Valve has dropped the payment feature from the Skyrim Steam Workshop, not even a week after it was first implemented. Here, our writers share their thoughts on what went wrong, what could have gone right, and what may happen next.
Tom Senior: Imagine the furor that could've been averted* if Valve had announced the idea in a preparatory blog post which explained the arguments for a mod store and invited feedback. Instead they ambushed a community that's been consuming free mods for four years. Mods that were free one day suddenly weren't—would all mods soon be behind a paywall? Valve employees put the arguments for a mod store forward eventually, but most players don't care whether a modder ought to be able to buy a house for making something good, they just want the thing, and they expect it for free. It's not even selfishness, it's just an assumption based on the way mods have always been.
It sounds like Valve will try to relaunch the idea, but it'll have to be with a brand new game (Bethesda's next big open world, perhaps?) I think it will be very interesting to see if the system works the way Valve and their partners hope. I like the idea of a rich, competitive mod community that offers lots of stuff for free, with a bunch of premium killer mods heaped on top. I worry, though. If I had to pay a dollar for every mod I fancied trying, I would never have started modding my games in the first place.
*Actually people would have lost their shit anyway because The Internet.
Phil Savage: The reaction this time has been overwhelmingly negative—encompassing legitimate problems, philosophical opposition and naïve fear mongering—but its worth noting that this isn't the first time Valve has tried to make paid mods work. Their other attempts didn't result in as vehement a backlash. There wasn't a petition when Aperture Tag was released to the Steam storefront. Somewhere in the difference between these two approaches is a line that, according to the community, Valve shouldn't have crossed.
The problem, I think, is that this time Valve tried to hand the tools directly to modders. Aperture Tag was hand picked by Valve and given a space apart from Portal 2's Workshop. It was also new. For Skyrim, Valve and Bethesda gave everybody the opportunity to monetise their work, and that, of course, led to problems. Valve has a habit of doing this: dropping a new feature into the middle of their community and watching as it detonates. The problem is The Elder Scrolls' modding community is its own thing, and exists separately from the Steam ecosystem. More than that, PC gamers are incredibly protective of TES modders—and rightly so. When we put Skyrim into our Top 100, it wasn't the vanilla version. The game is great because its mod community is great, and has hammered the base game into something far and above the static console versions. You don't set fire to something that celebrated and expect to walk away unsinged.
I don't have a problem with modders making money from their work, but I also don't think there's an easy solution that will magically make it happen. Some say the existence of a donation option will instantly make everything better, but I think the reaction we've seen proves that many aren't willing to pay. I suspect the type of mod is important. Those included in the scheme's roll-out encompassed added systems, custom assets and improved visuals—all things the community is too used to getting for free. It's not right, but I do think Valve and Bethesda would have had an easier time if they'd restricted the scheme to new quests. If a total conversion like Enderal one day appears on the Steam store as a premium product, à la Aperture Tag, I don't think there'd be too much controversy. My assumption is that the community places more value on new content than on wide-ranging and necessary overhauls to existing systems. If I'm right, that sucks.
PC gamers love modding. The problem is there's less incentive than ever to part of a modding community. It used to be a route into the industry—a way for would-be developers to build a portfolio to show potential employers. Now we have Unity and an indie scene. Instead of making a mod, you could make a game. Instead of working for a big developer, you could work for yourself. I worry that this most recent backlash will cause modders to wonder how much they're actually worth to the gaming community at large. Luckily, there is hope. Former SimCity artist Bryan Shannon is currently making $820 per building to create new assets for Cities: Skylines. There are solutions that can work for all involved, and—If Valve is ever going to attempt paid-for mods again—it's in everyone's interest that they find one.
Tim Clark: I can’t say that I’m surprised that the reaction was largely negative, but the virulence of it caught me off guard. And it also seems to have come as a shock to Valve too, who let’s agree could’ve done a much better job setting out the case for a paid system, rather than sliding some Skyrim mods into view and saying: “have at ‘em”. What’s most frustrating is how binary the argument became as a result. Plenty of the concerns were legitimate, like those outlined by a modder this Steam discussion thread, but equally I felt persuaded by Garry Newman’s position. He wrote: “I sold a mod once and everyone was angry that it was happening, until it happened and they got a much better product than they’d have gotten when it was released for free, then they seemed to calm down a bit. It has given me a career for ten years. It’s bought me two houses, a bunch of cars. It’s created a company that has hired 30+ people.” Do we really write that experience off so lightly?
