What do you think of the paid modding model employed by Valve?

Curious to know the biggest reasons you all are either for or against paid modding. Please select your biggest issue.

I don't see "horse shit" in the options. Fix that and I'll vote

I voted the clusterfuck option. I am fine with a donate option on the mod creators site so I can give them some money if I feel the mod was worth it but I doubt many mods would be worth real money and I think paying for all of them is a bad idea. Also them only getting 25% if they were paid is also too low.

I think they should pursue a strategy of monetizing the modders and not the people buying mods ... by a strict interpretation of the DMCA it is illegal to mod software (whether they are selling it or offering it for free), it just isn't to the advantage of most companies to pursue the modders legally ...

however, they could offer modders a license to mod ... charge them $100 modding fee but allow them to do any free mods with that license ... they would still be prohibited from selling mods or monetizing them in any fashion (including donations) without violating the modder license agreement (at which point they could be dealt with legally) ... the developers would control who is modding their software this way ... the modders have a firm legal way to mod for others ... and the user base continues to get access to free mods ... that would seem to be the best win-win-win for everyone

One thing I get pretty annoyed about is that creators often don't get enough for their work. Music Industry does that. Writers in Movies as well, not that I think writers do a great job most of the time... but there are some I feel deserves more.

There's also issues of mods possibly fucking up. If they're gonna do this, they need to ensure that it works without issues, but they won't because it's impossible.

The people selling the mods know what they're getting themselves into. So do the people buying them. There is always going to be free mods, and paid mods, this just makes it so mod creators don't have to rely on donations. Now they can have both!

I somehow doubt all of the people selling mods know what they're getting themselves into.

Surely, the scammers might. There are already people uploading things not their own to sell. But I don't think some of these people think about the fact that their mod might be fucked by other mods or something to make it not work and be filled with complaints... like some of the indie devs that make crap and then go on a rant on their boards... happens a lot recently.

Just a massive clusterfuck of legal/moral issues.

- Valve taking a greedy-as-fuck 75%
- Mod creators using other mods as a base / compilations - who gets paid?
- Locking previously free mods behind a paywall (should be new content ONLY)

Where is the "I couldn't care less" option?

MavericK96 said:

Just a massive clusterfuck of legal/moral issues.

- Valve taking a greedy-as-fuck 75%
- Mod creators using other mods as a base / compilations - who gets paid?
- Locking previously free mods behind a paywall (should be new content ONLY)

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Your first bullet point is entirely incorrect. Valve takes 30% the same as anything else sold on Steam.

I'm for paid mod content as long as a) mod creators are free to release content that costs nothing as well and b) Valve works through all the other questionable issues reasonably quickly. I think that mod content creators being able to easily monetize their work if they want to is a good thing.

Yippee38 said:

Where is the "I couldn't care less" option?

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Just casually browsing the PC gaming forums then? Because if you are a PC gamer, not sure why you would care less about something which will result in huge consequences for PC gaming in the long-term.

I don't get my mods from Steam, so I don't care. It's pretty unlikely that I'll pay for mods, so why should I care?

On top of that, if nobody pays for mods, who cares if they charge for them? The problem is that people WILL pay for them, thus re-enforcing mod makers to charge for them

GearChoices said:

Just casually browsing the PC gaming forums then? Because if you are a PC gamer, not sure why you would care less about something which will result in huge consequences for PC gaming in the long-term.

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People are overreacting. Valve and Bethesda only decides what to do with their own games, they do not decide what happens to other games. If Bethesda wants to implement the concept of selling user created contents, so be it. That's their product, they are free to do whatever they want with the product. And consumers are free not to purchase their product if they do not agree to it.

PC gaming is open and diverse with everyone doing their own stuff, there's no one single entity at the top that tells everyone what to do, and it will continue being what it is.

MavericK96 said:

Just a massive clusterfuck of legal/moral issues.

- Valve taking a greedy-as-fuck 75%
- Mod creators using other mods as a base / compilations - who gets paid?
- Locking previously free mods behind a paywall (should be new content ONLY)

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So here is the interesting situation regarding this. Let's use SKSE (Skyrim Scripter Extender ) in a hypothetical example due to its familiarity (obviously we do not know their stance on the issue, nor is it important for the sake of discussion). SKSE is an independent distribution and has does not include any of Bethesda's actual Skyrim IP in it.

Currently it seems Valve's stance is that mods dependent upon other mods are fine as long as those dependencies are not distributued (and sold) without permission. This means all mods that require SKSE can be distributed and sold even if SKSE's owners hypothetical are against it.

