So apparently people are upset about this.
I think that it’s a good thing:
-I think 25% of $3.99 is better than 100% of $0.
-I think money will encourage better mods.
-And I think that 75% is not unreasonable considering it’s derivative of an established brand.
What do you all think?
I think 75% sounds very harsh…
I think its fair to compare it to making a cover track, in the music industry.
If you sell a cover track you have to pay ~ 10% interests to the rights holder and ~30% to itunes,
leaving you with the remaining 60% of the money. (arrest me if I’m mistaken at this point).
Comparing that to 25%, where in some cases the content are completely original, albeit, exported into the rights holders platform, makes it sound way to much.
I don’t really have an opinion on the price, but I am pretty surprised that 1) it took this long for it to happen and 2) that Epic didn’t do it first.
Obviously, getting paid for work allows the author to spend more time on that said work. I have no trouble paying for work in the form of mods. But I think 75% sounds like … a lot. I wouldn’t be interested in making mods for commercial purposes if this was the deal. But then again, I don’t make mods.
75% seems very fair considering you don’t make the game or own any of it … pay your dues.
If you don’t like it, well… don’t do it.
In my opinion its simply an insolence.
A lot of games live on the possibility to be able to be modded. And now the companies get more money from other peoples work then themselves, although they polish their games? Its like tuning a car and have to pay the car manufacturer for this, absolute nonsense.
I think it is OK that the studios get payed but not that much. If you assume that steam still gets 30%, only 35% of the rest goes to the guy who actually did something for it an 65% to the game studio.
Its simply ridiculously.
This kind of make me wonder what happened to unofficial expansions like Diablo: Hellfire.
Because if I’m not mistaken, so long as the code is all your own you can legally make expansions without the consent of the original developer.
So how are these mods different?
Maybe it’s about getting to use Steam…
A lot of outrage from people who’ve never modded in their lives or finished a damn thing. Another day on the internet filled with crying babies.
No, your comment is absolute utter nonsense. This is basically saying "ok I’ve made a mod to the back seats of a ferrari and I want my mod to be sold as an optional extra to the entire world from inside ferrari’s own flagship store.
Big difference. Big, big difference.
Of course you could just offer your mod for free from your website. Still nothing stopping that, last I checked. So?
You are totally right here. There is a difference. All I say is that 65% is way too much.
But I also have to disagree to your argumentation in some way. The so called “flagship store” is steam. So the “flagship store” already gets its 30%
You still can, that’s true. And if you have absolutely no intention to make money it’s totally fine.
But I am still missing a good argument why the publisher is supposed to get that amount of money, without offering anything in addition except saying yes to allow sales of mods on steam.
I’m all for the idea of paid modding if prices are reasonable. People getting paid for their hard work is always a good thing and having a monetary incentive could attract professional development teams to expand on your favourite games without the need to jump through hoops getting permissions.
However only getting a 25% cut? I wonder how that’s split between Bethesda and Valve?
25% is too low. I reckon that’s just going to encourage modders to raise their prices beyond reasonable and scare off people who might consider doing it for a profit.
Plus there is always the issues of mod theft and the fact that many mods are build off of one another. It’s a whole mess of who has the rights to what.
Again, I’m not sure that the company could do anything about it if you did sell the mod on your own.
Does anyone know anything about it? Like maybe they could point to a court case about it?
Regardless, what’s really being sold here is realestate.
Well the thing is it’s about exposure, say you make $1 profit but reach 1000 people? vs $10 profit but reach 10 people? Even at 75% you’re likely to make more not less money at the end of it.
As you’re using a very well known IP (people don’t generally bother modding a game nobody’s heard of) then it’s only fair you pay for the right to earn money from that. Since it’s steam’s platform they want to encourage developers to design games to be moddable from the outset and this is very good encouragement for developers to invest a lot of time doing so. Making a game moddable isn’t easy.
So the way I see it is, it’s OK and everyone wins. I don’t see a bad side to this. If it was 75% for your game… well now, that’s just too much. But this is a mod… it’s nowhere near the workload of making a game, but you get much more exposure than you ever would have making your own game.
And is this a forced payment? are free mods no longer allowed? Last I checked you could still charge 0 and nothing changes. So what’s really the issue here?
In general I like the change a lot that people can now earn money for creating new content for games but absolutely hate the way they started this if this is supposed to be a kickstart for the mod selling thing in workshop games. The 75% sounds a rip-off when I think all the mods I have used in various games. As mod buyer I dislike it a lot if most of the item cost to does not even go to the item creator I would like to support. It however says in the agreement that the share is game based so it might not be as bad for others but this is not good PR for the feature launch.
