Skyrim: The biggest problem with paid mods

[Rhekimos]

For a TL;DR go straight to the second post.



If you have installed one of certain 17 mods previously, you might have noticed that your game will no longer launch. Steam will not let you play Skyrim until you either uninstall these mods or purchase them, even if you had them installed way before this paid mod business.

This means that Valve is effectively holding your save games hostage until you pay up. If you are a frequent modder, you are very familiar with the kind of damage suddenly uninstalled mods can cause to your saves. Even those mods that provide uninstall procedures require you to do it before removing the mod from Skyrim.
I have enough faith in Valve and Gaben to think that they would not intentionally bank on this kind of thing, but it bears keeping in mind that Valve gets 75 per cent from each mod purchase.
This in turn means that Valve has an absolutely massive incentive to push this to more and more mods.

You might be thinking something like "so what? 75% out of 2 bucks/euros isn't that much, don't they deserve a cut?"
They probably do, but not 75%. Not when they didn't do any of the work in making the mod, or making the host game. And it's not looking like it'll be just 2 bucks, but who knows how much for the entirety of your current mod collection? Read on.

Let's say you were a great guy and yesterday bought these mods that you already had, and in so doing supported their good work (with 25% of the amount going towards the actual work).
Today, you go to Steam and click to continue on your epic journey across the lands of the Nords, killing Giants and Dragons as you go. But as you attempt to go there, Steam again announces that more money is required to access this save game.
Another mod that you had installed previously has joined the paid mods program. What a joyous day.

But is paying for a couple of more mods that bad? The real kicker about this is that Valve might do this again and again for every single mod that your save relies upon. Or that you might install in the future.
The size of the of shadow that this casts over all of the current Workshop mods is hard to overstate. Do you dare to install this cool mod that just arrived for free on the Workshop? At any time it and Valve might lock you out of your saved data if you do.

This is the same business model as cryptolocker viruses use.

If you decide that this is unacceptable, and very unfortunately so far Valve has chosen not to rescind this policy, but instead have chosen to censor the negative feedback they have received about it, you should make the jump to outside of the Workshop mods.
For your convenience, here's a couple mod managers that are free now and are in no apparent danger of ever demanding more and more money from you. Nexus has made a public statement that they have no plans to go into paid modding, despite having received many offers.

Mod Organizer
Nexus Mod Manager


As a bonus, here's a couple of Youtube videos about this if you are not familiar with the whole ordeal yet, or would like another perspective about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt2wSvb6rhw by Gopher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k by Totalbiscuit

[Rhekimos]

TL;DR Valve is effectively holding all of your current Skyrim saves and any future saves hostage in this paid mod business. Whether they realize yet it or not.
The only way around having your saves held hostage like this is to either uninstall all Workshop mods and only play native Skyrim or go with an external mod manager.

For your convenience, here's a couple mod managers that are free now and are in no apparent danger of ever demanding more and more money from you. Nexus has made a public statement that they have no plans to go into paid modding, despite having received many offers.

Mod Organizer
Nexus Mod Manager

[Algarn]

Greedy Gaben.

But seriously, people make mods because they want to do it, not for money. If they want money, then they make a donation button or something, they don't ask for an external mega game distributor to sell their mod with 75% of the benefits eaten by Valve & others. Disgusting world we are living in.

Of course, it had to be the mods I'm using,  fuck you Gabe.

[Kafein]

Seriously though, who the fuck used Steam Workshop for Skyrim?

[Daunt_Flockula]

There was a big resistance against Steam's monopolization of digital game sales during its initial years. I think Steam are itching to bring back that resistance.

[Leshma]

Seriously though, who the fuck used Steam Workshop for Skyrim?

Many mods are already taken down from other sources, because their authors don't want to give them out for free anymore.

[Algarn]

Basically, Skyrim is way too plain without mods. For example, to have the Wet & Cold + Realistic Needs, it'll cost you almost 10 euros. THIS is bullshit. Either you want something more complete as a game, and you have to burn your credit card, or you have to pay for an empty game, mechanics wise.

Almost all the current games got DLCs with more or less important content in it, the worst example ever being PAYDAY 2, where you have to pay 20€ for the game, but something around 100€ to get the whole content. Plus some games have a P2Play system, some got a P2Play and a P2W system at the same time, and so on. This is downright disgusting to see that.

[Rhekimos]

Seriously though, who the fuck used Steam Workshop for Skyrim?

I agree with you there.

Seeing that there's this competition with a better and cheaper (free!) product, do you think they might only let Steam Workshop be used for mods in the next Elder Scroll's game?
Or other future games?

[Kafein]

the worst example ever being PAYDAY 2, where you have to pay 20€ for the game, but something around 100€ to get the whole content.

Don't be silly now, would you really include dozens of cosmetic packs as "the whole content". The ability to buy exactly what you want is bad for people who can't control themselves, plain and simple. You don't go in libraries asking to buy entire shelfs.

Seeing that there's this competition with a better and cheaper (free!) product, do you think they might only let Steam Workshop be used for mods in the next Elder Scroll's game?
Or other future games?

Well if they do that, consumers are going to make mincemeat out of them. The Workshop really is an absolutely abysmal mod manager, it lacks almost all the necessary functionalities of a good one.

Many mods are already taken down from other sources, because their authors don't want to give them out for free anymore.

Until I see them, "many mods" will be relatively vague. There's also probably a lot of modders that will completely disallow their content to be used in paid-for mods (what I was referring to as the GPL vs BSD thing) like what already happened with the fishing mod. This is the biggest problem we're talking about in my opinion: the destruction of a nice and helpful modding community.

[Leshma]

consumers are going to make mincemeat out of them

Nope. As I already said in one thread, consumers are sheep. There is small part of consumer group that actually use their brain. Things our ancestors fought for we are taking for granted and allowing vile forces to take that from us. Idiocracy is not just a funny movie, it becomes our reality.

[the real god emperor]

Pirated the shit out of Skyrim, have all DLCs, the important mods , all patches. Didn't pay a single coin , now I am not dealing with purchased mod shit.

[Algarn]

Don't be silly now, would you really include dozens of cosmetic packs as "the whole content". The ability to buy exactly what you want is bad for people who can't control themselves, plain and simple. You don't go in libraries asking to buy entire shelfs.

I'm talking of all the maps and weapon packs. There are only two DLCs that add characters. There are 20 fucking DLCs, each at 5€, remove the three ones (characters included) that don't change the gameplay, you still come near to 100€ to play the whole game. Hell, MGs and Sniper rifles must be bought, and half of the assault rifles + SMGs must be bought too. This is stealing money.

[Kan_Tervel]

[Swaggart]

Or...

You don't pay and stop playing Skyrim? That's always a choice.

[Leshma]

I played Skyrim for like 50 hours without mods, haven't touched it since then (numerous times I've said what I think of Bethesda putting fresh skin on 20 year old game). This isn't about Skyrim, it is about future of PC gaming.