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Bethesda is once again adding support for paid mods to Skyrim
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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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There's a lot of negativity here, and a lot of it is pretty justified. But I don't hate the idea of paid mods. Like if there's a way for authors like the ones the made Enderal or other really big mods to make some money off of it that's really great. Is Bethesda going to be fair about them? Probably not. Is Bethesda going to be competent with the system? Probably as competent as they are at anything else (derogatory).
But at least it's a way that you can make some money back for your work where you don't have to worry about chargebacks from trolls costing you more than the donations they were originally giving you. And this can be a pretty big problem for donation driven works. Someone donates $1, 200 times. Then charges them all back. Paypal charges you $15 processing fee for each chargeback. And you can contest it but who needs that? If Bethesda can be the entity brokering all of it, then they are the ones that take the chargeback risk.
So in theory, I don't hate it. But it will all depend on the implementation and competency of Bethesda (not looking good here).
My problem with it last time around, which was not the problem most people took with it, was how much of a cut Valve and Bethesda took before the mod maker saw any of that money. It's Valve's store and Bethesda's IP, sure, but if Bethesda was going to take that much of a cut, they should at least be spending some of that money on policing the bad actors in the paid mod scene to make sure it's all legit so that they earn their cut.
Also if I pay for a mod and they release a patch that breaks it (seems unlikely but we've already gotten about two or three more patches than I expected), I would expect them to fix the mod or pay the creator to do so.
Oh and I would expect them to magically resolve conflicts between paid mods.
If a free mod breaks and never gets fixed, or a free mod breaks another mod, fair I have no expectations there. But once I fork out money that's not a mod, that's a product now. And if Bethesda is taking my money, they are responsible for the product.
As long as you can easily turn individual mods on and off, I personally wouldn't have the expectation that one mod must not break another mod. I also don't mod much, but that's why I see potential in paid mods. What's out there the way things are now usually doesn't float my boat, and I'd like to see what we get when people can support themselves in producing mods.
and they still dont seem to be interested in offering the full toolchain for the engine, including official mesh and anim import/export plus documentation for the formats
Yep! Like I said, a lot of the negativity is pretty justified. I just wanted to provide one positive for people to see.
Don't give them even an inch. They are not doing this in good faith for the sake of the modders.
That is exactly the point. "Hmmm, maybe it's fine if some high quality mods can make some money" no! This is "it's just cosmetics" all over again. Give them a finger, they'll be taking the arm and suing you for the other one soon. Don't! Just don't! If you want creators to make money, donate.
If you're looking for monitary returns, make a game not a mod. Otherwise you're building your foundation on sand and owe the lack of monitary return on nothing but your own choices. Having Bethesda broker this is just a horrible idea and will lead to a cesspool of fraud, exploit, and death to genuine creative love works and passion projects. Not everything need be made for profit, and often it's better for it.
Don't use PayPal. That's a good policy in general.
I think Flight Simulator has paid mods and I've seen ambivalent or slightly positive opinions of it. It is definitely doable and is actually a good idea, but something about Bethesda and their way of doing it always seems shady.
mods made by more than a few people are impossible to monetise with this scheme, way too many creators to pay so you would make next to nothing over just making it free and putting it in your resume
and then we have bethesdas aversion to new dialog (and localising it) in these official mods, which really kills the vibe in many of them