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Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

bbc.co.uk

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

#221

Post by nailer »

madez wrote: post #189
nailer wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I like HN for demanding explanation. Shout-out to all the skeptics! I focused the problem with his argument into one sentence that made it intuitively understandable. Then I stated my opinion. I thought that'd be enough explanation. Free market value is often obviously unfair. For example, in many companies the highest managers receive a hundred times the average salary in the company. Nobody works for one hundre…

> For example, in many companies the highest managers receive a hundred times the average salary in the company. Nobody works for one hundred persons.

I don't think anyone's actually making that argument. Rather they'd say the highest managers may be providing 100x or more value to the company.

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

#222

Post by nailer »

crdoconnor wrote: post #210
nailer wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I certainly agree that freedom isn't absolute: there are more of less degrees of competition in a market. However that doesn't preclude supply/demand setting values for things.

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

#223

Post by Tenhundfeld »

madez wrote: post #211
Tenhundfeld wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I hear what you're saying. People use the words interchangeably, but in this context, I think there's an important distinction between fair and reasonable:

- Fairness is a moral judgment.

- Reasonableness is a logical argument.

That's why I argued that Valve's taking 30% is reasonable but not necessarily fair.

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

#224

Post by Navarr »

erikb wrote: post #179
Navarr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hijacking for visibility (I'm so late to the party..) Valve has not ended the paid mods programme. They've only turned it off for Skyrim. From the Valve post: > We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. They're very explicitly removing it only from Skyrim. Personally, I'm completely okay with the paid mod system - and I think the reason it failed so spectacularly was because of Bethesda and…

Yes, sorry, didn't say that clearly enough. The real mistake here was starting with the biggest mod community they have. You should first try to find a good system without being so public about it. And that's what they will change. Iterating with a smaller project.

I'm personally incredibly hopeful for Tabletop Simulator.

The Skyrim community was just a bad fit, and Bethesda a terrible overlord.

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

#225

Post by TheHypnotist »

nailer wrote: post #4
gkwelding wrote: post #2

I think Valve/Steam (and Bethesda) really screwed up on this one. Although the idea of modders being fairly compensated for their work is a great idea the execution was poor at best. Only 25% going to the content creators? Really? And a poor returns mechanism, getting a refund gets you banned from the steam store for 7 days to stop abuse. That's a poor returns policy when you're buying things like mods that might be…

Ditto. I'd quite happily pay for mods - they add value, there's more a chance of bugs being fixed, Steam would make installation less of a hassle. But 25% going to the authors is awful. The game's original creators - who already benefit from increased sales - additionally get more of the revenue than the actual mod creator.

So you would willingly pay full price for your standard game, whether it's half-life 3, skyrim 2 or whatever, and on top of that pay for mods just because it makes your UI nicer and you like that sweet axe skin?

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

#226

Post by frik »

t4nkd wrote: post #61

So, I was personally involved in a HL mod called The Opera, which for some of you who may vaguely remember, is a mod based on the high action shoot 'em up films by John Woo, also known as the Hong Kong Blood Opera genre. The game was the first ever example of animated fabric(trenchcoats) in Half-Life, a tech that carried over to Action Half-Life. At the time it was kind of a big deal, but I also remember another big…

I remember the "The Opera" mod. Good ol times. Only a few commenters in this thread are/were actual real PC gamers (not Farmville/CoC).

I refused to upgrade to Steam and patched my HL1, CS 0.8 to 1.x with non-Steam-patches. Valve was such a let down since Half Life 2 fake E3 presentation. HL2 was good, but many levels were cut (e.g. icebreaker) and after all HL1 was the better game (except the Xen alien levels). Half Life 3 is running gag like Duke Nukem Forever was for 10+ years.

The greed almost destroyed PC gaming around 2006-2009, it revived due to the casual trend and more players owning a PC/laptop. Nevertheless PC gaming is still strong in certain countries in Europe and Asia. Sadly, the real-time-strategy genre is completely dead (except StarCraft2 & clones) - Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Command and Conquer (3 different series) will be missed.

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

#227

Post by TheHypnotist »

ryan-allen wrote: post #63

Paid mods are fine, they should have led from the back, not the front, somehow. The rates were bad, and the launch mods were just... crap useless crap. The people leading the charge were useless idiots too, they are happy to pay for Skyrim and not for quality mods? There should be opportunity for content creators to contribute in a significant way and get paid to do it. This is just awful execution of a good idea, wi…

Why should modders get the most? Most of the work is already done for them. You want a bigger piece of the pie? License the engine and make your own game.

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

#228

Post by TheHypnotist »

fooqux wrote: post #159
XorNot wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a Mickey Mouse sequel, it doesn't require users to first buy a copy of the original movie. Using a mod does . These two things are in no way comparable.

Just to add to your point: I wonder how many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of the DayZ mod. How many copies of Half-life were sold because of Counter Strike? Warcraft 3 and Dota? I could go on. Developers should be ecstatic that modders want to build off their game as a platform. It can only bring them additional money as people buy their game for access to hugely popular mod. I can understand the des…

Absolutely right! Think how differently it would be if we had to pay $50 for Half-Life and another $10-15 for the counter-strike mod. Everyone would lose.

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

#229

Post by koube »

Retric wrote: post #219
koube wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you also posted the mod for free, nobody would have a reason to pay for a re-posted paid mod. If you're both charging for it, then that goes into the realm of intellectual property. That's a change that could be painful in a world of previously free mods, but something not uncommon in other places.

It's an app store. The question comes down to: would you rather have an ecosystem of only free (or donation-driven) mods, or would you rather have some mods be paid mods? I really don't think the move to paid mods is as apocalyptic as reddit was making it out to be.

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

#230

Post by madez »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #223
madez wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I hear what you're saying. People use the words interchangeably, but in this context, I think there's an important distinction between fair and reasonable: - Fairness is a moral judgment. - Reasonableness is a logical argument. That's why I argued that Valve's taking 30% is reasonable but not necessarily fair.

Reasonableness usually implies more than just a logicality, including fairness. To then say that the 30% cut is reasonable means that to say that it's fair.

Let's assume reasonableness were equivalent to logicality. Then, for a decision to be reasonable, it must satisfy some logical conditions. I'd argue that is in our case maximizing a fixed metric in relation to all other possible options. One either doesn't value fairness in the decision-evaluation metric, the 30% cut is fair enough or it's unreasonable.

So, putting it all together, we get

(1) 30% is fair (enough),

(2) one doesn't value fairness prominently in decision making metrics or

(3) the 30% cut is unreasonable.

I'd say the 30% is _not_ fair (enough). That leaves one to pick (2) or (3).

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