You Can Now Sell Skyrim Mods on Steam

sc94597

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sc94597 on 23 April 2015

Ka-pi96 said:
Ok, that's really really bad.

Some mods are worth paying for (more worth it than the actual game in some cases) but the majority just aren't. I doubt many will stay free even if they are only minor things now that people know they can legally charge for them.

The good thing about a market is that if something is easy to do then many people will do it and compete with each-other by lowering/eliminating prices. I doubt we will be seeing ini tweaks being monetized or texture packs for outrageous prices because there is always an alternative. Mods are already very competitive endeavors while they aren't monetized.

If people must put their time and effort into creating something unique which you want then it certainly is worth paying for.

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LurkerJ on 23 April 2015

sc94597 said:

LurkerJ said:

Wait for third party publishers to find ways to ask for their share too. It's their game afterall.

Is it not implied that the publishers/developers already get a piece of the pie? The 75% is split between them and Valve I assumed. If a person doesn't want to monetize their mod they don't have to, to be honest. No matter how you try to spin it, this is another option in which a person who wants to monetize their mod can. And if the publisher/developer allows them to monetize it, I'm sure they don't have to go through Steam to do so. They can make their own website with all of the costs involved in doing so, pay costs to advertise their mod, and then sell it from there. Of course while still giving the share that is due to the publisher/developer, per request.

I mean if a mod like Skywind sold for $20/purchase, then the developer would get $5 /purchase if they chose to use Steam as their publishing/advertisement platform. Now let's say that it sells one million. That would be $5 million dollars given to the mod developer. And then let's say they chose to reward the participants, who are currently doing it for free on their own free time, based on how many hours they put into creating the game. Let's say there is a total of 100,000 man-hours (100 people doing 100 hours each) spent on development. That would be $50 /hr - about as much as a video-game developer makes. Or if somebody spent 100 hours of work developing the mod they will be compensated $5,000 before taxes. That's pretty nice for something they were doing for free before.

Why should the main game developers/publishers get money? Because they created the engine, tools, art, IP, storyline, quests, etc that the modders are creating from. Without these things there would be no mods.

Is it implied? I didn't know.

I am not trying to spin anything. I said it was worth mentioning how much money modders get.

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ofrm1 on 23 April 2015

It's a dumb idea which will only fuel drama when the mods are inevitably hosted elsewhere, but it doesn't matter. No one gets their mods from the workshop anyway, except from the select few people who, for some reason, only make mods on the workshop. They get them from Nexus because it's a better platform for modding with a much larger userbase.

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sc94597 on 23 April 2015

Ka-pi96 said:

sc94597 said:

Ka-pi96 said:
Ok, that's really really bad.

Some mods are worth paying for (more worth it than the actual game in some cases) but the majority just aren't. I doubt many will stay free even if they are only minor things now that people know they can legally charge for them.

The good thing about a market is that if something is easy to do then many people will do it and compete with each-other by lowering/eliminating prices. I doubt we will be seeing ini tweaks being monetized or texture packs for outrageous prices because there is always an alternative. Mods are already very competitive endeavors while they aren't monetized.

If people must put their time and effort into creating something unique which you want then it certainly is worth paying for.

Hmm, hopefully it will work that way for the smaller ones.

As for the larger ones, I just won't use any. Not going to pay for them. I would make exceptions if the price was low and it was from a dev I respect, but not much chance of that ever happening.

The market will probably similar to the indie game market. Very competitive, and it will be hard to sort out the trash, but the games that do make money are become popular deserve it. Anything else will be cheap.

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Cloudman on 23 April 2015

Hmm, wasn't a big component to PC games the modding? Seems kind of terrible if they start charging for something so valued in the PC community, but I see it's fair that modders get paid for their hard work, the good ones at least... : / I dunno, I don't play a lot on PC.

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Ultrashroomz on 23 April 2015

Honestly, I don't know what to feel.

Unless this starts to get a lot of praise, I really don't think this is a good idea, considering that mods have been free for a long time, and are a huge part of PC gaming.

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sc94597 on 23 April 2015

As a primarily PC gamer I'm excited. This means more time and resources put into mods than they already get. It means long-term mods have their release dates pushed sooner, and a lot of people who do good work and are successful are rewarded for it. There will still be free mods, and tweaks, I'm sure.

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Scoobes on 23 April 2015

This could go either way, but hopefully it'll mean some of the bigger mods will get the funding they deserve. Some of those mods really do deserve some financial reward considering they can play better then many full commercial games.