Steam charging money for mods

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/co ... ling_mods/

You can now sell your mods on Steam for monies.
I suggest we all write strongly worded letters to Valve for making this happen, and cast away the False God Gabe Newell, who no longer deserves to be the Lord and Savior of the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race.

[Chairman_Tiel]

there is no reason to be upset

it's not like charging for user content is some kind of compulsory mandate from steam. oftentimes mods have just as much time and labor put into them as the game itself; now those creators have the option of asking for monetary compensation in the same fashion their platform does.

if you don't want to pay money, maybe, I dunno, don't buy them?

[҉]

I have no objection to this.

[Iv121]

It merely means that much less people are going to get these mods. As someone who did mods I would find it unfitting to sell mods for money. It is content we make out of free will for our and the community's enjoyment, but I guess you are free to do whatever you want with your content. In general though even in big games the avg mod only gets up to 5k DLs (Which is not bad !), if those ppl were to sell their mod this number will prob fall down below 10. Following this pattern a mod with 100k DLs (a BIIG mod) will get no more than 1000 DLs (I was generous and took into consideration the fact it is probably much higher quality content that more ppl will deem worthy of the money). Thats just our BASE DL count, keep in mind that less DLs is lees exposure, less people will discover this mod and it is less likely to be picked by people. With all things considered I expect about 300-400 DLs.

Yeah if you charge $4 per DL it might amount to a nice sum, however as a modder I think it defeats the point of the mod. Every modder's ultimate goal is to make a popular mod with tens of thousands of people playing it. It brings some sort of weird satisfaction, perhaps because you are well known now among the community. Charging money for your work will totally ruin your chances to get there. If you want to make money off your work you might request donations. For the avg mod with 5k DLs you prob wont get even 5 donators, however with a big mod with 100k DLs you will prob get around 500 donations, usually around that same sum of $4 and sometimes even more so you will not only achieve that milestone of 100k DLs but also get the money for it as well !

[Chairman_Tiel]

I'm not sure how your perception of the goal of modding really has any bearing on whether Steam should support purchasable mods on the workshop.

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

First of all, when people know they can get money from mods, very few people will make free mods.
Second, when you have to pay for mods, people will start pirate them, and as much as I hate the "slippery slope" argument, this could potentially lead to a general increase in piracy.
Third, mods were supposed to be free, made for players by players, to enhance the experience of a game, with everything from adding an item to patching glitches and overhauling graphics, physics and gameplay. This is how it has always been, and this is how it should be.
Fourth, having to pay for mods divides the community.
Fifth, this opens up so many scamming opportunities.
Sixth, many mods rely on other mods to function.
Seventh, in this case modders only get 25% of the profits anyway.
And eighth (which is a weird word when you write it down), why have compulsory payment and not just an option for donation, like many modders already have on their mods?

And these are only the arguments I came up with from the top of my head.

[Iv121]

Anyway as I said the vast majority of mods wont be able to make money out of it at all, it will only ruin their DLs and motivation to continue. Greed is a dangerous beast ...

@ Tiel it seems like you stopped reading my post after the first sentence (perhaps even the first part of the first sentence as in that very sentence I answered that my stance regarding the payment is "Don't mind, find it obsolete anyway"). Most of my post was regarding what would happen if mods become paid for. Another reason why it won't matter is that the truly big and significant modding communities are located outside of Steam anyway (In places like ModDB or NexusMods etc.). Usually it is there where you find the best and the biggest, Steam is only getting the leftovers, or duplicates ... There are some exceptions like cities: Skylines for example where the Steam integration is really convenient but otherwise it all lies elsewhere.

[Chairman_Tiel]

If I'd only read the first sentence of your post I'd have little ability or cause to comment on your rambling of how mods work, no?

your persecution complex is showing x_x

First of all, when people know they can get money from mods, very few people will make free mods.

I agree there is the possibility of a dangerous precedent being set depending on which and how many modders leap on this immediately; but consider that there are free games existing alongside paid ones at current. The ability to pay for mods is by no means going to suddenly twist and contort everyone's intentions to the point that everything is premium.

Second, when you have to pay for mods, people will start pirate them, and as much as I hate the "slippery slope" argument, this could potentially lead to a general increase in piracy.

Piracy of what? Mods? Then it wouldn't be any better than what we have now where people get all their third party content for free. This ultimately means many modders won't want the added hassle of charging for their work.

Third, mods were supposed to be free

I'm going to stop you right here. "Supposed to?" Says who? At the end of the day there's some guy(s) putting out just as much effort as the "real devs" to make stuff for you. Do they not warrant compensation if they want it? Just because something has "always been this way" doesn't automatically invalidate change. You're starting to sound like some kind of christian.

