Charging money for mods was almost a thing!

[Matt]

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comment ... ?context=3

So many downvotes.

This is the first time I've ever been tempted to join Reddit, just to fuckin' downvote the shit out of that fuck. D:

Reminds me of this quote, just replace "bee" with "mod" and "hive" with "system":

However, that they clearly aim at the burgeoning ‘bee-friendly market’ by suggesting that the hive promises less disturbance of the Bee, seems, to those who see the whole organism, to be a deceit. Yet, they look like nice chaps; no doubt they are. The detachment of the intellect from the heart is not a condition unique to them. It is the disease of our time, and there is no easy cure for such maladjustment.

[Big C]

This is the first time I've ever been tempted to join Reddit, just to fuckin' downvote the shit out of that fuck. D:

Well, it would only cost you time, not money.

That and /r/doom is a thing.

[Reactor]

I don't mind payin' munnies for quality mods, especially for TCs which use the engine but otherwise unrelated to Doom itself. The problem is, the great majority of such mods/TCs will not be quality ones. Imagine that some joker will whack together somethin' like Grezzo or a Terrywad and then sells it for cash!

[Big C]

Imagine that some joker will whack together somethin' like Grezzo or a Terrywad and then sells it for cash!

*SHUDDER*

Yeah, that's it. I'm drawing a line in the sand now.

Terrywads are bad enough. A world where Terrywads are rewarded is unacceptable.

[Reactor]

Well, y'know the mentality of many people, especially those who are close soulmates of the dreaded Michael Hardy. Some fools will see this as a ripe opportunity to mash together some hogwash, hype it up, and the sell it. And, if no demo is released prior, you won't know that you actually paid money for an enormous pile of steamin' turd. As I witnessed, it's quite a common practice amongst game developers, no one wit' the right mind would spend a nickel on titles like Airborne Hero, Big Rigs over the road, Marine Sharpshooter or Power of Destruction. So if game developin' companies follow this, why should yer Average Joe be any different...

[Trance]

Why are you typing in an accent?

[TheBadHustlex]

Now I know what will make me a millionaire soon.

My opinion on this entire thing:
If everything in your mod is 100% original: OK. It's still weird to charge money for it, but at least you have the right to sell it, since it's your work.
If the mod involves models, sounds, graphics... from other sources: Absolutely wrong to sell it.

[Reactor]

It's just a harmless old habit, which I'm giving up already. Possibly it's due to the factor that I had more than 10 English teachers alltogether thru my whole life (I'm learning English since nursery school), and each teacher used different accents when speaking. Not just like British-American or Oz English, but pronouncation methods and styles were also highly different through my two elementary schools and the secondary school as well. It was not until university that I actually learnt phonetics of English, as it is not a compulsory thing to teach earlier (and it's not half as easy as English grammar, expressions, passive and such). So mainly it is due to the language differences. Also, when I first entered the world of "da Intarnetz", typing in accent and ghetto-slang was the "cool thing" on forums, so I caught on quickly. L33t-speak and such (like "U" for you and "R" for are) was never my thing though. And as you know, old habits die with difficulty TVTropes has the phrase "Xtremely Kool Letterz" for this phenomenon.
Also, when story-telling for a game, many of the characters speak this ghetto-slang or pirate-talk by nature, so those are intentional. Same goes for fictional trademarks, like "Zicca Lazer" or "AA-10 Pantokrátor", as deliberate misspellings can be clarified as trademarks whilst normal words cannot. Tim Langdell caused actually quite big shit-storms with the "edge" word.

As for originality, this is why I like TCs better, as they're much more original. After all, if they're treated as distinct games, and only the game engine itself is common, the creator shall have to use resources other than Doom ones, or at least heavily edit them. Heavily edited stuff can be considered OK I suppose. But selling resources from commercial WADs, or even Doom2.wad as the Grezzo-guy did, is an absolute no-no-no-never.

[insightguy]

Totalbiscuit planning on Interviewing prominent modders about valve mod charging
I know some people have a hate boner dislike for TB here, but who (and what s/he made) do you think might be good for a round table discussion about this?

