Steam Removes Paid Mods Feature
mezbreezedesign.com
mezbreezedesign.com
Mod creators could still release their mods for free but could opt into payment if they felt they were deserving of pay. So the people who thought mods should be free could just not purchase any mods for sale. Instead they took to complaining to Steam about opening a venue that might encourage mod development and create more content for everyone.
Correct me if I'm wrong... but it sounds like a bunch of reactionaries got mad over something that would largely only have a positive effect on them. In fear of pissing off its consumer-base, Steam took a step back.
Am I missing something here?
E: Reading through the comments on the scenario. Seems like there was a bit more corporate muckery going on. I'll have to read more, I've only been following this drama loosely.
In some ways it seems similar to the jailbreak community, and there are paid apps and tweaks there - but it does come at the cost of greatly reduced performance, stability, and security.
a) If the developer wants to continue sales,
they must fix their mod to work with future updates.
This gives them incentive to keep it up to date.
b) It's an accepted and known risk that updates
might break the mod at time of purchase.
The ability to sell a mod could incentivize people who would otherwise not create mods.
So here are the two scenarios:
1) No sales = less content created; same issue of future incompatibility
2) Sales = more content created; same issue of future incompatibility.
The suggested donation-model (optional payments) is how I think most media should run regardless. It seems theres a fair amount of support for a "donation button" instead of the sale model.
[0] Based on nothing but posts from 4 years ago and a quick Google search and the fact that future incompatibility is an apparent issue.
The modders were getting 25% of the mod sales, Valve was getting 30% (a standard for digital distribution channels), and 45% going to Bethesda. The outrage being how much Bethesda got. Bethesda responded to this in the linked article [0]:
> Many have questioned the split of the revenue, and we agree this is where it gets debatable. We’re not suggesting it’s perfect, but we can tell you how it was arrived at.
> First Valve gets 30%. This is standard across all digital distributions services and we think Valve deserves this. No debate for us there.
> The remaining is split 25% to the modder and 45% to us. We ultimately decide this percentage, not Valve.
> Is this the right split? There are valid arguments for it being more, less, or the same. It is the current industry standard, having been successful in both paid and free games. After much consultation and research with Valve, we decided it’s the best place to start.
> This is not some money grabbing scheme by us. Even this weekend, when Skyrim was free for all, mod sales represented less than 1% of our Steam revenue.
> The percentage conversation is about assigning value in a business relationship. How do we value an open IP license? The active player base and built in audience? The extra years making the game open and developing tools? The original game that gets modded? Even now, at 25% and early sales data, we’re looking at some modders making more money than the studio members whose content is being edited.
> We also look outside at how open IP licenses work, with things like Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, where you can publish fan fiction and get about 15-25%, but that’s only an IP license, no content or tools.
> The 25% cut has been operating on Steam successfully for years, and it’s currently our best data point. More games are coming to Paid Mods on Steam soon, and many will be at 25%, and many won’t. We’ll figure out over time what feels right for us and our community. If it needs to change, we’ll change it.
If you ask me 45% is too high, I don't think it should be exactly 0% but to give the developers so little seems criminal...
Another source for this was fact that there is no real support for mods especially with mods interacting with other mods. While there was a return period (24hrs IIRC) a number of gamers were arguing that you don't always find out within 24hrs if a mod will conflict with another mod. Maybe a long trial period would have helped to alleviate some of this.
I can't tell you how many times I read about these knee jerk reactions from people with their self imposed boycotts of the entire Steam platform. The reason most given? "Because Valve takes 75% and only leaves 25 for the mod maker".
These people were so quick with their math they never even got to the fact that a) Bethesda takes a cut, the highest one at that and b) this split came from Bethesda and did not originate at Valve.
But, as these things go, have one of these people spew out this misinformation, get enough people to echo this and many others will take it as fact. You can then try to tell them as often as you like how that is wrong and they will just downvote you because "you're just a valve shill" resulting in nobody seeing the actual facts and the echo chamber happily moves down the wrong way getting more and more worked up.
In the end, it was just an option to treat mods like DLC and games. Make em either free or charge for em. Nothing more. If mod makers want to make their work free, literally nothing changed. If they want to they could have started chargin for them. And if people didn't like it, they just didn't have to buy them. If there was a mod that was once free and was then moved to the pay side, people could have let the maker know that was a dick move. And if a paid mod breaks because of a game update, people could have let the maker know to better fix that asap or they'll demand a refund. Only with free mods you could say "yeah, it broke with the newest update. don't have time to fix. working on other stuff". If you sell it, you have to support it. But that is up to the mod maker, not the owner of the distribution platform.