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[Damerman]

Valve worships market forces.

market forces are seeing people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and sergey brin/larry page do good for the world. its not always a negative thing.

 

[Aaronology]

There's two arguments at play here:

One, will monetizing mods ruin even free mods? We don't know yet, but one of the major and, IMO ,legitimate, concerns is that the way mods currently tend to feature a lot of work shared between members of the community and if you've now got some members saying "Hey, I want a piece of this money thing", and others saying "Nah, it's gotta stay free", you've created a rift. We can already see this happening. Worse though is that it means many of the collaborative efforts that have happened in making Skyrim mods will simply not happen when Fallout 4 hits. When the new things you can learn about the game that help in making mods become something that makes you money, you're not going to be especially willing to share that info. This is totally counter to the past spirit of the modding communities (for these games, at least)

Two, will paying for mods mean higher quality? Again, we don't know yet. We do have some very worrying things being said, like that post 24-hour-refund-window, mods that stop working (for any reason) are just broken, and it's on the modder, and the modder alone, to fix it. But since there's no recourse for the buyer at this point, other than hoping for future customers, the modder isn't necessarily going to fix this stuff (and in some cases, given the lack of Bethesda/Valve support, may not be able to). When people *buy* a product, they expect a certain level of service, and Valve has pretty much come right out and said that you simply won't get that service from them, and may get it from the modder (if the modder deigns to continue working on it).

Grayson, this is a really excellent summary of two of the most legitimate issues with paid mods.

 

[JawzPause]

damage control doesn't seem to be working

 

[Zolo]

There's two arguments at play here:

One, will monetizing mods ruin even free mods? We don't know yet, but one of the major and, IMO ,legitimate, concerns is that the way mods currently tend to feature a lot of work shared between members of the community and if you've now got some members saying "Hey, I want a piece of this money thing", and others saying "Nah, it's gotta stay free", you've created a rift. We can already see this happening. Worse though is that it means many of the collaborative efforts that have happened in making Skyrim mods will simply not happen when Fallout 4 hits. When the new things you can learn about the game that help in making mods become something that makes you money, you're not going to be especially willing to share that info. This is totally counter to the past spirit of the modding communities (for these games, at least)

Two, will paying for mods mean higher quality? Again, we don't know yet. We do have some very worrying things being said, like that post 24-hour-refund-window, mods that stop working (for any reason) are just broken, and it's on the modder, and the modder alone, to fix it. But since there's no recourse for the buyer at this point, other than hoping for future customers, the modder isn't necessarily going to fix this stuff (and in some cases, given the lack of Bethesda/Valve support, may not be able to). When people *buy* a product, they expect a certain level of service, and Valve has pretty much come right out and said that you simply won't get that service from them, and may get it from the modder (if the modder deigns to continue working on it).

Along with a split between paid and free mods, there also seems to be the fact that collaboration on developing even paid mods now means that the pay would have to be split between people meaning people are now less likely to work with others or as many people.

 

[Neverforget]

Good move from valve, however GabeN's answers are more of a non answers PR talk.

 

[not psycho]

If you don't think people stole mods before now then you're mistaken. Look at all the different variations of DayZ for an example. Every creativity driven hobby/job has examples of stolen work. If someone steals a mod and charges for it but doesn't know how to support the mod, people will stop buying it.

Same thing for your second point, if an update broke a mod before, a good modder would go in and fix their mod so that it would work with an update. If someone didn't fix it then no one would download that mod anymore. That isn't going to change just because a dollar sign is attached to a mod. If anything it provides more of an incentive for modders to fix things because if they don't people will stop buying their mod.

You misunderstood both questions. I'm talking about free mods, not paid mods.

1. If someone steals a mod and tries to charge for it then sure, people can just not buy it. But who decides when a free mod counts as "stolen" or "copied"? Will free mods even be allowed to copy functionality of paid mods? And if not, what mechanism will prevent it, and can that mechanism be abused? And will the prospect of a fight simply cause people not to bother making the mod at all?