Well, y'know the mentality of many people, especially those who are close soulmates of the dreaded Michael Hardy. Some fools will see this as a ripe opportunity to mash together some hogwash, hype it up, and the sell it.

Considering the $2 "art of catch" "in beta" mod and the 100$ horse genitals mod, I'd say You are not far off.

and this guy has a point:

It's essentially free community DLC the company can sell.

[Reactor]

Well, let's hope that they have some common decency, and of course, they release some kind of playable demo before charging cash for a mod/TC they make. This way, at least 80% of the hogwash-mods could be effectively avoided, so you won't accidently buy something with the quality of a Terrywad...

[Xtyfe]

Yep, the moment they patch out non-workshop mods then Bethesda might as well put a bullet in their heads. They are nothing without mods, their games are too shit.

[Ghastly]

Totalbiscuit planning on Interviewing prominent modders about valve mod charging

Depends who he gets. Unfortunately, he's demonstrated in the past that he has absolutely no clue about modding communities.

On the subject of patching out non-workshop mods, that won't kill a non-paid modding community. Baldur's Gate, BattleZone and several other games had communities spring up from various hooks and openings the developers left to make content-creation easier, and allow for updating later on. Magic: The Gathering 2014 - Duel of the Planeswalkers is an amazing example of this; the game only had specific, pre-built decks for people to play with and other decks were released as DLC later on. The community figured out how DLC decks and new cards were added, built a tool for building a completely custom deck and are in the process of adding almost every card from the physical card game.

As long as there's some kind of hook or opening, modding will happen.

[leileilol]

Paid mods is new? I have three words for you:


Flight Simulator Addons


Fans made plane addons for money, and no one flipped a "game ded" shit decades ago.


The only real concern I see are the children/companies frauding it up, and everyone getting vindictive towards Gabe Newell for what Zenimax wants (what company have they NOT ruined?). Paid workshop mods on Steam is not the problem here, it's the worstcasescenario that would play from the typical young scavenge-and-exploit modder, and getting other contributors to agree and also recieve money.

Kind of like CAPCOM getting shit for Microsoft's DLC concept.

[Xtyfe]

It depends on the game I guess? For TF2 and DOTA2 and such it's fine because the game doesn't NEED the mods to function. But with Skyrim, we NEED the mods for the game to not be shit.

This is why it can't work with it.

[Snarboo]

Flight Simulator Addons

See, for certain markets, paid mods make sense! If you're working with a sim game, where the entire point is to recreate an existing vehicle, it works because of how the content functions inside the game. It's harder to recycle assets when recreating a unique vehicle, and you don't have to worry about level design or voice acting either. Even then, there's still probably plagiarism going on, the market is just too small to notice or care given how hardcore they are. Then there's the dubious legality of recreating a real world vehicle owned by a company, and then charging money for a virtual representation of it!

Compare with Skyrim: not only is the community much larger and interconnected, but the closest equivalents to a "flight simulator addon" are unique mount and sword addons. Sure, that sword addon might be the best one available, but the value for such a mod is a lot less than the equivalent flight simulator addon. There's plenty of free alternatives to boot, even mods that add entire arsenals to the game. Suddenly, that well crafted sword doesn't seem as worth charging for as an entire plane does. This isn't even going into the nightmare that are mod dependencies and community resource addons, which make charging for mods even shakier.

The best way to profit off the Skyrim Workshop right now is to create horse armor DLC or special effects addons, which is exactly what most of the current paid mods are. One of the launch mods is even the crowbar from Half-Life 2! On its own, that isn't necessarily bad, but horse armor is the exact opposite of what a paid workshop should be supporting. There are plenty of mods that are wholly contained unique scenarios, comparable to the best megawads or TCs for Doom, that deserve to be compensated, but a 25% cut isn't worth bothering with given the risks and dependencies involved. There's no guarantee that your super epic quest mod won't be buried under a glut of terrible joke mods or unique armor sets, either.

Valve and Bethesda needed to think this one through better before throwing modders to the wolves, then expecting them to sort everything out once it went wrong.