it will be interesting to see the people who comment before actually watching the video twitter.com/Azuraaaaaaaaa_ discord.gg/p4gePVpRDx ko-fi.com/azuraeso MUSIC: zweihander.bandcamp.com/
I watched a few seconds and then was enchanted by the Asura's crown of flower elegant mystery eye shadow red hair statue of dibella powerful charm magic allure combo and felt compelled to comment before returning to the video. Everything is aligned, the thoughtfulness in the writing, the subject matter and the feel and pull to the viewer. Its so effective and you are an absolute joy to watch
I think paid mods are ok when it's subscription based via patreon. TBH if you have a active creator like coco or Melodic that makes armors at a regular rate, you're getting your 5-10 dollars worth. As someone who makes models for VR and someone who is making probably the most immersive skyrim build ever made, there is A LOT of work that goes into creating armor, from blender, to the CK, it's a lot of time and effort, and I think people should get paid for the labor they are doing. I prefer to pay the artist directly though.
If your mod is assets created from scratch, then by all means ask for donations but modding shouldn't be done to get a paycheck and don't expect people to pay for it. That's not how it started and that isn't the direction is should go in. If you want to get paid for your labor then get a job.
@@jase276 Those armor mods they create and charge for are assets from scratch, I think coco is a really good example as they post on twitter the blender process as well.
Go write AND maintain some good mods for free then, since apparently you do not value your time and effort, want to slave away at a dayjob while following your actual passion at night, just to be spat on by your users who complain about updates taking too long
@@holonaut Stop putting words in my mouth. Never said I do not value my time and effort. I helped with some mods (mainly New Vegas related) in areas of level design. There's way better ways to make money than staining a by the community for the community hobby.
@@holonaut Also, I will heavily boycott Bethesda's paid mods solely because they get money for doing absolutely the bare minimum of just hosting the mods. The same company that then wastes those profits on making Fallout 76 worse and developing worthless things like Starfield and it's DLC (which, by the way, is just recycled cut content from the base game). I would rather donate to the developers directly. I do this a lot. But not to those who jumped the train to Bethesda's grift model. Kinggath, as much as his Sim Settlements series is well made, won't see a cent from me because he jumped on it. Many others as well.
@@holonaut Also, if you make everything free paid, you do realize that modding piracy is on a steady rise? Nobody will buy these. There's now proven asset flips on the mod store as well. Outright scams. Bethesda can't even be bothered to moderate the content properly. People will just obtain the mods through different means, as was always the case. If you want to make money off of mods, go find a job in game development instead. Stop staining one of the last bastions of community engagement.
@@holonaut mods are things made for fun, out of a passion for the game. Not a career. Bethesda coming out and saying it is okay for people to collect donations to focus on more ambitious mods would have been fine. Breaking hundreds of fully complete and no longer maintained mods in a game no longer actively being supported in order to force a horrible cash grab on the community, solely to satisfy their own greed by getting paid to do absolutely nothing, is completely inexcusable.
Long-time modder here. If people want make money from it, that's their choice, but it doesn't change the fact that *paid mods are a grift and always will be a grift.* Just look at the rubbish filling the Creation Club. Still, even ignoring that, it's about value proposition compared to that initial dollar investment. People are seriously okay with paying 2, 5, 10 dollars for a weapon, armour or small quest mod when they can get entire games or mods of much higher quality for free? Of course, for most people, they're not... but that's the thing: it was never about the PC userbase. It's about cashing in on the console market which has always been Bethesda's focus. That's what always gets left out of the discussion, that this was never about the 2000+ modlists or ultra 2025 graphics or whatever, it was about nickel and diming people who otherwise don't get access to the same mods that PC does. The problem is more insidious because, much like microtransactions, it's about normalising corporate meddling and getting players to accept not only getting more for less, but paying for content that should have been free in the first place. Any big modders defending paid mods and the cut they get from Bethesda are sellouts, mouthpieces, and their integrity is compromised.
Thanks for interviewing me and for the shout out! I've been around a while and witnessed the rise of paid mods and how it divided the mod creator community. I stand by what you quoted in the video. I know Fallout isn't your preferred franchise but thank you again for getting my thoughts on everything.
So you stand by "the creators only get a small percentage of the actual earnings while the company gets to pocket most it". On the off chance that you actually know the things you claim to know - did you factor the taxman cut and/or the distributor's cut?
@@GalahiSimtam If evidence is shown to the contrary then I don't see why I wouldn't update my stance on that. At the end of the day, so long as the mod creators get a fair cut then it's all good. From reading the comments, the split/share on newer CC stuff is a lot better.
@@zealotlee Thing is, the evidence can be shown both ways in these internet discussions. For instance, depending on circumstances Zenimax/Bethesda may be or may be not obliged to withold income tax at the source. So, don't expect the evidence any time soon. A youtuber, however, can up their journalism game by asking these kind of questions up front.
I think mod authors should get the biggest chunk of change - perhaps a small portion can go to the primary company that supplies the tools and resources but the author should get the vast majority. Make it a legitimate review process too where the community can speak and the developer/publisher might get a chance to see some future talent.
Mods really should stay free. I'm all in favour of a patron model, and if modders want to give their patrons extra perks (e.g. like actual support or access to alpha/beta versions) that's fine too.
I have tinkered with making mods plenty over the years, I'd never do it for money though because the moment money gets involved something is no longer fun or a hobby but more work.
@@Sigismund-von-Luxembourg I can empathise.But a lot of modders these days are professionals in a sense. I've also done open source for a while, something I personally consider fairly analogous to modding. In that world, it's not unusual to use such money to commission work you cannot do yourself, particularly around game projects.
l would agree with this approach, but sadly without regulations and hard rules it is also easy to abuse and has been in communities that use this approach. Because sadly too many people in the past have abused "beta versions" as excuses to effectively keep the whole mod paywalled forever.
Imo I dislike paid mods because it enforces an idea like it's a dlc rather than a mod where right now mods are free but if you really love the mod you can support the author by donating on nexus, patreon etc
Thanks for tuning me in to Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption-Reawakened! Totally slipped under my radar and I'm a huge Bloodlines devotee. Recently re-christened VtM: Reawakened a couple weeks ago when Microsoft slammed the ban-hammer on the og storyline adaption apparently. However they're clearly a very organised and savvy team because they've already pivoted seamlessly into plan B. An honestly much cooler sounding project where they refashion the high-level events of the game using canon sourcebook lore allowing their writing team to go nuts and do their own thing.
Bethesda is going to get worse and worse until there is massive change at the top. The only way to do away with terrible practices is for a change in culture, and corporate cultures don't change unless the executives do.
I feel like you need way more than the executives to change a corporate culture. You really need the "money" to change, as in, the least risky way to revenue must change so the culture can too.
this is a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism. businesses will always choose maximum short term profits over all else. they have to or they will be devoured by a more ruthless competitor. you could put the most nicest most humane person in charge of these companies and nothing would fundamentally change. profits have a tendency to fall over time and so businesses are required to seek out new profits constantly with all that entails (increasingly pervasive rent-seeking of various forms).
@@UncleBoss-cr1cb Some of such businesses get to a tipping point, when they do something, which makes them lose their reputation and trust. They cannot do everything to maximize their profits all the time or customers turn their backs on them. Paid mods aren't too much of an issue, because you get a good game without them. But imagine Skyrim selling every questline as a separate DLC - Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guilds, College of Winterhold, Daedric quests. That would be going too far.
@@theodentherenewed4785 Skyrim came out 13 years ago and is just one game. Bethesda has released ESO, Fallout 4, Shelter, 76, Starfield, & TES: Blades since then. Before Skyrim there was Oblivion (where modern conception of "DLC" came about) and Morrowind. Each game is buggier than the last and have been increasingly monetized via DLC. Skyrim isn't really relevant as a touchstone given how much has come after except as a component of a trend of Bethesda towards mediocrity as profit seeking intensifies. I'm sorry, but your idea of customers forcing a company change through some kind of boycott just doesn't hold water (the MW2 and L4D2 failed boycotts being two prominent examples in my mind). Each of Bethesda's games, increasingly buggier and more monetized than the last, have increasingly sold more and more copies than the preceding title. There is no incentive from the customer for Bethesda to change, in fact, Bethesda's incentive from the customers, going by sales number, is to double down on what they're doing. Bethesda could very well sell each faction as separate DLC with TES6 and going off past sales numbers and the current trend, it'll be Bethesda's best selling game to date.
Just earned a new subscriber. Fantastic video. As a Mod Author I mod for fun, to give something back to the community. I have a good paid job so any DP I make off my mods simply goes towards buying new assets for my mods or PC upgrades for my daughters. I'll never charge for a mod.
The biggest problem with the original iteration of paid mods wasn't just the abysmal split, but that it was incredibly easy for people to just steal other people's mods and repost them for money, which many people immediately did.
The problem with creation club is it deliberately manipulates the console community into buying them. The mod search UI and menu on console is egregious. Its horrendously bad. And its made that way on purpose. Because it funnels the console player base into the first 4 or 5 lines in the mod list. Which are usually all the creation club content. Fallout and Starfield have this same issue... The problem with this is, the console player base is completely unaware of the nexus. They can't use the nexus even if they did know. So they're stuck with a mod menu that prioritises creation club content above everything else. I think its called "the dark" system? something like that. Where a company prioritises what it wats you to buy over what is essentially free. It shoves the "buy this" button in your face as much as possible. This is social conditioning. Because eventually, the player will buy that product to get it to disappear from the search list. And its that way by design... Thats the biggest problem with creation club. Its specifically designed to manipulate the console player base. And, unfortunately, it works exceedingly well...
What I love about free mods, and the way Skyrim modding works, is that the mods themselves do not have to be locked down (since they are free) and are pretty much open source. You can choose to withhold the source, but very few modders do so. The result? Mods can be endlessly improved upon, remixed, and if a modder calls it quits they are usually fine with someone else taking over. Also, picking apart someone else's mod is a great way to learn more advanced techniques. Contrast that with modding in Conan Exiles. Those are free... but because of the nature of the engine, they are locked down and cannot be reverse engineered. When mods become paid, that will be the norm. No more learning, no more remixing, and if a modder calls it quits, people will be left without when the game updates next. Back to Skyrim... there's some talk of TES VI development switching to Unreal 5. How conducive is that engine to modding, and how open will those mods be?
