PC Gamers
Hardware & Tech
This is a group for all PC gamers from all gaming generations. From the time of PCs like the Comadore 64 to the modern PCs. By PC i don't mean just Windows, I mean them all like Mac and Linux.
Victory!
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Description
This battle is over, we have won.
Forgive, but never forget.
However it's not time to holster our weapons yet, not only paid mods might come back, but a civil war might be starting on the modding community, between some corrupt modders and the community itself:
"Modders":
Steamcommunity.com
The community:
Steamcommunity.com
The announcement of the end of paid mods (at least for now and for Skyrim):
Steamcommunity.com
Free Debate Community here on ModDB:
Moddb.com
I fail to understand how can people defend paid mods.
As I've said 2 times already here on ModDB, mods are about passion, if that passion isn't enough, don't mod.
When I see The Core, Twisted Insurrection, Enderal, Mental Omega, Sins of the Prophets, Rise of the Reds, Stargate Space Conflict, Luftahraan, and many others, for many different games, I see passion, passion for the game being modded, passion for the idea being created, passion for modding itself. Most of the time for all of these 3.
That's how I want modding to be, even if that means it stays somewhat small.
I agree with you but I also think everyone should be paid for their work. Of course I don't think mods should be locked behind a pay wall. Basically I'm all for donations, sponsorships, maybe even an ad system, etc where the money doesn't have to come from the people that play the mod.
There are a lot of benefits from people being able to make a living while doing something like modding. Think of it in terms of YouTubers; they make a living making free content for all of us. If only modders could have the same ability to make a living while providing everyone with free mods. If modders were paid for modding they wouldn't need a regular job to feed themselves and could therefore afford to invest more time into their mods, support them for longer, create more mods, etc.
Also on top of just being able to feed themselves some modding requires certain software (photoshop, 3ds max, etc) which while they could be pirated; should really be bought. Additionally some modders really deserve to be able to buy better hardware. Some of the hardware I see some amazing modders use is just... unfair.
That's what a heretic would say...
Now seriously, it would be awesome to have passionate modders working full time on their mods, this would give us better mods, and would prevent the death of many.
That's a good side that I fully agree with, but the cons surpass the pros.
A quote from my huge comment on ModDB's article about this:
This would work in a perfect world, unfortunately, ours isn't.
I don't think there is a way an ad system similar to YouTube's could work on mods. I'm not sure how sponsorships could work. I agree with donations 100%.
People say that the majority of people don't donate, but that's because donating isn't a common practice, most mods don't even have a way to donate, and when they do, it's through some outside mechanism, which sometimes varies from mod to mod. If we add a donate system on the Workshop, Nexus, ModDB, etc, it would make donating much easier, because it would be through the same system, and through a site we already trust.
Indeed, those softwares are expensive as ****, but there are free alternatives (Example: Modeling has Blender, which seems to be really good, although I haven't started using it a lot yet, only did a cup following a tutorial from YouTube), and besides, since they don't use it to profit, I don't think it would be morally wrong to pirate them.
I agree with you on most points. Also FYI nexus has donate feature. Blender is very good but in some cases one needs 3ds max. For example collisions in skyrim are literally the worst part of making custom assets with blender. I still can't do it with blender alone. 3ds max is still painful and lengthly but at least it's doable. I guess pirating could be considered moral when it's for a hobby that only benefits others.
I think some modders have enough of a following that they could easily get companies that want to advertise to their audience prior to the user downloading the mod or something. Could even work with the site splitting the ad revenue with the modders that host mods on their service. Since let's face it how many of us would use moddb if there were no mods here? Of course it would have to be popularity based to not get abused and even then it doesn't mean it wouldn't be abused. Also that system would not work thanks to all the ******** that use ad blocking plugins... I've recently disabled it on moddb and the nexus but the nexus loads too slowly when ads are enabled so I had to re-enable it on the nexus :( It's still disabled on moddb.
No more money for modifications
We are free from the devil that made this thing