Valve adds paid modding

Tuco_sl said:

Click to expand...

Saw this on the Reddit, pretty awesome.

Nobody has spliced in a angry Hitler Rant to the 2004 movie Downfall using the reddit AMA as Hitlers Lines? We should really get on that. We need to get it rendered and posted before anyone else.

Tuco_sl said:

Click to expand...

That's nice but it should be the other way around (Beth holding the knife) since they are the ones that determine who gets paid what.

I can honestly see the positive side of where Valve was coming from but there was some serious oversights on their part. There should have been some sort of cross licensing system setup in place so that modders who create custom animations or items etc they have the option to license it to others to use in their mods for free, or to specify an amount they'd want to use their work. The cut that Bethesda and Valve are taking are retardedly high, while I feel that Bethesda deserves something for developing the engine/game that's allowing you to generate income from, 45% wasextreme.

I don't know how anyone in charge at either company looked at them keeping 75% and expected anyone not to think that's just them bending the modding community over the barrel. Now that being said I honestly think there is a place for paid modding, there just needs to be a way to accurately track who's made what to ensure owners are being paid properly, some system in place that allows modders to automatically license things to other modders, and the cut taken by Valve/Whoever needs to be reduced considerably. Unless the modders can charge a low price for the mods then there has to be some sort of contractual agreement to maintain the mod to work with future versions of the product otherwise people will flip their shit if their 20$ mod doesn't work and no one is interested in fixing it. If Valve/Whoever is taking 75%, then they should be providing that service if the company making the mod fails to follow through.

Iannis_sl said:

It'll stop the people who make 1/20th of an awesome mod from even trying. That's the only problem, really. Otherwise who cares if steam and bethesda fuck themselves.

They just managed to fuck everyone, is all. And I honestly do think that Nexus is going to start having legal trouble. Because I don't think any of this was actually an accident or an oversight or malicious incompetence.

Click to expand...

I don't see where the Nexus even comes into this, legally. They signed an agreement that says that people who upload paid mods can choose to throw some of Valve's cut at the Nexus instead of Valve. All it affects is payout distribution. The Nexus itself still is pushing for free mods, they just aren't turning down what is effectively a donation by a modder that costs the modder no money. It's win/win for everyone except Valve in this case. There's 0 chance of the Nexus going to a paid mod system. The Nexus isn't even like Facebook where it owns everything uploaded to it. The modder still has the rights to their own work.

The immediately obvious legal issues are: People uploading other people's mods to the paid workshop as their own, and mods that incorporate other work into them (which is a LOT of them). When mods are free, issue 2 isn't really an issue so it shall remain not an issue unless people are dumb. Which they are.

Meanwhile, Skyrim's rating on Steam has dropped from 98% - placing it among the highest rated games on Steam - to 84% over the weekend.

All someone has to do for nexus to get into the shit is take a mod off of nexus and put it on steam and then claim ownership of the IP through steam. Nexus gets a pull it down please notice until ownership is established.

That avenue is open now. That's a new consideration. Gabe said it's fine though.

I'm not saying they will. I'm just saying that they could. And with the steambox and steamOS coming... sometimes having a stick is as good as using a stick.

The Nexus has no standing to do that, at all. The mod is the modder's IP, not the Nexus. Based on the fact that the Nexus has their own attorney/lawyer it's super unlikely they would make that mistake.

If it ever happened, we'll have to see how that works out for 'em.

I am not optimistic that Nexus would come out of that battle alive. It's RIAA bullshit part deux. IP victories can be phyrric.

There would be no battle. I've uploaded to the Nexus. They claim no ownership, material or otherwise. There's literally nothing there. I have no idea what you keep referring to The legal jargon isn't even that bad as far as that all goes.

They're hosting. And if they tell valve often enough, "We're just a host, we have no responsibility or authority to pull it down"... we HAVE seen that before. Many times.

I think valve is too lazy to bother with it. I think you're right. But if valve picked that fight, even though Nexus would be right, they'd still get buried.

One of the best things they could possibly do is to hire the Nexus staff to run their modstore. Pull a Bill Gates. That would go a very long way to making the whole shitfest go away.

Unfortunately, I suspect valve is too lazy to do that too.

That wouldn't fix anything. The reason the Nexus sites are so loved is the freedom and community of them. The modstore goes against that pretty significantly. Not to mention running the Nexus is a pretty full-time job it sounds like so if Valve hired them, either new people would have to take over the Nexus or the Nexus would go away, neither of which is great.

If a modder legitimately uploads a paid-only mod and another modder rips it off and throws it up on the Nexus, it's extremely unlikely it won't get taken down quickly. Of course that doesn't apply to torrents and whatever other download sites also choose to re-host it but that's out of their hands.

There's tons of real serious problems with the mod store and the current implementation, but the Nexus getting into a legal battle with Valve is just not realistic Seems silly to imagine issues when there's so many real ones to attack

Maybe it's tin foil hat territory. Hell, I easily grant you that. It is tinfoil hat territory.

I just have a hard time believing that they're thisdumb. There has GOT to be some convoluted ulterior motive, like they're looking at a popular platform coming out soon and they want to establish dominance in the previously untapped mod market. Because otherwise this is like... hey guys, I have an idea. Lets smear each others shit all over our own faces and pretend like it's halloween!

Wut?

Valve's corporate structure is quite... different than most companies. Their company is also pretty unique, as is their money-making engine. They have a tiny number of employees for how huge their platform is (and the growth they want to see), those employees get paid quite a bit, those employees also aren't structured in the usual -> goon -> management -> useless management -> more useless management -> GabeN like other IT companies. Steam gets away with an outdated platform because they can. Origin and Uplay are both almost better than Steam from a functionality and smoothness standpoint, they just lose on their limited market and for trying to shove themselves down gamers' throats through exclusivity.

This is an idea that, implemented in a different fashion by perhaps a different company (or an alternate-universe Valve) could be a great system. It is NOT a system that has been well implemented and the knowledge people have of Valve makes it seem like they won't be able to manage it properly, if at all. The top 5 paid mods are all parody / protest ones so at least they're not censoring the complaining too much yet.

It's easy to see where this idea could go in a negative spin or a positive spin. The problem is it doesn't look like Valve took either scenario into consideration. It was a project someone came up with, a team worked on, and is now live. It went through the ropes of all major Steam changes but those have ended up being poor designs before (Greenlight).

I'm not against having the option to donate to modders for their work, if they so chose. But the implementation is so, so wrong.

Steam Community :: Group Announcements ::

We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.