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[inm8num2]

Jamin at Game/Show had a pretty nice video on this subject.

 

[Vallen Valiant]

Jamin at Game/Show had a pretty nice video on this subject.

He made the mistake thinking that "if I put in the work I should get paid for it".

No, you get paid for it if you meet the needs of your audience. The amount of work you put in is actually irrelevant to that. Mods have the problem of being an extremely low value product to the consumer, because there is so little quality control or guarantees that come with it. Spending two years making a mod means nothing to the consumer, if the mod conflicts with the game or crashes the computer. What makes a mod valuable isn't how much time you spent on it, but what the customer gets out of it.

Valve and Bethesda would need to seriously improve stability and compatibility of mos, let alone quality, before mods are truly worth money. Many AAA videogames cost literally millions and years of time, it doesn't mean they all deserve to be paid, especially if the game sucked.

 

[Almighty]

I think they were moreso refering to people who may be mod users but don't really interact with the modding scene in any meaningful way. Ie the people who download mods they like, but they never leave comments or feedback or bug reports etc, and don't rate/endorse the mods. You can see this in a lot of the most popular mods on the Nexus in that their download to endorsement ratio is significantly more disproportionate than the more niche and involved ones. So what they're saying is that a lot of this "casual" demographic has suddenly come out of the woodwork (I think DarkOne has the statistics to back this up with as well) to partake in this internet hate campaign, and that this is not really representative of the actual visible modding community.

I think Scott had a better idea of what was going on and where it was coming from. So you are right on that. but McCaskey made it pretty clear at the start that he believes that most of the hubbub was from people who weren't part of the modding community(which is probably true) or even mod users(which I think he is dead wrong about), but just random people on places like Reddit that joined in because it was the current big controversy. I think he is way off the mark on that and I honestly believe that the modding community(which to be clear I am not a part of as I am one of the silent users on the Nexus) is probably the minority and not the other way around.

I guess while I am on the subject I can sympathize with the Skyrim modding community when they have thousands of outsiders shouting what is best for that community. On the other hand since it is pretty clear that neither Bethesda or Valve gave two shits about the community either and were just in it to make money off those millions I can see why when those people said "fuck off" to the whole paid mods they backed down so quick. It just sucks that some modders were/are the ones to be stuck in the middle of this whole mess.

 

[Durante]

PCGamesN did an article on this -- they also contacted me for a comment.

Here's what I wrote:

In general, I'd like to first note that I'm not personally interested in paid modding, since this is usually one of the first things people ask about -- or worse, assume.

That out of the way, I believe that the option existing could have significant advantages. In particular, beyond the often-discussed ability for people to dedicate more time to modding, there are some potential secondary benefits which I have only rarely seen mentioned.

For one, there is the fact -- and you can certainly discuss whether this is a good thing and what it says about society, but it is a fact -- that the general public takes a paid pursuit more seriously and treats it with more respect than a hobby. Thus, modders could go from "people who spend way too much time at the computer" to "people who use their skills to create something valuable to others" in the eyes of those unfamiliar with modding, and this can certainly be a huge boon to motivation.

Secondly, from the perspective of game developers, supporting modding could go from a cost with nebulous benefits (from their perspective, I think the benefits are already clear) to something with a well-defined payoff. This could result in companies which have previously refrained from supporting mods, or even actively sought to prevent modding of their games, becoming more supportive of the practice.

That said, there were definitely some issues with how paid mods were introduced for Skyrim. First of all, it's probably not a good idea to make such a step at a point in time where the modding community is already well-established for a game. And then of course there is the issue of the relative revenue split. I'm no economist, and people more familiar with the situation have actually claimed convincingly that the conditions are favourable compared to e.g. licensing an existing IP, but 25% as a number just feels wrong. However, even with these issues in the system I was still more disappointed with the reactions from some members of the gaming community, who resorted to insulting or even threatening modders producing paid content, than in the initiative itself.

Anyway, if you ask me now how things *should* work, I would boil it down to one essential rule: both paid mods and free mods *must* be able to coexist, and they *must* be given the same space, access to features and care without discrimination. As long as this rule is held up I support adding new options for modders, and as soon as it is violated I'll be throwing torches with the mob.