Greetings, Skyrim Nexus. It has been a while since I've made an official check-in here, and I suppose many of you may be wondering what is going on, especially with regards to current affairs in the modding world. I thought that, especially at this juncture, where it seems that our hobby seems poised to change into something radically new and different, that it would be meet to address it.
Since the last update, I have been amazed and overwhelmed to watch the reception of FCO by the community. When I started, I figured breaking four figures for endorsements was the ceiling that I was aiming for and assumed might hit, were I lucky. The reception I got, of FCO becoming one of the top files on the Nexus, of being featured in a number of video series on Skyrim mods, and being downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, I was never in a million years expecting, or prepared for. All I can say is thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who has used, enjoyed and supported this mod this past year.
I've been lax in maintaining it, this I will admit. There comes a time for every modder, I think, when their needs as a gamer refuse to be ignored anymore - that that part of you stands up and says "enough! Now enjoy the game you have built!" And that time came for me after finishing the B-team last year. I wanted to finally sit down and play Skyrim as I had now improved it, and try out other games as well. So I have let it sit.
But the events of the past 24 hours have shook things up in a way that cannot be ignored, and would be summarily irresponsible to ignore.
I am first going to state, without equivocation: I have not, and will never, sell a mod, be it FCO or any future mod. I have refused donations as well - though I recognize the right of any modder to ask for them. But selling mods crosses a boundary between pleasure and business that I absolutely will never do.
I understand why many modders want to embrace this. It may be easy for me to make this declaration, seeing as FCO is almost entirely recycled assets, to make this stand, but there are many modders who do generate original art in the pursuit of this hobby: be it voice acting, writing, animations, 3D meshes, or textures. They have a right to demand compensation, this is true. But demanding it of the modding community is the last place they should be doing so. If you have the talent and the desire to use it, you should get a job with it, not shake a can under the nose of people who, up until a minute ago, were your friends and neighbors, and who are now, by your own fault alone, customers.
Anyone who hasn't turned off his brain can see what a raw deal the Steam Workshop is for the modder - a meager 25% of the proceeds, and your first check only comes after a threshold of sales arbitrarily decided by Valve and Bethesda. If you applied for a job and got told that 75% of your salary gets farmed back into the company (before taxes, mind you), and that you wouldn't even be payed until your sales cleared a certain threshold, who in their right mind would even apply for such a company, much less accept a job there? And that is what's ultimately at stake here: tieing down modding and turning it into a job, rather than a hobby.
People have to consider what this means for modding, not just for the Nexus, but for the PC as a platform. Modding is a niche of a niche - a fraction of the PC gaming market, which is itself (unfortunately) a fraction of gaming as a whole. Nobody is born a modder - they get into it by using mods, and erecting a paywall raises the barrier to entry impossibly high, especially for young people. Most begin modding by reverse-engineering the work of others, seeing how it ticks, and putting it back together again - or improving on it. The advent of paid modding is going to make close-sourcing of mods an inevitability, which will make learning the art of modding that much more difficult for new modders. Altogether, I can see this having nothing but a catastrophic effect on the community, turning the Workshop and Nexus alike into a glorified Play Store for mods, a wasteland of thousands of data-stealing flashlight apps for Skyrim.
Anyway, I digress. I will be updating my mods to begin using a Creative Commons license to help insure them against being resold on the Workshop. I already have a small presence there - and one I am now strongly reconsidering - but I want to make sure FCO is not abused for profit. As well, assuming that this fiasco doesn't turn me off gaming forever, I do plan on making good with my original plans for FCO, re: an SKSE-free update. If this has done anything good, it's that it's forced me to take a long hard look at all this again.
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18 comments
This is not true. Before The Ford Motor Company, automobiles were hobby items where people hooked up steam engines to wagon wheels in their barns. Before big corporate gaming companies came along, gaming was a bunch of kids playing pen and paper DnD in the back storage room of a book store (and it was really hot in there too). Go ahead and hate on “the man” all you want, but recognize that he is a necessary evil when you want to get something done.
Think about the space program for a minute. Up until now space travel has been run only by the government, and progress has been very slow. Now that private companies (AKA greedy corporations) are getting involved in the space industry, we are going to see very rapid growth as compared to when it was just governments doing it.
