Steam introduces paying for mods; starts with Skyrim

[TheElusiveSniper]

I'm waiting for the "All factions unlocked" mod to come to a total war title for $5

[drone]

This is a terrible idea, if modding scene becomes solely about the money it's going to get ugly quick. Not to mention the legal problems the game publishers will have with this.

[Crandar]

A donation button would be enough.
No idea why Gaben shoud get 75% (or 100%, if it's less than 400$), for merely providing a site for the purchases to take place, while the modders get only the one fourth.
Greenlight was quite the disaster, so let's all hope that this initiative will have the same fate.

[Fisherking]

That is a money tactic for Steam and using the mod community to do it.

The small amount of cash might bring in some mods, and at the expense of other sites, but it brings people and mods to Steam. They keep most of the money and gain traffic.

I would boycott the whole thing and let Steam know it sucks. Right now they are a monoplay that needs broken up.

[Greyblades]

Let's review:
30% of the modders profits goes to valve, 45% goes to the devs, 25% goes to the modder.
I think the amount going to the dev is dependant on the developer's wishes, but I'm not sure. Either way 45% is what bethesda gets here.
A mod has to earn $100 before the modder gets his first $25. If it doesn't reach $100 he gets nothing.
Steam workshop still allows free mods.

8chan had a lot to say between the n and f words, warning some surprisingly mild profanity:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They also noticed this:

I found the page myself. I cant verify the donation link actually being removed but there is a link to the free version on nexus that is identical to the one pictured. The donation link on the free version is intact.

Also relevant is the press:

PC Gamer - http://www.pcgamer.com/paid-mods-won...ake-it-better/ Archived: https://archive.is/SUV8A
IGN - http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/...-to-make-money Archived:https://archive.is/JGxdm
Kotaku - http://steamed.kotaku.com/modders-ca...eam-1699760897 Archived:https://archive.is/2HcMG
Giant Bomb - http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/st...ods/1100-5193/ Archived:https://archive.is/9Uxsf
Gamespot - http://www.gamespot.com/articles/you.../1100-6426844/ Archived:https://archive.is/ZLFfK

Rather blissfully optimistic, IMO

Kotaku is soemwhat interesting as apparantly 8chan caught an article before and after being attacked by editors:

(Before)
https://archive.is/jmBC6
(After)
https://archive.is/v2wHL

Highlight:

>It will also be interesting to see how this market shakes out. What, for instance, will become the standard price for, say, a weapon pack versus an entire quest line or expansion? It’s a bold new frontier, or at least a potentially interesting one. Now I don’t mean to be rude, but I really should be going. I have a horse armor market to corner, and I need to figure out how to turn My Little Pony into My Little Pony, if you know what I mean. (I mean creatively renaming everything and declaring all eerie similarities entirely coincidental.)

changed to

>It will also be interesting to see how this market shakes out. What, for instance, will become the standard price for, say, a weapon pack versus an entire quest line or expansion? And how will the free mod market be impacted? What will people decide to give away for free now that getting paid is a much more viable option than in the past? It’s a bold new frontier, or at least a potentially interesting one. It could even be damaging, if you look at things from a pessimistic angle (Free things now cost money? Mod makers only take 25 percent of the profit while big companies rake in the rest? Etc.)

Again, cant verify it.

My sources originate from: https://8ch.net/gamergatehq/res/87539.html
It is an image board, view at your own risk. (why mere images and profanity would be a risk to a full grown adult escapes me, but I suppose there could be kids reading.)

[Montmorency]

From the POV piece in the OP:

Fourth, there will be inevitable stealing of other's people's content and then selling it as their own. Some may claim that because they modified another mod's content, they now have created their own mod and are free to sell. I disagree. They are making money at the expense of others.

Also note, as OP himself pointed out, that collaboration between mods is the lifeblood of large modding scenes.

If I were to find that all the major Skyrim mods (taking base-game version for granted) were developing completely independently of each other, such that I had to choose one of X major gameplay mods, rather than most, if not all, of them, then I would just give up, play the base game unmodded for 10 or 20 hours, then abandon it all forever.

If mods add value to games, and pubs and devs want a piece of that value - as this initiative certainly isn't about the modders - then Scorched Earth + King of the Hill is just the worst way I could think of going about it short of having local law enforcement confiscate every Skyrim player's gaming machine to search for modded content to charge...

[Husar]

Finally the invisible hand of the free market can improve modding.

The 75% Valve take probably include licensing fees because the modders make money using the developers' game/engine. If you want to sell a commercial game built on the Cry Engine, you also have to pay a huge licensing fee. In this case the licensing fee seems to be directly based on how much money you make.

I for one found the Steam Workshop quite confusing (and slow) so far and barely go there. Now they added more stepping stones to it that make me want to avoid it.
Is it even possible to release big mods there? I remember reading something about a 100MB file size limit or is that game-dependent?
A lot of the games just seem to have script changes which is not the type of mod I'm usually looking for (new models etc.).

[Ironside]

Kotaku is soemwhat interesting as apparantly 8chan caught an article before and after being attacked by editors:

(Before)
https://archive.is/jmBC6
(After)
https://archive.is/v2wHL

Highlight:

changed to

Again, cant verify it.

You could read your link. Its longer and contains both parts now.

Most links are somewhat sceptic to it if you read between the lines. But it's more wait and see and parts of the concept are good (big modders getting some form of financial compensation) rather than outright condemnation.

The current way does feel to be a path to failure.

[Greyblades]

You could read your link. Its longer and contains both parts now.

When I read it it didn't, but good for them.

Most links are somewhat sceptic to it if you read between the lines. But it's more wait and see and parts of the concept are good (big modders getting some form of financial compensation) rather than outright condemnation.

I still maintain my opinion that it is blissfully optimistic whan compared tohow bad the situation seems. The first iteration of this program is a disaster and while it remains it in the public memory I can't see the modding community ever trusting valve enough to sign on to anything short of a version that lets 95% of profits go to modders, which wont happen because valve are too greedy to take less than 5% and the developers wont accept not getting a cut regardless of if they deserve it.

As for the consumers: There are few mods worth more than a penny, and those that are when compared to the main game dont exceed a worth of £5, 10 at the absolute maximum. As for the distribution of this payment, well I paid £35 for the base game and around £20 for thier expansions, I've paid enough as it is and I sure am not paying bethesda anything for something they didn't make. As for valve, it's services arent worth more than a pittance let alone 30%. I can get what they do for free from nexus and I can even check for and download updates myself.

Until this payment program changes to reflect that I will have nothing to do with this.