I have never bought paid mods and STILL have spent over $400 on Skyrim over the course of it's tenure: PS3, PS4, PC, BE, SE, AE, etc. I can't imagine how much money I'd be out if all mods were behind paywalls like that lol
I've made a few Bethesda mods, and have an idea of how much work goes into them. While I don't sell mine, I have no problem with other people doing it. It's hard work, and can take an enormous number of hours. It even becomes an ongoing commitment to keep up with game updates, mod conflicts, and user questions. There is a sizable contingent of mod users who think that modders owe them constant updates, new features, and support and just dealing with the entitlement deserves some consideration. That said, it rarely seems like the mods most deserving of financial support are the ones asking for it.
There is one big issue with paid mods that wasn't covered but it is one that for me as someone who turned from mod user to modder is important: When I started playing Skyrim I couldn't afford an expensive PC and barely any videogames cause I was still going to school and obviously didn't have a job. So free mods were the only thing that could help keep my gaming experiences fresh. Now what would happen when back then we would have had paid mod or patreon pay walled mods ? Well there would have been a split in the community of people who consider 5€ for a mod pocket change even if they need 20 of those mods. And people that could barely afford one if any mod at all. Now why or how did I become a modder myself? Well by investing time into free mods and learning how they are made to make my own mods. So if modding had always featured paid mods I likely wouldn't be a modder now. And even considering that I now have the money that I could buy paid mods I won't because I don't want to support a practice that will enrich others financially while also starving the modding community of a lot of creative people that might have become modders if it was still free. The nexusmods donation points are amazing because the mod user doesn't need to pay anything and a modder still gets rewarded and that's the way it should be in my opinion. And this doesn't even touch on my hate for Bethesda using a fake currency for their mod shop that is designed to be predatory to get you to buy more than you wanted. Paid mods are harmful to the community in ways many people don't realize yet. I'll never forget where I came from and because of that always keep my stance against supporting paid mods. - Luca
For context I am mostly going by one of my many actual first names Luca in most modding places. (Just for context for the people that don't know that Crit was replying to me there. 😊)
Good video. I had to smile though when you said how strongly you feel about ads and then as soon as your video finished it rolled straight into an ad. 😄 I know that's out of your control though. That's the joy of using the UA-cam app!
Honestly with the way Bethesda has been going if they just HEAVILY focus on making the modding tools as good as possible and take their cut from the content the community produces while also supporting the free mod community at the same time… I think that would be better than many possible future timelines.
Before I retired I was CEO of the software company for 35 years. I've also been a gamer for 40+ years. As far as Bethesda goes, I don't think I've ever seen a company who is as incompetent at software development and design as Bethesda. I do believe Skyrim was a good product and the modding community made it even better. However, if my programming staff had turned out the shit that Bethesda has released since Fallout 76 I would have fired every dev and their worthless manager. The question that begs to be asked is "Does Bethesda even have a QA Dept?" Fallout 76 was a dumpster fire, Starfield was a huge disappointment, and now they've broken Fallout 4 and they don't seem be able to fix it. Or perhaps they're just getting back at the creators of Fallout London. The only cash cow left is for Todd to borrow a lesson from his former mentor Bobby (Gimme your money idiots) Kotick, let's steal the modders work because it's better than ours and sell it!
As a small-time mod creator for TES games (over the past 16 years or so) who has been writing long comment essays on paid mods and their history for years ever since the Steam Workshop disaster, I have so many thoughts on this. There's a much more in-depth podcast from TotalBiscuit with Robin (the founder of Nexusmods) and the dev from SMIM going over the original mess in fantastic detail, including how they had let Bethesda know all of its core problems before it even launched which Bethesda had failed to listen to them on. They're way more informative than I ever could be. My quick opinion is that the Steam Workshop's absolutely horrendous approach to paid mods poisoned the discussion of paid mods and made it excessively negative to the extent of bandwagoning instead of seriously considered complaints in many cases. (Not that all complaints about it are invalid by any means, I'm personally conflicted on whether they're a good thing overall, but I'm not against them.) In more detail the core problems with it as I would describe them: 1. It released into an already mature modding community built around freely available mods and frameworks. Skyrim had been out for over 4 years at that point and releasing it as an update fractured the modding community down the middle. Previously free mods were being taken down to be put up paid, people who didn't even create the mods were uploading them without permission, mods built on top of free frameworks were being uploaded even though the framework author disagreed with it, and some were releasing updated versions of free mods only as paid. Some authors even put ads for the paid version in the free version. It was a nightmare. They should've released it when a new game launched, not surprise folks who had been doing it for years. 2. Bethesda, in a boneheaded move, decided on no moderation beyond the bare minimum restrictions from Valve's user agreement. So the only way to get your mods taken down if someone else uploaded them was to DMCA claim them. I get the idea they had but jeez it was bad in practice. 3. The Steam Workshop limited the type of mods, as Valve's terms of use didn't allow adult content (vaguely defined at the time) but it also meant that DLL injector types of mods and other out-of-game tools couldn't be monetised. It also had a 100 MB limit on file size, so larger mods like Enderal or even just ones with high res textures weren't allowed. 4. This was before Valve had refunds. At all. This was a problem Steam-wide at the time. No guarantee that a mod author would keep it up to date or have any quality. An ongoing problem with digital purchases. Prices were also entirely set by the users. There's also no comparable values based on scale. Bethesda tried to go free market on it. The other generally noted problems: 1. The split, 45% to Bethesda, 30% to Steam, 25% to the author. This sounds terrible. It's probably not as bad as it sounds without context. Valve always takes 30% cut from every sale on their platform, that's an unfortunate cost of doing business on Steam. Ignoring them because the sad fact was it was locked to the Workshop. So from the non-Valve portion Bethesda took 60% and mod authors got 40%. For creating content for someone else's IP inside their own game 40% isn't bad. If you look at a thing like Team Fortress 2 (25%) or Roblox (~28%) it really isn't an unusual cut in the industry, and if Valve hadn't been involved it would've been above average, but it was limited to the Workshop. 2. The value sucks. Yeah, it really does, the value is terrible for buying any sort of DLC and it always has been. Shivering Isles was $20 and Oblivion was $60, but Oblivion has way more than 3x the content of Shivering Isles. DLC tends to be priced higher because it has a much smaller playerbase that will buy it. Anyone can buy a basegame but the amount of people who buy DLC, especially in the past, was just a percentage of the people who bought the game. I respect people who don't feel it's worth their time, that's a decision they need to make on their own. Certainly as a kid I only had basegame Morrowind without Tribunal or Bloodmoon (at least legally) because I wasn't going out to buy expansions for a game I bought used for $2. Economies of scale and all that, therefore the basegame is always the best value because it always sells more copies. Horse Armour became a meme, but Bethesda didn't do any more minor DLCs like that until 2017's start of the Creation Club. Look at the DLC for Fallout 3 or Skyrim, Hearthfire's the smallest of them and it's still sizeable for a cost of $5. The Creation Club was a significantly less offensive approach. Not good, but they took the worst of the problems and had a go at fixing them. No existing mods could be uploaded, they all had to be created new. It was for a new version of the game (still not ideal, but better than before). It had full moderation, excessively so, but they weren't taking chances at the time. Still no refunds, but at least the mods would get updates to make sure they still worked with the game in future. I think if the Workshop trashfire had never happened the Creation Club would've been seen as bad value DLC but not in the same way it's currently seen. Also I think the microtransaction currency is more a combination of cutting down on payment fees, getting people to spend more in a closed ecosystem, and for cross-game credits. Except on PS4 where each game had separate credits, on PC and Xbox they can be used for Skyrim, Fallout 4, or now Starfield with the dumb Beth net accounts. I think the paid Workshop was the worst thing to have happened to the TES modding scene and it was terrible watching the community rip itself apart over the single week it was active. If there's any more evidence for how bad and poorly executed it was, Bethesda and Valve, two of the companies most known for barreling ahead with their unpopular ideas no matter how much backlash and negative feedback they get (the Steam client being one Valve turned around into a major success over the years), took it down a week after it launched.
My issue is we are already seeing bug fixes in starfields creation club area ...THEY ARE SELLING BUG FIXES! Completely an irresponsible level of greed, sickening. Naturally I pirated all CC content and starfield. The last dollar Todd got from me was for beta testing fo76, for that crime il always set sale upon the bethesdian seas! Yarrr!
my biggest problem with paid mods is...its just more of the vanilla, why bother? mods are great exactly because you can mod ironman armor into fallout or all the raunchy stuff ect, but such mods would never pass moderation and cant be monetized so mod autors have the choice for what to use their time, sure they will choose for more vanilla, and paying customers will choose to not bother.
@@aka-47k The Forgotten City is a full paid release now after initially coming out as a Skyrim mod. I don't think a time loop detective experience is more of vanilla, but not all mods are as unique.
I beg to differ. Creation Club is far worse than it was on Steam. Using BS currency is exploitative. Creation Club is just another form of overpriced microtransactions. At least on Steam it was more in spirit of modding by allowing users to set the price. Creation Club is just soulless, greedy corporate garbage through and through.
Great video. I been modding for years & I just do it for fun. I really appreciate Bethesda for giving us the creation kit, I gotten donations without ever asking so the modding community is very kind, happy to be a part of it.
Paid mods that benefit bethesda financially are never ok. I am happy to support the modders directly with a tip, but not gonna give a AAA company more money than they already make.
The problem with creation club mods is that they are all stand alone and not designed to work with other mods, where as Nexus mods will have the benefits of people making patches allowing you to run multiple mods of similar types or that complement each other. An example of this is Hellfire armour, the paid creation club version as vastly inferior to the free nexus version.
15:50 Problem is, 99% of people will NOT donate, no matter how much they use or love a mod. This has been proven time and time again. Most CC was crud, 100%. But the new Creations model has produced some very quality stuff for the price. Examples being Bard College Expansion and the East Empire Expansion. The creators behind those mods use the money to fund their development teams that are behind the massive and FREE Fallout 4 mod Sim Settlements 2. Kinggath did a video explaining why and such. Time will tell if the general Creations mods show to be worth the costs in general or if most will fall into the crud that was most of the old CC stuff.
"People will buy anything." Translation: "There's a SUUCKER born every minute." Now it SEEMS every 10 secs, whatever, THEY are VERY HAPPY to...accommodate.
I'd like you to consider the following: I'm a yuropoor who can't afford a gaming PC and can only play Skyrim on his PS4. Creation Club allowed me to enhance my immersion with improved Necromancy spells and the Armor of the Imperial Champion/Lord's Mail for my Elder Council Vampire in a way that would have been otherwise impossible for me if it weren't for the Creation Club.
