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Gabe Newell thinks modders not being accurately compensated is a bug in the system

J

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
I'm not a PC gamer so I'm not familiar with the culture but it seems pretty obvious that people should be compensated for their work. From what I understand about mods, it sounds like a shitload of work.
 
1

13ruce

Banned
Translation: i want more money.
I would only accept this if valve gets nearly nothing (max 5%) the devs 20-25% and the modder the rest.

Game devs themselves should be able to decide for paid mods or not.
 
I

Illucio

Banned
To me I feel like paid mods are the game companies decision. Not so much the community, the old model of donations is fine.

I just don't agree with the idea of having modders live off making content for someone else's game. Game companies need to adopt modders and take them in, offer things like employment, cash prizes for accomplishing something, and so on.

I feel like it's a great opening to find talent of anything.
 
C

Chairmanchuck

Member
Illucio said:
To me I feel like paid mods are the game companies decision. Not so much the community, the old model of donations is fine.

I just don't agree with the idea of having modders live off making content for someone else's game. Game companies need to adopt modders and take them in, offer things like employment, cash prizes for accomplishing something, and so on.

I feel like it's a great opening to find talent of anything.
Click to expand...

Thats what Valve did though.

But like I said. Those words seem stupid, because instead of hiring translators for their operations, they use freelancers to work for free for them through the Steam translation service.
I dont think many people actually know about this:

https://translation.steampowered.com
 
coughlanio

coughlanio

Member
Not everyone feels the need to get paid for their work, look at open source software, its a world full of passionate people who want to share their work for basically nothing in return.

Saying that, if the majority of a company's revenue is coming on the back of good mod support, then yes, I think some of that should be kicked back to the mod creators.

Hopefully they take an approach like some Android apps do, where you can download the APK from somewhere like XDA for free, or you can pay the 99c on Google Play as basically a donation, for easy install and automatic updates.
 
StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Member
Silent Hill said:
Bethesda tried this and everyone complained.
Click to expand...
Bethesda games are not a great platform for paid mods I feel unless there is some sort of shared compensation model.

People have dozens and sometimes more mods. A lot of folks switch out mods, try a new one, etc. The big reason for their games popularity are mods and the fact that Bethesda game engine for all its warts is very friendly to modders.

Now most people won't mind paying $1 - $3 for a mod or two. Now, multiply that by 50 - 100 mods. That's where things break down. Maybe Valve/Bethesda could have a "Season Pass" mod option that say for $25 gave unlimited access to mods and then distributed money to mod Devs afterwards Spotify style.
 
A

Abilidebob

Member
Hektor said:
All things that are done because it benefits valve.

Again: The statement "valve paying modders" implies that valve takes a financial hit to benefit the modders, not gains money by having other people pay modders.

Your entire argument is built around this weird idea that valve is paying modders by building a storefront in which i can pay modders money and have valve profit off of it.

Valve enabling me to pay modders is not valve paying modders.

I've now accidentally repeated the same thing in three paragraphs because you don't seem to get it. But i'm gonna let it stand like this.

If 100% of the revenue stream towards the modder are coming from the community and valve takes a cut, valve does not pay modder, even if they built the enabling system. It is the community. They are the factor in the equation that ends up giving the modder money. Not valve.



Modding tools have been for ages part of the full priced package because these devs know that they move copies.

My point being is that they aren't proving anything of further value that would justify them taking a cut from every mod created. They'd simply be taking that additional money because they could.





What is it with videogames and awful examples.



These things are done to sell the game and would exist just as well if mods weren't a thing, they are covered by the game's sales and no justification to take an additional cut oter than that they simply can.



These things are not provided by the developer and therefore completely irrelevant to my question.



I have yet to see a reason as to why a modder should pay this license fee and why it isn't part of the package that comes with the game itself, just like how it's been with free mods in the past.

Your Harmonix example is cool and in that case it makes sense as the modding tools themselfs are free. But that usually is not the case and the only way to access most games mod tools is to buy the game, meaning the company already profits off of it at that point.




________


Yes, i understand, the developer made the game. I'm not dumb. But it isn't at all a reason as to why they should by entitled to further profit off of other people's work on it long after the initial sales that netteted them an inital profit. You'rs are only reason as to why they can do this.
Click to expand...


