You should have all heard the news about now, long story short, Steam will now be charging for mods from Workshop creators.
Steam gets 75% of all mod sales.
There announcement can be found here,
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent...
This has instantly caused massive outrage from the steam community.
There's currently a petition going made by Steam users to try and stop this.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BoycottSteamWorkshop...
Thoughts on this?
25% of something is still more than 100% of nothing.
If someone doesn't like it they don't have to start charging for their mods and and can keep the status quo. It's an option, not a mandate.
You're using Steam's service, you're using Bethesda's game, this is a decent way for everybody to win and people to be able to distribute mods for a profit without any legal troubles. The crying over this is kind of senseless. Yeah, there will probably be problems and abuses at first but nobody wants to trust they'll get ironed out over time.
You can't do anything that gamers won't cry about but at the end of the day Valve could nuke a 3rd world country and you still wouldn't get enough people to boycott Steam to actually hurt their bottom line.
Some people have made sensible arguments usually in regards to people uploading stolen content or Steam's cut being too big, however most people just want to keep getting stuff for free.
Well, in principle I don't have a problem with it. Of course from a selfish perspective I would like to get mods for free, but I understand that some people won't have the incentive to do it without payment.
My main concern though, is more about mods that address issues with the game. I don't have a problem with authors charging for things like a new quest or character, but there are some mods that simply make the base game more playable/enjoyable, like SkyUI, Convenient Horses, the one that fixes dialogue issues, etc. Those are the kinds of mods you'd want to install, even if you just want to experience the game as is.
The UI mods are highly important. Oblivion and Skyrim had UIs that were much more suited to consoles than for the PC, but this was not a problem because of mods. I hope that in general, the mods that charge will be those that add extra content to the game like new quests, characters, buildings, etc. (especially those with custom textures). It's not that the developers of other mods don't work hard as well, but it would be disappointing to buy a game and then have to shell out more money for things that should have been in the game in the first place.
This petition will go nowhere. Fuck Gabe Newell and fuck Valve.
I'm not a huge fan of this, but at the end of the day I can still make the decision not to pay for it. However, I am somewhat hoping that some of the mods that improve basic functions of the game / make it more accessible aren't hit too hard by this.
This is seriously the biggest "fuck you" I've ever seen by a company since Gearbox deliberately lied to people (as well as Sega) about Aliens: Colonial Marines. I feel hurt and worst of all, I feel cheated by the one thing in this hell hole of a video game industry that I viewed as something that I could trust and rely on to be consistent in word and in deed. I'm sure the majority of Steam users will rally around Good Old Games now and might encourage them to turn Galaxy into a Steam clone with only the best of intentions for it's user base
It always puts a big smile on my face when stuff like this happens. Not when companies get greedy, but when everyone finally snaps out of their blind fanboyism.
I remember seeing people write the stupidest stuff about Nintendo. One that comes to mind is when someone was comparing Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. They said "Sony and M$ are greedy, but Nintendo is just like a little kid that only wants to do good in this world." or something like that, and people were agreeing with them! It was kind of satisfying watching the whole Nintendo and Youtube debacle after only hearing blind praise for Nintendo for so long.
Now, people are finally realizing valve can be just as greedy as everyone else. Maybe now the Steam/Gabe Newell worship will finally come to an end.
Maybe one day I'll understand why people still gets surprised by stuff like this.
And let me know when one of these millions of petitions change something in real life.
I don't buy games with DRM (Steamworks being an example), so that doesn't affect me.
Steam was really the only thing with DRM that wasn't too horribly intrusive. But in hindsight, it's like saying that month old food is still edible if you scrape the mold offQuote:
Originally Posted by Alexrd
Requiring the installation of a third party program and online activation is horribly intrusive to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by negative chill
I was thinking more along the lines of DRM installing Malware/Spyware/rootkits on a user's computer, which to my knowledge, Steam doesn't doQuote:
Originally Posted by Alexrd
Not all Steam games have DRM, or necessarily any use of the Steam API.