[dell]

Sophistry. And you know it. You found the bug in normal operation of the game. You aren't being paid to do so. The only way you could make this an argument is you want to say that you make it a hobby to find bugs in other people's work, and then my response will be the more business reaction of "That's cool, I'll give you credit. You aren't getting money."

ETA: Unless I needed QA testers. Then I think I'd give serious thought into hiring you.

[des lynam]

Mine are hidden, but... I delete all My mods after a few weeks/months (I'm one of 'those' people...); and as my thread in the Mods section revealed, I lost my own mod... So yeah, not related, haha (So that's 3 off the list )

@Sesom,

I think you're right about the quarrel/drama--my reply though would be that it's always been there to some degree, this will just make it more pronounced as people get more bitter about it. I've been accused of 'stealing' people's ideas before, and I've seen people 'steal' mine more than once; in the end, it's just people having the same idea and going with it, I find--heck, I once released a Mod within about an hour of someone else releasing the same thing, haha! This will be one of those 'changes' that comes from introducing money: people will be more suspicious, and more ready to pounce on people who are too similar :/ And then there's no way to really 'prove' someone did not intentionally copy your idea... :/

[Josh Sabatini]

Wow. That's just as annoying as the dude who put up adds in his free mod telling people to buy his paid update.

Having a donate button=/=asking for donations. Those things haven't changed on Nexus. Donating is indeed superior for many reasons. But pay-for mods are superior for one reason: 25% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Until that nothing from donations becomes something, that won't change.

If people are on such fixed incomes, then why are they spending them on video games? I mean everyone can do what they want wit their own money, but I certainly can't buy every luxury item I want. Video games are a luxury item. Mods are...well I don't even know how to label them, but you could throw them under the video game umbrella. Talking of how a couple paid for mods would deprive poor people is a very silly one. I get there is a minority here with these issues, but on Skyrim modding forums a lot of people brag about their $2000 PCs. It's a little like golfers complaining that drink prices are too high at the country club. We are talking about video games, these are luxury items, not basic living conditions and human rights here.

This was my post. I'm glad you found your comments appreciative. I find mine the same way too. That doesn't mean everyone has to. I made my game because I wanted it to be better yes. But I didn't have to share it. Neither did your or anyone else. There's always ego in creating something, even something as tiny as a mod. I don't assume to speak for why every mod author got into the game. Personally, I don't care why. I just don't understand why we have to tell authors "you can only do this for the love of modding. If not, get lost", when there are so many other reasons to do so.

Also please don't call me bro.

I don't. Maybe some do. Why should you or I be allowed to stop them?

I don't even know what any of this has to do with my post. ANd since you're quoting something from forever ago, I don't remember the context of what I was replying to.

I've thought about it for a second. Clearly you haven't. The world is not black and white. Neither is this issue. Pretending it is is plain ignorance or intentional distortion.

No. Thankfully that scenario is not the only option like you're pretending. You're continuing to do the opposite of what I said is the truth.

Why? Why do you have to do any of those things? Why can't you make your mod, but a $.99 price tag on it, put it on Steam and call it a day and see what happens? You don't have to market it. You don't have to worry about DMCA because you made it. You have to worry about piracy, but you always had to worry about that. People pirated mods before there was money in it. You have to worry about royalties? Uh, isn't that the point of selling it? So that you get royalties? How is that a negative.

And yeah, I've sifted through Nexus. There are thousands upon thousands of crappy mods already. I don't know the exact ratio, but I don't expect it to change much because of paid mods. And you know what? You can bet mod reviewers will be there to do that sifting for people who can't be bothered.

Please don't put words in my mouth. You are the fifth person to have done so in the last 12 hours on this site in these threads. My post you quoted clearly says "IF I considered endorsemants as appreciation", right at the very top. What is appreciation for modders though in your eyes? How are they appreciated by the community for all their time and hard work?

As for having more mods, even if most of them are bad? Who cares? The cream usually rises to the top. It'd be great to see this community grow, because the last few days it has been shrinking.

