Are people really more in favor of modders getting 100% of $0 rather than 25% of $X?
Is there more to this debate that I'm missing?
1. Modders are hobbyists, not professionals. Many modders came right out and said they would no longer make mods under this system, because the pressure to charge means it becomes a job. They no longer would have the option to just walk away from the mod. 2. Piracy. Modders have explicitly made their mods available for free. Once you have a system where they can be charged for, you have freeloaders putting someone elses mods on steam to make money. Steam provided no protection against this, the only resolution would be filing an individual complaint or invoking DMCA, and Steam was leaving that entirely up to the mod owners to figure out. 3. This was seen as a hostile move towards Nexus, the biggest provider of mods for the games in question. As soon as this was announced, mod makers began removing their products from Nexus out of concern that they would be dishonestly put on the Steam store. As Nexus is an ad-supported service, fewer mods means less income, and it would not be due to a capitalistic business reason.
In the end, most modders don't WANT to be paid for their mods, because it's not a profession. I saw plenty of support for a donation system, however.
Make that possible and you'd then have some professional modders and some amateur ones.
Unless I'm missing something, nothing happened that would have forced mod makers to start charging, right?
That's an interesting perspective. Sounds like there are some valid criticisms of the system Valve has put in place.
To me it seems that gamers have cut off their nose to spite their own face in this regard. It seems to me that a paid modding ecosystem would be a big win in favor of gamers.
If lone hobbyists can improve a game so much, can you imagine if a studio of 5-10 could make a viable living from modding?
I think the worry is that the move would have killed the lone hobbyists. Even though you could argue that this feature is pure value-added as it doesn't stop anyone from modding the same way as before, it would have reshaped the community. So you'd have a few great mods by semi-professional studios but it could also discourage the hundreds of passionate modders who enjoy putting quality before marketability. In my opinion, the Android and iOS app stores are a good example of this.
And some mods do end having a "studio" backing... For example the Network Addon Mod for SimCity 4, it started with several individual modders solving their own problems with the game, and now it has a official "NAM Team" that act as a professional team (they give release dates, have deadlines, make their own installer, etc...)
If this was viable, you'd think that studios would consider paying small teams to continue patching and generating content for games for some years. </?>
Obviously this has happened with a few games, but one minor argument I've seen put out over the weekend was something along the lines of "why don't $studio just hire these guys?", and some sadness that it might happen even less often.
So in the end, most modders don't WANT to be paid for their mods, except they do WANT to be paid and call it a donation?
If you are the seller, and you got paid, that means work. Give support or get shouted at by dozens of angry customers. Reply to emails for months to come when a competitor modder added your mod features to his mod and why the hell are you charging 4.99 if it's worth 1.99 and now you need to refund your costumer.
Donations, on the other hand... explicit intent and different expectations from everyone involved.
Also, it might be neither "most don't want to be paid" nor "most want donation", and both sets might have a very small intersection.
Most gamers are aware of how Valve became so big and it's through the modding community in HL1 and eventually HL2. Can you imagine how prohibitive it would have been for Counter-Strike to grow if they charged $10 for the mod (obviously when it was till a mod =< v1.6)?
On top of that, some mods were genuine improvements over the original. For instance, there is a huge Skyrim UI mod that is a vast improvement over the vanilla. Some people were actually afraid that game companies would use this pay for mod system as a way to double dip. "Let's release a half-assed UI, let some modder charge for his better UI and take 45-50% of his sales."
As far as donations, there is no way you can assume that. Sure, a vast majority won't pay, but I'm sure there are those out there who are generous enough to throw a dollar or two out there to support the modder. Shit, it works for server admins.
Edit: Donations also work for people who contribute nothing and just stream themselves playing games. Some do very well, so I would venture a guess and say a modder putting out quality content could gather a few bucks.
What I was more concered about was the 'quicksilver' effect. When apple hired the dev who made the tool, it just stopped getting updated.
Everytime a game was patched or updated, what % of the mods would then become unusable, despite paying for it? Can't complain when it's free, but if you paid for the mod is there an expectation of it being working for a period of time? What was that period of time?
Many gamers feel [1] where in the past you paid $a for a complete game, today you pay $a for a fraction of the game then an extra $b and $c and $d and $e through these extra mechanisms.
I suspect some people saw the 75% profit margin, and felt this was more about adding on $f, a new mechanism to transfer yet more money from gamers to big publishers, rather than anything to do with rewarding mod creators.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
It also appears to have created quite a feud among moders which were or weren't going to charge for their work, since some mods are quite intertwined.
So it was a combination of effects. I do think the basic idea is worth of discussion, but it's certainly debatable if anything other than pay-what-you-want actually fosters the moding community.
Especially when there's still no requirement for the original developer to have made the modders lives any easier to get this benefit.
If you read Gabe's responses he starts poking at the "Wow wow wow, why is this bad?" and learns a few things.
