[Vaskivo]

I gathered my thoughts in a comment on the Bethesda blog post:

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyr...

TL,DR: Bethesda doesn't deserve the 45% of the sale, specially when they are charging 60$ for the game. IMO, they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing (and were already paid for the game/tools). And mods had value to the game, and increase it's lifetime.

Two problems with paid mods:

1 - most modders are heavy modders (about a hundred mods at a time). Knowing that, I can see some players realizing they will spend more than 100$ in a game.

2 - This can becomes Bethesda's business model. It can lead to a Elder Scrolls 6 with lackluster content, waiting to be filled with (paid) mods.

I don't have a problem with paid mods. I just think Bethesda is getting greedy. Does adobe get a cut from Photoshop plugin sales? Does Unity get a cut from Unity developed games?

How to implement paid mods:

- Help modders choose a copyright license

- Help track/prevent copyright infrigement. Many mods use other mods or are "mod compilations". And track unauthorized mod uploads to the market.

[vacri]

they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing

Not true at all. They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding. They should get some percentage, like a royalty, but taking twice as much as the people who write the mods is patently ridiculous.

[smackfu]

>They created an attractive gaming environment and a mechanism for modding

Isn't that what paying the $60 for the game pays for?

[Lancey]

The $60 pays for the game, but to develop a mod for it, you're using tools they've made for the game. They didn't have to provide those tools, they're an additional service that Bethesda offers. Bethesda also added workshop support in the first place. 45% is outrageous, but a 10% cut would be acceptable and help fund the development of better tools and improvements to the mod community.

[lsaferite]

Agreed.

The fact that it can be so heavily modded is what drives continued sales long after the initial release.

[vacri]

And the modders are building on the incredibly successful IP of Bethesda, riding on their coattails. Why shouldn't Bethesda get something like a royalty? It happens in pretty much any other kind of IP - music, books, movie merchandise and so forth.

If you're selling something that's largely due to the popularity of the source material, why is the idea of a royalty problematic?

[sliverstorm]

$60 gets the user the game.

Maybe it's appropriate to liken the royalty to Bethesda, to the per-sale royalty agreements that gaming engines have struck with some developers? Skyrim-as-development-platform is not entirely unlike Unreal-as-development-engine.

[JoeAltmaier]

Its arguable they should charge a fixed rate for facilitating the creation of the mod. Not a percentage of all downloads. I know, its common for content delivery platforms to charge a percentage, but its far from logical. Its just traditional. In the sense of 'what the market will bear'.

[Nemcue]

> Does Unity get a cut from Unity developed games?

That is not unheard of. Afaik the free version of the Unreal engine has a royalty system. It's kind of the same thing with the Source 2 engine, except instead of paying royalty you promise to only publish on Steam.

[darkmighty]

> you pay Epic 5% of gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product per calendar quarter

That's 1/15 of the revenue share that would be in place at the Workshop.

[mcphage]

> IMO, they deserve 0%, for they have created nothing (and were already paid for the game/tools).

Except, for, you know. Skyrim. A game engine and toolset attractive enough that people want to build in it so badly, they're willing to do it even though there wasn't a way for them to get paid for their efforts. Maybe you've got higher standards, but that's more than I get when I pay $60 for most games. Of course, I only paid $7.50 for it, but.