Quote from steam

Removing Payment Feature From Skyrim Workshop

We'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.

Holy Crap didn't see that coming.

I thought it was pretty easy to see coming actually. This thing is so poorly thought out and implemented even by Valve's standard of the last few years.

PC gaming seems complicated.

There's a lot of junk on steam these days i did see horse genitals being part of that junk.

Pretty quick change but its for the best right now probably

eyeroll.gif

They'll be back...

Weird. Newell talked a big game about them figuring out the paid mods thing not that long ago on Reddit. Seemed like they were gonna stay the course on it.

http://kotaku.com/gabe-newell-optimistic-paid-mods-will-be-a-win-for-ever-1700219463

Well, at least Valve is listening to the community, and yes, to start this feature with Skyrim was not a good idea.

That was faster than anticipated.

hahahahahaha

That escalated quickly(and then fell of a ledge).

I guess I wont be making my millions on that cabbage retexture I was working on after all.

Well that ended exactly like we all knew it would.

I don't agree with the decision(I see value in having paid mods), but I completely respect them for making it. This was a huge cluster fuck and I don't see how they could of solved it without a shit ton of effort. I really hope they launch a game, possibly Fallout 4 or whatever Bethesda's next game is, with it. I think they have a better chance of less outcry if the feature is launched with clean slate.

what a disaster this has been for Valve.

I do agree with the idea of mod creators being given the option to monetize their work just not in the way valve was attempting to go about it as it offered far to many possibilities that ended with everything going of the rails

In an ideal world, it could have worked. Maybe it's best to have it as a donation model instead?

They'll be back. Hopefully with a well thought out system (or a system with the slightest bit of thought).

Yes and no. It lasted less than a week, anyone who spent money has had it refunded, and there's a potential for this to come back as a better program.

Really the only negative has been the intense negative, and imo hyperbolic, reaction to this program. It honestly seemed like no one was listening to what Valve hoped this would be and just attacked it anyways.

I initially thought that would be a good idea but I don't see how publishers or developers would support that. Someone making money off of your work is iffy, even if it is through donations. Having those donations come right there on the mod page and not through a separate Patron or website might annoy some game makers.

Also donations don't stop people from stealing copyright material or other people's mods and passing it off as their own. I wouldn't want to see the mod workshop turn into the iPhone app store where people are blatantly stealing from others but making all the money.

It's a shame but not a big surprise. Starting this program with Skyrim was too ambitious. When they bring it back it should probably only be as part of new games,not existing ones.

Reads like they'll try a new approach to paid mods in the future, but realized that this wasn't the way to introduce it,

The internet has a pretty low bar for "disaster".

This will be back, with a new game from the ground up, probably curated to a degree and with a barrier to entry, and it will end up working.

This was definitely a hotter and messier trial than they were probably hoping for, but this isn't exactly the fall of the Berlin wall that so many online are crowing about.

Yeah I meant more from a PR perspective rather than anything else and yes a better implemented and thought out system could have a real positive impact on PC gaming

I really support their idea behind this but I just don't know about handling it well at this point, plus the costs to mods overall. I really like supporting someone who is making a mod though.

I actually do hope they think it over and come back because I think it's a good idea. I'm not sure about what exactly it does to mods overall but if this encouraged mods that give new life to some of my favorite games, why wouldn't I like that? The content could be better made if it was worth money to the modders.

I can't deny there are questions about what it does to modding overall. Hopefully it wouldn't ruin what's there. Although I think modding right now isn't what it used to be years ago, when it seemed like you saw a lot more large, total conversion mods coming out. Maybe that could come back if people could make some money.

I'm not opposed to the idea of paid or donation mods. Like they said in the post though, jumping into a massive existing modding community like Skyrim's was probably a poor way to start.

meh, i doubt it sticks with them. if anything it shows they can admit they're wrong and quickly pivot.

personally i think it's something of a shame. i probably was never going to pay for a mod (i don't really use mods), but it would have been neat to see enterprising fans get rewarded for hard work. especially when people like gary from gary's mod thought it was a step (albeit problematic) in the right direction.

This whole thing just leaves me amazed that people still play Skyrim on the regular and that Skyrim is going on 4 years old.

This is the best thing Valve's done in years. Props to them for the very rare time they actually listen to reason and their community.

That happened waaay sooner than I thought it would. But good on them. They did something, it got very negative feedback, and they went back to the drawing board. Hopefully Valve doesn't take as much shit for that move as Microsoft did.

Probably for the best considering the amount of ASCII middle fingers they got since that feature was implemented.

Well, that didn't last very long.

Good.

I saw a mod on the workshop that was a bucket. Just a run-of-the-mill loot trash bucket, and someone put a price tag on it. Another was titled "Absolutely Nothing" because it was just that. It cost a dollar. Of course, these are extreme examples of the abuse the system allowed. Valve didn't research the Skyrim community close enough. Like Blizzard and the Diablo 3 auction house, they thought they knew best.

