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0 pointsyebyen10y ago0 comments

> I personally found Bethesda getting any split quite distasteful.

So, you agree that Valve should get some part of the sales, because they are the ones (Steam) actually taking the payment and assuming some of the upfront risks of processing payments (fraud) and, because of the network effect and the customers they bring (read ... marketing)

But Bethesda who developed the actual game that brought the modders and gave them a platform to derive their work on, not to mention creating the actual game and game engine and putting it in the hands of the actual customers; they should just get nothing out of this whole deal?

I agree that the whole thing is a big hairy mess, and as a developer and an underdog myself I agree that the split should be approximately reversed, but I'm not sure there's much else we agree on.

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Already__Taken10y ago

What about mods that the publisher can't do?

I played GRID a lot and found the "any car any track" mod which was awesome. Codemasters didn't do that for some reason. There are mods that add Ferraris, Codemaster aren't licensed to include those cars. They were even in the trailer for the game and got pulled.

There's mods to include stuff the publisher couldn't even care[1] to sort out. Why should they get any cut of money for that. Would they even be allowed to take a cut? I assume this kind of stuff sits in a grey zone at the moment.

I think this will always be a problem if you couple the distribution and the day-to-day service in the way steam does.

[1]:http://www.moddb.com/mods/8-ball-prestige-packs-dlc-pc

yebyenOP10y ago

If you think about it, those mods probably wouldn't be able to be sold either (forget anyone taking a cut)

Unless a deal could have been worked out with Ferrari. But good on you for asking something different!

Already__Taken10y ago

I agree maybe not the best example, but it illustrates about problems than can come up from combining services in the market. Hypothetically if steam was _just_ a package manager and the mods payed to for the convenience of users to install it. It shouldn't matter about the content.

Maybe a better example is Red Alert 2, I still occasionally LAN play that and there's a community patch to replace the IPX stack with TCP/IP so it can still work. as IPX is completely gone from windows 8+ I think.

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talmand10y ago

Well, if Bethesda gave the game away for free and wanted a source of revenue from mod makers, sure. But it's quite established that a strong mod community results in continuing sales for the game beyond a normal product lifespan. In some cases, the price of product remains higher than normal because of the strong sales due to the mod community. Bethesda has already made money on the backs of mod makers.

A proper response to this is to give all the remaining money after Valve's cut to the mod maker as a thank you to the community.

But this doesn't even address the other problems that people have been pointing out.

random2834510y ago

> But Bethesda who developed the actual game that brought the modders and gave them a platform to derive their work on, not to mention creating the actual game and game engine and putting it in the hands of the actual customers; they should just get nothing out of this whole deal?

Mods represent value added to the game that wasn't provided by the original publisher. Each mod "fixes" a deficiency in the game, adds, changes, or removes something the original developer did not do from the baseline game. The changes add value to the publisher's bottom line by increasing the value of the game, thus stimulating additional sales.

Thus the idea that modders both increase demand for the game, increasing the publisher's sales, AND want the lion's share of the money paid for mods is repugnant.

yebyenOP10y ago

I don't see how the idea that Steam should get a share approaching 30% is any less repugnant than that. Visa gets less than 4%, and they are the ones that are really processing the charge. Valve eats that much, and whatever they get paid over that is simply for their role in facilitating the transaction

If any of these three parties declined to provide their own involvement, a sale does not happen. So all of them are reasonably entitled to a share. But not necessarily a whole third.

I agree that Half-Life developers should not be the ones getting the majority of the sticker price of CounterStrike, insofar as those people are disparate parties and the popularity of CounterStrike drives sales of HL and even surpasses Half-Life in popularity. But it is impossible to deny that CS does not have a game to sell at all without HL.

They did sell "CS-Only" discs without the ability to play Half-Life in single-player mode, didn't they? And, Valve still got a cut? (What's that? They never did? Hmm...)

Edit: There is obviously some risk for Valve, too. Maybe more than Visa in the long run, but I think they will pass on the risk to those who they pay, just like Visa. They do get to hold the money, and they can decide who gets paid.

random2834510y ago

> I don't see how the idea that Steam should get a share approaching 30% is any less repugnant than that.

If you don't understand they 30% is reasonable, then you haven't tried to sell a game in the last 5 years.

That 30% you're paying increases your sales by a factor of 50x, and game developers are quite happy to take 70% of a much larger pie.

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lsaferite10y ago

Bethesda did get something. They got my purchase of the original game plus all of the DLCs. All at initial sale prices to boot.

Do they deserve more than that?

yebyenOP10y ago

I don't know about deserve, but if you want to talk about incentives for behavior, you really can't go wrong with something that provides both "increased sales volume and lifetime" and "an ongoing share of the grosses".

If you want game developers to promote a helpful environment for mod developers, grab some money and pay them something out of it. Definitely!

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Already__Taken10y ago

What about mods that the publisher can't do?

I think this will always be a problem if you couple the distribution and the day-to-day service in the way steam does.

[1]:http://www.moddb.com/mods/8-ball-prestige-packs-dlc-pc

yebyenOP10y ago

If you think about it, those mods probably wouldn't be able to be sold either (forget anyone taking a cut)

Unless a deal could have been worked out with Ferrari. But good on you for asking something different!

Already__Taken10y ago

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talmand10y ago

A proper response to this is to give all the remaining money after Valve's cut to the mod maker as a thank you to the community.

But this doesn't even address the other problems that people have been pointing out.

random2834510y ago

Thus the idea that modders both increase demand for the game, increasing the publisher's sales, AND want the lion's share of the money paid for mods is repugnant.

yebyenOP10y ago

If any of these three parties declined to provide their own involvement, a sale does not happen. So all of them are reasonably entitled to a share. But not necessarily a whole third.

They did sell "CS-Only" discs without the ability to play Half-Life in single-player mode, didn't they? And, Valve still got a cut? (What's that? They never did? Hmm...)

random2834510y ago

> I don't see how the idea that Steam should get a share approaching 30% is any less repugnant than that.

If you don't understand they 30% is reasonable, then you haven't tried to sell a game in the last 5 years.

That 30% you're paying increases your sales by a factor of 50x, and game developers are quite happy to take 70% of a much larger pie.

1 more reply

lsaferite10y ago

Bethesda did get something. They got my purchase of the original game plus all of the DLCs. All at initial sale prices to boot.

Do they deserve more than that?

yebyenOP10y ago

If you want game developers to promote a helpful environment for mod developers, grab some money and pay them something out of it. Definitely!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse