An open letter to modders: Stop removing your mods from the Steam Workshop!

[GideonHidolka]

As opposed to getting nothing now? i'm not a modder but i never understood the drama surrounding that situation. Giving modders a platform to make money from mods if they wanted to try it  did not seem like that big a deal to me and I cant help but feel like the backlash was purely from PC gamers being a spoiled bunch that think everything should be free (Including games via piracy)

Some other issues apart from the % of money and players wanting it to be free.

- Encourage Modders to produce lots of small cheep crap just to cash in.
- Encourage Modders to steal work from other mods and claim it as their own.
- Reduces Community Collaboration, why work together (share a cool new way of doing things) when if I keep it to myself I can make more money, but harms the community as a whole.
- If a free mod does not work then there is no loss, if someone pays for a mod how long does it need to keep working? Each Alpha version of Rimworld breaks most mods from the previous Alpha, how many Alphas do I need to support a mod for? Just the one or is there an expectation that it will keep working, if so for how long?
- What about compatibility with other mods? If two mods don't play nice with each other do I need to try and fix it? What if I am taking a break from Rimworld for a while, can I do that now without pissing off everyone who feel entitled for the mod they paid for to keep working (No Judgement in if that is reasonable for them to expect or not)?
- What about just bugs in the mod, how quickly do they need to be fixed?

So while I would love to just get money from what I am already doing, there are a number of issues that need to be figured out as a Community to avoid a massive issues and disappointment. It would probably be best for Paid mods to be implemented from the release of a game to avoid a painful transition and so everyone knows what they are getting into.

Some of that makes sense, you being a modder would know better than me in any case. I think the scenario that steam and Bethesda proposed was not nearly thought out enough and the points you raised probably were never even considered.

But I think people are overreacting with the whole Rah bah steam is evil because they tried to do paid mods rah bah. Especially since they listened to the complaints and went back on it.

[RemingtonRyder]

Here's why I don't want paid mods to be a thing.

If I decide to take a break for a few months, someone comes along and releases a mod that is very like mine, except it's not for free. And if I come back from my break and update my mod, suddenly there's this huge conflict because the other guy feels like I'm undermining his franchise.

That's just an example I thought of off the top of my head. I'm not saying it will happen, but it could happen if we have a paid mods workshop. It's all very well to say 'oh but you don't have to put a price tag on your mod' but when you have a conflict between free mod-maker and paid mod-maker, everyone loses.

What about mod-makers who build common libraries like HugsLib? Do you think that there would be many mods using a library if you had to pay for that library to use it?

I'm not against mod-makers earning money from their work, if that's what they want to do, but there are other ways than giving Valve the green light to start an ugly mod warfare which will have consequences for everyone.

[Greep]

As opposed to getting nothing now? i'm not a modder but i never understood the drama surrounding that situation. Giving modders a platform to make money from mods if they wanted to try it  did not seem like that big a deal to me and I cant help but feel like the backlash was purely from PC gamers being a spoiled bunch that think everything should be free (Including games via piracy)

Some other issues apart from the % of money and players wanting it to be free.

- Encourage Modders to produce lots of small cheep crap just to cash in.
- Encourage Modders to steal work from other mods and claim it as their own.
- Reduces Community Collaboration, why work together (share a cool new way of doing things) when if I keep it to myself I can make more money, but harms the community as a whole.
- If a free mod does not work then there is no loss, if someone pays for a mod how long does it need to keep working? Each Alpha version of Rimworld breaks most mods from the previous Alpha, how many Alphas do I need to support a mod for? Just the one or is there an expectation that it will keep working, if so for how long?
- What about compatibility with other mods? If two mods don't play nice with each other do I need to try and fix it? What if I am taking a break from Rimworld for a while, can I do that now without pissing off everyone who feel entitled for the mod they paid for to keep working (No Judgement in if that is reasonable for them to expect or not)?
- What about just bugs in the mod, how quickly do they need to be fixed?

So while I would love to just get money from what I am already doing, there are a number of issues that need to be figured out as a Community to avoid a massive issues and disappointment. It would probably be best for Paid mods to be implemented from the release of a game to avoid a painful transition and so everyone knows what they are getting into.