2. Sure, a paid modder would have incentive to fix it to keep getting paid. But what happens to free mods now that companies can earn money from paid mods? That gives them a direct financial incentive to break free mods. And Steam already uses forced updates, so it is extremely easy to break free mods whenever you want.

 

[Elfforkusu]

There's two arguments at play here:

One, will monetizing mods ruin even free mods? We don't know yet, but one of the major and, IMO ,legitimate, concerns is that the way mods currently tend to feature a lot of work shared between members of the community and if you've now got some members saying "Hey, I want a piece of this money thing", and others saying "Nah, it's gotta stay free", you've created a rift. We can already see this happening. Worse though is that it means many of the collaborative efforts that have happened in making Skyrim mods will simply not happen when Fallout 4 hits. When the new things you can learn about the game that help in making mods become something that makes you money, you're not going to be especially willing to share that info. This is totally counter to the past spirit of the modding communities (for these games, at least)

Two, will paying for mods mean higher quality? Again, we don't know yet. We do have some very worrying things being said, like that post 24-hour-refund-window, mods that stop working (for any reason) are just broken, and it's on the modder, and the modder alone, to fix it. But since there's no recourse for the buyer at this point, other than hoping for future customers, the modder isn't necessarily going to fix this stuff (and in some cases, given the lack of Bethesda/Valve support, may not be able to). When people *buy* a product, they expect a certain level of service, and Valve has pretty much come right out and said that you simply won't get that service from them, and may get it from the modder (if the modder deigns to continue working on it).

This is problem software has had more or less solved for 30 years, BTW.

It's called copyleft.

 

[KevinG]

Alright, fess up, who copy/pasted my post from GAF to reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqoj9vn

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=161384491&highlight=#post161384491

That sweet reddit karma and gold.

Spoiler

Wasn't me.

 

[Hedja]

This is problem software has had more or less solved for 30 years, BTW.

It's called copyleft.

Copyleft isn't just a software practise. It's used in pretty much all forms of creation where copyright exists.

Besides, it's hardly "solved". Software still has a crap ton of legal disputes. It's also hard to know when a license has been infringed and even if it has, no one's going hire lawyers over a hobby project. The only time anything really happens is when it's between major companies like Oracle vs Google.

For the most part, it's all about just trusting people not to be assholes. Something that becomes more difficult when money is involved.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Copyleft isn't just a software practise. It's used in pretty much all forms of creation where copyright exists.

Besides, it's hardly "solved". Software still has a crap ton of legal disputes. It's also hard to know when a license has been infringed and even if it has, no one's going hire lawyers over a hobby project. The only time anything really happens is when it's between major companies like Oracle vs Google.

For the most part, it's all about just trusting people not to be assholes. Something that becomes more difficult when money is involved.

I know it has more implications than software (one of which is... game mods!), but it's been battle tested in that space.

Also... Oracle vs Google was a patent fight, it had nothing to do with copyleft. Software patents are a much bigger cause of legal disputes than GPL violations.

Also also, it's hard to know that someone's infringed on a copyleft software license because it's hard to tell if someone's using a given piece of code. It's much less hard to tell if someone copy-pasted a 3D model.

Re: "it's all about just trusting people not to be assholes", that is the exact opposite of the GPL. The GPL (and other copyleft licenses) exist because people are assholes where money is involved.

edit: I guess I basically disagree with everything you said.

 

[RK9039]

Alright, fess up, who copy/pasted my post from GAF to reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqoj9vn

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=161384491&highlight=#post161384491

DMCA his ass.

He was only trying to add little.

That reply is right though lol.

 

[gabbo]

So, I came to this thread having heard paid modding was coming to Steam, but didn't know things had exploded so quickly.
Is there a comprehensive timeline with details and such in this thread or elsewhere?
That AMA didn't seem to provide answers to most of the rather big issues that aren't 'omg Valve is greedy' that he took way too much time answering, so I'd like to get some more background on this if I can

 

[TheSeks]

http://i.imgur.com/dMCAXML.png

That downvoting is getting larger and larger. Delicious.

