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Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods
- Thread starter Sendou
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Have you ever worked at any company ever?
Relaxed Muscle
Member
I'm pretty sure the expected outcome of that "what will happen" is: We made lots or money/or allowed the fundation to make more money in the future.
I'm not saying is evil, but try to make people believe that's not the case and that they are losing money right now, instead of a clearly, I assume, a very well calculated investment is just wrong.
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Yes, and i've taken courses on marketing, accounting, economics, etc.
The only leverage modders have is refusing to participate. That is a fact.
Bethesda and steam hold all other leverage in this business arrangement.
Moral Panic
Member
But is it a derivative work? If I make a crossbow model, texture it and animate it, what part of my work is derivative of Bethesda's IP? Valve's own lawyers state that having a dependency opens no legal barriers to monetisation.
Yes, super naive for looking at AN OPTIONAL FUNDING POLICY as the gateway to being "nickel and dimed"
Maybe things will stay the same and people are just freaking out over the smallest thing possible. Are you implying that that has never happened in the history of online gaming?
And it literally is like the smallest deal in the world. Because it's an optional option for content creators to put their items on a marketplace and take out the middle management and bureaucracy of normal mods to retail items
Relaxed Muscle
Member
The part that it works on Bethesda code.(and you probably had to use the modding tools they created)
Obsidian's share of Fallout New Vegas was way less than 25%, and they developed an entire game on the Fallout 3 engine.
Modders have no leverage. They are working on IP and code that they don't own and haven't licensed.
None - but it's value comes from being in their game, which is how they would probably justify it.
Could you upload an entire film say Terminator 2, where you have edited hulk hogan's face on the main character (or it could be you, whatever) and dubbed your own voice mimic of Hogan on their too, and then sell that for money - all profit yours - - the answer would definitely be no
It depends on the scope of your lawn service and how the funds work. Of course, I am an employee in that situation, and have a whole slew of different laws and such that deal with being an employee. It's a shitty argument since none of these modders are employees under Valve or Bethesda and are selling content. Thus if they dont want to sell it they can release it for free like they always have, or if they have more ambition they can release it for a price.
Zombie James
Banned
Imagine if this policy were in place when Skyrim launched. Imagine paying money for SkyUI and 75% going back to Bathesda. Should Bethesda be rewarded for making a garbage UI that needed replacing and someone else doing all the work? Fuck this.
Edit: I see I'm not the only one bringing up SkyUI. There are downright essential mods that come straight out of the horribleness of the original development of the game. The original developers don't deserve a dime when it comes to the community fixing their problems for them.
The bow model, textures, sounds, and unique animations are all yours.
The components of the package that make those all usable and worth something in Skyrim are Bethesda's.
You basically cross indemnify each other (Bethesda won't C&D/sue you for selling your item/mod for Skyrim, and you indemnify Bethesda from allowing their game to load your assets).
You could totally make a bow and arrow for Skyrim, and then re-use that bow and arrow and all the animations for another game and Bethesda has no say or cut in the proceeds, but you couldn't call it "Tamriel McAwesome Badass Bow" anymore (for example) or use any Skyrim-specific code/trademarks/sounds
I think if Skyrim's UI actually works and does what it is advertise to do, the fact that it "needs" to be replaced or not would be a matter of opinion, and not an objective fact.
Moral Panic
Member
No, because I don't own the rights to the dialogue. But if I made up my own dialogue then there would be no problem. IIRC that is what Rifftrax does.
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Sorry, but you are just wrong here.
Modders do have leverage in that they can refuse to participate until better terms are offered. It is, unfortunately, the only leverage they do have. This does take a unified stand across the super-majority of modders though. You can compare this to unions, which is one of the few forms of leverage employees have, which has been sorely been chipped away at in recent years.
You are still working with their code/IP/creation tools to "improve" their game. SkyUI is better then the stock UI, but it also has probably been worked on a lot more and open to a lot more criticism. Bethesda mightvew thought their UI was good when they released, and for all intents and purposes it worked as advertised.
Also, we are ignoring that SkyUI would not have been nearly the force it was in the community if it were a dollar instead of free.
So, uhh, FYI, pretty much every landscaping company in existence operates with worse terms than that for its employees. In that line of work, what you're describing as the trivial elements -- having the business established, advertising the business, and getting the actual work lined up -- are the only things with actual value, since the employees' jobs would not exist otherwise, they would not be able to line up the jobs themselves, and the labor is not skilled or scarce.
In your example I could just set up my own lawn service and make even more money. In this case, if I set up shop elsewhere I likely would not be nearly as successful, and in fact I probably wouldn't be able to charge for my services without being stomped on for IP infringement.
