[Chris Guerin]

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[Juan Cerda]

Reposting my last post if that is fine since I was the last post in the last thread.

I thought they were just told that valve would like to keep this on the down low and not under a contract? At least from my understanding based on darkone's public release

"we haven’t announced this information publicly yet, so we appreciate you keeping this under wraps for now."

[Soku Nyorah]

The petition to get VALVe to stop allowing paid mods to be sold on Steam is now at 124,000 signatures.

In just 3 days that is fast.

[aisha jamil]

Geeze, that linked thread from SPUD contains a screenshot of a http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2518268, glad my post didn't end up in that screen shot though being 1 down from the 2 that were.

[Brandon Wilson]

those petitions means nothing they are simply request not orders

[Amiee Kent]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/611704730323876292/#p3

If this is true then Bethesda stole an idea that someone posted and then the moderator closed the thread saying that selling mods is illegal and then banned him. Then Valve started to change their user agreement... It is all very strange if it is even true... but let us assume it is true then this has been in the works for a long time and they were just waiting to see what the modders would do with Skyrim.

This is not just the end of free mods... it is the end of free modding. The CK will be sold at an extremely higher price than the actual game, maybe even licensed out, possibly over the internet like the way windows office is, it never gets downloaded on your computer. That means that you won't be able to do everything with it as we are able to do now.

http://emmates.proboards.com/thread/1705/regards-charging-mods?page=1#scrollTo=42265 this is a can of worms that once opened can never be shut. The consequences and ramifications are still rippling like blood... the sharks will be coming. Once they big corporations see that this can be successfully monetized they will come and fight over it. They will destroy it and then put it back together in their image with a sticker on it saying, "Now Better tasting and Improved."

All around the net in almost every country people are now saying that free modding will go to the Torrents. I don't know what to think any more... but this has burned me out. Is anyone else downloading everything they can get their hands on? I have grabbed over 300 gigs this weekend from all my fave updated oblivion mods, Fo3 and FOV and Skyrim so I can enjoy the game in the future.

I HAVE ALSO BACKED UP MY SKYRIM FOLDER [edited]

I urge all of you to do the same. It is only a matter of time until your Skyrim game is modified by Valve and your mods no longer work.

[cassy]

That was specifically to Robin, Chesko said that he was under NDA.

Also, they're incredibly stupid for not trying to reach out to the mod authors the mods depended on. They could've asked fore and have him sign under NDA, but they didn't.

[Ross Thomas]

The Oblivion Construction Set and the Skyrim Creation Kit EULAs both already contain.

The technicality that Bethesda (and now Valve) can gain control of your mods and redistribute as they see fit has always been the case.

[Rachel Tyson]

Meh, they aren't going to do anything like that with Skyrim, it's modding community and mod libraries are already established. But, they have timed this so that they can get the anger and the backlash behind them in time for the announcement of and release of their next game, which might very well have some unpleasant surprises in store for us where modding is concerned.

[Holli Dillon]

Of course!!! What did you think? That you owned your mods?

[Alisha Clarke]

I really wish that someone from Beth would say something already... even if it's a bold face lie it would be better than their silence. Has Pete Hines said anything yet? He is public relations... he needs to relate to the public on this.

[Noely Ulloa]

I think that acting like this is some grand conspiracy formulated by the evil mega-corps Bethesda and Valve in 2012 and that modding is DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!! is rather silly.

[Lew.p]

I decided to avoid theses discussions from now on, as I have decided that I am neutral but partially questionable on what has went on. I apologize if I seemed rash or made no sense in the previous threads but I just wanted to say one last time that I think, personally, this is a very questionable decision and it is unfortunate that some of the bigger projects went that route. I will decide if I will support them when the time comes that I need that certain mod but for the mean time, I am sorry the modding community feels this way. And for those that went paywall, all I can say is more power to you.

As for the company, I say the same. I am very puzzled but I will admit I am more neutral now that I was irked with Bethesda/Valve. I will continue supporting the company, and the community.

Thank you.

[darnell waddington]

Indeed. they are more of products than anything else.

I absolutely love Ladyonthemoon's comment regarding modding: The spirit of modding is sharing.

That's so poetic and so true.

Edited: Corrected my mistake.

[Claire Jackson]

[quote removed]

Agreed - just relax a little ktbu you don't need to download all of Nexus - I seriously doubt Bethesda would send out a patch for Skyrim - it would aggravate the PC fan base even more - besides they gave up patching the game ages ago.

I've been reading some of the posts on Steam and am pretty disappointed in the way some of the mods are being talked about - I know some mod users can be harsh in their criticism but the way they refer to the paid mods is sad.

Having looked at the images about the quality control of the paid mods i found it sad for the modders they were getting ripped for their work - they just looked like amateur mods to me - ones which were a bit rushed but given some help could be improved - they are mostly not professionals - though the crowbar guy is a game developer

Although I don't support the paid mod system I know what its like to get your work derided - there are plenty of mods on Steam and Nexus that have equal or worse issues and yet the authors haven't been ridiculed like this.

If the quality of the paid mods is low then that is an issue between the modder and their customers - of which some seem to have many - far more than I would have expected but then Steam is like Pokemon for some people - gotta get them all. Where was I? Oh yes - I feel bad for the paid modders though I think they were set up for failure - not enough time to polish their work.

If the mods that had gone out first of all had set a really high standard and encouraged others to collaborate with them it might have taken some heat out of this.