You really really have no idea how game, no, software development works at all, do you? And if you do I'm simply flabbergasted that you know about it and keep spouting this stuff. The developer spent time and money on modding tools for other people. A modder can make stuff for that game and distribute it for free, no problem. If the modder wants to sell it then it's completely obvious the developer is owned a part of that money. The modder doesn't own any of the stuff from the game, so he doesn't have the right to earn money from it without the original owner getting a cut. The fact that you want to deny the dev that percentage is just completely insane to me.

Also you keep talking about the "initial cost of the game". What about games like DOTA 2? A modder can literally start earning money from items he made for the game without spending a cent. Literally 0 cost of entry, and if the modder is using tools like Blender then the only "cost" is electricity. Saying that because he made the item alone he deserves 100% of the profits makes me nauseous. Keep up with your mental gymnastics though, even when we have actual item makers and development tools developers giving their opinions.
 
C

collige

Banned
Abilidebob said:
If the modder wants to sell it then it's completely obvious the developer is owned a part of that money.
Click to expand...

It's not obvious at all in fact. A very appropriate real world analogy here would be aftermarket car parts. These parts are manufactured and sold completely independently of both the car company and the part OEM. If I decide to buy fancy new tailpipe for my Honda Civic, for example, Honda would neither get nor deserve any of my money. For a more closely related example, you could look to the industry of paid Photoshop plugins. Abode created the SDK that enables modding the program, but they take no cut of third party plugin sales. If a dev wants modders to pay them, they should charge for SDK access.

The modder doesn't own any of the stuff from the game, so he doesn't have the right to earn money from it without the original owner getting a cut.
Click to expand...
The vast majority of mods as distributed don't contain copyrighted content though. People could also charge for emulators if they wanted to (see Bleem).

Edit: Dota 2 is a special circumstance. For one, Valve is both the developer of the game and the operator of the store. Their cut of both accepted workshop submissions and paid custom modes is done from the role of the latter and they could just as easily do the same thing for mods for other games on Steam as long as the mods don't contain copyrighted content.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Allow modders to charge for content, with devs getting a royalty slice per purchase:

- You don't have to pitch to a publisher to make DLC or content for a game, you just make it and put it up.
- Publisher sees revenue from it, modder sees revenue. Modder gets nice things. Publishers are encouraged to budget more money for the tools team to make the engine tools more user-friendly.
- These two systems feed into each other. Game becomes easier to mod, more people can mod it (even for free if they want to), game makes more sales, modders eat more sandwiches.
- Other publishers see those revenues and start budgeting and asking developrs to add official modding and content creation tools to their games.
- More games become moddable.
- Sales increase, developer and publisher are rewarded for having good mod support, modders get cash. The ones that want to charge money do so, the ones that want to do it for free are still free to mod as they currently do Self sustaining ecosystem self sustains..
- Hell, a modder could release content years or decades after a game's release, and if they can convince people, they just start making money. A cottage industry could start up with "legacy sustain" centric developers that content create for older games.


Making developers pay modders out of the profits of the base game:
- Developer has to become a meta publisher and "choose winners".
- DEveloper has to become a payment coordinator and processor.
- Developer and publishers, as proposed earlier, would earn less the more popular a mod got, so they're actually de-incentivized to add or support mod tools.
- If the developer cuts a check to every single modder, the slices would get so small that in some cases, the check would cost more to write than it's face value.
- Once the developer moves on, mods wouldn't get paid anymore.


Donation box:
- Modder gets enough money for a single Subway sandwich, but no drink.
 
D

Drazgul

Member
StereoVsn said:
Bethesda games are not a great platform for paid mods I feel unless there is some sort of shared compensation model.

People have dozens and sometimes more mods. A lot of folks switch out mods, try a new one, etc. The big reason for their games popularity are mods and the fact that Bethesda game engine for all its warts is very friendly to modders.

Now most people won't mind paying $1 - $3 for a mod or two. Now, multiply that by 50 - 100 mods. That's where things break down. Maybe Valve/Bethesda could have a "Season Pass" mod option that say for $25 gave unlimited access to mods and then distributed money to mod Devs afterwards Spotify style.
Click to expand...

