Oh no! Not this again! Valve Paid Mods

[Artorias]

It looks like it slip from everyone's radar but Valve has revive the Paid Mods starting with DotA 2. I was scrolling down my facebook news feed when I saw an article on Kotaku that a mod creator apologizes for using someones mod assets for his own paid mod. This could be the beginning of another dramatic event in the PC platform. I think it won't be long for Valve to also implement this on other popular games like TES, Fallout, and many more. Here's a quote about the article:

Quote

Slowly but surely, Valve is wading back into the murky waters of letting people charge for mods. Unfortunately, it seems that in some ways, history is repeating itself.

Last week Valve launched DOTA 2's new Custom Game Pass functionality. Instead of allowing mod makers to charge for the whole of their creations—potentially roping them off from longtime free players—Custom Game Pass grants additional features within pre-existing free mods. So basically, it’s kinda like a mini-subscription, except for use within specific well-established DOTA 2 mods. In the case of the first mod to sign on with Valve’s new program, co-op player-vs-environment RPG Roshpit Champions, this means extra character slots, a slight XP boost, and some other goodies for a once-per-month fee of $0.99.

Source: http://steamed.kotaku.com/creator-of-dota-2s-first-paid-custom-game-apologizes-fo-1766279745?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

[CtW]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[PlayStation 2]

The hell do you expect from Valve at this point.

[spartaman64]

if they gave more percent of the payment to the modder there isnt really a big problem in fact i think it could be a good thing

[Artorias]

Volvo NotLikeThis

[Rolfejc]

 

 

That is my only response. 

[Adreyu]

i seriously wouldnt mind if steam wasn't taking basically all the profits, its like how anything lower than high-mid tier bands wont see anything off of record sales because the label takes it all, and then charges for tour costs anyway.

[Techicolors]

i'm not surprised valve is trying this again. 

[Unhelpful]

Yes. Valve is a shitty company. With a couple good products.

[Killmeplsok]

IMO the thing that Valve did wrong wasn't the idea of paid mods itself, a lot of modders deserves kickbacks of some kind for their hard work (although I do agree that a lot don't too) and it's nice to be able to feed yourself doing something you love, the only problem I had with the previous implementation was modder himself gets a mere 30% out of his work and Bethesda getting 40% for doing nothing (30% for Valve, that I have no problem with, they charge 30% for anything on the steam platform so I don't think it has to be any different for mods). As long as modders gets a reasonable share of it I'm fine with paid mods.

[Gale]

Based on some of the responses I've been reading in this thread, I don't think people are understanding this correctly.

 

The creator of this mod was using someone else's assets. Now, this was fine when the mod was 100% free. But since his mod got accepted into the Custom Game Pass program (where players can choose to pay for extra stuff in those mods), the contract stated that everything the creator used was supposed to be his, or he got permission from the original creator to be in this paid program. He missed this part. He has since rectified the problem.

 

As a side note, the feedback that Valve got when they first announced this Custom Game Pass program was actually pretty positive. I'll paste some quotes from Dota 2 mod developers:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4ajcaz/supporting_custom_game_developers/

 

Quote

As the developer of Dota IMBA...

I'll avoid the pro/against discussion here and I'll just say how this impacts me. You can judge the effect of these news based on this impact, if you will.

This is a complete gamechanger for me. I don't know if the money one can earn from these Battle Passes is enough to live off - depends a lot on what's our cut versus Valve's, and on the amount of people who would be willing to donate - but...

 

Even if it means a degradation on my income, I would GLADLY quit my job to develop IMBA full-time if it gets a battle pass. Working on my passion project and being able to call it "my job"? Holy fuck. It's AMAZING. It's the best fucking feeling in the universe. I can't properly describe it.

 

I don't yet know what I could add to a pvp game like IMBA, beyond audiovisual changes, that wouldn't be straight pay2win, but holy shit, I'm going to brainstorm for ideas RIGHT NOW. These are the best news I've heard on the last 2 years.

 

For the people who play, this also means good changes - currently, the gamemode has way more bugs than I would like it to, and the rate at which I add new heroes is way too slow. This would quickly change for the better if I didn't have to have a real job.

 

Thanks, Valve. I'm a bit salty that you didn't even send an e-mail, and I only heard these news from a secondary source, but holy shit, that really doesn't matter right now. I hope I can make my game good enough that we both get a kick out of this.

 

Thanks to anyone who cared enough to read this. Have fun!

 

EDIT: heck, I might even be able to start my second custom game project this decade! Now that would be a shocker

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

As a developer of Dota 2 Horde Mode (with Nye)...

