I agree. I wish there had been a better vetting system for mods. And there is nothing to stop a modder from contacting Bethesda and getting some sort of contract set up - except that Bethesda would (probably) never allow that.

Or you can just tell the current system to piss-off and make your mods. That or just wait for the people who wish to give them away for free to do so.

Hopefully, the new system they come up with will allow for that as well.

You seem to value your mods pretty highly. Why would they be worth paying for? Thinking you have the market is not the same as knowing you have the market. It's one of the biggest things business owners do wrong. We have no sales but so and so market we are selling in has over 300,000 customers. All we need is 10% of them to buy our product to make lots of money. The minimum price of the mods sold was 33p/50cents. Is your mod worth that amount? Are there enough people willing to buy the mod worthwhile. I'd wager a no. You didn't lose what you never had.

Also interesting making it about 'us' and 'them'. Everyone has the ability to become a modder. It does not grant special rights. Customers have rights. Those rights were violated by the paid mods...

What happens when the mod breaks and no support is given? What happens when there is false advertising? What happens if the mod author suddenly stops supporting the mod and it becomes unusable? If you don't like it, don't release your mods. No skin off my nose.

No one wants to pay for overpriced clothing and armour mods that are exactly the same as horse armour dlc.

I'd love to see what "rights" were violated by the mere existence of paid mods.

You can argue all you want but at the end of the day Valve and Bethesda don't think it's worth the effort after the over-reaction from large parts of the community. I agree that mods should remain unsellable but I think the sense of entitlement from a lot of mod users is pathetic especially the people complaining about SkyUI.

The only good that may come from this is that people might be more willing to compensate modders for their work via donations now that this particular storm has passed.

Nightasy has taken his mods down from Nexus, but from what I can gather from a google search, his claim to fame was making an "ultra skimpy armor" mod that, based on some of the images I saw after googling "Nightasy Skyrim," could not even be linked in this forum because it would violate forum rules for advlt content. Not something I would personally use, but perhaps something that would be valued on the open market . . .

Edit: qouted the wrong post, sorry.. Done anyways.

Did I say that? You just presumed. The 24 hour refund policy violates my customer rights, I should have much longer. If I download the mod I become a paying customer and so the mod author HAS to make sure that it will continually run in my game. False advertising, is another issue that will occur.

A further semi related issue is what happens when you buy two paid mods that don't work with each other?

Not something I would use either but there may be some market. A market that downloads for free. No sales = no presumptions.

^^I have a right to complain about SkyUI. I use a controller so it does me no favours. I downloaded it because I had to. You'll end up with lots of prequisite mods that are required by other mods to work.

You wrote:
So I assumed you knew what those "rights" were.

First of all, the 24hr refund policy does not violate your rights. You agreed to that 24hr return policy when you signed up for Steam.

Secondly, if you download a mod, the author does not have to "continually" make sure that the mod will run in your game. That's like asking a car manufacturer to guarantee that their car will "continually" run - which they will most definitely not do.

That's your problem as the consumer, not the person who made the mod(s). If you try to make an Xbox work with a Playsation, you're gonna have a bad time.

That argument goes both ways. If you want free mods create them yourself.

There's been a lot of talk about community, openness, sharing, etc. but frankly I haven't been seeing much of that from the people talking about it.

I wish that everyone would freely and openly share their modding knowledge, but that has never been how it works. My modding is mostly scripting, and even in the Morrowind days when source for scripts was included in the ESP file there were people who would use a hex editor to strip it out because they didn't want to share. For Skyrim it has been the norm to only ship the compiled version of scripts, and I've been in the minority in calling for everyone to include their source scripts for Skyrim mods. There was no outcry about the hoarding of knowledge and even some of those who have recently espoused the importance of sharing told me that I was being unreasonable. I even hate the idea of donations on the Nexus because money does change everything, but I've learned to cope with the fact that I don't get everything I want.

Some of you aren't liking the anologies provided so far. Here's a new one for you to think about.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Maimonides.

Chesko, Arthmoor, and the SkyUI team have always shared their source code and experience freely with the community. They have been master fishermen and mentors to others. They said that they would gladly continue help people learn to fish but those who just wanted to eat what had already been caught would have to pay a little. The community demanded their free daily catch of fish and have gotten it for now.

