probably depends. Are those meshes & textures modified from Bethesda sources originally? In any case, The Subscriber Agreement on Steam has verbiage which puts the onerous on the uploader to take full responsibility should they upload content which they do not have full license to. Again, would probably depend on the court whether it would hold up, but it's all taken care of and would seem to make the uploaders like Chesko far easier targets in any case.

[Sammi Jones]

a relevant song to this situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQbwP51GYQ

hope it will calm down the tension

[Alina loves Alexandra]

Thank you to the whole team for all the hard work they've done and will continue to do! Regarding your team's stance on the issue a wise choice based on the circumstances.

[BethanyRhain]

I can (maybe) get behind the idea of a modder or team creating something for this purpose. But to now charge money for a previously released mod that the community freely helped develop with suggestions, bug tracking etc, is a little low for my taste.

Bit I still believe modding should be free and community driven.

I suppose Bethesda as a business wanted to capitalise on such a lucrative opportunity.

[Lance Vannortwick]

Sorry if it's been answered already somewhere on the internet, but I do have a simple question: Chesko said he would release his mods for free after some time (30 days or something).

That's fine with me, but is it really allowed by the Workshop rules ?

Seems kinda strange to me, considering the only purpose of this pay-for-mods business is for Beth and Steam to milk as much money as they can.

[Peter lopez]

How would that even work? Mods for the Bethesda games are generally just game data, a bunch of models, textures and whatnot. No executable to put DRM in.

The only DRM will be that it requires Steam, which is something Skyrim exe been doing since the 1.2 patch over 3 years ago.

[JUan Martinez]

The list of "under review" paid mods: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=72850&searchtext=&childpublishedfileid=0&browsesort=forsale_pendingapproval§ion=readytouseitems&requiredflags%5B0%5D=paiditems&browsefilter=forsale_pendingapproval&p=1

[Saul C]

I guess we can have a silent consensus to boycott, ignore and condemn this steam mod store thing or whatever it is. Its here now so the real question is what are we going to do about it?

I can't afford to spend money on mods as if they are microtransactions in an MMORPG. Some of us have a full 255 mods in our load orders image what that would cost if only a dollar per mod or plugin. If gamesas is successful with this then expect to see other companies copy this like when Bank of America started those fees. I considering taking up other hobbies this is like betrayal a major let down.

[Big Homie]

I was joking about that! Skyrim mod DRM would be impossible to enforce using Steam since you can play offline and the mods are just a bunch of assets you can copy and paste into your data directory.

However, I see this whole thing as an experiment by Beth/Valve to see if players and modders buy into the whole paid mod concept(literally!). I wouldn't be surprised if future Fallout/TES games include a new clause in their EULA restricting mod availability to the Steam workshop. They really need to up the monetary share modders would receive though if they expect this to succeed. 25% is just pathetic and it reeks of a quick money grab.

[An Lor]

My favorites:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=430858236&searchtext=

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=430897627&searchtext=

[Stacyia]

Friendly Reminder that Valve and by extension their business partner Bethesda will actually remove donation listings on free mod pages, this isn't a way for people to make money this is just a poorly veiled attempt at a money grab here's a picture for reference.

https://imgur.com/wW5j5yu

So they're not doing this to make YOU money as they are saying, they are doing it to milk the money that THEY want.

Also another reminder that 75% of the mods "Earnings" goes to both steam and Bethesda respectively, If your mod only makes under 100$ you're not even going to see any money from it.

It's cute that Bethesdas gotten so greedy that they are willing to nickle and dime their main revenue source to death, it's also cute that they'll kill their video games longevity to implement an immoral cash cow.

But no one from Bethesda/Valve will see this comment... or even care for that matter, save for the poor moderator who has to deal unfairly with this PR nightmare they've intentionally created.

[Lily Something]

So what % do you suggest? Valve take 30% for everything on Steam, that won't change. So 70% is for Bethesda and the modder, and I suppose could be adjusted somehow. 35% for each?

If a mod use assets of another mod, it's kinda bad practise, no? Unless the modder of the other mod is ok with it and get a % or something?

The relationship between the modder and the Bethesda is really no different. A mod use a ton of assets from Skyrim that Bethesda made, so it makes sense that Bethesda get a slice of it too.

[Johanna Van Drunick]

TLDR: Bunch of people who don't want to pay at all complaining that now it's not free cloaking it in criticisms in the monetizing scheme

No one is forcing you to buy them. Go make the mods yourself, calculate the time, and then go tell me they should be free.