I'm glad you think your post is important, but try and address what I actually said instead of spouting of incendiary nonsense.

[M!KkI]

I just posted this on Nexus but I think it should be here as well. Please forgive the long post but if you bear with it I believe you will find it worth your time reading.

Seeing as more and more people appear to be highlighting the 25% split that Modder’s, from here on called 'Unofficial Content Developers' (UCD's), are getting as the single biggest problem with this whole debacle I feel it needs to be pointed out once again that 25% is on the extreme high side of what any actual original game Development team would get paid. Steam has essentially since it's inception and certainly since it's popularisation always taken a 30% cut as the Distributer. Publishers of any reasonable size have always taken the larger cut of what remains after the Distributer got theirs. Developers have always and most likely will always get the shortest possible end of the stick even more so when the Developer staff is in house to the Publisher. It is not fair; It is not right; it is, however, how it is and always has been and the direct result of and fundamental principal of the capitalist system whose altar all those pro paid Modder’s are worshipping at.

Many people seem to be confusing the difference between an App store like Apple's 'iCrap' or whatever *censored* it's called and the 75% they give and an Add On store like Steam Workshop. Apple only take 25% because they are acting as Distributer and Distributer alone, that most Developers choose to act as both Publisher and Developer thereby taking home the entire remaining 75% is because those Developer are not under any obligation to an existing Publisher. An Add On store is a completely different beast, it is entirely liable to the initial Publisher of whatever it is Adding On to. In this case that Publisher is, of course, choosing to take the lion’s share which they feel entitled to given that without their investment there wouldn't be anything to Add On to in the first place. Even so they are still leaving a higher than industry standard 25% for the Developer (in this case Unofficial Content Developer).

Again I say by all means lament the injustice of it, not for the sake of Modder’s but for the sake of the actual original game Developers who did all the work in creating the game and got far far less than 25% but please do not for a second be so ignorant as to forget those actual Developers. It is certainly not impossible that should everyone cry loud enough about this 25% it may, in the case of the Steam workshop, be increased; but given the magnitude of threat such an outcome would pose to the Publisher, and the entire structure of the industry they have worked so hard to manipulate into being, it is extremely unlikely.

So assuming this Distribution of Monies does not change let's break it down in a more comprehensive manner that I have yet seen posted anywhere and see where it ends up.

There seems to be a significant amount of misinformation and miscomprehension about this distribution so I will first list the FACTS as they have been outlined by STEAM.

30% goes to 'Steam' as the Distributor.
Should an 'Unofficial Content Developer' (UCD) elect to do so 16.65% of Steam's share can be paid to a so called 'Service Provider' elected from a Steam approved list of such. In the case of multiple chosen 'Service Providers' the 16.65% of Steam's share would be divided equally amongst them.

45% goes to 'Bethesda' as the Publisher.
An undisclosed amount of the Publisher's share, though almost certainly 0%, goes to the 'Original Development Team'.

25% goes to the 'Unofficial Content Developer' (UCD) as the Developer.
A variable amount up to 30% of UCD's share goes to the 'Internal Revenue Service' of the 'United States Federal Government' as Taxation.

Or to put it in brief...

$1.00 Listed Price
$0.25 Steam
$0.05 Service Provider
$0.45 Bethesda
$0.17 Unofficial Content Developer
$0.08 United States of America Internal Revenue Service.

Now that we have the FACTS and whilst we have these figures in front of us we could have a little fun with them and see just what would be needed for a UCD to earn minimum wage selling a mod for the rather high price of $1.00 USD. In the United States of America the minimum hourly wage rate is currently around $7.25 USD per hour, assuming an average full time working week of 45 hours that is an approximate wage of $325.00 USD per week. So for our hypothetical UCD this means that they would have to sustain a minimum new user purchase rate of 11 per hour up to a total of nearly 2000 new user purchases per week. This would be an absolute best case scenario, if we were to use endorsemants as a guide to what people may pay for, almost 99% of all mods currently available at the Nexus have significantly less than 2000 endorsemants the overwhelming majority of Mods are barely in the hundreds of endorsemants. In short any UCD thinking they can turn to Modding full time is delusional! Even thinking one could receive financial compensation commensurate to the amount of time put into creating a Mod is ridiculous, unless of course you were to put very little time into creating the Mod.