Sure this is continuing on the whole paid mods derail, but I just have to chime here.  Here's the problem with this line of thinking.  What if I said "hey lets have a place, let's call it steam, where indie developers could actually make a living off their work".  Reply:

This would just:

- Encourage Developers to produce lots of small cheep crap just to cash in.
- Encourage Developers to steal work from other games and claim it as their own.
- Reduces Community Collaboration, why work together (share a cool new way of doing things) when if I keep it to myself I can make more money, but harms the community as a whole.
- What about just bugs in the game, how quickly do they need to be fixed?

The above can and does happen in the gaming industry, to some extent in every game ever made.  It's just life.  The alternative is just crappy games with poor support and vision all around with the very rare occasional decent game.  I bet combat realism wouldn't have dropped off the face of the earth if they got paid for it, and I'm guessing the outdated subforum wouldn't be bigger than the release forum (which also has a bunch of outdated mods).

I agree that paid mods before release is pretty dumb, though, or at the very least would have to be with support and moderation explicitly from the developer.

[Technical Ben]

I'm sure you have your reasons. Maybe the mod isn't needed anymore or made obsolete by a similar mod, maybe you don't feel it's appreciated enough, maybe you just don't care about it anymore.

The problem is as soon as you remove the mod, it's also automatically removed from the library of everyone who happened to use your mod as soon as they open Steam. There's no notification on Steam's end to let your users know that the mod was removed, no message to point to your new replacement mod, nothing. The only indication that anything has changed is Rimworld's atrocious Mod Mismatch popup when your users try to load the same save they played yesterday. I personally have 100+ active mods in my game right now so maybe it's more of a problem for me than people who only use a handful of mods, but let me tell you - it's fucking obnoxious to try to compare the two walls of text that awful popup presents me with. Maybe that's something someone could enhance through a mod.

So if you want to abandon or remove your mod for whatever reason, please, just leave it on the workshop. It costs you nothing, and saves your users a lot of frustration and headache!

This. I've now got 3 broken saves, and a broken (IMO as was using mods) install. I'm probably going to revert to the Non Steam version now. I'm royally miffed.

[art281996]

Could you give me a list of your mods and load order? Im terrible with load order and my game is always messing up lol

[Granitecosmos]

But I think people are overreacting with the whole Rah bah steam is evil because they tried to do paid mods rah bah. Especially since they listened to the complaints and went back on it.

Sure they went back on it, after Skyrim was mass-downvoted and the rating falled into oblivion. (Pun of the day! )

Take anything that is fun and doesn't have money in it. Add money, watch as the fun gradually ceases to exist and turns into hardcore competition. Give it time and it's taken over by large companies. Need proof? Look at the majority of current games. Released as a bug-fest pre-alpha for $60 or more, dumbed down for "casual" players to the point it's unenjoyable to the original target audience.

Paid mods would quickly become DLC's themselves. I've used lots of free mods, therefore I make free mods myself. Along with the many good points Jaxxa mentioned; this is simply not how it works. Paid mods from the start for a new game, that could work but expect that game to be downvoted into negative score. 

Now, how about we stay on-topic? Although I think we've debated enough on how bad the Steam Workshop handles mods...

Has anybody simply asked Steam to not delete the mods without the end users permission?

That would mean putting in some effort on their part. You can't do that just for one or two people, you'd have to change the whole thing. And that means work. Which means the answer would probably be a big "nope, deal with it". Remember, it's their platform and with the recent state of Steam they don't seem to care much about users in general.

[GideonHidolka]

Like I said I have no horse in this race, I don't mod, arguing in favor of paid mods is not beneficial to me as I would have to pay for what I already get for free. But I am a writer and I very much want to get paid for books I get published. Sure some people do it for free for fun, but If I cant make money off of it, I cant, or wont do it. So I share some sympathy for other content creators of any kind.

Fun note about the dumbing down of games though, I predicted it before it happened, why it would happen and how. Of course no one believed me at the time. And its completely irrelevant and no one would believe me now ether. But if I say it whenever the topic of dumbing down games comes up I feel better about myself and can sleep at night

I also have...a rather fierce hatred of the dumbing down of games.

[jimthenoob]

Like I said I have no horse in this race, I don't mod, arguing in favor of paid mods is not beneficial to me as I would have to pay for what I already get for free. But I am a writer and I very much want to get paid for books I get published. Sure some people do it for free for fun, but If I cant make money off of it, I cant, or wont do it. So I share some sympathy for other content creators of any kind.

