Valve Resurrects Paid Mods

But.... but they are not mods. They are just coded games like say Grif Ball. This is just a way to support people like say Icefrog who created* (Took over and made famous) Dota and didn't make any money from it till like 10 years later. These custom games have been around since Wc3 Launch and people put free time into making them. They do not change the game experience at all as you are just playing a completely different game within a game. Skyrim Mods change the current game you are playing and make it more like DLC.

I noticed that southern "skyrum" there Meg. Still teasing Ryan even when he's not in the room.

This sounds more like hats less like mods. Valve come at Skyrim again I dare you our bannermen are ready!

So correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Valve selects certain mods to be monetized? I feel like that's fair, especially if the creator of the mod can decline being monetized. And for one dollar a month, it's kind of a good deal. I still feel like donations are the best method, because there's no predefined or reoccurring payment that's mandatory. That and it allows people to spend what they can/want. The main problem with donations being that it's not sustainable for those modders who want to focus on modding and eat.

Since they're working towards games with huge modding communities, like the Elder Scrolls, I'm going to talk about those, since I have the most experience with those. As someone who uses a lot of Skyrim mods, a comment I see on a lot of mods' pages is "This mod cannot be used in part of a paid mod." However the internet is full of asshole who will ignore these creators' wishes. But for now, let's pretend that we can police that. Like you guys mentioned in the original videos, a lot of mods are based off FNIS (An animation mod), SKSE (a script extender), SkyUI (Changes menus and allows for the easier creation of menus), etc. If these big players in the modding community don't want their mods being part of premium mods, I feel like easily over half, if not three quarters would stop working for just those three mentioned components. And then there's all the cosmetic mods, and mods that need cosmetic mods, and other mods that are all so entwined.The only way to have premium mods in this case would be mods that have everything from script extenders, physics engines, etc as part of their mod. But if they have all that they should just really look into making an indie game.

So then at this point I feel like making premium mods isn't that great of an idea, unless Valve/Bethesda also wants to release more tools for modders to work with to make mods. Knowing them I feel like it'd be paid, but then why bother even using it when you have FNIS, SkyUI, etc for free? Then again if it's another one dollar thing and you make a large mod that would go for $3 or more, a profit could theoretically be made on all sides, right? It would encourage modders to upkeep and made good mods, so they can keep paying for the - idk, let's call it licencing for a lack of a better term - of the use of their tools, so they can keep making money off their mods. And Valve/Bethesda would get profits on the mod and and the tools, while still supporting the mod developers. It could be wins all around.

Now let's be a bit more realistic about policing. People will steal assets or entire mods from other creators. It would be fine if mods were only accessible through Steam, but there's also NexusMods and LoversLab (for those lovley dick mods and more Adam and Lawrence were taking about in the OG video) and presumably many others. Those sites would also have police their mods, which seems like a lot of work on all parties. Valve/Bethesda going after Nexus/LL to make sure they're policing, and Nexus/LL actually doing the policing for their sites. And then all parties communicating to make sure that someone from Nexus doesn't steal an asset from Steam Workshop, someone from LL stealing an asset from a Nexus mod, etc. But it seems like Nexus, LL, and any other mod hosting site would get tired of doing all that extra without reward. So they too would have to have a premium mod section. Valve wouldn't be too happy with that as perhaps the other sties would take less so modders would move there to get more of a profit, and they came up with the idea first so to speak. So shouldn't they get all the glory? Regardless of that, it would be extremely difficult to make sure there isn't theft among different mod distributing platforms. Difficult enough to possibly make it not worth it.

If they could get policing down combined with the additional premium tools idea, they could easily have the foundation for an incredible premium modding empire for any game. It'll be interesting to see where paid mods go. As modding communities have typically all done this for free, I hope that there'd still be a lot of great free mods.

Also I apologize for the length of this, I had a lot of ideas and a lot of things to say.

riot or but it?

eh i dont use the custom games so Im not bothered. Im still more annoyed withthe dota winter compendium this year gave a map that expired by march, making you pay for something where some of the rewards werent considered yours

I mean Valve already makes mods into retail games. Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, DOTA, the Left 4 Dead 2 DLC in the riverbed.... Basically Valve has never come up with an original idea outside the Half-Life universe.

6:18 Not sure if Meg's making fun of Ryan saying Skarm, or has been infected by him.

Im Russian and that pun hurtski very muchinsky

honestly I'm okay with some mods being sold because ive played enough game modes that I would've gladly paid a few dollars for. Zombie mode in cod4 (both versions) or the long war in xcom are just a few mods i wouldve gladly paid for . I'm pretty sure I played both of those mods more than the actual vanilla game. Espcially the zombie mod.