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Re: Should mods be free?

#346
DigitalDuck wrote:
Poet1960 wrote:I am going to help you out. You spend years making something, and I will come along and "help" you by putting it on my website and giving you 10 cents, while I take $19.90, just because.......you know, I care about you and want to help you.
If the exposure you're giving me means that will give me an increase in profits, I'll take it. If it doesn't, I won't. That's how business works.

Nobody's forcing anyone to sell their games/mods on Steam. The fact that they choose to do so suggests that maybe Steam's cut is worth it.
One of the main problems I have with it, is the mindset or precedence it sets, and who's in position to dominate it. It may sound good on the surface, but when you compare it to reality and what really happens in these types of situations, you realize it isn't all warm and fuzzy. It's ALL about the money. Money for the big guys who can dominate and control it. It has NOTHING to do with helping the modders, that is just their 'hook' to get people to support the idea.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#347
Poet1960 wrote:One of the main problems I have with it, is the mindset or precedence it sets, and who's in position to dominate it. It may sound good on the surface, but when you compare it to reality and what really happens in these types of situations, you realize it isn't all warm and fuzzy. It's ALL about the money. Money for the big guys who can dominate and control it. It has NOTHING to do with helping the modders, that is just their 'hook' to get people to support the idea.
Really? Businesses operate to make money?

Next you'll tell me the sky is blue.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#348
DigitalDuck wrote:
Poet1960 wrote:One of the main problems I have with it, is the mindset or precedence it sets, and who's in position to dominate it. It may sound good on the surface, but when you compare it to reality and what really happens in these types of situations, you realize it isn't all warm and fuzzy. It's ALL about the money. Money for the big guys who can dominate and control it. It has NOTHING to do with helping the modders, that is just their 'hook' to get people to support the idea.
Really? Businesses operate to make money?

Next you'll tell me the sky is blue.

Still don't get it huh? Simply put, don't piss down the back of my neck and then tell me you are "helping" me, you are only insulting my intelligence. You can call it whatever you want, give me all the seemingly plausible excuses you want, but at the end of the day, you are feeding me horse sh^t in order to take advantage. At least have the honesty to say, "Hey, we want to scalp the piss out of this at the modders expense," instead of trying to make it sound like you are the white knight and savior of those poor unsupported modders. Most modders do it for the love of it, there are exceptions of course.

Also, some modders DO make money. The only people who really seem to push this, are the ones who stand to gain the most, and it ain't the modders.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#349
Poet1960 wrote: :lol: Yeah, and Tesla wanted to make energy free, but we got what we have now instead. Thanks for proving my point. ;) I have no problem with free enterprise when done honestly and with no monopolistic control. BTW, it doesn't sound like you have the modders well being in mind when you make statements like this.

I am going to help you out. You spend years making something, and I will come along and "help" you by putting it on my website and giving you 10 cents, while I take $19.90, just because.......you know, I care about you and want to help you.
What I said was in huuuge quotation marks. The electrical company has a ton of expenses, keeping the infrastructure in place and working, and conduct improvements on the grid. Neither the power plant nor you could do anything if they didn't, you'd be without power and the plant would be without money. They are not exactly 'doing nothing', and so does Steam. Every middle man has expenses, and they charge for it. If you want to work around them, well, you can always make your own power lines/create your own distribution platform for your products.

No, it's not a charity, it's not 'helping out'. It's a business decision. 'Do I want to subsist on donations, or do I want to monetize and share profits with those who enable me to do so?' The interest of all three parties in covered there, not just the modders. Yeah they also wanna earn, boo-hoo. 25% of a cut is more than what donations give. And it's hell of a lot more than royalties in other genres where you work with someone else's IP. Want anything more, you are free to do all the rest of the work yourself.

Setting a precedence isn't a problem here imo. 'Hey you can actually make money with the thing you love and can stop with the labor of love excuse, your work is actually worth something to people', this is so terrible. And will wipe out the quality free market, just like how I can't find free programs and games anymore, everyone is charging :\
panic
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Re: Should mods be free?

#350
It's better than some fundraisers that I have done for cancer preventions/research/etc...where most of it goes to 'administrative costs' and barely anything gets to people who need it. And that is under the guise of "You are raising money to help people with CANCER! Raise money! Lots of it!" Gotta love the American Cancer Society...They make any company in the gaming community look like a saint. I am sure there are exceptions but I also don't want to hijack this topic. I am just giving an example of what it COULD be like.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#351
Mistycica wrote:
Poet1960 wrote: :lol: Yeah, and Tesla wanted to make energy free, but we got what we have now instead. Thanks for proving my point. ;) I have no problem with free enterprise when done honestly and with no monopolistic control. BTW, it doesn't sound like you have the modders well being in mind when you make statements like this.