 

[Salsa]

mod community is hella dead compared to what it once was

no one releases mod tools or facilitate their games to be modded cause they don't give a shit

so fuck giving them incentive I guess

 

[TheSeks]

I was gonna post this in the "AMA" but screw it:

"Has somebody asked why we can't use Workshop items for Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive *for ourselves*/cosmetics that don't show up in the server for other players to see the items that people want to put up for buying/selling/trading first-hand instead of through screenshots?

Because I'm curious about that system and why the Workshop for those titles are hindered when Skyrim and other Workshop enabled "mod" titles worked like traditional mods (before this hoopla).

I get it's probably to protect the paid-for items, but that's... kinda dumb, when previewing it for yourself in-game that isn't shown to anyone else isn't going to really stop the economy in-game?"

 

[Sunnington]

Gaben's words are like Ambrosia to my eyes. I'm glad he's dispelled all the communist propaganda and I hope you embrace his love into your heathen hearts.

 

[Nzyme32]

So, I came to this thread having heard paid modding was coming to Steam, but didn't know things had exploded so quickly.
Is there a comprehensive timeline with details and such in this thread or elsewhere?
That AMA didn't seem to provide answers to most of the rather big issues that aren't 'omg Valve is greedy' that he took way too much time answering, so I'd like to get some more background on this if I can

Basically the points of contention are:

There is no guarantee of paid mods being supported in any way and a customers only recourse is get a refund within 24 hours (setting up mod lists can take longer than that) or asking the author of the mod nicely to fix the problem (which they may not even be able to do) otherwise the customer is SOL.

This limits cooperation between different modders and moding teams, many mods use parts of other mods and the added complication of money will stifle cooperation to some degree (could be a little impact or a huge impact) this has already happened with Wet & Cold.

• Fear mongering that all mods will become paid
• People unhappy that modders get 25% of a sale, while it seems bethesda chose this cut giving them 50% and Valve 25%
• People think mods inherently should be free
• People not happy that it is "open" and thus has started out with people exploiting / protesting / plagarising work

In regard to the last point though - my opinion:

Pretty much every system they implement that has community driven content is declared a failure when it releases - rightly so at that point in time - but specifically because everyone starts experimenting always lean towards trolling, exploitation and alike.

It happened with Steam Tags, Early Access, Initial Hat selling, Community Market Place various times new features were added, Workshop in it's original form, Greenlight, Early Access, even the sales event such as the Team Event a few summers back and the winter sale.

While the issues still remain in most of those services, they don't begin to compare to the first months of chaos - which is not to say this situation with paid mods will improve or stay at all - but it is to say that I'd be certain they expected chaos to a certain degree, just so they could work out what to do next and eventually fix or get a workable solution.

This approach that Valve uses works BUT is unethical as it is wilfully pushing a terrible customer experience

 

[balladofwindfishes]

That was a pretty poor reply from Gabe.

 

[Hedja]

I know it has more implications than software (one of which is... game mods!), but it's been battle tested in that space.

Also... Oracle vs Google was a patent fight, it had nothing to do with copyleft. Software patents are a much bigger cause of legal disputes than GPL violations.

Also also, it's hard to know that someone's infringed on a copyleft software license because it's hard to tell if someone's using a given piece of code. It's much less hard to tell if someone copy-pasted a 3D model.

Re: "it's all about just trusting people not to be assholes", that is the exact opposite of the GPL. The GPL (and other copyleft licenses) exist because people are assholes where money is involved.

edit: I guess I basically disagree with everything you said.

My point is, the GPL or any other license does not protect a creator from having their work copied if they aren't actively looking for license violations.

Unless if it's a large company that actively checks software that contains their licensed code (via a legal team or however), no one will be caught. Some guy making things as a hobby won't be doing that, won't hire someone else to do it, and so the license is as good as not existing.

 

[Eighty Deuce]

Ice.fucking.cold.

 

[stan423321]

This is problem software has had more or less solved for 30 years, BTW.