Howdy! I certainly can't speak for all paid mods, however, as one of the members of Kinggath Creations, I can say we're all treating this as a full time job. We're serious about each project we make, and put as much effort, time, money and passion as we can into each mod we release.
IMO Giants Software (Farming Simulator) is approaching paying modders the correct way. They realize the value that mods bring to their game. The mod creators are paid by Giants pre download while the mods remain free.
Gabe absolutely had a point with his infamously downvoted comment "money is how the community steers work". If there was a mod marketplace with proper pricing and where authors get at least 70% of revenue, imagine how crazy modding could've got by now. Perhaps we could've got DOZENS of projects like Skyblivion, Morrowind, etc (with these mods having been finished already).
I like the idea of the modders actually make the money from it. I see it as kinda like the music industry. The only way musicians make money these days is merch. I know that’s a different thing all together. But it sort of gets around the bigger company thing
Kind of but the issue is more the potential exploration. Music can't really be exploited not like mods. Paid mods are literally paying for Ubisoft skins and the DLC horse armour. A lot of mods are things that should have been in the game, so patch fixes and so on. There's just no end to the limitations for potential exploitation. Forcing people to pay for patch fixes, game modes, tweaking combat, animations, things that would be in the game settings in any other game such as HUD elements, pay to win in the form of cheat mods, pay for unlockable rewards which is what we see now. The list goes on. Could do a Ubisoft and make the end game level locked forcing people to buy xp mods ect. That's the issue and an inevitable one at that. They're also that incredibly unstable that you don't really know what you'd be paying for half the time until it's actually in the game. I think the patron model or commission is probably the better way, kind of like artists and landscape photographers ect work now.
Morrowind was one of the few RPGs to really incentivize the player to immerse themself into the game world. You had to actually read and think, you needed to plan and remember who people were and their stories. You couldn’t just rush through tapping a button to get through dialogue and follow a quest marker. I really love that game, of course these days it’s not looking so good, but if they were ever to do a Morrowind remake, keeping it faithful to the original in terms of questing and game play, I’d be over the moon. I really like games that don’t hold your hand, it’s up to you to figure out how to do something and where you need to go to do it. But now they kind of cater to the DSP level idiot and dumb things down so much that it gets boring and offers little to no challenge or cognitive investment.
Stop being elitist, Skyrim is just as good as Morrowind, just different Stat/character development system is neither game's main strength so "dumbing down" that Skyrim is often blamed for doesn't matter much and when it comes to exploration and immersion which in my opinion is where TES games shine the most it's just as good Gameplay-wise some things it gets better, some worse, but it's okay Same for Oblivion BTW, exploration part took a hit by more generic world and same-y dungeons/realms but Shivering Isles is such a good DLC that it repairs the damage, IMO
As a modder myself I will be making some mods that i want to get paid for. Ive been making mods for Fallout New Vegas and am currently working on installing Skyrim with all the mods I like. Once im done ive got some ideas for weapons and armors, some will be free but others not.
Heres the thing...I like the *idea* of modders being approached by game companies to make their mod official dlc or something. I like the idea of modders getting paid, broadly. I know it might be a hot take. But, modders are god-tier skillful. I think, if the majority of the funds go to the modder, than its not a big deal.
The comments I've seen from larger people who make paid mods, like Kinggath for example, have been overall positive. He's been able to set up a small studio for making mods for Bethesda games where he and others get paid for doing what they're passionate about. Bethesda has shown no intention at all to try to limit modding anywhere else. Every mod creator is free to choose if they want to publish on the nexus or loverslab or on Bethesdas own website or even self host. They are free to publish something to bethesda and realise "hey the cut I'm getting from Bethesda for publishing paid mods here isn't worth it, I'd prefer to get patreon donations from a free mod instead" and stop publishing their stuff there. UA-camr and (paid)modder are very similar if you think about it honestly. Both put time and effort into making content so a large corporation can make profits off of them, that's part of the deal when they host their content on someone elses platform. Both start out small but with time, skill and dedication they can build up and audience and start making a living from their passion. Could the split be better? Probably, but we don't know what the split is and the ones making paid content for bethesda clearly don't think it's too little of they would stop doing it. As long as Bethesda doesn't try to hamper mod creation for other platforms, which as said they've shown no intention whatsoever of doing, there is nothing to be worried about. It's not some slippery slope. Modders want to get paid and now they can get paid officially, they can even put it on their cv for future jobs if they wish. The only ones I've seen complain about the system are doomers and people who expect to always get free stuff. And for the record I've not even spent the free bethesda credits I got for Starfield. The only paid mods I've interacted with was because I purchased the anniversary edition of Skyrim and the paid mods have been a bigger hindrande than anything.
I genuinely have no problem with paid mods. My problem is when Bethesda updates the game to add in these mods and breaks larger scale established mods. Such as script mods that require the script extender to function. It's been long enough there are many methods to dance around these updates such as downgrading your game version, but it does NOT make it any less tedious or annoying to have to jump through hoops to make the mods you love work properly.
I honestly have no problem paying for a really *significant* mod. I would probably have paid $15-$20 for Fallout London for example, heck if they had actually just made it a standalone game I would have probably bought it the same way I gladly bought New Vegas years and years ago. I'm glad they didn't go that route, but if paid mods have to be a thing, there is no disputing the quality of a mod like that and the effort that went into it. I'm somehow infinitely more angered by the cheapo $1-$5 mods that add like 1 weapon and an immersion breaking quest with minimal voice acting. Like if modders create a well made New Lands mod that is at least close to the level of value a Bethesda DLC like Dragonborn or Far Harbor etc, I'm all for that! They're significant undertakings and add significant content, but they should still only be around $5-$10 unless its a new game sized project like Skywind or Enderal or the aforementioned Fallout London. There's just absolutely no quality control with Bethesda's current setup. If Bethesda is going to put their seal of approval on a mod, it should be a mod that they genuinely believe adds value to their game for almost any player.
Thanks for this video! I think people are generally in favor or people being compensated for their work, that's how capitalism/free markets are technically supposed to work on paper. The problem is the real ugly face and exploitative nature of corporatism becomes apparent, and in their initial roll out of paid mods its was blatantly so. If they actually wanted to foster a community around a sustainable market place, they would've reached out to prominent modders and established a coop to keep the market place curated so assholes aren't trying to asset flip or folks reupload other peoples mods. Instead it was a cynical cash grab just like the creators club, just like starfield itself.
I'm down for authors having Patreons, having donate buttons, ko-fi, whatever, so that users who can and want to support them can do so in whatever way they want. Mods should be a community thing and remain free, and if that's to change, then I'd much rather see it change so that the mod authors are getting the majority of that money. I know the argument could be made that, well, Bethesda (or whatever company) released the game and the modding tools but like, they more than make their money from the game itself. The tools should just be a gift to the community. Larian just dropped modding tools on the community and have been nothing but gracious and giving and I think a lot of companies could learn a thing or two from them. That said, there IS still an issue with entitlement among gamers and it'd be nice if we could be fucking normal about folks making stuff!
But the fact is people dont donate, dont patreon, and dont do any of that. They all say they prefer it like you, and they all claim they would do it, but they never actually do so. Every single one of the creators who made stuff for the Original Creation Club content got paid a one time payment from Bethesda, every single one of them said that one time payment was more than they had made from donations and other sources ever, all combined. Years worth of donations and patreon couldn't add up to a single contract job payment. Every single one of them confirmed this. Modders getting money from donations and patreon is a convenient myth used to hand wave and ignore facts, so people can feel good about getting everything for free(because they are totally making money from others, not me though, but others are totally paying them thousands of dollars via donations, right?). Stop living the lie and come back to reality people.
Interesting scenario that can happen from paid mods. First, mods have driven some of the most innovative changes across the gaming industry for decades. Team shooters and Team Fortress started as a Quake 1 mode in the mid 90's. Day Z, Battle Royale's, Moba's, CSGO, DOTA, all come from modders. I'm sure that I've missed a few but this is just off the top of my head, and those mods inspired some huge changes in the industry. Now imagine that someone from the creation club creates a game changer mod like the ones listed above. Bethesda pays the modder a measly fee and the mod goes beyond being successful for the game, but becomes something that's good enough to be it's own game. What does Bethesda do? Do they pay the mod creator to be a developer on the project? Then other modders want to get paid more. Do they just flat out steal the mod, and make a game out of it? That would really piss of the community. What if another company just swoops in and makes the stand alone game made from the modders idea? It's happened before. I don't want to pay for mods, but I want to see modders get paid if their work becomes the next Day Z or Fortnite.
The idea of making Bethesdas games easy and accesable for free modding was one of the best their ideas. I think they should be both: free mods made by passionate creators with some donation platform if someone want to support thairs future works. and payed official bethesdas mods as well, where You pay for proper checked 100% working mod. - I understand that when you are microsoft property the money goes first, but the way the-besta acts lately is simply cutting the magickal hens golden balls (like in this legend) They can have both. "people who value comfort more than money will buy their handy, checked, mods, and people who value money more than comfort will struggle with fun-made unchecked mods. simple as that. I wish nothing more for Bethesda to keep making good games as they did before, thay have their own code of success, thay just need to come back to it. Thanks for the viedo Mrs. A. best regards form Poland
I find it insanely wild how our lord and savior Todd was able to smoothly say "y'know for April Fools we doubled the price of the horse armor in Oblivion, and everybody bought it hahaha".. Talk about ripping off people like a chad. lmao XD
13:50 imo this is such a greedy take. No, mod authors did not create 100% of the work. They would not have anything to show for without the million dollar foundation as well as modding tools provided by Bethesda and distribution systems of Valve or Nexus (which, spoiler alert, have massive costs to run as well). 25% is not even that bad, considering the modder did less than 1% of the overall work of the end result. 25% is not going to make it or break it to you. Either nobody plays your mod and you earn 50 bucks per month off it, or it's played by so many you earn thousands of $$$ per month. Whether you earn 5k, 10k or 20k, honestly at this point it becomes greed, it is enough. Of course then there will be those who earn exactly $500 per month from their creations, so it would be enough if they get 100% ($2000). However due to how scaling works, its pretty unlikely to be exactly in that "sour spot". You'll either have far too much or far too little most of the time. TLDR: Imo being able to cooperate with industry giants and work on whatever you want to build on THEIR foundations, while splitting the profits in the end sounds like a good deal to me.