 

I doubt this would get enough money for me to quit my job (I'm a well-paid web developer already), but it would absolutely allow me to justify to my wife the ridiculous amount of time I've been putting into it over the last month.

 

And it isn't hard to come up with ways to incentivize Horde Mode for paying players: come up with new customization options for the maps, letting them choose things like what kind of spawns to enable, new difficulty options, etc.

 

 

 

[That Norwegian Guy]

5 minutes ago, Killmeplsok said:

IMO the thing that Valve did wrong wasn't the idea of paid mods itself, a lot of modders deserves kickbacks of some kind for their hard work (although I do agree that a lot don't too) and it's nice to be able to feed yourself doing something you love, the only problem I had with the previous implementation was modder himself gets a mere 30% out of his work and Bethesda getting 40% for doing nothing (30% for Valve, that I have no problem with, they charge 30% for anything on the steam platform so I don't think it has to be any different for mods). As long as modders gets a reasonable share of it I'm fine with paid mods.

Pretty much this. People who think mods should be always free have never made a proper effort modding anything and need to get out.

 

But the HUGE and disproportional publisher and distributor cut is what can fuck right off. I'd never put up any mod for money if I was getting any less than 80%. Then I'd rather give it away for free. This is just Valve being leeches and parasites like literally every distributor and publisher in digital games and music already are. But this shows how much gall the leeches have for everyone to see. And I thank Valve for giving the matter publicity, if nothing else.

 

You're buying music with an affiliation to EMI/ Warner etc? Well then you're already no better than paying for mods.

You're buying video games from Ubisoft/ EA/ Activision/ Blizzard on launch day for sixty bucks? Same thing.

 

Lots of creative talent getting bloodsucked by zero-talent accountants, leeches and shills. And you support the latter more than you do the prior.

[Delicieuxz]

I suspect that paid mods will be good for the gaming industry, and gamers. Paid mods will give opportunity to content creators to-be, and will allow content creators to work on their hobby and passion as a paid job. And for those who just work on it as a hobby, it will encourage many of them to aim for a higher level of refinement.

 

Paid mods will encourage more custom content, more support for custom content, larger custom content, and higher quality custom content. It will also encourage game developers and publishers to include mod tools with their projects.

 

Despite doubters' concerns, I think Valve understands that the greater health and benefit for modding and people who play using mods rest with making modding a more viable for modders, and more reliable for mod-users, part of PC gaming.

 

27 minutes ago, JoeyDM said:

Yes. Valve is a shitty company. With a couple good products.

Valve sets the bar for gaming higher than any other company in the gaming business. It's thanks to Valve that gaming is where it is today, and that it's not still  dominated by publishers wielding a strangle-hold over every developer. Valve are why there are so many, and so many successful independent developers. They are also why massive sales occur for gamers every season. And amongst all the PC clients out there, Valve's is by leagues, the most refined, the most functional, and the most progressive.

[Misanthrope]

So a game that started as a warcraft mod now charges for mods, we come full circle it seems: An ouroboros of cynicism. 

[Delicieuxz]

27 minutes ago, Killmeplsok said:

IMO the thing that Valve did wrong wasn't the idea of paid mods itself, a lot of modders deserves kickbacks of some kind for their hard work (although I do agree that a lot don't too) and it's nice to be able to feed yourself doing something you love, the only problem I had with the previous implementation was modder himself gets a mere 30% out of his work and Bethesda getting 40% for doing nothing (30% for Valve, that I have no problem with, they charge 30% for anything on the steam platform so I don't think it has to be any different for mods). As long as modders gets a reasonable share of it I'm fine with paid mods.

Valve said that the publisher sets the ratio which is split between the publisher and the modder, and that Valve take a flat 30%. So the 40% to Beth / 30% to modders was Bethesda's call.

[TrigrH]

the cancer has grown back

[WolfDeville]

Why the fuck is everyone so upset about this shit? The modders that want to release their shit for free, WILL RELEASE THEIR SHIT FOR FREE. And the modders that want to be paid for their work, WILL CHARGE FOR THE MOD, WHERETHER IT'S ON STEAM WORKSHOP OR FUCKING NOT.

[TrigrH]

9 minutes ago, TehStranger? said:

Why the fuck is everyone so upset about this shit? The modders that want to release their shit for free, WILL RELEASE THEIR SHIT FOR FREE. And the modders that want to be paid for their work, WILL CHARGE FOR THE MOD, WHERETHER IT'S ON STEAM WORKSHOP OR FUCKING NOT.