It's called copyleft.

Copyleft is more or less a formal way of specifying what you mean by "it's gonna stay free" (relatively much, to be exact). It doesn't change the fact a conflict exists, and that there are going to be people who are not going to ask for permission to do stuff, and that there are now new incentives to proceed with it.

 

[nephilimdj]

mod community is hella dead compared to what it once was

no one releases mod tools or facilitate their games to be modded cause they don't give a shit

so fuck giving them incentive I guess

If anything its more alive then ever thanks to ARMA and Minecraft
Both those games have made people serious cash without a silly revenue share agreement

 

[Nzyme32]

Actually he is right only in the most distant way - if you were to assume he is talking about devs / pubs investing in creating workable tools and structure for modding / service level functionality to support mods and thus proliferate modding for those titles / services

 

[SneakyStephan]

Glad to see even durante shitposting in this thread...

 

[Elfforkusu]

My point is, the GPL or any other license does not protect a creator from having their work copied if they aren't actively looking for license violations.

Unless if it's a large company that actively checks software that contains their licensed code (via a legal team or however), no one will be caught. Some guy making things as a hobby won't be doing that, won't hire someone else to do it, and so the license is as good as not existing.

Fair. One thing Valve could/should do to alleviate this is require that mods enumerate what other mods they depend on.

Copyleft is more or less a formal way of specifying what you mean by "it's gonna stay free" (relatively much, to be exact). It doesn't change the fact a conflict exists, and that there are going to be people who are not going to ask for permission to do stuff, and that there are now new incentives to proceed with it.

Those incentives already existed.

 

[forest]

I feel bad for him :/

 

[balladofwindfishes]

I feel bad for him :/

He's a billionaire owns the largest PC gaming store front ever, I'm sure he'll manage.

 

[reckless]

Basically the points of contention are:

• Fear mongering that all mods will become paid
• People unhappy that modders get 25% of a sale, while it seems bethesda chose this cut giving them 50% and Valve 25%
• People think mods inherently should be free
• People not happy that it is "open" and thus has started out with people exploiting / protesting / plagarising work

In regard to the last point though - my opinion:

Pretty much every system they implement that has community driven content is declared a failure when it releases - rightly so at that point in time - but specifically because everyone starts experimenting always lean towards trolling, exploitation and alike.

It happened with Steam Tags, Early Access, Initial Hat selling, Community Market Place various times new features were added, Workshop in it's original form, Greenlight, Early Access, even the sales event such as the Team Event a few summers back and the winter sale.

While the issues still remain in most of those services, they don't begin to compare to the first months of chaos - which is not to say this situation with paid mods will improve or stay at all - but it is to say that I'd be certain they expected chaos to a certain degree, just so they could work out what to do next and eventually fix or get a workable solution.

This approach that Valve uses works BUT is unethical as it is wilfully pushing a terrible customer experience

Well I mean if you want to ignore some other important and reasonable concerns heres just two.

There is no guarantee of paid mods being supported in any way and a customers only recourse is get a refund within 24 hours (setting up mod lists can take longer than that) or asking the author of the mod nicely to fix the problem (which they may not even be able to do) otherwise the customer is SOL.

This limits cooperation between different modders and moding teams, many mods use parts of other mods and the added complication of money will stifle cooperation to some degree (could be a little impact or a huge impact) this has already happened with Wet & Cold.

 

[Nzyme32]

Well I mean if you want to ignore some other important and reasonable concerns heres just two.

There is no guarantee of paid mods being supported in any way and a customers only recourse is get a refund within 24 hours (setting up mod lists can take longer than that) or asking the author of the mod nicely to fix the problem (which they may not even be able to do) otherwise the customer is SOL.

This limits cooperation between different modders and moding teams, many mods use parts of other mods and the added complication of money will stifle cooperation to some degree (could be a little impact or a huge impact) this has already happened with Wet & Cold.

