Steam Workshop Now Supporting Paid Creations
www.gamesradar.com
  • Friendship@kbin.social
    23·
    11 months ago

    As with the several times they tried this before, this is a train wreck of an idea for so many reasons. While I do love the idea of mod creators getting to make money doing what they enjoy, from the consumer perspective this is bound to be awful… I don’t want to have to get nickel-and-dimed by what are essentially third party micro-transactions… with no grantee that the product I just bought will even work with the others I bought or that they will continue to be supported if the game gets patched a year later. Not to mention virtually zero quality control, leaving users to trust in reviews, AKA other customers who put their money on the line.

    And from the mod development side of things, this is going to make building off other mods a complete mess. Think of how many mods you have installed that have had other mods as requirements to work. Are those mods going to need to be bought by the user too? And are the mod creators going to have to set up some kind of revenue sharing with those dependency mods? What happens if a mod developer uses a free mod as a dependency, is that fair to the other mod creator? Do moders have the rights to request their content not be used by other mods? And if so what does that process look like and who arbitrates it? Having seen this tried before, it makes a mess and long term it will stifle collaboration leading to weaker mods.

    • AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org
      4·
      11 months ago

      I think those are all good points, but I think they’re also potentially surmountable ones; I think the key would be to be as restrictive as necessary for which mods are allowed to charge. If only a small fraction of the most clear cut and expansive mods can charge, maybe even hand-picked by the developer, I think that’s still a better state than it was before.

      Some potential examples: a mod isn’t allowed to charge if it has any mod dependency. Games supporting paid mods must support opt-out updates (steam already supports this easily via "beta branches) and mods have at least one version available to consumers that are guaranteed to work. Depending on the mod, it could be possible to do some automated regression testing, similar to how the Steam Deck verification works.

  • Tosti@feddit.nl
    19·
    11 months ago

    This will be epic in terms of the cluster fuck it can generate.

    Mod makers making more than the game creators, commercializing someone elses products, asset and mod theft and monetezation, revenue split…

    Lemme grab my popcorn.

  • vanquesse@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9·
    11 months ago

    It’s wild how many people who do not have mods published on nexus/workshop/bethesda are happy to speak on the behalf of modders.

    • pimento64@sopuli.xyz
      121·
      11 months ago

      I have mods published on the Nexus, and I feel confident in saying paid mods are degenerate and so are everyone who supports them.

  • Computerchairgeneral@kbin.social
    5·
    11 months ago

    On the one hand I’m not opposed to mod creators getting paid for their work. There are a lot of great Skyrim mods, released and upcoming, that I wouldn’t mind paying for. Total conversions like Enderal, giant content expansions like Beyond Skyrim, and especially a lot of the great companion mods. The pay what you want option seems like a good way to let people support mod creators while not creating a paywall. On the other hand I just don’t trust Bethesda to deal with all of the issues this is going to create and it’s hard to see how it doesn’t end up negatively impacting the wider modding community.