After seeing how the Internet exploded over this paid mod thing (which I'm against for reasons I'll go into more deeply if people want), I'm not hearing good reasons why modders should be paid for what they do. And I mean really good ones. Stay with me for a bit. It'll make sense. I promise.

I have no problem with people being paid for their work. That's basic economics. But the pro-pay story goes like this: If modders *ahem* content creators pour all their time and effort into their creations, they should receive compensation for doing so. They need money to survive, and by not being able to monetize their creations, it puts them in a lurch. Now that this budding business opportunity has been knocked on the head, they can't afford to create anymore. Ergo, the mods are going away because they're starving to death. That's the black-and-white formulation of the argument.

I call horse puckey. These same people weren't complaining at all one week ago. Modders have made mods for years without this paywall nonsense, and just look at where we are now. I think gaming is doing fan-freaking-tastic, and I look forward to its future.

But I have a question that I haven't heard anybody else asking: What if nobody wants to download paid mods? By that I mean what if the pay system is put back in place and all these modders come out of the woodwork and make all sorts of content anticipating a profit ... and nobody buys their crap - or even downloads it? What if it just sits listlessly on the download page until it succumbs to bit-rot, forlorn and forgotten by the wider gaming world?

This is the flip side of the capitalist utopia that nobody is talking about. Mods are not required for a game (it's the other way 'round). They're just not. What is being created is, by definition, an unnecessary product. I believe the Loyal Opposition is forgetting some lessons in basic economics. Any paid-mod system is going to be user-driven, NOT creator-driven. Unless I miss my guess, modders are looking at download numbers and falsely equating them to a $.99 sale if only they had the opportunity to make that a reality. But now since their lives and finances are in shambles as a result of Valve's decision to abort, they're going to have to just quit making mods.

But here's the thing: Putting a price tag on your mod throws up a barrier to entry. All the people who would have downloaded your mod if it were free aren't going to get in line for what you're selling. Some will, but I would be surprised to see this number approach even 10%. According to the Internet, the "Click to Donate" button has been around on mods for quite a while, and less than 1% make those donations. Why?

Not to put too fine a point on things, but have you seen the vast majority of mods in the first place? They are of a certain quality to be sure (that's the nicest way I know how to say it). They're not worth buying. I freely admit that there exists some mod content that I might purchase, but only if it were complete and bug free. It couldn't bork my save games, and it would have to be supported for at least a year. By my calculus, that equates to exactly no mods on the market at present. Were Skywind or Skyblivion actually working, I'd go for it. They're not. Much as I look at my children's coloring pages from school with admiration and pride (even going so far as to hang them on the refrigerator), they're not Picassos and I'm not shelling out cash for them.

Short version: It would take a product at least as good as the content they are modding in the first place to get me to part with my money.

To charge for your work is to sell a product. If you cannot handle the notion that people might not want to buy from you (and indeed, do not have to), welcome to real life. If you're looking to sell your work, it'd better damned well be outstanding work - the kind that you could sell independently of the original game ... just like the people who made the original game.

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I think the long and short of this entire mess is that introducing paid mods upsets the apple cart. Everything was going smoothly, and now there are all these problems cropping up that we didn't have before like monetary splits, licenses, legal concerns, and in general a lot of cognitive overhead that many view to be unnecessary. It adds a complication to a tried-and-true system without obvious benefit to the community.

There is no guarantee that allowing developers to charge for their mods will give us all better mods. However, it does guarantee that mods which were once free will now carry a price tag. From what I've read in previous comments, the only ones who stand to make any real profit from this new scheme are the developers of the original game. I expect to see a lot of rocky road ahead filled with quick cash-in texture change mods for a buck each, as well as numerous weasels who game the system en masse. If Valve's tech support system is any indication of their response time to mod issues, they don't have any hope of staying on top of this. (And if they CAN stay on top of this, a seven-day-plus turnaround for assistance with account problems is inexcusable.)

Should developers be paid for their time? The answer to that is "if they want to be". I have no problem with a modder accepting donations (although requests for donations might land you in legal hot water). I also have no problem with a modder using his work as fluff for his portfolio when he goes job hunting later. But outright charging for mods seems antithetical to the spirit of modding somehow - even though I support their right to do so.

