Valve planning to monetize mods (again)

[AngleWyrm]

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.

[Fishbrains]

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?

[Thirite]

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.

[Fishbrains]

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.

[RemingtonRyder]

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.

[scuba156]

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.

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.

[RawCode]

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.

[mipen]

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?

[RawCode]

ever harshest obligations can be ignored if there is no punishment, and you can't punish mod developer in any way.

[d09smeehan]

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.

[Thirite]

I really don't get why they  try.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/moneygrubber?s=t

[Dimaspy]

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.

[Psyckosama]

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.

[skullywag]

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.

[Jstank]

A year or so ago I learned that kids were paying for minecraft avatar skins. I lost my shit.