Paid mods are now available on the workshop

[GrantSP]

 

EDIT: Also, I'd like to link to a post, which referenced Creation Kit EULA, which states that mod authors don't really own anything published after the use of Creation Kit to import in game.  But I can't find it right now.

That would be my post. Here's the link to the EULA.

 

On that point I would like to reiterate the position Bethesda/Valve are taking.

None of what has transpired with regard to 'paid for mods' is a "copyright issue". All of that legality has already been cared for in the aforementioned EULA. All that has happened is those two companies are officially stating something that they both could have done at any time prior to today, namely:

"We are making money from your efforts. If you would like some of it please join us. If not, that's fine too."

 

To claim the mod authors actually have any say in what transpires is attributing more than they actually have. They, the authors, are in a no-win situation.

1. Agree to the 'paid for'method and at least get something while being vilified by ignorant, misinformed malcontents.
2. Staunchly refuse, based on some imaginary moral grounds, and keep your user-base though miss out on some compensation.

Whether you like it or not, modding has changed and will never be the same again.

Is that a bad thing? I don't think so.

 

Just remember, if you mod because you love the game/modding, just keep loving the game/modding and everything else is secondary.

[Nozzer66]

No, what you should have said is Valve's position is: "We're making lots of money from this. You can have some meagre scraps from the tabletop."

[GrantSP]

Actually those are nearly the same words I used in a post on the Nexus. Same idea, different phrasing.

[Nozzer66]

Meanwhile everyone effectively gets gouged and Valve make a fat quid. Screw that.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Nozzer66

[Marthenil]

Oh I read it here? I swear I scanned this thread before editing.

 

Nevertheless, I think the issue really lies with the slippery slope this leads to, rather than Skyrim itself. 

 

Bethesda itself is going to lose a lot of customers I imagine. At least me, if this is a thing down the road.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Marthenil

[aaltair]

I'm wondering if this would have happened if more people donated to the authors via Nexus.

[kylhwch]

Whether you like it or not, modding has changed and will never be the same again.

Is that a bad thing? I don't think so.

 

It's too soon to tell if it's a good or a bad thing. But I think it's probably an inevitable thing. It's easy to forget how new all this internet distribution/user content/micro-payment stuff is. Those of us who follow the Elder Scrolls have been following this community's development for ten years, which seems like a long time but is just peanuts compared to space. There's all sorts of legal and social issues that need to be worked through surrounding game mods. It was inevitable that this approach would be tried. As unpleasant as the current situation is, there's no where to go here but forward. There are solutions to all the very real problems that have been raised so far. We have to go forward in order to find them.

 

I keep thinking about something that Chesko said in his open letter - that this was going to happen and there was nothing he could do about it. It took him a week to make his peace with it. We've only had a day. I guess we'll see where this goes.

 

For the moment, I've dropped the few Steam mods I was interested in, partly because Steam is such a crappy mod delivery system, but mostly because this is all going to be a colossal ass-ache for the next few months. I'm going to go play my game and then see where things stand next fall.

 

I know I'm not well known in these parts, but I wanted to clarify my thoughts about this. Also, I want to say thank you to all the fine people who have created the mods which bring me so much happiness and the guide authors who spend hours testing and analyzing them.

[sheershaw]

I think it's important not to be too harsh on the modders. Chesko said that Valve approached them, and I am guessing that Valve's silver tongue convinced these modders this experiment would be a good idea. Given the paltry returns for these mods, I doubt there was too much of a financial motive. I think, for some of the modders at least, they were genuinely convinced that paid mods would help the community. Now it is obvious it is a terrible idea, but it might not have sounded so obvious when Valve was pouring sugar into their ears.

 

The modders who cooperated deserve some blame, of course, but most of the ire should be directed towards Valve.

 

I was really furious with the modders who made paid content until I put myself in their shoes and realized I would have done the same.

[Octopuss]

Two things I'm curious about. 

This was known from the beginning, it's apparent, as some authors launched with it. The question is how were those people "chosen" and on what basis.

I am puzzled by this as well. Were some of the most known authors approached by Steam, saying "hey we're testing this paid mods invention, wanna hang around?"

