As we mentioned in the previous post, the Donation Points system has been a massive success with tens of thousands of mod authors receiving a bonus reward on top of the donations they'd have normally received directly from the community. However, some of the behaviours this system encouraged have led to a degraded experience for the end-user.
Problem 1: Content optimised to maximise Donation Points
With the old Donation Points algorithm it became apparent that there was a correlation between how many mod pages you posted and how many points you earned each month - this was especially true for our most popular games. As a result, some authors would break their content down into lots and lots of individual mod pages to maximise the rewards they would receive. This resulted in a heavily degraded user experience - a user previously could get all variants of a mod (or parts of a set) on one page, but they now had to go to multiple different pages to get the "complete" mod. Uploading multiple mods will still be rewarded but authors will start to see diminishing returns from having more interactions with the same user(s).
We've also updated the system to use a non-public algorithm to allocate Donation Points. While we understand this isn't great for transparency, it means that we remove the problem of authors min-maxing their Donation Points rather than creating content that's great for the community.
As part of these changes, it will no longer be possible to view a per-mod breakdown of Donation Points earned on the monthly reports. This is because the calculation works by measuring interactions between users over the month rather than solely counting downloads. To replace this functionality, we plan to give mod authors a dashboard displaying downloads per month outside of the rewards system. We aim to make this dashboard available to authors soon and may expand the stats available to include more than just unique downloads in the future.
Problem 2: Abuse of the system through fraudulent downloads
A further exploit of the system that came to light was the ability for malicious users to earn significant amounts of Donation Points by creating thousands of fake accounts and using them to download their own content. This could potentially take significant sums of money away from genuine users, which is not acceptable. Given the accessibility of throw-away email addresses and VPNs this kind of abuse requires significant resources to track down and we decided that the best approach was to make this activity pointless by factoring it into the new algorithm.
Problem 3: Mod list makers earn disproportionate rewards by including lots of their mods
Mod list curators do a great job supporting the community around their content and we feel they should be rewarded for this. The problem we identified was a trend whereby curators would upload resources for their list split across several mod pages. When a user downloads the collection/Wabbajack list/etc this would mean a unique download for each page and therefore generate a substantial amount of points. To be clear, we have no issue with mod authors creating collections that include groups of their mods to allow for easy downloading, but this trend was targeted towards mod files that had almost no value outside the use in the mod list. This is similar to the first problem but is very specific to mod lists. Uploading mods in this way will no longer generate excessive Donation Points.
Problem 4: Posting updated versions of mods on new mod pages
Some mod authors had taken to releasing updates to their mods by creating a new mod page for each version (and, often, deleting the original). This is a horrible experience for your fans as they are no longer able to easily track the mods they're interested in or be notified of new versions. It also breaks the "update" chain so that modding tools can't easily help users to update to the latest version.
This has always been against our Donation Points System Rules and we will be taking stronger action against users who do this, up to and including blocking them from earning any Donation Points.
We know that some of this behaviour is driven by wanting to increase visibility of updates too, so we are looking into ways to better surface the updated content to users.
We've introduced the changes to not only address these problems but also to redistribute the rewards in a way that enables more authors to benefit from the system. Overall we're expecting ~60% of mod authors to see some kind of increase in their mod rewards. The remaining users are expected to see similar amounts, with some of the current "top earners" seeing a drop in Donation Points where distribution is flattened out a bit.
To be clear, if you receive less DP each month going forward this doesn't necessarily mean your upload behaviours are a problem, it just means that the way you've shared your content is valued differently in the new interaction-based algorithm. We still plan to put the same amount of money (or more) into the system each month.
On reviewing the results of the simulated DP payouts we ran during this project we've noticed there are some cases where tool creators or other "high impact" authors in the community are not as well rewarded in the new system. We highly value tool creators who either enable modding or otherwise extend or amplify the mods that are available for games and we think that these individuals should be strongly rewarded for their efforts. As a result of this, we are now planning to create a separate pool of DP to distribute specifically to selected creators. This may be users who create modding tools that are invaluable to the modding scene (e.g. SMAPI for Stardew Valley) or create tools and frameworks which empower others to create great mods. This scheme is in the planning phases now and we aim to have more information on this later in the year. This will not impact the current DP system or how much money we put into the DP system.
