As many of you might have heard, Valve recently started giving mod creators the ability to charge money for their mods on the Steam Workshop. However, many people have been extremely upset about this action. For instance, many Reddit users have been particularly opinionated about this issue, as seen in the responses to one of Gabe Newell’s posts.
A lot of people don’t like giving mod creators the ability to charge money for their mods, and its true that this change has some disadvantages. For example, some mod creators might forbid others from creating derivatives of their work, thereby preventing anyone else from profiting off of the original mod maker’s hard work. Since some popular mods were created by taking another person’s mod and improving it, this could lead to a reduction in the number of high-quality mods available. Another issue is the fact that many mod makers put their mods online and never update them to fix bugs. Thus, if gamers have to pay money for those buggy mods, then they will likely expect the mod makers to regularly update the mods.
There are also some people that claim the modding community is filled to capacity with mod makers that enjoy creating mods solely for fun or to practice designing games. However, regardless how much fun one has while making mods, the average mod maker probably wouldn’t mind making some money at the same time.
What do you guys think about this change to the Steam Workshop?
In my opinion, Steam’s plan for mod payment is a good idea on paper that just doesn’t pan out in reality. I think the concept of paying money to support good mods and modders is a excellent idea but should be implemented as a donate or pay how much you want slider similar to the humble bundle offers. In this way mod shops and sites such as nexusmods or steam workshop can avoid becoming a “microtransaction hell” and still have the benefit of monetary compensation for high quality mods.
The good news is, it looks like valve has already rolled back the payment feature on the modding workshop.
@Bart
I think the main problem with that is the only way to implement something like that would be to “DRM-ify” mods. And that’s one of the major issues people have with this whole thing…
Great discussion, and a very interesting topic following our business plan lesson. I personally find Valve giving modders the option to charge a great idea. How many modders will actually charge? There’s a tradeoff here: put it out there for free, and maybe it will take off and a lot of people install the mod (I’m thinking Skyrim as an example) and talk about it on various forums. But if some of the Skyrim modders decided to charge for certain mods…you are running the risk of that mod never ‘taking off’, and the modder not getting the recognition he or she otherwise might have received it it was out there for free.
What would you think about a “demo” model, with regards to charging for mods? For instance, every mod is free to download, but after a set number of hours using the mod, say 20-30 hours, you need to then purchase it for continued use? That gives you a ‘try before you buy’ option, so you can still download all the mods you want, and just pay for the ones you want to keep.
I think it’s cool that modders will have the ability to make money off of their mods, but I think that (as someone brought up in that reddit article) it will be hard to keep a mod you’re selling away from the hands of pirates. Especially considering the gamers who mod their pc games in the first place probably have the know-how to pirate the mod or rip it from someone else who has it installed. I’m slightly worried about Valve “DRM-ifying” mods, such that you need to have your mods validated. That seems like a horror story to me. But if I were a mod maker, I would probably put my mod both on the internet for free and on steam for those who would like to pay money for it. It’s better than before, where the mod creator wasn’t getting any money anyway, right?
So, as long as developers and vendors like EA and Steam dont run away with the idea of paid mods, I think it’s a fine idea and a good contribution to the PC gaming community.
Seems weird to me that everyone in this thread is reacting so positively. It’s nice that Valve has decided to help monetize the hard work of communities, but I can’t help but feel like this is just going to cause headaches. While modding has played a big part in generating revenue and game content for valve in the past (counter-strike, garry’s mod, the stanley parable), doing this just feels wrong for some reason. Like it’s a ideologically wrong, and maybe a little wrong in practice as well. It grosses me out to think that I could someday have to pay to play MGE mod in TF2, or aim-mod in CS:GO; and it brings back memories of the times when I was younger and couldn’t afford to pay for dumb little things like an ESEA subscription, or even just a game really. The only things I could get my hands on were mods. But now, if everyone just starts charging for the shit they make, what’s it gonna be like for people who can’t pay for stuff? Modding was the last vestige of what seemed like a pure practice in the world of game content. Aside from all the already glaring practical issues that have been addressed almost everywhere with this new policy, it’s just a little disappointing to think that modding has become a DLC.
Overall, I like the idea of paying mod makers for their time and hard work. I think this system could ultimately work out for Steam (and Valve, and the modding community) since the entire system is very laissez faire; if someone wants to spend 5 minutes on a mod and attempt to sell it for $75, the hope is that the community will simply vote on something better with their wallets. Over time, the mods for sale would hopefully only be the ones that are actually interesting. There are certainly teething issues with this system; below someone mentioned about copied work, and a paid mod was already (voluntarily) removed for that exact reason:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/skyrim-paid-mod-removed-amid-controversy/1100-6426858/
I’d also like to address the 75%-25% pay split. To clear things up, 25% of the revenue goes to the mod creator, and the other 75% is split between Valve and the game’s creator. One important fact to note here is that modding only existed in the past because the original studios thought nobody was making money off of said mods (and their game by extension.)
When you allow mods to make money, you MUST cut in the original studio somehow, otherwise why would they allow the sales to go on? I would agree that 75% cut is high, but it feels to me like a child arguing with their parents over an allowance. Without the original studio, there would be no mods at all. Ultimately, paying for a mod feels strange, but if you actually want to allow modders to be paid, this is one of the only ways I can think of to implement such a system.
I have no serious issues with this payment model. Some of my favorite games (Garry’s Mod, Insurgency, Chivalry, DOTA 2, Counter Strike) all started their lives as mods at one point in time. Well developed mods often lead indies to rapidly build new and interesting game modes more main stream developers tend to miss and capitalize on niche game play. There are several steam platform issues which may need to be addressed before this becomes a viable option. What constitutes a mod? Does it have to change the game play or are they going to allow community owned texture packs? Game play cannot be copyrighted, but art may be. How will Valve handle the legal hurdles of cutting off people who steal other people’s work from other sites and re-post it on their store? It’s an interesting concept, but I do not see it panning out well unless they seriously address these fundamental issues.
In my opinion, mods are really no different than the developers developing DLC for a game. Often times mods are goofy and may be glitchy which can kind of be hilarious. This reminds me of Goat Simulator. Although the original game wasn’t a mod, the developers decided to leave bugs in the game for entertainment purposes. Obviously these bugs were not game-breaking, but they still added a funny aspect to the game.
One of the big missteps I think that goes with paid-for mods that needs to be addressed is that mods can often compromise the stability of a game in a way that DLC, the add-on these mods are often compared to in this discussion, don’t. If someone were to pay for a mod that doesn’t even function correctly, it would decrease player satisfaction. If the paid mods are going to stick around, they must ensure that the quality control and compatibility measures on them are incredibly thorough as to not push broken products to players.
I believe it is just a logical business plan. If a game company made a mod they would charge for it. So why should it be any different when a skilled individual can make a mod that they put a lot of work into and want to charge for it. this process is just helping mod creators get recognized more because they can include sales and earnings into a resume and make their selves stand out to larger game company’s
I really like the idea that modders are able to make money off their work in a legal manner. I think it will draw more people into making higher quality mods and it gives modders an incentive to maintain their mods. There are definitely a lot of good things about this system, but there are a few issues with it. I think the 75% cut from Valve is way too much considering they don’t own all of the games that have mods. There is also going to be a problem with people stealing mods and putting them on the workshop themselves.