Skyrim - Paid Mod Status Update(Re-Opened)

Forum member Brumbek notified me his mod SMIM will remain free despite submitting it for sale on the Steam Workshop. Here is his video explaining why.

Forgive the self-indulgince. Author of SMIM here. SMIM has over 2 million unique downloads and is one of the largest and most intricate graphical overhauls for Skyrim. I've uploaded a video giving my thoughts on the paid Steam Workshop stuff. I've submitted my mod to the paid Workshop today after 2 days of intense deliberation.

The short reason is:

SMIM will always remain free and up-to-date on Skyrim Nexus. However, I view Steam Workshop as a way for more casual Skyrim players to pay for the best mods out there. The money I (hopefully) make will help motivate me to mod SMIM, which directly benefits the free Nexus users.

Confused by the relevance of the video? Did you mean this one? z_N10OTtQyI

The wrong video was uploaded by mistake, and it was already fixed. I was updating another thread at the same time so I apologize about the mistake.

Originally Posted by Xian
If anyone is interested, Gabe Newell himself is answering questions on Reddit regarding paid mods

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comme…ods_and_steam/

Gabe's trying to play the "I'm on your side" angle. Mostly likely, the truth is that Bethesda saw a robust modding scene and wanted a piece of that action. They enlist Steam and cook up this program as a way to make it happen. Contrary to what Gabe says, I'm sure $$ was the motivation for both companies (I mean come on… companies do not do these things for good will or the future of the modding scene. They are businesses after all). Like so many game debacles (SimCity for example), they underestimated gamers and the power of internet rage.

I would guess that rolling back the program would be tough because they probably have a contract with Bethesda now.

More interesting is that they seem to be losing a lot money on damage control, and are being hammered by the internet regarding the issue. Even if they don't stop the Skyrim program, it could make them pause before starting it up for more games, and make other developers hesitant to get involved in "mod-gate."

Found a dude trying to sell, basically, my mod with a new name.

Sure, i gave him permission to use my trees a while back, but that hardly extends to making money out of my work.

Well this is gonna be a lot of fun for sure..

Originally Posted by vurt
Found a dude trying to sell, basically, my mod with a new name.

Sure, i gave him permission to use my trees a while back, but that hardly extends to making money out of my work.

Well this is gonna be a lot of fun for sure..

Well that's pretty shitty. I don't see any foliage mods besides a a grass settings tweak in the paid/pending mods though, so it must have been taken down pretty quickly.

Let me repeat it once again: Beth WAS making money from mods in an indirect way already. Skyrim wouldn't have been so successful without mods. And then some corporate assholes decided that it wasn't enough and introduced this clumsy scheme disrupting modding community in the process. Time will tell if Beth will be punished or rewarded for this decision.

Wow, this is disappointing - I view mods as a community project, where people are motivated and interested enough to give of their free time to help other have an improved experience. I have tried my hand at modding once or twice, the results weren't good enough to release (I thought) but I *loved* doing it, it was fun and if I'd been confident enough I would have loved to have others try my stuff. Think of the people who have pumped endless hours into bugfixing released games (a mod of sorts), or Co8 with ToEE etc. I think if people want to make money, there should be other ways than "modding" to do it. I also think that many, many mods are based on earlier work by others, so it us simply wrong to profiteer of this. In particular, SkyUI uses SKSE, right? Many mods do - they should simply state that people cannot use there system if they plan to sell their mods. I agree that if you wish to donate, that is fine - it should surely be your choice, but that is different than having to purchase something. Trust the money men to swoop in and ruin things.

So Gabe Newell has some comments:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gab…/1100-6426893/

Originally Posted by jhwisner
Well that's pretty shitty. I don't see any foliage mods besides a a grass settings tweak in the paid/pending mods though, so it must have been taken down pretty quickly.

Yes i asked him to remove it.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
So Gabe Newell has some comments:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gab…/1100-6426893/

Seems Gamespot members are the target for paid mods.

Update: I found another link with information Steam has made $10,000 already.

Link - http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/04/…erated-so-far/

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Seems Gamespot members are the target for paid mods.

Update: I found another link with information Steam has made $10,000 already.

Link - http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/04/…erated-so-far/

And that money is going to speak a lot louder than all the protests will.

Someone on the official mod forums reported that one mod actually has in game pop-up ads in its free version that you can pay to remove. Thanks to Steam and Bethesda for bringing free mobile gaming goodness to PC.

EDIT: Forgot the link http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/151…t-in-game-ads/

Originally Posted by vurt
Yes i asked him to remove it.

Is there anything to be done if he's already made money off it?

Originally Posted by SonOfCapiz
Is there anything to be done if he's already made money off it?

He didn't since the mod wasn't validated.. But i guess it's a sign of what's to come for me and other modders, we'll have to check that people aren't using our resources to sell. This could be a legal nightmare for Valve / Bethesda..

Its really sad how this dick move has more or less divided Skyrim modding scene. All the good will Benthesa gained with Skyrim is gone now. Not sure how the modding scene will recover from something like this.

This is just not an honest way to do things. Skyrim should have not been their guinea pig for this sick experiment. If they really wanted to push the idea of paid user made content, they should have done it with a new unreleased game and let these older released games be.

Originally Posted by vurt
He didn't since the mod wasn't validated.. But i guess it's a sign of what's to come for me and other modders, we'll have to check that people aren't using our resources to sell. This could be a legal nightmare for Valve / Bethesda..

It's quite possible that, eventually, a modder will have to spend more time on those checks than he/she did on the making of the original mod…

Edit: Ah nevermind, I misread what you wrote. But yeah this sounds like it's going to be a real chore for modders to watch out for other people trying to sell their stuff.

I guess everything that was once good has to come down to profit for someone else.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
It'd be way too risky with a new game. That's why they picked Skyrim as their guinea pig. The game has a huge established modding community and has made both companies metric shittons of money. A perfect target to test the waters.
Depending on how this shakes out, they can still backpedal for FO4 or go full steam (pun alert!) ahead with some amendments.

I disagree. A lot of people that have problems with this don't have problems in principle with the idea of modelers getting paid. That tells me that if introduced really well and committed to by a clever company, a pay system can definitely succeed. A company introducing something potentially controversial has a lot of power to set expectations, especially if they do it early and do it well. It's not in the same class but remember when people made fun of the names iPad and WII? Both Apple and Nintendo maintained an even strain and refused to allow the potty jokes to have an effect. Those jokes don't exist anymore. Likewise here. The payment system will probably work eventually even given the uproar, but it would have done better under a different game.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
this sounds like it's going to be a real chore for modders to watch out for other people trying to sell their stuff.

+

Originally Posted by CelticFrost
I guess everything that was once good has to come down to profit for someone else.

I have feeling that Beth + Valve know about these problems. But they dont care. Easy money from theft is good money too, right? Especially if there is always someone other to blame for such thefts. We "only" make theft-friendly system working for our profit…