The Modding Community is Divided.
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- Опубліковано 14 вер 2023
- A debate around paid game mods has re-emerged around a paid, DRM-protected DLSS 3 mod for Starfield.
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I also want to add that the modding community is known for having perfect mod compatibility. Once you download that tenth mod, your game will probably be crash authenticating ten different DRMs
Likely why mod DRM can't exist. I'm all for paid mods if they are really well done and don't kill your computer at the end of the day. I'm looking at YOU, Frackin Universe!
@@ryuketsuekiofficial if people start stealing or say sharing paid mods there will be DRM
@@Neclony if the code is all made by the coder itself perhaps (even then it'll be flimsy protection at best) but not if it contains anything (code, assets etc) that is proprietary like Direct X stuff or code from the game itself.
@@RivellaLight are you trying to say that code that interacts with the directx api? well then you would be very wrong. maaany pograms or more like little tools are sold and are only very clevery written api instuctions.
I'm "fine" with paid mods (in some circumstances, I think its fine. But I do think the vast majority of mods should not be paid, unless they add a significant amount of content) but I am completely against DRM. The entire concept of mods is to use them with other mods to enhance the game in specific ways. DRM makes them practically incompatible with running multiple mods
If monetized modding becomes normalized, we're gonna see a lot more legal action and a lot more controversy that could seriously negatively impact the public perception of modding as a whole. The cracking and uploading of that DLSS mod is just the start. We gotta remember some popular mods on Nexus rely on stolen content from other games. Apachii SkyHairs is mostly a collection of hair models from The Sims. Plenty of weapon and armor mods use asset rips or are based off other IPs. A lot of this isn't even technically within the rights of the mod makers to do in the first place, and you can bet EA and Nintendo are gonna come down with lawsuits and C&Ds on a whole bunch of mod makers if the field starts being "professional" instead of just free stuff from hobbyists.
It won't really matter whether the particular mod in question is monetized or not, and having a deluge of takedowns and bad publicity is not gonna be healthy. Monetizing these things is just asking for heavier policing, and if that happens, the landscape is gonna change, because everything's gonna have to be original.
Ooh, this is probably my favorite comment so far.
Ngl, I was on the camp of modders should have the freedom to monetize their mods, but your point about a lot of mods ripping copyrighted assets from other IPs is really huge. Donos should be allowed, but monetizing mods absolutely does open the modding community to lawsuits, and modding is already poorly supported as it is.
Prettymuch nobody monetizes ripped and modified mods.
Most of the artists that publish mods with "stolen" assets on their patreon etc make it public and anybody can download it.
@@OG_ALviK This is also a good point, but I think the point about mods encountering even more heavy policing is absolutely cogent.
@@acynicalasian Pf, good luck with that.
Companies can't even police their own platforms and games from Malware, cheats, scripts and Piracy. What they are hoping to do on others platform? Cmon, lets be real here.
@@OG_ALviK ? Most games just solve this problem by being really not mod friendly in the first place??
I think another factor is that the vast majority of mods are open source. They welcome people posting issues and helping out. This also helps greatly with mod compatability.
If one of my mods ran into compatability issues with a paywalled mod, id probably never fix it, because even if i paid for that mod, ill still not even be able to check the source code and see where our mods are conflicting. There are hacky solutions to see compiled mods code, but that can be extremely time consuming and convuluted.
Honestly? Closed-source mods shouldn't be trusted to begin with. You'd have no idea if you're downloading a virus.
The issue with the 'modding your car' thing is that you can mod your own car, or your own game, and no one is going to have an issue. But if you start publicly selling mod kits for a specific car (or game), then the manufacturer might get involved. With car mods it's harder, like you might have to remove the vehicle's name (make/model) from your mod kit description, or they might send a C&D (at that point, might as well be nintendo who is anti-mod and threatens most any group that posts mods, even free ones)
Isn't there a ton of mod kits for Teslas?
My extent of car modding knowledge is opening up a menu in Gran Turismo, but googling for "aftermarket turbocharger" I believe I see a website advertising turbochargers and comparing their product to an OEM product. With makes and models of compatibility on the page.
You can always just say it is „compatible with“ a certain make of car
With cars its different
If I build and sell a car and you buy it and modify it
Then it explodes and kills you or someone else, I get the bad PR and I get investigated by the government.
If you mod a game its on you
@@RusticRonnie Yeah, see, this is why cars with certain mods are banned on public roads and why cars have yearly safety and emission inspections. I don't think the government cares if you mod your copy of Elden Ring to turn Godfrey into a big-titted anime girl waifu, though.
The big issue for me is that the moment there's money to be made in modding he game companies are going to want their cut, and from there they will start trying to control the modding scene and locking things down to drive skilled modders into parntner ships, and to protect themselves from any mods deemed 'controversial'. One of the big joys of modding is that it's people making things outside of monitisation and all the limits and restictions that brings
This happend with minecraft, texture packs that were free in Java are paid only on bedrock due to agreements with mojang and just financial want.
I am very afraid of mods ending up like Minecraft Bedrock. It would def stop me from playing there games, I stuck with Java MC. I play for the free mods and the community that brings, not people out solely to make a buck and make another Skyblock "addon map" and charge $5 for it. Theres dozens of them!
@arcadeportal32 I'm fine with bedrock having paid textures since console has always had paid textures packs.
I think the creation club is the best example to look at what paid mods could do. The creation club features some of the best modders being paid to make mods and they're shit. They're honestly worse than the free content they made, and mods are often a community effort. Some of my favourite mods need a second mod to fix them. One of the best Japanese mods which is giant has a whole other mod to dub it into English and many more to make it prettier fix bugs and make it more compatible with other stuffs.
When a mod is a passion project they put as much time and effort in as they feel like and sometimes it's a whole lot. With paid mods you get exactly what you paid for and usually the mod maker isn't being paid all that much
that's a horrible example because the creation club greatly limited what the modders could do
@@herrabanani Yeah but they could work around them potentially, but they didn't because quite frankly they weren't being paid enough to put a lot of time and effort in
Dude greed will ruin the mooding scene its not worth it.
*Important note* Skyblivion and Skywind both have to create their own assets because Bethesda banned them from straight up porting the assets from the old engines to the Skyrim engine.
From what I understand the map geometry could carry across approximately but everything about characters has to be recreated from scratch.
As of now the main effort is the manual recreation of navigation mesh which the AI uses to find it's way around the world and is a publicly-sourced effort
Single player game for 400$: Welcome to paradox games.
Will there still be micro transactions? I desire to spend even more money within the game.
Linus talking about 11+ mods and my Skyrim list with 900+ be like...
For many mods, they actually require other mods in order to function.
So you would HAVE to install others work to make the other function.
So even if a mod only cost $1, but it requires 4 other mods to install then you have to spend $5 just for the functionality of the one you wanted.
Which makes the people that makes the "mod framework mods" the ones that would profit the most if all mods (or most) required the framework mod. Harmony for RImworld is essential for many mods if not all for the game. If you had to pay for a critical mod like that two things would happen, the mod would be expensive due how important it is, and secondly some other modder would make a similar mod for free, splitting the community in two making modding a lot harder.
@@halvars90And on top of that, that person who had the base mod that everyone worked off of. Would get an absurdly higher pay cut that isn't going to the other modders at all. It isn't like paying Bethesda for the game that goes into all the workers at Bethesda. Instead it goes to that one person who really just happened to get lucky enough to make the framework that everyone agreed on first. And then you have to contend in a damn market place. It's not something that the consumer wants and that will eventually kill the community entirely when that becomes the standard.
Mods can only work well with each other if they are open source.
So we can't sell mods as it would encourage close source mods.
But I believe that supporting the developers of the mods through Patreon is a good compromise.
Humble Bundle's sliders are no longer front and center. You have to click a button to expand the sliders and the default allocations have a minimum for the humble bundle tip. I think they changed it when IGN acquired them.
But to raise a controversial opinion... Does those sliders actually work or are they just a "feel good" at the moment?
Pretty sure it'b be some kind of crime if they did that with the sliders, so hopegully not.
Bethesda has always handled their modding community excellently. But I do think that you will start to see the suits get _real_ pissy if modders start trying to monetize their mods privately after the gigantic backlash that we saw with the Creation Club.
they would become competitors. and it will hurt all modders
Bethesda is the worst abuser of their modding community. Bethesda has objectively released unfinished broken games for a fraction of the cost, labor, and time because it can rely on modders as free labor after the fact. Yes, modders in aren't slaves and have the *option* not to work, but they *are* replacing jobs that would otherwise be filled by paid and compensated employees.
Forget Creation Club, do you remember enabling the sales of Skyrim mods for upwards of $50? Rampant content theft ensued
dude, paywalled mods are already a thing for skyrim, legit people just hide mods behind their patreon for years now.
Creation Club had a lot of other issues, too. It was lazy DLC contracted out to modders and sold in the BethesdaBux shop... Funnily enough the best thing to come out of that update was .ESL files, which rendered merging plugins obsolete.
IMO the only approach that makes sense is to use the donation model for making money with mods; no paywall, just remind people they can donate if they appreciate what's being offered (not nagware though, be sure the reminder doesn't piss people off). That, and commissions for custom stuff, with no imposed license on the end result.
I would say that the game companies do get a share of modding revenue either through the increased playtime from the mods being entertaining leading to possible in-game purchases or just through more purchases of the game.
For real. There's a reason why Valve bought CounterStrike. And the Project Revolution mod disappeared just before Starcraft 2 became a real thing.
CS sold more copies of Half Life and later Steam than Gordon Freeman ever did.
this exactly here, is what mods to me are for, i have bought games specifically for the mods that the game had built off it, thus giving profit to the company
Many games don't have in-game purchases, so increased play time does not really contribute to devs.
@@SlavaThereshinIncreased playtime does make it more likely that you'll recommend the game to other people though, so it will generally lead to increased sales.
@@danieljensen2626 but it does mean you can make a half assed content dump 10 years later and the players will still buy it.
35:51 This is exactly what I was talking about in my other comment. SkyBlock and One Block are both big Java Edition mods. The number of knockoffs in the Bedrock Marketplace which are all the same thing but paid is enormous, and it's _very hard_ to know which listing is by the actual creator of the concept. Based on a quick google, the original creator of SkyBlock is Noobcrew, _not_ RareLoot as featured on that page there. The fact the main advertising page of the Minecraft Marketplace is advertising a rip off of another's mod is both disgusting and _entirely_ unsurprising
I think one thing you didn't talk about (and should have) is that "DLSS as a mod" is going to be, imo, not just an order of magnitude more popular than even a popular mod, but TWO orders of magnitude more popular.