I’m not a fan of Skyrim or any other that theme games so haven’t really used any of the affected mods either. I did browse the paid section and not sure about the share percentage in that game if the sold content is mostly swords, armors and such small changes. When I think other games where I have used mods and other user made content has been larger scale stuff and sometimes even better than official DLC (map packs, dozens of units and game modes) it not really fair for the authors to only get 25% for that work.
I’m not sure how many of you here are thinking about this change as a developer or as a player. Compared to the old no paid mods and from player perspective I mainly see Bethesda (and/or maybe Valve) now leeching more money with player content with such percentage cut. I rather press the donate button on mods own page than send my money to the party that aren’t doing enough to earn 75%. The game developer sure deserves to get some money from the sales but it should not be such a huge cut.
Leeching? who is the leech though? It’s not like some random dude making a sword mod spent 2 years and 50 million dollars struggling through deadlines to make the game is it?
As opposed to the old revenue being 0 and the new revenue being potentially 100k or more even at 75% for a popular mod, I’d say that’s very, very fair for a mod.
Most importantly, mods devalue paid DLC, so the developer does need some compensation. Especially if you consider that there’s only so much money an individual will pay, and so much time to use paid content. Paid mods do compete with DLC.
As I said I’m not sure about the percentage if all mods for that game are dollar swords. It sounds like the silly hat sales in TF2 or similar which probably had the same percentage(?). It might be ok share for a such mini mods or content but if the game supports and has mods that add tons of content for the game I only see Bethesda leeching. I’m also talking from player perspective and not from a modders. For me “very fair” and 75% do not belong to same sentence for mods that add tens or hundreds of hours of content to the game and take a lot of time to create. Fair would be 40-50% or so for actual content creator and very fair over 50%. Again this is how I feel as a gamer and mod buyer.
True
The Problem is the following:
They get 25% of a product they created for a platform that is required (the game)
The get approximately 45% of the product revenue they did not create but offer the platform for.
Compared to the creator of the content its 65% of the money that is left after valve took its money.
They get the usual money as for all products and that is okay. They offer a popular platform to buy content and have to struggle with a lot of things.
And this is exactly the point in your argumentation I don’t understand. The big studios create a game for a lot of money and they get a price for that product that is much higher than the price for a mod. So they get their money for the development, anyway (as long as the games sells)
Independently from this point also the mod is work and people will only pay as much as they think its worth. When you offer a mod for 40 bucks and the people buy it, then you cannot say its not worth the money because there wasn’t so much work needed as for the game itself. When the people pay it, its worth the money. Supply and demand, as simple is that.
And here is the important part hidden. First of all I agree. They are offering the platform and should be compensated for that. But secondly the Mods compete with the official DLC’s is imo a poor argument. What will a customer make buy a mod instead of an official DLC? The quality or popularity.
When a studio makes a game moddable, it is okay to get a piece of the cake when mods are going to be sold. But to get more than the people who actually created the content that at this point generates revenue…I simply don’t get the point.
Are Valve sending any revenue back to the game IP owners? If so that would be a fair shake. If not, I have not yet decided if this would amuse me, make me furious or cause me to raise a stink and demand monies due for the IP originators that the MODs made money for Valve with via the courts or threat thereof…
Imo this is reasonable that Valve and developer take some cut but 75% is waaay too much imo there should be 60%. in that case mod maker take 40% Valve 30% and developer 30%. Fair enough.
Another story is multivariations between mods - some are just skin and in that case 25% revenue isn’t a problem but some mods are complete overhaul/improve and in that case mod maker imo deserve at least 50% revenue… Perfect solution would be ability to set revenue cut per mod rather than per platform(game). Or solution like in humble bundle where buyer decide where money should go
EDIT
and one more thing: as im aware valve state that they send you money only if you above 400$ pure revenue otherwise you practically lost these money… this isnt fine either…
Also this argument is valid for the publishers. They didn’t make any revenue with the mod and now they want to take most. They only profited inderictly by all the new content that made their games more interesting.
Additionally the the publishers don’t get a bad reputation by bad mods, which differs by DLC’s.
I agree 100%
If this is true, it would really be a punch in the face. This would be fraud of every modder.
Here is Forbes article about the subject with good points
Well you need to earn at least 100$ to your account before they will transfer anything to you. With only 25% of sales and 0-30% tax withholdings it means you have to earn over $400 before seeing any money.