[Marquis T]

Everything. EVERY. SINGLE. THING of it, reflects my views.

next time I need to argue, I'll just copypaste this link right here

[Sweet Blighty]

24 hours for a refund is pretty short.

Some mods can show problems in the longrun or others add/modify things that cannot be immediately experienced by the player.

If a mod has a bugged script that screws up savegames by growing it in size (Like Sounds of Skyrim did), and that this script only shows up later in the mod, you have lots of players that lose both savegames and money.

I'm neutral on this. I'll never release a paid mod and I'll never ask for a donation because I tend to take long leaves from modding, even if there are bugs remaining, and I wouldn't feel confortable knowing someone paid for something broken. Speaking of which, I find it most unfortunate that some mods currently sold have easy-to-fix problems or very bad development. (Overpowered items, armor that only fits one six, console-only added items).

I'm also still very septic about how mods pending to be paid are verified. Is it people who are very knowledgeable about Skyrim's technicalities and bugs who check those mods for dirty edits or common mistakes? Or is just people who check if the mod loads up, whatever the problems that mod may cause?

Like games, if I pay for something I expect it to work as flawlessly as possible. And if there are problems, I expect them to be fixed, by the developper or users. If a popular paid mod causes a problem and the developper disappears (Like I sometime do ), what can we do?

Anyway, it raises a lots of questions and it'll be interesting to see how it works in the following weeks and months.

[Sammie LM]

Are you guys getting a cut when you direct us to YT videos?

[MARLON JOHNSON]

...

I'm starting to think you don't know what reverse-engineering is.

it doesn't always involve super computer and mad hax0rz

[Dina Boudreau]

Why? Because their games won't sell. I would stake my reputation that things like the Unofficial patches for Skyrim and other Beth games simply could never work on a pay-for model. They just can't for a number of reasons, which I've talked about in prevous threads.

They will probably continue to make buggy games forever, so long as they continue to use some version of the Gamebryo/Creation engine (which is also one of the main reasons why their games are so moddable btw), but it won't really be any different than before. You couldn't bugfix with mods on Xbox and PS3, yet people still bought millions of copies on those platforms.

But yes, informing people about the quality of paid mods is a very good route to take. I certainly plan to do my part in this regard.

Unfortunately not. At this point, even if they did put out an update, this could have huge problems for mods. There are already thousands of mods that you should not use. Most people in the know strongly recommend not using any mod that was last updated before the 1.9 patch because there is potential for all sorts of problems. That was back in spring 2013 if I remember correctly. A new patch would mean that every mod before its release would potentially have game breaking bugs, even mods that are currently very well designed. While there are lots of mods still being released and updated, the community has already slowed down, many mods have been left as "finished" and probably would never receive an update.

Not sure. And yes, there are differences, but to say they're not "remotely the same thing" is once again inaccurate. We're not talking about the model in this regard, we're just talking about the naming.

Your $60 was for the Skyrim game. Unless my brother has the CK on his Xbox...

The difference is that it puts the control in the modders' hands. They can choose to set the price, and that includes $0. They did not have this option in the donation-only system.

That difference doesn't change the fact that they are still mods. That's what I was referring to. I'll ask you again, what do you call a "mod" that goes up on the Workshop, with a "pay what you want" option that lets the "buyer" pay $0.00? Is it a mod or is it a 3rd party DLC or is it something else? Which category would you put it in?

I was just letting you know. Do with it what you will.

Yes, because it is their tools, their files, their IP. Which is why they have that right. Your average joe schmoe doesn't.

The environment before is that the free mods section was home of crappy, unpolished mods. Chesko brought himself under fire. Is it [censored] that Beth/Valve didn't have his back? Yes. But I've yet to see anything where they told him they would. They underestimated the backlash as much as Chesko did. But they didn't make him put up mods which were not 100% his. They did not make him fail to consult fore or apachii or zzjay beforehand (yes, they asked him not to contact people, but it was in fact NOT an NDA. And he and other modders actually did reach out and contact others in the community whose resources they used. That is a failure on Chesko's part. Them telling him he cannot permanently take his mods down because people already paid for them is also logical. For one, it's in the EULA; once Chesko released his mod ANYWHERE, they could do what they want with it. That's always been the case. The mod is the mod makers, but they hold rights to do with it as they like once it's distributed. Because he distributed it on the Workshop and others paid for it, they decided that those people deserved to have the mod continue to be available. They made the decision that their obligation to the paying customers was more important than their obligation (which was in fact, none, per the EULA) to Chesko.

I don't know how anything you said hurts my argument. I'm not even sure what my argument IS (other than I think the CONCEPT of letting modders determine whether they want to sell their mods is a good thing) since you keep taking me around in circles, so maybe you could tell me while you're telling me how it's been hurt.

