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Comment by cma | Hacker News Reader

If you make a Mickey Mouse sequel using derivative assets, how much of a cut would Disney want? Keeping in mind the assets would be open to competing high-caliber studios (back to the Skyrim example, just allowing for free modding generally precludes competing triple-A's from producing anything, but give them say a "fair" 75% cut of expansions or complete sequels to a competitor's bockbuster game, taking advantage of all their lore, characters, graphical assets, and game engine?).

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If you make a Mickey Mouse sequel, it doesn't require users to first buy a copy of the original movie.

Using a mod does. These two things are in no way comparable.

Just to add to your point: I wonder how many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of the DayZ mod. How many copies of Half-life were sold because of Counter Strike? Warcraft 3 and Dota? I could go on.

Developers should be ecstatic that modders want to build off their game as a platform. It can only bring them additional money as people buy their game for access to hugely popular mod. I can understand the desire to monetize this, but too much and you freeze out your modders and you get nothing.

This is what's always driven me mad about the battlefield series. There's were some great mods springing up and I wish it was capitalized on and encouraged.

I feel like Arma 2 saw the Project Reality demographic and said "Lets go for that"

Absolutely right! Think how differently it would be if we had to pay $50 for Half-Life and another $10-15 for the counter-strike mod. Everyone would lose.

It's pretty darn hard to make a derivative work without understanding the source material. I suspect your immediate dismissal of this analogy is more related to your strong personal greed for entertainment, which appears to be a fundamental human feature.

One wonders how that could have evolved. Someone should do experiments where they deny access to three company episodes to chimps, to see if they freak out as badly as the internet generation does when they can't get their favorite things.

75% should go to the modders. If people are buying the mod, then the mod developer deserves most of the cash for the mod purchase. Remember, the player needs to buy the original game too. Those funds don't go to the mod developer.

Except in this case the 75% was going to the studios (Valve got their flat 30% cut, as with everything, and Bethesda elected to charge a further 45%). The modders were getting 25%.

You misunderstood.

75% is not to the mod developer, 75% was to Bethesda, and 25% to the mod developer.

This is what pissed people off. (Also, the developer would only get paid if he got 100 USD to receive, meaning that he needed 400 USD in sales, meaning that probably most developers would never get any money).

As mentioned by the guy above you, 30% was to valve, and bethesda determined the rest. A 30% cut is similar to what you'd get from the app store and in my opinion is reasonable for the costs of hosting and perhaps supporting the mods.

This all seems like an attempt to app-storify mods. I really didn't think it was a bad thing.

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