You have to buy to buy Starfield for $70 coz that's what it costs. And when you do you might play it at like 20 fps. OR you could pay $70+5 to play it at like 60-80 fps. NO OTHER MOD can generate that level of general interest in the players unless there's an absolutely massive hole in functionality in the game. And even in the case of DLSS, they've now announced it so the interest is gonna go way way down
VR mods of flat games has been pulling back into VR when regular made-for-Vr games, most of them don't do it for me. So being able to play Valheim, Outer Wilds, and many others has really made me use my headset more
I hope the upcoming unreal VR injector opens up VR modding more. I don't like how much of it you have to pay for.
The modding community went south for the winter when a mod for half life 2, known as garry's mod, decided to charge for access to it compared to other mods at the time being released with no payments necessary. Always hated paid mods ever since that became a thing.
*Cough* Counterstrike *cough cough*
I don't mind that Garry's mod became its own thing, so many games or development studios started as a Mod and extended it till it became its own thing.
The only thing I hate Garry's mod for is that they now heavily rely on mods and actively remove features of the game, so modders have to re-add them
@@verrueckteriwancounter strike… unreal tournament… ms. pacman.
They started the same way, so its been common practice for years.
I don't really think GMod counts. It's a lot more justified in being a paid mod, because it only became paid after it was spun off into its' own sandbox game. The original Half Life 2 mod version of GMod have always been free on the other hand. That is very different from paying for a mod that adds a single feature like DLSS.
@@inkoalawetrust Nope, the original mod also was paid only. Could never check it out because of said paywall.
@@sephiroth668No it wasn't. GMOD was completely free as a Half-life 2 mod up until a much later version. You can still get those mods for free and play them right now, only requiring a copy of HL2.
Suggestion: Valve should support the modding community more with Steam workshop integrations. Not all games that have a ton of mods have a steam workshop. It would give many mods a ton of publicity. All mods in the workshop have to be free. But directly on the main page of a mod, there is a "donate" button just like the buy button on the store page of games. You can freely decide how much you want to spend. Valve takes 3 cents cut of every donation just as with marketplace items. The steam users get a profile badge / showcase that they can display which shows how much that user has donated. Similar to the profile award badge.
The money someone recieves can be transfered away from steam. Or it works like the sales from games.
And when we are at it, there should also be an option during steam sales which allows users to decide via slider if they want to spend a few cents to bucks more on the discounted price that goes directly to charity. It may not be as cool as HumbleBundles approach, but for charity, every dollar counts.
Valve has already released APIs, making a game steam workshop compatible is on the developers, not Valve. I'm also fairly sure I've seen mods with links to ko-fi or similar tipping platforms. Yes, being able to tip directly through Steam might be nice, but we basically have everything you talked about.
@@widgity That is not the same. What I suggested is vastly different from what we have now.
Sure, the theoretical functionality is already there. But it is like you are trying to compare a aeroplane with a bycicle when your goal is to travel from america to australia. The practical aspect is far off.
It is about making those things accessible, not just avaiable and to give people an direct opportunity to support their favourite creators.
@ What would be superior to someone switching payment processors for donations to steam?
Platforms like kofi, patreon, etc already fit this purpose, I don't see why steam needs to throw their hat in the ring.
The few people who are actually going to donate to support the development of mods they like, are likely already going out of their way to return to the workshop page after having the mod downloaded for who knows how long.
The only difference I see this making is steam getting a cut of the donations instead of some other payment processor.
Personally, Patreon has been serving me well and already has quite a few features that allow me to communicate with and reward the people who choose to donate. idk why I would want to have people donating in two different places, and I'm not going to ask the people already donating on patreon to stop and start donating through steam.
Also, I don't only make mods for games that are on steam, I also make mods for minecraft, I'm not going to make multiple places for people who enjoy mods for different games to donate.
seems like it would overcomplicate things for anyone who is already participating in the modding scene idk
I think modders making profit might end up creating the AAA effect. Back 15 yrs ago when gaming started to balloon and make serious money I feel that the monetary incentive made people interested in learned to code and design for the wrong reasons. I think it's what's led to a lot of burnout because I feel there's a big chunk of people in the industry who are only in it for the money. I'm not gonna say 12-16 hr days is good, but many people in olde WANTED to slave away perfecting their craft and potentially needed others to reign them in. Now with a less dense population of people that have to be held back from overachieving it's become more of a professional endeavor. And as the artists that are dedicated to their craft get connected with those who do intend to do a good job, but only as far as it is a job, I think that'll leech into mods made with "I know people want this, and I can sell it." Which completely undermines the passion thes gotten games to where they are. Once again working tirelessly for little pay SHOULDN'T be expected, HOWEVER many many people want to push themselves for their work.
This might be controversial but try to understand how commodifying works of art can remove what makes it art.
Okay, i see what you're saying but how about music? I personally think good things will always be made, its just when you have a mainstream people like you and me aren't used to looking outside of it. (Not that i know anything that isn't mainstream either though, like i don't play videogames anymore so take that as you will)
nah
Reminds me of Blender. It's free, it's open source and anyone can work to fix it. But why fix it when you can leave it broken and sell the fixes? Even something as simple as adding a keyboard shortcut is 5$ I also compare the price/value of the mod vs the price/value of the original product and yea, no.
Ngl I have a hard time agreeing with that take. Games nowadays aren't good not because people making them aren't passionate; they very much are, it's rather a bunch of other reasons. Corporate greed from upper management studios/devs to implement egregious monetization as well as try and get games out the door faster and faster. Games back in the olden days just needed less work, and yeah sure we have better tools now, but the amount of work that needs to be done is exponentially higher, all while they're trying to spend as little time on development as possible to minimize costs.