I am going to help you out. You spend years making something, and I will come along and "help" you by putting it on my website and giving you 10 cents, while I take $19.90, just because.......you know, I care about you and want to help you.
What I said was in huuuge quotation marks. The electrical company has a ton of expenses, keeping the infrastructure in place and working, and conduct improvements on the grid. Neither the power plant nor you could do anything if they didn't, you'd be without power and the plant would be without money. They are not exactly 'doing nothing', and so does Steam. Every middle man has expenses, and they charge for it. If you want to work around them, well, you can always make your own power lines/create your own distribution platform for your products.

No, it's not a charity, it's not 'helping out'. It's a business decision. 'Do I want to subsist on donations, or do I want to monetize and share profits with those who enable me to do so?' The interest of all three parties in covered there, not just the modders. Yeah they also wanna earn, boo-hoo. 25% of a cut is more than what donations give. And it's hell of a lot more than royalties in other genres where you work with someone else's IP. Want anything more, you are free to do all the rest of the work yourself.

Setting a precedence isn't a problem here imo. 'Hey you can actually make money with the thing you love and can stop with the labor of love excuse, your work is actually worth something to people', this is so terrible. And will wipe out the quality free market, just like how I can't find free programs and games anymore, everyone is charging :\

You are assuming they aren't making any money, or even want to make money. Like I said, most do it for the love of it and because it's fun to tinker.

EDIT:
BTW, you ever TRY to work around the electric company? :lol: Do a little research on what happens to people who do try.
Last edited by Poet1960 on Sun May 10, 2015 2:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#353
Umbru wrote:Eh go listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aavBAplp5A for some feed back from a guy who wrote one of the biggest skyrim mods and the guy who runs the Nexus modding site.
This "conversation" is a farce. TB doesn't know anything or care about the modding community for Skyrim, Brumbek admits that he doesn't take part in the community (and then proceeds to tell us all about it), and Robin stands to make a potentially decent cut from the paid modding system. Brumbek even has the gall to say that no modders were involved in the protest. I guess Apollodown, T3nd0, Trainwiz, Eiries and Fore are nobody, and that Emma didn't write a long post explaining why the modding community has always been centered around the free sharing of mods and assets.


Ultimately, the big issue with paid modding goes like this: The publisher of the mod and developer of the original game will always demand a cut. For paid modding to be profitable for the kind of huge, quality mods some people seem to think this will bring, those cuts must be unreasonably small and/or the price for the consumer unreasonably high. But for selling low-quality mods (like the majority of the Skyrim Debut Pack), damn near any cut will turn a profit for everyone involved, since the modder didn't need much more than a little time. These mods are clearly targeted toward the normies who don't know how modding usually works and think a couple bucks for a mediocre armor set is a fine deal. It wasn't a coincidence that Skyrim was free for the weekend paid modding went live - they figured that only people who've never even picked up the game before would actually pay for mods.

The game developer's cut also presents another issue - it can create an incentive for releasing a game with half-assed, broken, or missing features. Bethesda already knows that modders will jump at the chance to fix their buggy games even for free (see the entire bug-fix section for Skyrim on the Nexus). With paid modding, they now get more money from mods that fix their mistakes. SkyUI is a patch. It basically makes Skyrim's UI playable on PC, and it went up for sale. And the only reason the old version was left up for free was to mitigate the backlash (it didn't). If anyone thinks game developers wouldn't stoop that low, you're being naive. We're already paying for garbage like eternal early-access games, day-one DLC, on-disk DLC, the same old game every year with superficial changes, etc.

I think this will work eventually. Not in the sense that it will bring more quality mods, but that companies will figure out how to keep the boiling frog from jumping out of the pot and make more money without actually making more content. Gamers are not "entitled", in fact, we've proven we'll usually just bend over and let it happen.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#355
Ringu wrote:When I read the subject of this thread, I thought DWMagus had been jailed :-D
...
...
...
... I never thought of it that way.

*Scribbles a bit*
*Holds up a hastily drawn 'free the mods' sign* :ghost:
Image The results of logic, of natural progression? Boring! An expected result? Dull! An obvious next step? Pfui! Where is the fun in that? A dream may soothe, but our nightmares make us run!

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