Steam Workshop goes Market

[Tech614]

Lol 60k to be above poverty line...

You would either be homeless or living in the ghetto in SF if you are sub 50k a year as a house hold. My rent alone is over 20k a year, and forget about trying to buy a house in the current bay area market. Depends entirely where you live as you can live very comfortably on 30k(if single person anyways) in say Kentucky.

[zealo]

Some of the comments in that thread are... Quite ignorant.

/r/gaming is a cesspool of memes and shitposting, the only interesting part there is really what Gabe Newell is saying. Go to /r/games for more serious discussion.

[Deleted]

You would either be homeless or living in the ghetto in SF if you are sub 50k a year as a house hold. My rent alone is over 20k a year, and forget about trying to buy a house in the current bay area market. Depends entirely where you live as you can live very comfortably on 30k(if single person anyways) in say Kentucky.

That makes me very happy to be quite comfortable with my ~20-22k/year (gross) where I live in France

[Acidbaron]

I agree. As with a lot of things Valve does, they're well intentioned but poorly implemented.

With gaben saying they are aware of their QA on things like greenlight and having long term and short term hacks planned, i'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this. Not because out of the kindness of their heart but they want more publishers to do this and for more publishers to jump onboard with this it first needs to gain some more popularity.

it hasn't been out long it's limited to one game for a reason so i'll reserve judgement after this "beta" stage.

- - - Updated - - -

That makes me very happy to be quite comfortable with my ~20-22k/year (gross) where I live in France

It's not comparable to europe since we pay a lot of taxes for our social security, also they pay more taxes at the end of the year on their income i believe, it's a different system.

60K there could very well be 30-40K here. (just guessing not an accountant)

[breadisfunny]

It only took like a day for the Skyrim modding community to become severely fractured with huge internal conflicts due to this shit.

The amazing thing about mods is that they were created due to passion for a game. People did it despite not getting paid. Now we're already seeing a gigantic influx of worthless paid weapon "mods", or even worse, script mods that anyone could compile in a .txt document and type into the console themselves. So from where comes this idea that mods will be better with money-grubbing thrown into the mix? You don't see great mods from entrepreneurs who sees potentials to make money, you see great mods from people who loves the game itself, who wants to improve it, and share that experience with others. Since you're modding a game, using their SDKs and other tools, it was never truly "yours".

No one is arguing that it's wrong to get paid for one's work, but do you expect to get paid for a hobby using someone else's tools? This market is ONLY beneficial to Valve and Bethesda, who can cash in on something they haven't had anything to do with other than to allow people to make content. Mod makers are hiding their mods, taking them off of Nexus, and don't get me started on the fun times of people uploading other people's work and Valve barely giving a shit. It's actually quite scary how little Valve seem to care about what's being thrown up on their servers. High Definition Horse Genital Mods.

I am not an avid mod enthusiast, I'm not losing sleep over this, but I'm not dumb enough to think that this is beneficial to the player community. It's transforming passionate mods into microtransactions and the negative effects are already showing.

i shudder to think which of the mods i have installed in skyrim are now behind a paywall.

[kail]

It doesn't matter whether someone has a right to sell something they created

I feel that is does matter.

My annoyance with the recent internet reactions comes down to people wanting to restrict the rights of mod creators when it was the IP owners that gave the go ahead. Before this move, I have only seen this done the other way where people complained about IP owners (i.e. Nintendo) overly protecting their property and not letting anything go by w/o their permission.

If a chef is allowed to put a price on their food in a soup kitchen, then there is nothing wrong with him/her in doing so. Chances are the chef will not make a whole lot of money where people just want to eat for free, so he/she would have to change their location or practice. Let that market control what does/doesn't get sold or eaten.

They did it all for the dollar dollar bills.

Chances are 99.99% that you are right. Businesses rarely make moves that do not make them money in the short or long run. Gabe mentioned that currently, the Steam Market is actually losing them money. I will not claim it to be true or untrue, we simple do not have official evidence to prove either way.

[Acidbaron]

Every business move is for money but we cannot deny that valve has done more for indie developers and even artists then any other company in gaming to get them on the map and give them a platform. Sure can it be better but i find the leap to saying that they are going to EA practices to be far fetched.

[Kelimbror]

I feel that is does matter.
*SNIP*
If a chef is allowed to put a price on their food in a soup kitchen, then there is nothing wrong with him/her in doing so. Chances are the chef will not make a whole lot of money where people just want to eat for free, so he/she would have to change their location or practice. Let that market control what does/doesn't get sold or eaten.

But this is why what yo are inherently saying and what I am saying aren't on the same field at all. I appreciate the good nature of the response, but I specifically said it doesn't matter because my argument doesn't depend on that. There are a lot of people arguing that, and you are right in thinking they are wrong. That's not the right argument.

My approach, and the one that is valid, is represented best in the discrepancy of what I highlighted from your post. This was never a market. This was a community of people. It has been turned into a market. That's bad. Bad bad bad. It capitalized something that was communal and free of the taint of money. To this point their Mod workshop and Mods as a whole have been an extension of the community of players involved in the games. It was a service that didn't bring them direct revenue, but served to keep games fresh and relevant which translated to more sales when the products lifecycle should have been over.

