Was "paid mods" a console plan all along?

Paid Mods Are Being 'Re-Evaluated' at Bethesda

Paid mods might have died just days after they began, but Bethesda's Pete Hines doesn't sound like a man who's totally given up on them.

Speaking with Gamespot, Hines was pushed into giving something up about the controversial move to monetising unofficial add-ons:

"I think our stance on it is we're going to re-evaluate it going forward," he said, "I think that we feel like there is a case to be made that people who spend a lot of time working on mods ought to be able to have a way of monetizing what they're doing.

"Certainly some of the folks that we talked to were very interested in and supportive of the idea. We had creators who said, 'I've been asking for donations for years and never saw anything, and I made more in one day.' So why would I not support that?

My friends, after spending many hours meditating, something occurred. Something, shocking.

Set your minds back........

Surely, at the announcement of Skyrim's plans to sell mods, at that time, they must have made an arrangement with Microsoft to have them on consoles?

Would it be safe to assume, at the time of the announcement, Bethesda was already making plans to sell them on consoles with Fallout 4?

In an alternate reality (bit like that bad one from Xmen), if resistance had not had happened from pc gamers, this would, through consoles, become industry standard, with multiple companies having modders create a barrage of microtransaction level items, taking a massive 60%+ cut?

Was this modding incident, in reality, possibly, actually a larger, sinister plan, using the guise of supporting modders, as actually, in reality, a means for them to rake in income, on a mass scale, with a new industry standard, essentially doing.... nothing?

Was this the cynical plan all along?

Paid mods is probably why consoles were getting PC Mods, they figured they could screw console gamers since they bend over for this type of stuff. Guess they didn't figure out a platform that has user created content/modifications for decades would actually put up a fight. Heck I still see a lot of negative reviews because of paid mods even when it was over and some people edited their positive reviews to negative because of it. Luckily paid mod plan failed otherwise devs would suddenly "care" about PC gamers enough to make mod tools and make them compatible for consoles and just so happen to let people sell so they can "support" the modders.

It would be bad if devs half assed PC versions but release mod tools with the only attention to attract people to buy console versions to use them.

No.

That said, you're not that potentially off base. It would make sense that, after having paid mods backfire on PC, Bethesda could try to do it on consoles. Taking a select group of mods on PC, re-program them for consoles (they don't just run like that on xb1 and ps4) and try to sell them would make sense.

For PC gamers, mods have been a thing for a long time, so trying to create an uncontrolled economy was never going to fly.

On consoles, the lack of mods, outside of rare cases like UT3, would be a perfect case to try and sell them.

It'd be BS, yeah, but i can't say i'd put it past Bethesda now, after the Steam situation and flatout coming out and saying that Fallout 4 mods are coming to consoles. Plus the whole Bethesda.NET thing, whatever it is.

Paid mods will never work on PC. If they are planning to do so on Consoles then it won't be mods but paid DLCs made by users instead of devs.

That's so fucking evil.

And probably so going to happen.

Nah, it's just the same a Games for Windows Live, PC gamers said "**** that shit". So paid online gaming became Xbox Live Gold (latterly PS+ or is it Now?, I never remember) and trundled off to a more gullible market, where it's something that's lapped up and even defended by Xbox and PlayStation fans alike. Paid for mods is no different, try it on PC first, PC gamers gave it the middle finger so off it goes to Console, where it'll be adored and worshiped with open wallets.

Will still be free on PC.

I can see xboys and playkids paying for shitty little mods while PC gets the great/big (that don't work on conosles) ones for free.

This is so wrong it's funny. PC gamers were introduced to pay monthly to play with MMO's to incredible success then MS took it to the console space. Always online? PC gamers bought SimCity and Diablo 3 like no tomorrow. Gamer values only last until it's something they really want. The same thing will happen with paid mods. Sure, there's kicking and screaming now when it changed mid-stream well after the market was established for the game, but a new highly anticipated game with it set up from the start, it would be different.

It appears pc gamers scuttled this plan, with Todd Howard having to edit his E3 speech.

