Paid Mods - Should Game Mods be Sold? - Extra Credits

Valve's attempt to introduce a marketplace onto the Steam Workshop raises questions about the effect paid mods would have on the mod community and the game companies themselves. The modders get only a small percentage of sales, but that percentage is still better than the cost of licensing the game's brand or engine. Game developers must consider the risks of legal action if a modder sells content using copyrighted or trademarked material, because even if they had no direct hand in the content's creation, the fact that they make money from it may open them to lawsuits.

_______

_________

_________

♪ Intro Music: "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM

♪ Outro Music: "Caravan Bowser" by Flexstyle, XPRTNovice
(sorry, no direct link available)

[oldman]

*buys two 40$ mods
*aren't compatible

[NoahWeisbrod]

I think monetization should be an option only for mods that have received N (maybe around 500) positive reviews/upvotes.
This would accomplish two things.
1. Players paying for a mod know that at least some other people think it's decent.
2. It encourages players to try new mods, because unknown mods would be free.

In addition to rating the mod, players reviewing it could recommend the price it should be worth.
If a mod contains unlicensed content, it could be flagged as such, and it could stay in the marketplace, but only for free.

[avstube]

If a big mod is being sold and not for download, then it's a DLC. ;P

[asbestosfish_]

Well, it's three years later, _so I'm pretty sure they've given up._

[MazeMouse]

Reasons it's good:
-Modders get paid for their work
Reasons it's bad:
-I bought it, I expect support for the damn thing (how many modders have a support team?)
-Many mods borrow parts of eachother. Hello legal minefield
-Dependency between mods (see previous point)
-Compatibility between mods (also see previous point)
-Quality Control (Unless I can refund shit-mods why should I bother with any mods? Also ties in with previous points)
-Mod abandonment (not only because the money ran out, but because the modder became bored with it)

Especially mod abandonment is a big deal. If I'm paying for it that modder is now forced to see it through or get sued for not delivering the product I bought from him. If I'm forced to pay for it I will require a certain base level of quality and support on par with a developer DLC. And while a lot of mods have come close to that, none have ever delivered on that (especially support is dreadful). Now getting paid might change that. But thats a big maybe.

The way I see it the only way this will work is if developers start treating this like Third Party DLC. And that would mean some strict regulation from the devs.

[haakonnordli]

About total war and factions. If i recall correctly, creative assembly removed some factions from the workshop and made a dlc for those factions. The reason being that the mods existed was because those factions already existed in the game. The dlc was just an unlock, dlc for stuff already in the vanilla version of the game seems shady.

[goldenfloof]

Major companies like nintendo and disney probably wouldn't prefer fan made content, like games, art, stories, etc. But the sheer public backlash they'd get for suing a 15 girl writing pokemon fanfiction would be to much of a PR disaster to be worth it.

[LizardOfOz]

Minecraft Marketplace vs Minecraft Java Edition Mods show how the modding scene shifts once there is money involved.
While the Java Edition has large experiences composed from hundreds of mods made by dozens of people, the Bedrock Marketplace mainly consists of small self-contained packages made by a single person or a group. That's because you can't freely use someone else's work in the commercial environment.
Also, Bedrock Edition doesn't have the Utility mods, plenty of which exist for the Java Edition.

[seanrshivers]

I work in volunteer recruitment, i think you're missing the motivation of Love... By paying people for stuff that they'd do for free you actually devalue the experience.

It seems paradoxical, but people will do stuff for free that they'll refuse to do for $100... Because you change how they make the value of the experience... And intangibles are very often greater than about price.

[franklinz]

But recreating unlicensed assets from other games, movies, novels or real life is what modding is all about in the first place.

[XylaFox]

paid mods should be on the decision of the developer, and have a special team dedicated to verifying mods to be paid. that way the developers can make sure that the mod is safe, reliable and/or enjoyable without worrying about all the bad repercussions stated in the video. and then they have a more reasonable claim to the 75% as they're actually putting some effort into testing the mods and making sure they're good enough to be paid for.

[Lionheartwolf]

the open market app store has pretty much already answered this question. It will benefit a few, and spawn a massive amount of clones hoping to profit from the works of others in an unregulated market. Why spend all that money working on a mod for the next guy to slightly change my work and syphon my profits? How do you distribute the money earned by somebody who modded a mod? How do you claim the right to a specific mod when you dont own the rights to it? If I made a simple weapon mod that includes a new class of weapons that are generic enough (e.g. adding submachine guns to Xcom) do I now own the rights to all submachine gun mods for that game?

It doesn't work. There is no market there just an unregulated black market that does not protect modders or consumers. It's dead.

[YtseJam]

This is one of the very few times I've had to completely disagree with you.

