[jonlucc]

The latest I've seen is that Valve gets 30%, then the publisher decides what the rest of the split looks like. If they had released the exact same system, but said the modders get 75%, I think this whole ordeal would have been avoided. It's interesting to me that it was apparently better to give modders nothing than to give them 25%.

[lsaferite]

I personally found Bethesda getting any split quite distasteful. They produced the game and made their money on game sales. If they continue to be responsive to bug reports and/or adding new features to the game then perhaps I can see a small amount going to them.

Valve taking a cut I understand as they handle the sales and distribution platform. I'm not sure I think 30% is fair, but that's a different issue.

As a revenue split I'd be much more on board with the modder getting 75% and the rest being to everyone else.

Of course, then you need to consider how mod dependency is handled. And you have to look at how long term mod support is handled. What happens when the modder goes away or Bethesda releases an update that breaks existing mods.

The whole thing is a big nasty ball of problems.

[yebyen]

> I personally found Bethesda getting any split quite distasteful.

So, you agree that Valve should get some part of the sales, because they are the ones (Steam) actually taking the payment and assuming some of the upfront risks of processing payments (fraud) and, because of the network effect and the customers they bring (read ... marketing)

But Bethesda who developed the actual game that brought the modders and gave them a platform to derive their work on, not to mention creating the actual game and game engine and putting it in the hands of the actual customers; they should just get nothing out of this whole deal?

I agree that the whole thing is a big hairy mess, and as a developer and an underdog myself I agree that the split should be approximately reversed, but I'm not sure there's much else we agree on.

[Already__Taken]

What about mods that the publisher can't do?

I played GRID a lot and found the "any car any track" mod which was awesome. Codemasters didn't do that for some reason. There are mods that add Ferraris, Codemaster aren't licensed to include those cars. They were even in the trailer for the game and got pulled.

There's mods to include stuff the publisher couldn't even care[1] to sort out. Why should they get any cut of money for that. Would they even be allowed to take a cut? I assume this kind of stuff sits in a grey zone at the moment.

I think this will always be a problem if you couple the distribution and the day-to-day service in the way steam does.

[1]:http://www.moddb.com/mods/8-ball-prestige-packs-dlc-pc

[yebyen]

If you think about it, those mods probably wouldn't be able to be sold either (forget anyone taking a cut)

Unless a deal could have been worked out with Ferrari. But good on you for asking something different!

[Already__Taken]

I agree maybe not the best example, but it illustrates about problems than can come up from combining services in the market. Hypothetically if steam was _just_ a package manager and the mods payed to for the convenience of users to install it. It shouldn't matter about the content.

Maybe a better example is Red Alert 2, I still occasionally LAN play that and there's a community patch to replace the IPX stack with TCP/IP so it can still work. as IPX is completely gone from windows 8+ I think.

[yebyen]

That's a great example of a mod that just plainly repairs a deficiency in the original game! I was in fact struggling to think of one.

It's clear that this game is abandoned and there's no further support coming from Westwood Studios for it, not to mention that it won't be coming available on Steam any time soon. As troubled as this analogy is, ...

I think it's still clear that in a hypothetical scenario where Steam gets the rights to distribute RA2 and Westwood (EA? who owns the rights to C&C series now?) has still washed their hands of support for it long ago, it would make sense for Steam to give the mod authors the option of sending back some percent of the gross (1-10%) to the rights holders for the game. Sort of a "vote with your dollars" kind of thing.

Of course if we are really talking about sending "extra money" to EA to say thanks, as a mod author or gamer I'm probably going to need to vomit right away, but replace EA with some other hypothetical not-shitty company (the ghost of Westwood) and I think you've got a deal.

This whole scenario just makes me reflect on the relatively recent development of Apple deciding that they can't allow any apps in their phone store that mention support for any products competing with Apple Watch (misfit, fitbit, etc)

The way this played out just goes to show who really owns the greatest share of the attention of Valve and Steam (it's the game companies, not the mods or the community.)

[talmand]

Well, if Bethesda gave the game away for free and wanted a source of revenue from mod makers, sure. But it's quite established that a strong mod community results in continuing sales for the game beyond a normal product lifespan. In some cases, the price of product remains higher than normal because of the strong sales due to the mod community. Bethesda has already made money on the backs of mod makers.

A proper response to this is to give all the remaining money after Valve's cut to the mod maker as a thank you to the community.

But this doesn't even address the other problems that people have been pointing out.

