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Paid Skyrim mods being removed from Steam

Archie

Second-rate Anihawk
http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.

But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.

WE DID IT REDDIT
 

Computron

Member
so what happens now? do they replace it with anything tweaked, or just go back to business as usual and put this behind them?
 

BY2K

Membero Americo
We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

It's gonna come back, though. Source 2 mods from the start?
 

dungtongue

Neo Member
Good on them for listening.

Developers and publishers have proven over the years that they can't be trusted with anything that can be abused. A complete removal is the only way to prevent another DLC situation 10 years down the line.

It's unfortunate that Valve and Bethesda put this fucking stupid ass idea into the heads of the more malicious publishers though. They're going to be coming up with ways to shove this down people's throats now even after this backlash.
 

Deadbeat

Banned
Just put a donation button there, and make sure the mod creators get a huge cut. Add a steam badge towards donating to mods.
 
Christ, that's as close as humanly possible you can get to writing "WE FUCKED UP" without actually writing it. Ahah.

Nice to see Valve isn't thick.
 

mrlion

Member
latest
 

lazygecko

Member
I hope they're not dissuaded from trying again with better execution. The whole thing was really half-assed but that doesn't make it an inherently bad idea.
 

Qassim

Member
I hope they don't back off the idea completely. There were issues with how this was implemented, but if Valve back off the idea of allowing content creators sell their content on Steam altogether.. then that's stupid.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
so what happens now? do they replace it with anything tweaked, or just go back to business as usual and put this behind them?

It's probably going to be tweaked.

Good on Valve for backtracking, though.
 

Portalbox

Member
People hardly admit their own mistakes, let alone big companies like Valve.

This makes it pretty clear that Valve is STILL different from many other companies out there.
 

Almighty

Member
Holy shit. I mean I am happy, but I did not expect this to be rolled back. I did not think that had a snowballs chance in hell of happening. The reaction from it must of been much worse then i thought. Sadly I the fallout from this is probably still going to come. Now we are going to get reactions from the mod developers who were happy about paid mods and how the "entitled so called community" ruined it for them.

Then again this might just be a delay on the inevitable now.
 

KarmaCow

Member
I am legitimately surprised they backed down. Though Gabe did say it wasn't selling well in the AMA. I wonder which game they'll reintroduce it.
 

Guess Who

Banned
"Optional donation systems" are useless. No one actually donates. There's nothing inherently wrong with people being paid for their time and effort and work if the copyright holder agrees to allow them to do so and anyone who thinks there is can fuck right off.
 

KissVibes

Banned
Hooray, people can't get paid for their time and effort anymore!

Games aren't supposed to be about money. If people are upset they can't make art and get compensated for it, there are plenty of non-artistic jobs they can go work instead.
 
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