Valve To Remove Steam Workshop Mod Payment Scheme

[Omnomnick]

In one of the fastest and most severe turnarounds in Valve's long and varied history, the Steam team today announced they will soon be removing the ability for users to create paid mods on the Steam Workshop, a feature only implemented last week. This move comes after massive community outcry, failed Reddit AMA's from Gabe Newell, and an uncontrollable amount of workshop trolling.

In a short post over on the Steam Workshop announcements page, the team discusses why they thought the introduction of paid mods would be a beneficial idea - bringing about positive, large-scale projects like Garry's Mod, DayZ, Killing Floor, and Counter-Strike, all of which started out as community-made games before they blossomed into huge financial successes. As many claimed, Valve seemingly underestimated this approach, effectively placing a strict pay wall right down the middle of one of the Steam Workshop's oldest and most well-established supported games in the form of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

With that said, Valve have admitted their mistakes, claiming they missed "the mark pretty badly" before mentioning that the team will return to the drawing board to see where a similar system such as this could work in the future. As such, all users who have purchased Steam Workshop mods over the past week or so will be given full refunds, regardless of whether a purchase was made outside of the now-defunct 24 hour refund period.

You did it, Reddit.

 

[kineaesth]

Finally, some change we can believe in!

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Good.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Gotta say I'm digging the transparency here. Not sure what the **** they were thinking in the first place though.

 

[Aizawa]

Wow. This is almost like the Xbox One announcement where they also made a 180. Its nice to see things like this happening. Most of the time I feel like the players cant do shit.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

If they would just set an option for DONATIONS that benefit the creators, it would be something else.

 

[Mr. Sir Shpee]

GG Volvo, good decision.

 

[User With No Name]

It's an interesting concept, but poorly implemented with sloppy execution. Reading through Gabe's AMA answers I think they genuinely had good intentions going in, but did a poor job showing that.

 

[Krynn72]

It just seemed strange to me that they rolled this out without even announcing it ahead of time. Usually with changes this large they announce it, and then release it on Valve-time schedules. Usually this gives them user feedback and fixes issues with their system before its ever even implemented. With all the data mining, focus testing, etc that Valve does, it just seemed very out of place for them to jump in head first on something like this.

 

[Lubci50cal]

If they would just set an option for DONATIONS that benefit the creators, it would be something else.

No, modders deserve no money, community showed that loud and clear.

 

[Lolcomputer]

No, modders deserve no money, community showed that loud and clear.

I have seen people saying that modders should exclusively make mods for free. However, the majority of people say that they would rather just have a donate button, so I don't think that your statement is 100% correct.

I guess people just don't want a paywall to something that was otherwise free, and I can understand that from a consumer perspective.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

No, modders deserve no money, community showed that loud and clear.

It isn't that they all don't deserve money. It's the fact that many put their shit behind a paywall, losing a lot of respect. The deal here is: paywall was a retarded idea and it was an idiotic move on Valve's part.

Had it been a donation thing if the user felt like donating to the creators, it would have been better and much more respectable than modders putting a forced paywall up for a version of their mod. I can't really articulate what I'm trying to say here, so I will try and simplify it.

Forced paywall: BAD
Valve: Wrong
Whole Situation: BADONG
Optional donations to support them while retaining free mods/opposite of BADONG: GNODAB

The community as I have seen has no problem with donating, but paywalls are beyond f*cking stupid and Gabe Jewell is dead.

 

[Lolcomputer]

Gabe Jewell is dead.

EDIT: I also like how Jewell sounds awfully reminiscent of devil.

 

[ríomhaire]

I wasn't happy with exact implementation and I think it would have a negative impact in some ways with regard to free sharing of information and work (but this is true of capitalism in general) but I thought that people being able to make a living off mods and lowering the barrier for people being able to earn a living off of working on games was pretty cool. So all in all I'm not happy with the temper tantrum that the internet collectively threw over this and that it was taken down. I hope it comes back in another form TBH.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

EDIT: I also like how Jewell sounds awfully reminiscent of devil.

*rubs hands*

 

[Mr. Sir Shpee]

EDIT: I also like how Jewell sounds awfully reminiscent of devil.

We're spending all our lives living in a GabeN's paradise

EDIT: I don't like Jewish jokes and such, but Gabe's getup reminded me of the stereotypical Amish, so Weird Al's parody came to mind and yeah

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

We're spending all our lives living in a GabeN's paradise

Its more like a jail sentence, forced to have DRM with bad customer service, a broken Greenlight and Early Access. I want off the merchants wild ride.

