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Regarding recent mod monetization rage *Discuss*

Proficiency·4/24/2015, 11:49:20 AM·3 votes·666 views

Anyone reading this is most likely aware of the recent skyrim news on mods. This post is not specific to that game, however is has been a catalyst for discussion suddenly. I will simply start with a question and a statement.

"Why is it so horrible that people are being given the chance to make money off of something that they went time creating that people enjoy? A few various readings of forum post have simply left me with the idea that the ones complaining are just simply not willing to pay for someones work and want mods to stay forcibly free due to legality."

Obviously i want people to comment and post their concerns, but let me touch on just a couple things.

  1. Creative incentive - most people would argue that the love of the game drives the best modders/developers ( really anyone in regards to "doing what they love"). I generally would have to agree. However money is quite the motivating factor, and i feel like their love of said work in tangent with the ability to generate income is an even stronger force. Outside of just wanting everything for free, its just smart to give more incentive to great modders who put the time, love and mountain dew crazed minds into something that creates entertainment that you enjoy.

  2. Developers taking their percent of revenue - If this one bothers you rather than the concepf as a whole is probably due to what most people consider to be a large percent the companies take from each sale. I will not argue what I think is a good number as far as splits go, but just keep this in mind. The developer is providing the platform, the players, the advertising (mostly indirect), sometimes support and most often the tools. So with that mind the split rate is up for debate.

  3. Industry talent pool - Although this would seem to affect the company foremost, it does have an effect on is as consumers also. By giving these mod developers a platform for selling it also gives companys a better view of the large talent pool available to them. Then if great people are hired it will lead to better games for us (in theory obviously). Although they can see this in general by diving into forums and other means to check popularity, a direct sales platform will give companies more numbers to gauge off of.

  4. Increased revenue - I know more money for the game developers is bad...but i do not think so. Note: Yes, some game companies are greedy and this will not apply to them, however, there are many that do this as a labor of love although they are in this to make money, that is what a business does.. By increasing revenue, developers are able to spend more money on content ( aka have more employees/ pay employees better/obtain better employees). All the things we want cost time and money. Our hunger for content does have a cost. note: this is aimed at you RiotAlso, imagine you have a small design team. You open up you game for skin submissions, with being acccepted, would net you some percent of revenue. Now you are able to place a current team or hire a new one to sort through these submissions to discard garbage (not viable, stolen content, etc). The increased revenue allows them to do this and not only that, increases their work output ( through you, excellent artist!). Everyone gains! More money for company, money for creator and more content for consumers!

This list is by no means a complete howver its 6am and im doing this on my phone so forgive typos. Would love to listen to everyones input and just a reminder. People are still able to place mods for free if they wish to. This is no force of the hand. Get involved in the discussion!

Open the LoL board gates!

7 Comments

Sir ArmaMalum4/24/2015, 12:55:17 PM1 votes

Oh I had some great discussions with a few friends on this. Funnily enough I'm actually on your side with the whole thing but for the sake of discussion I'll bring up some good points they brought up.

  1. It further incentives a lower quality base game. While there can be clever solutions around this, like early access to modders pnly and what not, the previous complaint of mods and DLC encouraging developers to release 70-60-50% of a game and charging full price, and expecting modder and DLC to kake up the difference will only be exacerbated by this. Especially because it now distributes the 'total' cost of a game across multiple people, meaning there's very little opportunity to regulate the 'total' price.

  2. It will destabilize if not kill the modding community. Since the mod marketplace is only lightly competitive when it comes to visibility right now, once money is in the picture it harms an individual's willingness to share and teach their ideas and tricks. While this is good for the individual the community, and by extension new modders, will suffer for it. It may not happen immediately as the infastructure developed in the free atmosphere won't just evaporate, but the simple fact is one strategy is earning money and the other isn't.

  3. While it will increase the incentives to start modding (i.e. money), this will severely impact modder diversity within games. Since a user can only download but so many mods due to the price you have to choose between the best mods to make it worth it. This will destroy the audience base for the second-best mods and funnel everyone further towards the higher downloads.

  4. Steam will have too much power over the direction of popuar mods. And not in the way you think. Currently mods are all free, meaning the thing that makes them different in face value is popularity/word of mouth and visibility within the workshop. Steam can easily tailor the visibility of the workshop towards the higher priced mods and away from the free ones, and are in fact incentivized to, as they make no money of free mods. To be fair, this point is a hypothetical but a worrying hypothetical nonetheless

  5. There is a precedent to what a paid mod community will look like. The mobile app store market. No specific side to this really, just a question, would you mind your mod marketplace to look and act just like the App Store?

hüng4/24/2015, 6:26:33 PM1 votes

You can donate to people on nexus. Steam is just greedy fuckin fatass gaben

Karlyr4/24/2015, 6:51:16 PM1 votes

The main problem doesn't come from the fact that developpers get a cut. For the Skyrim case, specifically, the problem is that it's not even the developpers of the game that gets the large cut. It's Steam. I still think that 75% is too much, getting this down to 50% would be WAY more reasonnable. The developpers basically gets "free money" from modders. Yes it is their, hence why they collect a part of their share. But Steam getting a cut is just outrageous. (Insert Gaben+Taric photoshop)

Other than that, your points are pretty much all valid.

I'll just leave this link here if you wanna watch it / add it to your OP. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k