I agree with this take. Also this gives modders like Kinggath Creations to make their own studios and make essentially third party DLCs, which Skyrim needed a long while ago
Paid mods COULD BE a good idea - its just that the way they are introduced and sold is bad. Mod creators can already get income from fans willing to donate some money to the authors of the work they love. Otherwise there is Patreon where modders can get reliable recurring payments and release the newest content as reward. While I do not know how much a creator of for mods is making as an average, I love reading fan translations of web novels and know for a fact how much money fans are willing to spend on the content (the translation) they love there. Still both ways come with disadvantages: 1. If the creators only release the latest version of their mod on Patreon but the rest for free on Nexus, there will be a reduced number of patrons. If they release all / most of their mods only on Patreon, there will the complains about a paywall and much less people will be aware of your mods - compared to releasing some of them on Nexus. 2. Unsolicited donations and Patreon all require the author to continuously release new mods or at least regularly work on and update their mods. Otherwise the donations will drop of over time. With paid mods though this would be an additional income for modders - an income they could receive even if they no longer work on the mods. I don't say that paid mods should replace the existing way mods are distributed, but I would suggest that it could be an addition to the current distribution models. Is Bethesda the right platform to sell the mods? At the moment certainly not! But it could be - if the mod authors get a much bigger share and the consumers can outright buy the creations istead of buying coins first. Would it be an alternative to ask Nexus to pay modders an obolus? Maybe, but I don't think this is a workable suggestion - Nexus currently doesn't earn a ton of money while there are way too many modders and mods for Nexus to give each modder a fair payment (it would only amount to a few cent if everyone gets some payment, or the community would need to get involved in a discussion what mods would qualify to receive payment and how the payment should be tiered).
I would support paid mods if: - The mod creator gets at least 75% of the revenue from the mod. - BGS actually moderates the Creation Club and filters out all the asset flips, the free stolen mods from nexus, the low effort item color swaps, and all the other low quality garbage. - The pricing makes sense. You can get the amazing and high quality “Bard’s College” mod by Kinggath Creations for $9.99, yet there’s all kinds low quality BS selling for the same price (including stuff by BGS themselves). In Starfield, BGS are selling one measly quest line for $7. Their games have become platforms to sell you more stuff (which was probably already in the game and cut out so they can charge more for it) and it’s seriously affecting the quality of the experience.
I see a disturbing amount of similarities and shared notes between ZOS and BGS as Fallout 76 and its atom shop have been under tight scrutiny since day one. We’ve caught them doing some heinous stuff, searching the fallout subreddit can show years old threads of people complaining about their purchases not working since release and some still to this day to say the absolute least on the matter lol
Candy crush, Pokémon Go and star wars galaxy of heros came out all around the same time and I knew back then the dangers that would come from micro transactions and sleeping them slowly seap into aaa games has been such a disheartening experience. It doesn't matter anymore what genre of game you play from any gaming studio (except fromsoftware) it all now feels like a giant gambling casino simulator and im convinced its all by design to separate old gamers that were full of passion and curiosity and the new mindless whales that are willing to play through the bad rng and empty out their wallets ... I miss the old days 😭
i would pay for mods thats companies take a cut of ONLY if they provided the modders with access to professional voice actors and if the modders had to adhere to the lore
I think for es6/fo5 the people who wanna do paid mods get access to the Creation Kit either early or completely, and free modders either get it years late or never I think a few modders come to mind when it comes to creations and pushing for them and it's why I don't even deal with their free mods
This whole topic is pretty simple when you strip its parts back IMO. Modding currently for any game is a community thing made by the community for the community. When big greedy company XYZ gets involved it is no longer a community produced piece of work it's a product. And where you have products you have suits. Suits are the death of community for gamers no matter the topic.
The payment structure should come from the modding community themselves. Surely someone like Nexus could implement a way to pay for using a mod? Personally I wouldn't pay for a download, but if I install a mod and like it I probably would if it guarantees that it will be updated for DLCs and patches etc.
Are you ever gonna branch out beyond ESO? I'm thinking about subbing for your certified fresh memes about minerals but things probably stop there as I'm not into ESO.
Divines! My goddess Azura has blessed me with her appearance! Moving on, lol. I don't think it's wrong for there to be paid mods. Modders do help the player experience and in general just build upon the game world and make it better. It's basically like DLC. I do think Modders get too much praise however because people act like the modding community is the only reason why a game like Skyrim is good. No. Skyrim is a great game on its own but in general I definitely do see the appeal of them. With all that said I do want to state that I don't think that all mods should be paid for. There should be a balance.
With paid mods is you don’t know exactly what you’re getting until it is installed. Authors and porters often add unwanted crap to an otherwise good mod to make it ideal for their personal game. So imagine paying for ten mods about one particular item or feature just to find the one that does what you want without the irritating built in extras. Example: You find a highly desirable skin for your sword and dl it, only to find the mod author has loaded it with an enchantment that a) you can’t use in your playthrough b) it prevents you double enchanting it with enchants you DO want. Imagine if you paid for that frustration. …..With unpaid mods you can try them and discard until you find a good one.
When Tod H talks about the Oblivion Horse armor paid add on and Tod says players will buy anything, it showed how out of touch Tod was with Bethesda game followers. Many players bought the horse armor to show support for Bethesda and keep Beth afloat so they can continue making these kinds of games.
The biggest problem with paid mods is, if its just more of the vanilla, why bother? mods are great exactly because you can mod ironman armor into fallout or all the raunchy stuff ect, but such mods would never pass moderation and cant be monetized so mod autors have the choice for what to use their time, they will choose more vanilla to be able to sell, and paying customers will choose to not bother.
Great Video, good humor, beautiful host and a decent discussion.8:32 "SDK" "Source Development Kit" ... Keep going you're doing great. Also SkyBliv/Wind aren't released yet so 9:04 I wouldn't really mention those, I'm still not sure they ever will be released personally, I've seen more done by smaller teams in a much shorter amount of time. ...The issue about this subject is that - you didn't invent youtube, Modders didn't invent their games that they mod for. On the face - it's fine to act like paid mods are cool, but the bad blood and potential for theft is too much - not to mention - these are fans, not professionals. I pay Professionals for their work because they were paid up front, I'm comping for their work and future. It's not about pub opinion of paid mods at all imo, if every game turns into a potential cash farm - the marketplaces associated will be BRIMMING with crap. What do you know the marketplaces that exist ARE. It's too much of a headache to manage and if paid mods were the "norm" - no one would WANT mods. ...Girl ... No One is confused about your "fans" site, they are making a wack attempt at engagement/humor with you.
The goal of a company is to maximize profit. This is how it always has been, and it is how it'll always be. If people keep buying paid mods there's no reason for bethesda to discontinue the practice. The market will sort itself out as always
The only good thing I can say about the subject is that Shattered Space just proved how creatively bankrupt Bethesda is at the moment. The majority of people aren't interested in buying paid mods for their lackluster games, so it won't become a standard like horse armor DLC. My stance on the subject is: if you want to earn money with gaming, just make your own game and stop being a parasite to a big studio or corporation living on scraps. I've been a modder myself since Oblivion, and I'll never accept paid mods. Donations are fine but asking for money upfront is a big no.
Personally I never understood the hate for paid Mods, I don't know if it's just because people have not made the connection yet but paid Mods are almost as old as modding. Let me explain, mods/modding are just short hand vernacular for modifications/modifying. Expansions, DLCs, Re releases, remakes, and so on are just paid modifications released by the game studio rather than a 3rd party content creator. This means any official content added after the base game release that you have to pay to play is just paid Mods and people have no problem with these additions for the most part (occasionally you'll get something like horse armor). My personal opinion on the matter is if someone creates something of value that people are willing to pay for they should be able to sell it. My only gripe about paid Mods does not come from the Mods themselves, but if they are included in a mod list and made mandatory for said list especially if it's a list hosted on a free to download platform. I do like the idea of Nexus having an incentive program for creators.
![The MYSTERIOUS Gamemasters of ESO | Where are they? | + GIVEAWAY!!! [Ended]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bbM7b7ujOoU/mqdefault.jpg)
it will be interesting to see the people who comment before actually watching the video twitter.com/Azuraaaaaaaaa_
discord.gg/p4gePVpRDx
ko-fi.com/azuraeso
MUSIC: zweihander.bandcamp.com/
I commented before the video ended. I did this to answer your opening question.
Commented while watching. Twice.
I watched a few seconds and then was enchanted by the Asura's crown of flower elegant mystery eye shadow red hair statue of dibella powerful charm magic allure combo and felt compelled to comment before returning to the video.
Everything is aligned, the thoughtfulness in the writing, the subject matter and the feel and pull to the viewer.
Its so effective and you are an absolute joy to watch
By azura By azura By azura
...are you related to Ardra ASMR? You two look like twins.
Look the fact that there is no manure in skyrim ruins my imersion
Right. I mean, if there's no manure then how can you get immersed in it?
And where are the outhouses, where do people poop in skyrim 0/10 not immersive.
@@ben-td9ob the chamber pots and buckets!
Manure-only playthrough incoming
@@Aaron-xo7px \\ mind the window!
I think paid mods are ok when it's subscription based via patreon. TBH if you have a active creator like coco or Melodic that makes armors at a regular rate, you're getting your 5-10 dollars worth. As someone who makes models for VR and someone who is making probably the most immersive skyrim build ever made, there is A LOT of work that goes into creating armor, from blender, to the CK, it's a lot of time and effort, and I think people should get paid for the labor they are doing. I prefer to pay the artist directly though.
If your mod is assets created from scratch, then by all means ask for donations but modding shouldn't be done to get a paycheck and don't expect people to pay for it. That's not how it started and that isn't the direction is should go in. If you want to get paid for your labor then get a job.
@@jase276 Those armor mods they create and charge for are assets from scratch, I think coco is a really good example as they post on twitter the blender process as well.
I hate how even modding is turning corporate and into an "industry".
Go write AND maintain some good mods for free then, since apparently you do not value your time and effort, want to slave away at a dayjob while following your actual passion at night, just to be spat on by your users who complain about updates taking too long
@@holonaut Stop putting words in my mouth. Never said I do not value my time and effort. I helped with some mods (mainly New Vegas related) in areas of level design. There's way better ways to make money than staining a by the community for the community hobby.
