Yeah this is a kinda gross(/kinda neat) situation made super gross by this modder. If anything I'm pretty much giving up on the mod scene after all this.

Yeah, releasing something as free is absolutely different than making it copyright free.

Consider a while ago when U2 put their new album on apple devices for free. Anyone with an iPhone or iPad could listen as much as they wanted to for no cost. But that very clearly didn't mean that I could then legally take those files, and sell that U2 album to profit from it myself.

Cost and ownership are fundamentally separate things.

I really cannot disagree with you more. No, it does not belong to society at large. The person who created it should be able to do with it what he pleases. Am I saying that he should be able to take away from people who already downloaded it for free? No, I don't think so. But I don't think he is required to give something away for free forever. That sounds nuts.

As for legal protection, that's a little less clear cut. But like... why are you even arguing that position? Even if you COULD legally re-host some mod that was free in the past, why WOULD you? You ask how modders are going to protect their work? I'd say a good first step would be us players to decry and take a stand against such blatant theft. We should support the people who have brought us so much enjoyment from the fun mods we play.

Seriously, the script seems so flipped on this one. So many players seem to be decrying the modders. Looking for any excuse to steal, pirate, or slam their work. They are acting like the modders are BETRAYING the players or something. Well, to me, it feels exactly the opposite. It feels like first sign of a problem, the players will drop you like a bad habit. They'll spit on your grave, steal your work, and feel like some kinda Robin Hood hero for doing it.

Seriously, it drives me freakin' nuts. There is so much anger. It just makes me really sad.

@tuxfool@joshwent: Yeah, you guys are right. I'm getting confused - if you release something as "public domain" you give up all rights to take it back out of the public domain, even if you want to - but releasing it into the public domain and releasing it for free are different things. My mistake.

Are we really defending pop-up advertising, now? Look, the argument about whether mod creators should get paid for their work is completely separate to this, for me. It's not like pop-up advertising in anything else doesn't go to putting food on someone's table somewhere along the line, and I'm completely safe in expressing my distaste for it in any other situation. Can I not say "I hate pop-up ads, this is gross" without someone accusing me of wanting modders to live in back-alleys?

Yeah. Not that I'm defending the behaviour. Despite it being the authors right to do what they want, simply removing something that was implicitly free (and was created without the intent for profit) to put it behind a paywall very much feels like a cashgrab. The author isn't required to update it or anything but does seem cynical.

@tuxfool: I guess I don't understand what you mean by cash grab. I agree it seems like this person would like to now make money off the mod. I guess I don't see why that is a bad thing.

Because when it was made, it was created with the implicit understanding that it was free. This is akin to dropping money in a street buskers pot, then changing your mind and taking it back. It is your money, you're perfectly allowed to do as you wish, but it is very unseemly.

@koolaid: Yeah, I agree with you that creators have the moral right to do whatever they want with their stuff (and I was getting confused about the difference betwen releasing to the public domain, and releasing for free - my bad). With the legal issue, I was more wondering what the position is of people who use other modders content in their own mods, or re-host mods, or whatever, and what steps modders will have to protect themselves against that. When money is involved, I garuntee that that stuff will happen - just look at the crazy number of clones on the iphone app store.

I might have given the wrong impression with my comment. I do support the idea of modders being able to charge for their work if they want to. I guess my gut thinks that it's a bit mean spirited to be doing it to a mod that used to be free - but as you say, even if I don't like it it's totally within the creator's rights. My biggest problem with the whole thing is that the modder only gets 25% of the cut, and steam/Bethesda gets the other 75% - it's really only to a very limited extent that sales are supporting the modder at all.

@tuxfool: @immortal_guy: I think it's entirely possible that this is one of those "straw that broke the camel's back" situations where I am just SUPER salty from all the little controversies. I'm sure that there will be weird cases with paid mods. Force updating people's mod to make it worse so you can sell them the fix is odd. But like... it just feels like no one gets the benefit of the doubt anymore. It just feels like an endless series of lynch mobs. That's why it makes me sad.

What if the free market self corrects? For example. I saw that some jerk wanted to charge people 15 USD for a driver to use an Xbox One controller with a Mac OS X machine. You know what I did? I made a free version. Its my belief that all of this is just turbulence in a recent market upheaval. Given time and sanity checks (also maybe a little bit of help from Valve, but that will never happen) the whole thing will self correct and figure itself out. Sure there will still be scumbags, but there are scumbags in every market.

@marokai said:

No, you're not an asshole for thinking that pop up ads in free mods are complete bullshit. Modders don't deserve anything for their work, same as I don't deserve to be paid for my carpentry. I do it in my spare time as a hobby. I don't expect monetary compensation because I do it for myself, because I enjoy it.

Modding is the same thing. Modders mod because they enjoy it, or because they think they can make an existing property better, or more interesting, via their work. Adding money to the mix doesn't mean there are paid for mods, it means that there are third parties releasing authorized DLC. Authorized DLC and Mods are two very different things and confusing the two should be avoided at all costs.

A significant number of Skyrim mods are dependant on other mods. I have to wonder how that will function in this new economy. Also, how retextures and remodels will work. Will one modder need to pay another modder from their profits? If both mods are necessary to function that might not be an issue, but there are plenty of stand-alone mods that take elements of an earlier mod and kick it up a notch. A lot just update or convert a mod to work with a variety of base mods. It's going to be intersting to see how this plays out.

I must say, though, I am a little less excited for Fallout 4 than I was a week ago. I fear that the creative community I've followed for years will grow splintered and suspicious of each other. After all, money changes everything. On the otherhand, change is inevitable and nothing good lasts forever.

What the actual fuck? Money ruins everything.

As a guy who recently sunk like ... 90-100 hours of his life into doing UI work for a mod in a recently release PC RPG.... nahhhhh. I would not be down with this. I don't have a problem with modders who put in real effort asking to be paid something for their work, but steam is just trying to rip off not only the modder but also the players paying for the mods. What's sad is that this is nothing but a corporate suit at steam seeing an easy no risk way of making a quick buck yet people still think steam is god and Gabe Newell is baby Jesus. Steam has always been out for number 1, wake up and smell the coffee.

That said if the modder was really smart he simply would have included a 3% chance or something some of the most powerful spells simply fizzle. Then added a faq to the mod that included a blurb "Noticed your spells don't always pack the punch you would like? Seek permanent male enhancement with the paid version of this mod! You will stand tall and proud, never fizzling out in the heat of the moment again!"

Seems like this mostly benefits Valve and the game developer (not the modder) if that 25% going to the modder thing is true.

Wow, there are actually people defending this, holy shit

I'm not sure if there's some confusion here, but this wasn't exactly "pop-up advertising", as the title of the thread implies. It was apparently a person who had a paid mod that didn't interrupt gameplay at all, along with a free version that would rarely pop up a request to buy the full paid version.

Maybe that's what you're talking about, and what you find distasteful, and that's fine. But to me at least, there's a huge difference between a free thing asking the user occasionally to upgrade (like many shareware games I played in the 90s), versus a mod that randomly shows me another fucking Game of War: Fire Age ad, or something.

Where were all these homeless and starving modders in the 30 years leading up to this happening?

Spending most of their time working other unrelated jobs because they couldn't make any money from modding?

@oldirtybearon: you don't know why everyone mods. Some people very well may mod, not out of enjoyment but because they do want to monetize work. They have the right to monetize it just like you with your carpentry.

Multiple arguments going on in this thread and crossing over, leading to people misunderstanding eachother.. so let's clear some of this up. Here are the different topics of discussion, differentiate which topic you're speaking about.

Topic: do modders have the right to charge (factually yes)

Topic: You feel modders should charge for their work

Topic: do you feel modders should have THE RIGHT to charge for their work on another developers finished product.

Topic: How you feel about advertising through a game pausing pop-up

Topic: how You feel about previously free mods being pulled and now having a free and charged version

Topic: the cuts that everyone recieves from the sales (25/30/45; modder/valve/bethesda)

Modders have a right to charge. They should think long and hard about how they want to release/charge/advertise. My feeling is that the mod is a service, like a video game. The gamers never owned the mod after applying it, just like you don't own a game. So the analogy of putting money in a basket then taking it back is inaccurate. After thinking long and hard, I am okay with how the money is split up, though believe that the valve and modder cut should be swapped.

A problem I don't see brought up often yet in this is that once you start paying for something you then become entitled to a working product. Take dota2 hats for example, these items are purely cosmetic and once they are chosen to be put into the game they are given a once over by valve and from then on they take the responsibility of making sure that those hats display properly at all times.

