An in-depth conversation about the modding scene

[76561198192850063]

TotalBiscuit (Youtuber and Steam #1 Curator), Nick McCaskey (developer of the SMIM mod) and Robin Scott (owner and Admin of Nexus mods) discussing the whole paid-mods topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aavBAplp5A

[TheStoryteller01]

TotalBiscuits Cynical Brit with a 20 minute analysis:

YouTube™ Video: Valve announces paid modding for Skyrim - Apr. 23rd, 2015 

Views: 434,765

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent 18:51 TOTD: AeroZ - IV. Sky http://bit.ly/1KBGHaa Skyrim gameplay courtesy of: https://www.youtube.com/user/GophersVids...

[Sovereign]

Watched that, all I can say is I dont agree with them. Especially around the end.

Paid mods = DLC and no amount of sugarcoating will change that, not to everyone, not to us.

[TheStoryteller01]

Originally posted by Sovereign:

Watched that, all I can say is I dont agree with them. Especially around the end.

Paid mods = DLC and no mmount of sugarcoating will change that, not to everyone, not to us.

Totalbuiscuits Cynical Brit says is at 16:55 himself

This is basically Horse Armor!

[N-Sign]

People who make money doing something that was traditionally free support other people making money doing something that was traditionally free.

I'm absolutely shocked.

[Sovereign]

The discussion steered in the end in another direction though, especially from the Skyrim mod guy.

Indiscriminately, be it a sword, horse armor or a totalt conversion mod, if you pay for it, its DLC:
By whom it is developed and for what purpose is irrelevant.


And a final argument I have about the free market. If they think or anyone the free market can regulate things, just look at the games released nowadays.
You dont see a dungeon keeper 3, Command and Conquer games or RTS games in general, Deus Ex style FPS games etc.
You dont see expansion packs and wide range mod support. You dont see cheats given freely, but cheats sit behind a paywall.
Remember Total Annihilation? That game had a free unit as DLC, every month.

Look at all that the free market has "Regulated".

[sick duck]

community

or

commercial venture

pick one. can't have it both ways. Many artists have tried charging for their work, and came to the same conclusion, and this also explains why the skyrim community of 3 1/2 years erupted last week.

[76561198192850063]

I thought a lot about the whole topic.

In my opinion Steam made several basic mistakes:

-did not gather any information from any modders according to TB, Nexus admin and the modder, how this could work. simply made assumptions and treating them as facts

-did not attempt in any ways to find out if their customer base will appreciate or refuse the new feature

-introduced the paid mod system to an already existing free and prospering mod community. that is a huge facepalm.

-leaving less than 25% of all revenues to the content creator, while not providing any mandatory service like quality control (Is the content worth the purchase), anti piracy measures (who made this mod) or ensure content support (will the mod cause any compabilty issues).

conclusion:
steam/valve did not really prepare this thing, they introduced a system with the least effort you could imagine. so its no wonder that their payment system was broken within 24 hours. to me this feels lazy and unmotivated.
the only aspect they had put some real effort into it was the censoring and manipulating of the public discussions around this topic in their forums :/

And when I think of the fact that there is absolutely no quality control at early access or greenlight. people get scammed on and on. steam has still several titles in their shop that are not done yet and never will. and also the review system is broken . its ridicoulus.

And please keep in mind: if the backlash would not have been that big, valve would not have pulled back. that`s for sure. eventually we would had just another steam feature that would not contribute worthwhile to the pc gaming market.

valve has made some great developments over the years for the pc gaming community. but they reached the point when they have a monopol on the pc market. the bigger a company gets, the less they are dependent on their customer.

let me give you an example:
when borderlands 2 was released for 49,99€ on steam I thought: why should I buy this online? I can get it for the same price as a real copy with booklet and all. so I went to the next shop and bought the game for 44€, and it was the special edition that cost 59,99€ on steam. and this was not the only occasion.

but I guess it has no use to think or even critic this whole thing since there is no choice. unless you turn off your computer.

oh one last thing:
a lot of people said this would give modders more resources for their mods. but here`s the thing: if a mod is really really good, it will draw attention, get supported and become a full game on its own like dota 2, portal 1 & 2, garrys mod and many others. and I don`t care about DLC. the last thing we need in gaming is more DLC.

[Tux]

Valve did this based on unprecedented empirical research and feedback over several years....

in its own modding community.

just an FYI

[76561198192850063]

Well whatever they did to prepare this, they did literally nothing on PR, and even more important nothing on curating.

could you post any link where you got that information?

[Tux]

Originally posted by chewchew_the_cannibal:

Well whatever they did to prepare this, they did literally nothing on PR, and even more important nothing on curating.

could you post any link where you got that information?

They under estimated the readiness of the general gaming community for something like this.

[76561198192850063]

It`s not only the `general readiness`, the point that really troubled the people was valves awful terms. the general lack of any services that would ensure quality and security.

still, can you post any link where you got your information about valves research and feedback?

[Tux]

Originally posted by chewchew_the_cannibal:

It`s not only the `general readiness`, the point that really troubled the people was valves awful terms. the general lack of any services that would ensure quality and security.

still, can you post any link where you got your information about valves research and feedback?

Explain to me without looking it up how its different from Valves own modding community which pays for mods and is extreemly successful.

[76561198192850063]

Why should I answer your question, when you are ignoring mine?

[Tux]

Originally posted by chewchew_the_cannibal:

Why should I answer your question, when you are ignoring mine?

Ah my bad I missed the question. Sorry but I can not. It is buried in a few long video interviews.

You are however free to think I am just pulling this out of my ass if it makes you feel better

[76561198192850063]

I don`t mind if those video interviews are very long. I am happy to get my hands on as much material related to the paid mods topic as possible