The Modding Community is Divided.

A debate around paid game mods has re-emerged around a paid, DRM-protected DLSS 3 mod for Starfield.


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[cynthius]

If monetized modding becomes normalized, we're gonna see a lot more legal action and a lot more controversy that could seriously negatively impact the public perception of modding as a whole. The cracking and uploading of that DLSS mod is just the start. We gotta remember some popular mods on Nexus rely on stolen content from other games. Apachii SkyHairs is mostly a collection of hair models from The Sims. Plenty of weapon and armor mods use asset rips or are based off other IPs. A lot of this isn't even technically within the rights of the mod makers to do in the first place, and you can bet EA and Nintendo are gonna come down with lawsuits and C&Ds on a whole bunch of mod makers if the field starts being "professional" instead of just free stuff from hobbyists.

It won't really matter whether the particular mod in question is monetized or not, and having a deluge of takedowns and bad publicity is not gonna be healthy. Monetizing these things is just asking for heavier policing, and if that happens, the landscape is gonna change, because everything's gonna have to be original.

[milkevgaming]

I think another factor is that the vast majority of mods are open source. They welcome people posting issues and helping out. This also helps greatly with mod compatability.
If one of my mods ran into compatability issues with a paywalled mod, id probably never fix it, because even if i paid for that mod, ill still not even be able to check the source code and see where our mods are conflicting. There are hacky solutions to see compiled mods code, but that can be extremely time consuming and convuluted.

[Dazen]

I also want to add that the modding community is known for having perfect mod compatibility. Once you download that tenth mod, your game will probably be crash authenticating ten different DRMs

[SurgStriker]

The issue with the 'modding your car' thing is that you can mod your own car, or your own game, and no one is going to have an issue. But if you start publicly selling mod kits for a specific car (or game), then the manufacturer might get involved. With car mods it's harder, like you might have to remove the vehicle's name (make/model) from your mod kit description, or they might send a C&D (at that point, might as well be nintendo who is anti-mod and threatens most any group that posts mods, even free ones)

[ramel]

The big issue for me is that the moment there's money to be made in modding he game companies are going to want their cut, and from there they will start trying to control the modding scene and locking things down to drive skilled modders into parntner ships, and to protect themselves from any mods deemed 'controversial'. One of the big joys of modding is that it's people making things outside of monitisation and all the limits and restictions that brings

[ThePlayerOfGames]

*Important note* Skyblivion and Skywind both have to create their own assets because Bethesda banned them from straight up porting the assets from the old engines to the Skyrim engine.
From what I understand the map geometry could carry across approximately but everything about characters has to be recreated from scratch.
As of now the main effort is the manual recreation of navigation mesh which the AI uses to find it's way around the world and is a publicly-sourced effort

[synthiandrakon]

I think the creation club is the best example to look at what paid mods could do. The creation club features some of the best modders being paid to make mods and they're shit. They're honestly worse than the free content they made, and mods are often a community effort. Some of my favourite mods need a second mod to fix them. One of the best Japanese mods which is giant has a whole other mod to dub it into English and many more to make it prettier fix bugs and make it more compatible with other stuffs.

When a mod is a passion project they put as much time and effort in as they feel like and sometimes it's a whole lot. With paid mods you get exactly what you paid for and usually the mod maker isn't being paid all that much

[Elbrasch]

Single player game for 400$: Welcome to paradox games.

[TheMorrowgamer]

For many mods, they actually require other mods in order to function.
So you would HAVE to install others work to make the other function.

So even if a mod only cost $1, but it requires 4 other mods to install then you have to spend $5 just for the functionality of the one you wanted.

[cirmothe]

Humble Bundle's sliders are no longer front and center. You have to click a button to expand the sliders and the default allocations have a minimum for the humble bundle tip. I think they changed it when IGN acquired them.

[DoublesC]

Mods can only work well with each other if they are open source.
So we can't sell mods as it would encourage close source mods.
But I believe that supporting the developers of the mods through Patreon is a good compromise.

[Kevin-jbpv]

Bethesda has always handled their modding community excellently. But I do think that you will start to see the suits get _real_ pissy if modders start trying to monetize their mods privately after the gigantic backlash that we saw with the Creation Club.

[unrealed]

I think one thing you didn't talk about (and should have) is that "DLSS as a mod" is going to be, imo, not just an order of magnitude more popular than even a popular mod, but TWO orders of magnitude more popular.

You have to buy to buy Starfield for $70 coz that's what it costs. And when you do you might play it at like 20 fps. OR you could pay $70+5 to play it at like 60-80 fps. NO OTHER MOD can generate that level of general interest in the players unless there's an absolutely massive hole in functionality in the game. And even in the case of DLSS, they've now announced it so the interest is gonna go way way down

[BenWillock]

Nobody is entitled to anybody's labour. If someone wants to sell the mod they spent dozens of hours making, let them. You don't have to buy it.

[mathhews]

Linus talking about 11+ mods and my Skyrim list with 900+ be like...

[Respectable_Username]

35:51 This is exactly what I was talking about in my other comment. SkyBlock and One Block are both big Java Edition mods. The number of knockoffs in the Bedrock Marketplace which are all the same thing but paid is enormous, and it's _very hard_ to know which listing is by the actual creator of the concept. Based on a quick google, the original creator of SkyBlock is Noobcrew, _not_ RareLoot as featured on that page there. The fact the main advertising page of the Minecraft Marketplace is advertising a rip off of another's mod is both disgusting and _entirely_ unsurprising

[Ryan-tngk]

VR mods of flat games has been pulling back into VR when regular made-for-Vr games, most of them don't do it for me. So being able to play Valheim, Outer Wilds, and many others has really made me use my headset more

[caedenw]

I would say that the game companies do get a share of modding revenue either through the increased playtime from the mods being entertaining leading to possible in-game purchases or just through more purchases of the game.

[sephiroth]

The modding community went south for the winter when a mod for half life 2, known as garry's mod, decided to charge for access to it compared to other mods at the time being released with no payments necessary. Always hated paid mods ever since that became a thing.

[tiagotiagot]

IMO the only approach that makes sense is to use the donation model for making money with mods; no paywall, just remind people they can donate if they appreciate what's being offered (not nagware though, be sure the reminder doesn't piss people off). That, and commissions for custom stuff, with no imposed license on the end result.