Take me to the DRM free with refunds GoG paradise!

 

[kineaesth]

Please refrain from shitty Jewish jokes, idiots

 

[Vegeta897]

shitty Jew

Now who's the idiot?

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Please refrain from shitty Jewish jokes, idiots

thanks

 

[kineaesth]

Now who's the idiot?

Jews, apparently?

edit: YOU ARE VEGETA, AN IDIOT

 

[Lolcomputer]

Please refrain from shitty Jewish jokes, idiots

But dank maymays...

 

[Eejit]

But dank maymays...

Castrate yourself, prole.

 

[Lolcomputer]

Castrate yourself, prole.

Are you implying I'm a jew? Nonsense!

Spoiler

sorry

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

 

[Mr. Sir Shpee]

So this thread went from a serious discussion to dank memes.

Such is life on internet forums.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

it went from serious discussion to antisemitism to dank memes, straight out of a european history book, folks

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

More like the entire thread was about memes, considering that Le Happy Merchant is in fact a meme.

 

[Lolcomputer]

it went from serious discussion to antisemitism to dank memes, straight out of a european history book, folks

oi, that's ironic antisemitism. Hopefully, no one took that too seriously.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

it went from serious discussion to antisemitism to dank memes, straight out of a european history book, folks

 

[Bluestrike]

http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/30/8513483/paid-mods-matter-stardock
Also we already pay for mods, its called dlc and its in general on games that did not get mod support else nobody would buy the dlc ...

If I could live from it I would probably still be modding.

 

[Vincent Pride]

I have seen people saying that modders should exclusively make mods for free. However, the majority of people say that they would rather just have a donate button, so I don't think that your statement is 100% correct.

I guess people just don't want a paywall to something that was otherwise free, and I can understand that from a consumer perspective.

Donations don't do shit, nobody is donating when the stuff is available for free. Out of 100 people asking for a donation button there will be probably just 1 who ever clicks it. Your mod can be downloaded over million times and you can still get just $100 in donations. It's ok if you intended to give your mod for free anyways, so donations would be just a nice extra. But donations never were a viable monetization strategy.

The bottom line is that mods are developed by people having spare resources to do things for free, not by the most talented people out there. There are countless mods that never happened because their creators had to put food on their tables first.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Which I think is the original idea behind it. And that's a good idea, it's just how you deliver the product and put what you consider important in the front window. I can't explain the 75% cut, that seems steep, although Gabe said that is set per-game by the original developer. On such basis, it should have been launched with a Valve product first, with Valve setting the standard of 20% or something.

If this was launched as "Valve launch revenue stream creation for modders on Steam Workshop", headlining with the exposure of the workshop platform, voting and allowing donations, BUT modders can charge a flat user-set fee if they choose, this would have been better received. Especially if Valve used Dota 2 custom games as an example product, showcasing 100 mods for free with donation buttons and a select few more popular mods for a reasonable fee, with the majority share going to the creator.

I believe it's mostly a marketing flaw and it'll be relaunched with Dota 2 custom games in a few weeks about how they've learned their lessons. You know the "Sometimes we get it really wrong" blog post, see Diretide-gate

 

[Lolcomputer]

Donations don't do shit, nobody is donating when the stuff is available for free. Out of 100 people asking for a donation button there will be probably just 1 who ever clicks it. Your mod can be downloaded over million times and you can still get just $100 in donations. It's ok if you intended to give your mod for free anyways, so donations would be just a nice extra. But donations never were a viable monetization strategy.

The bottom line is that mods are developed by people having spare resources to do things for free, not by the most talented people out there. There are countless mods that never happened because their creators had to put food on their tables first.

I completely agree. Though, my point was, that the majority of the community isn't directly implying that modders should, from principle, not get paid, which was claimed otherwise. I just think that many people do not know how ineffective donate buttons are, and just to set the record straight, I don't like the idea of just adding a donate button either.

No one will be able to make a career out of donations, at least when it comes to something as miniscule and situational as mods, and Valve is trying to accomplish the contrary; to make modding a career, so that the life expenctancy of a game can grow on a significantly more substantial manner. Altough, I think before Valve cotninues, they will need some sort of curation. Not every modder should be able to sell their mods, and only the people who are verified by some sort of regulation should be.