The thing is, if I pay $5 for a mod for Skyrim, what guarantee do I have that mod will work and do what I payed for at all times? It's not uncommon for mods to be abandoned due to creator disinterest or lack of ability to get it to function properly. With a free mod, it sucks but whatever, delete it and move on but now that I paid for a product what happens? Do I get a refund, does valve force the developer to make it work, does valve fix it or did I just waste my money on something that used to be free a few weeks ago?

C'mon.

A pop-up request to buy something is pop-up advertising.

I understand you have a strong interest in defending the practice of paying for mods for your own reasons, but the wholesale defense of all actions of all the modders who participate in the pay-for-mods structure is only going to poison the discussion. If you want to be a proponent for this 'movement,' then you need to laud the best examples of the work and why it should exist, not make excuses for practices that remind people of the iOS and Android appstore, which have a notoriously shitty reputation.

This is actually a very good example for a couple of reasons.

You are absolutely right, in that giving out something for free is not the same as saying someone can distribute that thing for free. However, you gave the example of selling that album rather than distributing it again for free. Taking someone else's work and attempting to make a profit off of it is a horrible practice, and it's something we've seen come up with this new pay-for-mods system.

There is already a problem of people taking free mods and trying to sell them on Steam. It's been less than 5 days, and this is already a problem. Modders who have no interest in making a profit off of their work have started to pull their free versions from the internet at large, because they have no interest in keeping track of the Workshop on Steam to make sure that they're hard work isn't making money for someone else.

Then there's the problem of mods not being wholly original pieces themselves, but often created piecemeal from the parts of other mods. 2 of the original 16 (?) pay-for-use mods on Steam had to be pulled already because parts of them were created by other modders who gave no permission to use their work to make a profit.

The very act of creating a profit incentive for modding and having the community police it has given a disincentive to modders who don't mod for profit and allowed a proliferation of predatory practices.

~

Also, I can't see U2 adding advertisements to the middle of their tracks retroactively for people that have already downloaded the album. That would be pretty funny, though.

JC I can't believe there's defenders in here. YOU CANNOT SAY THAT THIS ENCOURAGES INNOVATION: Its things that were done ANYWAY and now have a price sticker on them. To have empirical evidence of increased innovation you need to show that the rate of new mods being published has increased(a statistic won't help you here because people are reposting old mods with a price tag or numerous types of bundles for the same mod).

I'm more worried about this affecting other modding sites through virtue of people downloading free versions of mods there then trying to upload them for pay on the Steam Workshop repeatedly until the original mod author is forced to take the free version down due to repeated theft. It's already happening on the Skyrim Nexus, I can't imagine what will happen if it moves on to Garry's Mod or Mount and Blade.

These two point are part of what I wanted to say. Mods for Skyrim are incredibly interdependent. How can a mod ask for money when it is not an enclosed experience? And so if a mod needs to be self contained to be sold, it will hurt the modding community because the effort to make everything in one mod is huge.

Support is another huge issue. Mods are incompatible. The more mods need to be self standing, the more compatibilities issues will arise. And if a mod doesn't work, how is it supported? This isn't selling hats. Actual gameplay is changed.

And this is ignoring that this is really just a cash grab by Zenimax and Valve. Pateron exists in order to pay for things like modders. Making it a transaction through Steam with only a pittance going to creators is skeevy at best.

I won't get into the whole moral right or wrong of people being allowed to charge for mods, or the pop-ups in the free version. Suffice it to say some people in this thread are being real dumb.

More importantly, what Valve has let out of the bottle will have a more far reaching effects than they themselves realize.

The thing is, not all mods are standalone. For example, any mods in Skyrim that introduces new races, equipment, etc, depends on a few existing mods that changes size and shape of skeletal structures of character models in the game. With that sort of web of dependencies, certain mods being placed behind a paywall will end up greatly restricting, or at least hampering, what the rest of the modding community can do.

This whole ordeal reminds me of the Stampy episode in Simpsons where Homer retroactively raises the prices of elephant rides and then tries to force people to pay him.

This system isn't for modders to benefit, it is only designed for bethesda and valve to profit.

And this is the sort of thing that lead to Nintendo creating the "Nintendo seal of Quality" back in the day.

Valve needs to start setting and enforcing some of the most basic standards for things they allow to be sold through their service, otherwise it just turns into a $hitshow which negatively impacts everybody. At some point if this sort of thing is allowed to continue, consumers will lose trust in Valve and spend their money at a competing service that ensures they won't get ripped off.

A modder has every right to put crappy pop-up filth in their mod if they want to no matter how stupid it is to do so, but Valve shouldn't let that be on their service.