Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Monetization of mods and new games

Just to confirm, irrespective of whether modding becomes more monetised or not, I plan to always position the Nexus as a completely free modding resource, free of monetisation. Modding, for me, is a hobby, not a career. While careers can spring from modding (by being hired by a game developer), money should not be the main motivation for it.

I look at the subject the same way I'd look at football. All professional footballers start playing football as a hobby. They don't get paid for it. If they're good enough they're scouted by the football clubs at which point football becomes a career, not a hobby. Feel free to poke holes at my analogy

If modders make content that is 100% their own they should be allowed to put a OPTIONAL donate button in the mod topic, but nothing more (when it's a modding group this becomes a huge issue by the way..). No license nonsense, no passwords, no other nonsense.

And if this game really spawned a huge campaign then maybe Larian should sell it as community expansion alá NWN campaigns. But only when everyone who worked on it gets fair share. Too often have I seen modders use stuff from others (artists) and then reap in all the donations.

In the end, modding can work if the donations are spread to everyone fairly, but the problem with these donations is the one who owns that paypal account is the one who gets the money. And that is NEVER fair when the mod project includes more than 1 person...

so anyway ;P

Btw: Modders, please never even consider making your mod steam workshop exclusive, upload to nexus at the very least please. Otherwise you are pretty much guaranteed that someone will rehost it without your permission. Steam workshop is horrible for various reasons... anyone modding Skyrim who has more than 20 mods (bashed etc.) knows what I mean.

if a mod is not really good/needed etc. few will be willing to pay for it. the only mod i can think of i would really pay for is baldurs gate reloaded. i did on the other hand donate for various mods not as complex b/c i wanted to support the modders for their work/effort.
being obliged to pay and being asked to donate are two very different animals.

The implications that come monetizing mods are many, and may even have unexpected consequences. I will try to analyse the problem from the perspective of Larian, the modder and the player

Let's assume that mods are monetized:


Larian built the engine and built the editor. If mods are monetized, maybe they want some of that money. They deserve it and it's fair.

If Larian wants some of the money (I'll explore later how Larian could do it), they automatically are bound to the editor. This way they are selling the editor/license to the editor. So they have to give support to the editor and the engine. This will add a new "business" side (building game-making tools) that they may not want.

If they don't want any money, they are not (morally) obliged to support the editor. But as there are other people making money from it, I can see lots of modders spamming them with "Fix bug XYZ" and a lot of griefing.


How can Larian make money with the editor.

Some user suggested something like what Wizards of the Coast did with D&D 3.5, the OGL. This basically says "You can sell products based on our game as long as you don't use our fluff, certain names and our artwork, and we ask no money in return". This was, from a business perspective, a very bad idea. I could grab the books, reskin everything and just sell it as my product. This also allowed WotC's biggest competitor to rise: Paizo with Pathfinder, that uses the rules that WotC created.
Like WotC, Larian could allow the use of the editor for free but forbid the use of their assets for commercial mods. This could lead to a competitor, like in Wotc's story. This would also make modding much harder. If I want to sell a mod I would have to make *everything* in it from scratch. (one of the good things of modding game is that we already have an engine *and* assets, scripts, sounds, etc.)

They could also ask for a percentage of the sales, but that would be tricky. How would they monitorize that? One way is to add a unified distribution method, maybe a Divinity workshop/nexus. Either Larian would do it - more work for Larian - or a new entity would make it - more entities in the pipeline, profiting from it and revenue getting diluted.

Or they could sell the editor but give a less-featured version for free. People who just want to have fun would be angry to be using a gimped editor.


How would this affect modders.

To start, some modders could be earning some money for their efforts. That's not bad.

But It would make modders much more secretive about what they are building and how. They whole community would, in my opinion, be much smaller and less thriving.

There is also the problem of stealing content. When there is money involved, things get serious fast and furiously. So the modders would ask for a way to protect their work, like packaging it with passwords or drm. More work for Larian, as they would have to implement that feature.

The protected mods would also prevent new modders to come to the community, as they cannot look at existing mods to learn the ropes.


What about the players?

It will all hinge in how the players value the mods and Divinity itself. If the player has bought Divinity and has finished it / is bored with it / wants to spice things up, mods give the opportunity to lengthen the game's lifetime. But if the mods cost money many would just drop the game, even if it would only cost 1€ for a sheep companion. And if he wants lots of mods (undead companion + alien planet map + light/dark spells + giant robots, for example) that would require big money.

