Yeah, for some years that will hold true. But eventually most good modders will be lured by the prospect of making money for their work. Maybe I'm wrong and being a pessimist, but I doubt it. Eventually no one will do for free what others are getting paid for, as it is with every other market in the world.

 

Erhm, a lot of people do things for free that others get paid for. It's called charity, being a volunteer, being an amateur(like football) etc. In fact, people constantly do stuff for free that others get paid for and not just because they are worse at it.

 

To some extent, yes, but there's usually a massive gap in quality between the volunteer/amateur and the professional. The same thing will probably happen here. The disparity between free mods and paid mods will increase, with the free ones tending to be of poor quality, and the paid ones becoming ever better.

 

Well I'm just hoping the nexus won't start this

 

There's apparently something about the Nexus getting a cut of the money somewhere along the line. I don't know much about it, but at this point I don't think it's unreasonable to assume it's shady until proven otherwise.

Everything about this industry is a fucking joke at this point.

 

I use a pretty large number of mods, and if I were to tally them all up and apply the lowest possible prices for them, I'd be looking at a price tag of well over $500. And that's assuming all those mods charge the lowest possible price. For the larger ones, like gameplay overhauls and quest mods, the prices would likely go up significantly. So realistically, for my current mod load order, the price could be higher than $1000. If something like that happens, I think it's safe to say the 'life expectancy' of future Bethesda titles will drastically decrease in comparison to Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind. The thing that keeps people coming back to them years after their release is the huge number of mods available for them.

 

Here's a petition to stop it, for all the good it'll do. Personally, I'm not going to be buying anything off of steam unless this gets dropped.

 

Gaben is now doing an AMA about the whole shebang.

 

Yikes. Cant see how this was possibly thought to be a good move.

I can see a point behind a monetized aspect of Steam Workshop, at the level of total conversions or complete new modules (would have salivated for something like this for NWN2), but the vast bulk of mods are nothing of the kind. Most mods are highly derivative of one another. Or collaborative may be the right word, since this was done for free.

This will kill the modding scene.

 

The petition declared victory, saying that Valve and Bethesda rolled back the paywall. Gary's mod then came out in support of paid mods, apparently, though I have no idea how that would work.

 

In theory, I like the idea of modders being paid for their work. Some mods are entire overhauls almost a new game unto itself. A hobby done out of passion should not preclude being able to be paid for it.

But the execution just left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Suddenly putting a mandatory price tag on a previously free commodity is going to rile up everyone.

Combine this with the fact that Valve is not exactly the most... responsive of companies in terms of customer service and you had a recipe for a disaster.

Hell, all you really had to do was look at the Banished workshop for a glimpse at what could have been.

People stealing other people's mods, putting it up as theirs or putting up multiple copies of the mod flooding the workshop. Now imagine that with a bunch of price tags. Oh wait you dont because the Skyrim Workshop had price tags. How about that.

I would say I'm surprised at how this got implemented and executed but I would be lieing.

Knowing how Vavle's command structure is like, it really feels like it was some guy going "Hey. You know what would be cool? If we monetize mods we can make even more money! And publishers would be on board because they would be making more money too!"

And no one really took the time to figure out the implications of such a venture.


Speaking of mods, The Total War Attila assembly kit was released a day ago.

I have no idea what I'm doing describes it perfectly. There's like 0 documentation. I have no idea what exporting does? Where does it go? Why does it fail to export? What do you mean its an invalid format? I didnt even touch its format. Why would it let me export if its not valid. This is retarded. All I want to do is port some Heavy infantry over to an infantry weak faction IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR!?

 

I can get behind that sentiment. If modders could actually do their magic for a living, it would improve their quality hugely.

Maybe a Twitter-esque mark of approval that modders have to earn/ pay for could work.

 

So apparently valve has given devs the authority to ban people from their games. I'd be alright with it if this was just a way to deal with online shit, but people have already been banned from single player games due to forum issues.

 

Wait, what?

 

Wow, remember that one guy that got banned from DA2 until they backpedaled and claimed it was just a mistake?

That's right, no even EA had the balls to shit on their customers that hard.

Ah, nostalgia. (nsfwish)

 

Anyone else see the Disney Infinity 3.0 stuff? Lots of (mostly, I think Age of Ultron toys too) Star Wars stuff.

Game Informer is covering it, gameplay looks kind of awesome too!.

I've heard you'll be able to play through the entire saga (including clone wars, which is included in the starter pack) in condensed form with a TFA set coming out later.

They've finally got me with this toys to game shit. At least the Disney toys look properly fucking awesome, unlike Nintendo's 'link standing on a urine tower' Amiibos...lol

Edit: I should probably add Asohka holding her lightsabers in reverse grip is what sold me, lol. This is the closest I'll get to a Force Unleashed 2 sequel.

 

So this is vaguely interesting, if you care at all about the MGS franchise or the stuff going on with Kojima. Normally I'd just call it speculation and bullshit, but Konami apparently shut the video down only for youtube to bring it back up.

Here is his source.

 

XCOM 2 Reveal Trailer

 

What, if anything, would you want changed in the sequel?

I played, enjoyed and beat the first, but I'm not sure what I'd want different other than 'more' (missions/ base building/ Units/ enemies).

I think having arcadey, dog fighting sections instead of the simple minigame thing in the first one could be pretty cool too, but I figure strategy pursuits and diehard xcom fans wouldn't like that.

Some story might be nice too. Would make losing soldiers even more stressful.