Valve now allow modders to charge for their games

[Eliasfrost]

So just now Valve announced that they will enable modders to charge for their work on the steam workshop, first out is Skyrim. There's been a bit of a heated discussion the past 4 hours or so about this and I'm a bit torn on it myself.

Here's a bit of info:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/241836/Game_mods_can_now_be_sold_on_the_Steam_Workshop_for_real_money.php

On one hand this can incentivice creative modders to work even harder on their mods to push out even better quality than they were allowed before when there was no money involved, teams of modders can potentially earn a living selling mods, that's not a bad thing at all. On the other hand, the publisher is in control over the revenue share and it's not completely unrealistic that some publishers will take advantage of that fact, Bethesda is currently cutting 75% of the profit of paid Skyrim mods for example. One can hope that the revenue share will stabilize over time so that the model becomes profitable for both the modders and the publishers.

I think it's a great thing that the big boys are starting to find ways to make modding profitable and actually trying to establish a market for things like this but do you think this is the right way to do it?

[Gman]

This is not a great move but honestly it should not come as a surprise to anyone if they've considered the way games are treated now and the variety of modding options and increased viability with games as times goes on.  Just like porn, really, there is a market for it, if you are good enough and cater to enough of a fan base.  There will be people out there who might pay for the extra content they Really want.  Is there enough of a market/modders/enough moddable games to require this now? No, I don't think so because modding is never even guaranteed, useful, or have quality content/good creators, so much is not really worth paying for.  That might change with this incentive.

Am torn as well, as I see it as both good and bad, with option to go either way depending on the future and how people handle it.  It has to survive the backlash because I doubt there is enough quality mod creators to be a positive push for it and so more commentary will come from the demand/customer side. Also has to survive the corporation stranglehold that is going to follow as money-grubbing/greed again tries to ruin gaming and their toys.

[Greep]

I see it as mostly bad, simply because only a small portion of players will ever use mods (unless it is a game that considerably improves with them like KSP), and this cuts that down even further.  Not to mention if money gets involved and people seriously try to make a living off modding (lol), modders will take less risks, and that was kind of he point of mods: to try cool stuff.

[Jamolotl]

It's too early for me to form much of an opinion either way, but my initial reaction is mild disgust.

If anything it will just push people away from Steam workshop to places like the Nexus surely.

[Eliasfrost]

As a content creator myself I don't have a problem with modders getting compensated for their work, in fact I encourage it strongly. Why should their hard work go unrewarded?

And the modding community is strong, it really is and there are modders out there who truly believe in the idea that mods should be free for all and that's great, but the beautiful thing now is that there's the option for modders to charge for their work. If a modder don't want to, they can release it for free while the modders who wants to charge money for it do so.

The two things I have big issues with are:

1) Profit cut. I'm sure it will balance itself out and the market will find a good middleground once it's been established, Beth setting a 75% cut is very steep and it's unfortunate but time will tell how that will change. It IS only Beth so far who's doing this thing together with Valve after all so yeah, time will tell.

2) Vetting. Both Valve and Beth have stated that they won't police the market themselves for copyright infringement, overlapping mods that don't work together, stolen content from other mods etc. They want the system to be 'democratic' and therefore they let the community take care of the vetting process themselves. It's a huge disregard for responsibility over the system they set up and I think this is my biggest gripe. Opening up a brand new market for people that most likely don't have a history with things like owning brands, marketing, legal rights, copyright etc is a huge oversight and I hope they will take a step back and set up regulations because this won't end well if they just drop it like it is.

[Mac Orion]

First off i think it is a good thing that people can make money off that what they love to do. What i don't like in all that is the 75% cut, that good sites like nexus loose there importance and basically 90% of the mods will be bad cosmetic items, also how to charge for example for an sword 5 bucks? I would have no problem to pay for a good mood that brings something to the table content wise even 10 bucks, in the end people pay how much they think its worth, but how many of those mods are out there, maybe 1 in 1000.

I don't know in the end what to think about it.

It's the same think with Early access, a lot of people started to abuse it, on the other side without it I wouldn't have a job as game dev and would most likely project some boring UML for corporations all day instead of creating cool sci fi worlds.

[Fenix]

Fortunately I don't use mods so I don't care at all.
But! It's look bad.