PC Bethesda Studio decides to take Paid mods off from steam workshop

[Wassim]

Posted this a few days ago;

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And you might of seen all the ruckus on the internet lately regarding the matter, Gabe even did a Q&A on it 2 days ago on Reddit ill provide link below

I realized that the modders only got a 25% cut of the sales and thought what the fuck and my mind got totally reverted

However less then a week after release Bethesda decided to take it off and commented

After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop. Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want. Your support means everything to us, and we hear you.

This is what it looked like in case you missed it.

Spoiler

Regarding revenue, they explained why the cut was so small

Many have questioned the split of the revenue, and we agree this is where it gets debatable. We’re not suggesting it’s perfect, but we can tell you how it was arrived at. First Valve gets 30%. This is standard across all digital distributions services and we think Valve deserves this. No debate for us there.
The remaining is split 25% to the modder and 45% to us. We ultimately decide this percentage, not Valve.

Basically there reason was that original content creators would get less in long time periods

Is this the right split? There are valid arguments for it being more, less, or the same. It is the current industry standard, having been successful in both paid and free games. After much consultation and research with Valve, we decided it’s the best place to start.

This is not some money grabbing scheme by us. Even this weekend, when Skyrim was free for all, mod sales represented less than 1% of our Steam revenue.
The percentage conversation is about assigning value in a business relationship. How do we value an open IP license? The active player base and built in audience? The extra years making the game open and developing tools? The original game that gets modded? Even now, at 25% and early sales data, we’re looking at some modders making more money than the studio members whose content is being edited.

We also look outside at how open IP licenses work, with things like Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, where you can publish fan fiction and get about 15-25%, but that’s only an IP license, no content or tools.

The 25% cut has been operating on Steam successfully for years, and it’s currently our best data point. More games are coming to Paid Mods on Steam soon, and many will be at 25%, and many won’t. We’ll figure out over time what feels right for us and our community. If it needs to change, we’ll change it.

Links

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  ~ Gabe Newell Q&A on reddit mentioned above
  
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  ~ Bethesda Blog commending on the matter
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  ~ Steam's announcement on it.

 

[Benden]

Hm, this is good news. I'm glad that they're listening to their audience instead of sticking to what they want (ahem, EA.). However, I do think they'll come up with some other way to pull this off. I read somewhere about a pay what you want feature which would allow you to still show support if you wanted to yet allow you to obtain the mod for free. I assume the cuts would be the same if they did this as it still is a sale, and if so, mod creators would still get little money.

 

[Wassim]

Hm, this is good news. I'm glad that they're listening to their audience instead of sticking to what they want (ahem, EA.). However, I do think they'll come up with some other way to pull this off. I read somewhere about a pay what you want feature which would allow you to still show support if you wanted to yet allow you to obtain the mod for free. I assume the cuts would be the same if they did this as it still is a sale, and if so, mod creators would still get little money.

Yeah it was already implemented from what I seen before they took it off and that's actually a good thing if they don't take 75% of the revenue's made to be honest.

 

[ByCreator]

The decision has crippled there own economy, and for some people it is a loss of job, complete morons bethesda are for doing this.

 

[Benden]

The decision has crippled there own economy, and for some people it is a loss of job, complete morons bethesda are for doing this.

No it hasn't. They had it up for a week so profit based nothing has changed. Also, no jobs were cut from the company and nobody was full time making mods to sell for games because it was only on skyrim for about a week. Your reply is crock