Of course. That is just of the top of my head. It's half one in the morning here

 

[Salsa]

I feel bad for him :/

yeah feeling bad for a billionaire

even then; dude had to eat shit and possibly death threats for years when Steam was "DRM HELL!" and the client was terrible and PC gaming was doom cause of it and yadda yadda

this is child's play after the shit storm Valve managed to turn completely around

 

[stan423321]

Those incentives already existed.

No, before there was no official, publisher supported method of premium mod distribution. So you can now sell a Skyrim mod without fearing Bethesda's lawyers to show up, and you can do it through a very popular internet storefront that's already integrated with Skyrim to some degree. Please present me with something that demonstrates this is not a new incentive.

 

[Elfforkusu]

No, before there was no official, publisher supported method of premium mod distribution. So you can now sell a Skyrim mod without fearing Bethesda's lawyers to show up, and you can do it through a very popular internet storefront that's already integrated with Skyrim to some degree. Please present me with something that demonstrates this is not a new incentive.

Modders could already accept donations, correct? Money was already in play.

It does make it easier, I'll give you that. But the financial incentive was already there.

 

[stan423321]

Modders could already accept donations, correct? Money was already in play.

It does make it easier, I'll give you that. But the financial incentive was already there.

If you lump them together, sure.

 

[flaxknuckles]

The abandoned mods not being able to be revived by other people and no more mega combined-mods thing definitely concerns me, but I think paid mods is a great thing as a whole. Barely any damn games have thriving modding communities so maybe this will make more publishers put out modding tools so they can get paid too (though they definitely shouldn't take as much as Bethesda is because come the fuck on)

 

[Bizzquik]

Has he addressed the 25% cut for modders?

That is the only question I care about. Tell me when Valve & Bethesda agree that the mod author cut will be no less than 50%.

 

[bounchfx]

Modders could already accept donations, correct? Money was already in play.

not nearly in the same way. the idea is to make it easier to support your favorite mods. I'm not sure a lot of modders asked for donations before, and this gives them a good way to 'suggest' a donation if they decide.

bringing money into the table, whether people believe it or not, will bring better quality content in the end, as long as the community doesn't eat itself from the inside out first. It really is better in the long run, as hard as it is to swallow at this time.

Has he addressed the 25% cut for modders?

That is the only question I care about. Tell me when Valve & Bethesda agree that the mod author cut will be no less than 50%.

as far as I'm concerned this isn't even your battle. It's up to the modder/author to decide if they are OK with it. Otherwise they can continue to get $0. I've only been getting 25% on dota, and I wouldn't be able to get anything if steam didn't have a system in place to make it possible. I'm not advocating that 25% is ok or fair. But for me, and what it's capable of bringing in, i"m more than willing to participate. Would I like more? Of course, who would say no to that? But again, that's up to the individual doing the work. They can always continue doing it for free, or not at all. It's all about choice.

It's actually one of the most confusing parts of this whole debacle. Half of the people are bitching that mods should always always be free. "Fuck the modders, if you want to get paid, get a real job!" The other half are screaming that the modders don't get enough. It's really interesting to see.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

I'm gonna have to side with Gabe on this one. If people put time into something that they think they deserve compensation for I see no reason why they can't try. People get compensation for youtube videos based on others works, why not mod code? Obviously if people don't buy it they either reduce the price or just set it free entirely, but I think the PC modding community at large will pretty effectively sort it out themselves (as they seem to largely have already). People will pay for what they want to pay for and not what they won't and modders that dont conform will be weeded out pretty quickly (as a number of them seem to have been already). They even have a PWYW option. As far as "support" for a paid mod goes, that went out the door when Valve started enabling broken early access projects en masse. There's always a "hey we're being upfront this may not work so like don't blame us or whatever" get out of jail free clause that keeps the creator out of trouble, so precedent renders that point moot whether people like it or not.

The only real sticking point IMO is the admittedly stupid 25/75 split. It should be at least 40/60.

 

[tokkun]

Pretty much every system they implement that has community driven content is declared a failure when it releases - rightly so at that point in time - but specifically because everyone starts experimenting always lean towards trolling, exploitation and alike.

