The Gaben has grabbed a stick of butter, bent you over a table pushing down with all his weight, and while eating a jelly donut that is dripping on the small of your back, asks you.... "so, what do you think of the new Steam modding paywall, sweetcheeks?"
So, how do you reply?
https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop
The Gaben has seen that BTW, and posted on reddit that he basically doesn't give two shits, its just too lucrative to pass up, since its a nice 75% cut of all that new revenue (the modders get 25%). After all, Skyrim is selling for $5, and there are mods for Skyrim priced above that already...
Cliffs Notes: Mods are now going for pay on Steam, and that means that the way the modding community has functioned since its inception is over. Why? Because money changes things. Now you're going to have IP owners claiming third parties are making money off of their games by modding it, and making many publisher's games off limits for modding. You also can't just take a $2 mod and host it somewhere else for free, because its now behind a paywall. And previously, the community worked like creating a multi-layer burrito. One guy would mod hairstyles, another would grab that and expand on it by modding weapons, and another would add even more weapons to that, and then another would come along and combine it with a high-quality texture pack and so on, like a 7-layer burrito. But you can't just take someone's content they are selling for $5 and repackage it with yours anymore. And considering how the good mods are usually combo packages of dozens and dozens of mods, one often picked up and carried on by the next torch holder when a game gets an update or to fix compatibility issues with other popular mods and so forth, can you imagine what the total cost of most of the popular mods would be today if each modder is charging say $2 per mod? It'd cost more than the original game!
RIP PC gaming...
So, how do you reply?
https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop
The Gaben has seen that BTW, and posted on reddit that he basically doesn't give two shits, its just too lucrative to pass up, since its a nice 75% cut of all that new revenue (the modders get 25%). After all, Skyrim is selling for $5, and there are mods for Skyrim priced above that already...
Cliffs Notes: Mods are now going for pay on Steam, and that means that the way the modding community has functioned since its inception is over. Why? Because money changes things. Now you're going to have IP owners claiming third parties are making money off of their games by modding it, and making many publisher's games off limits for modding. You also can't just take a $2 mod and host it somewhere else for free, because its now behind a paywall. And previously, the community worked like creating a multi-layer burrito. One guy would mod hairstyles, another would grab that and expand on it by modding weapons, and another would add even more weapons to that, and then another would come along and combine it with a high-quality texture pack and so on, like a 7-layer burrito. But you can't just take someone's content they are selling for $5 and repackage it with yours anymore. And considering how the good mods are usually combo packages of dozens and dozens of mods, one often picked up and carried on by the next torch holder when a game gets an update or to fix compatibility issues with other popular mods and so forth, can you imagine what the total cost of most of the popular mods would be today if each modder is charging say $2 per mod? It'd cost more than the original game!
RIP PC gaming...