Discussion for Workshop Paid Mods - Thread 11 : V

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:33 pm

Moderator notice: All forum rules apply to these threads. If you cannot follow them, you will quickly find yourself cut out of any future discussions on the forums.
If you have questions about the forum rules, send one of us a PM.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1516784-skyrim-workshop-now-supports-paid-mods/

Copy of FAQ:

Quote

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:24 am

I'm going to repost this from earlier, as it is a good list of all the questions that need answers about this system.

Questions:

1. Since Bethesda are taking the majority of the money from mods, does that now mean that they need to provide protection for the paid mods and the modders that make them?

2. How will stolen assets from other game be handled?

3. How will stolen assets from other modders be handled?

4. Already Paid Mods is the default front page for the workshop, does this mean that free mods will never be visible on the front page again?

5. How will Bethesda protect underage (17 and under) from making legal mistakes with paid mods?

6. There are many third-party tools that modders use in order to make mods as Bethesda has released buggy and limited tools. What support is Bethesda going to offer to the developers of these tools?

7. How does Valve look to cycle the workshop to prevent the popular mods getting bigger and crushing any new mods?

8. If a modder leaves his work and it later become incompatible with a range of other mods, how will that effect users?

Problems:

1. In the past Bethesda has stated that their own content could not be transferred between their own games due to legal reasons with middleware.

2. If this is extended to the next game, it will cause a 'race to the top' problem like never before. Previously early big mods stayed big, if there is money involved this will be even worse and the quality of mods will be reduced as modders race to get content out.

3. In the past if I made a brand new model in Blender and then placed it into my mod that model would technically become property of Bethesda, however this was never enforced. With paid mods it is being enforced, does this mean that modders making brand new content are signing away their rights to it.

4. Many people use hundreds of mods, if this catches on then mod using will become an expensive pastime. This is not beneficial to keeping the game going.

5. If a modder finds a new way to do something, they are less likely to share that information as it can be monetized. This will reduce the quailty of mods as a whole if knowledge is horded.

6. The benefits of modding are two way. Modders get to have a creative outlet and train future game dev skills and Bethesda reaps the rewards of a game that has an extremely long lifespan. Giving modders only 25% is an indication the Bethesda does not see their benefits.

7. Already some mods are showing dirty practices in order to force people to buy the paid versions (pop-ups, update delays etc).

8. It is impractical for large teams to monetize as the 25% is too small to share with a team of 10 or more people (for example). Not to mention the problems with dividing up the money.

9. If Bethesda are taking the most money from paid mods, and enforcing ownership over the content, they are the one that must be held responsible for what is released as paid mod. They cannot take all the positives and leave any problems for the modder to figure out.

10. Down the line mods containing themes that are outside of the rating Skyrim has will be placed on this sort of store. This may have legal consequences on distribution depending on what country you are in and the laws that apply there.

11. Patches made for abandoned mods are in a tricky position. They (ethically) cannot charge for a patch of another mod, but if that other mod was a paid mod then releasing a patch only gets the original author money.

12. Valve openly defies consumer law in the EU, Australia and many other countries. Selling mods in the same manner as the rest of thier platform is going to lead to more legal problems.

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 11:45 pm

I wish the "refund" was called something else, since you don't get your money back. As far as I'm concerned, it's no different that getting a TF2 hat.

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:25 am

Where can we find the official figures about that?

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:11 pm

I can't say where the source is, but the 30% to Valve, 45% to Bethesda and 25% to the modder is where. I don't know the original source, but the Valve takes 30% number was from something. Put it this way, if 75% is going to valve and Bethesda, I would assume Bethesda are getting the larger percentage due to them owning the IP.

» Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:35 am

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12459/?

Dark has mentioned it when discussing the Service Providers agreement.

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 2:36 pm

There are other figures around saying that Valve gets 45% and the modder would get 30%...

We have a problem, we need to put an hand on a reliable source about that.

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 11:38 pm

No, the 25% to the modder is set in place. That is available on the official announcement and confirmed by the day one paid mod authors. The other 75% is unknown, but I've seen the 30% Valve, 45% Bethesda number on enough reputable source to believe it. Apparently publishers set their own take, but Valve normally takes 30% on mods of their own game (hats for TF2 or models for CS GO).

» Sun Apr 26, 2015 3:40 pm

There is nothing about that here: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement/?appid=0