I think it just found its way to being modded. I think the concept of mods has greater rapport with people thinking that they come from the people and not corporate overlords... of course, the corporate overlords want to monetize on that, can't blame them. However, there's just some kinds of mods that never ever will be adopted by this kind of exploratory paid mod options, and that's the ones that would if they were to be monetized would probably violate copyright laws. Like say, the Telletubies Left 4 Dead mod might be the publisher in trouble, unless Valve actually went and licensed it successfully, and if that were the case, I'd probably congratulate them than condemn them. Anyhow, there will still be plenty of free modding, nothing will change.

I can maybe see a market for paid mods, maybe some people just want the security of a mod backed by the publisher, instead of relying on mods from third parties...

It'll be a hit on consoles. And they won't label it as dlc as previously mentioned here. Labeling it as dlc won't be as appealing as mods to the general console market. A year from now there'll be people here posting how great consoles are since they can have mods on it and there'll probably be praising the "free" mods with ps+ and/or Xbox gold.

I'm fine with paid mods happening as well (on the console), as long as the modders receive a reasonable percentage of the sales. (More than 25%.)

No.

They probably just thought they'd try their luck since PC is the same audience that will pay $25 for an in-game horse when they're already paying a subscription fee for one game.

You carry on believing that all you want.

Firstly, a subscription for a game paid to the developer/publisher of that game is not the same as paying a third party a fee to play any game online.

SimCity failed so hard that the sub fee was removed sometime ago in a poor attempt to raise sales. The fact is that it has been completely and utterly superseded by Cities: Skylines

Diablo 3 did not and has never had a subscription service, it had a real money auction house that you could, should you choose to, buy and sell in game items on it. However this too has been removed a long time ago.

Regardless of what Steam does with the Workshop there are still plenty of modding sites outwith Valves/Bethesda's control. Nexus is a far better place to go for game mods. You don't appear to have full grasp of the open nature of PC and the internet.

Umm, you might want to read that again. Simcity and Diablo 3 did require an always online connection and both did sell big number despite the outcry. And why is paying the developer any different than paying the system creator? You're still paying to play a game you bought. PC gamers are not more proud or righteous than console gamers and both fold when it would get in their way of what they want. This has been shown over and over through history. We would never give up reseller rights, then it happened. We would never pay to play online, then it happened. We would never support an always online connection, particularly for a single player game, then it happened. Now it's paid mods, and it will happen.

Nope. Mods for MS Flight Simulator have been around much longer than on consoles.

I don't see how they where a console thing , because they started making it on PC and only on Steam i think.

Maybe this was to sucker future Steam box users?

I don't mind paid mods so much but I think they can't just be shoe horned into a game that already exists. All modding would have to go through a single store or set of stores to avoid people trying to sell other peoples mods. I also thing not everyone should be able to sell mods. There should be some sort of developer subscription for selling mods so we don't get tons of crap mods by everyone for $1, quality control would be necessary.

That said I would welcome paid mods, because that would allow businesses to develop around it. And it would allow decent quest or story driven packs to come out in a timely manner. And give incentive for businesses to keep their mod's up to date if the game changes.

This is the reason I am skipping fallout 4 btw.

@Ant_17: Didn't you know... It's ALWAYS the consoles fault, even though most of these practices started on the PC.

The worlds a messed up place.

PC gamers would just boycott those games that did that crap.

You know what, I was in the process of typing a response but then I realised, this is exactly what I meant by console gamers defending the online paywall put in place by their beloved companies. Stop being pathetic and stop defending a bad business practice, especially one you're a victim of. FFS grow a pair.

The always online has been removed from SimCity. You can now play the game offline. Do you know this?

Except it doesn't matter, because the game is shit.

You know what? I started to type a response, but then I realized that you and reality are separated by a great distance. My first tip should've been when you claimed Games for Windows Live was first and became Xbox Live after it got rejected on PC. Not one bit of my responses have been defending or in any way justifying any of the things I brought up or you brought up. A statement of behavior is not an endorsement of that behavior. BTW, of the 3 things I mentioned above, 2 haven't flown on consoles.

Yeah, it has, but it still sold over a million in the first two weeks, beating the company forecasts, and it was still in place, which was my point. Gamers may kick and scream about something they don't like, but when push comes to shove, they won't miss out on a game they really want.

I remember buying mods, and mappacks ages ago at retail for pc games.

So paid mods is nothing new, nor exclusive to consoles.