There would also be a much smaller amount of mods (for the reasons outlined in the previous section) so it would be harder to make "your custom divinity game".

And finally, there are some players that come to the game because of mods or a specific mod. In the second case, they would have not only have to buy Divinity but the mod as well. That would turn off some people.


In my opinion, mods should *NOT* be commercialized/monetized.

It allows Larian to focus on doing what they want (make games, I hope).
It allows the community to grow as community, not some closed modders building stuff in hiding. This allows for a bigger number of mods and a bigger number of modders.
More mods increase the value and lifetime of the game, that makes Larian sell more copies of Divinity.

Monthly competitions would be a pretty cool as an incentive for the non-commercial modding community.

featured modders that win the competitions would also increase their donation status.

Plus these modders may also be your future bug fixers so best to give them some carrots (or signed t-shirts along the way)

I've never made a mod though have used them a fair bit (also super excited and inspired by Original Sin & its editor to have a go myself!) and from my pov if someone wanted to sell me their mod product I would no longer view them as a modder but as a professional developer of content. I would expect a higher standard of quality assurance and customer service (information about the product for sale and post-sales support). I doubt this would be feasible for the vast majority of modding hobbyists.

I like Diacri's suggestion because to my eyes we should be looking for ways to encourage people to donate (cultivate a culture of respect, appreciation and support for modders) rather than essentially commercialising the practice.

Once you do that, it's not really modding anymore; no longer a hobby but a profession, not a community but an industry.

I also think that considering how much people love money (not saying I do ;-), some companies would have found a way to monetize mods a long time ago if this wasn't prohibitively fraught with technical, legal and practical obstacles.

Robcat I am with you. First you couldn't just sell any mod for money, a bar has been set a long time ago. However there have been some total makeover/full-blown mods that if they could sell them, you'd see many more. Now like anything, if we didn't think it was worth it we wouldn't buy it, so there is always that check and balance in place. I'm of the belief if one could monetize mods it would be a boon to that product as a whole. Most mods like 95% would still be free. But we may get some nifty expansion size mods each year to make this a classic memorable game

In case I wasn't clear, I am not convinced the benefits outweigh the negative consequences and would vote against it. I also don't think anyone can foresee all the ramifications as MaxTeel noted, both good and bad, and it would seem to be quite experimental.

Just like Steam Early Access and Greenlight, allowing monetization of mods (not just voluntary donations) will lead to abuse, scammers and rip-offs. Larian's streams have demonstrated how fast and easy it is to make a good-looking mod and publish it to Steam... that actually has no content in it whatsoever.

Do not allow people to charge money for mods. It will only lead to bad things.

That's the reason we don't. However, we will do something that will make it possible for people who put significant effort into it to be rewarded for it - we just need to figure out how.

Well Dark I know why you have a preference for the Nexus...you run it.

Regardless, all I have to say is that I remember back in the days when people modded a game because they loved the game and they wanted to add to it or make something amazing with it, now a days it seems that people just want money. It's sad yo. I would not pay for a mod, if a mod author is charging money for a mod I do not consider it a mod anymore, I consider it DLC and I wasn't willing to pay for Hearthfire in Skyrim because it was essentially a $5 mod and I wouldn't be willing to pay for something similar in D:OS.

You could always do what Valve did with their community made TF2 items that they made official. Basically whenever someone buys the item in the cash shop Valve cuts the person a check for their percentage, and no I don't know the percentage that would be between you and the modder.

Essentially you could take the mod on, make it DLC for the game and then cut a check to the modder every month or so for their share of the profit. Though I would suggest this ONLY for particularly good and lengthy custom scenarios, anything less isn't really worth paying for at least in my opinion.

Addendum: The kind of thing I am talking about being worth paying for is something on the scale of Nehrim. Nehrim is a massive total conversion mod for Oblivion that essentially makes it a whole new game with potentially dozens if not hundreds of hours of new, professional quality content with professional-tier voice work as well. If Bethesda had worked a deal with SureAI, the devs of Nehrim, and made it into DLC for Oblivion and charged like $15-$20 for it I wouldn't have minded that much. Though I do have to say this, the fact that something as impressive as Nehrim, and then the sequel of Nehrim being made for Skyrim called Enderal was made by modders for free with just donations is absolutely amazing. Kinda goes to show that passion is more important than greed.

