I've said it earlier in the thread, and Tyon summarised it well : "one word, donation".
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Just think of the good publicity! After what's happened, all the gaming press will be reporting on mods' affairs. If you make a good move now, *everyone* who felt burned by what Valve and Bethesda did will see you as heroes. You could even take a small cut(say 10%) and get away with it.
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It's already available, it is apparently up to the modder to set the minimum and the maximum. Unless they meant some change to this?
Let it be 20-25% and let PDX help the popular modders by giving them beta acces to patches and DLC in order to ease the mod-patching proces. Let them be able to update their mod so it´s ready only a few days later than the patch. Perhaps have PDX employee who rates the mods for the newcomers to see what is the best.
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I am a fan of Tesla, but I don't want to end up crazy & broke in the end so I will go someway down the Edison road and try to get paid for my work. I would love a job making content for HoI games! I don't want to move to Sweden and is it the only legitimate in your eyes way to make money is to work directly for Paradox? Could I not try to be independent developer of content?
Do I think all mods should or will be paid, no. Some, yes.
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A perfect workshop solution methinks would be getting the mods for free, but with a good ol' donation button next to ''subscribe''. That, or just like the already existing ''Pay what you want'', except it supports a free option. This way the mod would stay free, but modders would still get money for quality work.
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AFAIK the pay what you want thing already does support a free option, the modders just chose not to use it. I could be wrong though.
Yes, needing to buy the game to use a mod for it hardly seems to qualify as a "paywall" for the mod.
Not to mention that mods are usually downloaded from third-party sites, not the forum. The links may be on the forum but you can probably find them without that. This may change in the future since it seems they're looking at increasing the limits so large mods can be hosted directly on the forum. However since all their new games are also Steam-only, many mods are also available through the Workshop which again means no forum access is required.
Valve aren't stiffing modders. Valve take the same 30% cut as with everything else sold on the platform. After that the remaining split is set by the game developer. So in this case Bethseda have decided that they deserve 45% of the mod sale-price and the person (or people) who create the mod get the remaining 25%. If another developer (e.g. Paradox) were to join the scheme they could set a completely different revenue sharing formula.
What if Valve's new system allowed the game developer (i.e. Paradox) to configure their Steam Workshops to require paid mods be priced at "pay what you want" (with no minimum price). Would that be a viable way to support modders/allow donations?
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assuming a situation where donations exist with paradox taking a cut a good -almost compulsory route- idea would be to use the money gained from that cut to further improve modding capabilities for the games and/or provide specialist assistance to modders. Afaik, things that Paradoxians already provide but often outside the project itself (i.e. on own initiative and time). There Always things modders could use to improve their work after all.
Maybe have the community vote on requested modding features (of both small and large variants) per trimester or semester. Have Paradoxians evaluate the list, put a monetary value on the retained items and put the list up in the form of stretch goals. Then let the donating begin! After x period the tally is made and the achieved goals could be produced. Resulting in more mods with more bells and whistles
I would object the game company (Paradox) or Steam getting money from donations (other than minimum fees for handling the money).
I am far from sure what Paradox will decide to do, but I think it would be a big mistake to say 'Never' when it comes to paid mods. Things will change in time. If they decide that Paid Mods is not for them they should qualify it 'at this time & for the foreseeable future'. This way people will understand the policy and it may change if conditions change. People would be much more upset if they say 'Never' and it changes, than if they say currently as things will change.
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The simple answer is: elevate the best and biggest mods and from Paradox give them permission to monetize.
Paradox has earlier hired successful modders to make new games entirely, and this has not always been a success. However with official support to a mod you can create a half-way solution that might just work.
From a quality standpoint the problem with the Skyrim monetization debacle is that anyone can demand money for anything. In the above model, the developer chooses what mods to monetize based on their quality, size and dedication of its team.
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Best yes, but I would argue against them necessarily being the biggest. The type of mod I'm usually interested in are small mods that add flavor events and the like (which should of course be proportionally cheaper).
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I would also have some board or other player evaluation as part of it.
That sounds like an awful idea and the one that would create the most outrage, as what was previously people's favourite mod, that they probably wouldn't play the game without, suddenly became something they had to pay for. I can imagine many of the most dedicated players who, for example, wouldn't play EU4 if not for mods like M&T or Lux Invicta, would then decide to leave for good.
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Of course.
But point is that Paradox chooses what mods to promote.
Well, if you ask me any kind of monetization of mods is awful one way or the other
I refer again to what Paradox used to do, and probably might still do, that is hire skilled modders to create entirely new games. Both AoD and DH were developed by HoI2 modders. Both fine tales, but then we have EvW which didn't like up to the publisher's expectations and was scrapped. Given that Paradox already supports modders in its patching, they might take the middle road of letting good modders monetize their mods without having them develop an entirely new game which is a big risk for the producer. Middle ground, always consider the middle ground.
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The old versions could remain being free, and only future ones be monetized.
Quality, and big enough. I have made both big & small mods and I don't think the small mods are worth selling (I do think they are good).
I personally would keep my free mods free and build new mods that would be for sale. I don't like the idea of making a free mod a paid mod, unless there are major changes.