191–200 of 282 posts
I just don't think gamers understand, if you pay for high quality mods, your gonna get more high quality mods. It's a bit like the crazy excuses people make for pirating games.
We've had excellent mods for free for years. Absolutely no reason to start charging for them now after more than 20 years of modding.
If you have financial incentive, more modders will come on to the scene and do it full time.
I just don't think gamers understand, if you pay for high quality mods, your gonna get more high quality mods. It's a bit like the crazy excuses people make for pirating games.
I'm not so sure. As soon as you start having monetary incentives, you lose on the social incentives. For example, suppose I ask for a friend's help moving to a new apartment. The friend says yes, and the move is finished after a full day of moving boxes. At the end of the day, I tell him thank you, and give him $5. The friend is insulted. Do I value him that little? What he would happily do for free, he refuses to do…
If you had a decent way compensating them, the more popular mods could have full-time people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally found Bethesda getting any split quite distasteful. They produced the game and made their money on game sales. If they continue to be responsive to bug reports and/or adding new features to the game then perhaps I can see a small amount going to them. Valve taking a cut I understand as they handle the sales and distribution platform. I'm not sure I think 30% is fair, but that's a different issue. As a re…
> I personally found Bethesda getting any split quite distasteful. So, you agree that Valve should get some part of the sales, because they are the ones (Steam) actually taking the payment and assuming some of the upfront risks of processing payments (fraud) and, because of the network effect and the customers they bring (read ... marketing) But Bethesda who developed the actual game that brought the modders and gave…
Mods represent value added to the game that wasn't provided by the original publisher. Each mod "fixes" a deficiency in the game, adds, changes, or removes something the original developer did not do from the baseline game. The changes add value to the publisher's bottom line by increasing the value of the game, thus stimulating additional sales.
Thus the idea that modders both increase demand for the game, increasing the publisher's sales, AND want the lion's share of the money paid for mods is repugnant.
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At first they tried to give passionate content providers a way to also make some money. Given that the "passionate content providers" only make 25% of what users pay, I think that's a very generous interpretation. Edit: It doesn't matter if it's Valve or Bethesda or the tooth fairy that takes the remaining 75% - the fact is this system does little to accomplish the goal of "giving passionate content providers a way t…
So the closest analogue to computer game "mods" in the book publishing world is "fan fiction". Note that 25% is pretty generous when you're creating a derivitive work off of someone else's IP. See Kindle Worlds http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001197421 for an example of the kind of deal you'd be lucky to get.
Your opinion is in the minority, I'm afraid. By and large,the gaming community (on reddit at least) has spoken, and Valve took heed.
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I haven't been paying extra close attention to the whole fiasco, but there's something that I don't understand. Are people really more in favor of modders getting 100% of $0 rather than 25% of $X? Is there more to this debate that I'm missing?
As much as the idea of paid mods pissed me off, I 100% agree with this. Anyone who was getting upset over the 25% to the modder was just using it as an argument point and not serious. If they were serious then they would have come to the same conclusion you did and realized 25% of something is better, monetarily, than 100% of nothing.
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The core of the issue came down to the effects on the modder community. 1. Modders are hobbyists, not professionals. Many modders came right out and said they would no longer make mods under this system, because the pressure to charge means it becomes a job. They no longer would have the option to just walk away from the mod. 2. Piracy. Modders have explicitly made their mods available for free. Once you have a syste…
In the end, most modders don't WANT to be paid for their mods, because it's not a profession. That's an interesting perspective. Sounds like there are some valid criticisms of the system Valve has put in place. To me it seems that gamers have cut off their nose to spite their own face in this regard. It seems to me that a paid modding ecosystem would be a big win in favor of gamers. If lone hobbyists can improve a ga…
If this was viable, you'd think that studios would consider paying small teams to continue patching and generating content for games for some years.
Obviously this has happened with a few games, but one minor argument I've seen put out over the weekend was something along the lines of "why don't $studio just hire these guys?", and some sadness that it might happen even less often.
I just don't think gamers understand, if you pay for high quality mods, your gonna get more high quality mods. It's a bit like the crazy excuses people make for pirating games.
but 25% goes to creators, 45% to bethesda and valves standard 30% fee for transactions? 25% is awfully low, honestly.
Now its' 0.
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It's an example for the perfectly accepted greed in the corporate world. Valve claims that 30% share is fair while having one of the highest income per employee of any company. That means that their share is too high. It's more than what the government demands from you, while the government is _much_ more important than Valve is for any business. The CEO of Valve argues that money steers the community. That's true, a…
Apple takes 30% of app store purchases, in-app purchases, and iAd revenue. Google takes 30% of Google Play purchases and in-app products. 30% is a reasonable share for the maintainer of a network to take. As for the 25% to the author of the mod, that does seem unfair, but I don't think that was Valve's decision. I think they left that up to the game producer, Bethesda in this case. Bethesda chose how to split the rem…
Steam is arguably still the most permissive of all of those since it allows redeeming keys purchased directly from the developer or places like Humble Bundle Store which are reported to take a smaller cut.
> We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop.