Join the steam groups for boycotting Steam Worksop mods.

The ramifications for this will spread beyond Valve, with people far more cynical than them (EA/Ubisoft). They don't have to do anything and reap in 70+ percent of revenue.

Blood in the water.

Some people are too idealistic. "Don't like it don't buy it" , "Wait and See" ... WTF? We said the exact same thing and now look at DLCs, Microtransactions, Early Access, Yearly rehashes and so on. If there is something wrong, you should complain about it before you are trapped in a Limbo and it's too late to escape.

There are already people who've removed their mods from Nexus and now they are on Steam workshop. Most people are not honest... They just want to make money. Look at Early Access... Most of the mods will be broken made by some amateur to earn some cash. Forget about refund after 24 hours too. So, if devs decide to update their game,,, good luck!

First we had to wait for mods to fix buggy games from companies like Bathesda. Now, we'll pay modders to fix devs crap and the worst part is, devs will also be making money. More broken game = more profit for devs. Everything seems far fetched then it becomes too late to change anything. Few years ago we used to laugh that one day games will be sold as DLCs and now it's happening. Early Access, DLCs, Episodic releases and so on. If they really want to help modders then give us an option to donate. Steam workshop is also going to hurt honest websites/communities like Nexus.

Thanks for the site. Looks good.

The worst thing is people re-packaging mods and claiming they made them and selling them. I really doubt anyone would give permission to someone to use their mod assets to profit off. This may kill a lot of good mods from being made in the future.

The greed of valve knows no limits. 75% money they take for doing nothing, lol?

My problem with this is that it's not easy to create a game that's accommodating for SDK use on behalf of the customer. Hell - it's hard enough for EA and Ubisoft to create games worth modding for at all, whatsoever. If it was so easy, every single game would have an SDK no problem. Instead, most of EA/Ubisoft's games are not mod-friendly at all. Most games in general today aren't.

If modding capabilities and communities became a lot more robust and rampant, I'm perfectly fine with a few crappy mods having a price tag. If a game isn't worth its pricetag and you're uber reliant on mods for a fun experience, maybe you should focus on supporting games that you don't have to rely on the community in order to have a worthwhile experience.

Furthermore, maybe we'd get some great mods from people fueled by ambition and profit instead of legions of amateur lazy mods built for free? I can't help but feel people are focusing on the negative aspects (which are few) instead of focusing on the positive aspects (which are many).

From a modder who has now apparently left the scene.

My key argument to Bethesda (putting my own head on the chopping block at the time) was that this model incentivizes small, cheap to produce items (time-wise) than it does the large, full-scale mods that this system has the opportunity of championing. It does not reward the best and the biggest.

Looking at the steam workshop, it's primarily artists selling what can be described as microtransactions.

Perhaps having been conditioned into a cynical prick, I always see the glass half empty, but I think the exact opposite of what is suggested will happen.

Rather than a flourishing community, if someone like Ubisoft latches on, I foresee them making an obligatory charge for items accepted, clamping mods to uplay or sending out cease and desist to third party sites.

I don't think we will see big impressive mods, rather smaller chopped up content that will make console sold DLC look quaint in comparison.

If that's his key point to his argument, I'd say his argument is in the toilet. Do you know what also doesn't reward the best and biggest mods? Forcing them to release it for free. A mod with some effort put into it is clearly going to stand tall above the majority of microtransaction-based mods in terms of popularity, no different than they do now. People who make big mods are people who want to get hired for what they like to do - they want something they can put on their portfolio. Developers like Valve hire directly from the modding community. That has always been the incentive, and added profitability doesn't change things. Focusing on microtransaction-based mods unfortunately isn't going to get anyone hired at their dream job.

Mods are mostly microtransaction-sized anyways. If his argument is implying that this is shifting the mod scene from releasing large mods to exclusively small mods, then I'd say he's full of it because we all know that 99% of mods out there are small as is. If something that the community wants is easy enough to implement, someone will release it for free. Free modding content isn't going to completely disappear.

