Mods for sale Created 9 years ago2015-04-24 23:44:38 UTC by Penguinboy

There was some discussion in the shoutbox about this but it merits further discussion: Valve has recently enabled paid modifications on the Steam workshop. There's been a lot of controversy in the last few days about it - mostly around how there a lot of problems in the implementation.

(right now, paid mods are only available on Skyrim)

In theory, a modder having the opportunity to get paid for their mod is a good idea, but in practice, it's not going to work (at least how it is now).

There are some major problems:

1. The workshop turning into the mobile app stores. Most of you will have experience with the iTunes app store or Google Play - how much of a pain in the ass is it to actually find a quality app? There's a million clones and copies of apps and games, some have massive ads, some are outright broken, some are "free trials" with expensive paid versions, and others are just paid rip-offs of free apps. It's technically legal, but it's a terribly shitty ecosystem and it's absolutely the worst thing I can think of to happen to Steam.

2. Lack of responsibility. If I pay for a mod, I expect it to continue to work for the lifetime of the game (i.e. as long as the game works, the mod should work). If a free mod breaks, well, that sucks. However, if something is paid for, you expect it to continue working. There seems to be a lack of responsibility from content creators to keep the mod up-to-date. Otherwise, someone might cash-in on a quick mod, and then not update it when a future patch breaks it. Why would I want to buy something that mightn't work next week? Where's the support contract? Do I get a refund? How difficult is it to get one?

3. Copyright infringement. Modding is already a problem area in this case - are you allowed to use someone else's free content in your free content? The answer is no, but a lot of morally corrupt modders do it anyway. This becomes an even bigger problem when some of the content is paid. How do you stop someone "pirating" a mod? How do you stop someone putting your free mod up for sale? How do you lodge a copyright complaint, how do you prove you are the copyright owner, who enforces the copyright, and how quickly does it get enforced? What happens to any profit the thief makes from your content? Valve has never had a good track record responding to customer support. This has a huge potential to go horribly wrong.

There are also some other teething problems:

1. Mod dependencies. If Mod B (paid) depends on Mod A (free), should that be allowed? My opinion (and Valve's) is that it should be allowed, but only when the free mod is a separate download. The free mod is not affected by the existence of a paid mod that depends on it. However, the creator of the free mod might get upset about it (this has actually happened recently). However this creates a moral problem, with the "app-store-ification" of the workshop with numerous rip-offs and clones trying to cash-grab using a small modification of someone else's work.

2. The Steam Subscriber Agreement. Workshop creators are not lawyers, and they won't be able to fully understand the subscriber agreement without one. Big companies have many legal resources, but modders can't afford that for the most part. In the above link, the mod creator was upset that they couldn't fully delete their content from Steam (people who already downloaded the mod could still use it), but the licence they agreed to very clearly stated that this was the case. It applies to big companies too - for example, even though EA pulled a bunch of games off the Steam store, people who already owned those games can still download and play them.

3. The modders only get 25% of revenue. This isn't a bad number considering the circumstances, but it seems bad from the users' point of view since 25% doesn't seem like a lot. This number was apparently decided upon by Bethesda, Valve have a standard cut they take from all microtransactions and the publisher chooses how much of the remainder they want to take.

In Summary:
1. People are scumbags and will take advantage of the free content to make money in an illegal (or at least morally incorrect) way
2. Modders don't have the resources/money to enforce (or even understand) their copyright rights effectively
3. Valve's support is not good enough to effectively enforce copyright violations or ensure that workshop items are compatible (and there doesn't seem to be any way to get a refund if your paid mods are no longer working)

What does everyone else think about this "paid mod" thing?

https://archive.is/PaB5b A part of me wants to feel bad for this guy, since I think out off all the new paid-mod stuff going on, he is definitely getting the most shit. And Valve is pretty much treating him like shit. I want to call him the fall guy for all of this, seems like he was sweet talked into something then when he really needed Valve's support they just kind of ignored him. Whole situation sucks.

As for the guy who used a dependency that was separate, I still think it's a shitty thing to do, but if no one downloads the dependency he technically isn't profiting off of another person's work right?

Why can't we just have a donation button or thing that's supported by Valve/Steam? Why do they and Bethesda HAVE to make money off of it, haven't they already made enough by people BUYING the game? And also, why is Valve possibly deleting links to donation pages on certain mods? https://i.imgur.com/wW5j5yu.png (this mod was actually taken off the workshop, so I'm not sure what's going on there).