[Marthenil]

/tinfoilhat

 

I have a gut feeling that this is NOT a Valve initiative, but a Bethesda/Zenimax move.

 

And it's a shame when Valve is taking all the flak when they are both equally into this.

 

/tinfoilhat

[EssArrBee]

I'm not sure people realize how much 25% is. Do you think your company pays you 25% worth of the revenue you generate? I doubt it. I doubt that I get 25% of the revenue of the tuition from my students. Actually, I've never done the math, and now that I think about it, I probably get about 25%. I do teach two large classes (up to 80 students) though so that probably has something to do with it. But, everyone knows teachers are extremely underpaid. 

 

Anyways, what I mean is that in the real world for your real job you will get much less of the revenue percentage for your work than Valve is offering. Ask anyone in the food service industry if you get 25%. What is the going rate for tipping your waiter/waitress? 15% and $2.15 an hour.

[Neovalen]

I recently posted this on all my mod pages in a sticky. Figured this would be a good place to put it as well.

 

 

Evening everyone, as you may have noted in the last hours the shroud of the dark side has fallen over the world of modding. Paid modding on the Steam Workshop with required purchase has reared its ugly head. As both a mod consumer and mod creator this is a very sad day indeed. Mods as they exist today are built upon the backs of others such as the SKSE team, the xEdit team, the SkyUI team, Fore, Groovtama, and many others who provide their work free of charge. Both the base tools and the mods provided on this site are continuously improved by the community with creative ideas and suggestions.

Putting mods behind a pay wall is wrong and stifles the growth and strength community at large. It fragments the community into groups: those who pay for mods, those who do not, those who charge for their mods, those who do not. This causes several issues:
1) Debugging compatibility issues will become nigh-impossible for mods behind the pay wall. i.e. If someone is using a paid mod I don't own, I cannot provide support for conflicts or make compatibility patches without paying for the mod.
2) People who provide free mod resources need to be worried if their work will be used for monetary gain.
3) Mod authors need to be more careful who they provide permissions to for their resources. They need to watch the workshop like a hawk to make sure their hard work is not stolen. Even if they do: unless it is obvious from the images, there is no way to tell without buying the potentially infringing mod first.
4) The community will simply not use mods as much as they used to. even if they only cost a dollar a mod. I personally have over 400 mods currently installed on my machine as I write this and I've used so many more that it would easily be in the thousands of dollars to purchase them all, I would never be able to afford it and I suspect many of you would not as well. I already see mods with a single piece of armor or a single sword going up in the paid section.

On top of these issues, Bethesda and Valve have decided to take 75% of the proceeds generated by the mods posted on the workshop. This leaves a paltry 25% for the person putting in the time and effort to improve their original game. In my opinion, Bethesda has already been paid with the additional sales, longevity, and popularity of their game that stretches into future sales for new titles. Valve itself is simply the mechanism from which the download occurs, like an app store and the nexus does the same simply on ad revenue and optional memberships.

I am posting this today to reassure you all that both my mods Dual Sheath Redux and Skyrim Coin Replacer Redux will remain free to download and exclusive to the Nexus sites. If you find these mods on the workshop or elsewhere, they are stolen. Additionally, these mods - in whole, or in part - may not be used for a monetized mod without my explicit permission.

My mod guide on the STEP wiki (updated almost daily), Skyrim Revisited: Legendary Edition, will also remain free for all users and will not feature or include any exclusively pay to play mods.

I hope all of you join me in not purchasing any content via the workshop. It sets a bad precedent and fragments the user base. That being said, I completely understand the desire for mod authors to make money on their mods. I have personally been unable to continue work on my mod projects for some time now due to both family and the financial realities of life. I have a staggering 1,170 hours logged in Skyrim and I have not once actually completed the game. My mods have a total of almost 37,000 endorsements and almost 1.1 million unique downloads yet I have only received a total of 5 donations over the course of my modding and guide writing tenure. I made these mods and wrote my mod guide because I wanted to share and provide a better experience for others and I never expected anything in return. To those few users who who have donated over the years, I thank you. To everyone who has downloaded and enjoyed my work, I thank you too for using them and having fun. That is why I made them. To conclude: If you enjoy a content creators works I encourage you to donate if/when you can to them via the nexus donate button provided on their pages. Many authors on this site deserve it, but don't support the pay wall.

