Apathy is the "absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement; or lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting." When someone isn't engaged enough to show any interest, they are said to not care about that which is the subject of their disinterest. People who are engaged, who are interested, are motivated to act and so they do; they speak up, ask questions, argue, file complaints, ask for refunds, click the Like button, share an article, comment on a thread, and so on. Those who act are said to care.

And nobody finds it suspicious in the slightest that the "against" petition has more signatures than the estimated number of mod authors?

I'm sorry, but I happen to agree with something I heard in the video that was said. The opinions of those who only consume mods and don't make them has value, it just doesn't have AS MUCH value as the opinions of those who make mods. I have seen a number of mod authors commenting of late that they simply needed more time to assess things and that the knee jerk reaction that got it shot down took away any possibility of people making that assessment.

I stand by my opinion that it was nothing more than an angry mob that got this shot down. Reasoned debate takes more time than this to sort itself out. I've said all along that it needed at least a month to get a good idea of whether it was going to work or not. That way there'd be actual data to determine future plans. Data we don't have now.

I think they should try again, and I think they should try again with Skyrim. 2 days isn't long enough to know anything. (business days, weekends mean jack squat)

Imo if they try again (which ofc they will) it should be with a new game, and not one that has been out for several years.

Not really when mods authors were signing against paid mods also.

The bigger point I was trying to make is that nobody knows who signed that thing. It could have been nothing but trolls from [censored]. It might have been every author in the world who was aware. It's an online petition with no way to validate the results. It's not something a serious marketing team should be paying any attention to.

No. It is not "simple." The fracas was over before some people even found out about it. Many people didn't have a chance to sign a petition or express an opinion on a forum.

This may come as a surprise to you, but some people have other interests besides video games. Real-life responsibilities prevent some people from monitoring forums every day or every week.

The fact that we didn't hear from a certain percentage of the population does not mean that "they didn't care enough to comment."

And serious marketing teams know that dissatisfied customers who do complain are only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to the true number of unhappy customers.

An argument I'd be prepared to accept in a month's time. Not after 2 business days though, when everyone seems to agree that there's a large portion of the public that didn't even know there was something to be outraged about. I'm still hearing from people NOW who didn't even know something happened.

Which honestly calls into question any validity to any claims that a majority of anyone hated this thing. If that many people never had the chance to speak up, the petition looks even less like something to take seriously.

And yeah, I'm aware. There's no need to try and be personally insulting about this.

and not just small names. Most of the Beyond Skyrim team disagreed with it, a lot of famous modders like Trainwiz, Elianora, T3nd0 and numerous others voiced out their dislike of the paid system.


The thing is, it's not just the people who came out against paid mods. I've noticed modders who left the community come back, people for paid mods then disappeared a week later. Another point to make is that some of those members came from other places in order to voice their opinion, like from the steam forums or the Nexus.

Just as many modders came out in support of paid mods—including http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/articles/50159, Arthmoor, and EnaiSiaion—supported by game developers like http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-05-04-id-software-planned-to-pay-mod-makers-in-1995 (Doom), http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/dayz-dev-dean-hall-i-would-love-to-make-mods-for-grand-theft-auto/0148660 (DayZ), and http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/30/8513483/paid-mods-matter-stardock (Fallen Enchantress).

I was meaning more the original customers of Beth. and Steam, the ones who paid for Skyrim. There were people who were saying that they wouldn't touch Beth. again if the paid mods remained.

People have made all manner of claims that they're not going to touch Bethesda games again in the future. Many of the people I saw saying such things long before this controversy even existed, so their statements rang hollow.

Some folks might even recall that I vowed never to buy Skyrim as long as it was distributed through Steam. Well look what happened. I obviously caved. I'm still not happy about it, but there it is. I know I'm not alone in this either. A whole mess of people in those old "I hate Steam" threads are now playing Skyrim too, despite making similar vows.

I suspect, given enough time, a lot of people vocally against paid mods would have quietly changed their stance. Time will tell. They're GOING to try again, that much is certain. It's just a matter of when, and for which game. I honestly think they should try again with Skyrim, but I'd also fully understand if they didn't want to and opted for FO4 or TES VI instead.

DayZ developer made a total conversion, can't speak about fallen enchantress. John Romero hasn't worked on a game that saw release since what, the mid 2000s? Even so they could all have terrible opinions especially since those three have no experience with the skyrim modding community nor TES modding at all.