@@holonaut Also, I will heavily boycott Bethesda's paid mods solely because they get money for doing absolutely the bare minimum of just hosting the mods. The same company that then wastes those profits on making Fallout 76 worse and developing worthless things like Starfield and it's DLC (which, by the way, is just recycled cut content from the base game).
I would rather donate to the developers directly. I do this a lot. But not to those who jumped the train to Bethesda's grift model.
Kinggath, as much as his Sim Settlements series is well made, won't see a cent from me because he jumped on it. Many others as well.
@@holonaut Also, if you make everything free paid, you do realize that modding piracy is on a steady rise? Nobody will buy these. There's now proven asset flips on the mod store as well. Outright scams. Bethesda can't even be bothered to moderate the content properly. People will just obtain the mods through different means, as was always the case.
If you want to make money off of mods, go find a job in game development instead. Stop staining one of the last bastions of community engagement.
@@holonaut mods are things made for fun, out of a passion for the game. Not a career.
Bethesda coming out and saying it is okay for people to collect donations to focus on more ambitious mods would have been fine.
Breaking hundreds of fully complete and no longer maintained mods in a game no longer actively being supported in order to force a horrible cash grab on the community, solely to satisfy their own greed by getting paid to do absolutely nothing, is completely inexcusable.
Long-time modder here. If people want make money from it, that's their choice, but it doesn't change the fact that *paid mods are a grift and always will be a grift.* Just look at the rubbish filling the Creation Club. Still, even ignoring that, it's about value proposition compared to that initial dollar investment.
People are seriously okay with paying 2, 5, 10 dollars for a weapon, armour or small quest mod when they can get entire games or mods of much higher quality for free? Of course, for most people, they're not... but that's the thing: it was never about the PC userbase. It's about cashing in on the console market which has always been Bethesda's focus. That's what always gets left out of the discussion, that this was never about the 2000+ modlists or ultra 2025 graphics or whatever, it was about nickel and diming people who otherwise don't get access to the same mods that PC does.
The problem is more insidious because, much like microtransactions, it's about normalising corporate meddling and getting players to accept not only getting more for less, but paying for content that should have been free in the first place. Any big modders defending paid mods and the cut they get from Bethesda are sellouts, mouthpieces, and their integrity is compromised.
This is far too sensible for most people to ever pay attention to. 😞
That's a good point. As a PC user I don't even consider the console market
Thanks for interviewing me and for the shout out! I've been around a while and witnessed the rise of paid mods and how it divided the mod creator community. I stand by what you quoted in the video. I know Fallout isn't your preferred franchise but thank you again for getting my thoughts on everything.
So you stand by "the creators only get a small percentage of the actual earnings while the company gets to pocket most it". On the off chance that you actually know the things you claim to know - did you factor the taxman cut and/or the distributor's cut?
@@GalahiSimtam If evidence is shown to the contrary then I don't see why I wouldn't update my stance on that. At the end of the day, so long as the mod creators get a fair cut then it's all good. From reading the comments, the split/share on newer CC stuff is a lot better.
@@zealotlee Thing is, the evidence can be shown both ways in these internet discussions. For instance, depending on circumstances Zenimax/Bethesda may be or may be not obliged to withold income tax at the source. So, don't expect the evidence any time soon. A youtuber, however, can up their journalism game by asking these kind of questions up front.
Bethesda games are best when you ignore everything Bethesda made and overwrite it with 600+ mods.
I just stop playing games that need 200+ mods to be good. I don't have time to deal with mods after I install the game.
@@Kintablyou can just download a mod list, let it run over night and done.
EXACTLY.
@@101Mant Yeah, no thanks. If game is not good as vanila I'm out.
No it dont need mods. Its just people who arent satisfied with anything. And modders are lazy to make their own game instead of modding everything.
I think mod authors should get the biggest chunk of change - perhaps a small portion can go to the primary company that supplies the tools and resources but the author should get the vast majority. Make it a legitimate review process too where the community can speak and the developer/publisher might get a chance to see some future talent.
Paid mods have no redeeming qualities. We are all used to NOT paying for mods and there are amazing free mods.
Mods really should stay free.
I'm all in favour of a patron model, and if modders want to give their patrons extra perks (e.g. like actual support or access to alpha/beta versions) that's fine too.
I have tinkered with making mods plenty over the years, I'd never do it for money though because the moment money gets involved something is no longer fun or a hobby but more work.
@@Sigismund-von-Luxembourg I can empathise.But a lot of modders these days are professionals in a sense.
I've also done open source for a while, something I personally consider fairly analogous to modding.
In that world, it's not unusual to use such money to commission work you cannot do yourself, particularly around game projects.
l would agree with this approach, but sadly without regulations and hard rules it is also easy to abuse and has been in communities that use this approach.
Because sadly too many people in the past have abused "beta versions" as excuses to effectively keep the whole mod paywalled forever.
Imo I dislike paid mods because it enforces an idea like it's a dlc rather than a mod where right now mods are free but if you really love the mod you can support the author by donating on nexus, patreon etc
smokey eye, moon and star top and jewelry really hits that azura vibe! looking great
"People will buy anything".
Very true and the future of Bethesda is counting on it.
Thanks for tuning me in to Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption-Reawakened! Totally slipped under my radar and I'm a huge Bloodlines devotee. Recently re-christened VtM: Reawakened a couple weeks ago when Microsoft slammed the ban-hammer on the og storyline adaption apparently. However they're clearly a very organised and savvy team because they've already pivoted seamlessly into plan B. An honestly much cooler sounding project where they refashion the high-level events of the game using canon sourcebook lore allowing their writing team to go nuts and do their own thing.
Bethesda is going to get worse and worse until there is massive change at the top.
The only way to do away with terrible practices is for a change in culture, and corporate cultures don't change unless the executives do.
I feel like you need way more than the executives to change a corporate culture. You really need the "money" to change, as in, the least risky way to revenue must change so the culture can too.
this is a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism. businesses will always choose maximum short term profits over all else. they have to or they will be devoured by a more ruthless competitor. you could put the most nicest most humane person in charge of these companies and nothing would fundamentally change. profits have a tendency to fall over time and so businesses are required to seek out new profits constantly with all that entails (increasingly pervasive rent-seeking of various forms).
Ask ubisoft how their change of culture is going, something tells me they'll be meeting volition if they don't revert to their previous state.
@@UncleBoss-cr1cb Some of such businesses get to a tipping point, when they do something, which makes them lose their reputation and trust. They cannot do everything to maximize their profits all the time or customers turn their backs on them. Paid mods aren't too much of an issue, because you get a good game without them. But imagine Skyrim selling every questline as a separate DLC - Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guilds, College of Winterhold, Daedric quests. That would be going too far.
@@theodentherenewed4785 Skyrim came out 13 years ago and is just one game. Bethesda has released ESO, Fallout 4, Shelter, 76, Starfield, & TES: Blades since then. Before Skyrim there was Oblivion (where modern conception of "DLC" came about) and Morrowind. Each game is buggier than the last and have been increasingly monetized via DLC. Skyrim isn't really relevant as a touchstone given how much has come after except as a component of a trend of Bethesda towards mediocrity as profit seeking intensifies. I'm sorry, but your idea of customers forcing a company change through some kind of boycott just doesn't hold water (the MW2 and L4D2 failed boycotts being two prominent examples in my mind). Each of Bethesda's games, increasingly buggier and more monetized than the last, have increasingly sold more and more copies than the preceding title. There is no incentive from the customer for Bethesda to change, in fact, Bethesda's incentive from the customers, going by sales number, is to double down on what they're doing. Bethesda could very well sell each faction as separate DLC with TES6 and going off past sales numbers and the current trend, it'll be Bethesda's best selling game to date.
The smoky eye is majestic ✨
Just earned a new subscriber. Fantastic video. As a Mod Author I mod for fun, to give something back to the community. I have a good paid job so any DP I make off my mods simply goes towards buying new assets for my mods or PC upgrades for my daughters. I'll never charge for a mod.
The biggest problem with the original iteration of paid mods wasn't just the abysmal split, but that it was incredibly easy for people to just steal other people's mods and repost them for money, which many people immediately did.
The problem with creation club is it deliberately manipulates the console community into buying them. The mod search UI and menu on console is egregious. Its horrendously bad. And its made that way on purpose. Because it funnels the console player base into the first 4 or 5 lines in the mod list. Which are usually all the creation club content. Fallout and Starfield have this same issue...
The problem with this is, the console player base is completely unaware of the nexus. They can't use the nexus even if they did know. So they're stuck with a mod menu that prioritises creation club content above everything else. I think its called "the dark" system? something like that. Where a company prioritises what it wats you to buy over what is essentially free. It shoves the "buy this" button in your face as much as possible. This is social conditioning. Because eventually, the player will buy that product to get it to disappear from the search list. And its that way by design...
Thats the biggest problem with creation club. Its specifically designed to manipulate the console player base. And, unfortunately, it works exceedingly well...
Just some "Random online person"? Yeah right! Can't fool us Mistress of Dawn & Dusk!
What I love about free mods, and the way Skyrim modding works, is that the mods themselves do not have to be locked down (since they are free) and are pretty much open source. You can choose to withhold the source, but very few modders do so. The result? Mods can be endlessly improved upon, remixed, and if a modder calls it quits they are usually fine with someone else taking over. Also, picking apart someone else's mod is a great way to learn more advanced techniques.
Contrast that with modding in Conan Exiles. Those are free... but because of the nature of the engine, they are locked down and cannot be reverse engineered. When mods become paid, that will be the norm. No more learning, no more remixing, and if a modder calls it quits, people will be left without when the game updates next.
Back to Skyrim... there's some talk of TES VI development switching to Unreal 5. How conducive is that engine to modding, and how open will those mods be?
Thank you for interviewing actual mod creators for your video.
I have never bought paid mods and STILL have spent over $400 on Skyrim over the course of it's tenure: PS3, PS4, PC, BE, SE, AE, etc. I can't imagine how much money I'd be out if all mods were behind paywalls like that lol
I've made a few Bethesda mods, and have an idea of how much work goes into them. While I don't sell mine, I have no problem with other people doing it. It's hard work, and can take an enormous number of hours. It even becomes an ongoing commitment to keep up with game updates, mod conflicts, and user questions. There is a sizable contingent of mod users who think that modders owe them constant updates, new features, and support and just dealing with the entitlement deserves some consideration. That said, it rarely seems like the mods most deserving of financial support are the ones asking for it.