Developers are also not paid a sustainable salary, no matter how much passion you have you're not going to care to put that passion in if you're worried about affording rent and food. The pay is so bad that there's a distinct lack of senior devs in the industry because everyone leaves after awhile. In the GD world you're considered a "veteran" if you've worked more than 5 years, because that's how bad turnover is here. If we take Blizzard as an example, even though they have more devs than ever working on Overwatch, the ratio of senior devs to junior devs is probably so high that most junior devs can't learn the work they need to do to make a better game.
Passion was never the issue with games being bad nowadays, it's corporate greed. You can always pay people to do good work, but if you're not going to pay for it you can't expect good work, and right now executives are trying to find out how they can min-max the costs of development with profit.
I personally believe that the vast majority of people who join the gaming industry want to make games because they love them. That's a pretty good reason. It's the people higher up the ladder that only care about money, and they are the ones at fault.
I don't mind donating to modders but I do mind being forced to pay extra for necessary features in the form of a mod, not only does it go against the spirit of modding it is also the straw that breaks the camel's back, we're already fleeced to near breaking point and more would be insufferable.
Not to mention how many mods are not compatible with other mods...
I think the reason modding hasn't been heavily monetized at this point is the community largely creates with the mindset of it being for fun and not profit. I don't think someone monetizing their hard work changes that mentality, I think a large community of modders modding for free and modders modding for profit can co exist.
As long as a company isnt profiting from user generated content Im fine, like what Bethesda did it is stupid IMO since they barely do shit anyways and one pretty much needs the mods just to fix the game and avoid falling through the floor.
One major issue, especially with Bethesda games, is that modding tends to create conflicts (when editing similar parts of the game) and those conflicts require patch mods in order to allow them to work together. Those patches are not going to be created when you have to drop $5 per mod just to work on an patch.
Because people wants free stuffs without doing anything. As always.
@@kingrooperwhich isn’t a problem. Modding is supposed to be fun and doesn’t have to be monetized or not.
@@enrd12 But what about bigger mods or massive mods that people took way too much time on making them. I think for those they should be at least given some donations because of the size. Words doesn't do much to all the time wasted on those people making those mods. People need food to work, and making massive mods for free sounds like what a masochist would do. But for this DLSS mod, the guy is asking for a sucker punch of course.
Wow, finally this video is not banned! Huraayy🙂
Why did it go private twice?
Mods bring old (and new) games to life and keep them interesting or in some cases fix the game and most of them do it because it's fun, i have seen some modders start up a patron to earn some rev but only a few times have i seen paid mods (not counting when Bethesda did it for fallout). Even popular games today were born out of mods like CS and Dota. Hell Garry's Mod is basically built by modders the amount of mods that get ported from other games to gmod is insane i can play sandbox and have a bunch of stormtroopers fight the flood from halo and like luke said there are games i will only play modded because the vanilla experience is just a bit stale like minecraft for example, when i play minecraft mods i play with 100 - 300 with gmod i have about 370.
Have been waiting to watch this for like weeks it feels like lmao
idk seemingly nobody has brought up beatrun...... that was not only paywalled, but if you were to download a crack of it, you would have your ip and steamid logged and put on a public website for shaming......
Idk I think modders should decide and display in the description of their mod if the mod in question released under cathedral or parlour "license". Usually they do saying "you gotta credit me if you want to use this mod in a collection" or sth like that.
The fact that a mod has DRM...
Yeah, I do not see the positives of paid mods outweighing the negatives...
I think ignoring that there's a free option that offers most of the features, but a one time unlock for a mod that has the latest greatest feature, isn't entirely the same as locking the whole feature behind a pay wall.
I'm slightly concerned though, that a game company might look at that success, and then add that pay wall to their game outright, like dlc, but instead of content, it's a monthly subscription to DLSS 3.
That same studio if they see too much revenue may also decide to go after modders in the future
I can imagine mod makers bundling their mods to create mega-mods that combine a bunch of mods that would otherwise be standalone if the split was on a per-mod basis. Or maybe like a gamepass sort of model where you pay a flat fee for access to all mods and the mod makers receive a percentage relative to how many people use their mods.
Or just donations like it is already
People already bundle mods for free. Momecraft for example does it a lot. But with other creator mods too. RLcraft mod pack comes to mind.
They do this already in the forms of modding frameworks. They exist for a slew of games. One that has really taken advantage is the Forge APIs for minecraft. Has made intercompatible mods arbitrary.
Another thing I don't is mentioned. Why would a company include these features in the base game when the company could monetize mods, or if normalized sell it as a DLC.
Here's a couple of thing to consider when modders make money: it is a strong incentive to keep a mod updated so that it keeps making money, it is also a strong incentive to make mods as compatible as possible so have the largest user base. With money, a modders can hire help to improve aspects of their creation, such as music or illustrations.
But even then, just like free games still exist, free mods would keep existing. With that in mind though, 5 bucks a mod is wildly over the line!
That's one of the things I was looking for in here. The number of times a promising mod has gone dead because the modder just can't devote the time to it, but potentially could if they were making money from it. I don't think there's an overall easy answer here. If a modder goes "I am passionate about making this huge content mod, but can only actually do so if I can make an income from it so I can afford to do that instead of working a job" I think they should be allowed to do that without being dogpiled on by the community. And they *do* get dogpiled on sometimes for that. I think it is and always will be something that needs to be evaluated on an individual case by case basis.