Finally, we've also updated our Donation Points System Rules and empowered our Community Managers with new tools to disqualify specific mods or users from participating in the Mod Rewards program. This will allow us to better handle any exploitation of the system and be confident that content which shouldn't earn DP, won't.
TL;DR - If you'd like to join the discussion we strongly recommend reading the whole post!
- The first Donation Points report using the new algorithm will be available in early August 2024 - this is for Donation Points earned in April 2024. The reports for May and June 2024 will also be available to view and the points will be added to your wallets in September and October respectively.
- The inner workings of the new algorithm will not be made public to prevent abuse or exploitation of the system.
- Donation Points are now shared more fairly and our stats show that ~60% of mod authors see an increase in their monthly rewards.
- The new report will no longer include a per-mod breakdown of allocated points, but you will still see the splits with other authors. The per-mod download breakdowns will be moved to a new dashboard outside of the Donation Points system soon.
- We've empowered our Community Team with better tools to tackle abuse of the system.
- Check out our new Best Practices page for advice on creating great mod pages.
- We're looking at setting up a new, separate rewards program to provide better awards for key tool/framework creators in the community using a separate pool of money. More on this later in the year!
- The total amount we're paying into the Donation Points system each month will remain the same or continue to increase.
Overall, this new system will ensure that the Donation Points system rewards modders for producing high-quality content that the community loves and prevent exploitation of the system. We will be closely monitoring the distribution of DP each month and can make tweaks to the algorithm to make sure it's working as we would like it to. If you're a mod author and you have concerns or questions about these changes, please speak to one of our Community Managers using the forums, Discord or leave a comment below.
447 comments
Based on the comments here, there seems to be a bit of confusion about what's happening with the latest DP reports. Hopefully this post will help clear a few things up:
The Fallout traffic has returned more or less to normal from June 2024 onwards, so the distribution of Donation Points will reflect that in future reports.
I hope this alleviates some of your concerns about seeing less DP this month.
1)Does posting new mods still give DPs as always by accumulated downloads, unique DLs and endorsements at each months normally? It's a dumb question but I'm that bad at understanding things.
2)Does updating a mod in it's own page still accumulated DP? A few days ago I updated my mod called "Muni Ja" for Yakuza 0, which lead to this question.
3)Is the best practice something that is a must for every mod makers as some makers when I've checked their mods have missing points from the best practice article?
1) As I understand it, it is unique downloads that are what counts towards points, not overall downloads, and not endorsements. Once the new system is live, they will apply additional calculations and considerations to that unique downloads number, some of which are discussed above, but they aren't going to tell us the details, as that is what got the whole system in trouble in the first place, with people min-maxing and taking advantage of understanding the system a bit too well. Yeah, right now the pending points shows 0, I find that annoying too, but the points for the months after May aren't lost, just still to be calculated from unique downloads, hopefully by the new system. If they can't get it up and running by well into next month, they will likely do what they already did once, and release a few more months of points calculated on the old system to give themselves more time to get the problems ironed out of the new system.
2) I think update-downloads still count, as long as they aren't really frequent? But I am a bit fuzzy on that one myself.
3) As I understand it, the new system intends to penalize (on some kind of sliding scale?) those that ignore too many of those strong recommendations, and if it looks like someone is willfully scamming the system, not just oblivious to the new system, their ability to earn DP might go away entirely. This should hopefully leave more DP to distribute among those obeying as many of those recommendations as they reasonably can. Once the decrease in DP is noticed by people, it is hoped they will look at the recommendations, and try to come a bit more in line with them.
That is all I know on the subject.
Thanks to all the asses, that ruined it for everyone else by abusing it.
Before coming here and saying the sky is falling.
Edit: Perfect timing for Pickysaurus to post a new pinned comment too about this, which helps a lot in showing why everyone needs to chill, at least for now.
