Paid mods have come to skyrim and the steam workshop

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And I strongly agree with this video.

Haven't heard the news yet? Here's valves official statement on it.
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent/

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Steam Workshop lets users sell mods, but only shares 25 percent of revenue

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Valve's Paid Skyrim Mods Are a Legal, Ethical and Creative Disaster

By Paul Tassi



Valve and Bethesda’s announcement of a jointly run paid Skyrim mods store has been met by nothing but fury from fans over the past 24 hours. Even modders, whom the idea is supposed to benefit, are coming out against the idea, which they deem detrimental to the entire community.

It should be good news. Now modders have an official way to get paid through a partnership program when before most were getting nothing and many were squeaking by on a few donations alone. But in practice, Valve/Bethesda’s Skyrim mod store is an absolutely terrible idea for reasons that are already becoming clear even in the first day after launch. Let’s go through the issues fans and modders themselves are bringing up.

The Split is Unreasonable

The modders only take home 25% of the money made from the sale of their mods. The rest is split in some undisclosed way between Valve and Bethesda (Update: 30% to Valve, 45% to Bethesda).

As Erik Kain pointed out yesterday, this is well below something like the Apple store, which gives creators at least 70% of the cash and just 25% seems abysmally low (although in an interview, Erik found that DayZ creator Dean Hall believes 25% to be perfectly reasonable).

Even if it’s “better than zero” as proponents will claim, it’s more than a little reminiscent of Nintendo's we-don’t-understand-the-market YouTube policies which forced a revenue share program that most content creators couldn’t be bothered with.

Modders are Friends, Not Food

Mods have kept a game like Skyrim alive for years after many would have otherwise stopped playing. Bethesda is choosing to look at this like “why are these players not giving us more money?” rather than “wow, this is amazing advertising and community building for our franchise!” Modders usually love the games they mod, which is why they spend so much time on their creations. Changing the equation and turning them into employees is going to dishearten many of them, and attract the wrong sort of crowd.

The Wrong Sort of Crowd

A mod store like this has the potential to turn a game like Skyrim from “fun, infinitely modifiable sandbox adventure” to “Guinness World Record holder for most micro-transactions.” It will create a flood of modders who aren’t the type of passionate players doing it “for the love of the game,” but rather people trying to reskin a sword and sell it for $5. The game could be overloaded with this kind of crap, and even if it’s all “optional,” it puts a black mark on the entire modding community.



The Legal Questions

Already, one of the paid Skyrim mods has been taken down after one user claimed another user was selling it using animations that he had originally created in his own mod. The mod store seller claimed that Valve actually forbade him from contacting the original animator about using his work because of an NDA about the existence the store. And this is somebody who is actually well-meaning.

The “wrong crowd” mentioned above could easily slide in and just start stealing other people’s work left and right and selling it on the store. I’ve already heard of modders taking down their mods rather than let them potentially be stolen and used for paid store offerings. Even if Valve has some sort of report system in place, it’s going to be a headache to sort through justified and unjustified claims based on who iterated off whose work and who has the rights to the original mod and so on and so forth. It’s a nightmare waiting to happen.

Potentially Broken Products

Mods, are by definition, experimental. Though Steam has a 24 hour return policy for mods, so you can send something back (so to speak) if you don’t like it, there doesn’t seem to be anything in place to prevent a modder from selling something to consumers, having it break down the road, and then simply never fixing it, leaving the buyer with a useless piece of software they paid good money for. Most gaming companies don’t do this because they’re large organizations with reputations to uphold. But some modders might not care and be perfectly comfortable with abandoning a mod they can’t be bothered to fix. They and Bethesda and Valve already made their money when they sold it, and the return policy prevents further re-compensation, so who cares? Let the consumer rant into the void about it.

Dividing a Community

The Skyrim community has always been a pretty tight group, but now through the introduction of the store, a lot of tension has been created overnight. Fans are looking at modders like this was their idea as an attempt to cash in. Free modders are looking at paid modders as sellouts. Legitimate paid modders are looking at newbie paid modders as opportunists. It’s awful, and only made possible through the introduction of the store.

Bethesda had a creative, united community until yesterday, and now there’s tons of infighting, not to mention the rage directed at the company itself.