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Meh ... rain on Jon Blow. Braid was a fun distraction, but he had to be put in thumbscrews to make it happen, and then with a 3rd party (Icculus), doing the port.

While I don't personally like the guy for the viewpoints he espouses (I find them insufferable and pretentious), I can objectively say that his lack of interest in Linux has never been able to elicit anything other than a mighty yawn from me. Stars will not collapse, nor will galaxies explode if he never makes another game for us (ditto for Team Meat, by the way).

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For my part, Skyrim would definitely be a "Shut up and take my money" purchase (again). However, I am prepared to have my hopes dashed by the realization that he's secretly into Candy Crush or some other title I couldn't care less about.

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Quoting: AryvandaarI don't want to get into semantics, so I don't care if it's incompetence or not, but when I got into Linux I considered something like a wubi installer, but I decided to read more about it because installing a OS within a completely different OS seemed like a very bad idea.

I would rather not use wubi if I could help it either (and it's hard to imagine how I couldn't). However, something tells me he's having compatibility issues that aren't wubi related. And as always, I could be wrong.

Just because there is a lot of software out there that doesn't work without serious bugs doesn't mean that you should trust it blindly, or blame another piece of software because another one failed.

I think you meant "There's a lot of software out there that works without serious bugs", but I'm with you so far.

That is basically what he's doing. He's using a third party installer and blames Linux, a kernel.

Not with you anymore. :) I gather that his latest troubles with Linux are just that - the latest ones. He's specifically griped about apt-get, Ubuntu, and basically everything but the Nvidia drivers (which he praises). He's not talking about the kernel ... at least I don't think he is. He's talking about GNU/Linux being a giant pain in his nether regions and he's not willing to support it after this latest batch of issues (as an aside, ask me about how code::blocks borked an entire Ubuntu install for me, x86_64 and 32-bit compatibility libraries, PulseAudio being forced down my throat whilst breaking things for years, and my adventures in SDL2 sometime).

And yes, I think he threw a temper tantrum unbecoming an adult. But man, do I ever understand.

The very fact is that this guy has no idea how Linux OS works. He went in expecting it to work like Windows. Whatever this guy have to say about Linux is irrelevant, because he doesn't seem to have any proper experience with it.

I'm only bothered by your use of the word "proper". I don't know what proper Linux experience is. This dev is telling the world about his Linux experience, and people are somehow offended by it. That doesn't seem terribly fair.

But tell me, is one's experience "proper" only if they've had a certain number of hours running Slackware? Or what if they've done the Ubuntu thing for a month after coming in from Arch? What if they've got UNIX experience with OSX, but haven't done the penguin? Or what if it happens that they're just trying to figure out a modern linux distro and have had nothing but headaches because the documentation for what they want to do sucks? I admit it would be different if he were lying through his teeth (and if so, release the hounds - and a squadron of lawyers), but I don't think that's the case.

Keep in mind, I find his comments to be bombastic, overwrought with hyperbole, and just plain old ill-considered, but we, as a community, should fix what he's bitching about, not kick him around for daring to bitch in the first place. If it's broken for him, then it's bloody well broken. If wubi is the culprit, then the misbegotten thing shouldn't be available because it tears stuff up. And should it turn out that his brand new hardware isn't properly supported (Liam's suggestion - and I agree), then that really is Linux's failing.

It's what you teach your kids, you try the food before you decide if you like it or not.

I like pie. And barbecue ... just not together.

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Quoting: XzylOkay two of your posts are direct shots @ Linux users for retaliating against someone who fire the first shot.

Yup, sure did. Because there's nothing to "retaliate" against. One guy had a table-flip-rage-quit moment when he finally had enough of having things break for him, and tons of people queued up to stamp on his nuts with combat boots. "Hey man," you may say, "I only kicked him once!" Uh huh, you and about a hundred other people. That's the problem. It makes us look bad. All of us. He needs help (and possibly derision - I won't be using the C4 engine).