Exactly, I may be an outlier but when I mod my Bethesda games, I more often than not end up hitting the ESP limit of 255 plugins and have to merge some to be able to play -and that figure doesn't even include pluginless mods such as virtually all texture replacers. Even at an average cost of $1 it'd be completely cost prohibitive, and when those Skyrim paid mods were on steam, most cost a lot more than that.
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
The problem with paid mods is that anything good that costs money to get will quickly have someone releasing a free version. Either their own new variation on the same idea...or simply deconstructing the paid mod somehow and giving it out. Lots of people will hate the modder who has "sold out" and is now trying to profit off something they've always done for free, and will intentionally try to destroy their work in one of these ways.

So that means paid mods need some kind of DRM now to prevent that from happening, which means modding itself needs to be rolled into the whole framework of the game and authorized to be possible or not by the game developer, which is one of the major concerns about UWP and the steps it's taking to eliminate modding and unauthorized deconstruction of a game's files....

What about replacing Skyrim's dragons with Thomas the Tank Engine? What about Macho Man Randy Savage? What about making Krystal from Star Fox a companion (shudder)? What about the legality of all this weird stuff that gets modded in?

Modding needs to be grassroots. It needs to exist in zips that are distributed randomly across the internet, not official secure downloads that respect all copyright.
 
L

LewieP

Member
HP_Wuvcraft said:
They want to replicate the store system from TF2.

Which is fine by me.

They get 30% and some girl gets her entire college paid for.
Click to expand...
Hats from TF2 are:
Guuaranteed to work even if the game gets an update.
Never incompatible with other hats.
Submitted to Valve and then manually processed by Valve employees to ensure they match the description.
Guaranteed not to include any adware or malware.

I'd be cool with paid mods for all games if they came with similar assurances.
 
C

collige

Banned
Drazgul said:
Exactly, I may be an outlier but when I mod my Bethesda games, I more often than not end up hitting the ESP limit of 255 plugins and have to merge some to be able to play -and that figure doesn't even include pluginless mods such as virtually all texture replacers. Even at an average cost of $1 it'd be completely cost prohibitive, and when those Skyrim paid mods were on steam, most cost a lot more than that.
Click to expand...

This is one of the reasons why I'm against paid mods as they were implemented before. Modders being paid != charging for mods in the same way that you would for DLC.
 
MrCunningham

MrCunningham

Member
sbkodama said:
It's always about money for valve or what ? can't have enough don't they ?
Click to expand...

In a case like Valve, they are a privately owned company so they do not have investors to fall back on. They are always finding ways to make money through any means necessary. Though yeah, with Steam money isn't really a problem for them.
 
A

Abilidebob

Member
collige said:
It's not obvious at all in fact. A very appropriate real world analogy here would be aftermarket car parts. These parts are manufactured and sold completely independently of both the car company and the part OEM. If I decide to buy fancy new tailpipe for my Honda Civic, for example, Honda would neither get nor deserve any of my money. For a more closely related example, you could look to the industry of paid Photoshop plugins. Abode created the SDK that enables modding the program, but they take no cut of third party plugin sales. If a dev wants modders to pay them, they should charge for SDK access.


The vast majority of mods as distributed don't contain copyrighted content though. People could also charge for emulators if they wanted to (see Bleem).

Edit: Dota 2 is a special circumstance. For one, Valve is both the developer of the game and the operator of the store. Their cut of both accepted workshop submissions and paid custom modes is done from the role of the latter and they could just as easily do the same thing for mods for other games on Steam as long as the mods don't contain copyrighted content.
Click to expand...

Sure, but are those car parts sold AT Honda's stores? Are those paid Photoshop plugins sold DIRECTLY from Adobe's store?
 
C

collige

Banned
Abilidebob said:
Sure, but are those car parts sold AT Honda's stores? Are those paid Photoshop plugins sold DIRECTLY from Adobe's store?
Click to expand...
No and no. Like I said, store owners can rightfully take whatever cut they want, but I'm arguing against giving devs/publishers a cut from mod sales from a 3rd party store (Steam in this case)
 
G

Geist-

Member
Zeneric said:
Valve just want to profit from mods.
Click to expand...

Nothing more to it.

The good modders are being compensated, in that it looks great on their resume if they're trying to get into the gaming industry. A prime example being the Long War devs, who were hired by Firaxis to do a sequel to their mod after the original became one of the greatest mods ever made, and are now making their own game.

