In an attempt to cool things down, Gabe Newell of Valve took to reddit to answer questions and concerns from people. I throw some opinions in too.
There’s a lot of genuine concerns from people, and a lot of the usual junk posts you would expect.
Gabe has stated they will add a pay what you want option, so that people could technically “donate” if the mod author sets the minimum to zero.
See the full Q&A post here on reddit.
My thoughts
Previously I wrote that it was all a big hoohaa, but thinking more on it, and reading thoughts from others my own thoughts have changed somewhat. I don’t think it’s as good an idea as I did before. Well, I still think it’s a good idea, but the execution isn’t the best.
I do think it’s open to more abuse than other systems Valve has rolled out. It’s not just the abuse factor, but the mods themselves that can become a problem. There was also the fact that in less than 24 hours it was already abused, and a paid mod had to be removed that used someone else’s work.
Let’s say you buy a mod for £10, and you get a good few hours out of it and enjoy it. That’s great, but what happens if the mod is no longer worked on and the game is updated breaking the mod. Will it still be sold/How long will it take for the developer and/or Valve to act on it? Will people get refunds? Things like this aren’t clear at all.
We all know how slow Valve’s support is, and they generally don’t give refunds. This is why it worries me, it’s going to open them up to a massive amount of support issues, and they weren’t dealing well with support as it was anyway. Gabe is even open about their support being an issue, so this isn’t me putting some sort of spin on it.
Honestly, if they rolled it out with a pay what you want including zero, or just a donation option with a small cut to Valve and the original game developer this would have been much better received I think. People would have been much more open to fully paid mods once that system had been in place for a while too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Kimyrielle Apr 26, 2015
Quoting: GuestDonate button would have been very sane, what they did is not sane; I don't think Valve can even pull this off properly.
Let's be open for a second: On the internet, the amount of people willing to come back to a page and donate for something they downloaded from there is a really good approximation to zero. I think the best approach would be a "pay what you want" button -before- downloading it, and allowing them to cancel their payment for up to a week after download in case it didn't live up to their expectations. That would be at least a nudge to make people give something to a modder for their work.
But I otherwise agree that what they did there is not sane. ;)
0 Likes
I have read there is already a mod, "Midas Magic", who's free version was updated to pester the player with pop-ups to buy the paid version. At a 4% chance every cast.
0 Likes
Giving money for the modders was never a problem for me in this issue. It's the fact that Valve and Bethesda take 75% cut of the cash, so still wont be buying or donating anything on Steam.
1 Likes, Who?
Gabe got downvoted hard on this reddit, there where some really good argument made like this one https://np.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqol9re and https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqom1kq but sadly Gabe never responded to those at all
0 Likes
Quoting: LiekkiGiving money for the modders was never a problem for me in this issue. It's the fact that Valve and Bethesda take 75% cut of the cash, so still wont be buying or donating anything on Steam.
I completely agree. I browsed the workshop a little bit, and there's very little indication of how little money actually goes to the mod authors. Gabe stated that the 75% number comes from Bethesda (not surprising at all, to me); I just wish Steam actually had a UI that showed how much was going to whom. Also, for mods that are "pay what you want", I would like to be able to choose who gets my extra money (everything that I choose to pay above the minimum).
Of course, there are also issues of random people uploading mods they don't own and trying to profit from them, or authors screwing over people using free versions of the mod that were previously released (which hits pretty close to home, since I was one of the people using my linux partition on my PS3 when Sony released firmware 3.21 - a similar situation where the update is a major downgrade, and you can't go back to a previous version once you update).
In the end, I think the idea is good, but they shouldn't have released the feature in the state it's currently in.
0 Likes
As a long term modder 10+ years. I don't have a problem with this. (Hell what is counterstrike?) What i would like to see is Valve get agreement from rights holders such as Games Workshop so they get a cut when modders use their IP. Games Workshop in particular have been total assholes at shutting down any mod using their ip. If valve could work out a deal for paid mods that gets modders access to ip they can't currently use, it would be a huge step forward.
As with anything there will be those who make free, open source, and closed source mods.
As with anything there will be those who make free, open source, and closed source mods.
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me