If any of you were around for the nearly week-long comedy show that was Valve's attempt to monetize the modding communities of games on its platform back in 2015, you'll probably remember the utter fiasco that it turned out to be. Well, they want to try again. See the article here. (http://archive.is/tWsXz)
I am just going to start off by saying I am strongly opposed to the very idea of "paid mods", and anyone who cares about the modding community should too. I have always made mods for the simple satisfaction of the community to enjoy them and getting positive feedback for making quality content. When I make something fun and others have fun with it, that's my reward. It's a simple system that is the backbone of every modding community. But modders deserve a little compensation for their efforts, right?
Well, things change when the drive for creating content shifts from "satisfaction and positive feedback" to "how much money can I make". If anyone else here witnessed the results of this, you'll remember the swathes of low effort crap priced at only $2!, the free mods stolen from the Nexus and being sold by illegitimate users, and pretty much every big mod that was previously available for free on the Nexus suddenly locked behind a DRM paywall. Personally I was pretty disgusted that modders who had previously done it for the sake of the community/fun sold out at the first scent of a dollar. But this is simply the result of trying to turn mod communities into a business. Instead of being a public platform to freely share content with each other, it becomes a run of the mill competitive business platform where it's all about turning a profit, not making a quality product. Just look at the state of modern mobile games: 99.9% "freemium" utter crap that only exists to suck as many microtransactions out of you as it can. The same thing has been happening with the content appearing on the Steam store- what used to be a store of exclusive quality content has turned into a store peddling whatever (http://store.steampowered.com/app/415950/) will (http://store.steampowered.com/app/246090/) sell (http://store.steampowered.com/app/350200/), regardless if it's even in a playable state. And that's certainly not the end of the problem with monetizing mods.
Quite frankly, I'd rather not see any modding community fall prey to this ill-fated scheme- but in particular I wanted to alert and inform every modder here about this in the event "paid mods" come to RimWorld.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Remember when TheSims did a big event to gather the modder community to share their favorite subjects? They then turned those favored parts into un-moddable exclusive add-on content to be manufactured and sold by their one little team. Lost a segment of the gaming community in what can be described as bad marketing.
League of Legends made a similar decision last year to disable modding skins and art even for personal use. Pair that with banning accounts for leaving mis-matched 4v5 PvP games and there goes the people who were skin collectors.
> skin collectors
That certainly has a different meaning in terms of RimWorld's context. Hyuk hyuk
so does that mean the only way to get free mods is through drm free version
If Valve does push paid mods onto RimWorld then any mods that are 'monetized' will not be available for the DRM free/sendowl version.
I can see it now. Cosmetic mods everywhere. One new hairstyle for just $0.99! Or, buy the whole set of 12 for just $9.99! WOW. Same goes for weapon mods. They're both relatively "cheap" to make, but there's a decent demand for them.
Thanks for posting this.
I love how it's all about "content creators should be paid". What was the distribution again? Valve gets its usual 30%, the game creator gets ~45%, and modder ~25%? Sure. That feels like it's about paying the content creators.
I personaly could pay something for the awesome mods I use, but I won't install steam and get a steamkey for rimworld and then going through the hassle with mods that auto-update and destroy's the saves.
Is it even legal to charge money for mods? That would require the creators permission, no?
Thank you for posting it Thirite, although I'm a happy DRM-free user ;)
PS: Need dusters? I got some skin for sale!
nobody force you to pay for trashy mods, just like trashy DLCs (especially fun for EA games).
Most rimworld mods are already creative commons licensed and available on github, at least the best ones. You can't really undo that license. Patreon is better way to pay modders.
Quote from: AngleWyrm on February 11, 2017, 09:24:23 PM
Thanks for the heads-up.
Remember when TheSims did a big event to gather the modder community to share their favorite subjects? They then turned those favored parts into un-moddable exclusive add-on content to be manufactured and sold by their one little team. Lost a segment of the gaming community in what can be described as bad marketing.
League of Legends made a similar decision last year to disable modding skins and art even for personal use. Pair that with banning accounts for leaving mis-matched 4v5 PvP games and there goes the people who were skin collectors.