Fun note about the dumbing down of games though, I predicted it before it happened, why it would happen and how. Of course no one believed me at the time. And its completely irrelevant and no one would believe me now ether. But if I say it whenever the topic of dumbing down games comes up I feel better about myself and can sleep at night

I also have...a rather fierce hatred of the dumbing down of games.

As a writer maybe you will understand if i put it this way. charging for most mods would be like someone writing small 2 page leaflets based in a world you wrote, then charging for them just becasue they can. not only could it cheapen the perception of your work, it also sets bad precedent.

when it comes to games Im happy to throw a few buck to someone who actually did some work and did a full conversion mod or something with some real meat to it. but I would rather do that through a donation button then through steam.

[Minnigin]

You can take steam mod folders and make them regular ones with ease, I don't use steam since updates often break saves. Control your own world, not somebody else's.

[Rainsoda]

they made it then its their rights to remove it
you aren't paying them

[Thirite]

...so yeah if we had a better "mod portal" than the forums I doubt steam would even be used (apart from by those that just HAVE to have it in steam). Personally it doesnt take me that long to rattle through the release forum and pick out what I like and update what I have. Its way less bother than steam randomly deciding to break my game.

This is really what I've been hoping for; a seperate part of the website dedicated to released mods. The way a forum handles topics is not a great way to handle listing mods- you have to sift through pages and pages of entirely unfiltered A17/A16/A15 releases and who knows if you'll miss what you're looking for because someone just posted in it and bumped it up to the first page. The method the Nexus uses is excellent, but requiring an account to download anything larger than a megabyte and being a seperate site altogether understandably make it unpopular to use.

[RemingtonRyder]

We said that having a mod portal or something like that would be a good idea ages ago (before Workshop), but nothing came of it. I tried starting a mod site for mod authors to use, nothing came of that either. I did for a while try using Nexus for mods but there's a ridiculous number of steps needed to get a damn mod up on there, so I ended up dropping it.

[DaemonDeathAngel]

Perhaps trying it again qould pan out? I could have a rough draft website up in a weekend. Thats mostly just due to working all week.

[Thirite]

I think a portal for released mods would require direct communication and cooperation with Tynan to succeed. It would likely have to be integrated into this site to have any kind of adoption rate by modders- otherwise who even knows about it?

[FilixDark]

Like I said I have no horse in this race, I don't mod, arguing in favor of paid mods is not beneficial to me as I would have to pay for what I already get for free. But I am a writer and I very much want to get paid for books I get published. Sure some people do it for free for fun, but If I cant make money off of it, I cant, or wont do it. So I share some sympathy for other content creators of any kind.

Fun note about the dumbing down of games though, I predicted it before it happened, why it would happen and how. Of course no one believed me at the time. And its completely irrelevant and no one would believe me now ether. But if I say it whenever the topic of dumbing down games comes up I feel better about myself and can sleep at night

I also have...a rather fierce hatred of the dumbing down of games.

As a writer maybe you will understand if i put it this way. charging for most mods would be like someone writing small 2 page leaflets based in a world you wrote, then charging for them just becasue they can. not only could it cheapen the perception of your work, it also sets bad precedent.

when it comes to games Im happy to throw a few buck to someone who actually did some work and did a full conversion mod or something with some real meat to it. but I would rather do that through a donation button then through steam.

I would say this also totally depends on the game. What if vanilla of the game is so lala, but people actually buy it because of all the mods that exist? Isn't that also unfair, if only the game developer gets money? I am not speaking about rimworld now, but there have been plenty of commercial projects (games, bots etc), that kinda sold entirely, based on free community mods and addons. So yeah they make something basic, add some nice modding and then let the community make them earn millions.  But I also have no clue, if there is any solution. Paying for a mod, that is not published by an accountable person, possibility of refund and some maintenance guarantee is definitely not the right way, leaves only donations.

About the autoupdating mods, couldn't modder not upload their mods to a repo, and the users, just add a line into an update.bat, which just pulls the latest version? At least that would give the user the ability to autoupdate, without following every single thread. ofc a portal would be nice, but yeah there you could just get this "line" to autopull the repo and done. and if every modder, would do this, as a best practice, should be possible, maybe also add this link/line to the steam workshop description, so you could still search there, but then download directly, instead using steam, just a few thoughts.

Cheers