[carly mcdonough]

Hey all,

I'm gonna copy in a post I made on Reddit (and the Nexus) giving a suggestion about how Valve and the modding community could meet in the middle. I'm a firm believer myself in that the modding community should always remain moneyless, and that it should even get rid of the donation button entirely. My PERSONAL opinion is that I would never (and have never) modded for financial gain at all, under any circumstance. But, I know that is an opinion, other people probably WON'T share it, and I've accepted the fact that this is not what's best for almost anybody. However, I think this proposed solution might be a really good common ground for all parties involved: mod users, mod authors, Valve, and Bethesda. If it gets enough attention, I think they would take notice and this might be the start of how everyone can benefit. Anyway, without further ado, here it is:

I initially thought of this when I was skimming through (sorry it won't let me post links) and he mentions something along the lines of voting for mods, and if enough mods get enough votes, they become eligible for being a paid mod. I feel like this satisfies a number of concerns that I personally had (not all, but certainly more than the current system). It alleviates the issue of purely cosmetic cheapskate mods becoming the driven factor for profiting, it allows a community-based oversight system that was pretty much already around anyway (for anyone using the Steam Workshop), and it will still help Valve and Bethesda (and the modders) get a share of any money they want to be entitled to.

This would put the modding community as the first point of contact for deciding whether a mod would be worth being a paid mod - a system that is pretty much already used on the Nexus already through Endorsemants. Say, enough "Endorsemants" and the mod becomes eligible to be a Paid Mod, at which point it goes through the SWS Paid Mod Review cycle and etc.

So, what do you guys think? Does it svck? How could it be improved? Should we disregard it completely and only accept an all-or-nothing policy? Or are things perfect the way Valve and Steam are making them now?

[how solid]

That's the part where you try to cover your ass and look the other way. Take, for example, TES5EDIT, it was built by reverse engineering the way plug-ins work, it also allows you to clean the official DLC, which amounts to modifying the files. By cleaning the official DLC you've modified them, considered hacking

[Petr Jordy Zugar]

No, that is not considered hacking at all. The DLC files are not encrypted or otherwise obfuscated and are made with the Creation Kit just like Skyrim itself. Cleaning or modifying a DLC file is not illegal - distributing said modified DLC file (or any other Bethesda-made files, including the original, non-cleaned DLC) is what is illegal.

TES5Edit is a great tool - but it didn't "reverse-engineer" the mod format. It instead gives a low-level ability to modify ESP and ESM files.

[Miss Hayley]

So what's everyone's thoughts on the pay what you want thing? Can you pay 0.00 if you wanted? Is it basically saying you can download for free, but I'd like a donation of ￡X.XX if you could be so kind?

[Conor Byrne]

Petitions do work not all the time, but in some cases they do.

In 2012 there was a petition asking From Software to port Dark Souls to PC it got 300,000 signatures and when Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition released for sale on PC it sold 500,000 copies on the first day.

Now the PC version of Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition has sold 1,854,061 copies so far.

So if more PC gamers sign, VALVe might get rid of paid mods if they see it hurts their business.

[Taylor Tifany]

who says that has anything to do with a petition? They may have been planning a port all along

[Yvonne]

I'm just glad I recently returned to modding my Minecraft project, this way I'm currently not really involved into modding Skyrim.

If the whole payed Mod thingy fails, then so does the chance for outstanding Mods...and I'm talking really really outstanding 10x level Falskar Mods.

The most hypocritical thing I've read how the community should be a labor of love, not a labor of money. Where do you draw the line, when it's about fishing Endorsemants? Competition was always involved since the very first day the Nexus implemented it. Speaking how we all do this for love and integrity is hilarious, specially because exactly those people break all hell lose if their 'copyrighted' stuff gets used without their permission. It's a disgrace like Modders that earlier had the 'I want my work to be respected and safe from Mod thiefs', are now openly supporting the idea of free share...Hypocrits!

Let alone for this I hope the payed thingy doesn't fail. Because if not, it will hopefully drive all the hypocrits away from this community.

[herrade]

I agree for those who say that the spirit of modding is sharing but it's also is experimenting.

As such, selling MODs is wrong on so many sides.

There is another question I posed already last Thursday and for which I still haven't read a satisfying answer. If I look back at my Skyrim experience over the past 4 years, I probably have tried over two hundred, maybe three hundred MODs. Tried didn't mean I liked them all. Out of all of them, I have kept around 40-50 . For some of them, it took me more than 24 hrs to realize they weren't fit to my taste (I'm not saying they were bad - I've great respect for other people work) for various reasons. I would I know, upon buying a MOD, that it isn't up to my standards?

If paid MODs will become a standard, I would probably stay away from them or I would buy them only during sales, just like I do with DLCs: 1-2 years down the road, you can find the game with all the DLCs sold at about 1/10th of the original price. Another consequence would be that I won't distribute my MODs further out of fear that somebody would integrate them into paid mod. I'm totally against the idea to have people pay for my work and it seems Valve is not interested in making sure that the work of people is fairly re-used into other MODs.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way... In the end the modding community will wither down and probably also Bethesda income.

Having people pay for mods may yield a few bucks here and now but in the long run it will hurt sales and image of both Valve and Bethesda. The prevalent mentality of corporations these days is that is better to have a quick cash grab rather than long term cash flow and a healthy market. There will always be the opportunity to exploit another market, should things go too bad in the long run.

[Imy Davies]

Endreal and Wyrmstooth are not outstanding mods?

They are both huge very amazing mods and will remain 100% FREE.

[djimi]

If you consider those mods to be DLCs (only difference being no support, no guarantee and authors exploitation), it doesn't change much besides possibly losing some modders. And if they try to hinder real modding, it'll just return to the underworld like in the old days. Not saying the whole thing isn't a massive loss (and middle finger) for consumers though. But at least big names won't be able to pretend they're so nice because they love mods, when all they really did was to allow consumers to improve their games.