However what if SKSE were to sell outside of the workshop indepedent of Valve/Bethesda and therefore take a much larger profit share? Or is the double standard in this situation due to the amount of lawyers each party has?

Also I'm going to use companion mods as a way to show why proper policing is going to be a nightmare. Companion mods can be repackaged rather easily. For instance take an exisitng companion mod and adjust the actual companion in terms of visuals (or even take someone's elses and make minor adjustments). Suddenly verification of infringement isn't so simple. Now factor in the sheer amount of relatively minor adjustments people can make and the number of submissions.

Lastly in terms of infringement relates to recovery of damages. It's unlikely practically that the infringer would pay if he has already withdrawn his earnings. Valve is also unlikely to directly pay out for infringement. Are buyers even going to be getting direct refunds or just steam wallet refunds (which is just store credit...) upon removal? So actual IP owners would have to spend effort to police submissions without actually being able to recover anything or potentially have others profit from their work? What about abandoned mods, who will police those? Or is it a race to claim (with a few adjustments) and to sell those as your own?

Hornet said:

People are overreacting. Valve and Bethesda only decides what to do with their own games, they do not decide what happens to other games. If Bethesda wants to implement the concept of selling user created contents, so be it. That's their product, they are free to do whatever they want with the product. And consumers are free not to purchase their product if they do not agree to it.

PC gaming is open and diverse with everyone doing their own stuff, there's no one single entity at the top that tells everyone what to do, and it will continue being what it is.

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Valve and Bethesda are however industry leaders in their respective related areas (Valve is arguably a monopoly in its). It would be naive to think what they do in this situation has no indirect impact on the industry as a whole.

limitedaccess said:

Valve and Bethesda are however industry leaders in their respective related areas (Valve is arguably a monopoly in its). It would be naive to think what they do in this situation has no indirect impact on the industry as a whole.

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Valve can only do what the publishers want to do. Therefore it's not reasonable to expect them to say no to Bethesda if this is what they wanted, otherwise Bethesda will just take their business elsewhere. It is also important to note that paid mods requires legal agreement from the publisher, otherwise they are all illegal.

As for Bethesda, I don't see how they could make other publishers do the same thing. Perhaps what they can do is to prove if this business model can be a successful one, or not.

If it is a success, then you should probably be taking this up with modding community, and consumer, as they are the one doing the selling and buying at the end of the day.


But as I said, every company are free to adopt their own business model of choice. For example, despite Steam being dominant and a DRM, we still see plenty of dev. offering DRM free version of their games too. As for those publishers who adopt DRM, they would have done the same with or without Steam.

Likewise, when it comes to paid mods, Bethesda would have done the same with or without Steam. Heck, Epic is doing the same with the new Unreal Tournament before Bethesda did this.

Valve should just add a "Donate" button on every creator's/mod's page. Then, if someone donated, split the money (not using the current %s though). If someone donates, then the split should be something like 60% user, 30% publisher/developer, 10% Valve. I support giving the developer a good chunk since they developed the mod tools; however, Valve is nothing more than an enabler.

Yeah... a pay-as-you-want model I could get behind. I'm not a big fan the current implementation.

I think it helps modders get some extra income and recognition.

I think it encourages publishers and developers to make games moddable.

I think the current cut taken by valve/Zenimax is too high. The modders should get closer to 50%.

I think the store should include free mods (Not sure if it does, but I get the impression it doesn't).

I just don't believe, given their already awful policing of early access, that valve has the capacity to police people stealing and reselling other peoples work. I think artist theft will be rampant and everyone will get burned except valve, the publishers and the thieves.

I expect this to go over as well as it did with the launch of Starcraft2. I get the idea of "helping the modders get rewarded". But its really just a cash grab and just like with starcraft2 I expect to see this disappear. With all that hate this is getting on the net I just can't see this lasting. I think its just a testcase to see if gamers have been brain washed by DLC enough to start paying for more stuff that used to be free.

Cod said:

Valve should just add a "Donate" button on every creator's/mod's page.

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This an idea I could get behind. I think the percentages could and should be better since if the modders just got donations from their own site it would be 100% going to the modders. So I'm not really sure how they came up with the numbers that they did except for greed.

Hornet said:

Valve can only do what the publishers want to do. Therefore it's not reasonable to expect them to say no to Bethesda if this is what they wanted, otherwise Bethesda will just take their business elsewhere. It is also important to note that paid mods requires legal agreement from the publisher, otherwise they are all illegal.