Source on the League decision? AFAIK they don't ban on visual modifications, but some apps that change the skin can also do other modifications which makes the app unauthorised.
Regarding Steam, its just hyperbole at this point. It cannot even be said what payment method they will take. It could be donations, it could be money generated by trading cards for mods, who really knows what Valve may have up their sleeve. Discuss it, but don't complain about forced payments like it's already happening.
Oh boy... if this sort of thing didn't make the moding community pretty toxic I wouldn't be so pissed about it.
Way too much ripping off mods... then people will become protective and selfish of their stuff. Forget having a nice sharing community... this is some small percent of a mod fee we're talking about... collaborating with other moders or combining mods or making mods for modders just doesn't seem like it will work well in an environment where people are concerned with money or stealing content for money...
Hopefully they just add a donation option because if it's skyrim again then it's a shame. Plus how does that work for people who make stuff like huglibs does that person have to make his source cost money so others can make mods of it?
ability to set price for mod won't magically turn everyone into greedy kid, and nobody force you to pay 30 buks for mod that just recolor hud into gold color.
Quote from: scuba156 on February 12, 2017, 06:46:06 AM
Quote from: AngleWyrm on February 11, 2017, 09:24:23 PM
League of Legends made a similar decision last year to disable modding skins and art even for personal use. Pair that with banning accounts for leaving mis-matched 4v5 PvP games and there goes the people who were skin collectors.
Source on the League decision? AFAIK they don't ban on visual modifications
Update what you know; you cannot mod League of Legends graphics anymore. For a source use yourself: attempt to change a graphic in your game folders, Load up League of Legends and watch it re-download several gigs.
Quote from: RawCode on February 12, 2017, 10:49:30 AM
ability to set price for mod won't magically turn everyone into greedy kid
Did you have a look at the Skyrim workshop when it went paid? It was mayhem atleast 75% of the mods went paid and they weren't like 30cents. We're talking 5-10 bucks for mods that you could make in a few days. Not to mention people stealing mods given away for free and charging for them.
There is nothing wrong with modders getting paid but sometimes they might over value the work they did. Again I'm using the Skyrim trial as a basis and my opinion for this math.
Let's assume Skyrim still costs 60$
If you make a mod and sell it for 6$ that should mean the mod adds about 10% more to the game or took about 10% of the work of the whole game.
So if we take rimworld it's what 20$ and the biggest mod I can think of is the Mars overhaul but in reality it's probably about 25% so 5$. Which means a lot of mods should be sold for like .10$ -.30$.
Either way modoing is something you should do for fun because you want to play a game your way, or maybe to get some experience for making your own game. I understand steam wanting to get modders some money but if they actually felt that way shouldn't like 75% of the money go to the modder and 20% to the game devs?
Quote from: RawCode on February 12, 2017, 10:49:30 AM
ability to set price for mod won't magically turn everyone into greedy kid, ...
Unfortunately that's pretty much exactly what happened back in 2015 with the skyrim community. All the big name modders sold out pretty much at the drop of a hat. I'd like to believe the same wouldn't happen here.
@Fishbrains
It's a fair point that donations don't really get you any significant revenue. I heard some modder got more money in three days on steam than they ever got in three years from donations when it was free on the Nexus. But the point is that revenue shouldn't be your drive for modding in the first place. If you're only doing it for the money then you might as well be making skinner-box freemium crap for mobile phones; you'd make a lot more.
Makes sense that people would make more money from paid I just never thought it would be that much of a difference.
I wonder if a like optional donation that you have to opt out of would help. Like you say you believe the mod should be worth 1$ and when people add it it asks then if they would like to donate and its a editable field that just starts at whatever you set the value to. It would get kind of annoying and make you feel bad downloading 100 mods and paying for none but it would still be an option and would probably result in much more income.
Alternatively you could set a range like .15$ - 5$ or no limit sort of deal.
Valve have no clue what an online store front should look like (they keep changing it around at a rate which seems comical) let alone a paid workshop store front.
Sure, I'll let them blindly stumble around trying to make it work. Again. If their incompetence doesn't underscore why they shouldn't be running a paid mods store, the fallout from their blundering attempt will be a glowing reminder of what happens when you mess with things you do not understand.
