neronix17

That's a pretty bad petition, 500 people would be nowhere near enough for Valve/Bethesda to change their minds, it'd have to be +90% of the fanbase signing it and that's never going to happen. Fact is they expected a backlash about it, they've been quoted saying that in emails between them and various modders that were contacted. No matter how well they did it there was going to be a backlash from those who oppose even the thought of it.

Really there should be no fear of this since you can submit a DMCA claim against mods that have been stolen, afaik any money they could have claimed is refunded to users and the mod is removed, admittedly this requires you policing the paid mods too but people are typically quick to call out mod theft as soon as it's noticed.

It's confirmed that Bethesda get the majority share (see the devs of starbound on twitter), authors get 25% so I'd assume something like Valve 25-30% and Bethesda 45-50% knowing that, and Bethesda have control over the share with the authors from their cut. I'm not looking for stable or reliable income, I'm looking to make enough to add to what little I have to live, even if it takes a month or two to build up enough to dispense to my account it'd be an improvement over starving for a couple of days occasionally. Currently my plans have evolved to be releasing the mod paid for 30 days with full notification that it will also be available for free after that period, which it seems many people are agreeing is a good way to go about it, with updates coming out on the paid version a week or two earlier than free to keep the incentive, critical bug fixes would be released on both versions asap of course. I agree that the % is horrible but seriously give me a better option, there isn't one, donations a aren't a viable option, I've had 30k downloads over my mods with 1k endorsements and not a single donation. So at the moment I'm STILL better off with the pathetic 25% cut.

All my previous mods on Skyrim Nexus will be completely free, as will a couple of my upcoming mods, mainly because I don't think it's right to charge for something that was free already as people may rely on it for their current saves and should continue to have the same access as before, and also because most of them are not of a quality I would even consider charging for. Ideally I'd have Steam as a quick and easy way for people to pay me what they think my mod is worth while having it available for free via other sites with a donate button if they want to give me 100% of the money. In an ideal world I'd also have someone willing to hire me and I'd be able to afford to feed myself. Modding for me started as a hobby when I was 13, back then I didn't have to worry about money so it never bothered me, it never affected how much effort I'd put into a mod, school affected time of course. Now I'm out of Uni, in a over saturated job market that has employers barely looking at me, I'm having to sell my belongings to get enough to eat and pay rent/bills, this option to charge for mods is something that could help me, even if it's a tiny amount of money it's still something that could help me live. I'd be more than happy to rely on donations if anyone did donate but a lot of people think that should purely feed back through to the mod itself (which to be fair, me continuing to live instead of starving is going to allow the mod to continue), but I've never seen a donation, I've rarely seen a thanks for mods I've made previously. I'll continue to release smaller mods for free and any that are of an IP that I do not own of course (wouldn't charge for that even if I had permission), but I have a couple larger mods in mind that I'll be charging for, and I'm considering what I could do to have a free version available but still give people incentive to buy the paid version while also being fair in the process. And I have a few ideas for that. Whatever you think on the matter, there are plus sides to this, as much as there are bad. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing for the modding community in general, but it's that strong at this point all it will do is make a new section of mods that people who oppose the system will ignore whenever looking for new mods, maybe a little modding piracy for those who don't care about pirating things and for those who pirated Skyrim anyway nothing really changes.

Seeing the overall opinion on Steam Workshop paid mods, I doubt this is going to be a popular choice but here goes: This mod will be on there. Under the 'Pay what you want' section, with a minimum of £1/$1.51. That is because I spent the last two days without food, nobody will hire me and it's a possible method for me to obtain a little extra to keep myself alive. To make it still available for free for those who want it free because they believe they are entitled to that in the 'spirit of modding', it will also be on Skyrim Nexus, with a big old donate button for those who want to give me 100% of their payment too. There will be no other mods, no modder resources or anything like that in the paid or free versions, instead I'm making anything I need myself, I'm a modeller so perfectly capable of that and prefer to do so than use other people's work even if it was only available for free. I'd like to be able to survive on donations alone but I know from previous experience that is not viable unless tens of thousands of people are interested. I've had a donation button on my older mods since I started modding Skyrim and not one has received a donation. Thanks to Skyrim Nexus policy I can't even give the tiniest incentive to thank people who are willing to donate. The one thing I can, and am seriously considering doing because I've got little choice is to delay the release to the Nexus, and only have it on Steam for a while. The things I'm planning to do different in the mod now is that I plan to add a bunch of custom models that I wasn't going to do before, and raise my standards for the quality of the mod as a whole, not to mention spending more time actually working on it. Despite sounding definitive in how I want to release this, those plans may change. If you have an opinion on the matter, good for you, if you want to post it in a reasonable, friendly and constructive manner, please do, I'm open to suggestions on how to better go about making it available for free alongside paid. Sorry to take the topic slightly away from the mod itself and into this new paid territory but I thought I'd show my stance on the matter since so many others are being so vocal about it.