@@wanderer202 I believe there is an easy answer if paying modders becomes a thing: Like in the regular game market the top 1% of best mods for the biggest games will gobble up 90% of the money, so the situation won't dramatically change for the vast majority of the modders.
But that little bit of tip money might allow them to get a beer from time to time, or if they are lucky to commission someone to make them some cool custom music and the like.
mods should be donate-only, because when they aren't they WILL get pirated
also about the minecraft marketplace everyone WAS mad at it, but people just didnt care because it only worked in that edition of the game. when the other edition (java edition) had alot more mods, and alot better mods, not to mention the mods that were just stolen from the java edition and put into the marketplace *with a price*
Also a take on this. Looking at Workers and Recourses Soviet Republic. They've contracted a few very popular modders to actually make assets for the game! Very symbiotic
In my flight sim I have about 1000 free mods/plugins/addons installed and I have still spend hundreds of dollars on payware addons aswell. Without the amazing work by the modding community these games could never even get close to what they offer thanks to the incredible amounts of freeware
If anyone was around for Modageddon on the nexus One of the thing people were doing was pooling their backups to ensure that mods would be preserved if and when stuff started getting pulled from nexus in favor of the paid mods on steam workshop. It was after this that a second Modageddon occurred when Nexus updated its licensing terms to allow it to continue to host and distribute files after mod authors pulled them. This caused alot of issues however I personally agreed with Nexus's move here because modders are subject to alot of Drama and when they take their toys and go home IE pull down a mod or worse release a poisoned update they can damage existing users abilities to continue playing the game especially if the mod integrates into a save file and makes the save dependent on it. I am all for a modders right to monetize their work with donations however I do believe a modders rights to remove / restrict their mods after the fact or to add paywalls or DRM ends when it results in existing users potentially having damaged saves or other problems when a critical mod is lost from their load out
I run as many as 500 mods on a single game with enough support
In all the time creation club existed , i never once even opened the storefront. I usually run packs of around 20-50 mods in things like beth games. Mods are actually the only reason i played skyrim as i actually dislike fantasy but it being a beth game and the modding comunity behind it is what pulled me into it. Starfield is in the same boat for me as i dont like spaceship games but this being a beth game im just waiting for the modding community to take off.
ive run minecraft modpacks with 200-300 mods in them. i think in situations like this, you could reasonably have people sell not just mods, but bundles of mods. To continue with minecraft, mods are often grouped based on what sort of thing they do, so perhaps you could buy the tech mod bundle or the magic mod bundle or the exploration mod bundle since i would wager most players arent using these mods on their own and hence would never feel the need to buy them individually
OK by the logic of "modders owe money to x Dev for using their assets to sell their work" then what Unity just pulled is completely ok. I'm not OK with that as a precedent
This isn't entirely correct, what unity did was different. Unity still charged for using their engine but they changed to basing in the amount of installs which is what dev had issue with
Mod Engine subscriptions and on-going royalties from mods going to the host game developer? That sounds like a painter having to keep paying the canvas company and the paintbrush company, forever. Modding tools as a service sounds like an excuse to nickel-and-dime, less as a means to provide reliable and timely support or collaboration for modder's ambitions. likely I'm ok with modders asking for money and devs selling modding access, provided they also take responsibility for destroying the modding scene if or when that happens. I can certainly imagine a future where mods get broken down into parts to be sold piecemeal, to nickel-and-dime everyone.
I think the best compromise is to set-up a way in which the developer can receive donations if the user enjoyed their work or felt helped by the mod and wants to contribute. Of course, that means way less $ because some can but won't cuz of it being a bother, not wanting to give a penny or will just take advantage of everything while keeping all to themselves.
Donations dont work, nexus has implemented it already. People want skyblivion but never actually support the devs.
To add fuel to the fire- at one point i was starting a mod for oblivion (way before skyrim), learning the ropes of the their creation engine, had a nearly town built and some big plans... but the more i dipped into it the deeper the hole went, and at that point i had other priorities competing with that passion and i had to put it down- basically whatever more months or a year it would take doing that would bring me vs what i could do with that time... and right there the modding died. But monetary return, even more so at that time in my life wouldve been a completely different story (and idk, maybe spilled into game development proper? i can only guess).
Theres pros and cons to both...
The best scenario wouldve been having both but i have no idea how that could go. Maybe a company controlled medium (like bethesda hoped for at one point, but a good implementation) or how valve implement mods into tf2.. in such a way that modders could release free versions but then the latest release with easy installation through the official monetized mod browser, heck inside the very game to make it even more convenient, something like that would be the best scenario. Free version: dont get the new update as soon as it releases, manual installed mod and only customize via ini files... official/paid release, nobrainer 2 clicks auto-install, auto-updating, customize via ui inside the very game...
As for the EULA about "multiplayer thing", that may include, indirectly anything public facing system yet internal (DRM, CDN, "highscore" kind of thing (if there is anything) of such thing, ...). Maybe other public facing thing as well (login system that may be shared with their forum or other public system). That could also be just a "generic EULA" thing (if they had such similar clause in their other games) since nowday using internet is common, better to have it already instead of forgeting to add it then getting sued.
Theres a concept of subordinates doing something nefarious based on what they think their manager wants, even if the manager had no such intentions. I wonder if that's basically what happened with dlss.
My view on paid mods is similar to my view on microtransactions/dlc vs expansions.