The best thing that's come out of this mess is that now there is an option to donate button that appears when you start to download something on the Nexus. Give or don't give, it's up to you and give as much or as little as you like. Look at Humble Bundle. People will give willingly if they are interested in the product and want to support the service. They don't need to be coerced into buying something that might break their game or be broken from the start.

ha- reading the comment thread on their mea culpa does not disappoint.

no ascii birds in the air- but it seems like a 33-33-33 split between FUCK YEAH, FUCK YOU, and IDGAF.

edit: current favorite quote- "steam is the soviet union of video games."

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

Money makes everything complicated.

Meh, this whole thing is a mess. I hope they come back with a revised system because I do think content creators should have the option to be paid for their work. A donation button could work and would hopefully attract more high quality mods and incentivise developers to allow modding in their games.

I also kind of hope the bombcast guys have already recorded the podcast because it would be funny if they missed the news by a few hours.

It honestly makes me a little sad. There were many anti paid mod folks who had lots of good points. But there where also folks who seemed like their argument was "PAY MONEY FOR MODS?! You fucking modders are evil pieces of shit! What monster charges for something that was free once!" It feels to me like those folks stamped their feet and got what they wanted. And that kinda makes me sad.

The paid mod idea was horrifically executed. Implementing it was a clusterfuck and Valve should've known better to drop that system, designed as it was, onto the game that they did. We'll see this idea again in the future, I'm sure, with hopefully more effort put into it than almost none. A lot of their responses to issues were basically just "Eh, you figure it out with the other modders" or "Eh, everything will fall into place. Market forces." If it's really all about supporting the mod community they can do this in a million better ways, and hopefully they do.

Still seems like a cool idea. Here's hoping they can attack it from a better angle, with a fresh start and a new game.

It's not really, Valve is just throwing a bunch of crazy stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks and what they can get away with. They're practically printing money these days so they can do whatever the hell they want.

With PC mods being such a big deal and all of the time and resources those modders put into their work I bet it's kind of nice for them to get some cash out of it. Those people on the higher-end side of things are basically doing the same thing that game developers are doing without getting paid for it. The reason why this didn't work is because its really hard to start charging for stuff that has been free forever, and honestly, a lot of it isn't worth they money they are asking for. I can understand charging for mods on a new game that just came out ( lets say mods for GTA V, for example), but charging for Skyrim mods is kind of a tough sell even for the most diehard fans.

We'll be seeing this again no doubt, but not now. Not until another Elder Scrolls game or something that justifies a bazillion mods like Skyrim did.

I kinda hate that they caved to the pressure like this. There were certainly some causes for concern, but there was enough potential upside for all involved that it seemed like it was worth it to stick it out while refining the system.

While I'm not opposed to the idea of paid mods, it's clear that Valve didn't have an open dialogue with the general community before implementing the system. That by itself would have saved them a lot of trouble in trying to design a system in a way for mod creators and users to use.

A more reasonable approach would be for Valve to start by implementing this in one of their own games to begin with.

Not Dota 2 or CSGO because they are too big.

TF2 or L4D2 would be perfect. Big enough to have a meaningful go at it and see how things go but not so big that if it fails it becomes a disaster. TF2 is where they've tested F2P and microtransactions for the first time and most of the last major updates to the game have more or less been outsourced to the community under Valve's supervision and final approval before release. The way that game has operated for years makes it ideal to test this. L4D2 would be equally good for this and could use some love from Valve anyway.

Most importantly though, using one of their own games would make it immensely easier for them to deal with the inevitable clusterfuck of copyrights infringements and other DMCA takedown notice this will create. No need to involve anyone else but themselves before they've got things figured out.

I saw the upside but this was just not something that should have been dumped out the way it was, the stuff in DOTA 2 and TF2 are handled well and make sense and have quality control, what they did with this was sloppy.

It will be back attached to the next Elderscrolls/Fallout game and be all the better for it.

It's good of them to do this. Even if people are going to whine about this, too.

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. At least they are going back to the drawing board to figure out how to make this work the way they intend (which I truly believe they intend something like this as a positive and not as negative as people are reacting to it). How many companies would even bother experimenting with stuff like this, let alone going back to the drawing board on it because it's community at large feels it's implementation was disruptive?

Good on Valve. Shame on the entitlement culture which made a big deal out of this when it wasn't a big deal to begin with- even if poorly executed.

As someone with a job and understanding of the work that goes into a mod it made no difference to me. However, the Nexus option of "pay what you want" should have been included and this would have been not an issue. Mods are for the talented and the less talented continue to bring the industry and community down.

Hindsight is 20/20 but it probably would have been a lot smarter to roll this out with a new game instead.

Weren't Valve taking a 75% cut or something crazy like that? It might be kinda hard to live off of your mod making unless it's super popular and relatively expensive

Good games almost always have a long tail on PC if they come with mod support.

You're only partially correct. The modder would have received 25% and the remaining 75% would have been split between Value and Bethesda. I think the split was 30% value 45% Bethesda.

Also, 25% is the same cut that TF2/DOTA2/CS:GO modders get.