Steam jumps the shark

[wings7]

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

All I know is steam is buggy I lost access to my account and when I got it back all my games were gone.

You should create a new account, contact customer service (it does take some time) about what happened to your old account to get your games back...you have to be patient.

[aaatoysandmore]

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

All I know is steam is buggy I lost access to my account and when I got it back all my games were gone.

Ouch! no kidding your whole library. Such chances people take putting all their eggs in one basket with Steam.

[Hotschi]

Not using Steam myself, the only problem I see with this policy is, when some people charge money for the work of other modders, just altering it slightly before doing so. This would open up the Pandora's Box of a modding community.

[fodder]

bump

[Ranger33]

Well, that was quick. Valve removes paid mods from the Steam Workshop.

I would like to reiterate my position that I am not opposed to rewarding modders for their efforts, but this was about the worst imaginable way to go about doing it. The key issues being:

1) If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Especially when that fix involves telling people to start paying for stuff that was free literally yesterday.

2) No quality control whatsoever. When you buy an official DLC for a game, you have a certain level of confidence that it will work, especially in the long term. This system was 100% buyer beware, with no refunds for mods that were broken by later game updates, or any other reason. Even among the hand-picked debut mods for this program were several that were incomplete, buggy, or flat out broken.

3) No official protection against stealing the work of others, scams, empty promises, etc. The community was expected to police this themselves.

4) The modders' cut was 25%. Seriously? If the whole idea is to support these people, why do they get the smallest piece of the pie? Additionally, they would not receive a dime until the mod had generated $400 in gross sales.

No doubt we will see this come back later in a different form, hopefully one that involves voluntary donations, of which the modder actually gets the majority of the donation.

[IainMcNeil]

As I understand it Valve haven't changed anything. The developer/publisher in this case has decided to stop selling paid mods for that game. The functionality is still inside Steam for anyone who wants to use it.

[gradenko2k]

4) The modders' cut was 25%. Seriously? If the whole idea is to support these people, why do they get the smallest piece of the pie? Additionally, they would not receive a dime until the mod had generated $400 in gross sales.

1. A 25% sounds like highway robbery from the outside looking in, but is not actually outlandish relative to entire industry standards. It's more a reflection on the immaturity of regulations with regards to game development as a whole.

2. It was Bethesda that dictated a much larger cut going to them. Steam's implementation would allow for a larger cut going to a modder per approval of the publisher.

[Zap]

I see this possibility, temptation for some Companies to produce games that have the basics but really need more scenarios or more substance. Because, they know a group of modders are motivated to produce mods that make their game(better. Maybe making the game, what it should have been when it was released. It could be just another way we pay extra for what should have been with initial release.

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: Zap

I see this possibility, temptation for some Companies to produce games that have the basics but really need more scenarios or more substance. Because, they know a group of modders are motivated to produce mods that make their game(better. Maybe making the game, what it should have been when it was released. It could be just another way we pay extra for what should have been with initial release.

The idea has some merit (insofar as every new feature ever released by Steam has gone through some birth pains, even significant ones, before actually being useful), but they decided to choose the worst possible implementation and testbed for it.

You can already see the potential in TF2 and Dota 2: the "community" produces aesthetic content for the game, Valve approves it and puts it into the game.

The problem with what they did here is that the publisher seemingly had no interest in putting any work into managing what can be modded or filtering what mods can be created, so long as they got their (very high) cut of the profits. Part of that is bolting on this system onto a years-old game that isn't even being officially patched anymore.

Ideally, you'd have a set-up where the developer/publisher has tight controls on what aspects of the game can be modded to limit compatibility issues, and/or will take an active role in picking out mods that can be monetized to ensure some measure of quality.

[Eambar]

There are also plenty of other places to obtain Skyrim mods. I have over 100 mods for Skyrim and very few from the Steam workshop. I'm also not against paying for mods or assisting a modder with a donation for a well made mod that increases my enjoyment of a game.

Cheers,

[aaatoysandmore]

Due to the huge outrage word has it that Steam is pulling the plug on money for mods program. Hurray for petitions and the people. [&o]

[marcpennington]

As I understand it, Steam is re-evaluating. But it seems to be a feature that will still come in the future, hopefully with all kinks worked out.

Out of curiosity, is there any official position by Matrix on paid for mods created by users? The obvious one being that someone creates a new scenario in one game or another, then wants to charge a nominal fee for it. And honestly, given how high quality so many user scenarios I've played over the years are, I personally wouldn't have an issue with it. And if a certain price paid allows these modders to create even better and more accurate scenarios, well again, it might be win-win. Honestly, I could see it as being the future of the niche war-gaming hobby, and probably in practice bouncing back more money to Matrix (or any other wargaming company) in the long run.

Just to establish my position, I'm not a scenario designer, nor will I ever be. I just don't have the patience to wade into the OOB's and such, but do appreciate many of the "modders" who have done that over the past, and I have very much enjoyed many scenarios they have created in one wargame or another.

[IainMcNeil]

From a legal stand point any mods created for games cannot be sold without the game developers/publishers permission, but we've worked with a lot of modders over the years to help them become fully fledged developers. For example the Panzer Corps Grand Campaign designer start out as a modder and we recruited him. The Lordz started as modders and we recruited them too. A number of the developers we work with used to be modders. The idea of paid mods is interesting and I think could generate higher quality mods, but there is the danger of quality control. You really need a user rating before you allow them to be sold unless the developer is going to sign them off which is too time consuming. There is also potential backlash if the game changes code which breaks a mod people paid for and who is responsible to fix this? Its a bit of a can of worms really but if done right could be interesting.

[zakblood]

all those who paid have had a full refund, so fuss is all over now tbh, and never should have happened anyway but in there comments they said as such and also said it was a big mistake...

[marcpennington]

Those are interesting comments on who has the responsibility to keep the game up to date and compatible with paid mods---- especially as in the Steam experiment the game publisher was getting roughly 50% of the price, per the Rock Paper Shotgun article covering the debate.

I guess that makes it obvious why a game like Skyrim, which I imagine is at the end of its patch cycle, was chosen for the experiment. Also, maybe why an older game that Valve itself published (Halflife 2 or Portal for example) was not. But I really don't see an easy solution to the problem.

[gradenko2k]

It's really a six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other kind of deal: any monetized modding scheme is going to need developer or publisher oversight to prevent it from damaging the rest of the game's community, and if you're going to do that, you might as well either license your game officially or fold the mod/modder into your company and it circles back around.

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil

From a legal stand point any mods created for games cannot be sold without the game developers/publishers permission, but we've worked with a lot of modders over the years to help them become fully fledged developers. For example the Panzer Corps Grand Campaign designer start out as a modder and we recruited him. The Lordz started as modders and we recruited them too. A number of the developers we work with used to be modders. The idea of paid mods is interesting and I think could generate higher quality mods, but there is the danger of quality control. You really need a user rating before you allow them to be sold unless the developer is going to sign them off which is too time consuming. There is also potential backlash if the game changes code which breaks a mod people paid for and who is responsible to fix this? Its a bit of a can of worms really but if done right could be interesting.

Thank you for telling us this. [:)]

[shape]

I am sure we will see this with fallout 4.