I don't mind paying for expansions but hate the idea of games being sold to me in bits and pieces.
If the mod is the equivalent of an expansion i don't mind it being sold for profit. But with the blessings of the publisher. Like alot of mods based on Valve games.
My issue with paid mods is that it would just become third party microtransactions. A paid patch.
At the end of the day the consumer is in control of what they spend money on or not 🤷♂️
And the reason why alot of things that are "hated" still exist in the market is that the consumer is willing to pay for it. Money talks.
Also, law of averages means there is always a small fragment of the audience you can exploit. But allowing or building a system by which that tiny fragment determines the entire market is profitable but is the antithesis of community.
Wait...isn't modder creating something hiding it behind paywall the same as "it will be on floatplane not yt"? :D
Not quite, no.
People have to right to ask for money for the mods they make. However if everyone did, the modding scene would be damaged beyond repair. Assuming the mods would cost $1-$5 each I would end up paying $200-$1000 to mod Skyrim (I typically use about 200 mods). I really think the best solution is voluntary donations. If I get enough enjoyment out of a mod I'm happy to donate.
I haven't finished the video, but also consider the context of the Quake and Unreal engines in their infancy. Using someone else's IP as a platform to create your own tools screams the need for licence agreements to be conducted.
By default, modders are likely violating the EULA, and IP holders (developers) should be free to negotiate or terminate modding activity as they are the original creators (for better or for worse).
As great as it can be for modders to create amazing tools or content, they are not guaranteed freedom to do what they want.
I cannot go and create street art in public and demand to get paid for that art, or claim ownership of what I created that art on at all. That's just the nature of it.
I think if modders want to sell early access to test/development versions of their mod, that's fair enough, but I don't think they should sell the mod itself.
for me its between roughly at minimum 48 to a max of about 60 mods depending on what I wanna do
I don't think the costs will skyrocket to the point Linus suggested (at least not for long) because someone will come up with a subcription thing or something (like Gamepass for mods).
KSP also has a visual mod that you can only get access to via patreon
I think it depends on the situation tbh. I mean mods, in general, should be passion side-projects. However, I can see some of those, for example, solo Flat-to-VR projects be monetized for instance. Because that's a simple case of ''I can't make these mods in purely my spare time. Having people pay a buck or two means I can actually spend time to make 'em that I would usually have to spend working my regular job.'' However, DRM and everything related to that: *nope* big nope.
Exacly mods arent real work.
I think if you want to charge for early access to a mod, but then let it go free after some time, while keeping updates behind a early access model, might help encourage complex style mods.
I think the company can either get a cut OR charge for tools because with out the base there to mod there wouldn't be anything to mod, so even if people wouldn't play the games without the mods there is still a relationship needed. I think there should be a store, not that necessarily needs to be immediately moderated but has the option for the company to moderate as needed to deter unscrupulous behavior. I would think a reasonable cut would be 10% but could see up to 25%(more for live service games).
Edit I also think people should be able to charge for their time, if someone is putting out something that is helpful for me I like to try to donate if I have the capacity. Some things I just don't get/don't donate for, primarily because I do not see enough reason to purchase.
Why would bethesda get a cut when they are essentially asking for a 70+ usd entry fee?
Didn't Path of Exile already do the "pay more for better graphics" thing?
Regarding your poll, how many mods I add to the game entirely depends on what is available and what I fancy. It can be one mod or 50+ mods. Arma 3 is my most modded game with 102 mods on my PC, I don't run them all at once and some I probably have not used in a while.
there is another argument. usually, even the IP's that dont openly support mods, tolerate them because they are free and mostly an exercise for jr devs and a great showcase for dev resume. The moment Mods become a viable business, The owners of these IPS will crackdown on them hard... They already dont like people messing with their stuff, if you are making actual money from it, big nono...
I will not install a mod with denuvo even if author pays me :D And I guess, I rather reimplement the thing by myself and publish it with donations page. Yeah, I'm the "Cathedral" game modder (did some modding for Space Engineers and RimWorld)
The best result is paid pre release versions with cosmetic additions or unfinished-but-working features
I tend to run between 200-600 mods in Skyrim in other games I would run at least 10 depending on how many mods I can have
Side thing, some mods are using creation kit and then black magic into starfield.
Winrar’s drm is the most gentle. One time. And entirely offline. Just a combination of serial key and email address. Usable entirely offline and even on super old versions of winrar
The DRM on the dlss (or is it dlsss Linus 😂) has been cracked.
Paid mods isn't something new though.
That "11 plus" hits like that article from the onion "man spends 90 minutes online a day, addiction spirling out of control"
this one of the better and nuanced takes out there. it kinda covers all prespectives. it's a shame that what triggered it was an essential/basic feature that should've came with the game, because people would be less inclined to be up in arms about it.
if the mods actually has benefit on improving the performance on the game or Visually improved making the mod 1 time purchase is reasonable but of course at a reasonable price i'm to be honest invested on this kinda idea not only it's new but it's also opening a new oppurtunity for a modder.
The real problem for me is accessibility of mods, when greed and pride is involved.
Basically modders will take off their mods from Nexus and move to another site. where? nobody knows.
It's an issue for me since whenever i download some mod that has dependent mods requirements, i would often see these mods taken out, making the mod i downloaded obsolete.
Sure i understand modders wanting more control over their work, but mods are supposed to be for everyone to enjoy, not to be locked behind a paywall or hard to find in some shady site, or tucked away in some forums site where a link is secretly tucked away. Ya mostly have come across some problem like this and it needs to stop.
