Steam charging money for mods

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Archduke Daynel, PhD
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Archduke Daynel, PhD » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:28 pm

Professor Fenway wrote: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.
Exactly. Thank you.
I'm all for modders having some way of getting money for their mods, but why in the world not just have a clearly available "donate" option?

Speaking of which, Valve are now removing mods that have a "donate" option.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Iv121 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:58 am

You know another problem with charging for mods is lack of quality insurance. The adv of being a modder is no obligations, there are no obligations to release a mod, support it , provide certain content. Now that you charge money for your "product" there are obligations you MUST follow:

- You MUST provide accurate information about what your mod includes and what ppl are paying for, most mods usually don't do it and a portion of them try to pump up false expectations from their mods.

- You MUST support your content now. You are giving a warranty that your mod is stable and doesn't cause issues on your machine. That means patching and a lot of it. Most mods don't do it either. If the content was free it was perfectly acceptable, now to download a mod tht doesn't work is absolutely NOT acceptable.

- And finally you MUST use your own content that you own (or purchased for that matter). When mods require some hard to make content (models, music and sounds etc. ) they use resources that do not belong to them. Resource packs made by other modders specifically for these people, various content available online ... all of that cannot be used anymore by those modders. That means the quality of mods being made will drop significantly and it might mark the end of co-operation between various creators (or in other words the end of some modding communities).


Bottom line if you ask me it becomes too much hassle for ppl to implement, both on the modder's side and Valve's . Also the above is why mods were free all these years @ Tiel and LJS.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Prototype » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:00 am

But most people try and do all that anyway... Nobody wants their mod to be a shitshow.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Iv121 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:01 am

Try and do what ? Do the musts or break em ?
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Prototype » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:01 am

The musts.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Iv121 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:10 am

Nope, the vast majority ignores them and / or can't oblige anyway. Going through hundreds of mod entries, filtering out what I want and what I dont ,I stumble quite often upon mods that do not describe accurately what they are, usually no malicious intent involved but it happens nevertheless. I learned how to really judge what a mod contains through experience but most ppl don't DL thousands of mods ... thats the first must.

The second must is much easier, ppl don't do it because its not fun and often REALLY hard. When ppl do it it is because they use it themselves and/ or they are serious , but I'd say only about 20% do it. Some other 10% release minor patches that solve small issues however game-breakers and various CTDs are rarely handled simply because they are too hard to handle.

Third must is actually rarely followed. This is free content and you are free to use other content in its creation. When all good intents align together ppl often make great things through co-operation. The fact those mods are free means there are no arguments over profits and dividends and what not. PPL just get together and do things. It would be stupid if free mods were to follow that third must.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Prototype » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:22 am

First must: People do this anyway, if you want your mod to be taken seriously this is a must regardless where/how you're distributing it.

Second must: Read the first point. If you can't support a certain system you outline this in the first must, again, this is something you should be doing anyway.

Third must: You don't necessarily have to make everything yourself, if you want to use an asset somebody else has made, you need their permission to use it. Now you're also supposed to do this anyway, using someone else's asset without their permission, even if it is for free use, is something modders (or any sane person) like to call "being a scumbag". And just because a mod is free does not mean there is no argument about who uses what, intellectual property is intellectual property, if someone else steals your asset you can legally request a takedown, even if it's free. Now adding onto that most mods do generate some ad revenue, so while they may be free to the users, there is still money involved, and believe me, if someone starts using your stuff without your permission, bearing in mind in most cases they will be earning money off it, you're going to be tick off about it.


It's not a matter of hassle, if you give two shits about your project you do all this anyway.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Iv121 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:30 am

Really ? If for some obscure reason after updating the pack to 1.9 or something you discover that your pack crashes MC do you think you would be able to fix it ? Yeah in MC and Java in general its much easier plus you got the support of Flan on that front, even then its gonna be hard right ? Keep in mind in most games ppl are thrown into the water with no support, no crash logs, no nothing and you expect them to fix it ?

