Why is everyone losing their minds over paid mods on Steam?

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It's not like it's a new thing. Mods are basically just community-made DLC, and paid DLC has existed for years. While I don't like it when a game comes out and there's a bunch of DLC made for it that should have been part of the original game, I don't mind it when expansion packs are released, and certainly not when they run deals where you can buy a game along with its DLC for a discounted price. If anything, I think Steam allowing people to charge for mods will be a bit of a boon, since it'll compel people to create more mods, and to put more polish on them as well. It'll open the doors for amateur developers to start making money on their work.

Hell, I remember when Epic Games was advertising the same exact feature for the new Unreal Tournament, and nobody complained at all, probably because the base game itself will be free, but still.

I'm going to copy and paste a response I gave to basically this same thread on a totally different forum:

see this as a bad thing, and a bad thing only... no exceptions to this.

Because what it is in actuality is MICROTRANSACTIONS. In a new, stupider form. The fact that each one comes from a different source does not change this... they're still microtransactions. And ones of dubious quality, at that. I've seen mods for LOTS of games. I've used them. And, FAR moreso than official content, they can be INCREDIBLY SCREWY. Even the highest quality mods can do some really strange, damaging things when they run into issues. The chance of this happening is very dramatically higher than with official content. Even moreso with a game like Skyrim, which is already a glitchfarm to begin with.

Now, I'm fine with the idea of DONATING and such. If a mod maker has just been putting out tons of amazing stuff, people WILL donate. And there are a variety of valid ways to encourage this. Best example that comes to mind for me is Minecraft's "Feed The Beast" mod.... thing. Not just a mod, but an entire launcher of great quality that not only comes with gigantic complicated modpacks (LOTS of them), but also makes it soooooo much easier to stick more mods into any given pack if you should feel like it. Normally the process of adding a mod to the game can be... difficult. And filled with problems. Particularly if there are already mods running. I've spent hours yelling at the screen trying to stick the damn things in manually. And then this came along.... and I havent had to do that since. And what these guys have done to get money is not any of that microtransaction crap. They first built up this software, and related maps/mods/whatever of their own. They made it incredible, they got it out to people, they got it popular, and they just kept showing off just how much they could do with it. Once it hit a certain point, they simply started offering things in a completely seperate shop. Not digital content, mind you.... I'm talking actual physical things. Shirts, mugs, various things that are quite cheap to make, but that people are happy to buy because they're interesting, and they support the devs in a non-annoying fashion. You can pay for these if you want, or even just donate I think, but you DONT pay for the launcher. And of course they can do things like put up proper ads on their site to generate more money, as is normal on the Net. This, to me, is a great way of doing it. And it's working for them; the team is looking to expand even further, as it is right now.

Now obviously that exact model isnt going to work for everyone, but there's TONS of different ways that something like this could be handled in a manner that DOESNT restrict the actual in-game content. People could get creative with this. As opposed to trying to sell you new sword models, or mods that may or may not interact very badly with other mods (which can happen in any game that uses mods). Mod making is great, but I'm sorry, I'm not going to pay for something that ISNT a game as if it was a game. And really, only the biggest modders, brought to a high status by constantly making all sorts of awesome things, should be attempting ANYTHING of this nature to begin with. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay for a mod from a modder I've not heard of! Or if I research someone and see that they've made like, 3 swords and almost a castle, it's like... I'm sorry, but no. You havent proven enough to me yet, I'm not going to support you for now.

And note, this has exactly squat to do with the actual cost. I'm not in a position of having money issues. Not even close. Hell, I'll go out and purchase full-priced games at random out of simple boredom. And I dont mean the sort of boredom that occurs over the course of a couple of weeks, I mean "I've been bored for 30 minutes. I think I'll go get something new for the heck of it" sort of thing. I do this *often*. This doesnt dent my funds in the slightest; as a rule, I can do what I want, when I want. So yeah... it's not about the price. It's more about the practice.

And what I mean by that: It's just the same, again, as the microtransactions..... which means that eventually, inevitably, it *will* lead to people getting greedy, and starting to do some of the nasty things that the big publishers are doing. I dont believe for a fraction of a second that this WONT happen. And that's where the downward spiral will get going. Obviously not all modders will do this; there will be many that will rail against the very concept of this, offering tons of stuff for free simply because they have awesome ideas that they would love for others to play with, and just to support the game in question and it's community. But many will dive into that downward spiral of greed, doing whatever they can to suck up more and more cash while offering less and less, and such as that.

So, yeah... Obviously nobody has to agree with me, but I just thought I'd toss my own input in here, as someone that likes using mods in a general sense.