I been modding games for over 10 years now and seeing modding community being so divided and seeing certain individuals just either steal mods from another author to make it theirs only for the mod author to take off their work and put it elsewhere, or just put up the mod on patreon with a paywall is just so idiotic.
I wish i was a coding-tech savy, where i could make mods myself so would enjoy my game little bit better, since companies can't and will not produce more packed content games no more. It's really sad to see, it's really frustrating to depend on someone else's work when they themselves can take it away anytime they want, or put it behind a paywall, im not smart, im not rich, i want free mods, that's why mods are so fun to play, because it adds more to the game, more personalized content or more needed fix to make the game immersive. We all hate real life, it's boring, games are the only escape from the dull life, where we can be what we cannot irl.
Honestly If those people really want to make some money, then why not make their own games elsewhere... why monetize unofficial content which is considered broken and unpolished, why intrude on the companies IP which screams copyright, the company can send you cease and desist anytime if it sees you making money out of their own property.
So i will not believe anyone that modders can fix starfield, nobody will change my mind, with such community like this.
What could be done is that if someone chooses to offer a paid mod then what bethesda could do is take a portion of the revenue at like 35% or lower 5%. that would make sense to me it would suck a little bit to pay for the mod but it would also allow them to potentially make the kit better in the future. although that does raise the concern about people stealing the mod (more than likely a free one) and re selling it at a profit with little to no work. Which would be really unfair but to me i don't really see a way around it.
Heh, I don't even how to mod! Last time I installed a mod manager, it promptly had a stroke!
ether with an bounty/request system or an simple donation link. i can't see any other way that is healthy for the mod community. if no one asked for a mod, don't expect something in exchange, but you can remind to donate if the mod was good. i still see mods as an " a fellow gamer fixed a problem you had as well, and shared it to be the hero of your next 10-100-1000 of hours in game.
i mean sure i love mods and wish the best luck to modders, but you brought up very valid points.
if there are 15x versions of an auto loot for The Witcher 3 because it's an popular mod, i would be pissed if compatibility issues came up with another new mod i would want to try.
if soled as a product there should be a minimum supported time... and if i think about how many kickstarter and other way founded games where cash grabs' the modding scéne would take that route really fast as well because of bad actors, no doubt.
and as you said, it's not just one mod. i play my bethesda games with about 60-80 mod's, CDPR with 20-30 and compared to others that's still lightweight.
Bethesda's cut during their first paid mod attempt was 75%/25% in favor of Bethesda. On their second one they took 100% but they paid the creator during the creation of the "mod", hence why they called it mini-dlc: it was effectively contractor work instead of free labor that may result in a chance to earn money.
Technically Bethesda was only taking 45%. The other 30% went to Valve.
One thing I'm going to push back on your point at 38:00 minutes in was that would those same people that bought in to the horse armor back in the day still purchase it if they knew what kind of state micro transactions would be in now?
How about a model where you pay an additional 10%/$10 on the base game, almost like DLC, to unlock an 'approved by developer' simple way to mode the base game. A cut goes to the game developer (say 5%) and the rest gets distributed evenly among the mod makers. (Maybe evenly distributed among the mods you install the first month or year of purchasing the "Mod DLC" to make the financing simpler). That way the developer gets a cut and an incentive to promote good mods, and the mod makers get a cut for their hard work as well as an incentive to make good mods and keep them updated so that gamers will want to install them.
The underwear thing… same thing happened to DOA and the Techmo came out to explain that the body textures are actual photos that are edited.
Probably was the same reason it was there. Its more effort to edit out than to just cover up, less so now but still
I remember my dad telling me about a co-worker who modded for Minecraft on the side. This was back when Minecraft Marketplace was just becoming a thing. When I asked my dad how long the co-worker had played Minecraft, my dad said, "He said he's never played [Minecraft for] a day," and I immediately said I wasn't interested in checking the guy's stuff out.
I feel that a donation to compensate for work is appropriate because, as stated in the video, there are plenty of works where the creator definitely deserves something for the work. But I also don't want to be charged up the butt for secondary, half-baked mods or just things that are helpful but not really time taxing like a slight reskin to a UI made in an afternoon.
Some money can help encourage good creators to do more, but having to make works with the monetary worth of a product in mind could also damage quality from non-established creators while drawing in people looking to scam or are not at the point where they can fairly charge money.
11+ was the top end for that poll? Try 200+. That where most Bethesda games end up. You have multiple mods for outfits, weapons, textures, mods that overhaul every system in the game, mods that add new systems entirely, mods that add storylines, mods for everything. Even less modding-driven games I play that I mod tend to have 20 to 50 mods that I use.
Some games I'll mod up the wazoo. Others either none to maybe small quality of life or performance improvements as my system is old and need the help sometimes.
As a Minecraft Java modder, some of my favorite mods use java more like a game framework than an actual game.
A prime example is Create mod, my current mod of choice. It is more complex and complete than the Minecraft 1.19 game that runs underneath it. Create adds its own rotational physics engine, crafting recipes, and achievements.