Nexus is giving us money to host files on their website, on their servers that they have to pay for. Yes, we the users help this fund, with ad revenue and premium memberships, but they ultimately still keep the site running. And they are paying us, the mod authors, to be here. Yes, the site wouldn't exist without mod authors, but up until recently, we didn't get ANYTHING outside of the occasional donations more popular modders got from the rare user.
We did this for fun, as a hobby, because we were passionate about the game(s) we mod and the projects we worked on. When did Nexus community become so entitled that y'all threaten to LEAVE, I guess so your mods can die somewhere, just cause you got a little less money for a hobby?
Yes, I'm aware some people need the funds to pay rent or whatnot, but those are outside cases and not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the greedy people who only mod because it nets them money, like it's the new Etsy 'get rich quick' scheme or something.
I fully expect hostile comments in response to this, but I will stand by the fact that you all need to take a step back and realize Nexus doesn't have to pay us s#*!, and the fact we get free Premium and these DP at all is awesome! But we shouldn't take it for granted, we are not entitled to it, and I think all outcrying should at least wait until we see a proper report using the new system before we call it bad.
Not surprising, if someone doesn't read the TOS to begin with, they can't really agree with the content either.
Then you have my case, that I read them but that depending on how hard the legalese is, perhaps I misunderstand them.
I remember pointing out to a moderator in another forum how stupid it was that I had to agree with the TOS in order to post a comment on the forum for clarification on the content of said TOS.
Edit: Grammar. Please forgive for the mistakes I can't see myself.
Saying this is quite unfair to the people who create. Do you prefer mods where every creator has a Patreon paywall?
I am a mod author myself, so no need to act like I don't know the work that goes into it. I've spent months on mods before.
Does the new algorithm penalize my user-friendly home mods? 🙄
✅I publish both REDmod and non-REDmod versions of my mod on the same mod page.
💠 Since it is a REDmod version, they can test the possibility of my mod conflicting with other mods. (optional)
💠 If I don't add a REDmod version, people ask me to add it. ➕
💠 The new algorithm scolds me for more interaction. 🤕
✅ When I make an alternative version of my mod, instead of creating a new mod page, I add a separate download option on the relevant mod page.
💠 Instead of changing the popular content of this mod, I offer people the opportunity to change some parts of it with alternative download options. ✨
💠 For example, chromanticore, a content in my mod, 50% of people prefer the alternative version. Since 50% prefer the original presentation,
having both there gives people the opportunity to choose and customize. 🥳
💠 The new algorithm scolds me for more interaction. 🤕
✅One of my mods already changes a lot of content in itself, but I still try not to distribute it to separate mod pages.
Accordingly, people may not want to use my entire mod, but they may want to use a few parts of it.
💠 That's why I offer the entire pack and multiple download options on a single mod page so that they can download all the content in my mod one by one. 👏
💠 I add the image of the content to each download option, so people can download only the content they like and use my mod with different mods, and it also prevents conflicts with other mods. 🥳💕
💠 For example, someone wants to use mod B, but they also want to use a few content from my mod, here I can offer great customization with these download options. 🎉
💠 The new algorithm scolds me for more interaction. 🤕
🤔 I also added an option to download all the individual download options in a single package, so why did I add the others?
💠 For a few content that people like, it can take time to download the entire mod due to the file size, and they may need to match which file is which content, and repeat this process when there is an update.
💠 Separate download options can distinguish which content is updated by version numbers, and the update process is easy.
💠 Options like fomod also require downloading the entire mod, and not everyone uses a mod manager.
✅I like to reply to most comments and do my best to solve the problems people are experiencing. 😇
✅ On my mod's description page, I provide visual information about the purpose of my mod, how to install it and other information in a way that looks nice on the eye. 🤩
💠 The new algorithm may scold me for more bandwidth. 🤕
Doing all the things I mentioned above takes a great deal of time, and time is valuable. ⌛⏱️
🔸I like sharing my mod, but doing the things above and having many different mods is a time-consuming process, I endure these difficulties to make users happy 🥰 and because it also helps me financially. 🪙
🔸Making users happy makes me happy spiritually, but it is not easy to live only with spiritual values, life conditions require me to work at a regular job.