And as I've said numerous times, the incentive hasn't changed. They shipped buggy and bad games on consoles for years with no mod support to fix them. People determined that they found this acceptable by continuing to buy them. It will be unacceptable if and when people stop buying them, just as paid-for mods will or will not be proven unacceptable if and when people don't pay for them. That's every business ever that delivers a product. If there's no demand for an inferior product, they can't sell their supply.

[Jade Muggeridge]

Well, the only response i can think to that is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

[Avril Louise]

The difference is that many of these games with microtransactions actually are free. Even if they're severely P2W, they are still free to install and try out. Freemium mobile games and MMOs, Valve's own DOTA2 or TF2 which Gabe kept referencing, they don't require any upfront investment. Skyrim does. The barrier of entry is $60 and double that if you buy DLC as soon as they're released. It's an offline game with no one to show off your cool hats and swords to. It's a game with a broken PC interface... and now Bethesda is profiting from a mod fixing this interface.

I'm willing to admit I might be bitter simply because I'm not the target audience anymore.



Not true.

[katie TWAVA]

Far from it. I'm just another modder that's made a few mods...only one of which has had any real popularity. I'm wholeheartedly against paid mods, and I was also against the notion of donations for fear of it leading exactly to this. The 'we' in my statement, it should be obvious, refers to the modding community as a whole. 'We' started the money train. 'We' allowed donation begging to become a thing. 'We' didn't put a stop to it. Now 'we' are reaping the reward for opening the can of worms to begin with.

[Chloe Lou]

Who the [bleep] is Jim Sterling and why do I care what some You Tuber thinks?

[Calum Campbell]

Haha sorry. Your English is very good. It's a joke basically, one that would get me in trouble if I used the language necessary to explain (look up other terms for "donkey" if you want to know), but basically I was saying that assumptions are just that "assumptions", not proven. They may never be proven right and they could be proved wrong in the future. Yesterday I saw some people were mad at SkyUI going "pay for", and asked for their recent donations to the SkyUI team to be refunded. Someone else jumped in and said something the effect that "and I assume the greedy ahole will keep it since he's looking to sell his mod". A little while later, the original posters came back and edited their posts to say that SkyUI did return their donations. Quite promptly in fact. The guy who made the assumption looked like a fool, because he based his statement on 0 facts.

Yeah, the 24 hour window is an issue for me too, for all the reasons you mentioned among others. A longer window makes sense for gameplay mods and even cosmetic mods, but on the other hand, some mods like certain quest mods might only take 24 hours to play. The buyer could play the mod, enjoy it and find it worth the money, but return it anyway and get his refund, which is an abuse of the system. I don't know how to reconcile that conundrum without some sort of DRM which is not where I'd want pay-for mods to go.

As for the queued mods waiting to go up for sale...I don't believe they are being verified for bugs or errors. They sit there and will be approved within a weeks time if no one contacts Valve and says "this is using unapproved assets or has been stolen from another modder" or something like that. I don't know if they'd do anything if someone simply reported that it had bugs.

[Benito Martinez]

You missed a lot of fun.

[Sabrina Schwarz]

jim sterling is probably one of the only game journalists worth respecting. . Him and the guys from extra credits

[RAww DInsaww]

In the drop down contact list at the link below, who do you guys think would be the most receptive to a polite Curated Workshop concerns letter?

http://www.valvesoftware.com/email.php

Im thinking about copy /pasting some of the bullet points that daede expressed in http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2793044-paid-mods-for-skyrim-workshop-on-steam/page-27#entry24680649 over at the Nexus.

[lolly13]

Jim Sterling is a popular journalist that is renowned for portraying the really really terrible parts of games on the steam market as well as on greenlight. He has some pretty good opinions and can be funny.

[Naughty not Nice]

Well, I will watch the whole video, even if what I saw so far was quite cringe worthy................

[Hearts]

The minimum is 0.01€ respectively $.

You can't switch. You need to remove and reupload in order to be prompted with the new form.

[chloe hampson]

No, its to compensate loses after TESO fiasco. It has nothing to do with Skyrim.

[Genevieve]

Well, in that case we got off easy. If it had been a success they'd have stopped making SP TES games

[Honey Suckle]

Except TESO did well and is still selling copies to this day, especially since they removed the subscription. There really wasn't any fiasco after the beta when they began to fix a lot of the problems and complaints they got.

[Jinx Sykes]

They removed the subscription because it was doing well... obviously!

[kevin ball]

The buyer can do that anyway. A mod is just a .esp and perhaps a .bsa file. You can purchase and download it, back it up then get the refund. Then you just copy the backed up files into your data folder, activate and play.

I'm sure the intention is to deny refunds to those who become seriel refunders, but that would be the case anyhow.

[WYatt REed]

He has some good points. But his style is not my taste.

[Eduardo Rosas]

Agree. The 24 hours is waaaaaaaaay too short. For all the reasons Cliff mentions above.