A good example of a great modding community is sim racing, paid mods, free mods, subscriptions mods, developers encouraging moding, bad quality mods, good quality mods, greater-than-first-party-content quality mods, content mods, settings/features mods, of course there were some mishaps(ex sim dream development), abandonwear being rereleased (richard burns rally) and people are really happy with it no one is complaining as far as i am aware. Expand on this
I made my first game mod last month, with the release of Baldur's Gate 3. I have a few thousand downloads on nexus. At this point I've spent more hours modding the game than playing it. I wouldn't charge a dollar for my mods, because then no one would download them. My reward is, honestly, seeing download number go up. Getting my mandated human interaction by responding to comments, feature requests, and bug reports. I want to make a cool thing that people like, and if I happen to get $50 in my PayPal in 3 months from nexus' donation points system, that's just a bonus.
15:25 Ok, it depends on the game, and how willing I am to bother with making sure all the mods I'd download would work together without issue.
But for games like Skyrim, I'd be using probably more than 10 mods to get it the way I want it. Games like Banished I'd probably use close to 10 mods.
Then there are some games where all I want is a mod to remove those pesky loading advertising stuff or whatever that should, quite honestly, be skippable after the first time the game has been loaded and they've been shown.
There's a 10-year-old game called DLC Quest. Everything in there is a DLC - wanna go right? Buy right arrow. Wanna jump? Buy the jump key. It's not real money and it's a part of the game loop. But it's a commentary about the nature of microtransactions that was made to mock the industry. However it looks like we're getting closer for it to become reality, sadly.
On one hand, artists do deserve to be rewarded for the work, but on the other hand, when money gets involved things change, and people change; can kinda ruin the volunteer culture people associate with the concept of mods.
Third-party DLCs are a tricky thing...
On the other hand I've seen modder patreons allow modders to reduce their hours at work to dedicate more time to modding, giving us some of their best work ever. It's a *very* complicated situation. Unfortunately there genuinely is no very good one size fits all answer. I think all paid mod scenarios ultimately need to be evaluated individually.
There was a mod of sorts for a game that the person was charging $5 for. It affected a large group of people who wanted to do a certain thing in a certain game. I didn't like that they were charging $5 for a basic feature, so I looked into how to do it myself and released a version for free and expanded on it so that it greatly surpassed the original. I think when it comes to modding a game that isn't yours, it's a grey area if you should or shouldn't monetize the work. I think taking donations is a different thing though.
Ok but why didnt anyone make the mod before that person originally?
The funny part is, Mojang they’re fine if it's on the market on bedrock, but they’re not fine if you have a paywall on Java. However, on Java, you have more freedom to mod the game. And bedrock is very limited in what you can mod there. For me, most of the game I play depends on how many I will use for the game before I crash the game or am too laggy to play for Minecraft Java somewhere about +200 mods, and for Rim World some about 500 to +600 mods, other somewhere about 30 to +50 or 400 mods. yes there are pay mods for most of them are models or HD texture pack At least the model I can reuse them for 3-D print for it
What i am wondering, how does this affect modders modding mods.. Who should grt the pay? I think this could destroy the modding scene
Modding is to BG3 what homebrew is to DnD. But when you start selling DnD homebrew you have to follow certain rules set by WoTC(Hasbro), BUT the creator of the homebrew keeps the profit.
I should say that microtransactions in gaming happened long before horse armor, that was just the era that MTX became more widespread.
Never forget that the original arcade version of Double Dragon 3 had microtransactions. As in, you paid to play it, but you also spent extra real money on items in game as well. People hated it, and it was removed for subsequent iterations of the game.
I could get behind sort of a "game pass" model. Pay a yearly fee per the game you want to mod. And this fee gets divided between mod devs who meet requirements for the system such as monthly downloads or consistent improvements and updates. This also allows the game company to receive an appropriate level of compensation.
In saying this I find the precedent of paid/DRM mods potentially dangerous in general.
What about people who dont want to pay for mods? I dont exactly have 50$ extra just so i can add jiggle physics.
@@MattioBinotto then just get free mods. The community for it won't die.
I don't agree with paid mods but its probably coming like DLC and lootboxes...
I sure hope the mod creators realise: when you ask money for something the demands on them will be higher. Because if I paid for a product I expect it to be fixed a.s.a.p. and not: "When I feel like it' or once in a blue moon. Then there's all the legality nonsense that comes with it... Yeah, no this will turn our hobby worse again.
I think what gets lost is that its a patreon sub and not a direct purchase.
The original idea of the creation kit is that bethesda made the game with this, and why not also ship this system with the game, so there shouldn't be extra cost in terms of making the creation kit, because the kit was required to make the game.
My understanding is that the version we get for modding isn't the full fat version they use to create the game, hence the delay in release. Maybe I'm wrong.
But they still made it either way… are they not also entitled to the profits generated from their work
How many mods do I usually run in games? About 250 to 750...
this is an interesting discussion because i think it can sway in both directions because i understand that not all mods are created equally, some dont take much time or expertise at all to make, and others can take an extremely long time and a lot of expertise, i do think if it was really easy to make it should essentially be made free on the get go, and you can then use those free things as a way to advertise your abilities, and then you should be able to make a patreon or something where you can release more high end mods as early access so that you make a little money on the side for people who want it immediately and then within a month or so you release it for free to the public, so that its not entirely gate keeped behind a pay wall but you were able to make a bit of money for your effort, and the people who want to keep supporting you for your continued efforts can keep supporting you, to give more incentive to work harder
thats what is going to happen. If its easy to do thten there is no incentive to sell it.
I get paying for mods if they are LARGE complex overhaul type mods. But don't support small assets or tweaks being payed mods.
I think that section of the EULA is becasue they are going to do a fallout 76 style thing as a paid DLC and give multiplayer. They are just settting it up before hand.