What is more valuable to the community the knowledge of how to construct mods or the mods themselves? Choose wisely because in the long run you could end up with neither.

Ah nice misquotation there to try to miscontrue my point.

1.Erm yes it does. A contract can't overrule European or British Law.

2.Er cars have a warranty so they are obliged to run for an extended period. 3 years is the least I've seen. It would be fine if mods could guarantee that, but they can't. IE EA gives a warranty of 90 days if there are defects or workmanship issues.

3.Well that's a terrible anology.

Although it would perhaps be smarter to stay out of this fight I thought I would add my two cents.

I was excited to see the new system although it was obvious to me there were massive flaws from the word go.
I was excited because I love modding and wish I could I could do a lot more modding than I have been able to lately. I don't want to charge for mods- I love and appreciate that they are free. I also understand that as a hobby they cannot take precedence over real life. So many of us have bills and obligations.
Why do I think the so called paywall was a good idea? I'll only use my own experience as I cannot speak for others. Modding has been a part of my life since 2003 when I first became hooked on TES Construction Set for Morrowind. I spent every spare moment modding, and loving this community around it- the motivation was never to mod to get payed. Eventually however I started modding to build a portfolio- poor job of that I did. Still modding TES games motivated me to attend art school for game design. Long story short even after schooling I still could not get a game design job- most companies expect prior experience in the field. What then is the use of game design skills? Ideally I would love to make use of my schooling to do something I love. Instead I barely scraqe by doing jobs I'm not qualified for as they have nothing to do with games. I don't think paid modding could or would be super lucrative, but it was a good incentive to think of modding as something more than a hobby that directly interferes with my ability to pay the bills. Most modding projects take a significant chunk of time to do properly. The moment o heard about the new market my mind immediately flashed to large Skyrim Projects I've had planned for years but never had any time to devote resources. Now I'm not planning on scrapping any of those concepts- they are just once again relegated to the back burner.
On the topic of free modding- that's never really been my experience. Some modding does not carry obvious costs- some does. If I had more money and resources I would love to buy 3DS Max and Crazybump- maybe a Speedtree license. All of the things those programs allow can be done with free resources given enough time but the quality is not necessarily equivalent. I can make great normal maps with GIMP but they can never compete with similar maps from Crazybump.
That's the potential I saw with paid modding- being compensated could open the door for high quality assets that all the talent in this incredible community cannot match with free resources alone. Better voice acting has been mentioned before, there are many other instances where professional grade tools and assets could be a boon.
All that being said I also wish to see the continued sharing of ideas. The collaboration of the TES community is a beautiful thing. I learned many valuable skills over the years from many here that I might have otherwise missed. It's true that was potentially threatened.
For my part any paid mod I had planned would have been presented as such right from the start. I would never expect people to share ideas or work with me for a paid project where I might financially benefit without sharing that benefit with that collaborator having already agreed what that compensation would look like. This idea that paid modders would have stopped collaborating with the rest of the community is from my perspective totally false and unproven. Again I like releasing things for free- I had the thought of producing one free mod after every mod for pay. Having any extra time to produce free mods would be an ideal situation in my eyes. This is all very speculative as the option to get paid is once again gone. I better get back to work- my $50k in school loan debt won't pay itself.

I wasn't trying to "misquote" you. If you will notice, I actually quoted exactly what you said.

1. Ok. Fine. So 14 days then in the EU for a refund.
2. Ok, fine. So the mod runs for 90 days or whatnot. That's still not "continually".
3. It was more of a joke than an anology. How about this instead: Trying to get two different mods to run together is not the modder's responsibility. The modder is only responsible for the mods they have released. If Fantastic Mod A and Wonderful Mod B don't work together, that's not the fault of Mr. Fantastic or Mr. Wonderful.

You cut two different quotes together giving the impression I wrote it all in one go. That's not quoting exactly. You completely change the context. I can do it too.

I didn't realise you take everything literally. I do not expect it to run to the end of the universe. I expect them to work until Bethesda finishes support. If a Bethesda update broke official dlc would you expect them to go 'Nah they've paid who cares?'