Dear Bethesda Employees Monitoring the Forums,

First of all, I am very excited about Fallout 4. I have put a frankly unhealthy number of hours into your previous titles, Fallout 3 in particular, and I look forward to spending many hours in the next iteration of the franchise.

As with many Fallout players, I have gained many hours of playtime with your games through the use of user mods. I think it's fair to say that Fallout 3 is the game that finally sold me on PC gaming. When I understood the sheer number of user-generated companions, weapons, missions, and worlds available through Steam Workshop or Nexus, I re-purchased Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim for PC and never regretted it.

Which brings me to doubtlessly an uncomfortable topic in your company over the last few months- the paid mod experiment you attempted with Steam. I am writing to tell you that at least one customer was disappointed to see this feature pulled. I applauded you for taking such a bold step towards empowering the amateur content creators that have been such an important part of your community and was looking forward to buying inexpensive content and, perhaps, someday creating my own. I have experimented with your generous modification tools, but never had the time to complete a truly ambitious project, but the ability to legitimately sell a mod- the validation of making a profit from my efforts- would have been one hell of an incentive.

But then the community reacted. I can't blame them for being upset with the prospect of having to pay for something they had always assumed would be free. I can blame them for being sickeningly entitled, acting as though they were making some kind of moral stand by refusing to let creators decide if their own work is worth selling or not, but that's another discussion.

The general tone your company put out after the dust settled was that Skyrim was not the ideal place to start allowing modders to charge for their mods. The modding community was years old and entrenched in its ways. But with Fallout 4, you have a chance to start anew. I encourage you to try again. Everyone stands to gain from paid mods- you, the modders, even the players once they learn that creators who can actually profit from their work will usually make better mods. I can't say that I'll buy every mod released under such a system, but I've always had a thing for companion mods with decent voice acting. If I could buy them with money I earn off my own combat mods, you bet I would.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to hide from the vitriol doubtlessly building under this post.

Keep up the good work!

Sincerely,
-bluewax

You don't understand the real problem. The real problem was... as modder you don't get much money. You would get only a very small percentage of the money. Steam and Bethesda would get the most money from your mod. That was the problem. As modder you can't really earn money from this system. Bethesda and steam would be the one who earn money for your work.

Well its like any thing. That would be like someone selling something threw Walmart.. Walmart would get probably 75% profit

Fallout 4 is new but the modding community that will cater to it is the same one that blew up over paid mods before, making it a poor choice to try that idea again.

What Bethesda could do is license the Creation engine for cheap and let people make and sell their own games. A lot of people would use that and it would follow the trend of several other big-name companies licensing their game engines for use by the indie community. THAT would be interesting.

Exactly as Thure93 said, the problem isn't the concept of paid mods, it was the implementation. Now I accept it's down to the creators discretion as to whether they're willing to accept the percentage offered, but as a consumer many of us were not happy with the split, or how it was paid out. Regardless of if the author was happy the users didn't want to support what they viewed as an injustice on the author (I won't go into the entitled "but I want it free regardless" crowd).

It was sickening that it was the mod authors themselves that got burned over it though. I can't believe how vitriolic some of the comments were. I agree that the concept needs to be raised again, but if both authors and users are going to get on board it needs to be thoroughly rethought out, and discussed with the community before implementation. The community itself needs to be realistic about it as well; distribution networks do need to be paid, and IP owners should get a cut too.

Thank you, Thure93, for being the first to bring up a demonstrably wrong counterpoint.

The lowest a mod could be sold for was $.25. Of that, 25% went to the modder, so that's at least $.06 going to the modder per download. Not a lot, granted, but it's a lot more than the nothing per download they'd otherwise make.

And to preemptively address the follow-up point, yes Valve and Bethesda taking 75% of the sale is a lot. But it's their distribution system and their game, respectively. They're the ones that built the advertising, the coding, and the assets that made the mod viable in the first place.

Anyone who's ever worked anywhere near intellectual property law knows that a flat 75% cut is an amazing offer for a preexisting franchise like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. No up-front licensing payments, barely any parent company oversight, full use of existing coding and art assets... that is an amazing deal for the modders.

Donation systems don't work. Mod makers can barely get people to endorse their stuff, let alone put money down for it. But suddenly putting up a paywall in a free environment that had been going strong for as long as it had been was obviously going to make some serious waves.

I'm of the opinion Beth should get a chunk of the pie, but as only a consumer of mods I can't really say where it should be sliced. Whatever they do, they need to first find a way to discuss it with the community beforehand. Springing something that big on a fanbase without warning wont work no matter how perfect the system.

This has less to do with Fallout 4 and more to do with a controversial program that no one really wanted even as well intentioned as it was. The backlash from the community was overwhelming and this experiment this did not even last a week. The message was heard loud and clear.

I am moving this to CD as we don't have a current thread discussing this.

Why would they talk to the community? Do they have to ask permission? The community ain't entitled to nothing

It doesn't matter what kind of deal the modders get. It matters that the audience is hostile to the entire premise.

It also matters that the modding community lynchpins around a few tools - like SKSE - that are currently free but could easily be licensed by their authors for hundreds if they decided to disrupt the entire scene out of protest. New tools would be written by someone eventually but that would break a lot of big mods while everyone waited.

Bethesda was right to drop it the first time.

Projects like Nuka Cola Break are a better alternative. New comics and books could be sold under license too. New tie-in products could be created and sold. Those ideas are interesting and fans would pay without griping.

There are a lot of ways to bolster and create a fan-based economy without trying to turn something that was free into something that isn't.

I disagree with paid mods. I can understand modders wanting to profit off their creations, but I am sternly of the belief that modding is about the passion of the community, not about making money. If you're making a mod and your thought is 'how can I make a profit off this mod?' I don't respect you. Modding should come from a love of that game and its community and a desire to enrich it further. In a day where Day 1 DLC, Locked Content DLCs and other ripping of game content for profit is a common trend today, the last thing gaming needs is more paywalls.

My entire point is that I DID want this , but... okay, moderators are as moderators do.

You do realize that nexus and steam both have a donate function now, and if you really want payed mods you can. Right?

Basically what almost everyone else saw was a naked money grab that was far worse than anything EA and others tried to pull. Because seriously even ignoring steams calmed numer of mod installs there were nearly a billion mod Dls bor Beth games on nexus alone.