Paying for mods on the Steam Workshop

Right, Cara. The reason I bring up the 25% pay to modders is that it seems obvious to me that this is just a scam by Valve for them to make some money. Give just enough to a modder to get him to sell his mod but not enough to really make it worth while. The mod has to generate 400$ in order for the modder to get a payment of 100$. Certainly not impossible to get but if it sells say 397$ Valve keeps all.

Also this thing about you can't remove your mod once you upload it. Suppose it is found to have serious flaws which you cannot fix? Not all modders will bother to warn people.

I typed a big post and lost it... In any case most modders keep fixing things until they get bored with the mod or with the game. That's the way it is and unless you have someone breathing down your necks you always find things to fix and improve and that's especially true of mods which are supposed to be a labour of love and not meant to put bread on the table.

The other thing is that mods can be compared to early access games, you don't know if they will be "finished" or at least come out of beta.

The modders who are taking part in that scheme were contacted a month ago so they didn't have all the time in the world and it shows. Take the armour mod that has been selling at 1.85, it does look good and it's no wonder they put it on the front page on steam but it is not finished, Kana has pointed out earlier that you have to use the console to get it in game and that's a terrible way of making things work if you're asking for money. Not only that but the armour is in one piece so you can't separate parts, you can't take away the hood of remove the mask and even worse you can't have more than one enchantment on the armour. I guess people who've bought it can expect some things to be improved like making the item obtainable in the game but it seems unlikely that it is going to come up as a suit of armour made of several pieces.

Modders who are in this for the money won't have any real incentive to fix things. They will move on to the next shiny item that will make people open up their steam wallets instead of making sure the previous mod works perfectly (if that's even a thing).

I think people who assume that paying will improve the quality of mods are fooling themselves. There will be no incentive for modders to work together or for one modder to step in and help another.

It's not about the 25% it's about money entering the equation and messing things up. Teams of modders will have to be on the same page to be able to work together and even then what was already difficult will be made even harder by the temptation of making a little money (and contrary to what some people have been saying it's very unlikely modders will be able to make a living out of it).

By the way there are a bunch of fake mods uploaded on the Workshop. These are in protest to the pay for mods system. I understand they cannot actually be downloaded but they will certainly confuse people. As I understand it Steam is leaving it up to the community to police the mods and report stolen or questionable mods. It does annoy me that Valve is taking 75% of the sale price but no responsibility for the mods.

Steam not taking responsibility is hardly surprising. Moderation is lacking and the whole stance on mods is confusing to say the least. You can't expect people to regulate things like that by themselves... There is a reason why the Nexus sites have an entire team working full time to make sure there is no problem with the mods.

Carabas wrote:

The silly thing is that modding is the only reason people are still playing these games after all these years. Take that away and there is no reason to go back. Who in their right mind would pay the price of a new game to be able to use mods in a 2011 game? That's preposterous and it's high time Skyrim gets taken down a notch or two (which ironically is happening right now as irate steam users are spamming the steam page with negative reviews for the game).

You know, I used to be a pretty heavy gamer, heck I'm even making a break free from game addiction course Anyway, any addictive activity be it heroin, food, anime, booze and etc. put you in a special state, let's call it "trance".

Reality perseption and life priorities change when you are in those states. So I addicted people would by things, because they have no use for money anyway, except PC, internet and some physiological needs.

There are some real gems in the paid mods waiting for approval by Valve.

Gaben's Fork
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=432297459&searchtext=

[Early Access] The Sword
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=432075376&searchtext=

A Beautiful Man's Shield
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=432073247&searchtext=

These are awesome Kana.

The description of the last one is priceless. I really like the way they're handling that with humour, playing the system against itself.

Announcement on the Steam Workshop front page:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

Wonder what Steam will come up with next. Thanks, Kana for the update.

Kana wrote:

Announcement on the Steam Workshop front page:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

Reading that makes me think that they are very likely to try and pull that stunt with their next games. People won't be in a position to argue then...