I'm a little disappointed in the gaming community. I think this was a step forward. I mean, modders cannot legally get paid for their work now (donations at the moment amount to little to no money even for top modders), this would change that. 25% seems small, but when you realize that the modders are using an engine, assets, and pretty much everything else produced by another company and then just adding on to it, the cuts don't seem that unfail: 30% to valve, 45% Bethesda, 25% to modders. I mean, in reality Bethesda did most of the work, and Valve is just taking their normal 30%. Also, the reason you're content is popular is because it is an add-on to a popular game. Which means your product comes out pre-marketed by Bethesda. Marketing budgets for AAA games usually amount to about the same as development budgets. Also, there is a free option. Use it if you want! I see nothing wrong with this, in my opinion.
Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
201–210 of 282 posts
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sentiment probably comes from experiencing Valve's customer support, which is a lot like Google's - either - the automated system solve your problem, or - you have enough influence to generate bad press for them, or - your problem will most likely be ignored.
Gabe has acknowledged how horrible the customer support is and they are, supposedly, working on a solution. I count myself fortunate to have never needed to interact with the customer support.
The time for a solution was ten years ago. It has always been quite bad.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You say a share is fair when it's what the market currently offers. That's obviously a remarkably stupid definition of fair.
Read my comment again. I never said that a share is fair when it's what the market currently offers. You're simply inferring something I didn't say.
I explained why the 30% is a reasonable rate as compared to other marketplaces.
And as an aside, I argued that income per employee is not a good metric of fairness. I never argued that 30% is fair or unfair, as I think that is frankly a pointless debate.
But I did say that, to me, 25% going to the modder feels unfair. So, I get why you might think I was arguing 30% is fair – though that was not my intention.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> But Bethesda who developed the actual game that brought the modders and gave them a platform to derive their work on, not to mention creating the actual game and game engine and putting it in the hands of the actual customers; they should just get nothing out of this whole deal? Mods represent value added to the game that wasn't provided by the original publisher. Each mod "fixes" a deficiency in the game, adds, ch…
I don't see how the idea that Steam should get a share approaching 30% is any less repugnant than that. Visa gets less than 4%, and they are the ones that are really processing the charge. Valve eats that much, and whatever they get paid over that is simply for their role in facilitating the transaction
If any of these three parties declined to provide their own involvement, a sale does not happen. So all of them are reasonably entitled to a share. But not necessarily a whole third.
I agree that Half-Life developers should not be the ones getting the majority of the sticker price of CounterStrike, insofar as those people are disparate parties and the popularity of CounterStrike drives sales of HL and even surpasses Half-Life in popularity. But it is impossible to deny that CS does not have a game to sell at all without HL.
They did sell "CS-Only" discs without the ability to play Half-Life in single-player mode, didn't they? And, Valve still got a cut? (What's that? They never did? Hmm...)
Edit: There is obviously some risk for Valve, too. Maybe more than Visa in the long run, but I think they will pass on the risk to those who they pay, just like Visa. They do get to hold the money, and they can decide who gets paid.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think another valid pov from most of the gamers is the dislike for the system that has been growing where once you purchase a game there are usually a series of other purchases associated the game to get all of the content that somebody else has been playing. It's extremely frustrating to many of the players to have to continually purchase little bits of the game, and this trend has been started by "day one DLC (do…
That POV doesn't seem very valid in the general case. It's extremely similar to "I already bought a ticket to Avengers, so why are they charging me again for the rest of the story?"
There are some cases where companies have been overly greedy and compromised the core game to sell mods, but the general hatred toward expansion content seems to come mainly from a desire to get things for free rather than a rational complaint about harm they've experienced from expansion content. You'll also see a lot of gamers suggest that charging $60 for a game is morally questionable (unless you're Nintendo). The freak out over paid mods seems to be that variety to me — it's really hard to say that the existence of community mods devalues the core game. People just don't want to pay money for things.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#206I'm a little disappointed in the gaming community. I think this was a step forward. I mean, modders cannot legally get paid for their work now (donations at the moment amount to little to no money even for top modders), this would change that. 25% seems small, but when you realize that the modders are using an engine, assets, and pretty much everything else produced by another company and then just adding on to it, t…
> in reality Bethesda did most of the work
Yes, but no. Sure, they made the game, but why should they take such a big cut of someone spending 6 months modelling 3d models, coding features, recording sounds, etc.? A lot of games are still alive right now thanks to their modding community and the hard work of modders.
Those people are not creating a product off the back of the big games. They are modifying the current game to make it better. They owe nothing to the game developer. If anything, the game developer owe them for fixing their game.
Take a look at the community patches of various games. Some of them fixes up to half the bugs of a game, some fix all the bugs of a game. Why should the game company take a big cut from that? "Thanks for fixing our game! Here, we will sell your patch, now take 25% of the profit of your work!" ... Makes no sense.
The game companies should be the ones getting a small cut. They are getting free content, free support for their game, free bug fixes, free publicity.
I would rather work for free than get the wool eaten off my back.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's interesting to me that it was apparently better to give modders nothing than to give them 25%. It's due to perceived "fairness" This 75/25 split by Valve reminds me of the psychology experiment the Ultimatum Game: "'Inequity aversion' is so strong that people are willing to sacrifice personal gain in order to prevent another person from receiving an inequitably better outcome." https://www.psychologytoday.com/…
Inequity Aversion only exists in America and other Westernized countries btw. We're WEIRD like that. Different cultures respond differently to the Ultimatum Game. Be wary of those studies that only use "Anglo-Saxon American College Kids" as test subjects, which is a group of people that isn't even representative of America in general. http://bigthink.com/praxis/are-americans-the-weirdest-people... >>> The revelation…
>Inequity Aversion only exists in America and other Westernized countries btw.
Monkeys do it:
http://www.livescience.com/2044-monkeys-fuss-inequality.html
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#208Earlier 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. They produced the game and made their money on game sales. They produced the game engine, and are letting people develop on it for free. And them getting a cut from people piggybacking on their work and making money from it was distasteful to you?
Microsoft doesn't get a cut of Jetbrains' IDE "mod" revenue, though, despite the fact that Reshaper and similar products "piggyback" (what a loaded term) onto Visual Studio and other Microsoft products. Microsoft already got their cut up front.
Same thing for Bethesda - it's not their value-add and they don't have a moral right to take a cut. On the other hand Steam is providing a value-add here - a market and financial transaction services.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#209Earlier 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. They produced the game and made their money on game sales. They produced the game engine, and are letting people develop on it for free. And them getting a cut from people piggybacking on their work and making money from it was distasteful to you?
Also, I wasn't aware that Bethesda had released their game engine for free. Care to give a link as to where they've done so? As far as I'm aware you still need to pay for a copy of it.
Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say a share is fair when it's what the market currently offers. That's obviously a remarkably stupid definition of fair.
Generally on HN we like to say why we think something is bad, rather than merely labelling it as stupid. Free market value is a common measure of fairness. You might disagree (eg, you could argue Steam has a monopoly on PC gaming, likewise non-official app stores are rare on cell phones, so it's not a free market), but you should state why.
>Free market value is a common measure of fairness.
Free market value is a fantasy. No market is really free. No value is set by a free market.
If what you are saying is that in theory under certain completely fantastical assumptions that market value is fair and otherwise it's not, then yea, I agree.