“Oh Someone Will Just Mod That”

Here’s some fun with theoretical extrapolations of this concept. Let’s say that Bethesda wants to make another Skyrim DLC expansion involving some new order of warriors. They want to make their signature weapon a flail, but the oddly behaving weapon is proving difficult to animate and operate effectively on PC. Under this new system do they A) work really hard to get past the issue and release the flail at launch or B) say “oh the modders have flails, let’s just promote their mod in the store.”

Under the old system, Bethesda would have been motivated to make the flail themselves, but under the new one, someone is doing it for them, and they’re taking up to 75% of the revenue for each flail sold. I’m not saying this would for sure be their philosophy going forward, but when a company can charge handily for someone adding extra content into their game, you can bet that the opportunity for exploitation is there.

Honestly, all of these issues were just off the top of my head after glancing through a few forum posts about the store where fans are expressing similar concerns. There are probably many, many more issues no one has even considered yet. The pros are technically “modders get paid, the game maker gets paid,” but past that, there are too many cons to count.

This will prove to be a disaster, and may damage the PC the modding community irreparably if the practice spreads.

Read my follow-up to this piece: Is There A Way To Make A Paid ‘Skyrim’ Mod Store Work For Everyone?

Follow me on Twitter, like my page on Facebook, and pick up a copy of my sci-fi novel, The Last Exodus, and its sequel, The Exiled Earthborn, along with my new Forbes book, Fanboy Wars.

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Creator of removed paid Skyrim mod gives his side of the story

By Andy Chalk



The creator of Art of the Catch, the paid Skyrim mod that was removed from Steam earlier today, has posted a lengthy message on Reddit in which he says he didn't "steal content" to make the mod. In fact, while he acknowledged that using content from the Fores New Idles in Skyrim mod without permission was "a bit crappy," he claims that Valve told him specifically that creating a mod dependent on another mod's content would not cause any problems.

The mod maker, going by the name "Chesko," wrote in the post that Valve invited him to take part in the rollout of the paid mods program about a month and a half before it went live. He knew there would be backlash, but he also believed that "there was an opportunity to take modding to 'the next level,' where there are more things like Falskaar in the world because the incentive was there to do it." And while he wasn't happy with the 25 percent cut being offered to modders by Valve/Bethesda, he decided to take part because "it was an experiment I was willing to at least try."

The complexities of modding, compressed by the tight deadline, led to "a lot of questions surrounding the use of tools and contributed assets, like FNIS, SKSE, SkyUI, and so on," he wrote. Because of that, he reached out to Valve to determine what was and wasn't permissible, and was told, "I am not a lawyer, so this does not constitute legal advice. If you are unsure, you should contact a lawyer. That said, I spoke with our lawyer and having mod A depend on mod B is fine—it doesn't matter if mod A is for sale and mod B is free, or if mod A is free or mod B is for sale."

That's where things start to get murky. Instead of contacting a lawyer, as it now seems he should have, Chesko went ahead and and built the Art of the Catch mod, which requires a separate, free animation package that contains an FNIS behavior file.

"Was this a risky, perhaps bold, thing to go ahead with? Yes. Was it a bit crappy of me? Also yes," he wrote. "But it was a risk I took, and the outcome was largely dependent on the FNIS author's reaction to the situation. He was not happy, so I took steps to resolve it. I did not 'steal animations' or 'steal content'." He added that he's been in contact with Fore, the maker of FNIS, and that they've smoothed things out.

But he's also been in contact with a lawyer from Valve, who clarified that, in accordance with policies outlined yesterday, the mod, and Chesko's other work, will be marked as unpurchasable but will not actually be removed from the Workshop, despite his demand that it all be taken down completely.

"He stated that they will not remove the content unless 'legally compelled to do so,' and that they will make the file visible only to currently paid users," he wrote. "I am beside myself with anger right now as they try to tell me what I can do with my own content. The copyright situation with Art of the Catch is shades of grey, but in Arissa 2.0's case, it's black and white; that's 100% mine and Griefmyst's work, and I should be able to dictate its distribution if I so choose."

For now, Chesko's work, minus the Art of the Catch, remains available on the Skyrim Nexus.

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Skyrim Paid Mods Pulled From Steam, Valve "Didn’t Understand What They Were Doing"

By Scott Grill

Valve’s experiment with paying for mods on Steam for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim blew up in controversy late last week. Attempts by both Valve head Gabe Newell and Bethesda Software to calm the PC community down over the weekend did not help things. Both companies finally threw in the towel Monday evening and elected to pull the paid mods from the Steam Workshop.

“We’re going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop,” Valve announced via the Steam Community. “For anyone who spent money on a mod, we’ll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.”

In an amazing act of contrition, Valve admitted it mishandled the introduction of paid mods to Steam.

“We’ve done this because it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing. We’ve been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they’ve been received well. It’s obvious now that this case is different,” the company explained.



Bethesda backed the decision in a post to its blog.

“After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop,” the developer wrote. “Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want. Your support means everything to us, and we hear you.”

The Steam paid mods were controversial from the word go. A fishing mod called Art of the Catch was one of the first released but used animations from a free mod called Fores new Idles in Skyrim. The creator stated that Valve cleared the use of the dependency on the free mod, but he was already overwhelmed with claims that he was a content thief and pulled the mod himself.

Another source of contention was the revenue sharing between Valve, Bethesda, and the mod creator. Bethesda explained that Valve gets 30 percent of the cut no matter what. The split between the publisher and the mod creator is dependent on the publisher, and Bethesda elected to go with 45 percent to itself and 25 percent to the modder.

“There are valid arguments for it being more, less, or the same,” the company explained in its defense of paid mods. “It is the current industry standard, having been successful in both paid and free games. After much consultation and research with Valve, we decided it’s the best place to start.”



There was a myriad of arguments for and against paid mods on the Steam Workshop. The creators behind Skywind, a total conversion mod to recreate Morrowind, stated that they would not monetize their efforts. Meanwhile, the popular creator behind Garry’s Mod, Garry Newman, came out in support and explained how it had led him to create and start his own studio. He was joined by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive modder Shawn “FMPONE” Snelling in a guest editorial at PC Gamer.

However, the overall reaction from the Steam community was negative. This included a Change.org petition that quickly reached over 100,000 users.

Valve clearly wants to bring paid mods back to the Steam Workshop at some point. It may start off with a smaller game with a less established modding community. However, it will likely come with some significant changes based on feedback from the community.

Images via Steam

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Valve brings back paid mods with Dota 2 Custom Game Pass

By Jeffrey Matulef


Roshpit Champions.

Last year Valve introduced paid mods on Steam when Bethesda allowed its fanbase to sell Skyrim mods. That experiment was short-lived, but Valve is having another crack at it, this time handling things itself through one of its first-party games, Dota 2.

Soon Dota 2 players can purchase what's called a Custom Game Pass, allowing premium access to user-made modes. As detailed on the Dota 2 blog, the premiere Custom Game Pass will only cost $1 and offers 30 day access to bonus goodies in Roshpit Champions, a co-op dungeon-crawling variant of Valve's MOBA.

It's worth noting that Roshpit Champions, like other Custom Games for Dota 2, is free to play. But purchasing the pass "will enable additional stash and character slots, and offer multiple perks for the duration of the pass."

"We wanted to create a method by which hard-working developers could be directly rewarded for their work while also encouraging the continued development of enduring custom games and vibrant communities," Valve explained inits FAQ.

Custom Game Pssses will not renew automatically. Valve explained that it wants developers to keep updating Custom Games and this timed service incentivizes devs to continue giving back to the community.

"We want a system that encourages developers to work hard to continue to support their games, and for fans to be able to reward developers if they are happy with the work the developer is doing," Valve said. "For custom games to be successful in the long term, they will require ongoing updates from their creators, and a cheaper but limited activation period allows players to continually reassess their choice to support a game if they think it's going in the right direction."

One major difference between what Valve's doing with Dota 2 and what Bethesda tried with Skyrim is that Valve is offering Custom Game Developers the same cut of revenue as any other developer on Steam. We've heard that to be 70 per cent. Comparatively, Bethesda was only offering Skyrim modders 25 per cent.

Furthermore, Valve is going to be a lot more hands-on with this new market, as it's going to act as the gatekeeper for what Dota 2 Custom Games are allowed to sell passes.

"The process will be curated by the Dota team," Valve explained. "We will be carefully selecting which custom games are able to offer a Custom Game Pass, selecting only games which have already established a sizable community and are mature enough to offer good value to customers. Ultimately, players will help determine which games are right for a pass by choosing to play and engage with growing communities, and the Dota team will continue to work with the custom game community to identify good candidates."

Valve is also offering 48 hour refunds on Custom Game Passes, should you try one out only to decide it doesn't offer enough bang for your buck.