Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Valve shuts down paid mod system after pressure from gamers

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 282 posts

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

#261

Post by yebyen »

lsaferite wrote: post #138
yebyen wrote: post #103

Earlier 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…

Bethesda did get something. They got my purchase of the original game plus all of the DLCs. All at initial sale prices to boot. Do they deserve more than that?

I don't know about deserve, but if you want to talk about incentives for behavior, you really can't go wrong with something that provides both "increased sales volume and lifetime" and "an ongoing share of the grosses".

If you want game developers to promote a helpful environment for mod developers, grab some money and pay them something out of it. Definitely!

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

#262

Post by orng »

existencebox wrote: post #177
orng wrote: post #160

Although I think people should be rewarded for their work I don't really don't like where this is headed. As others have noted the statement from Valve reads as if paid mods are definitely coming in a not so distant future. Modders getting paid is all well and dandy until you consider the way mods often evolve and build on top of each other. I spent a lot of my time as a young teenager on the custom ladder in Warcraf…

First; I wanted to just nerd out a little with you, because the custom ladder you describe were the crucible of my gaming habits as well (geek cred, I think I even have some screenshots somewhere of when I was playing a Wintermaul clone with duke himself, from decades ago) :) Second, I wanted to echo that there's a concerning parallel between paid vs free mods and free to play gaming. In both, I think the proposed so…

> I think I even have some screenshots somewhere of when I was playing a Wintermaul clone with duke himself

Now that is cool.

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

#263

Post by skizm »

Raphmedia wrote: post #256
skizm wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't charge based on the modder's intent. If a mod was made out of love vs. money grab is irrelevant. If people want to pay for it the question is how much money should the modder get? You're saying the 25% is a raw deal. Maybe it is, but that's the mass-market deal. If you're mod is awesome, then maybe the publisher is willing to buy it or pay for it. Counter Strike was a mod that Valve bought and made into a s…

How would you do it? Be glad the that some of the money is send to the modder when you purchase a mod and have modders abandon games that take too big a cut? From my point of view, if this happens, it would simply hurt the modding community as a whole. Big games like Skyrim will get a big quantity of low quality mods that sells for lower and lower, driving the market down, making the modder already small cut even sma…

Bethesda/Valve will do some A/B testing with different games to see what the optimal pricing/payout scheme is, but right now modders get absolutely nothing (donations are near 0 even for top modders) so I just don't see how adding the option to get paid (even a small amount) is a bad thing for the community.

As an aside, I actually think the way the payout scheme was pretty fair. I mean valve is taking 30% of everything sold on their marketplace no matter what, so if you write that out and only count the money that could go to the publisher the split was actually 65/35 publisher/modder.

That said, I can understand people arguing too much or too little. All I am saying is that I think, overall, paid mods are a net positive once they shake out the kinks.

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

#264

Post by ux-app »

jeeva wrote: post #196
ux-app wrote: post #123

Earlier 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…

>If lone hobbyists can improve a game so much, can you imagine if a studio of 5-10 could make a viable living from modding? 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…

>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.

If you're Bethesda then maybe you don't get out of bed for less than $10,000,000. This leaves the door open for small teams that will be more than happy with a much smaller pay day.

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

#265

Post by mcphage »

lsaferite wrote: post #109
mcphage wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Yes. I paid full price for the game and all of the DLC. Part of the reason I did this was due to the ability of the game to be easily modded. I knew with modding the lifetime of the game was much greater. Why should they get 40% of mod sales for doing nothing? They already got paid for making the game. Now, if they are still providing good customer support with timely bug fixes around the mod system, then perhaps I c…

> I paid full price for the game and all of the DLC.

> Part of the reason I did this was due to the ability of the game to be easily modded. I knew with modding the lifetime of the game was much greater.

So you paid full price for the game because you knew people would spend their time and effort making things for you for free... and now that there was an option for them to get paid for their work, you get pissy?

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

#266

Post by mcphage »

paulmd wrote: post #209
mcphage wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Their game isn't free; nor did I claim that it was. What is free, however, is they don't charge you any licensing fee to create a mod for it.

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

#267

Post by frik »

blakeyrat wrote: post #259
pearle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bioware was doing DLC before it was called DLC and long before Bethesda. Google Neverwinter Nights premium modules.

We used to call them "expansion packs". They were the same thing as DLC, just without the DL. (Nobody had enough bandwidth to do large game asset downloads.) The concept's old as dirt.

Expansion packs or Addons came with a lot more high quality content with many more hours of actual gameplay content on a separate CD/DVD. The CD/DVD can be sold later.

Since 2006, a DLC is usually a minor content like a horse decoration, a car, a few short missions worth 1-2 hours gameplay, etc. DLCs come also with DRM, you cannot sell it later. (Also used in conjunction as pre-order bonus on e.g. Amazon or Steam) (Some still release Addons, some call Addons DLCs, but generally it is the way as described above.)

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

#268

Post by castell »

vacri wrote: post #153
castell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. DRM != copy protection You can own the DVD with a copy protection and even legally create a backup-copy. You simply cannot own a DRM product, as its bound to a server side check. DRM products may suddenly vanish from your PC, or change its content. Valve already wiped some games and changed the regional settings (removing games from certain parts of the world in retrospect) and Rockstar released an aut…

Copy protection is a form of DRM. It is used to manage rights to digital content. You're redefining DRM to mean "the trend of selling licenses rather than software", which is only one form of DRM.

It's the other way around! DRM is a specific form of copy protection. Read the DRM article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

  "The term [DRM] is also sometimes referred to as copy 
  protection, copy prevention, and copy control, although 
  the correctness of doing so is disputed."
And read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_protection

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

#269

Post by belorn »

lightbritefight wrote: post #254
belorn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then do the Patreon model where the modder is "hired" by the community. The modder/s decide a minimum wage, and then see if the community is willing to continue to support the mod creation. The beautiful aspect of this compared to selling products is that everyone involve know what is expected from each other, the responsibility to fix bugs is established in the beginning, and its very hard to sell someones else mod…

There is a former maxis employee doing exactly that for high quality building mods in cities :skyline. Its working well for him, but that has partly to do with the his former job, the pure quality of his work, and the press attention hes garnered. I suspect it was the timing of maxis closing and Cities releasing that helped the most, although his models are excellent in every way. Its just that even with great art, w…

I think it would be a great model indeed.

A black and white webcomic I read runs a patreon page, and get $3k a month with only 800 patrons. The author was previously unknown, and managed to reach this point purely on the quality of his/her work and the readership it gathered. Looking at some of the major skyrim mods with millions of downloads, I suspect they could easily gain more than 800 patrons.

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

#270

Post by Already__Taken »

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…

This is what's always driven me mad about the battlefield series. There's were some great mods springing up and I wish it was capitalized on and encouraged.

I feel like Arma 2 saw the Project Reality demographic and said "Lets go for that"

Post reply on HN