It really hit me when you said we'd see "better mods" under this system. Did you see what happened on the few days where the paid mod system was in place? The storefront became flooded with cheap, zero-effort cash-ins. It's the exact same effect early access and greenlight have had. Allowing anyone to put something up on a storefront has always resulted in the market becoming flooded with garbage made not out of passion like how mods are made now, but to make a quick buck. Paid mods will make most mods MUCH lower quality.

Also you've failed to address many crucial questions, such as "What if an official game update breaks a mod you paid for?", etc.

Best part of the episode was the credits music. Good choice.

[ameno]

I have 100 mods in my Load Order I can't afford to pay 200 euros for them. Ever thought about that???

[RaineAvina]

I don't understand the argument that just because modders are passionate about something that they shouldn't be paid for it. "I'm being paid for what I love...fuck this, man!" As someone who has been part of the modding community and released quiet a few Oblivion mods, I can tell you that a LOT of mods get completely dropped, and a lot of times its due to losing interest in finishing that last bit of it. If members of my team knew that it might get them some money, I think those teams that fall apart during the polish phase might stay together enough to finish it.

That said, legal copyright bullshit and curating would be a bitch.

[LIQUID]

The whole the developers should be paid anything for mods argument is completely ridiculous. Mods are not like borrowing another companies IP to create a stand alone game. In order to play a mod you must first own the game. Without ownership of the game the mod is worthless. So the developers have already been paid for their part in development by the original purchase of the game.
Imagine this problem in a different industry: You want a yellow car, but you don't have a car. You then go and buy a black car from a large car making industry. You then take your car to a small mechanics shop to get your car painted yellow. The mechanics charge you $25 to repaint the whole car. When you go to pickup your newly painted car a representative from the large car making industry is there demanding that you pay them $75 for the privilege of repainting your own car. They argue that since they created and patented the body of the car that the paint is sticking to, they should be compensated more than the people that actually repainted the car. This is, of course, ridiculous. Yes they created the body of the car that the paint is sticking to but you already paid for that body when you paid for the car. They provided no work towards the repainting of the car and yet they expect to be paid much more than those who actually did the work.

[hagamablabla]

1. Paid mods might lead to higher quality mods, but it might also lead to lower quality mods. Right now, there is no incentive for people to make purposely bad quality mods (ie a neon red sword reskin in Skyrim) except for personal use. However, you can bet that for every $10 amazing Skyrim mod, there will be 20 shitty neon red reskins.

2. You say that DLC published by the developers might be ignored in favor of a mod that does the same thing, but isn't that a good thing? Most people know the image comparing the corruption of expansion packs and DLC over the years to the Mona Lisa. No mod team would be able to create something like The Brood Wars for Starcraft unless they rivaled a small indie game dev company in size, but there are plenty of modders who could make a simple weapon reskin DLC.

3. 25% might sound fine when you're talking percentages, but when you actually translate that to $.99 or even $5 mods, the modder isn't actually making that much. This is especially serious when you consider that these mods are one time purchases, meaning the sales of the mods approach 0 as time goes on. I would love to see modders be able to do what they love as a job, but 25% isn't going to cut it.

[Studioithy]

I've seen some other comments suggesting similar ideas, and I'd have to agree with them. Perhaps a system of voting for mods can be put in place so anyone who enjoyed a mod or thought it was well crafted can promote said mod. The top rated mods could then get some more 'official' support, perhaps by being showcased on the game developers' websites/forums/etc (think of custom content in a game like Halo or GTA Online: the best custom content can be showcased and in the case of GTA even RockStar verified and added into the main game. Of course this is a different scenario, but you get the idea. This content is highlighted for the majority to see and praised).
So most mods within this system would be free and unofficial, like they currently are. This allows the 'junk' mods (badly mad, stolen content, viruses, etc) to not have to be supported by developers, allowing them to distance themselves from this sort of content. But the good mods that are well received can be put into the spotlight to get the developers attention. Then these modders can be offered a deal where their mods are monitized, and all the details would have to be worked out but the idea should hopefully be the same.

[blakebrown]

I think if I had to pay for mods, it would be best if you paid one upfront fee, and then have access to any mods. The money could then be distributed to modders based on the downloads they get. This kind of system would ensure that a) The quality mods are more likely to recieve money, and b) players wont have to worry about paying for a specific mod that sounded better than it was.

[ChosenOne]

The reason I think paid mods are a bad idea is because there is no quality assurance with mods. I've downloaded maybe 50 mods for Oblivion but I would say only about 5 or so of them are keepers. If I had paid for all of those I would have felt ripped off on those 45 I didn't like. It's not to even say that those mods were all poorly made it's just that they weren't exactly what I was looking for.

Mod creators should be paid for what they do but the solution isn't putting mods behind paywalls. The great thing about PC gaming is how open everything is and paid mods would break that. If YouTube can pay people who make free to watch videos than I am sure there is a way to pay mod creators without the paywall as well.