Quote from: AngleWyrm on February 12, 2017, 11:18:31 AM
Update what you know; you cannot mod League of Legends graphics anymore. For a source use yourself: attempt to change a graphic in your game folders, Load up League of Legends and watch it re-download several gigs.
Tested using Wooxey and it works just fine. One person, even if it is myself, is a terrible source for anything as there are many variables . There are no mass reporting of this happening, and many skin sites are still going implies it is not the case.
Quote from: MarvinKosh on February 12, 2017, 03:43:23 PM
Valve have no clue what an online store front should look like (they keep changing it around at a rate which seems comical) let alone a paid workshop store front.
Sure, I'll let them blindly stumble around trying to make it work. Again. If their incompetence doesn't underscore why they shouldn't be running a paid mods store, the fallout from their blundering attempt will be a glowing reminder of what happens when you mess with things you do not understand.
Haven't they only updated the store front once in the past few years? Its been pretty outdated until they did the refresh recently.
If Valve were incompetent then they would not be where they are now. Sure their last attempt at paid mods went bad, but they are not just going to use the same model as they did before, they have had plenty of time to redesign how to best achieve it.
skyrim is invalid reference, community intentionally did things wrong way, because very large number of mods already existed and only few selected by game devs were allowed to get money.
imagine, that you published good mod, really good one, next day devs selected mod about single sword re texture and pushed it to store as payed one for 30 buks!
fair? lol no
especially if it was your texture.
ofc community suffered major butthurt and whine like there is no tomorrow.
At same time, posting mod that does nothing and cost 30 buks won't harm anyone, refunding subsystem is here just for such cases.
Also, due to some issues related to information theory, you can't prevent people from downloading your mod, refunding, reversing and posting as they own, but you can punish them for such activity.
If people were paying for your mods, would you then be obligated to to continually support it and update it? For example, with Rimworld most mods are broken in some way each time a new alpha is released, some majorly so. With a paid model would you have to continue to update it each time, fix bugs etc?
ever harshest obligations can be ignored if there is no punishment, and you can't punish mod developer in any way.
I really don't get why they try. Not only is it a shot in the foot from a PR perspective (like the industries ever cared about that though) but also almost no one will download a mod they have to pay for.
Frankly, very few mods are worth paying money any amount of money for individually. Lots of mods seamlessly integrated could be, but creators don't always build their mods with mass compatibility in mind, and personally its not worth the risk to pay for something that may not even work (by themselves or with other mods), may be abandoned at any point and simply may not be any fun. And it can all be undermined by third party sites like the Nexus anyway.
So where's the incentive? I don't believe the revenue made with this could be worth the PR suicide it requires to pull off.
Quote from: d09smeehan on February 13, 2017, 04:18:51 PM
I really don't get why they try.
(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/955/334/a39.jpg)
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moneygrubber?s=t
More like Valve is planning to sabotage the mods, again.
It's one thing if modders ask for a donation, of which they'll receive precisely what you deserve.
Another thing to force people to pay for something which they later find out that they hate/don't use/doesn't work.
It only applies to Rimworld if Tynan allows it, and considering he's recently edited the TOS expressly to make paid mods forbidden, it's not bloody likely.
My mods will be free forever and all source always on github (when i remember to push it up). Here and on every game i mod for. I dont mod for fame or fortune, I mod for the love of modding. If youre doing it for the former, youre doing it wrong.
A year or so ago I learned that kids were paying for minecraft avatar skins. I lost my shit.
Quote from: Dimaspy on February 14, 2017, 07:24:51 AM
More like Valve is planning to sabotage the mods, again.
And Bethesda isn't?
For having the largest modding community I've seen, they sure as hell don't seem to care about them... if anything they seem to want people to play the game vanilla more than not....
Quote from: Jstank on February 14, 2017, 05:52:47 PM
A year or so ago I learned that kids were paying for minecraft avatar skins. I lost my shit.
insert dota\hat simulator reference here
so if I downloaded a mod before the ban and still use it. Does that mean I'm hustling mods.
All I have to say is that Valve can take it's greedy lil fingers and stick them into it's big corporate rich ass...
and for modders support I do agree that Patreon is the better alternative...