Blizzard - Gamers Can Sell Their Mods Through Blizzard Arcade

skavenhorde

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I realize this has more to do with StarCraft modding than our regular RPG news, but since a lot of the RPGs we play can be modded it seems very relevant to us as well.
Blizzard will let gamers sell their mods through the soon to be launched Blizzard Arcade. Blizzard Arcade is a new version of their old Marketplace. Their goal for this is to let gamers sell their mods in hopes of creating higher quality mods. I'm not sure if they've seen some of the Bethesda mods because some of those are already at the highest quality.
Blizzard Arcade launches alongside the release of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. You can find out more about it here. Here are some more details on Blizzard Arcade:
Arcade

Arcade will serve as a hub for both free and premium games created by the community, for the community.
The commerce elements will come later on, but the changes made to the interface will serve as a foundation for custom games on Battle.net going forward.
Allowing custom game makers to charge for their games will incentivize higher quality custom games, benefitting players and game creators.

Goals:

-Easy to locate quality games
-Play the games you want to play
-Prepare a place for selling games
More information.
 
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Wie bitte ? O_O

I wonder whether this will work ... O_O
 
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Will this service be free-of-charge in terms of selling without Blizzard getting compensated?
 
Good question.. and what about quality control? Is it just going to be a ratings system based on user feedback?

I can see the idea of making cash causing every wannabe mod-maker from here to Korea flooding the place with a bunch of shitty user-made maps.
 
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I always wondered why they didn't do something like this for NWN and/or NWN2 (or Dragon Age). You could even make money by selling support to the developers to refine their mods. Seemed like a no brainer to me.
 
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One question from me is is it only mods for Blizzard games that can be sold or all games? And how does one know they are getting something that works before they lay out their money?
 
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I always wondered why they didn't do something like this for NWN and/or NWN2 (or Dragon Age). You could even make money by selling support to the developers to refine their mods. Seemed like a no brainer to me.

Isn't that what Premium DLC was? ;)
 
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Steam just started something similar with their "workshop". Right now, it's just for Team Fortress 2 but it's sort of implied that it will be added for other games.

I should also note that other games, like The Sims, have had a paid modding community for years, though in that case EA allowed it to go on in other places but did not actually host or directly profit from the sales of mods.

A lot of it depends on how much the community will tolerate it. It has caused something of a divide in the Sims community with some being pro and others being anti user made custom content for pay. There are also some sites that are basically pimps for want of a better word, that profit from the labor of others although they do nothing themselves but facilitate by hosting files.

Traditionally, the Elder Scrolls community has been pretty heavily anti (unofficial) mods for pay and any time it was even brought up it tended to bring a very negative reaction from the community. I remember once some gaming magazine put out a CD with some user mods on it and it ended up causing absolute outrage because the magazine, of course, had a fee and people viewed it as indirectly charging for mods.

Still, times and attitudes change. Perhaps we will see Skyrim end up on the Steam workshop. Who knows?
 
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For me their is still to much uncertainty with mods to pay for them. I spent days trying to get all my mods to work in oblivion and still had some random crashes. Fallout was no better, although I never had any problems with dao mods.

There are some people that work very hard and do make excellent mods and it would be great for them to be compensated somehow. I'm just not sure this is the way to do it though because I would say that less than 1% of mods fall in to that category. (no I don't have any actually #'s to back that up just my opinion.)

I think all this would do is make me use mods less. Maybe that's what dev's want though so we will buy there dlc rather than risk trying a paid mod.
 
Well this could encourage better mods (as well as a flood of piss poor ones). Should be an interesting experiment!
Yeah. It's very nice to see the experiment is being conducted on a game I don't care about, too!
 
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What a ingenious plan to ensure modding will no longer be free. Bravo blizzard keep up the good work.:rolleyes:

And on a side note all you blizzard apologist and die hard supporters can kiss my big rump. There business and design plans lately have me shaking my head in bafflement.

Will this service be free-of-charge in terms of selling without Blizzard getting compensated?

Of course not blizzard gets 10% of your sale. Free are you kidding me.:greedy:
 
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cue the Wet Blanket Brigade!

Oh how original you posted the same lines you did yesterday. That's all right not all of us bend over and take it.:p
 
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I've built many modding tools mostly for Morrowind/Oblivion/NWN2 and have done many kinds of mods for other games. I would never even think to charge end users for the work mostly because I dont consider them professional enough to warrant it; wouldn't want the support headaches and probably couldn't do so legally anyway. I would rather have a rich ecosystem like what happened in those games due to their free nature. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind being compensated for the work but too many legal questions start to crop up once money is exchanged software and services.

On the subject of the Premium DLC like that for NWN and NWN2, I don't really have a problem with it. They are were effectively outsourced development teams and probably had a lot of interaction with the developers before being released including going through the QA/QC team. There are some mods for Oblivion that are probably worth some money but I would hate to see what happened in the early Sims games happen more widely. In any case it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
 
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This could get interesting. Time = money, at least for many people out there. So obviously this could encourage some more proffesional work that isnt just for fun or recognition, but as something more serious.. And personally i can't wait to see all the fart mods, which like always, will make the creator a millionaire in a week ;)
 
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I would be willing to pay for the massive mods like Nehrim, The Lost Spires, Sea of Destiny, Tamriel Rebuilt, Project Nevada, AWOP or any of the massive mods for Beth's games. The work on those is amazing and worth a few dollars at most, five dollars for some of the very large expansion like mods. Not much more though since if I had to buy all the mods the price tag would soon sky rocket.

However, if Beth follows suit and starts letting modders sell their products then they sure as hell better pack that sucker up and make it an easy install. I'm not going to go through the hell of installing these things if they made pay for it as well. Took me all weekend long to get New Vegas up and running to the way I like it. That was even with an install guide helping me out on the mods I wasn't sure about.
 
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Vegas, just like FO3 and Oblivion has that auto-sorting app called BOSS which takes care of the install order.. it's a lot easier nowadays to install mods for Bethesda's games. But customizing a game completely will always require a bit of work, i doubt there's a way around that.
 
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Oh, I know about Boss, NVSE, FOMM, FNVedit and a few other utilities I use, but when you load dozens of mods you have to be very careful as to which you install first and which come later. The load order is never really a problem due to Boss and what Boss doesn't fix I can figure out on my own where it goes.

The hard part is not messing up when installing them and making sure they don't conflict with each other or you'll get some very interesting things happening in the game ;)

I finally got New Vegas purring like a kitten and modded to perfection, but it took all weekend hunting down patches, compatibility patches, upgrades to old versions and all the while making sure that they don't conflict with each other. It takes a while to get it perfect, but once you do the game will never look the same. Nevada Skies alone is worth the trouble.

If I have to buy a mod then I want a complete list of what conflicts with it. At the very least have a list with the major/popular mods. That is one of the biggest headaches I have when installing.
 
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In the case of Bethesda, I'd rather they would go the route that Valve did: strike a deal with the very best mod teams, and give them the resources to polish the mod and release it as a standalone game or an expansion pack. But who knows, maybe a market place can work too, I assume it would self regulate after an intial period of chaos, if there are suitable rating/filters, etc., It is an interesting experiment, at least.
 
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