Monetizing it just complicates the process, encourages people to try to game the system, and discourages variety as people try to create mods within certain guidelines so they aren't breaking any IP laws. Stealing assets is a key part of the modding community and I don't want to see it going away anytime soon.
 
P

Paz

Member
Netherscourge said:
I hate that Valve and developers want a cut of a Modder's profits.

Valve and the developers should just be happy other people's mods are selling these games in the first place.

I agree with an optional donation system, embedded in the game for modders. But they should get 100% of the profit for THEIR work.
Click to expand...

If any modder has this attitude then they should just make their own game. Good thing not a lot of modders have this attitude.



I'm kinda split on paid mods as a whole, it's a logical thing but the culture we've cultivated for so long is incompatible with it so I'm fine if it never comes to fruition. Something tells me people will find a way some day though.

From a players point of view the biggest argument in favor of paid mods should be that it creates an environment where mods become much higher quality, so I think the way they tried it with Skyrim was probably the worst way to go about it since it felt like all they were doing was taking away and not adding anything of value. I'd love to see small teams get together to make insanely high quality mods as a genuine business model, like pseudo game studios but without the difficulties that come with doing 100% your own thing.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Paz said:
If any modder has this attitude then they should just make their own game. Good thing not a lot of modders have this attitude.



I'm kinda split on paid mods as a whole, it's a logical thing but the culture we've cultivated for so long is incompatible with it so I'm fine if it never comes to fruition. Something tells me people will find a way some day though.

From a players point of view the biggest argument in favor of paid mods should be that it creates an environment where mods become much higher quality, so I think the way they tried it with Skyrim was probably the worst way to go about it since it felt like all they were doing was taking away and not adding anything of value. I'd love to see small teams get together to make insanely high quality mods as a genuine business model, like pseudo game studios but without the difficulties that come with doing 100% your own thing.
Click to expand...

There's already been games with paid mod communities, though. Skyrim just really backfired because it came out of nowhere, and both companies involved just went silent when they should have been working the phones, so to speak. They did not do a good job of introducing it.

But a gaming genre I can definitely name off would be stuff like simulation games. Look at all the DLC Train Simulator has. But even before Steam, people would make stuff for flight simulators/etc and sell them to the other users. Half Life , Unreal Tournament, and Quake mods got sold as games.

Hell, even in non gaming, there's people that make a living off making forum software mods, like this guy.
 
I

Interficium

Banned
Gamers: "Mods are great and the creators of mods should TOTALLY be compensated for their hard work... just not by me. Never by me."

Add something in there about evil valve corporate greed mods are part of the value proposition I paid for etc for your average gaf mod hottake.
 
M

mieumieu

Member
Springfoot said:
ITT people don't understand that tools development is an entire career in the games industry. Most developer tools are locked into networked systems that typically only work internally and are often ugly, a pain in the ass to work with, and undocumented. Making user friendly modding tools that can be detached from the developer's network, is well documented, has a clean UI, and plugs seamlessly into the final compiled game is typically a massive undertaking.

Not to mention the only reason someone would paying for a mod in the first place is because they had bought the game already due to the millions the developer/publisher spent on development and advertising. Bethesda games sell millions in the first weeks of release on consoles and PC when (a) no mods have yet been released meaning people aren't buying the titles for a specific mod that doesn't even exist, and (b) mods aren't even expected an expected feature in the console market.

The modders deserve to be compensated and profit if they want to put their work up for sale (that is if they choose not to release it for free, a choice they can continue to make), but arguing that mods can somehow exist in a vacuum without the work, support, and investment by the developer's original title that functions as a platform for those mods is a bizarre stance to take. It's like people who get upset that Valve takes a 30% cut for providing a massively popular, well supported sales platform that yields significant exposure, advertising, and boosted sales just because "well it's a platform that already exists, so they aren't putting in extra effort and therefore don't deserve more money despite the value created." Developers can always release their games on their own sites without giving Valve a cut, but doing so provides a minuscule fraction of the sales.



Uhh, what? This is how every single platform exists. When Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Valve develop a platform on which developers can sell their games, they all get a ~30% cut. In these instances the developers are paying a percentage of their sales to the platform developers for the opportunity to sell to an exponentially larger audience than they'd ever have the opportunity to sell to on their own unique platform. This is especially obvious with Steam, because it's easy for a PC game developer to sell Windows compatible titles for 100% of the earning without having to pay MS or Valve, and yet most still choose to sell on Steam because the additional sales due to Steam's advertising and exposure far, far exceeds the extra 30% they'd make on each sale putting the titles on their own custom storefronts. All people, both developers and customers, pay for value, not for the amount of work that went into development. All platform holders have created value through the creation of their platforms regardless of whether or not they continue to put in more work on the tail end.