Of course the DayZ dev would support it, their entire fortune is being made from a game that was originally a total conversion for Arma 2. They don't understand what it would do to a community wide thing and (I didn't read the articles) if they're quoting Team fortress 2 and DOTA 2 I'm going to say the same thing I've been saying for weeks. SKYRIM ISN'T EITHER OF THOSE, you can't compare a market where all the items are cosmetic to a community where mods range in types, sizes and can easily be incompatible with other mods or break the game and see no more development.

I stopped reading there because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

You mean like John Romero, Dean Hall and Derek Paxton? I know what I'm talking about as I've been talking about it since this began, I've heard every argument for and against it and these three people? They have literally NO experience outside of certain modding groups, they never modded for the elder scrolls, they never put their mods up for sale on a curated marketplace that steam has, they don't know a damn thing about communities that suffered under mod sites that forced people to buy mods.

Call me crazy, but where does this idea that people are FORCED to buy mods even come from? That was never going to happen and so far as I know has never been the case in any other modding community either.

That article there is also completely different than how paid mods were implemented in Skyrim. It was id who was going to select mods/maps themselves and then pay the author based on network traffic. And again, even though mods for something like quake are more complex than hats for tf2, Skyrim is a whole different level of quality control/assurance and compatibility problems.

Because when people hear money they decide to go where they can make a profit, happened with the Sims modding community and it could've damn well happened with the skyrim one. Also I want everyone in here that plays DOTA 2 and team fortress 2 to name EVERY free modding site for those games without doing a google search.

Just because it's one site means nothing at all, people will still go to where they can make a profit as evidence with TF 2, DOTA 2 and the Sims. The only difference with TF 2 and Dota 2 is Valve has people policing those two.

So then why can I do a Google search and come up with a ton of free Sims 2 mod sites? That's the particular Sims game you're referring to, yes?

Did anyone ever consider that maybe the Sims modding community just wasn't ever as strong as the TES community?

There was no legitimate threat to free mods. Plenty of people, myself included, were still going to be making them. Yes, some of us ALSO planned to make pay mods that would be exclusively available for cash. At no point was anyone going to be forced to spend money they didn't want to spend. That's the free market in action.

For-profit software co-exists with free/open source software, and neither dominates the other. Where would we be without Linux, Apache, Mozilla, Android, PostgreSQL, etc.? And yet there also exists Oracle, MS Office, Photoshop... And then you have the free but not open source option, like OS X. I don't see any reason to think that wouldn't happen in the modding community. Some modders would choose one route, other modders would choose another. Choice is good. Like Arthmoor says, no one would be forced to buy mods (and, of course, no one would be forced to charge for them).

• Open source vs. commercial software: open source is thriving.
• Free apps vs. paid apps: free apps are thriving.
• Free games vs. paid games: free games are thriving.
• Free music vs. paid music: free music is thriving.
• Free books vs. paid books: free books are thriving.
• Free events vs. paid events: free events are thriving.
• And so on and on...

The fact is that a very small percentage of content creators produce paid content.

Despite the availability of free and affordable content creation software and the ease at which anyone can develop content creation skills, http://store.steampowered.com/news/15614/ have created content for Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive since 2011. Those 1,500 people have brought in $57 million to themselves. That's around $38,000 per content creator. So much for money being such a huge draw.

The idea that paid mods will displace free mods is just ridiculous.

I agree completely with this. I am very disappointed the plug was pulled so quickly and I'm already planning a paid mod for the next Bethesda game, be it Fallout or TES.

That's how it usually goes, show me a man, I'll show you a hypocrite. Especially if you promise him money

Though I have managed to not buy any Activision games since Prototype was a buggy mess and I learned they won't patch SP only games. Nor any Ubisoft games since they implemented their half-assed UPlay thing. Which is a shame, I think I would have enjoyed Blood Dragon

I don't believe Bethesda and Valve try it again with Skyrim, but they probably will with the next game, and if so, I'll not be buying it. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a money pinata by this "industry", so I'll certainly not accept a Todd and Gabe tax on mods as well.

Heh, well, what can I say? My desire to play Skyrim overcame my unwillingness to deal with Steam. I swear, if they put the game up on GoG I'd buy a second copy without hesitation just so I wouldn't have to deal with it so much.

I have stuck to my guns and refused to use Origin or uPlay though.

Personally I do prefer Steam over GoG and Origin, and have even bought games in it's sales that I already have in the other services. It's handy to have all my games in one place.

Though it's going to bite me in the ass royally when it finally goes belly up