As for Bethesda, I don't see how they could make other publishers do the same thing. Perhaps what they can do is to prove if this business model can be a successful one, or not.

If it is a success, then you should probably be taking this up with modding community, and consumer, as they are the one doing the selling and buying at the end of the day.


But as I said, every company are free to adopt their own business model of choice. For example, despite Steam being dominant and a DRM, we still see plenty of dev. offering DRM free version of their games too. As for those publishers who adopt DRM, they would have done the same with or without Steam.

Likewise, when it comes to paid mods, Bethesda would have done the same with or without Steam. Heck, Epic is doing the same with the new Unreal Tournament before Bethesda did this.

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I agree that Valve is just being Valve and allowing a company to sell DLC on steam for the normal cost. Its Bethesda that is doing the testcase to prove to the industry that unlike during the launch of SC2 we are now ready to pay for user made content that used to be free. Its Bethesda being greedy, all those mods currently bring value to their games which helps to keep them getting sales. The fact that this is not good enough anymore proves that they want more for doing nothing. Its greed. I would hope the gaming community blasts this like they did with SC2 but I have a feeling that enough people have been brainwashed into paying for DLC that they have forgotten about SC2 and don't know that for the majority of mods you can donate to the creator if you really feel they deserve to be rewarded.

Cod said:

I support giving the developer a good chunk since they developed the mod tools

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But I already paid the developer for the mod tools when I bought the game in the first place. Why am I paying them again every single time I want to give money to a content creator? Why are they getting any money at all in this transaction to begin with? All parties involved have already paid both the developer and the publisher for creating the modding tools and providing the assets. They don't deserve a cut of every donation I give to a mod creator. They already took their cut at the start and haven't done anything new since then to warrant additional payments. Valve is the payment processor and the marketplace. They can take a marginal cut of the transaction for providing an otherwise free marketplace. The publisher and the developer have done nothing new at all in this transaction and are just leeching off of the willingness of others to support content creators. Bethesda doesn't deserve, and should not be receiving, a single cent of money I give to a mod creator.

It doesn't really bother me either way and I honestly think it's really overblown at this point. If someone wants to charge for their hard work, then so be it. Nobody is forcing you to buy/use it. As long as the owner of the IP is on board I don't see what the problem is.

I'm OK with it so long as the pay for mods are really worth paying for and are top quality. It's not like now all mods for all games will cost money so it is no big deal to me.

I think it's fine as long as modders get more of the money. 75% seems fair.

Rizen said:

Your first bullet point is entirely incorrect. Valve takes 30% the same as anything else sold on Steam.

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Yeah, I just saw that from the Bethesda post...still think that 25% to the modder is BS, so I guess ultimately I should revise to "Bethesda/Valve" rather than just Valve.

Hornet said:

Valve can only do what the publishers want to do. Therefore it's not reasonable to expect them to say no to Bethesda if this is what they wanted, otherwise Bethesda will just take their business elsewhere. It is also important to note that paid mods requires legal agreement from the publisher, otherwise they are all illegal.

As for Bethesda, I don't see how they could make other publishers do the same thing. Perhaps what they can do is to prove if this business model can be a successful one, or not.

If it is a success, then you should probably be taking this up with modding community, and consumer, as they are the one doing the selling and buying at the end of the day.


But as I said, every company are free to adopt their own business model of choice. For example, despite Steam being dominant and a DRM, we still see plenty of dev. offering DRM free version of their games too. As for those publishers who adopt DRM, they would have done the same with or without Steam.

Likewise, when it comes to paid mods, Bethesda would have done the same with or without Steam. Heck, Epic is doing the same with the new Unreal Tournament before Bethesda did this.

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Valve and Bethesda of course cannot force their propositions on others (nor really would for example Bethesda even care in this case) but by being industry leaders their actions carry influence. The higher profile of those involved the more the industry watches. If Valve/Bethesda managed to successfully push this it carries a lot of weight in the industry, and other companies will take notice. By comparison on the other extreme a random Indie developer doing something few people even know or care about not so much.

Companies can do what they want and those affected by the same virtue can react how they want. In this case the strong negative reaction influenced the decision of the companies involved. What if no one said anything? Well this is hardly a high cost endevour so even minimal revenue generation would still be profitable.