How many less people would have bought Skyrim on Steam if it didn't have free Mod support? We will never know, but I guarantee you without the huge replayability, advertisement from youtube videos and content creators, and everything else it would be a different story. Still a huge success even being a buggy pile of mess, though set in a beautiful framework...but not the same. This is my problem. This is why I think the people complaining are correct, they just are using the wrong arguments.

Chances are 99.99% that you are right. Businesses rarely make moves that do not make them money in the short or long run. Gabe mentioned that currently, the Steam Market is actually losing them money. I will not claim it to be true or untrue, we simple do not have official evidence to prove either way.

And I don't begrudge a business for trying to make money, but Steam has a unique position and has recently been quite a bastion for video gaming as a community and not simply a method for generating pools of gold for Scrooge. Maybe that's unfair to hold them to that standard since they are a business, but that unique brand has enabled their recent surge in popularity and sales.

I have to think that Steam is likely a large reason why we even have bundles and a diverse economy to shop around for value games. It's pretty much the opposite side of the coin from console publishers price gouging their games, Gamestop continuing to resell the gouge, etc.

Maybe this is a direct result of Steam enabling other competition, because they have to get a leg up, but it's that disregard from what made them special and pursuit of only money that seems incorrigible. While I won't stop buying games from them, because I'll be honest: I've only used the workshop in Skyrim and TL2, I will never ever pay anyone for a mod on their out of principle now. So for me that aspect of their platform is ruined. For others they may use workshop content in like all of their games.

[Acidbaron]

I don't think valve is pursuing exclusivity with this move, that would be rather bad and it wouldn't pay out since a lot of developers are loyal to their platforms they began on being it Nexus or anything else, reason they also spoke with them and offered them a cut from their 30%.

I see this as a rather good move since it actually provides people a legal basis to sell their work. I have yet to take a detailed look but i don't think people will suddenly start adding a price tag on every mod.

This is not a popular opinion but i truly believe a lot of people are outraged at the notion that they can legally sell their goods and that previously good free stuff may end up being no longer free.

[kail]

This was never a market.

Correct, it would have been illegal until recently to turn mods into a market.

This was a community of people.

It still is, market or not. People can still collaborate, mods can still be posted for free. Donations, feedback, collaboration is still possible. Steam's policies are currently a mess which has turned the modding community a mess. But that is where I put the blame, the policies not the fact it has turned into a market.

It has been turned into a market. That's bad. Bad bad bad.

Will this negatively affect some users/consumers? Yes. Many don't want to pay for mods. I don't want to pay for mods. I still don't believe it is a strong enough reason to restrict modders. Telling people what they can or can not do seems to be against what Gabe believes. It also goes against my wavelength as well.

How many less people would have bought Skyrim on Steam if it didn't have free Mod support?

I'll repeat your answer in saying "we will never know". I can also throw in the possibility that modder that sold his/her mods received enough support and financial possibilities to create a game's worth of content on top of Skyrim (say Blood Dragon-ish). But there really isn't a point in speculating the past. We will never know.

And I don't begrudge a business for trying to make money...

For that part, I'll just agree with you. I simply find the posts claiming they know of this to be a cash grab without any evidence as to how this is even performing.

[Kelimbror]

It still is, market or not

This is where we fundamentally disagree. Much like giving a third world country top notch technology, missions work to make sure everyone knows who Jesus is, or giving the Native Americans small pox, this change irrevocably alters said community to where it no longer exists. To me, that's a negative hurdle that has no way of being overcome. It ceased to exist the second this happened. Whatever it evolves into is nothing good, because now the fundamental tenet of its existence has changed for the worse.

In any case, I'd like to stay polite so I'll have to just say we operate on two different levels w/r/t this issue and that's ok. We won't really have too much to discuss without running in circles though, but it was nice to have pleasant conversation as opposed to what can happen on these forums. /cheers!

[kail]

This is where we fundamentally disagree.

It is. We just have different definitions of community.

[Edge-]

http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582...32365253244218

Chillax dudes, no more paid mods.

[Iamanerd]

That's good news, maybe they'll research a better system overall for when a new game comes out like the new Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

[-aiko-]

Hopefully this lets them sit back and really compile all of the feedback for the future. I don't doubt they'll try it again in the future, this time with a much better system.

[Edge-]

I'm just ready for all the people who sword they'd never trust or like Valve again to jump for joy and go right back to acting as if nothing happened. Because it's totally happened before when Valve has screwed up and it's hilarious every_single_time : 3

[Kelimbror]

The people have spoken, the companies have listened. There PR statements are nothing but eating crow and saving face, but what else are you going to do? At least they had the decency to listen. Hopefully they use this experience to develop a much better way at accomplishing the goal and in the meantime allow for easy donations through steam for modders.

[barackopala]

Taken from: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/commen...team_workshop/
[...]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.[...]

HMMMMMm valve, don't do this pls, you're hurting yourself... INB4 Fallout IV Modstore

[smackyslap]

They went about it the wrong way this won't be the end of it. though they might do it better next time (Bethesda/valve) so it's not as much as a clusterfuck only time will tell.

But after how bad greenlight has been I don't know as far as qualty control is concerned .

I am just glad they seen the negative feedback and took down paid mods for now untill they can come up with a better system

It's the shame a lot of damage has already been done with chesko possibly done modding now (maker of frostfall) and just the split in the community.

[Edge-]

From the sounds of it... Bethesda is the main culprit

Just what I'm getting from the post over at Bethesda Blog

Valve approached Bethesda about this, not the other way around.