Steam Launches Paid Mod Support

[Huw the Poo]

At the end of the day, Valve, Bethesda and all of the rest are corporate entities driven by immediate profit. The only thing that changes their mind is something that impacts their bottom line. This isn't going to, because despite all of the pitchforks and torches most people will line up to buy Fallout 4 on Steam as soon as it's announced. When all of the mods for that are pay-to-play, most people will shrug and buy them. Gamers whinge a lot, but when it comes down to actually not buying a game from the company they were whinging about, they'll buy the game. That's less the case with a lot of the regulars here but very much the case in the general population.

Nail -> head.  Gamers as a general population are depressingly weak-willed.  I'll never forget that image of the Steam group that was set up to boycott some game (think it was a Call of Duty or something) and the screenshot showed that the vast majority of them were playing that very game.

[Boggit]

^^ I think Panzerde is right.

[Huw the Poo]

Valve have just done a u-turn.  They've removed paid mods from the Skyrim workshop and are refunding anyone who paid for one.  Can't link right now but it's the top thread in r/games on reddit.

[Gusington]

Really?? That was quick.

[Staggerwing]

Looks like they have some idea of the difference between penny-smart and pound-foolish. Not their first rodeo I guess...

[sandman2575]

 ???   This is just bizarre.  I didn't get any sense that this was being launched as a 'trial balloon'...  Wasnt Gabe Newell just touting the virtues of Steam's wonderful new scheme in a conversation with the founder of Mods Nexus?

[Gusington]

I hope this gets buried quick.

[sandman2575]

Not at all sorry to see the kibosh put on this.  Just very surprised by Valve's inept handling of the whole thing...

[panzerde]

Definitely looks like a retreat. Clearly, the cost of dealing with the fallout was higher than the revenue generated. No one ever accused the team at Valve of not being able to count.

I think they did a nice job in their announcement of admitting that they screwed up. At the same time the announcement makes it clear that they haven't abandoned the concept of paid modding, they've just done so in the Skyrim modding community. It remains to be seen what, if anything might be tied to the launch of FO4 and TESVI, but if I try and read between the lines of the announcement it sounds like they might try a paid modding solution at launch rather than trying to break into an established modding community.

Again, done right I think that could work. I'm not at all against someone that produces a really exceptional addition to a game getting something for it, as long as all of the consequences of acting in a professional rather than hobbyist manner are dealt with. As several members of this forum can attest, there's a BIG difference between posting a few ARMA missions for people to play and trying to sell a total conversion to an entirely different war, for example - I'm looking at you, Iron Front!

So, good on Valve for seeing the writing on the wall and being smart enough to react to it the right way. Let's hope they actually learned something from it and future efforts at this are a lot less hamfisted.

[Sir Slash]

I think there was something of a revolt going on with modders posting their complete opposition to ever charging money for their mods and modders in general fleeing Steam over the weekend. Nexus was saying modders were moving their content there to hide it from Steam and Valve fearing it would be taken away from their control. Nice to see the way the community came together and that angry people can do something positive instead of burning down a city.  O0

[jomni]

I think there was something of a revolt going on with modders posting their complete opposition to ever charging money for their mods and modders in general fleeing Steam over the weekend. Nexus was saying modders were moving their content there to hide it from Steam and Valve fearing it would be taken away from their control. Nice to see the way the community came together and that angry people can do something positive instead of burning down a city.  O0

But it's all optional.  Why do they need to overreact?

[RooksBailey]

Story here:

http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-has-removed-paid-mods-functionality-from-steam-workshop/

"We underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

"Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know."

[Greybriar]

The story straight from Steam:

Removing Payment Feature From Skyrim Workshop
April 27 - Alden   

We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.

But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know.

[Gusington]

This is a great turn of events!

[Shelldrake]

This is a great turn of events!

+1 Someone at Valve won't be getting a year end bonus!