As for description, how would you describe a castle house you made in Skyrim for example ? With Screenshots , what would you take screenshots of ? Of the best angles of your castle isn't it ? You'd try to make it look good, nothing bad in it. If you take a screen of your entire castle it won't be noticeable that the meshes you used are low poly or that you didn't put much detail in some of it's places. You didn't lie nor try to sell your mod as something its not but nevertheless if I were to know all these flaws perhaps I wouldn't like to DL that mod.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Prototype » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:02 am

First off I'm not even going to pretend I know all the technicalities of actually making a mod, I don't, I don't even call myself a modder, that would be like telling people I'm a scientist when all I do is bang two bricks together and hope something interesting happens. However, the modders in question here are people who actually know what they are doing, they should be technically competent and able to work with the system they are using, otherwise I question how they'd even make a mod in the first place. Bugs are an essential part of modding, whether you like it or not you will always have problems, hell, most full games have their bugs. If you find a bug, you try and fix it, if you're competent, you should be able to, is it easy? fuck no, none of it is.

I've watched Flan bang his head against the wall for days about a ridiculous bug, we had absolutely no indication what was causing it, but sure enough, the guy knew his code, knew the system he was working with and was able to successfully identify and fix the issue, how exactly he did it is quite honestly black magic to me, but any competent modder should be able to keep up with the support side, if you're incompetent it's pretty difficult to make a mod worth selling. If I had such an issue I'd be completely fucked, I'm not competent dealing with this sort of thing (not that it would ever happen, usually these issues are Flan's fault), but on the flipside I'd never want to sell it, I know I'm not capable of making something worth buying. However, a competent modder making a good quality mod, would be able to sell, and if they did, and someone reported a bug, they'd damn well try and fix it, if they've been able to create a mod worthy of being sold, they should be competent enough to squash a few bugs. And trust me, you're not going to try selling your mod unless you know it's of the best quality.

As for description, you take screenshots of whatever looks best, as per any game made ever. If you have a few minor flaws, you should be fine, most games have minor flaws here and there, and they sure as hell never tell us about them.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by  ҉  » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:45 am

Archduke Daynel wrote:Speaking of which, Valve are now removing mods that have a "donate" option.
Not only is that image not a source, even if it was it wouldn't support what you said. Somebody found a mod page that had "You can donate here: {LINK REMOVED}". Even if Valve did that, which the picture doesn't say, looking at that and saying that Valve is removing mods is the kind of stupid hyperbole that discredits your entire argument.
Iv121 wrote:You know another problem with charging for mods is lack of quality insurance. The adv of being a modder is no obligations, there are no obligations to release a mod, support it , provide certain content. Now that you charge money for your "product" there are obligations you MUST follow:
Or, of course, if you can't do all that, you could not charge for your mod. That option hasn't gone away.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Iv121 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:25 pm

Funny thing there are ALREADY problems with charges of scamming and illegal use of other modders' content ... Seems like the ship is sinking already.

I was browsing the paid section of Skyrim mods and frankly there is nothing worth your buck. The most worthy of the bunch is some armor mod there, however considering armor is the most popular TES modding category with pretty much any piece of cloth for any possible taste duplicated at least 3 times, this mod is unlikely to reach anything meaningful. A runner up was the popular food system mod which introduced hunger, however its not that complicated to code and there are various identical in function mods for free that can replace it. All in all I dont see a point to buy any of the mods there ... but one: Literally nothing.

NO srsly a mod, literally nothing, you buy nothing, yup ... Its great ^-^ . Anyway we'll wait and see which mods decide to go "pro" (is that considred "Pro" modding ??? ).
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Saravanth » Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:32 pm

Heard SkyUI is becoming one of them. I'm worried. ._.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by  ҉  » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:31 pm

Iv121 wrote:I was browsing the paid section of Skyrim mods and frankly there is nothing worth your buck.
This is perhaps the #1 reason you shouldn't be upset about this.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Archduke Daynel, PhD » Sat Apr 25, 2015 2:09 am

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:
Iv121 wrote:I was browsing the paid section of Skyrim mods and frankly there is nothing worth your buck.
This is perhaps the #1 reason you shouldn't be upset about this.
The reason only shitty mods are there as of right now is that the feature has only just been implemented. It'll be different in a weeks time or so.
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Re: Steam charging money for mods

Post by Archduke Daynel, PhD » Sat Apr 25, 2015 2:16 am

BASH THE FASH CLASS WAR NOW

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