There is one big issue with paid mods that wasn't covered but it is one that for me as someone who turned from mod user to modder is important:
When I started playing Skyrim I couldn't afford an expensive PC and barely any videogames cause I was still going to school and obviously didn't have a job.
So free mods were the only thing that could help keep my gaming experiences fresh. Now what would happen when back then we would have had paid mod or patreon pay walled mods ? Well there would have been a split in the community of people who consider 5€ for a mod pocket change even if they need 20 of those mods. And people that could barely afford one if any mod at all. Now why or how did I become a modder myself? Well by investing time into free mods and learning how they are made to make my own mods.
So if modding had always featured paid mods I likely wouldn't be a modder now.
And even considering that I now have the money that I could buy paid mods I won't because I don't want to support a practice that will enrich others financially while also starving the modding community of a lot of creative people that might have become modders if it was still free.
The nexusmods donation points are amazing because the mod user doesn't need to pay anything and a modder still gets rewarded and that's the way it should be in my opinion.
And this doesn't even touch on my hate for Bethesda using a fake currency for their mod shop that is designed to be predatory to get you to buy more than you wanted.
Paid mods are harmful to the community in ways many people don't realize yet.
I'll never forget where I came from and because of that always keep my stance against supporting paid mods.
- Luca
❤
Yeah I prolly should've mentioned that too, good one, Luca
For context I am mostly going by one of my many actual first names Luca in most modding places.
(Just for context for the people that don't know that Crit was replying to me there. 😊)
You have above average editing skills. That Vampire Mascarae Mod looks interesting
Good video. I had to smile though when you said how strongly you feel about ads and then as soon as your video finished it rolled straight into an ad.
😄 I know that's out of your control though. That's the joy of using the UA-cam app!
4:15 Starfield
Great video again my friend! The creators need to be rewarded for their hard work for sure!!!
Honestly with the way Bethesda has been going if they just HEAVILY focus on making the modding tools as good as possible and take their cut from the content the community produces while also supporting the free mod community at the same time… I think that would be better than many possible future timelines.
Before I retired I was CEO of the software company for 35 years. I've also been a gamer for 40+ years. As far as Bethesda goes, I don't think I've ever seen a company who is as incompetent at software development and design as Bethesda. I do believe Skyrim was a good product and the modding community made it even better. However, if my programming staff had turned out the shit that Bethesda has released since Fallout 76 I would have fired every dev and their worthless manager. The question that begs to be asked is "Does Bethesda even have a QA Dept?" Fallout 76 was a dumpster fire, Starfield was a huge disappointment, and now they've broken Fallout 4 and they don't seem be able to fix it. Or perhaps they're just getting back at the creators of Fallout London. The only cash cow left is for Todd to borrow a lesson from his former mentor Bobby (Gimme your money idiots) Kotick, let's steal the modders work because it's better than ours and sell it!
As a small-time mod creator for TES games (over the past 16 years or so) who has been writing long comment essays on paid mods and their history for years ever since the Steam Workshop disaster, I have so many thoughts on this.
There's a much more in-depth podcast from TotalBiscuit with Robin (the founder of Nexusmods) and the dev from SMIM going over the original mess in fantastic detail, including how they had let Bethesda know all of its core problems before it even launched which Bethesda had failed to listen to them on. They're way more informative than I ever could be.
My quick opinion is that the Steam Workshop's absolutely horrendous approach to paid mods poisoned the discussion of paid mods and made it excessively negative to the extent of bandwagoning instead of seriously considered complaints in many cases. (Not that all complaints about it are invalid by any means, I'm personally conflicted on whether they're a good thing overall, but I'm not against them.)
In more detail the core problems with it as I would describe them:
1. It released into an already mature modding community built around freely available mods and frameworks. Skyrim had been out for over 4 years at that point and releasing it as an update fractured the modding community down the middle. Previously free mods were being taken down to be put up paid, people who didn't even create the mods were uploading them without permission, mods built on top of free frameworks were being uploaded even though the framework author disagreed with it, and some were releasing updated versions of free mods only as paid. Some authors even put ads for the paid version in the free version. It was a nightmare. They should've released it when a new game launched, not surprise folks who had been doing it for years.
2. Bethesda, in a boneheaded move, decided on no moderation beyond the bare minimum restrictions from Valve's user agreement. So the only way to get your mods taken down if someone else uploaded them was to DMCA claim them. I get the idea they had but jeez it was bad in practice.
3. The Steam Workshop limited the type of mods, as Valve's terms of use didn't allow adult content (vaguely defined at the time) but it also meant that DLL injector types of mods and other out-of-game tools couldn't be monetised. It also had a 100 MB limit on file size, so larger mods like Enderal or even just ones with high res textures weren't allowed.
4. This was before Valve had refunds. At all. This was a problem Steam-wide at the time. No guarantee that a mod author would keep it up to date or have any quality. An ongoing problem with digital purchases. Prices were also entirely set by the users. There's also no comparable values based on scale. Bethesda tried to go free market on it.
The other generally noted problems:
1. The split, 45% to Bethesda, 30% to Steam, 25% to the author. This sounds terrible. It's probably not as bad as it sounds without context. Valve always takes 30% cut from every sale on their platform, that's an unfortunate cost of doing business on Steam. Ignoring them because the sad fact was it was locked to the Workshop. So from the non-Valve portion Bethesda took 60% and mod authors got 40%. For creating content for someone else's IP inside their own game 40% isn't bad. If you look at a thing like Team Fortress 2 (25%) or Roblox (~28%) it really isn't an unusual cut in the industry, and if Valve hadn't been involved it would've been above average, but it was limited to the Workshop.
2. The value sucks. Yeah, it really does, the value is terrible for buying any sort of DLC and it always has been. Shivering Isles was $20 and Oblivion was $60, but Oblivion has way more than 3x the content of Shivering Isles. DLC tends to be priced higher because it has a much smaller playerbase that will buy it. Anyone can buy a basegame but the amount of people who buy DLC, especially in the past, was just a percentage of the people who bought the game. I respect people who don't feel it's worth their time, that's a decision they need to make on their own. Certainly as a kid I only had basegame Morrowind without Tribunal or Bloodmoon (at least legally) because I wasn't going out to buy expansions for a game I bought used for $2. Economies of scale and all that, therefore the basegame is always the best value because it always sells more copies. Horse Armour became a meme, but Bethesda didn't do any more minor DLCs like that until 2017's start of the Creation Club. Look at the DLC for Fallout 3 or Skyrim, Hearthfire's the smallest of them and it's still sizeable for a cost of $5.
The Creation Club was a significantly less offensive approach. Not good, but they took the worst of the problems and had a go at fixing them. No existing mods could be uploaded, they all had to be created new. It was for a new version of the game (still not ideal, but better than before). It had full moderation, excessively so, but they weren't taking chances at the time. Still no refunds, but at least the mods would get updates to make sure they still worked with the game in future. I think if the Workshop trashfire had never happened the Creation Club would've been seen as bad value DLC but not in the same way it's currently seen. Also I think the microtransaction currency is more a combination of cutting down on payment fees, getting people to spend more in a closed ecosystem, and for cross-game credits. Except on PS4 where each game had separate credits, on PC and Xbox they can be used for Skyrim, Fallout 4, or now Starfield with the dumb Beth net accounts.
I think the paid Workshop was the worst thing to have happened to the TES modding scene and it was terrible watching the community rip itself apart over the single week it was active. If there's any more evidence for how bad and poorly executed it was, Bethesda and Valve, two of the companies most known for barreling ahead with their unpopular ideas no matter how much backlash and negative feedback they get (the Steam client being one Valve turned around into a major success over the years), took it down a week after it launched.
My issue is we are already seeing bug fixes in starfields creation club area ...THEY ARE SELLING BUG FIXES!
Completely an irresponsible level of greed, sickening. Naturally I pirated all CC content and starfield. The last dollar Todd got from me was for beta testing fo76, for that crime il always set sale upon the bethesdian seas! Yarrr!
my biggest problem with paid mods is...its just more of the vanilla, why bother? mods are great exactly because you can mod ironman armor into fallout or all the raunchy stuff ect, but such mods would never pass moderation and cant be monetized so mod autors have the choice for what to use their time, sure they will choose for more vanilla, and paying customers will choose to not bother.
@@aka-47k The Forgotten City is a full paid release now after initially coming out as a Skyrim mod. I don't think a time loop detective experience is more of vanilla, but not all mods are as unique.
I beg to differ. Creation Club is far worse than it was on Steam. Using BS currency is exploitative. Creation Club is just another form of overpriced microtransactions. At least on Steam it was more in spirit of modding by allowing users to set the price. Creation Club is just soulless, greedy corporate garbage through and through.
1:10 Don't touch my guar...
Great video. I been modding for years & I just do it for fun. I really appreciate Bethesda for giving us the creation kit, I gotten donations without ever asking so the modding community is very kind, happy to be a part of it.
I've got a few mods for Skyrim SE & quite like the donation points you get on the Nexus 🙂
Paid mods that benefit bethesda financially are never ok. I am happy to support the modders directly with a tip, but not gonna give a AAA company more money than they already make.
The problem with creation club mods is that they are all stand alone and not designed to work with other mods, where as Nexus mods will have the benefits of people making patches allowing you to run multiple mods of similar types or that complement each other.
An example of this is Hellfire armour, the paid creation club version as vastly inferior to the free nexus version.
For the first time, the original vampire masquerade game will be fun.
The crab saying "money!" made me laugh way too hard 😂🦀
15:50 Problem is, 99% of people will NOT donate, no matter how much they use or love a mod. This has been proven time and time again. Most CC was crud, 100%. But the new Creations model has produced some very quality stuff for the price. Examples being Bard College Expansion and the East Empire Expansion. The creators behind those mods use the money to fund their development teams that are behind the massive and FREE Fallout 4 mod Sim Settlements 2. Kinggath did a video explaining why and such.
Time will tell if the general Creations mods show to be worth the costs in general or if most will fall into the crud that was most of the old CC stuff.
I would consider paying money directly to a mod author. I will not buy anything through the Creation Club to support corporate greed.
* *Types angrily* *
"People will buy anything." Translation: "There's a SUUCKER born every minute." Now it SEEMS every 10 secs, whatever, THEY are VERY HAPPY to...accommodate.