[Octopuss]

I'm not sure people realize how much 25% is. Do you think your company pays you 25% worth of the revenue you generate? I doubt it. I doubt that I get 25% of the revenue of the tuition from my students. Actually, I've never done the math, and now that I think about it, I probably get about 25%. I do teach two large classes (up to 80 students) though so that probably has something to do with it. But, everyone knows teachers are extremely underpaid. 

 

Anyways, what I mean is that in the real world for your real job you will get much less of the revenue percentage for your work than Valve is offering. Ask anyone in the food service industry if you get 25%. What is the going rate for tipping your waiter/waitress? 15% and $2.15 an hour.

I think that's wrong way to look at it.

A modder creates something all by himself (well, mostly) and is not part of any company, there are no other people and no other costs besides his own expenses in life.

[Marthenil]

Another detail that I'm not sure if mentioned: 

 

Your mod needs to generate at least 100$ before you get ANY money. Hmmm....

[keithinhanoi]

But what about people who haven't said anything one way or the either? An example, from Wet & Cold v2.0's list of credits (only available on isoku's web page and not on the Steam Workshop entry):

 

Credits

volvaga0 for his cloaks, fur cloaks and hoods.

SparrowPrince for his original Get Wet implementation.

verteiron for the list of dialogue animation events.

trebtreb for information regarding possible snowy shader issues.

lorelai2009 for her fur cloaks.

Chesko for his support.

drsoupiii for his knapsacks: Knapsack Backpacks.

Arthmoor for his work on Run For Your Lives.

 

Of the above list, only volvaga0 is listed as an author of Wet & Cold v2.0 on Steam Workshop. Chesko and Arthmoor both have paid user content up, so let's assume they're okay with whatever intangibles they provided being included in this paid mod.

 

Interestingly, this credits list is shorter than the one for W&C v1.422 on Nexus, and looking at the changelog for W&C v2.0 it seems that some assets from other modders were removed to "streamline the mod", but it still raises some questions:

 

Were all the others beside volvaga0, Chesko, and Arthmoor in the above list contacted before Wet and Cold v2.0 was posted as a paid mod to check whether they agreed to their work / intangibles being used in a mod for which isoku could receive money?

 

(Regardless of the answer to the above question) Will any of these people besides volvaga0 receive some portion of the 25% of payout over $100 that isoku receives?

 

Not often that I quote myself, but I see that TechAngel has answered the first of my questions in a post in the comments thread for isoku's article on Nexus explaining why he opted to join the initial group of SW's paid Skyrim mods:

 

I know for a fact that Isoku already took care of this. I don't know the specifics; however, I know that he reached out to all the asset owners before proceeding with putting his mods on the workshop. He either was given permission or removed the content or recreated it himself to bypass the permissions when they weren't given.

 

Thanks, Tech, but this still leaves my second question, and also the other question about hooks in W&C to other (currently non SW paid user content) mods.

 

Of course, by the legalese of the CK's EULA, Bethesda is saying all your mods are belong to us, so the point of my rhetorical questions is moot, I suppose. Nevertheless, the EULA has absolutely no bearing on the decisions people make to help each other make mods or provide free assets / resources for doing so... or not.

 

That said, there is also the untested waters of challenging Bethesda's claim to use of "the New Materials" (as they call mods) in cases where the mods themselves are making use of other's intellectual property.  Or even mods which have been produced without CK, and never published on the Steam Workshop. Can Bethesda still claim overriding domain of those intangibles?

 

What about mods which have (re)textures based on images bought / acquired from a source with a user agreement that prohibits any form of monetized distribution, even if in a heavily modified state? Does Bethesda now both "own" those textures and simultaneously put itself in a situation of legal contradiction if that mod is released as paid user content?

Edited April 24, 2015 by keithinhanoi