[random28345]

> But Bethesda who developed the actual game that brought the modders and gave them a platform to derive their work on, not to mention creating the actual game and game engine and putting it in the hands of the actual customers; they should just get nothing out of this whole deal?

Mods represent value added to the game that wasn't provided by the original publisher. Each mod "fixes" a deficiency in the game, adds, changes, or removes something the original developer did not do from the baseline game. The changes add value to the publisher's bottom line by increasing the value of the game, thus stimulating additional sales.

Thus the idea that modders both increase demand for the game, increasing the publisher's sales, AND want the lion's share of the money paid for mods is repugnant.

[yebyen]

I don't see how the idea that Steam should get a share approaching 30% is any less repugnant than that. Visa gets less than 4%, and they are the ones that are really processing the charge. Valve eats that much, and whatever they get paid over that is simply for their role in facilitating the transaction

If any of these three parties declined to provide their own involvement, a sale does not happen. So all of them are reasonably entitled to a share. But not necessarily a whole third.

I agree that Half-Life developers should not be the ones getting the majority of the sticker price of CounterStrike, insofar as those people are disparate parties and the popularity of CounterStrike drives sales of HL and even surpasses Half-Life in popularity. But it is impossible to deny that CS does not have a game to sell at all without HL.

They did sell "CS-Only" discs without the ability to play Half-Life in single-player mode, didn't they? And, Valve still got a cut? (What's that? They never did? Hmm...)

Edit: There is obviously some risk for Valve, too. Maybe more than Visa in the long run, but I think they will pass on the risk to those who they pay, just like Visa. They do get to hold the money, and they can decide who gets paid.

[random28345]

> I don't see how the idea that Steam should get a share approaching 30% is any less repugnant than that.

If you don't understand they 30% is reasonable, then you haven't tried to sell a game in the last 5 years.

That 30% you're paying increases your sales by a factor of 50x, and game developers are quite happy to take 70% of a much larger pie.

[yebyen]

> to take 70%

We were talking about the mod sales. Nobody is taking 70%, unless you counted the original game sale as part of the pie. Maybe we should.

The split as I understood it to be defined was: Valve takes 30% (arguably OK, but I'd argue for less), Game dev gets 45% (passive income hacker, woo!) and the Mod dev gets 25%.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Mod devs to get 45% of the sales of their own mods, but Valve asked Bethesda to define the split. What self-respecting PIH is going to give themselves or their own company less than 50%, really, if they are unilaterally the one making the decision about who gets paid and how much?

You are also right about one more thing, I don't have the first idea about selling games. But I would argue it's more work to build EITHER or BOTH a game engine and a mod than it is to sell it. In other words, Bethesda's cut should not be less than Valve's, in my humble opinion, and those mods would NOT have been for sale (or for free) without Bethesda and their game engine.

(Or at least, we would have entirely some other developer and game to thank for their share in this controversy.)

[lsaferite]

Bethesda did get something. They got my purchase of the original game plus all of the DLCs. All at initial sale prices to boot.

Do they deserve more than that?

[yebyen]

I don't know about deserve, but if you want to talk about incentives for behavior, you really can't go wrong with something that provides both "increased sales volume and lifetime" and "an ongoing share of the grosses".

If you want game developers to promote a helpful environment for mod developers, grab some money and pay them something out of it. Definitely!

[mcphage]

> I personally found Bethesda getting any split quite distasteful. They produced the game and made their money on game sales.

They produced the game engine, and are letting people develop on it for free. And them getting a cut from people piggybacking on their work and making money from it was distasteful to you?

[JoeAltmaier]

'Piggyback' is a loaded word. Its something we all do when we use a compiler or desktop machine. Yet those folks don't stick their hands into our revenue stream.

[mcphage]

> Yet those folks don't stick their hands into our revenue stream.

Game engines do. And they used to tack on $100,000 up front, to boot.

[talmand]

Not all game engines, some are free to use.

[mcphage]

Some are, true. But the ones with lots of features, that everyone really wants to use—the ones that you can make games for multiple platforms, and that big development houses use—those... are not free.

[lsaferite]

LOL, exactly.

Hell, why don't musical instrument makers get a share of royalties for music made with their instruments?

[mcphage]

> Hell, why don't musical instrument makers get a share of royalties for music made with their instruments?

Hell, why don't game engine developers get a share of royalties for games made with their engines?

...oh, right, they do.

