Opinions
Steam was started with pretty much payed mods only (CS, DoD, etc. - half-life platinum pack buyers rejoice \o/), continued to do so all the way through (albeit with somewhat strict control) and they've been taking a big cut from pretty much everything for ages, too. Now they're giving more people the chance to get ripped off - not exactly a surprising move given they just dropped quality control to quite some degree with greenlight and early access - and everyone gets mad. Magic o?
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There's a HUGE GIGANTIC difference between Valve's F2P model and this modding update. I don't even understand how people can compare the two. I'd go into more detail but I am too tired now lol.
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thanks for not even bothering to read the comment - you're welcome ;)
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haha you must have misunderstood me, my comment is not an argument against what you said, it's a follow-up. We are on the same page. Valve is indeed ripping off content creators in CS:GO, TF2. It is a better case, as CS:GO and TF2 aren't reliant on in-game items at all (they are as important as you make them to be), you can still have a complete gameplay experience.
I think Valve has really been pushing it recently and this move was just the last drop in the cup. Like they can get away with 1-2 bad moves (as you said already ripping off content creators in their own games), but there's a point where it is just simply too much.
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"their own games" was kinda my point - they aren't exactly. TF and CS both emerged as mods which were eventually promoted and commercialized by valve until they became what they are today as TF2 and CS:GO.
There's quite a history of commercialized mods on steam in the end and I don't see this move now as particularly outraging - it's simply giving those who do think it's a nice deal (and for some of them it may even be) a chance to get their chance of being used. After all the choice whether or not to sell your mod is still yours.
The one thing I really see as a big no-go here is the removal of mods asking for donations (which I didn't re-check that, so all I got on it so far is a reddit link and some blabbering - aka I'm still taking it with a grain of salt although it does sound like valve). The idea itself however is pretty much just consistent and not really much different from what they did in the past except being more open.
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People love to complain, they always find a reason to do so, you're no different (heck, me neither). Don't get me wrong, you are free to do so, but so am I to roll my eyes when you do. Have a nice day.
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the best part is when I read modders getting only 25% revenue of their own work if they sell it, Valve and Devs will take happily the remaining 75%......................
This is just milking the modding community and not a good feature for us.....
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Supposedly a portion of it goes to charity, which I guess is Valve's way of saying "sure, pick on us...but you're mad because we're supporting a charity? shame on you!" in hopes users keep quiet. Ain't working :D
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If that is true, it should be the modder that decides if some of the money goes to charity, not Valve. XD
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Valve has yet to buy companies and run their beloved franchises into the ground only to dismantle the company later.
But as to how they're handling Steam as of late is shameful and flat out greedy, which is to say nothing on how they're handling their other products/projects. At least EA has an external support team and doesn't rely on their CEO to handle password issues like gigantic idiots.
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I understand what the point of an argument is in that two sides are trying to get the other side to see it their way. But what I've seen here is stupid, most of what's going on here is "your opinion is different from mine therefor you are stupid and should not exist."
Yes, there are good Early Access and Greenlight games. Yes, there probably will be good mods and paid modding will help those modders. But it is also true that there are a lot of people abusing all of these systems. For Early Access, take a look at Spacebase, they made promises that they couldn't keep and just gave up. Steam did nothing about it to the people who bought it. The entire purpose of Early Access is to help support devs while they are finishing the game, not giving up on it. As for Greenlight, I've seen crap on there and a lot of games that get voted on just because there's a "free key for vote" on it. But both have given great games. Starbound is fun, The Long Dark is fun, Project Zomboid is fun. There are good and bad things that have come from this.
Modding, well, if the more popular modders were just fine modding for free, what will adding a paid option do? Modding is more than likely a hobby of theirs, I highly doubt there are many out there who make a career out of it, and I'm sure most of them have some other job that supports them. So what delays them the most is probably time constraints, and unless they're one hell of a modder I doubt they'll be able to support themselves solely through modding. I hope some of them add a free and paid version of their mod so that way we can choose what to do. On the other side of this is the people who are going to take advantage of this system and release some garbage they made in a few minutes to try to sell for a quick buck. Sure the 24-hr refund will help, but that can hurt the good modders as well. 24 hrs is a long time and I'm sure there will be people who "buy" mods that add new areas and, despite the quality, will get them refunded once they're done playing them.