In fact there are only five scenarios where this scheme could be of any real financial benefit to a UCD.

Scenario 1: Make a must have mod.

This scenario has many issues not least of which is actually conceiving, implementing and popularising such a mod within a timely manner. There is also an issue of replication, as soon as any mod starts to hint at entering this sort of domain you can bet there will be a host of copycat mods just around the corner that will eat into its popularity. In other words probably not going to happen and if it did it wouldn't last for very long.

Scenario 2: Make a really quick mod.

This is what most UCD's will try and do, spend as little time and effort as possible making something that is broadly appealing. This also has a host of problems first and foremost of which is competition, everyone else will be trying to do this and the market will quickly be flooded with these kinds of mods. Secondly there is the issue of support, unless your mod is nothing more than a single basic item introduced via console command there will be conflicts and issues come up that must be addressed thereby extending the time and effort spent on the mod. Finally the mod has to be half decent or you will develop low ratings and high refunds eventually leading to little or no existing or future mod sales.

Scenario 3: Copy and undercut an existing mod.

Obviously this involves finding a popular mod and either replicating it using original material or just stealing the existing material outright and publishing it for a cheaper price than the copied mod. The success of this strategy will depend on how well the Workshops DMCA takedown system functions and how often a UCD is willing and able to change their banking details and create a new Steam account. Unfortunately we will see quite a bit of this and its occurrence will only increase as more and more mods are uploaded to the Workshop thereby providing greater camouflage through sheer volume of numbers.

Scenario 4: Have little to no financial obligations and plenty of free time.

Basically this means either being a young teen or adolescent living under guardians who pay for your every need and wanting only to earn a little extra pocket change or some similar situation. There are so many problems with this scenario that I couldn't possibly list them all but they range from lack of experience heightening the likelihood of poor quality work to complications with taxation to the ramifications of a false perception of growing independence.

Scenario 5: Live in a country with a significantly lower minimum wage and high level unemployment.

This is my favourite scenario because of the punch line at the end. Essentially if a UCD was unfortunate enough to live in a region with no available and viable employment alternatives and a cost of living where an income of around $10.00 a week may be sufficient then they could conceivably sustain gainful independent employment making reasonable quality mods in a reasonable time per mod and reasonable quantity of mods per month. An issue here is that most regions where these circumstances could be found are non-English speaking regions and that language barrier would limit both the complexity, quality and publicity of the mod not to mention any technical support. There are other problems too such as a very real limit on the longevity and replayability of the game per individual player and the hard coded limit to the number of mods that each game can be played with as well as the more obvious limit to how much each player would be willing to spend on their game. These limits essentially place a hard cap on the amount of unique mods that could ever be sold, using the number of mods on the Nexus as a guide one would expect that cap to be well under 25,000. This scenario is pretty much the only one which could actually benefit the player being the most likely to produce something that could in some small way be worth buying and here is the punch line... This word turn the Steam Workshop into an actual Sweatshop

So what exactly does an average UCD get by charging people for their Mod?
?At best a scrap of pocket change.
?The slim chance of better Mod tools in future Moddable games given the extra revenue Mods will supply to Publishers.

And what of the cost a UCD pays by charging people for their Mod?
?Vastly fewer people actually experiencing their work (and as many seem to have forgotten that is why we Modder’s started releasing our Mods in the first place).
?Those few who actually do experience their work being drastically more critical of it (and rightly so).
?Should their work be decent or popular it will be copied, stolen and or pirated.
?Should their work be poor or faulty (and this being the internet even if it isn't) they can also expect spam messages, hate messages, cyber threats and cyber attacks.
?Should their work become outdated or incompatible they will be expected to fix it (and they damn well better understand that for paid work this is an obligation not a generosity).
?They are no longer a Modder but rather a paid Unofficial Content Developer and subject to all the legal obligations of any paid service provider (nobody seems to have comprehended this not so little fact yet and really it needs a post all of its own because the ramifications are truly staggering).