Fourth, having to pay for mods divides the community.

Potentially.

Fifth, this opens up so many scamming opportunities.

Most definitely. That's my biggest problem with this; people can easily steal a mod, upload it, and maybe turn a profit before it gets taken down. Easily solved if Workshops for games have respective delegates to approve mods before they are accessible to the mainstream, though.

Sixth, many mods rely on other mods to function.

You make the mistake of assuming all games function like Minecraft's jumbled mess of an addon system. Next.

Seventh, in this case modders only get 25% of the profits anyway.

True. So why would anyone but the young inexperienced teenage dev wannabe charge? There's no threat here.

And eighth (which is a weird word when you write it down), why have compulsory payment and not just an option for donation, like many modders already have on their mods?

When's the last time you've ever donated to a mod

[҉]

I went and ate a meal in the middle of writing this so Tiel's beaten me to the punch, but what the hell.


It's a question of work vs. reward. Realistically speaking, virtually nobody's ever going to make a viable career out of modding; unless (as occasionally happens) you eventually turn the mod into a successful standalone game the money just isn't there. But I don't think it at all unreasonable for people who produce content that others use and enjoy to expect to make some money from doing so, as compensation for their time and effort if nothing else. If any modders have philosophical objections to monetizing their work, as you seem to, there's no reason for them to do so.

1. While I understand that fewer free mods is a bad thing for you, it isn't a bad thing for the people who make mods, and ultimately they're the ones doing the work here. No-one has any right to free content.
2. It won't lead to an increase in the ratio of pirated content to purchased content, so while I suppose this is true in that the total amount of piracy will likely increase, that happens every time new content becomes available for purchase.
3. Why do you say mods are categorically "supposed to be" anything? Leaving aside for a moment the idea that a minor bugfix is "supposed to be" the same as a total conversion kit, "this is how it has always been, and this is how it should be" is almost universally an argument used by those who don't have better ones.
4. Why?
5. That's why we read the reviews and do our research before buying things, just like literally every other time we ever purchase anything online.
6. I don't see how this matters.
7. Likewise, this isn't an argument against paying for mods. Under the old system, modders get 0% of the 0 profits.
8. Because the overwhelming majority of people, even if they love your mod and wouldn't mind paying for it, won't if they don't have to.

[Error]

I maintain a neutral position until we can see how things go for this. The kneejerk reaction is to query Steam's motives (do they take a chunk of the money off, perhaps?) but it's pretty irrelevant either way.

[҉]

I maintain a neutral position until we can see how things go for this. The kneejerk reaction is to query Steam's motives (do they take a chunk of the money off, perhaps?) but it's pretty irrelevant either way.

According to its Wikipedia article, as of 2011 Steam was making Valve something in the range of 600-900 million dollars a year. I don't know what their overhead would be, but given that they aren't actually producing anything I can't imagine it's anywhere near that. No idea whether statistics for mod downloads are available, but I'd be stunned if they comprised more than, say, a percent of all of the downloads on Steam. While this move will increase Steam's profits, it'll be by such a tiny margin that I have a hard time seeing that as a primary motivation, especially given that Valve isn't known for stuff like that.

[Chairman_Tiel]

I do apologize for grabbing the bait before you. You do a much better job at this internet arguing thing these days then I do.

Food for thought, though, is the aspect of bandwidth. How much money does Valve sink in providing terrabytes of data daily to Steam users around the world? Perhaps introducing capitalism to the workshop is intended to marginalize those upkeep costs?

[Prototype]

Yeah, fuck people for trying to earn money for their mods.... *kicks $600 under the rug*


I have literally no problem with this. A majority of modders simply enjoy what they do, so it's not like every single modder will start charging you money, for most people it's just a hobby. And for those that do decide to charge, that should provide them with a drive to make their mod better and better.

[҉]

I do apologize for grabbing the bait before you. You do a much better job at this internet arguing thing these days then I do.

Food for thought, though, is the aspect of bandwidth. How much money does Valve sink in providing terrabytes of data daily to Steam users around the world? Perhaps introducing capitalism to the workshop is intended to marginalize those upkeep costs?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchian ... illions/2/
Apparently in 2011 Newell went on record as saying Valve is more profitable per employee than either Google or Apple, which meant they were making a minimum of 87 million dollars of profit per year. Profit from mods is small potatoes compared to what they're getting already.

[Professor Fenway]

Should people get paid for their mods? Totally. Is steam doing the right thing? Fuck no.

The way it's implemented is just a money grab for steam. They get 75% of the profits on selling mods that they only host the content; that's a lot. And they had no hand in making it. Plus, there's nothing stopping unrealistic prices or people outright stealing and selling mods there.

It's a good idea. But Valve is going about it the wrong way and that will be the death of it.