Support issues and server/client lag is probably very dependent on the country you live in. This shouldn't be an excuse though, Valve is a "small company" and that's by choice, but I personally believe that they are understaffed and need to hire more. It's not like they don't have the money. They can add better support and servers if they wanted to, but as of yet seem to only add what they feel like. As for crashes, it probably depends on where you live as well. During a major sale I wasn't able to access Steam for 3 days. It didn't kill me, but it was rather inconvenient. But people don't use Steam because it "doesn't kill them" they use it because it's convenient.
Also, I have dealt with Steam Support and it is very dodgy. Sometimes I have gotten good feedback, but it seems when I need help as soon as possible it is either very slow or the help is crap. An example of this is that I bought the Quantum Conundrum pack that included the DLCs, but for some reason there was some sort of processing error and only the main game was purchased. The support was no help at all with this issue as no matter how much I tried to tell them that I did not have the ability to purchase the proper version as my Steam Wallet was drained so that they could refund me the money for the initial purchase, they never did anything about what I was saying and I ended up stuck with the incorrect version of the game due to an error in the Steam client.
As for Valve's change in habits. I personally feel that they are becoming more profit-oriented than user-oriented. 25% to modders is ridiculous, they are the ones doing all of the work. That small of an amount is inexcusable considering that Valve has had no problem maintaining the free Steam Workshop. Region-locking is understandable from a developer's point of view, but I find it irritating that I can't gift my friend from Germany a game he wants for his birthday (or vice-versa) because the stupid thing is region locked.
Now the killing of trading, c'mon. How many people who support the region-locking because traders are slimy and buying games at extremely discounted prices thought that maybe the people they were trading to decided to just pirate the games since they can't trade for them? That means instead of a $10 game being bought and traded for $1, it is being pirated for $0. Tell me now which earns the developers more money?
But when the day is over, Steam is a STORE. That is why the tab is called the Steam STORE. A store is responsible for everything it is selling because they are the ones selling it and making it available to consumers. For example, if you bought a damaged box of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes from Walmart, do you return it to Kellogg's asking for a refund? No, you return it to Walmart, the STORE you bought it from. As of yet, Valve takes very little responsibility for what they are selling on Steam, despite the hard work that is probably involved on their part in getting it onto the store, they just seem to put it on the shelves and refuse to touch it after that.
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steam is a store and has it terms of use and licensing agreement... just read through it instead of comparing with physical stores ;)
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Doesn't mean they're not responsible for the product they are selling and often advertising.
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ok, let's speak of it from another point of view.
steam (valve's store) is a digital distribution platform that distribute digital product made by other company.
if you didn't get game via downloading it steam is responsible for it, but if you don't like game that is made by another company steam isn't responsible for this.
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But I'm not talking about games that you don't like, I'm talking about games that are so broken they're unplayable. For example, Vigil: Blood Bitterness was on sale for much too long after it broke for whatever reason and downloading it and clicking play brought you to the storefront of the RIP Trilogy (yes I know you can fix this by downloading the demo but it shouldn't be that way in the first place). Or another one is Gothic 1 and 2, I have not for the life of me been able to get those games to work. I have scoured the internet for answers and every single one I tried did nothing for me. And I know a lot of other people experience massive problems with those games.
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i got your point... need to reread license agreement to figure out if steam is responsible for this if they declare so in it ^^
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Even if they don't declare responsibility, I say they're responsible. They're the ones selling the product and making it available to the masses. Selling an unusable product is unacceptable in the real world, why should the digital world be any different?
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Steam used to be quite a paradise for us gamer, even more with trading and cross region gifting, then everything started to fell apart in the name of $$$.
When they started the region-lock on cheap reagions (with an out-dated excuse) I was like "Oh damn, at least it's just that"
Then a lot of trading blocks arrived (1 month to trade a gift? An item bought for TF2? Oh no let's make it for way more items)
I thought it was it and now I see that they want to make me pay for a frigging mod?
Ok, I recognize some mod are masterpiece and who made it deserve some credits but not in that way.
1) Paying for 0.45€ for a single item is robbery, I know they "trained" buyers with TF2 but that is really not worth it
2) A modded (at least a good one) fix and add a missing feature to the game, so why he gets only 25% (minus tax) of his work?
Steam is already EA 2.0, problem is that there is no real alternative on PC, that's why they can do whatever they want and people won't do anything about it.
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I think he means there is no real alternative to Steam in its quantity and diversity. Maybe.
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maybe atm yes, but gog.com is kinda big store and if people will support it with their money why it can be alternative to steam... that's my thought :)
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Gog.com is getting closer but still can't match Steam, there are still a few thing that need to develop like Galaxy, a richer store and a satellite community, of course imho :)
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The only thing that was good for Cross Region Gifting is profit for RU.