Exactly and when its not on steam the modder gets all they money they are entitled to. There is no excuse for the person who fucking created the mod to get less than 55% with no more than 25% going to valve for actually running/creating and maintaining the platform and no more than 20% going to the developer of the game for enabling mod support and really not doing anything.

[zacRupnow]

Any form of a Subscription Payment is bad, and that seems to be Valves current approach.

 

How about we take a look at this from people who are actually part of the modding community before we all scream 'Nooooo Fuck Valve! All mods should be Free!'

 

 

 

[Humbug]

1 hour ago, Gale said:

As a side note, the feedback that Valve got when they first announced this Custom Game Pass program was actually pretty positive

it was popular amongst modders / content creators. The problem is that it was not popular amongst gamers. Paid mods absolutely has to happen and it's a natural evolution. But I think that valve and Bethesda did something very stupid by launching it for an existing game (Skyrim). So the community already had a sense of entitlement that everything should be free. If they had launched using a new game then people would have accepted the fact that some mod creators choose to charge and others choose to distribute freely. Also the program got a bad rep because some people like Total Biscuit started spreading lies about how Valve was taking majority of revenue whereas they were actually taking their normal cut for steam transactions.

right now obviously the need of the hour is a proper system to prevent people monetizing other modders work without permission. I struggle to think of a good system to make that happen, if publishers and valve cannot solve that problem I struggle to see this going forward.

[EChondo]

I'm 100% against paid mods, mainly because it'll only ruin modding going forward. The modding community has been open and free for the past 20+ years without a cent being asked. When money gets involved, especially with this kind of thing, people will only care about the money which will lead to secrecy, stealing, and we'll end up with a Early Access version of mods flooding in trying to nickle and dime everything little thing. Sure, there'll be a few good mods here and there just like there's a few good games coming from EA/Greenlight, but the majority will be junk. Steam already has tons of issues with EA and adding paid mods ontop would be a catastrophe.

 

Also just like to point out that Skyrim has ~46,500 mods on the Nexus and Fallout 4 has ~8,900. That's almost 20% of Skyrim's mods and it's only been a little over 4 months since Fallout 4's release and the GECK/Creation Kit isn't even out yet. No one is requiring a damn thing from anybody, but I've donated already to some great mods and I plan on buying the lifetime membership to Nexus with my next paycheck.

 

Money does not fuel the modding community, it'll only ruin it if it becomes required. I'm all for a donation button on Steam Workshop like Nexus has, but anything more than that and things are going to go downhill.

[Humbug]

31 minutes ago, EChondo said:

Money does not fuel the modding community, it'll only ruin it if it becomes required. I'm all for a donation button on Steam Workshop like Nexus has, but anything more than that and things are going to go downhill.

But also wouldn't the financial rewards allow some talented modders to justify spending more hours and in larger groups to create content? And that will blur the lines between what can be done by a mod vs more ambitious content?

 

I see more people being able to make money off the PC gaming industry as a natural evolution. You are still allowed to distribute your content free either via steam or elsewhere.

39 minutes ago, EChondo said:

Sure, there'll be a few good mods here and there just like there's a few good games coming from EA/Greenlight, but the majority will be junk.

But majority of mods are already junk...

[Ridska]

 

 

This entire situation in one video.

 

[Master Disaster]

At this point we already have paid mods being sold every single day on Steam, its called Steam Greenlight.

 

A lot of these games are free public assessts cobbled together in a free engine by rank amateurs then sold on Steam as original content.

 

Valve went sour years ago, Gaben turned into Scrooge McDuck and now cares about his bank valence above everything else so its really not surprising he went down this path.

 

What is surprised is the very same people who got pissy over paid mods in the first place, and the same people who got pissy over PD2 and the whole pay2win fiasco seem to be fine with this which is essentially the 2 things combined...

 

Paid Mods - FUCK NO!

Pay2Win- FUCK NO!

Mods that contain P2W elements - Sure, why not!

 

The hypocrisy of people sometimes is staggering.

[Delicieuxz]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Valve went sour years ago, Gaben turned into Scrooge McDuck and now cares about his bank valence above everything else so its really not surprising he went down this path.

I don't see it. Valve offers the best value in gaming through Steam's sales, gives quality F2P gaming, and gives Steamworks' usage for free to publishers / developers. There's nothing that changed in the past however many years: Valve / Steam has continually improved and expanded to give greater user /community tools, and also to devs / pubs. Valve's interest looks to be doing everything they do to the best quality it can be done, which simultaneously is good for business.