I feel like the entire field of modding just got a lot more confusing and shitty. Just think about what this would do to other games. Garry's Mod, Space Engineers, Portal 2, L4D2. All of these games really rely on the modders to keep them alive for years and years after they normally would run otherwise(which is probably why Skyrim was chosen to beta this, it's a prime example of that). If all of these had paid-mods, would anyone actually buy them? I know I personally wouldn't, it's not that I don't think they should get supported for their work, they should, just not in this way.

There are more things I want to say but I'm about to crash.

EDIT: Also, agree with your first 3 points, 1 made me laugh, imagine a 'free trial' for a mod. I mean hell, someone already had an early access mod that would go up in price when it came out of development.

lets hope hl3 gets leaked once again

I just don't know how the hell anyone hears about such things. I don't know — and will continue not to know — anything outside of this thread. Then again, I'm remarkably uninformed on most things.

Anyway, I'm sure if it's a genuinely bad system, Valve'll tweak it until it works. It's what they tend to do.

The modding community has been driven by enthusiasm for so long, I don't think this can work.

It really does make a mess of a wonderful thing. There are so many long-standing, amazing mod communities out there that wouldn't be half the phenomenon they are if users could arbitrarily erect a paywall. Quaddicted are having a bit of fun with the clearly unpopular move at the moment.

That doesn't mean I don't think content creators deserve to earn something for their work. Donations or a standardised pay-what-you-want system would serve that purpose fine, as frankly all mods are not equal. Things are going to get very ugly, very quickly unless Valve make some huge revisions.

Sounds like the Steam Store alpha, for modders - 5% quality, 95% rip-offs and rubbish. I honestly don't remember seeing much around there that i'd be willing to throw money at (considering all my games), save for a few exceptions.
Either way, i hope the workshop market is large enough to support it, so hard working devs can get a few bucks for their work when in need. For me, it's another incentive to keep away from the steam workshop until the logistics are straightened out, both downloads and uploads.

I'm posting the journal here and deleting it, didn't notice the thread last night:

In light of the current shitstorm involving mods that can be bought on the Steam Workshop( brendanmint's linked image in the shoutbox explains better), I'd like to address a few points, some of them of interest to this community:

1 - I'm a fan of Valve and always thought they're a company that makes calculated moves. This time something feels off, as a donation model (out of which Valve or a company which uses the Steam distribution platform could get its share) seemed much more logical, at least from the point of view of the modders, right? Also, what the heck is that 25% revenue share? That's crap.

2 - Honestly I don't really care about Valve's monetization politics, but one should be more attentive to the subtle details of an emerging phenomenon. I could easily draw a parallel here with what's happened since PlanetPhilip came here and uploaded some of our maps to his site. Some of the members maps have long been uploaded on his site before he started the thread a few weeks ago, asking for maps. He even said somewhere(IIRC) that if the map had no copyright notices in the description he automatically presumed them to be... free to redistribute.
Of course, PlanetPhilip's actions have had only a positive impact, since all the maps and member names link back to TWHL, so no actual harm, only more exposure, which is nice.
My point is that Steam won't stop here. I suspect they will extend this to a lot of other moddable games, and other distribution platforms or even modding sites might follow this trend. And there will be scumbags, as Penguinboy put it, who will try to profit from the free work of others.

3 - Drawing conclusions from the points above, I would suggest that in the next iteration of TWHL an optional copyright/usage rights notification should be added to each map page. I know this a bit redundant since it can be easily added as text in the description, but a lot of mappers are lazy or perhaps, those usage rights will be hidden in a wall of text.

I don't know if this is a good suggestion or not, but I know this community will go on and maybe great projects and different tools/assets will spawn from it. The community should be protective and specific about what it lets out in the world.

The thread wasn't there when you posted the journal, not to worry

It's interesting that you mention copyright options in the next version of TWHL, I was actually working on that last night (not as a result of the workshop stuff, it's always been a planned feature).

Here's an example of the copyright notice on a vault page (the black box is a tooltop that shows when you hover):The user chooses the license when they upload the map:This is the default license:
All Rights Reserved - You must contact the author for permission to use this content in your own work.

Neat.

I assume the feature that says you must pay $2.99 to play and rate this map is still in progress?

That feature costs $2.99 to unlock.

I see TWHL4 as needing a subscription of, ooh, $25 a month, and and a premium service of about $40 a month which gives access to features like more screenshots.

By the way, I've always wondered, what exactly are the odds of getting a page leet-ified?