As Tyler noted last week, the ability to make a living from one’s work logically leads to being able to devote more time to the creation of that work. So, in theory, I still think a paid system that people felt was fair could have led to more and better mods, not less and worse. But given the explosiveness of the backlash, paid mods are effectively dead on the vine for now. Certainly I don’t see any big publishers being willing to risk being part of another PR shuttle crash. So, we won’t know how paid mods would’ve played out, but my two cents is that it would have neither been a dreamy new modtopia nor the coming of the modpocalypse. There’s a version of this in which the the best paid mods get iterated on and ultimately hit an unprecedented level of quality. But even in that scenario, there would still be a ton of stuff just done for the love of it or available for tiny fees. And, of course, plenty of garbage. Because if we can be sure of anything, it's that.
Tyler Wilde: Valve messed up. It launched this the wrong way. I understand the anger, and I had all kinds of concerns when the Skyrim Workshop suddenly changed last week. I chose optimistic speculation over fear of the absolute worst, though. I speculated that paid mods could lead to better mods, happier modders, and more games with mod support. Maybe I was being too optimistic, but who can say now?
I don’t expect Valve to try something quite like this again soon, but at least its own games and systems like Player Studio continue to test these waters. I like the idea that creative and skilled gamers might, if they choose, be able to earn a living making games better. I agree with many of the arguments against Steam’s implementation, but a lot of the philosophical arguments seem weak to me. ‘Modding is a hobby.’ Lots of people earn money from their hobbies. ‘Modders should do it for fun, not profit.’ Who are we to tell them what to do with their time and skills? ‘Modders should get jobs at studios if they want to make money.’ Easier said than done, and not for everyone. Ultimately, if a publisher makes it legal to sell derivative works, there is nothing immoral about selling them. I worry too about how it might change the historically collaborative modding community, but I also see lots of potential good.
Maybe Valve can’t be the one to make that happen on a large scale, and it has to remain a partnership directly between game makers and players—something built into the experience, as with TF2, and not added on. For now, I think that’s the direction we’ll see pursued. If Valve does try again, I’d recommend it starts with a fresh game designed specifically with asset and expansion mods in mind.
Evan Lahti: The past week illuminated one of Valve’s biggest weaknesses: communication. Skyrim was an ambitious choice for a paid modding program, but a very hard one to pitch PC gamers on, considering how much time Skyrim’s community has had to mature, and the intricate web of co-dependence that some of its mods weave.
I still believe that paid modding in some form is a positive evolution of the scene and our hobby. We cannot go on as a society expecting so much of our creative work to be done for free. Images are just one ever-present example of this. Pro photographers travel around the world and spend thousands of dollars or hours or weeks capturing wildlife, conflict, and other subjects only to have garbage Twitter accounts and aggregator middlemen like Imgur post their work in a way they can’t profit from, totally uncredited. We have huge systems that distribute and value the work of talented people but those same systems don’t reward or often even attribute the work to them.
It’s just and necessary for modders to eventually have the option of selling their work. I really hope the entirety of PC gaming is on the same page about that. The details of such a system are up for debate, and we should continue to talk about them, just as we (and PC gaming at large) did for Greenlight and continue to do for Early Access. And as continues to be the case with those Steam programs, blunders can and will happen if paid modding returns. Someone will steal content from a game, hide it in a mod, and publish it. It’s already happened in CS:GO, and when it happens again there’ll be a big uproar, policies will be changed, and that’ll hopefully be one of the last instances. But the inevitable abuse of a system doesn't invalidate the good that that system will do.
We should want modders to have the capacity to become millionaires. We should want kids in Germany, in Korea, in Mexico, and everywhere to have a chance to get experience publishing stuff and making money in games, lest their parents tell them to “get a real job,” depriving them of the chance to become the next Kim Swift, Cliff Bleszinski, or Garry Newman. Paid modding has the capacity to become the hotbed for the next generation of game creators.
