Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods Options

[Acadian]

Gstaff, of Bethesda, announced on the Bethesda forum that Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods. Here's the thread.

To say the reaction there has been underwhelming is a massive understatement. If I spend more than a moment pondering unintended consequences and pitfalls, I’m afraid I must agree with the ominous implications this has for the future of modding. A ton of posts on that thread already beat up the subject pretty well.

I confess I prefer as little to do with Steam as possible and have never touched their 'workshop'. I get my mods from Nexus, but the implications are disturbing - even for private hobby modders. Naturally, Steam is taking a big cut of all proceeds. Does this mean that for future games, the CK/CS will only be made available to 'for profit' Steam workshoppers? This seems to validate the concerns many of us have about Steam and their ability to control what you thought you paid for.

[gpstr]

I'm scratching my head here still at the lack of sense. It is clear that the modding community overall is not behind pay for mods. BethSoft has provided their CS/CK free and, in return, has sold more games because of modding and not had to repair tons of tiny bugs that the modders do. The situation has been, in my mind, symbiotic with mod makers, players and BethSoft all benefiting. If it ain't broke. . . .

It makes perfect sense. Modding only benefits Bethesda up to a point. It keeps people playing the games, keeps the games at the forefront of the players gaming library until the next game is released. Then it becomes a hindrance. How many people stuck to playing modded Morrowind rather than buy Oblivion? How many stuck to modded Morrowind or Oblivion instead of buying Skyrim? Once that happens, that free program that lets players extend the games lifespan gets in the way, and starts costing them sales. The fact that Morrowind still has an active section on the Bethesda forums shows how many people are still playing the game, and no doubt the high ups at Bethesda consider that lost revenue.

And on top of that, there's DLC. Players already have the choice of buying the DLC as it comes or waiting for the ultimate edition/GoTY edition and maybe getting them cheaper, but mods present another option: content that can be at a higher level than Bethesda can provide, but which doesn't come at a cost. So modding's potentially costing them money there as well.

And finally, there is a penalty to having people playing a TES game right up until the release of the next game; people immediately compare everything they find out about the new game to the old one, which is still fresh in their minds because they're still playing it. So of course people look negatively on the new game, particularly considering the direction Bethesda has been moving in with Oblivion and (more noticeably imo) Skyrim.

Killing off modding can benefit them, and doing it this way means they can sit back and make money while the modding community destroys itself. Sure, it might cost them sales, but the ones they'll lose, the long term modders aren't in their target demographic anymore.

Maybe making a mountain out of a molehill, but I can see how this can ultimately benefit Valve and Bethesda. Bethesda's gotten away with making questionable moves in the past, and Valve continues with its horrendous consumer practices, so I doubt they're particularly worried about this backlash.

This is a well reasoned post, and probably about dead on.

It's akin to a thing I often tell people about politics, when they start going on about whatever seemingly stupid decision some government has made. These people are highly paid professionals. They're not stupid. If their decisions seem inexplicable, it's only because we're not reasoning through things like they are.

And more often than not, it's because we're decent, honorable people who would never think to do whatever manipulative, shady, self-serving thing they've decided to do - it doesn't make sense to us because our minds don't work that way.

And no - they're not worried about the backlash. Valve is guaranteed market share just because of their DRM deals and they don't have to, and don't, care. And Beth - this is a company that has a recurring character in the games whose only purpose at this point is to communicate just how much the devs hate the fans. Of course they aren't afraid of the backlash.

I can see it now: "Some people think that they should be able to use M'aiq's things whenever and however they want. M'aiq thinks they're assholes."

My only real beef against Steam is the DRM they force upon all of their users. As an online storefront, I have no problem with them.

The two are inseparable, and since it appears that humanity has lost the will to refuse to install malware, will remain inseparable.

If it wasn't for the DRM deals, Steam would be just another online storefront, and would have to compete on a level playing field with everyone else. They're not willing to do that and they're not going to do that unless customers demand it, and customers aren't demanding it.

Sorry, but every single person who continues to do business with Steam is part of the problem. I hate saying that to someone I like and respect, but it's true. As long as people continue to bend over and take it, Steam will continue to do it, and it really doesn't matter how much the customers might complain along the way. The only thing that stands the slightest chance of making them stop is if enough potential customers refuse to bend over for them at all. Unless and until that happens, nothing is going to change.

But the DRM - requiring you to start the Steam Client every time you play the game to validate that you own a legal copy of the game - is totally unnecessary.

Of course it's unnecessary. It's not there because it's necessary or even purportedly so - it's there because it's profitable, and because there aren't enough people who are willing to say, "Screw that. I refuse to install your malware."

I have been thinking about what I said about future Geck/Creation Kits forcing you to save your mods onto a Valve or Bethesda server, and I am changing my mind. The reason is simply bandwidth and storage space. It would cost the companies a lot of money.

Mmm... yeah. But still - it's an elegant and certainly effective solution to a "problem" (the "problem" of lost revenue from mods that don't go through Steam's online storefront).

Instead what they might do is first outlaw all third party mod-organizer programs like OBMM or Wyre Bash. Bethesda loves to brings lawsuits against other companies. They are in court more often than most District Attorneys. It would not matter if they won or lost either. They have the money to simply bankrupt any mod maker in court. But they would win, as it is their game, and their modding software.

So then the only way to activate a mod would be through the game itself. Or more likely, through a Game Setup page on Steam, where you store all of your game settings and your mod load order. Mods uploaded to the Steam Workshop would be given a digital watermark. Then after you buy a mod and download it, when you go to the Game Setup page to put it in your load order, the server would check for that watermark, and refuse to activate it unless it is there. That way people could make all the mods they wanted. But they could only use the ones that came from the Steam Workshop. Including the ones you made yourself. That would give Bethesda and Valve absolute control over every mod, and they would be able to profit from every single instance of a person using them.

Mmm... yeah. That's possible too.

Suffice to say, Steam and Beth will work out some way to ensure that their for profit modding "service" doesn't face any competition from free mods. That much, at least, is absolutely guaranteed.

And as Callidus points out, even if that destroys modding for these games entirely, that's fine. Beth's target market is young people with disposable income who'll shell out the money for a game that'll give them 20 or so hours of "open world" gaming with lots of visual goodies. I'm certain they care just as little about modders, in the end, as they care about roleplayers.