I think it's a great idea! But only 25%? Seems sort of low, the shear amount of un fairness would make me cringe the entire time I worked on a mod knowing I did 100% of the work (besides developing the engine and editor) and the guys sitting on their ass's at steam get 75%. That's so un fair, no one's going to go for that. Check percentages developers keep in app developing programs like stencyl and 3d engines like UDK and Unity, they are much more realistic.

(Continues to make highly polished HLDM maps to piss steam off :thefinger:)

If they upped the amount a little more maybe i'd consider putting forth some effort.

The only cool thing I think this raises opportunity for is "more people to play your stuff."

I can see it now; youtube floods in with crappy mod videos and a link to buy the mod at the end of the video. And, I can see a bunch of idiots buying and rating horribly.

Valve should say "bayor" buy at your own risk.

PB, how would that system work for maps that are already in the vault? A lot of them might have a section in the readme relating to copyright or usage permissions so what happens if their permissions conflict with the default setting?

So SkyUI, pretty much one of the most essential mods for Skyrim(cause god the default UI is so terribad) is going paid. Not sure when, but one of the creators is making an update after a year or something just so he can make it paid with new content. Like I and everyone said, getting paid for your work and dedication isn't wrong, but this isn't the way to do it.

EDIT: Also realize my first sentence started out exactly like the title from this Reddit thread I was reading, whoops: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33quz6/skyui_pretty_much_one_of_the_most_essential_mods/

@TJB: Most of them don't, and authors can simply edit their maps in the vault to change from the default.

I like the idea but it needs a lot of tweaking.
Found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDyXIXyAZq0

^ agrees with Lajron.

Without knowing too much about the subject, I still think PB you are being a little melodramatic with some of those feared problems, hopefully you will be wrong

The problems are simply extensions of what I know about the modding community and the open-source software community.

OSS has had the concept of "freeware" and "payware" for a long time, and that is stable because open source software is almost always given a clear license, and the EFF can help with copyright/license enforcement. The workshop doesn't allow a creator to choose a license - you upload it to the workshop, and Valve is granted a pretty permissive license on it. This isn't good for modders, and a lot of people won't realise until it's too late.

The creative commons licenses are probably the best options for workshop content. They let you choose:
1. If someone can modify your content
2. If someone can sell your content
3. If someone must use the same license if they use your content

You also probably want control over these as well:
4. If someone with a free mod can depend on your content
5. If someone with a paid mod can depend on your content

Until we have some of this kind of flexibility, the paid workshop is going to be a licensing clusterfuck. Most modders don't realise that Valve can do pretty much anything they want with your content once you upload it to the workshop. If you have a moral objection to something, it doesn't matter - Valve has a license to use your content as it sees fit, which allows them to avoid any legal issues. This is bad - modders need to be able to keep control of their content and enforce their copyright if they need to.

If open-source software breaks, I can stop using it or I can fix it myself. If free (closed-source) software breaks, I find a better alternative. But if software that I paid for breaks, depending on the licensing agreement, there's an expectation that the vendor should fix it. The workshop only has a 24 hour refund clause, not any longer than that. If a mod breaks a week later, you do not get any support, at all. That's ridiculous.

I'm not saying that the system can't work. It can, and the OSS community is proof of that. But the paid workshop needs a whole lot more thought put into it before it can be anything but damaging to the modding community.

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/33zpsw/if_you_refund_a_mod_purchased_on_the_steam/ So I guess the whole refund after purchase feature is also a little skewed. All my lols. Valve/Bethesda y.

Wow, they're removing the paid workshop from Skyrim and refunding everybody who purchased a mod. I'm genuinely surprised. Didn't expect that at all.

Official announcement: http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

I'll be interesting to see if they do any damage control, and if they still plan to have paid mods at some point in the future (and what changes they'll make to make the community accept it). The way the announcement is worded, it sounds like they still want to have paid mods available in some form in the future.

I feel like if they had just taken it slow things would have worked out better, instead everyone is mad at everyone right now. Add a donate button, go from there.

I think they've just taken it all down. No doubt, most will celebrate this news for the wrong reasons.

Impressive.

The wording definitely sounds like they want to try again with a 'new' community. The next Fallout or Elder Scrolls game would be the obvious choice for Bethesda. With Source 2 also apparently concentrating on UGC, it'll be interesting to see if they attempt some sort of market there too. Something like the Unity store, perhaps.

Valve is still Valve and not EA.
Today is a good day.