I'd like you to consider the following:
I'm a yuropoor who can't afford a gaming PC and can only play Skyrim on his PS4. Creation Club allowed me to enhance my immersion with improved Necromancy spells and the Armor of the Imperial Champion/Lord's Mail for my Elder Council Vampire in a way that would have been otherwise impossible for me if it weren't for the Creation Club.
Howdy! I certainly can't speak for all paid mods, however, as one of the members of Kinggath Creations, I can say we're all treating this as a full time job. We're serious about each project we make, and put as much effort, time, money and passion as we can into each mod we release.
I believe in donating to modders, not corporate overlords
By Azura by Azura by Azura. subscribed!
IMO Giants Software (Farming Simulator) is approaching paying modders the correct way. They realize the value that mods bring to their game. The mod creators are paid by Giants pre download while the mods remain free.
Gabe absolutely had a point with his infamously downvoted comment "money is how the community steers work".
If there was a mod marketplace with proper pricing and where authors get at least 70% of revenue, imagine how crazy modding could've got by now. Perhaps we could've got DOZENS of projects like Skyblivion, Morrowind, etc (with these mods having been finished already).
I like the idea of the modders actually make the money from it. I see it as kinda like the music industry. The only way musicians make money these days is merch. I know that’s a different thing all together. But it sort of gets around the bigger company thing
Kind of but the issue is more the potential exploration. Music can't really be exploited not like mods. Paid mods are literally paying for Ubisoft skins and the DLC horse armour. A lot of mods are things that should have been in the game, so patch fixes and so on. There's just no end to the limitations for potential exploitation. Forcing people to pay for patch fixes, game modes, tweaking combat, animations, things that would be in the game settings in any other game such as HUD elements, pay to win in the form of cheat mods, pay for unlockable rewards which is what we see now. The list goes on. Could do a Ubisoft and make the end game level locked forcing people to buy xp mods ect. That's the issue and an inevitable one at that. They're also that incredibly unstable that you don't really know what you'd be paying for half the time until it's actually in the game. I think the patron model or commission is probably the better way, kind of like artists and landscape photographers ect work now.
My first thought about Skyrim is that we'll never see the likes of the great game of Morrowind again.
Such a bold take. You're very brave. I've never heard that one before.
Morrowind was one of the few RPGs to really incentivize the player to immerse themself into the game world. You had to actually read and think, you needed to plan and remember who people were and their stories. You couldn’t just rush through tapping a button to get through dialogue and follow a quest marker. I really love that game, of course these days it’s not looking so good, but if they were ever to do a Morrowind remake, keeping it faithful to the original in terms of questing and game play, I’d be over the moon. I really like games that don’t hold your hand, it’s up to you to figure out how to do something and where you need to go to do it. But now they kind of cater to the DSP level idiot and dumb things down so much that it gets boring and offers little to no challenge or cognitive investment.
Dread delusion, go play it
@@MetastaticMaladiesare you following wayward realms? It's made by the team that made the first 3 elderscrolls games
Stop being elitist, Skyrim is just as good as Morrowind, just different
Stat/character development system is neither game's main strength so "dumbing down" that Skyrim is often blamed for doesn't matter much and when it comes to exploration and immersion which in my opinion is where TES games shine the most it's just as good
Gameplay-wise some things it gets better, some worse, but it's okay
Same for Oblivion BTW, exploration part took a hit by more generic world and same-y dungeons/realms but Shivering Isles is such a good DLC that it repairs the damage, IMO
As a modder myself I will be making some mods that i want to get paid for. Ive been making mods for Fallout New Vegas and am currently working on installing Skyrim with all the mods I like. Once im done ive got some ideas for weapons and armors, some will be free but others not.
Totally not related to the subject matter of the video but your makeup is amazing!
Heres the thing...I like the *idea* of modders being approached by game companies to make their mod official dlc or something. I like the idea of modders getting paid, broadly. I know it might be a hot take. But, modders are god-tier skillful. I think, if the majority of the funds go to the modder, than its not a big deal.
The comments I've seen from larger people who make paid mods, like Kinggath for example, have been overall positive. He's been able to set up a small studio for making mods for Bethesda games where he and others get paid for doing what they're passionate about. Bethesda has shown no intention at all to try to limit modding anywhere else. Every mod creator is free to choose if they want to publish on the nexus or loverslab or on Bethesdas own website or even self host. They are free to publish something to bethesda and realise "hey the cut I'm getting from Bethesda for publishing paid mods here isn't worth it, I'd prefer to get patreon donations from a free mod instead" and stop publishing their stuff there.
UA-camr and (paid)modder are very similar if you think about it honestly. Both put time and effort into making content so a large corporation can make profits off of them, that's part of the deal when they host their content on someone elses platform. Both start out small but with time, skill and dedication they can build up and audience and start making a living from their passion. Could the split be better? Probably, but we don't know what the split is and the ones making paid content for bethesda clearly don't think it's too little of they would stop doing it.
As long as Bethesda doesn't try to hamper mod creation for other platforms, which as said they've shown no intention whatsoever of doing, there is nothing to be worried about. It's not some slippery slope. Modders want to get paid and now they can get paid officially, they can even put it on their cv for future jobs if they wish. The only ones I've seen complain about the system are doomers and people who expect to always get free stuff. And for the record I've not even spent the free bethesda credits I got for Starfield. The only paid mods I've interacted with was because I purchased the anniversary edition of Skyrim and the paid mods have been a bigger hindrande than anything.
The creators should get like 75 or 80 percent. Making a mod can be a lot of hard work.
I genuinely have no problem with paid mods. My problem is when Bethesda updates the game to add in these mods and breaks larger scale established mods. Such as script mods that require the script extender to function. It's been long enough there are many methods to dance around these updates such as downgrading your game version, but it does NOT make it any less tedious or annoying to have to jump through hoops to make the mods you love work properly.
I honestly have no problem paying for a really *significant* mod. I would probably have paid $15-$20 for Fallout London for example, heck if they had actually just made it a standalone game I would have probably bought it the same way I gladly bought New Vegas years and years ago. I'm glad they didn't go that route, but if paid mods have to be a thing, there is no disputing the quality of a mod like that and the effort that went into it. I'm somehow infinitely more angered by the cheapo $1-$5 mods that add like 1 weapon and an immersion breaking quest with minimal voice acting. Like if modders create a well made New Lands mod that is at least close to the level of value a Bethesda DLC like Dragonborn or Far Harbor etc, I'm all for that! They're significant undertakings and add significant content, but they should still only be around $5-$10 unless its a new game sized project like Skywind or Enderal or the aforementioned Fallout London. There's just absolutely no quality control with Bethesda's current setup. If Bethesda is going to put their seal of approval on a mod, it should be a mod that they genuinely believe adds value to their game for almost any player.
Thanks for this video! I think people are generally in favor or people being compensated for their work, that's how capitalism/free markets are technically supposed to work on paper. The problem is the real ugly face and exploitative nature of corporatism becomes apparent, and in their initial roll out of paid mods its was blatantly so.
If they actually wanted to foster a community around a sustainable market place, they would've reached out to prominent modders and established a coop to keep the market place curated so assholes aren't trying to asset flip or folks reupload other peoples mods. Instead it was a cynical cash grab just like the creators club, just like starfield itself.
how much spell damage does your robe give
I'm down for authors having Patreons, having donate buttons, ko-fi, whatever, so that users who can and want to support them can do so in whatever way they want. Mods should be a community thing and remain free, and if that's to change, then I'd much rather see it change so that the mod authors are getting the majority of that money. I know the argument could be made that, well, Bethesda (or whatever company) released the game and the modding tools but like, they more than make their money from the game itself. The tools should just be a gift to the community. Larian just dropped modding tools on the community and have been nothing but gracious and giving and I think a lot of companies could learn a thing or two from them.
That said, there IS still an issue with entitlement among gamers and it'd be nice if we could be fucking normal about folks making stuff!
But the fact is people dont donate, dont patreon, and dont do any of that. They all say they prefer it like you, and they all claim they would do it, but they never actually do so. Every single one of the creators who made stuff for the Original Creation Club content got paid a one time payment from Bethesda, every single one of them said that one time payment was more than they had made from donations and other sources ever, all combined. Years worth of donations and patreon couldn't add up to a single contract job payment. Every single one of them confirmed this.
Modders getting money from donations and patreon is a convenient myth used to hand wave and ignore facts, so people can feel good about getting everything for free(because they are totally making money from others, not me though, but others are totally paying them thousands of dollars via donations, right?). Stop living the lie and come back to reality people.
@@7BitBrian They make money with nexus dp points
@@Jakeryanu Yea, still barely.
@@7BitBrian Well its not meant to be a full time job
@@Jakeryanu Why not?
Interesting scenario that can happen from paid mods. First, mods have driven some of the most innovative changes across the gaming industry for decades. Team shooters and Team Fortress started as a Quake 1 mode in the mid 90's. Day Z, Battle Royale's, Moba's, CSGO, DOTA, all come from modders. I'm sure that I've missed a few but this is just off the top of my head, and those mods inspired some huge changes in the industry. Now imagine that someone from the creation club creates a game changer mod like the ones listed above. Bethesda pays the modder a measly fee and the mod goes beyond being successful for the game, but becomes something that's good enough to be it's own game. What does Bethesda do? Do they pay the mod creator to be a developer on the project? Then other modders want to get paid more. Do they just flat out steal the mod, and make a game out of it? That would really piss of the community. What if another company just swoops in and makes the stand alone game made from the modders idea? It's happened before. I don't want to pay for mods, but I want to see modders get paid if their work becomes the next Day Z or Fortnite.
3:23 just so I can come back to it now and then
Huge, DLC-sized mod deserves to be a paid mod.
The idea of making Bethesdas games easy and accesable for free modding was one of the best their ideas.
I think they should be both: free mods made by passionate creators with some donation platform if someone want to support thairs future works. and payed official bethesdas mods as well, where You pay for proper checked 100% working mod. - I understand that when you are microsoft property the money goes first, but the way the-besta acts lately is simply cutting the magickal hens golden balls (like in this legend)
They can have both. "people who value comfort more than money will buy their handy, checked, mods, and people who value money more than comfort will struggle with fun-made unchecked mods. simple as that.