Now it's good. RU can still their cheap prices (and so are SEA etc), but can't make profit. Fair.
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Blocking the profit is ok what isn't ok is that if someone moves in another region for work (and has the PROOF that he did) Sream won't unlock the games, it will just wipe yout library so you can buy them again.
That is really stupid from them
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This one I can agree with. As long as the owner of the account can confirm his movement, then I see no reason why he should be blocked because he moves around legitimately.
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I've got tons of custom campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2. They've all been free at this point which is wonderful. If people decided to start charging for them that would be very unfortunate. And the thing is, I wouldn't exactly blame them for charging because I know a ton of work must go into making a whole campaign. The game itself only comes with 5 campaigns. But what if L4D2 had had paid content from the very beginning? Would I have stuck with it for as long as I have? Most likely not because I generally don't pay for DLCs and the thought of paying for each campaign is not something I would do. Which means I'd be stuck playing mostly the vanilla campaigns so I would have gotten bored of the game a lot sooner and moved on by now.
It's like a community vs. capitalism kind of thing. Once you monetize things you start removing the community and hobby aspect of it. People that used to do it for fun will now want to get in on the action because they can. They spent a lot of time creating the content. Why shouldn't they see a little compensation for it? I'm sure some will still do it for free but it wouldn't be as many. Then what used to be a hobby becomes like a job. And a job means work and seriousness. And where's the fun in that?
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The biggest problem is that they are big corporation. Like every big corporation they do everything for money. There is so many things that they should fix or change on steam but they don't because it will cost them money and time.... like
- fix achievement system they are too many broken achievement. Valve should block them or give player achievement reset button. Not to mention statistic. Everyone have games that they play only several minutes because it's not for them but during this several minutes they manage to get one or two achievements. And some of players when they play second time some game would want to try to get achievements again too.
- Greenlight is some one big joke. Too many "game" pass this only because they were giving free copy for vote.
- If you have non goty vesrion of game and you buy GOTY version of this game STEAM will steal you non goty version. You should have goty and not goty in library or they should give you non goty to the inventory not stealing you it. You bought it then why they take it from you??
- Region system with 1$=1€ calculator not to mention that more poor country in Europe have to pay that same price as rich country.
- It would be nice if they would create cloud save system for all games. I play on PC and laptop and often I have to use google drive to move my save file from one device to another.
- They should somehow let people buy games that they were deleted from steam store. Just try to get some of them legally like Rayman 2. Good luck with that. Thanks God there is still gog.
And there is still several other thing like game with double DRM...
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I highly agree with the $1=1€ ... it's stupid ... they are two completely different currencies. Companies just haven't been able to figure that out I guess.
As for Cloud Saving ... isn't it the developers that have to put in support for that? I know they have to add in extra code for the Steam Overlay and such. With some games it just doesn't work, especially some older titles.
As for selling games that were removed from the Store. They can't do that, usually removed for legal reasons, and they could get sued for selling them.
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"As for selling games that were removed from the Store. They can't do that, usually removed for legal reasons, and they could get sued for selling them."
There should be some way. Really. If some game exist why anybody should prevent players to play it? Thanks to what you have to use torrents. I know there is still gog but even there you can't find some game. Older Tony Hawk's, The Sims 1, Prey, Need for Speed (U1, U2, Porshe Unleashed), Deadpool :< and other games. I bet there are many people who would buy these game. Why they don't put them anywhere? They are too afraid that younger games would sell worst because of that? or they are just lazy?
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But that isn't Valve's fault. That is the fault of the publisher's or the people that own the licenses to the games. Yelling at Steam because they removed a game isn't going to work because there isn't much they can do. They are not the ones preventing players from buying the games. It's the publishers and license owners.
If we want a game to be sold somewhere we need to bring it up with them. There are a plethora of reasons for why games are removed. Anything from licenses expiring to new companies obtaining the licenses. For example, one reason I think Deadpool was removed is because Disney bought Marvel and the content of that game does not exactly fit with Disney's image.
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hmm you have right. But there still lots of problems. At least they finally do something with bots.
"game does not exactly fit with Disney's image."
Well.... when you buy some company like Marvel you must consider that you will get character like Wolverine or Punisher with that. Dispose a game for that is a very painful hit for fans .... .