🔸In this case, it is not always possible to spend time doing all the above mentioned things. ⌛⏱️
🔸If doing it contributes to me some financially, 🪙 I can now work part-time 😃 instead of working full-time and spend some of my time making new mods 🥳✨ and offering them to people. 🥰
🔸I love making mods, 💗 I have many mods of different games that I do not share yet.
🔸I have limited time and I want to play 🎮 games in this time, I have fun, but on the other hand, I also think that if I share these mods, people will be happy, 😇 but then I say life conditions.
❔The purpose of sharing this comment is to make sure whether I understand the new algorithm correctly or incorrectly. 😇
What is certain is that now there will be a fixed amount of interactions with the same user that may vary depending on a hidden algorithm and will no longer allow to accumulate more during the same month, setting a limit of DP that can be earned per user, that means that if before a user downloaded for the first time of your 30 pages you received DP for the 30 UDLs generated, now will be counted as interactions in all downloads whether new, variants, optional, updates, etc... establishing a limit that cannot be exceeded for more downloads generated in the same month from that user.
This is what I can clearly deduce from the information available so far.
It is not determined if it is for all games, nor how many interactions, nor if optional mods from the same page or updates count, we only know that it restarts every month.
By the way, it is somewhat strange that it restarts every month because if they are also trying to eliminate “Abuse of the system through fraudulent downloads”, this new way will allow these users to accumulate accounts behind a VPN that will generate new downloads every month since unlike before it was only counted once per UDL and each account could only be used once.
A ~4% increase in unique downloads going into April from March, but a ~30% cut in donation points.
Make it make sense. 👎
The "reward" is a fixed amount each month. It is divided among people according to the percentage of total unique downloads.
So if a month has a spike in users and unique downloads it means you'll earn less per each download, as the global site amount is higher.
Months with less traffic will have a higher reward per each download.
April and may had a spike due to fallout show. The changes are not even applied yet. So more people downloaded mods in general, and that caused the value of each download to lower,as the money pool is a fixed amount of money.
The download pool also takes into account money donated to autors through nexus patreon, so some months may see a higher amount of money pool due to generous donations from people.
So in other words, If 80% of those people downloaded 2 different and completely unrelated mods that you made, suddenly you only getting 20% of previous rewards for your hard work on the second mod... ridiculous.
Best guess: the increased number of unique downloads sitewide led to a dilution of DP value per download of around ~27% for everyone. You are not being punished/singled out in any way.
If I recall correctly, the DP pool is not drawn from that specific month - meaning the increased volume of users did not increase revenue contribution to the pool for that month, but likely will for later month/s. If I am wrong about this, then I can only assume the increase in unique downloads was disproportionately higher than the increase in revenue - as in, many new users downloading mods but not subbing for premium and so on.
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Yeah well that's fucking stupid
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I have installed 70 to 80% of his Mods. Within the new System, he would now punish for creating stuff, the people like.
I see the point of stopping people to abuse this system. But to punish someone because he made Quality content, is just stupid.
I guess the only thing left to do is to relax and update some mods every month if you no longer play a particular game and not worry about the poor users who will be the real victims of this system. ( ◡́.◡̀)
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Someone is on strike
I don't want to be mean, but that sounds like a you (and people like you problem).
INB4:
You are making this sound like you (and people like you), kinda made this into a business -- and expecting stability, and for Nexus to keep losing, for your benefit. Nexus weren't asking any of you to update your mods, DP was just incentive.
So there's less incentive. Okay, then don't update it -- end of story. You act as if good mods are gonna die out without DP, but the great ones are made with the labor of love.
If you don't want to do it, fine, let others update the mod for you -- the modding scene always had been DIY, and people were just sharing it for the fun of it. We cried against paid-mods, and having DP function like commission is essentially paid-mods-with-extra-steps.