Wes Fenlon: I don’t know what I’m more bummed about: Valve making such a mess of this paid mods rollout, or the community reacting short-shortsightedly and negatively. The mob mentality is so tiresome. A new thing happens that the Internet decides is terrible, and thousands of people work themselves up into a frenzy to stop it in a righteous holy crusade. Valve screwed up this launch, no argument there. But if you’re against the very idea of paying for mods, I think you’re belittling the effort and passion that goes into modding projects, and you’re probably the kind of person who whines when a smartphone app costs more than $1.
I want to see Valve spend a couple months rethinking this and getting it right. And getting it right is going to require some experimentation. They should relaunch with the intention of getting community feedback, adjusting revenue share, establishing realistic curation processes on Valve’s end and within the community. They should start fresh with a new game that’s ripe for modding, but doesn't already have a Workshop page full of thousands of mods. And Valve definitely needs to hire more people to help Steam grow and manage that growth, because it’s clear that they don’t have enough people on customer support or the numbers to curate thousands of mod submissions.
What I hope to see is a new golden era of mod support in PC games large and small. It’s a very real possibility, and it’s why I think everyone making the argument “Modding is a hobby, and it should be free forever!” is standing in the way of exciting progress. If publishers like Ubisoft see profits in supporting mods in historically locked-down games like Assassin’s Creed, mod support could suddenly be a priority. And if independent developers can make more money on their games simply by supporting mods, they benefit, modders benefit, and the entire ecosystem of PC gaming benefits. Imagine virtually every PC game embracing modding with open arms. My god, it’ll be beautiful.
Chris Livingston: If Valve decides to re-implement this (and they will) they’re going to need to make a few changes. Most importantly, there needs to be a tweak to the payment split. I’d suggest something simple: 100% of sales goes to the modders. I know this is unrealistic—big, successful companies like Valve don’t become big and successful by shying away from profit—but it makes sense. Modders are the ones doing the work, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of hours of it, over years in some cases.
For customers, it would mean a lower price. See a mod selling for five dollars? It’s priced at five dollars because the modder knows he’s only getting to keep 25% of it. If the modders keep all the money, they’ll charge less. Lower prices mean more sales: I’d probably balk at buying a single mod for $10 but might buy dozens of mods priced at a buck apiece, similar to how I spend money on smartphone apps. If something close to 100% of the take goes to modders, the modders and customers both benefit.
Valve is already getting something out of creating and hosting the Steam Workshop: thousands of gamers spending tons of extra time on Steam. The longer someone spends on Steam, the more likely they are to buy a game. Hang around a store all day, and you’ll probably walk out with some purchases you hadn’t even planned on buying.
Developers being given a portion of the proceeds as an incentive to support mods seems silly: they already have a huge incentive and they're already reaping the benefits. Mods can greatly extend the life of a game, give it fresh content, keep people talking and writing and tweeting and YouTubing about it for months longer they otherwise would, and that continued exposure contributes to new sales of the game. Supporting mods means supporting the future of your game. Don’t take money out of modders’ pockets on top of that: they’re already doing you a huge favor.
Again, expecting 100% of sales to go directly to modders isn’t realistic. But it should be as close to that as humanly possible.
Samuel Roberts: I think content creators being paid for their work is fundamentally a good thing. If you create great mods that require hundreds of hours of legwork, I support your right to make money from doing so—ultimately you may be benefitting the game in question and everyone needs to make a living. How could anyone begrudge that?
I agree there were legitimate concerns about paid modding, particularly in terms of percentage splits between the owners of the game, Valve, and the mod creators, and how that’s been communicated. I also think there are many mods that should be free—paying can be the exception, not standard practice. But I think people should have a right to earn money from their work. Perhaps Skyrim wasn’t a good choice for breaking the scheme in; maybe a newer game would've been a better match, where a community is still in the early stages of being formed.
Maybe it could’ve led to a system that’s fairer and eventually better-received, with more flexible pay models. That this petition has a ‘confirmed victory’ on it now is very annoying to me, and I say that thinking of the creators who could’ve been making a living from this, not Valve or Bethesda who don’t need the money.
Think how much more useful the energy behind that would've been if it was channeled into challenging a more irritating trend in games, like day one DLC being promoted by an otherwise brilliant Just Cause 3 trailer half a year from release, or selling Jason Voorhees as part of a season pass shortly after the launch of a beat-’em-up. Isn't that more cynical? This was an initiative that ultimately could’ve helped people who want to improve the way you play games.
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