- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
Seems like Bethesda wants another go at this
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As with the several times they tried this before, this is a train wreck of an idea for so many reasons. While I do love the idea of mod creators getting to make money doing what they enjoy, from the consumer perspective this is bound to be awful… I don’t want to have to get nickel-and-dimed by what are essentially third party micro-transactions… with no grantee that the product I just bought will even work with the others I bought or that they will continue to be supported if the game gets patched a year later. Not to mention virtually zero quality control, leaving users to trust in reviews, AKA other customers who put their money on the line.
And from the mod development side of things, this is going to make building off other mods a complete mess. Think of how many mods you have installed that have had other mods as requirements to work. Are those mods going to need to be bought by the user too? And are the mod creators going to have to set up some kind of revenue sharing with those dependency mods? What happens if a mod developer uses a free mod as a dependency, is that fair to the other mod creator? Do moders have the rights to request their content not be used by other mods? And if so what does that process look like and who arbitrates it? Having seen this tried before, it makes a mess and long term it will stifle collaboration leading to weaker mods.
There’s a lot of negativity here, and a lot of it is pretty justified. But I don’t hate the idea of paid mods. Like if there’s a way for authors like the ones the made Enderal or other really big mods to make some money off of it that’s really great. Is Bethesda going to be fair about them? Probably not. Is Bethesda going to be competent with the system? Probably as competent as they are at anything else (derogatory).
But at least it’s a way that you can make some money back for your work where you don’t have to worry about chargebacks from trolls costing you more than the donations they were originally giving you. And this can be a pretty big problem for donation driven works. Someone donates $1, 200 times. Then charges them all back. Paypal charges you $15 processing fee for each chargeback. And you can contest it but who needs that? If Bethesda can be the entity brokering all of it, then they are the ones that take the chargeback risk.
So in theory, I don’t hate it. But it will all depend on the implementation and competency of Bethesda (not looking good here).
Someone donates $1, 200 times. Then charges them all back. Paypal charges you $15 processing fee for each chargeback
Don’t use PayPal. That’s a good policy in general.
My problem with it last time around, which was not the problem most people took with it, was how much of a cut Valve and Bethesda took before the mod maker saw any of that money. It’s Valve’s store and Bethesda’s IP, sure, but if Bethesda was going to take that much of a cut, they should at least be spending some of that money on policing the bad actors in the paid mod scene to make sure it’s all legit so that they earn their cut, but they seemed to want their money for nothing.
Also if I pay for a mod and they release a patch that breaks it (seems unlikely but we’ve already gotten about two or three more patches than I expected), I would expect them to fix the mod or pay the creator to do so.
Oh and I would expect them to magically resolve conflicts between paid mods.
If a free mod breaks and never gets fixed, or a free mod breaks another mod, fair I have no expectations there. But once I fork out money that’s not a mod, that’s a product now. And if Bethesda is taking my money, they are responsible for the product.
As long as you can easily turn individual mods on and off, I personally wouldn’t have the expectation that one mod must not break another mod. I also don’t mod much, but that’s why I see potential in paid mods. What’s out there the way things are now usually doesn’t float my boat, and I’d like to see what we get when people can support themselves in producing mods.
Coming soon: 5000 spam copes of the same relabelled, stolen mods by every single scammer in existence