Aren't "easy" monetization methods already built in the Steam workshop? Isn't that what Team Fortress 2 is all about for example? Steam/Valve calls that "user generated content". Larian should just be able to use the same or a similar system since they already support the Steam workshop...


There was a lengthy presentation about the topic at the latest Steam Dev Days. I can only recommend watching the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRyUpR4qOxU

The problem is that if Larian doesn't curate it then there is no reason to NOT put your mod up for sale. It's just a bad idea in general unless you go in really hard into moderating what you are and are not willing to allow to be sold.

Yep, let's pay 1 guy of a 200+ people giant TC mod team money and have the others get nothing ! (I think you do not even realize how Nehrim was developed....) how would they even split the money fairly? There were thousands of contributors.

No. Monetization needs to stay away from Modding.

And if it's TC's it's gonna lead to massive negative nonsense when not everyone is credited properly. And how do you even define a contribution? What is a fair share?

You can not compare this to the nonsense fluff mods that TF2 and the other Valve games have on Steam Workshop.

Monetization only leads to Misery.

And especially an RPG will have mods of varying degrees of complexity. It should be like NWN, good unique big campaigns get recognition and maybe get a sort of franchise deal as optional DLC when all contributors are known and confirmed (And no copyright is violated). That'd be a way to do this, but if that mod is then only DLC, it will of course not be a mod anymore, and be viewed as a professional product.

That is the only kind of monetization besides a completely optional donate button that i'd accept. And yes, Larian would have to curate the mod beforehand, obviously ;p

Well, shows how much I know If there's money to be made, people will find a way.



Simple summary of the video:

Mods User Generated Content (UGC) is a good thing. Monetized UGC mods that are vetted and controlled by a responsible authority (ie Valve) have been demonstarted to significantly increase mod quality and reward modders. Some modders have even been able to make a professioanl living by creating mods for the Steam Workshop.

Modding is a big deal, a big business with enormous potential and is generally super awesome. You should do it for us, trust us we've got this.

Various alternatives and advice for developers to encourage modding and mod use.

Speaker didn't address any potential negatives or criticisms during the talk, apparently there aren't any? Sounded like a sales pitch for Valve though some interesting content in there.

In Q&A - said coopyright issues weren't specific to Steam but were'nt proving much of a problem. Valve thinks healthy competition (eg the Nexus) is good and doesn't want a monopoly, yet obviously advocates the service they provide.

*



I'd need to see some balancing critiques of Steam's monetization practices before putting too much stock in this talk.



Edit Reason: Rereading my post forgot to add from my notes - It's interesting the speaker referred to the Nexus as a competitor to them in the Q&A (you'd have to watch it for context).

So basically you agree with what I said, you just wanted to imply I am stupid and don't know what I am talking about, and then say exactly what I said.

If I had wanted to do that I'd not have done it veiled And I mean both agree with you and imply anything ;P

No... in fact you mentioned Steam Workshop monetization, and I tried to explain why big mods do not exist on the steam workshop monetization system. You can not easily attribute contributions in a large mod project, and whoever "runs" it certainly has no right to collect stuff for free and then sell it on Steam workshop.

What you described would be something I'd actually oppose. Nehrim is a great example, there is NO WAY that mod could ever be sold or monetized because there is no way to properly identify all contributions. And not all of these contributions are 100% unique in-themselves.

When Larian curates a mod project and does what NWN had with the various Premium modules the mod team receiving such has to actually create a contract and proper employment status for each contributor with proper payment rules etc. There wouldn't be a single element in a curated mod that is of questionably legal or copyright status. But more importantly, there would be a clear detailed money and contribution trail.

When Larian does this, it has to be as Larian curated DLC (if at all) not as a MOD in steam workshop monetization system

(And please, don't read this in hostile tone.. because that's now how I mean it at all In this case I just care about the topic.

I never once specifically mentioned Steam Workshop monetization, I mentioned taking some of the better mods and making them DLC, you are the one saying I was saying steam workshop monetization.

Also if SureAI doesn't know who contributed to their fucking mod, then that is their problem in this hypothetical situation, just because that one mod team is apparently so incompetent that they don't know who contributed to their own mod for the hypothetical money that I hypothetically suggest could be paid to them, that doesn't all of a sudden invalidate what I said, which is once again essentially the same fucking thing you are saying and all you are doing is adding more detail to it.

fair enough It's true you didn't say that. Must have gotten confused by something before your post...

Maybe next time, try saying that without curse words and attacks, and I might actually read your post completely ;P