Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#211

Post by madez » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #203

madez wrote: post #157

Earlier 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.

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 t…

In general reasonable implies fair.

Yes, there might be situation where you can only decide between two unfair solutions and one is less unfair, and one could argue that that one is the reasonable choice. This is because reason-ability and fairness are not binary. Still, the tendency remains: if you say X is reasonable you imply X is fair.

Income per employee is not a good metric, you are right. However, if your profits are very high you must raise salaries if they are not already too high, lower your prices or invest to be fair.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#212

Post by paulmd » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #107

mmf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would happen if GitHub placed a clone fee and split it between itself and the repo owner...

So basically, GitHub offering a service where users could charge for software, and get the source code as well? And not just a core dump, but be part of a community building up that source? ...That's a pretty solid idea.

My understanding is that that's how software distribution used to work back in the mainframe days - you'd get the source to build in your specific environment, and you could modify it to add whatever functionality you needed. Then binary distribution took over as platforms became more intercompatible.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#213

Post by koube » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:52 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #154

adam12 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75% should go to the modders. If people are buying the mod, then the mod developer deserves most of the cash for the mod purchase. Remember, the player needs to buy the original game too. Those funds don't go to the mod developer.

You misunderstood. 75% is not to the mod developer, 75% was to Bethesda, and 25% to the mod developer. This is what pissed people off. (Also, the developer would only get paid if he got 100 USD to receive, meaning that he needed 400 USD in sales, meaning that probably most developers would never get any money).

As mentioned by the guy above you, 30% was to valve, and bethesda determined the rest. A 30% cut is similar to what you'd get from the app store and in my opinion is reasonable for the costs of hosting and perhaps supporting the mods.

This all seems like an attempt to app-storify mods. I really didn't think it was a bad thing.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#214

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:53 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #77

vacri wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing Not true at all. They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding. They should get some percentage, like a royalty, but taking twice as much as the people who write the mods is patently ridiculous.

>They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding Isn't that what paying the $60 for the game pays for?

$60 gets the user the game.

Maybe it's appropriate to liken the royalty to Bethesda, to the per-sale royalty agreements that gaming engines have struck with some developers? Skyrim-as-development-platform is not entirely unlike Unreal-as-development-engine.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#215

Post by koube » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

crazy1van wrote: post #180

kedean wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Unless I'm missing something, nothing happened that would have forced mod makers to start charging, right?

You are correct: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_stea...

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#216

Post by schwap » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #121

TheHypnotist wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are in favor of offering donations and having the modder get the full donation, not being asked to pay for added content. This includes full-fledged mods to a single weapon skin. To make things worse, it seemed that the store became flooded with half-assed content as a means for modders to make a quick buck. Furthermore, some mods required other mods, if the mods that were required started to charge, it became…

They sold Counterstrike as a retail release when it was still a mod. The donation stuff is a sure way to make sure almost no one ever even considers paying.

That's not really comparable, they sold a version of Counterstrike that did not require a copy of Half-Life to play, so at that point it wasn't really a "mod" any more.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#217

Post by Vraxx » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #205

Vraxx wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

It's definitely that in part, I would have to agree with you. This generation of gamer grew up with the relatively easy ability to pirate games instead of pay for them and steam sales on PC. So there is some resistance to paying for it even if it's not outspoken. My own personal reasoning (now that paying for a game isn't saving weeks of allowance) relies more on resistance to change on the way things have always been, with a bit of skepticism on the way they are monetizing the mods with the split amount.

After playing multiple games by Bethesda that have been relatively unpolished compared to what the modding community has done, I see the move as a cash grab by Bethesda in releasing a game and cashing in on people who just want the game to be more playable by selling the mods to other players as free generated DLC content. I understand that the modders have a lot of a headstart on the work as well, given to them by Bethesda, which is why I wouldn't support modders selling mods on their own. I think the free + donate model has worked very successfully in the past in both motivating and (I assume, but can't be sure in generalizations) compensation.

My last note on the issue is that at the very least this move should not be implemented on a fully developed modding ecosystem where the mods have already intertwined to a degree that this causes a single person decisions to need to be made by multiple mod developers. With mods using other mods, it would be acceptable to have to buy the used mod if that was a design decision by the original modder, but that information was not present as the ecosystem developed and I think it introduces a great deal of harm. As a source I cite all of the trauma that Nexus experienced in the wake of this system being released.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#218

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 4:02 PM UTC

crazy1van wrote: post #180

kedean wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Unless I'm missing something, nothing happened that would have forced mod makers to start charging, right?

[deleted]

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#219

Post by Retric » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

koube wrote: post #215

crazy1van wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Unless I'm missing something, nothing happened that would have forced mod makers to start charging, right?

You are correct: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_stea...

Sort of other people could post and charge for your mod.

Re: Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

#220

Post by skizm » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

Raphmedia wrote: post #206

skizm wrote: post #201

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, 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…

Bethesda did not ask for the fix. They have no obligation to compensate them financially.

Also, the amount of work one developer did in 6 months modding the game is probably still only an insanely small fraction of the work that went into coding the game engine being used. Which is probably written by dozens of programmers for months if not years.

Last, if you don't want them to make money on your mod, mark it free. This is totally an opt-in feature. No one is forcing modders to do anything.