What then does the player get out of UCD's charging for their Mod?
?A small chance that a handful of very good Mods could come out in the not too distant future.
?A medium chance that a reasonable number of very small but reasonably average mods could come out in the not too distant future.
?A large chance that a vast number of very small poor quality mods some of which may have quirk appeal could come out in the not too distant future.

What does the player lose out on by UCD's charging for their Mod?
?A fractured Modding community.
?A far more hostile general community.
?An infinitely more secretive community when it comes to learning how to become a Modder.
?A lack, or eventually even total absence, of compatibility Mods.
?A lack, or eventually even total absence, of unification Mods.
?A smaller number of possible Mods active per game due to the lack of compatibility and unification Mods.
?A significantly increased total cost of ownership to play a Modded game.
?A smaller number of Mods made with any real passion given the UCD's desire to optimise profit by broadening the appeal of their Mods beyond their own interests.
?A smaller number of Mods servicing any specific niches given the UCD's desire to optimise profit by broadening the appeal of their Mod beyond specific niches.
?A smaller number of Mods containing or referencing proprietary intellectual property such as a Film, Television, Novel or other series due to the illegalities of selling such a Mod.
?A flood of garbage Mods making it more and more difficult to find the few Mods that may actually be worth trying.
?A risk albeit slim one that future games designed with Mods in mind may be less than they otherwise could have been due to Publishers limiting Official Developers initial work and or long term support under the assumption that Mods will pick up the slack.

I could go on and on but really what is the point? If you have actually read this far and still don't get it I am clearly incapable of explaining in a way that you would understand.

P.S.
If I can find the strength left in my beaten down soul to go on I will try to explain tomorrow the Ramifications of Modder’s becoming Unofficial Content Provider's and therefore legally obligated service providers which is what my brief comment was actually in regards to. This would seem to be especially important given that even Steam's lawyers seem to have somehow missed the issues that this raises.

[Alexx Peace]

Except that's not a business reaction. QA testers for mods do it out of the love for the mod, QA testers in a business environment do it for money. The business reaction would be "Thank you for helping finding a problem, here is your money for your time" because that's literally what the whole point of QA testing in a business is like.

[Kristina Campbell]

Ok better example: What do you think of a modmaker who wants a share from the youtube income of a LP'er? Would be fair wouldn't it? The youtuber profits directly from his and the game companys work.

(not that I would ever suggest such thing in real but when I look where monetisation is going atm it won't take long as such thing shows up)

[SUck MYdIck]

QA testers hired do it for money.

[Cagla Cali]

Cool, double standards then. If it will make you money, go for it! If it'll cost you money, hell no, thanks for your work though, appreciate it (which is to say, I kicked your dog)

Ahhh, the taste of ironic greed, so sweet and so... precious

[Marcia Renton]

Most people spend weeks to months saving up for games, games last for a long time as entertainment but I'm not going to buy a game and then shell out over hundreds of dollars for addition content in the form of user mods.

Saying poor people shouldn't be playing games is downright disgusting.


Entitled hypocrisy at it's finest people. I agree with you Raest, this is straight up double standards.

[Symone Velez]

The LPer already bought the work if paid. I mean, maybe they should consider it? But generally speaking I'm of the opinion that it depends on the LPer's monitization, views, and the mod. Enormous grey area.

[Spencey!]

Sophistry is getting you nowhere. You know full well bug reports aren't QA testing, since you have to confirm them internally anyway, and you discovered them while playing. But you knew full well this is a silly argument, so congrats on a gotcha that isn't at all good.

Unless you think I'm somehow arguing a modder who has a paid mod shouldn't work out revenue agreements with people he asked to QA. And in which case, you're sadly mistaken.

[CYCO JO-NATE]

No, they shouldn't consider it. LPing is literally free advertising for a product. That's why people who try to make a buck off of Lpers always end up being criticized.


Yes, bug reporting is essentially QA testing.

[Ebony Lawson]

Do you go to say, a clothing store, and notice that maybe their rug is up, so people can trip on it, and immediately demand money for pointing it out? No?

[Andrew]

Oh Nintendo thinks different...

[Astargoth Rockin' Design]

I didn't say they have to. I know I'd consider it if a modmaker approached me at least a little. (If I was an LPer, which I'm really not.)

[cassy]

THAT ISN'T EVEN THE SAME DAMN THING. Yes, if a store's rug is like that you should tell them because it's a damn health hazard and someone could get hurt, that's not QA testing at all. Now you're just grasping at examples to use in order to make your badly-made point.

[Soraya Davy]

Wait a second now. So you're saying that you're going to intentionally sabotage your mods and ruin a part of them for a sub sect (however big or small that ends up being) of your mods users? And in effect be doing one of things along the same lines that have people up in arms about some of these modders releasing paid mods.

And is this intentional sabotage also being done in the spirit of the community, the free, open, collaborative spirit? Because to me, that seems anything but what is lauded by most of the community as the point of modding and the essence of it and the community and what it's all about and what it should be all about.

[Michael Russ]

Yes it is. You are basically demanding that because you found a flaw, you should get money. My answer is: no. I did not hire you to find a flaw, and my responsibility to you (the end user) is to fix the flaw.

QA Testing is when I hire or ask you to break my product or make sure it works, and in that case, *I* am the one who initated the responsibility to pay. Random person C cannot suddenly say "I am a QA tester" because you're not. If you can, then Beth owes so many people so much money.

This is how it works.

[Nathan Hunter]

I wouldn't call this sabotage. In contrary we have often seen this in open source. A open source program cares about to be compatible with the open source version of the software it needs. Not with the commercial one.

Also as always it's his mod and he can do with it what he wants. Don't like it, don't download it. That's the only price you pay for free stuff. The free mod developer has no obligations.

[Amber Hubbard]

So instead people who find bugs should just state they found a bug and will not report what the bug is till payment?

[Courtney Foren]

Yeah, it's just like on the forums here whenever Bethesda releases a new game. Everybody is reporting bugs then in hopes that they'll get fixed or patched and/or just to be helpful. And none of them ever get paid for it.

[Katie Louise Ingram]

I didn't say they shouldn't be playing video games. I said it's their money to do with as they please. Stop setting up strawman arguments. But if I'm going to help poor people, I'm donating my time at shelters and kitchens, I'm donating money to charities. I don't feel a need to crusade so that poor people can play free mods. If that makes me a bad guy, that's fine. But that's a ridiculous view to take.

To get the mod you need the game, the computer, electricity, an internet connection. All of these things cost a lot more than a $1 mod. There are thousands of free mods. Why aren't those good enough?

[james kite]

Sorry to be 'that person'... But the rug thing: no, you trip over it, and then sue the shop

I'm gonna have to say, I kind of disagree with AzSteve... Whilst I disagree with charging for Mods, I think punishing Mod users who've paid for a Mod is... unfair. It's going after the wrong target, really--yes, those people are encouraging this by buying mods, but rather than alienating them like that, I think the better target is valve/Bethesda. Unfortunately, there are not many ways to 'get at them' beyond encouraging Modders not to use the Workshop...

But as Sesom says, it's AzS's mod, and he can do what he wants; I just think it's the wrong target (although I totally see Sesom's reasoning about open source

[Ana]

If they don't want the modder to fix it, they can do that, sure. The point of bug reporting is to report a flaw so they can fix it - not reporting the bug means it doesn't get fixed.

That's a function of it. QA testing, at base, is making sure things work the way they're supposed to, and fail when they suppose to. This is a far more intensive process than bug reporting.

[Eric Hayes]

I wouldn't worry too much... I only have one mod that uses the MCM, and it's not like my mods are hugely popular anyway...

But point taken from all of those that have responded.