Would you rather see Samuel Adams beer as still being a hobby project that a guy in Boston brewed up from his great, great grandad’s recipe and only served to his family members on holidays? I am grateful to have the choice of buying a new type of beer on the market, and am grateful for the greedy corporation that brought Samuel Adams beer to market in order to make a profit by giving me more choices as a consumer.
I am a supporter of giving modders the choice of whether or not they want to charge for their games because I want the modding community to explode the same way that gaming did when the pen and paper guys at TSR “sold out” and allowed their stuff to be made into a computer game.
If you want to protect and expand the independent-non-corporate gaming industry, you should be a supporter of paid mods. If you want more games, better games and different types of games, you should be a supporter of paid mods. This is about breaking down the corporate boundaries and taking the keys back from the gatekeepers.
But selling mods crosses a boundary between pleasure and business that I absolutely will never do.
I think this is an unfortunate way to see things. I don’t hate my job, and I love making games. I don’t think that pleasure and business are two things that have to live in bubbles, eternally kept apart. In my opinion, the best any of us can do in this life is to find paid work that we love to do. I want to love and enjoy my business, and that’s why I am a supporter of paid mods and why I respectfully ask you to reconsider if this is something that you are against.
If you have the talent and the desire to use it, you should get a job with it, not shake a can under the nose of people who, up until a minute ago, were your friends and neighbors, and who are now, by your own fault alone, customers.
Like most people, I am not in a position to take an entry-level job at a gaming studio. Even if I did do that, I wouldn’t be able to make the kind of games that I want to make. If the art of it really is what you care about, it is counter-intuitive to suggest that paid mods are a bad thing. The opposite is true. Paid mods will bring in a lot more of a lot better stuff. Rather than telling me to conform myself to the existing (corporate) system, how about giving me a chance to see if I can find an audience for my ideas on my own? Isn’t that what “the art” of it is all about? I am willing to put a year of my life into building a really cool adventure just on the off chance that enough people will find it interesting and will be willing to pay $3.99 for the download. I ask you to give me that choice so that I will be able to take care of my family while I am doing what I love to do.
Anyone who hasn't turned off his brain can see what a raw deal the Steam Workshop is for the modder - a meager 25% of the proceeds…And that is what's ultimately at stake here: tieing down modding and turning it into a job, rather than a hobby.
OK, but this point isn’t about saving the soul of modding. This point is about modders getting a bad deal. I don’t think that this is a bad deal and even if it was, I don’t think that modders need protection from a bad deal by having the choice taken away from them. I’d rather give them the choice of whether to charge or not and allow them to figure it out for themselves. I don’t think that I’m smart enough to make other people’s decisions for them, and for the most part I prefer that other people not make decisions for me regardless of how good their motives are.
Now, as to it being a bad deal in terms of the profit split:
If you consider: 1) that my start-up costs will be next to nothing, 2) that I will be starting out with a working game engine that is packed with properly licensed assets (art, scripts, etc), 3) that publishing and marketing my game are mostly taken care of and 4) there is an existing marketplace waiting for my product to arrive, I think that this is a really good deal. If you consider that they spent millions and millions of dollars up front and are giving me a golden opportunity with nothing out of my pocket to set it up, I think they are entitled to the profit split as contemplated. In fact, I would love to take their meager 25% and use it to form my own company where I can make a living expressing my ideas.
I hope that you will reconsider your position if paid modding is something that you are against.
I've been bringing up legal aspects of the TOS of the applications we use to create new content that is not property of Beth/Valve but other than a few people I never really felt like I got the idea across that going pay-wall would hurt our hobby.
I've no idea how so many people could fail to understand that legally speaking our hands in creating content would be tied up.
But your take on it is probably the easiest to understand that paywall would shut out new mod authors from ever getting their start in the first place.
I really enjoyed your bringing up Taxes, its 33% in the US and 50% across most of Europe meaning a paywall mod is bringing in much less than the speculative figures that were being tossed around. Imagine having to split that in a mod team with voice actors as well.
Thanks, and I enjoy your mods.