I'm a cynical bastard, but all the big "shifts" in the gaming industry that could most possibly damage my game experience have already happened. We have already created so many systems that can and have been abused (the aforementioned DLC, F2P microtransactions, rehashes, Kickstarting, Early Access), but in the grand scheme of things, these systems have done good things for the industry. We need to remember that a lot of these systems are the logical answer to an unstoppable problem: piracy. Instead of PC dev's giving up and going to consoles to make profit because of rampant PC piracy - these systems let developers make profits on their own terms without them having to restructure their entire business into grilling pirates or making dumbed-down games for consoles.

Do I think the system is perfect? **** no. I just don't think it's the abomination everyone is making it out to be. I think giving modders the opportunity to monetize their mods is a great idea at its core. There are probably a million things about this process that needs to be done differently, but the most important is that the percentages of profits needs to be better split up.

I'm on board for modders being able to get paid for their content. I think the real problem here is that you can clearly tell Valve didn't do this for the modders' benefit, but for their own profit. The entire system is so poorly thought out it looks like a scam, especially when Vale is getting 75%. Why would they release such a broken system? If they really cared about the modders they would have waited to work out the problems. They did not. They released a broken system where they receive 75% of the money. This isn't about modders getting what they deserve, it's pure Valve greed. It seems like Valve is now realizing it can capitalize on it's semi-monopoly of PC games and content by ripping people off. That's the real problem here, not modders getting paid. I'm glad it's backfiring. Hopefully they pull it and either let it die or at least find a better way of doing it.

True - in this specific case, it really does seem like money is the exclusive goal. Even if it backfires now, I'd be really surprised if we didn't see this idea resurge at another point in time in a more successful manner. Maybe next time they'll ask the modding community what standards they require from such a system before randomly shitting out a system that relies on profiting from them their efforts. Valve somehow got the idea that their all of their ideas are gold and they can exercise their power without minding the community. I'm glad that they said they're only testing things and will remove the system if gamers as a whole don't like it. It just would've been nice if they worked alongside modders on this. Pitting modders against each other on this subject is an awful idea because they're a community - they'll stick together.

I don't know if anyone have seen this but, this is hilarious!

All over now

Removing Payment Feature From Skyrim Workshop

28 April - Alden

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.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.

But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.

Maybe now that they are done with worthless mod payment features they can get on to actually making games. Enough with worthless money gouging ideas.

Oh, I doubt they are "done" with it. I'm willing to bet Fallout 4 ships with this wonderful feature.

I think being able to sell mods is fine, some of them take a lot of work and the person making them should be able to claim some money if they want to. Of course taking 75% of the profit from them is way too much.

You don't have to buy crappy mods.

And don't say donate, very very few people actually donate.

When money involves things change for the worst mostly.

Valve got a heavy hit on it's reputation because of this kind of anti pc consumer tactic, It will haunt them for the years to come, it's a absolute disgusting tactic of them to make money of people. That gaben even remotely defended this and even allowed this to get through at any point in time says already enough about him and the trusth you should have in his company.

Making mod's is a hobby, giving them money because you appriciate them is fine, it can be done through donation. Demanding money for mods is not fine, you create a greedy community that only goes for the cash ( as you already saw directly when valve's drm platform called steam pushed this horrid shop forwards ).

It made high profile modders quit entirely, made a lot of modders throw there mods of the internet as they where affraid other people would sell there content for money ( which happened ) etc etc etc.

The fact that valve also wanted 50% of the cut is even more disgusting when you think about it.

I won't ever buy anything from valve anymore after they pulled this stunt. I lost all respect for the platform itself and the leader behind it. I have sended a e-mail towards steam support that i want to have copy's of every game without the need to access steam at any given time from which i paid for.

I'm switching towards gog now. And any game "like skyline cities" that isn't coming towards a drm free digital platform like gog will simple be pirated. They give me no other choice sadly.

That 75% take was outrageous. Gaming executives really like making money without doing anything.

I wonder how long it would take companies to release buggy unfinished games, then make money off of mods they release to fix them.

So I'll do now what I should have done right away. Locking this topic because of advertising, although the topic was very interesting.