It happened with Steam Tags, Early Access, Initial Hat selling, Community Market Place various times new features were added, Workshop in it's original form, Greenlight, Early Access, even the sales event such as the Team Event a few summers back and the winter sale.

While the issues still remain in most of those services, they don't begin to compare to the first months of chaos - which is not to say this situation with paid mods will improve or stay at all - but it is to say that I'd be certain they expected chaos to a certain degree, just so they could work out what to do next and eventually fix or get a workable solution.

This approach that Valve uses works BUT is unethical as it is wilfully pushing a terrible customer experience

One point of contrast to those other examples - they had relatively little impact outside of Steam, whereas this new 'experiment' is disrupting the existing modding scene outside of Steam. If you didn't like hats or Early Access, you had the option to simply not use those systems. This program seems to be causing collateral damage to those who do not use Steam.

 

[JambiBum]

You misunderstood both questions. I'm talking about free mods, not paid mods.

1. If someone steals a mod and tries to charge for it then sure, people can just not buy it. But who decides when a free mod counts as "stolen" or "copied"? Will free mods even be allowed to copy functionality of paid mods? And if not, what mechanism will prevent it, and can that mechanism be abused? And will the prospect of a fight simply cause people not to bother making the mod at all?

2. Sure, a paid modder would have incentive to fix it to keep getting paid. But what happens to free mods now that companies can earn money from paid mods? That gives them a direct financial incentive to break free mods. And Steam already uses forced updates, so it is extremely easy to break free mods whenever you want.

Valve hasn't said that free mods are going away. This whole thing only affects the steam workshop, not all mods everywhere, so as long as valve doesn't decide to stop supporting free mods in the workshop they will always be there. Free mods on the workshop aren't going anywhere as long as there are people who still want to make them. The content creators decide whether or not a mod is free, not the dev/publisher/valve. If Valve decides that free mods are no longer allowed, then sure, they'll deserve all the backlash they get, but for now, this backlash isn't really called for IMO.

 

[Shengar]

There's two arguments at play here:

One, will monetizing mods ruin even free mods? We don't know yet, but one of the major and, IMO ,legitimate, concerns is that the way mods currently tend to feature a lot of work shared between members of the community and if you've now got some members saying "Hey, I want a piece of this money thing", and others saying "Nah, it's gotta stay free", you've created a rift. We can already see this happening. Worse though is that it means many of the collaborative efforts that have happened in making Skyrim mods will simply not happen when Fallout 4 hits. When the new things you can learn about the game that help in making mods become something that makes you money, you're not going to be especially willing to share that info. This is totally counter to the past spirit of the modding communities (for these games, at least)

Two, will paying for mods mean higher quality? Again, we don't know yet. We do have some very worrying things being said, like that post 24-hour-refund-window, mods that stop working (for any reason) are just broken, and it's on the modder, and the modder alone, to fix it. But since there's no recourse for the buyer at this point, other than hoping for future customers, the modder isn't necessarily going to fix this stuff (and in some cases, given the lack of Bethesda/Valve support, may not be able to). When people *buy* a product, they expect a certain level of service, and Valve has pretty much come right out and said that you simply won't get that service from them, and may get it from the modder (if the modder deigns to continue working on it).

This is it folks, Vincent first argument, of why paid modding will be the poison that kill the modding scene we know today. People arguing or not mod should (mostly) stay free or let modders have (more) pennies from their hard pasttime activities. It is not about the money that most important as community is what modding scene, TES in particular alive so well years after the games original release. When shit like money involved in supposedly free, and open community of enthusiasts it will always stir shits up.

 

[Nzyme32]

One point of contrast to those other examples - they had relatively little impact outside of Steam, whereas this new 'experiment' is disrupting the existing modding scene outside of Steam. If you didn't like hats or Early Access, you had the option to simply not use those systems. This program seems to be causing collateral damage to those who do not use Steam.

Absolutely.