Also, apt-get isn't without its issues either. Get caught in dependency hell ("Dependencies not satisfiable: X package depends upon Y, but it is not going to be installed" ... or my favorite "package depends upon foo 1.9 but the only thing in the repos is foo 1.9.0 so we're not going to install it" ), and I think anyone will see how someone could have a meltdown. Now you could use aptitude to do your conflict resolution, but I virtually guarantee that to start breaking things if used extensively.

You ever go onto a hardware (graphics) site and read all the NVIDIOTS vs AMshitD nonsence? Ever go into a game forum and listen to its users blat and wail (Windows users usually)? Apparently not, Linux "fan bois" aren't doing anything any other "fan bois" don't do.

This is what's called the appeal to popularity fallacy (argumentum ad populum) - everybody else is doing it, so it's okay for me to do it too. See, the thing is, it's not okay. I don't care what everybody else is doing. Unless of course you actually want to sound like a "Windows fan boi." And I think I speak for all of us when I say dear god, please don't.

The best part about bashing this guy is that ANYONE who has installed Ubuntu can officially talk down to this guy as that is his level of incompetence (apparently).

I've got $100 that says if I give anyone his machine and have them use his install method (wubi as I understand it), they're going to have exactly the same experience that he did. That's not incompetence, that's shit that doesn't work. I've installed Ubuntu dozens of times with no problems whatsoever. And then I had an experience that I wouldn't have believed if I didn't watch it happen. Contrary to popular belief, Linux does NOT play nice with everything out there yet, just the vast majority of it. Someone's personal experience successfully running installers that other people wrote entitles them to nothing other than working software.

And while we're at it, I noticed that someone brought up the fact that wubi isn't supported. I vote that it shouldn't be available for download if it's not supported. If you're going to offer a product as a viable solution to install your software and then orphan the thing, that's just bad policy. You're begging for bad PR and rants like this dev made.

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Wow. A lot of you guys aren't getting it.

Stop being dicks in public. The crap you're slinging is almost verbatim what the Linux world had to suffer for years.

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Okay, I know I'm getting in on the butt end of this, but I think this bashing from our side needs to stop. After reading the thread, I've seen multiple arguments calling for the dismissal of this developer, and more than a few cheap shots at that.

Why am I taking umbrage? Because they're the *exact same arguments* we've all been hearing about Linux for two decades now - "less than 1%", "who uses this software anyway?", "I've never heard of this, therefore it must suck". I'm glad that Linux isn't getting pissed on anymore, but I'm worried that since we've got Valve developing for us now, the piss-ees have become the piss-ers. If anybody should know better than using the 1% argument, it's us. Number of installed users != worthiness or quality of the software (the engine might be as crappy as his attitude, but I don't know. I've never used it.)

As for Ubuntu exploding when you try to install it on a PC, I've personally had that happen. I went through three or four distros before I found one that the cantankerous (and relatively modern!), hardware liked, and even then X11 didn't want to play nice at the login screen. Near as I can tell, it was just a Walmart computer with a magic mobo chipset that absolutely hated all things non-Windows. These things happen. They're rare in my experience, yes, but they *do* happen.

And while we're at it, yeah, the guy is entitled to claim his opinion is an expert one. Most experts may disagree with him, and he can be as wrong as possible, but I'd say a PhD in comp-sci and having a game engine under your belt rather qualifies him as an expert here. Now is he arrogant, as has been claimed here? Maybe, but not for this reason. Holding a doctorate in a given field and claiming that pronouncements you make in that field are expert ones does not fit any definition of arrogance with which I am familiar. PhD's are *expected* to have expert opinions in their fields. Conversely, having no degree of any kind in a given field ... well, you get the idea.

All that said, I think the guy is making a mistake. I find him boorish, frustrated, and possibly a bit childish. But if he tells me I'm fucking up my pointers or I need to rearrange my linking order I'm going to pay attention. No one does well by trading vitriol for disrespect. If he wants to leave, let him. But save the slings and arrows. It makes you look like one of the pissers we've been enduring for twenty years.

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I bought the first game and I'm ready to buy the sequel if they'd let us have it. But no Tux, no bux.

(Why did registering with my Steam account on an English site take me to a sign-up screen in French? I'm grateful it wasn't in Norwegian.)

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