This is exactly how a game developed with user friendly modding tools can be viewed. The developer has created a platform on which mods can be developed. If the modder wants to release their work for free, as has been done in the past, they still could. However, if they want to profit from it, then they can pay a percentage to the developer for the value created by the developer's game platform. Alternatively, they could always go and create their own game from scratch if they don't want to pay the game/platform developer, but that's a lot more work, plus a lot of the potential customers (people who already owned, say Skyrim for example) wouldn't necessarily go seeking out that standalone title when they would otherwise be looking for new additions to the game they already owned and therefore more receptive to spending extra money on it. The very fact that the Steam platform is so popular despite the fact that developers could release their titles on PC for 100% of the revenue shows how much value a popular platform creates.

And yes, historically mods have been free. Modders could still choose to make them free. PC game releases historically never paid an electronic distributor (ie. Valve) a cut. PC game developers can still operate using the historical model and release their games directly for Windows without paying Valve. Most, however, are choosing to release on Valve's platform because it provides worthwhile value. Games with a pre-existing audience and mod friendly development and implementation tools create value for modders who want to profit.
Click to expand...

This is an important reply that everyone should read
 
O

old manatee

Banned
Interficium said:
Gamers: "Mods are great and the creators of mods should TOTALLY be compensated for their hard work... just not by me. Never by me."

Add something in there about evil valve corporate greed mods are part of the value proposition I paid for etc for your average gaf mod hottake.
Click to expand...

Hot takes about GAF hot takes are my favorite hot takes.
 
C

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I think it's probably possible to set up a system that would work, but I don't see it coming from Valve. There would need to be a lot of hands on curation and vetting that goes against Valve's pseudo-libertarian, hands-off policies.

I guess they could pass the dirty work onto the publisher and just have the system in place though.
 
Lanrutcon

Lanrutcon

Member
Get the modders paid, get Valve their cut and get the publishers to acknowledge and compensate modders who fix their shit.

No? They just want us to pay? Oh. Good luck. We all saw how that went last time.
 
X

Xeteh

Member
I definitely want to pay for mods and then find out some of them aren't compatible with each other or need some 3rd party program to manage them.
 
K

Keasar

Member
The problem I saw with games like Elder Scrolls Skyrim and paid mods is that I would instantly quit installing mods for the game

Not because I don't think modders deserve some compensation for their often hard work.

But because oh dear fucking god it would be expensive.

When playing Bethesda games, especially the latter ones they have made, a lot of the charm have been to mod the games, installing often a hundred or so mods at the same time and see how the game becomes then. If it doesn't work, I would finetune the mod installs until it worked and then play for a little while. After I am done or the game catastrophically crashes, I'd dump the entire install folder and start over again.

If I had to pay for the mods, especially with the prices I saw them putting on most of the mods during the paid-Skyrim-mod-time, I would have had to pay prices upwards of a thousand dollars. It just wouldn't be sustainable and I would probably quit to ever play another Bethesda game again (I've stopped enjoying their RPGs for the "story" or "gameplay" a long time ago).

Not to mention the risk of paying for mods and then find out that 50% of them are in conflict with each other, making the game not work. Mods do not have the same guaranteed comparability assurance and testing like proper official DLCs does.
 
T

Titoin

Member
Demagoguery is everywhere now it seems. He's just looking for new products to sell with a nice cut.
It might be difficult to understand for people who spend their time counting their money but there are some people who are happy to do some work for free. The mod community has been functionning well for years, why risk unbalancing the system for just a couple of dollars more.
 
C

CharlesSurge

Member
V

Vuze

Member
It's been said before but I'm also absolutely sure they simply want another non-effort revenue stream. Modding is huge, they don't have to do jackshit besides providing the payment platform and cash in. Also I would expect paid mods to be updated and maintained for as long as the game is updated - this is simply unrealistic. Huge publishers can't even get their products fixed up often enough, what to expect from single/small group of hobbyists? I would also expect a hassle free installation routine supported by the publisher.
 
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