 

[HariKari]

One point of contrast to those other examples - they had relatively little impact outside of Steam, whereas this new 'experiment' is disrupting the existing modding scene outside of Steam. If you didn't like hats or Early Access, you had the option to simply not use those systems. This program seems to be causing collateral damage to those who do not use Steam.

The danger of trouncing through an established community without consulting a large amount of people for feedback. Players that already subscribed to a long list of mods now have to deal with this fallout. Their experience is lessened by this all. And the program itself seems to be making chump change for the most part, so it's not exactly a resounding success.

 

[Compsiox]

So did Gabe actually inform us of any future changes to the program or is he like "screw you guys"?

 

[x3sphere]

I'm gonna have to side with Gabe on this one. If people put time into something that they think they deserve compensation for I see no reason why they can't try. People get compensation for youtube videos based on others works, why not mod code? Obviously if people don't buy it they either reduce the price or just set it free entirely, but I think the PC modding community at large will pretty effectively sort it out themselves (as they seem to largely have already). People will pay for what they want to pay for and not what they won't and modders that dont conform will be weeded out pretty quickly (as a number of them seem to have been already). They even have a PWYW option. As far as "support" for a paid mod goes, that went out the door when Valve started enabling broken early access projects en masse. There's always a "hey we're being upfront this may not work so like don't blame us or whatever" get out of jail free clause that keeps the creator out of trouble, so precedent renders that point moot whether people like it or not.

The only real sticking point IMO is the admittedly stupid 25/75 split. It should be at least 40/60.

Even 40/60 seems too high. I'd say 75 for the creators and 25 for Valve/Bethesda.

Honestly, most of these mods only sell for a few bucks or less. It's not like they're full games. Valve probably profits several times over from people buying the game on Steam, and Bethesda gets a cut from other avenues like YouTube when people share footage of mods on there.

Most of it should be going to the creators to encourage more development, that way more people keep coming to Steam and buy the game. I don't see how this isn't obvious, only greed could have blinded them...

 

[Skux]

Hearing the phrase "pirated mods" makes my brain hurt.

 

[electroflame]

So did Gabe actually inform us of any future changes to the program or is he like "screw you guys"?

I didn't see him really admitting anything was wrong with the current model.

He pretty much just did this:

 

[Nzyme32]

Even 40/60 seems too high. I'd say 75 for the creators and 25 for Valve/Bethesda.

Honestly, most of these mods only sell for a few bucks or less. It's not like they're full games. Valve probably profits several times over from people buying the game on Steam, and Bethesda gets a cut from other avenues like YouTube when people share footage of mods on there.

Most of it should be going to the creators to encourage more development, that way more people keep coming to Steam and buy the game. I don't see how this isn't obvious, only greed could have blinded them...

Here is food for thought - consider the average pay out to the developers of the cosmetic items in TF2 and Dota2 and CSGO - which is also only giving a 25% cut to the creators but they still earn over $30,000 on average.

Now increase that cut to all the money going to the modder or the percentages you mention, and ask why a developer of any kind should bother working on the base game in anyway, when they could quit and make orders of magnitude more money than at their place of work

I really want modders to get a better share than 25% but I can also see the other side of the coin and the reasons developers and publishers have not supported paid mods before

 

[BennyBlanco]

So did Gabe actually inform us of any future changes to the program or is he like "screw you guys"?

all i got from it was they're adding a pay what you want type system, where modders will be able to set the price as free and you can pay whatever you want.

the 75% cut was up to bethesda

he said he's going to stop the mods from banning people who are "protesting" (probably the edgelords posting ascii middle fingers)

says he's listening to the backlash, but valve is a data driven company. says that the paid mods have only generated $10,000 and the e-mails complaining have cost him a million (in manhours i guess).

 

[Qassim]

So did Gabe actually inform us of any future changes to the program or is he like "screw you guys"?

He said there will be a way for creators to have a "pay what you want" option, with the minimum being $0.

 

[samn]

He said there will be a way for creators to have a "pay what you want" option, with the minimum being $0.

Modders still only get the 25% cut, so it's not really a donation.