Not every experiment of Valve's will work, and this time it's paid mods that are being killed off. They will be refunding everyone too.
QuoteWe'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.
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I imagine this will make a lot of people happy. I hope they come back with a donation system of some sorts, as it would still be nice to reward modders.
I think this was for the best, as the backlash over this was just growing every day. It's nice to see Valve understand they don't have to stick to their guns on everything too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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QuoteWe've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing.
Hope we won't read similar things when it comes to Linux/SteamOS.
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I hope for great success of dota 2 mods. I really like modding and mods and I will pay for those modes if I can.
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I think a "pay what you want" or a donate button, as they have talked about recently would be a more positive way to provide money to mod-makers.
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I don't care about the way I just want to have the opportunity to pay them.
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Dontate button is the best way to go honestly; some way to ask once, *after* you've played with the mod enabled for a few hours, for a small donation would also be pretty good.
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Quoting: kalinI don't care about the way I just want to have the opportunity to pay them.
I would still like to see an option like this in the workshop, if Valve didn't take too much of the amount donated anyway.
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Quoting: edgleyDontate button is the best way to go honestly; some way to ask once, *after* you've played with the mod enabled for a few hours, for a small donation would also be pretty good.I like this. As long as you don't have to click through such screens often. But something like "This session you've given the following mods a try: <insert list of mods>. If you liked them, why not donate to the makers?"
Clicking on an item in that list will point you to a page where you can donate, and are informed about how your donation will be split between the game dev, the modder, and Valve.
The matter of reused stuff from other mods still needs a solution. Maybe the mod donation page should have information on what other mods (if any) this mod used? Hard to find a waterproof, manageable and fair system when money is involved..
In the end, Valve needs to be transparent on this so that modders and non-modders alike can help them make these systems better. Valve doesn't do too bad on that I guess. A good relation with your community only serves you in the long run.
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QuoteI hope they come back with a donation system of some sorts, as it would still be nice to reward modders.I hope so too. A good interface (like Humble Bundle for instance) can change anything.
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The 75/25 split between makers and modders was a horrible idea. Should have been in reverse no?
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They should have made a separate community for paid mods. I don't agree with the thought that paid mods is bad, but I think the execution was really poor. And I think that the mod creators deserve a bigger cut of the cake than the meagre 25%.
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