Ok?
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
I'll concede that it's a poor comparison ;p
It was the first thing that popped into my head since I do maintain the records and customers for a lawn business, but I should have considered it further before posting.
My larger point about leverage though stands.
The good news is, modders could still unite and demand a better take. As the current split is not a foregone conclusion.
This is never going to happen. Most modders who do charge will use the money to fund a couple of new games or a graphics card. Unlike with real life jobs with real trade unions, there is little at stake.
It's not up to Valve to create leverage, it's up to other companies to do that. Maybe GoG or GmG or EA or one of the thousand other people will create competition. But that's not a knock against valve, that's a knock against everyone else
It's like I'm arguing with Horse Armor defenders all over again. People really are doomed to repeat history when they ignore it.
When Fallout 4 comes out and this "optional option" becomes the only option I want you to remember these posts.
and that's always a possibility, but thus, we are not future tellers, so it's not my room to judge whether this will happen or something else will happen since we don't know. The Slippery Slope argument doesn't work
That is some weak ass leverage though. Mostly because there is no way for the modders to block others from modding the game and the bar to entry is so low that all they will be doing is letting others have their potential piece of the pie.
If they hate the cut so much then they would be better off banding together and making their own game based on their own original ip. Then they would be putting in the same work in theory and getting 70% of the profits(assuming they sell it on Steam). Right now as Evilore pointed out they could easily be getting a much worse deal.
I mean, in a perfect world wouldn't basically the same thing happen? Bethesda's making a game, and before it's released they notice that the UI isn't very good. So they hire somebody to make the UI better. The game releases with a great UI and sells better than it would have otherwise, so Bethesda makes more money even after whatever they paid their UI contractor. Bethesda's not being rewarded for making a garbage UI in the first place; they're being rewarded for giving independent contractors an incentive to fix it.
Maybe there's some kind of worry here that people will be tricked into buying a game at some price before realizing that it needs mods which they then have to pay for, but to first order surely we ought to expect that if a game needs a $5 mod to be minimally playable then the typical buyer will be aware of that and make purchasing decisions accordingly.
Moral Panic
Member
Are there any IP lawyers around who can set things straight? I am fully of the opinion that having a program/mod/piece of code depend on the existence of another piece of code/library/API/functionality was 100% fine and you were not bound under any licence they might have with the end-user. Unless I am wrong here I can't see how Bethesda has any claim to a cent of the profits.
I thought this was the case as well. I suspect the Steam profit sharing is because publishers get some say about what's sold alongside their game or because some mods use mod tools from the game or include assets from the game and Valve isn't going to check every mod to see if it uses copyrighted material.
this is so backwards I kinda can't comprehend it
you think Dark Souls would have sold as well without Durante fixing those issues?
you all paid FROM for that
any Skyrim sale that was decided upon seeing the mod community? 100% of the money went to Bethesda, not 75%
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
It may actually be in Valve's best (especially long-term) interests to get better compensation percentages for modders. They certainly do have significant leverage now that they are the ultra dominate PC distribution platform. But they don't view that as an issue at the moment unless modders make it one.
To further clarify my stance on the issue. I like the idea of paying modders for good work, but I hate the idea the 75% of my money will go towards someone else who had little to do with the work they created. I will also admit that I don't know what standard rates for a similar circumstance might be in other industries. I don't have any experience or knowledge and would love someone with some expertise to compare it. As of now I know the rates for the Apple and Android stores, and they come nowhere near this.
Above all, my sticking point is;
1.) The 75% Rate
2.) The incentive created, especially at these rates, to let modders fix issues with the final product.
I don't have a significant problem, other then the unknowns of what may happen (which applies to any new frontier), then these two points. I'm not a knee-jerk "mob" member as some posters are trying to make swathes of the community out to be. I'm attempting to have the best interests of both the modders, community, and developer in mind.
tbh yeah I do, but then again maybe DSFix has a ridiculously high number of downloads?
the resolution fix came out like, on the day of release, or the day after?
I can fairly easily say everyone and their mother uses it. everyone here does, everyone i've seen on twitch does, etc
Not an IP lawyer but interacting with an API and using another program's code are two different things. Using another program's code directly will generally require you to license it or have it be licensed that it can be used by anyone. Interfacing with an API/ABI is generally not seen as being a derivative work. You can look up debates over the GPL and using GPL code vs using public APIs with GPL programs for a similar idea. This is also how Audacity gets around not having to license MP3 patents because the program can interact with the DLL of an mp3 encoder without actually using the code itself.