I wish nothing more for Bethesda to keep making good games as they did before, thay have their own code of success, thay just need to come back to it. Thanks for the viedo Mrs. A. best regards form Poland
I find it insanely wild how our lord and savior Todd was able to smoothly say "y'know for April Fools we doubled the price of the horse armor in Oblivion, and everybody bought it hahaha".. Talk about ripping off people like a chad. lmao XD
13:50 imo this is such a greedy take. No, mod authors did not create 100% of the work. They would not have anything to show for without the million dollar foundation as well as modding tools provided by Bethesda and distribution systems of Valve or Nexus (which, spoiler alert, have massive costs to run as well). 25% is not even that bad, considering the modder did less than 1% of the overall work of the end result. 25% is not going to make it or break it to you. Either nobody plays your mod and you earn 50 bucks per month off it, or it's played by so many you earn thousands of $$$ per month. Whether you earn 5k, 10k or 20k, honestly at this point it becomes greed, it is enough. Of course then there will be those who earn exactly $500 per month from their creations, so it would be enough if they get 100% ($2000). However due to how scaling works, its pretty unlikely to be exactly in that "sour spot". You'll either have far too much or far too little most of the time.
TLDR: Imo being able to cooperate with industry giants and work on whatever you want to build on THEIR foundations, while splitting the profits in the end sounds like a good deal to me.
I agree with this take. Also this gives modders like Kinggath Creations to make their own studios and make essentially third party DLCs, which Skyrim needed a long while ago
@@jacobodom8401they already are a studio
@@chaserseven2886 yes, now with more reliable funding, because they receive income from their creations in the store
I'm just happy that Bethesda didn't make you! You're about the only thing in this video that clearly needs no modification 😊
The only good thing about paid mods is you making a video about it and looking absolutely stunning
00:00
1. freedom
2. simplicity
Paid mods COULD BE a good idea - its just that the way they are introduced and sold is bad.
Mod creators can already get income from fans willing to donate some money to the authors of the work they love.
Otherwise there is Patreon where modders can get reliable recurring payments and release the newest content as reward.
While I do not know how much a creator of for mods is making as an average, I love reading fan translations of web novels and know for a fact how much money fans are willing to spend on the content (the translation) they love there.
Still both ways come with disadvantages:
1. If the creators only release the latest version of their mod on Patreon but the rest for free on Nexus, there will be a reduced number of patrons. If they release all / most of their mods only on Patreon, there will the complains about a paywall and much less people will be aware of your mods - compared to releasing some of them on Nexus.
2. Unsolicited donations and Patreon all require the author to continuously release new mods or at least regularly work on and update their mods. Otherwise the donations will drop of over time.
With paid mods though this would be an additional income for modders - an income they could receive even if they no longer work on the mods.
I don't say that paid mods should replace the existing way mods are distributed, but I would suggest that it could be an addition to the current distribution models.
Is Bethesda the right platform to sell the mods? At the moment certainly not! But it could be - if the mod authors get a much bigger share and the consumers can outright buy the creations istead of buying coins first.
Would it be an alternative to ask Nexus to pay modders an obolus? Maybe, but I don't think this is a workable suggestion - Nexus currently doesn't earn a ton of money while there are way too many modders and mods for Nexus to give each modder a fair payment (it would only amount to a few cent if everyone gets some payment, or the community would need to get involved in a discussion what mods would qualify to receive payment and how the payment should be tiered).
I would support paid mods if:
- The mod creator gets at least 75% of the revenue from the mod.
- BGS actually moderates the Creation Club and filters out all the asset flips, the free stolen mods from nexus, the low effort item color swaps, and all the other low quality garbage.
- The pricing makes sense. You can get the amazing and high quality “Bard’s College” mod by Kinggath Creations for $9.99, yet there’s all kinds low quality BS selling for the same price (including stuff by BGS themselves). In Starfield, BGS are selling one measly quest line for $7. Their games have become platforms to sell you more stuff (which was probably already in the game and cut out so they can charge more for it) and it’s seriously affecting the quality of the experience.
It should have a player ranking system
There has only ever been one asset flip
I see a disturbing amount of similarities and shared notes between ZOS and BGS as Fallout 76 and its atom shop have been under tight scrutiny since day one. We’ve caught them doing some heinous stuff, searching the fallout subreddit can show years old threads of people complaining about their purchases not working since release and some still to this day to say the absolute least on the matter lol
Candy crush, Pokémon Go and star wars galaxy of heros came out all around the same time and I knew back then the dangers that would come from micro transactions and sleeping them slowly seap into aaa games has been such a disheartening experience. It doesn't matter anymore what genre of game you play from any gaming studio (except fromsoftware) it all now feels like a giant gambling casino simulator and im convinced its all by design to separate old gamers that were full of passion and curiosity and the new mindless whales that are willing to play through the bad rng and empty out their wallets ... I miss the old days 😭
i would pay for mods thats companies take a cut of ONLY if they provided the modders with access to professional voice actors and if the modders had to adhere to the lore
I think for es6/fo5 the people who wanna do paid mods get access to the Creation Kit either early or completely, and free modders either get it years late or never
I think a few modders come to mind when it comes to creations and pushing for them and it's why I don't even deal with their free mods
Ok the i wont type TYPE "STARFIELD" and "FALLOUT".
This whole topic is pretty simple when you strip its parts back IMO. Modding currently for any game is a community thing made by the community for the community. When big greedy company XYZ gets involved it is no longer a community produced piece of work it's a product. And where you have products you have suits. Suits are the death of community for gamers no matter the topic.
The payment structure should come from the modding community themselves. Surely someone like Nexus could implement a way to pay for using a mod?
Personally I wouldn't pay for a download, but if I install a mod and like it I probably would if it guarantees that it will be updated for DLCs and patches etc.
Are you ever gonna branch out beyond ESO? I'm thinking about subbing for your certified fresh memes about minerals but things probably stop there as I'm not into ESO.
Divines! My goddess Azura has blessed me with her appearance!
Moving on, lol. I don't think it's wrong for there to be paid mods. Modders do help the player experience and in general just build upon the game world and make it better. It's basically like DLC. I do think Modders get too much praise however because people act like the modding community is the only reason why a game like Skyrim is good. No. Skyrim is a great game on its own but in general I definitely do see the appeal of them. With all that said I do want to state that I don't think that all mods should be paid for. There should be a balance.
Omg... paid mods were 9 years ago, it seems so much more recent.. time is relative I guess..
With paid mods is you don’t know exactly what you’re getting until it is installed. Authors and porters often add unwanted crap to an otherwise good mod to make it ideal for their personal game. So imagine paying for ten mods about one particular item or feature just to find the one that does what you want without the irritating built in extras. Example: You find a highly desirable skin for your sword and dl it, only to find the mod author has loaded it with an enchantment that a) you can’t use in your playthrough b) it prevents you double enchanting it with enchants you DO want. Imagine if you paid for that frustration. …..With unpaid mods you can try them and discard until you find a good one.
When Tod H talks about the Oblivion Horse armor paid add on and Tod says players will buy anything, it showed how out of touch Tod was with Bethesda game followers. Many players bought the horse armor to show support for Bethesda and keep Beth afloat so they can continue making these kinds of games.
The biggest problem with paid mods is, if its just more of the vanilla, why bother? mods are great exactly because you can mod ironman armor into fallout or all the raunchy stuff ect, but such mods would never pass moderation and cant be monetized so mod autors have the choice for what to use their time, they will choose more vanilla to be able to sell, and paying customers will choose to not bother.
Great Video, good humor, beautiful host and a decent discussion.8:32 "SDK" "Source Development Kit" ... Keep going you're doing great. Also SkyBliv/Wind aren't released yet so 9:04 I wouldn't really mention those, I'm still not sure they ever will be released personally, I've seen more done by smaller teams in a much shorter amount of time. ...The issue about this subject is that - you didn't invent youtube, Modders didn't invent their games that they mod for. On the face - it's fine to act like paid mods are cool, but the bad blood and potential for theft is too much - not to mention - these are fans, not professionals. I pay Professionals for their work because they were paid up front, I'm comping for their work and future.
It's not about pub opinion of paid mods at all imo, if every game turns into a potential cash farm - the marketplaces associated will be BRIMMING with crap. What do you know the marketplaces that exist ARE. It's too much of a headache to manage and if paid mods were the "norm" - no one would WANT mods. ...Girl ... No One is confused about your "fans" site, they are making a wack attempt at engagement/humor with you.
Azura you look gorgeous here
The goal of a company is to maximize profit. This is how it always has been, and it is how it'll always be. If people keep buying paid mods there's no reason for bethesda to discontinue the practice. The market will sort itself out as always
The only good thing I can say about the subject is that Shattered Space just proved how creatively bankrupt Bethesda is at the moment. The majority of people aren't interested in buying paid mods for their lackluster games, so it won't become a standard like horse armor DLC. My stance on the subject is: if you want to earn money with gaming, just make your own game and stop being a parasite to a big studio or corporation living on scraps. I've been a modder myself since Oblivion, and I'll never accept paid mods. Donations are fine but asking for money upfront is a big no.
Someone like Bethesda zenimax and Microsoft make enough money that they could give the molders the money instead of keeping most of it.
4:18 "The superior Bethesda franchise." She said it! She said the thing!
Wasn't the Vampire Redemption project C&D'd by Activision?
Misinformation bonk, we werent CD'd we chose a safe option cause were ignored
@@Galejro that's good news, I had some "articles" on my feed that you were
commenting so the algorithm keeps putting pretty ladies named after elder scrolls gods in my feed
Greets. Which books would you recommend reading and in which category for life?
Interesting video aside you looks very cool :-)
this one wonders why Khajiit has not seen this channel before. Skooma cat must have hidden it.
comrade howard is actually talking about the commoditization of everything as a sympton of capitalism
Personally I never understood the hate for paid Mods, I don't know if it's just because people have not made the connection yet but paid Mods are almost as old as modding. Let me explain, mods/modding are just short hand vernacular for modifications/modifying. Expansions, DLCs, Re releases, remakes, and so on are just paid modifications released by the game studio rather than a 3rd party content creator. This means any official content added after the base game release that you have to pay to play is just paid Mods and people have no problem with these additions for the most part (occasionally you'll get something like horse armor). My personal opinion on the matter is if someone creates something of value that people are willing to pay for they should be able to sell it. My only gripe about paid Mods does not come from the Mods themselves, but if they are included in a mod list and made mandatory for said list especially if it's a list hosted on a free to download platform. I do like the idea of Nexus having an incentive program for creators.
Never touched Sky Grim tales, never will touch Sky Grim tales. 🌌 lets wash face and move on.
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Todd is happy that the workshop had 14 million downloads. I bet at least half of them were to fix the problems with Todd's game.