Oh this will be fun. This whole discussion about paid for mods turned so toxic in the The Sims communities that there pretty much was a blanket ban on discussing it on nearly every fan site except those specifically dedicated to that one topic for a while. And yes, the topic of mod piracy was rather big there as well. This is just the beginning.
Some cases to look forward to, collected from watching them happen in The Sims:
- Someone makes a free mod or tool that enables some new bit of the game to be moddable, and stipulates that all mods based on this mod must be free, such as with a GNU license, does he have any recourse in shutting down pay mods based on it?
- Same situation, reversed. A pay mod does something. Someone else has made a mod that does something very similar, but in a different way. Is this a conflict? If so, how does it resolve?
- The game gets updated, a pay mod stops working or outright crashes the game. Does the modder have an obligation to support the mod for the lifetime of the game? Will a user be able to demand a refund in this case? Will modders be required to render tech support?
- A paid modder intentionally breaks a mod in a "Screw you, I'm going home!" maneuver. Can the users get a refund due to deliberate sabotage?
Money getting involved makes modding so much more complicated, as money getting involved in nearly anything usually does. Frankly, if I pay for something, I expect lifetime support of the game and on demand tech support if the mod breaks. If a mod is free, then I don't care about that. But if you want to be a business, fine. Be a business. With all that entails. Will we see mods with a support hotline?