In this case your assets depend on Bethesda code to even be usable, as such, your work becomes a derivative work. You can't make a player character model and have it move around the Skyrim world without a ton of Bethesda code being involved in handling animation queues, event queues, physics, etc etc etc
Once again, not a lawyer, but common sentiment is what is written above.
But the question you're asking is how many people would have bought it without the fix. And I suppose that's impossible to know, but I suspect it would still be quite high. But that's just IMO.
We paid FROM for the base game and continued support of their product.
Arguably, i'd rather have the lion share go to Durante if they decided to charge for DSfix. But in this scenario, it would bel ike paying FROM once for the game, then again for a fix they did not do and had no plan of doing
Well now they get 100 % of the money from the game sale and 50%(?) from mod sales fixing their broken games, so they get to double dip...
you can see it that way or you can see it as some of the money goes to the modder instead of 0
again; the split is on a game per game basis decided by the game's dev.
if From wants.
Bethesda's game depends on Windows code to run. Is it a derivative work of Windows? Also, it was probably built with Microsoft's tools (Visual Studio). The design document was probably even written in Microsoft Word.
Mod developers should be able to sell their mods freely. Users would, of course, need to buy Bethesda's game to use it, just as people who buy Syria for PC need to buy Windows to use it.
There are some interesting mechanics here. It is entirely possible that in the hypothetical of the largest share or all money going to a modder, it may actually challenge the developers themselves, to the point where people would be more interested in paid modding than actually developing games or working on the base game since it would be more lucrative to be a modder.
not psycho
Member
Suppose the fix came out the day of release and it cost money. The next day a free fix comes out. Who decides if the free fix stole the work of the paid fix? Is it allowed to steal the idea of the paid fix? If not, how are people prevented from using the free fix?
so you're saying this model can work but needs proper work and measures that are only gonna be taken after people go forward with this and see the ramifications and possible outcomes?
I agree
It would only be stealing if it used the exact same code.(or a very significant part of it)
Could be interesting, especially in countries like mine where it's incredibly more difficult to find a job as a developper. I don't think it would undermine the work of full game dev but maybe act as a trampoline for more struggling artists.
It really is a giant mess that I admit really have trouble to wrapping my head around.
To reiterate, i really am not against modders charging by the way. (Hell, i go to conventions and sell sometimes some small stuff).
The fact that this is Skyrim really messes things up on a large scale since it's one of the THE most modded game and owes the majority of it's popularity today to the modding scene. And regulating most of these mods, which sometimes use other mods, seems like a total mess outside of valve's ability
Mostly, after a day or two, my biggest gripe is really not against the concept itself of paid mods, but makes me look at Valve and steam with more scrutiny, because I wasn't really on board with their quality control before hand
Oh I think it definitely could if the Dota / TF2 community creators stats is accurate - WITH the 25% cut only, there are already massively successful people. I have no doubt that this a conversation that has been discussed at Valve / respective developers
stan423321
Member
For so small programs as "fixers" often are, it's effectively impossible to check this.
Alex
Member
I'm always curious as to how well donation buttons like that work out. It'd be interesting to hear.
Might be, although isn't the situation with Dota2 as a game pretty different than Skyrim ? DOTA2 is a free to play so for me it seems that the pill is way easier to swallow (I haven't heard any major complaints like now when it was introduced anyway). It seemed much more adapted anyway from an early stage to support this kind of idea. And, well, the game is free, so I would be totally willing to have Valve have a bigger share on this, and support creatives at the same time. It also has a more solid continuous following, in my eyes at least
Skyrim it's a bit more tricky as you already pay for the game and it's subsequent DLC. Skyrim wasn't already the most rosy game when it came out. And, as of today, hasn't been updated in quite a while. Some of it's DLC (the housing one, if i recall) also has been outclassed by other mods who do a better job at it (although pretty irrelevant as of now, as I haven't seen these mods being behind a paywall so far).
That and the whole compatibility issues and technical support from both Beth and Valve yadda yadda, it's been said to death here. And the idea that Bethesda built the popularity of all it's recent games on a free creative community, while providing tools. Now it doesn't mean that creatives should not be entitled, but let's just say that was the original concept for many people when the game released.
According to Durante and with his DSFix mod. The ammount of people who actually donate is 0.17%. And that's for a fucking huge fix that everyone who plays Dark Souls uses.
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
I've seen Patreon to be quite successful, but I've heard reports of donate buttons being lackluster.
I think overall people are more willing to pay for content to come, especially if that money enables the content creation, then content already out. I don't quite get the psychology behind it.
I think Garry or Rocket would have the best comparison going from free to paid.
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