This is why I do not see why you suggest that people are "overreacting." If those affected do not like the situation they should make their voice heard which is what happened. Valve/Bethesda can then respond how they see fit and which they did.

In some ways it may have been beneficial for the "anti" crowd that it was Valve/Bethesda rolling out this initiative with Skrim. Due the the sheer popularity of the involved this allowed massive coverage and snowballing of reaction. Had they actually done this with a much lesser title their likely would not have been as strong of a negative reaction simply due to relative apathy.

Firstly, if modders want to get paid for their work then they can just as easily get a job as a professional dev or setup their own indie studio. People who started modding Skyrim before this debacle knew from the outset that their efforts were for their own personal satisfaction and the betterment of a game they enjoyed, so I don't buy the "won't someone think of the modders" crocodile tears being spewed by apologists on the internet. They weren't forced to develop mods against their will, they chose to do it knowing that there was no monetary compensation.

Secondly, it is beyond repugnant that an AAA publisher like Bethesda could potentially profit from the community fixing its broken ass games. SkyUI, which is essential for the PC version of Skyrim, was set to be monetized. I can just see EA and Ubisoft execs rubbing their hands with glee at the very thought of cutting down on Q&A costs whilst also generating another revenue stream from having the community fix their next broken BF or Ass Creed sequels.

Blade-Runner said:

Firstly, if modders want to get paid for their work then they can just as easily get a job as a professional dev or setup their own indie studio.

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Where are you from that getting a job as a professional developer or starting a business is as simple as filling out an online form with an upload box and waiting to get paid? I am interested in relocating.

CEpeep said:

Where are you from that getting a job as a professional developer or starting a business is as simple as filling out an online form with an upload box and waiting to get paid? I am interested in relocating.

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Nitpick much? If they want to be paid as a professional developer then they should get a job as a professional developer, no one put a gun to their heads to force them to develop free content.

Blade-Runner said:

Nitpick much? If they want to be paid as a professional developer then they should get a job as a professional developer, no one put a gun to their heads to force them to develop free content.

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How is that a nitpick? What you said is not true and is in fact the reason why modders would find the marketplace idea attractive to begin with. If if actually were as easy to get a job producing content you enjoy or start a business making fun stuff and getting paid there would be no need for a paid mod marketplace in the first place.

I'd quit my job in a heartbeat (even though I like my current job) if there were people ready to pay me a living wage to make whatever I enjoyed making, but that's not actually how the world works.

CEpeep said:

How is that a nitpick? What you said is not true and is in fact the reason why modders would find the marketplace idea attractive to begin with. If if actually were as easy to get a job producing content you enjoy or start a business making fun stuff and getting paid there would be no need for a paid mod marketplace in the first place.

I'd quit my job in a heartbeat (even though I like my current job) if there were people ready to pay me a living wage to make whatever I enjoyed making, but that's not actually how the world works.

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You are nitpicking. Here, I will rephrase the statement to your liking.

Firstly, if modders want to get paid for their work then should get a job as a professional dev or setup their own indie studio.

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There, now you can focus on the point of my post, i.e. that no one forces people to produce content which they are not going to be compensated for. That's how the world works in respect of modding and how it has always worked, they knew that from the outset so if they wanted to get paid they should have directed their passions elsewhere.

Blade-Runner said:

Firstly, if modders want to get paid for their work then they can just as easily get a job as a professional dev or setup their own indie studio.

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The irony of that statement is number of indie studios which wouldn't exist if it wasn't for alternate business models such as Kickstarter or, you know, Steam.

Blade-Runner said:

SkyUI, which is essential for the PC version of Skyrim

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Hardly "essential". I certainly never installed it. But then I'm not one of those mod purists who won't even play a vanilla game without adding SweetFX or some shit.

Anyway it's all fixed now, right?

Blade-Runner said:

That's how the world works in respect of modding and how it has always worked, they knew that from the outset so if they wanted to get paid they should have directed their passions elsewhere.

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That's not even right either, and actually runs counter to mods at their earliest. Many of the most prolific modders of early engines like Quake ended up being hired as game developers precisely because of the high-quality mods they produced. If they had "directed their passions elsewhere" like some kind of chump, they wouldn't have gotten a job in the industry. Not to mention that you'd certainly have less of the mods you love if you went around telling every modder to "direct their passions elsewhere" if they care about being able to eat food and pay bills. Somewhere there is a middle ground between hiring all the modders and throwing them all to the wolves. I don't think Valve did a very good job, but at least they were trying to blaze a new trail.