So pardon me. It's not that "I" have to understand your position -- I pretty much do, and your position is unreasonable.
I will continue to update and share mods for the games I still use, but no longer the ones I don't use it doesn't make any sense to waste hours of my time on them when I can create new ones for another game as Nexus now requests.
As far as updating mods from other authors, forget it, it's something I learned when I updated some for the DBZK community here on Nexus and got them deleted because it turned out that the original author had them hidden from view and claimed for them.
Then there is the nonsense of contradictions they preach.
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Maybe we need to lock comments also.
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Yeah, I didn't say "your", I said "you". As in I am separating myself from you, and people like you that hold such belief.
I update mods, because it is my responsibility -- that it is on me, to fix and maintain my mods because I made them. I have a pet mod that updated it 200 times over, spanning three different iterations, and sought no DP because it uses assets from other authors.
So damn straight I'm not like you, I do it for the sense of community, that I am responsible for my mod.
Well, you could be getting zero, because they don't owe you anything -- so yes, it's reasonable given that you're getting ANYTHING at all.
Again, you don't want to update it because it's not worth your time? (And be an irresponsible mod-author.) Don't. That's on you.
You are free to think what you want about me and I am not like you, I like to know that not everyone always likes me, because that means that I am true to my way of thinking and I am not a slave to the majority.
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I am no authority just an ordinary user with an opinion and I have the right to express it.
Yes dwolf11, all those points you comment on really happened, because I didn't take enough time to read the community rules ( you can crucify me if you want for that) but the problem was quickly corrected and I never generated DP for it with the instruction of the CM and now all those mods are completely respectful of the rules and it wasn't about splitting mods but merging mods that don't work together.
You want me to publicly denounce here the practices you do when resubmitting repeated models on different pages with the excuse that they are loaded with a different system, etc...
I guess now having 544 mods in two years is something that is very frowned upon, but I think that if that content is supported by 1.5M unique downloads is that something interests even if it is only 70 users like many of my games, I understand that for a user like you that you take many days to create a model or set of 3D models with much love for the community and then only has 300 downloads from users is very frustrating and that I with a simple mod that changes only the time in which an event happens receive 3500 but do not take it out on me, I have never belittled your work or that of anyone else.
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There's a LOT of context you threw out the window with that statement. One mod is for the player, the other is for pal customization. The latter was made to prove a community-made theoretical method of creating pal skins, so that we could finalize the guide for anyone else who wants to make that kind of content, and a sort of "thank you" to a friend who did something really nice for me, and you're really going to tell people that I was "resubmitting repeated models with an excuse"?
Lookalikes, sure. Reused assets, sure. An "excuse?" Absolutely not. They are meant to be an identical character, present as a cameo of sorts.
It was not that content that I was referring to, but nothing happens now because it seems that the content for xMOG that was duplicated that I was referring to, the author has hidden it respecting the rules.
Can we please continue with the subject that concerns us now, which is that most of the authors do not understand well the new contradictory rules that Nexus launched.
THANKS (^◡^)
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I don't care about the negative things that you and your minority talk about me, because people like you who start to despise a mod because you only need to change in one line the percentage of 0.1% of special PALS appearance to 100% and for you it's a junk mod, has no place in my thoughts.
I care about the thousands of people who support in many ways what I do, that does matter to me and keeps that ego and arrogance that makes you so angry with me.
You can make all the excuses you want but your duplicate mods would have to be on the same page because they are the same textures replacing the same thing, the only difference is that it uses xMod to manage it within the game, you have to add it as a complement to your mod it's very simple, I don't need to get to gut your mods as if I had an unhealthy obsession with you.
As far as the compatibility of my mods with the new IOSTORE Zen Loader system used in Game Pass is concerned, I have no idea how to create them since I don't know how to use Unreal Engine or any complicated program, but I'm open to you to show me how to do it PRO.
SALUDIS AMIGI
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:) Passar bem
xMOG is a system specifically designed to NOT replace assets.. If a modder creates a skin in the traditional way, they DO replace assets and their mod is NOT compatible with how xMOG functions.. Thus, any skin made for xMOG, should be stated as such, and any that isnt, isnt compatible..