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Which that is something that needs to be brought up with Disney. I'm actually pretty certain that after the Deadpool movie, the Deadpool game will be re-released as they are trying to make the Deadpool movie rated R if I remember correctly. But they do own the licensing now and can do whatever they want with it. Where we come in is we make it clear to them how they will make money with the license.
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problem?
i don't see here any problem if valve gets money for what they are doing :)
if you want to make it but didn't get any money for your work, just contact valve ;)
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muh free skyrim, muh free mods for a 4 years old game, hurr i ahve to pay for over 800h work, mods should be free, modders should have recieve no money at all
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Yea right, 25% only. Think about it. If you truly cared about modders, you'd also complain about the percentage.
Thus, you spoke bullshit.
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I'm a bit torn on the matter.
Modding has always been a big part of PC gaming. Often it corrected errors in the games, or improved them, or kept them up-to-date when the developer wouldn't.
And it has been pretty much always free: it's an added value.
A good chunk of the modders still had an option for donations though, and I see nothing wrong with a person that decides to pay for a content he/she likes, even if they could have it for free.
The main issues atm:
- the share to the person that actually put work into the mod is far too little. It's a joke and rules out the "I pay to support the modder's work".
- of course a lot of "modders" will be happy, the same way "developers" might be happy about Greenlight. Aside from those who actually do quality work, there will be tons of retards who just try to abuse the thing.
- they're free to exploit stupid people, but it undermines the credibility of the whole platform. Just to grab more money in the short term.
On top of these it makes me (and apparently a lot of other people) turn away from mods.
I'm not gonna pay for a mod that I'm not sure will work perfectly, and that I don't even know if I like yet.
I'm not happy about having technical standrds lowered by consoles on one side, and having to pay extra on the other just to have this "standard" on actual standard.
Of course I hope I'm wrong and that will turn ok, with developers realizing they're loosing a share of profit to modders who polish the games they wouldn't.
But why would they? If the developers get a share for the mods, why wouldn't they do the opposite? "Lol stop working on that, some modder will make it better, and we're getting money out of his work anyway."
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That doesnt even make sense tbh ... and its completely unrelated to the topic .
Valve arent the ones who split the games into a million DLC's ... its the devs .
If you think the pieces are the mods , you are even more wrong.
You get the full content of the game for the fixed price , Mods are side stuff and its not part of the full package ... its extra which is completely unrelated to the full product .
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paid mods are already pirated btw. I'd be careful with posting links though. not sure if that would violate steamgift's rules or something.
I can't believe how many people are actually buying these mods. Shadow Scale set has already more than 1500 subscribers. :/ Sure, it looks awesome, but still...
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Really sad, hope the mod creators need to pay for it, cause they earn money from it and they need to pay tax's :)
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https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/ Gaben on Reddit.
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Forgive my theft from the humble site and my shoddy Paint skills, something like this would be awesome.
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I don't know if this was already posted, but I'll leave this here
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Discuss.
[UPDATE]
Seems like the mod authors themselves are really enjoying the new system. This is all so good for modders/players alike huh? Nuff said.
[IMPORTANT PART]
So yeah RIP Skyrim modding pretty much, trading is dead/dying, region locks are getting crazier every day and heck even the TF2 economy is pretty much gone (I just throw it in the pile). Fear not we still have a shitty, laggy slow client, inconsistent download speeds and Steam servers collapsing during bigger events/sales or just whenever they feel like it. Outrageously bad support, big profile Early Access scams and failures (Spacebase df-9, WarZ, Stomping Land). Complete lack of quality control and responsibility over Greenlight (and in turn store content).
[TL;DR PART]
To tell the truth, I'd be fine with the rest of the issues, I could live with region restrictions, Early Access, Greenlight etc as they do not directly affect my personal gaming experience (although I do disapprove of them and I happily express my opinion)
Introducing paid modding is the last straw and it is way over the line. It directly kills off the most loved aspect of gaming for me. I am one of those special people who prefer modding games to playing them. I am already supporting modders over at the Nexus, but I will not pay £400-500/game to get all the 100+ mods I love to configure, test and use. I don't think it is unreasonable. If you don't have a clue about modding in general, or you are not a mod user then I'd recommend that you refrain from repeating popular comments like "finally modders get paid for their hard work" etc. it'll just make you look silly, you obviously have no clue.
More on modding (Skyrim Specific)
Thank you for expressing your opinion in a civil manner. I understand that this is a controversial area and might be grounds for heated debate but please refrain from insulting each other.
Also the poll is just a joke.
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