There's more to it than just that though. Quite alot more, actually. That's just me touching on the most obvious parts. There's *alot* of things wrong with the whole idea.

To add to what I said in the very first paragraph though: in addition to mods often causing issues within the main game itself, there's REALLY screwy issues that frequently appear when multiple mods are smashed together in the same game. The more you have, the worse this gets. And seriously, it can get NASTY. Like, game-wreckingly, save-smashingly, install-corruptingly NASTY. I've seen all of those things happen. And that's with free stuff: it's MUCH worse if you buy these things, and THEN that happens. The hardest part of dealing with mods by far is testing for interactions between two mods. Particularly since it's often not JUST two mods. Mod A and Mod B might work just fine normally... but when Mod C is added, they both get screwy, but A or B with JUST C work fine, and.... yeah. It gets complicated and it's outright impossible to test for this. Just trust me on that one.

It's because the mods used to be completely free.
Also the modders only get 25% of the revenue with the publishers and Valve taking the rest.

OK, now that is something I can see being an issue. I'm no fan of microtransactions, and from a buyer's perspective, I don't see much of a difference between paid mods and paid DLC, but Valve only allowing modders to keep 25% of the profits is f*****g stupid.

Of course, if that's the case though, between that and all the backlash against it, I think this program is going to bomb.

Which would be hilarious.

Well, to me anyway.

You say "will be" as if this is future tense, and not past tense. What is happening that is new?

There have been commercial mods since at least the Quake days (not sure if DOOM or Wolf had any previous to that), and there have been commercial mods on Steam since before it even came out (Half-Life had a few).

You should re-post this on the community forum. You'll probably get more responses as it is a service made for games. Then again I "feel" that this would also be a better place to post off topic questions because I don't think that Aspies would have a desire to leave off topic and unintelligible responses. As for addressing your question. I think people don't react rationally to paid mods because they don't associate mods as something that may affect their gameplay experience, as mods sometimes will do. In the Call of Duty franchise without downloading the map packs you may be left out of certain games; Mods will (most likely)not affect your access to playing the game such as in Minecraft or even a custom GUI in CS:GO. For me however it depends on the quality and type of mod whether I chose to pay for it or just ignore it.

Personally, I would prefer the tip jar system where I have the option to donate if I like a certain mod from a creator in hopes that he or she will make more.

From an economic standpoint, I think that it sounds like good news. The reason being that it could encourage better mods, and for game makers to make modding easier. If the price is not right at the moment, then that is okay since from what I know the price is up to the one making it and economics says that the market will eventually hit an equilibrium between price and demand. Just like how skinpacks and other DLC even reaches the console versions of Minecraft it has me in hopes that this could bring mods out of the grey areas of PC gaming and make it totally endorsed enough that it could reach consoles.

Right now it is kind of morally illegal that people can be getting money from how they have altered a game, even if you say that it is just a donation, more so if mods are using intellectual property from a third party. But if this can be figured out and even endorsed by the modding community, game making community, and the holders of intellectual holders, it could improve things.

Valve cancelled it. Apparently, fans were pissed that developers were taking 75% of the revenue. What makes PC gaming so great is free mods for your favorite games. You make a great mod and suddenly customers pay for it, then for every dollar you'd make, you'd only receive 25 cents. Fans thumbed it down hard and so Valve cancelled paid mods.

But here's the things the modders are modding someone elses intellectual property. I don't think they should charge money for that, but if they do, the developers/publishers should get ALL the goddamn money.

YYYYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! This proves that Valve listens to its customers. Hopefully they don't try pulling this stunt again.

Wouldnt work. At all.

The publishers would INSTANTLY collapse that scheme and get nothing out of it, as everyone either A: stops making mods entirely, because screw those publisher jerks, or B: makes them anyway but makes them simply harder to find with the creators being more anonymous.

Either is a bad outcome that'd give the publisher nothing whatsoever except hate from the players. The publishers are well aware of this. Not to mention losing the part of the playerbase for games like that that are attracted BECAUSE the mods add so much replayability and such. There's big revenue that can be gained in a variety of ways even just because of the free mods, let alone paid ones.

Most developers/publishers (of games that are capable of being modded, it's not feasable with certain ones depending on how they are structured internally) outright encourage the modding.

Yeah, I agree. I love mods and I want them to stay free.

Back when I had time for gaming, I did a lot of modding too. Like you said, Devs make games easily moddable, BECAUSE a vibrant modding community boosts sales and greatly extends the life of a game...

But modders need to understand that when working with the intellectual property of others, its better to leave things on a 'hobby' level and keeps things free. If you're really that talented and you want to get paid, do an indie game or get a job with a dev.