Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods

[Vals_Fan]

I am so happy to see that the paid mods for Skyrim have been tossed in the bin. However, I am afraid this means they will just churn away trying to find ways to make it work. I hope they do not succeed.

As I was saying to my friend today: People want to give all things value, while so often missing that which is most valuable about things.

[fleet]

The only thing about all this that surprises me is that they gave up so quickly.

[Raym]

[...]I am afraid this means they will just churn away trying to find ways to make it work. [...]

This.

Well, they've done quite a nice bit of damage to their image as companies... not that the average gamer will notice or care, anyway.

[Elaura]

Jac and I were just discussing the fact that we would pay for user-made content if we considered it worth the price, the mod author would be around to support it, and it was actually out of beta testing. We've bought add-on packs for Borderlands games for less than $5, so it isn't the money.

What we would never do is give 75% of what we think a mod is worth back to Valve and Bethesda. I would even be a little perturbed if I discovered the mod author wanted to send a percentage of what I paid to some third-party service provider. If I want to support Nexus or Blender or MCM, I'll do it directly, thankyouverymuch. We've already paid Bethesda and Valve everything we agreed to pay to play their games.

Though many people are dead-set against buying user-made content as opposed to DLCs, Jac and I aren't. Valve and Bethesda destroyed a reasonable idea with catastrophically poor implementation. While modders like Chesko realized they backed the wrong horse almost immediately, I have lost respect for those "Service Providers" who continued the propaganda even after the many faults were made painfully obvious. While Robin Scott came out publicly saying he didn't approve of the implementation, he sure as heck didn't remove Nexus from the list of Service Providers and in the case of Polygon, the ass-kissing had not even been remotely veiled. Steam allowing paid mods is awesome. Here's why Valve kills paid mods on Steam, will refund Skyrim mod buyers while the latter article is purely factual, the comments are not:

Kirielson Kirielson
MODERATOR, POLYGON
I’ll say it:
Weak move Valve. We know you’re going to put it up, and you really should have ridden the rough seas out of it.

In my opinion, the Service Providers pretty much threw the modders under the bus for a measly 1-5% of Valve's cut. Valve certainly bought their support cheap. It's ironic to me that Dark0ne accused Chesko of taking "a pop at the Nexus"; what I saw was someone trying to recover his principles. Chesko made a rookie mistake. Robin Scott, in his own words has "been doing this for 14 years" and has a business that costs $500,000 a year to run. He's a businessman and he should have realized the modders weren't and they were going to get screwed by the terms offered. Maybe he didn't know beforehand, but he found out at the same time everyone else did and kept his hand out.

In the end, I hope everyone will get over the death threats. I know they are hurtful because Jac and I got them at the time we decided we couldn't support Lover's Lab because it supported rape. We were also misquoted and our intentions misrepresented. But we didn't let them drive us out of the community and I really hope those modders who have left come back. I also hope that even if the horrible, mob-induced venom spat in every direction can't be forgotten, it can at least be forgiven enough to allow everyone to learn from this debacle and return to gaming, modding, and sharing our love for both.

EDIT: This post contains factual errors. Please see my next post for the corrections.

[Vals_Fan]

The death threats took things WAY too far.

I really hope that if they DO try this again, that it is more like the way they made Viking conquest. I would be ok with that, its not the money. The part I hated the most was the hostile environment it created, which was opposite of what it was just the day before.

And I did not know that about lovers lab, yikes, I was thinking of registering there, but now I am not so sure.

[Raym]

I really hope that if they DO try this again, that it is more like the way they made Viking conquest. I would be ok with that, its not the money.

For those not familiar with Mount&Blade: Warband, this is what Taleworlds did: there was a very good mod for that game (pretty close to a total conversion).
They made an offer to the makers and made it into a true DLC.

This means you pay for it, but you also get full support, patches and all the things you expect when you are buying a game or a DLC: case in point, when Viking Conquest came out they tell me it was buggy as hell and they've had to patch the everloving shit out of it.

Now, that's a professional way to handle this. Not just putting a price tag on some crap hastily put together by a greedy kid.

[Darknut]

Even though I love to mod I am glad that paid modding went away. (for the time being) I think there have been too many years of free mods in the TES world to suddenly start charging for them. Much too many mods with much too many shared resources to ever keep it straight.

I totally understand why the community went nuts about this & I think the modders that went to the "Dark Side" kind of got what they deserved, granted some of it went way too far with threats, etc. In my experience as soon as money becomes the sole motivation for anything that thing turns to sh*t ..... look at the music & movie industries ... most of it is total crap now.

IMHO the modder would be getting screwed anyway. If you really look at the numbers there was no "real" money for the modders .... maybe 1% of the 1% might might see some substantial cash but I doubt it with a 3 yr old game.

Just don't be surprise when they try this again on a different game with a different spin ( Fallout4 or TES6 )

[Elaura]

The death threats took things WAY too far.

I really hope that if they DO try this again, that it is more like the way they made Viking conquest. I would be ok with that, its not the money. The part I hated the most was the hostile environment it created, which was opposite of what it was just the day before.

And I did not know that about lovers lab, yikes, I was thinking of registering there, but now I am not so sure.

No-no. Don't worry about that. Jac and I are both registered there. It wasn't everyone, just like it wasn't everyone with Chesko and the others, it just seems like everyone at the time it is happening.

[Elaura]

Yes, I have made yet another mistake, pointed out to me by Illuminiel on Bethesda's forum. Here is my correction:

Elaura, on 28 Apr 2015 - 8:12 PM, said:

Illuminiel, on 28 Apr 2015 - 6:52 PM, said:
i thought it was Polycount who were a named service provider - all I've seen from Polygon is some reasonable journalism on the story?

Oh, you're absolutely right. The service provider involved is definitely Polycount, not polygon. I am so sorry for that mistake. Polygon, although not taking money from the deal wasn't exactly unbiased in their journalism. In fact "Steam allowing paid mods is awesome. Here's why." was the title of a piece on their site. The first comment on their article concerning the cancellation of mods for pay was from a current moder

I’ll say it:
Weak move Valve. We know you’re going to put it up, and you really should have ridden the rough seas out of it.

As for the death threats and negativity from the PC crowd: You wonder why mobile is having a major impact, this toxicity is why.

As for Polycount, one would think on a site "Created, maintained, and contributed to by professional videogame artists" at least one of them might have understood a 75/25% cut was nothing less than amateur videogame artists being taken to the cleaners.

Thank you Illy for noticing my mistake and pointing it out. I definitely had no intention of spreading more misinformation. My apologies to anyone I may have mislead by my words.Oh, you're absolutely right. The service provider involved is definitely Polycount, not polygon. I am so sorry for that mistake.