To put it into terms you might understand better..
Its like ADDING a new data table into the game instead of EDITING an EXISTING one..
Now dont try tell me you wouldn't upload 6 different mods for that? :D
I think this harassment by your community should be over, there was no reason to tell lies and recriminate something that happened half a year ago by people who today do not comply with the new rules, I accepted my responsibility to the CM and I have respected and complied with each and every one of the instructions that I have been recommended to take, I understand that there are people who want to use their closed mindset to classify modders by race, but for me everyone is the same even if your mod only changes the color of a freckle, simple as that.
I will not discuss this topic with you again FAREWELL.
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:) oh Mr Gantz "the best modder that only knows how to make variable change loved by million of ppl" the support doesn't looks like see the problems as u do, can't say the same about ur content of course since everything that have happened in the past :3 have a good morning or afternnon idk what's the time there
Edit:If something many users tell me, is that the problem that exists with me is that in a short time I have created a lot of simple and interesting content at the request of many users and that is always kept in HOT MODS monopolizing the other mods that have a lot of work and that generates that people think that creating mods is very easy (something that for some of my simple mods is true), that devalues a lot the opinion of the users towards those modders who spend many hours creating content, but as I said I am not responsible for my simple Cheat Mods have the success it has, everything that happened half a year ago because of my lack of understanding of the rules for being from a different language is irrelevant today, my mods are exactly the same as those of UE4SS but without the need to spend hours learning how to use them and are supported by the vast majority of the community.
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You're also disregarding the other half of the playerbase with your mods which is the Game Pass / Xbox users. I haven't seen a single mod from you that accounts for both playerbases which adds to my point of "quantity over quality", so I think the reduced DP in your case is justified. You've also had a history of hiding mods you've made for an older version of the game and then uploading a new separate mod for a new version of the game which is extremely confusing to the end user that's downloading your mods and is literally one of the listed points in the above post.
If you're going to blame someone for these changes, then blame yourself.
I will only add this, I do not have any mod divided in 10 and I invite all users to go through my mods, I do have a mod with which you can create 4097 mods Gantz79 Modular Game Settings Mods (4097 versions)
I don't create mods (I wouldn't even know how) for the UE4SS injector because it tends to corrupt games and I don't like it, my modifications are from uasset PAK files because no one on this site with programming notions has created some kind of program for users that allows them to extract, edit and pack UASSET from Unreal Engine 5.
It is not possible to create a mod that allows users to make any changes to the UE game, if that were possible, someone would have already created it since the UE was launched, you are crowned with one of the biggest nonsense I've read on Nexus in these two years.
By the way, you will not see a single attack in any comment for my part to other users anywhere in NEXUS unless before they were defaming me with lies as you have done.
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If that is the case I guess they thought you had several accounts to abuse the DP and deleted it, I think you should talk to a CM about this issue and point out the error, they are usually quite understanding.
I have not had any problem with modders sharing their points because back in the day I helped them to create their mods and I have always received them in my account.
You're making it seem like they're doing this out of sheer kindness, when in fact Donation Points are a motivator for many modders who want to make this into a marginally profitable hobby.
I appreciate their attempt at making it more fair and less prone to abuse from Collection maintainers or people who divide their mods into dozens/hundreds just to abuse the system, but the thing Fararagi mentioned is not a very good idea imo. It'd be better to have it work against abuse, rather than against fans and supporters.
I personally have downloaded and endorsed all of Fararagi's mods, and I would expect him to benefit fully from my support.
I do think there is a way to make this algorithm work, which is to check users that have ONLY downloaded from a single mod author, and these users give out minimal returns, whereas users who have downloaded from many mod authors including the one in question shouldn't be penalized.
I wouldn't want them to earn less from my interactions when my interactions with their mods are specifically because they are high quality and good contributions to the mod scene. I hope that there will be some way for the algorithm to be able to discern actual meaningful repeated interaction here.