[paulmd]

Microsoft doesn't get a cut of Jetbrains' IDE "mod" revenue, though, despite the fact that Reshaper and similar products "piggyback" (what a loaded term) onto Visual Studio and other Microsoft products. Microsoft already got their cut up front.

Same thing for Bethesda - it's not their value-add and they don't have a moral right to take a cut. On the other hand Steam is providing a value-add here - a market and financial transaction services.

[lsaferite]

Yes.

I paid full price for the game and all of the DLC.

Part of the reason I did this was due to the ability of the game to be easily modded. I knew with modding the lifetime of the game was much greater.

Why should they get 40% of mod sales for doing nothing? They already got paid for making the game.

Now, if they are still providing good customer support with timely bug fixes around the mod system, then perhaps I can see a small portion going to them. Otherwise, why do you think they are entitled to a share of the mod revenue?

[mcphage]

> I paid full price for the game and all of the DLC.

> Part of the reason I did this was due to the ability of the game to be easily modded. I knew with modding the lifetime of the game was much greater.

So you paid full price for the game because you knew people would spend their time and effort making things for you for free... and now that there was an option for them to get paid for their work, you get pissy?

[lsaferite]

I knew the mod community around the game would provide value long past the original game.

Did I say I never donated to mod authors? Did you ask?

I'm not pissy, but it sounds like perhaps you are.

[mcphage]

> Did I say I never donated to mod authors? Did you ask?

What difference does it make? Even if you were a good citizen and donated, there aren't enough people donating for it to be a dependable income stream.

> it sounds like perhaps you are

133,000 people who claim to represent gamers signed a petition saying that modders should work for free, how dare they think they should get paid. I'm not a mod author. I'm not even a mod user. But I'm someone who believes in paying people who make the things I like, so that they can keep making more. This was an opportunity for a new marketplace, a new way for people to start making content for games—and for some, support themselves by making that content. An opportunity for anyone to use the IP of another company—which I don't think exists in any other industry. Can you imagine what it would take for Disney to allow anybody to legally make and sell their own Mickey Mouse cartoons? But no, it had to get shat on by entitled assholes who want people to make and make and make and give nothing back. You say it sounds like I'm pissy? Damn straight I'm pissy.

[XorNot]

The part where they also got to sell the game engine to customers, the developers, and then take a cut of the developers profits too?

You don't buy the mod, and get the game to run it. You have to buy the game, then buy the mod. If they want more money for the game, they can increase the price.

[mcphage]

> If they want more money for the game, they can increase the price.

That still doesn't get the mod developers any money.

[paulmd]

Also, I wasn't aware that Bethesda had released their game engine for free. Care to give a link as to where they've done so? As far as I'm aware you still need to pay for a copy of it.

[mcphage]

Their game isn't free; nor did I claim that it was. What is free, however, is they don't charge you any licensing fee to create a mod for it.

[draugadrotten]

> It's interesting to me that it was apparently better to give modders nothing than to give them 25%.

It's due to perceived "fairness"

This 75/25 split by Valve reminds me of the psychology experiment the Ultimatum Game: "'Inequity aversion' is so strong that people are willing to sacrifice personal gain in order to prevent another person from receiving an inequitably better outcome." https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/200911/...

[dragontamer]

Inequity Aversion only exists in America and other Westernized countries btw. We're WEIRD like that.

Different cultures respond differently to the Ultimatum Game. Be wary of those studies that only use "Anglo-Saxon American College Kids" as test subjects, which is a group of people that isn't even representative of America in general.

http://bigthink.com/praxis/are-americans-the-weirdest-people...

>>> The revelation that rural Peruvians handle the ultimatum game so differently from American respondents led Henrich on a MacArthur Foundation-funded research trip to more than a dozen more locales around the world, where he found wide variation in the average offers of player #1 and this curious result: “in some societies — ones where gift-giving is heavily used to curry favor or gain allegiance — the first player would often make overly generous offers in excess of 60 percent, and the second player would often reject them, behaviors almost never observed among Americans.”

[crdoconnor]

>Inequity Aversion only exists in America and other Westernized countries btw.

Monkeys do it:

http://www.livescience.com/2044-monkeys-fuss-inequality.html

[talmand]

That's not quite the same. That game involves two people trying to figure out who gets what from a pot of money they did nothing to deserve receiving. Mod makers did work that may deserve compensation. One example is a possible bonus for the people involved, the other is a possible shafting for the people involved.