• They definitely did learn. They learned that they could charge for mods and people, sadly, will pay. They’ve learned that they can make more money by paywalling what should be essential patches and bugfixes. They learned that the average gamer is willing to be fleeced. They learned that they can run an IP into the ground and still extract maximum cash from it.

      They’ve learned. They just didn’t learn the lesson that we here on Lemmy wanted them to learn. That’s a sad fact of being part of a minority community.

      • If Bethesda created a paid mod market where creators could charge for access and Bethesda only took a super nominal amount of those payments to cover transaction fees (say, 2-3%) I would so be in favour of that. I love the idea of passionate creators being rewarded for their work, and frankly it could (and should) create a new employee pipeline for them.

        Sadly though, then Bethesda might make 0.01875% less profit this quarter than they did last quarter, which these days is the death knell of the capitalistic venture.

    • Exactly. I was extremely disappointed in the community reaction when Steam was going to implement the option for modders to get paid. Instead of focusing on the legitimate issues with the proposal (pay ratios were off, mod dependencies and ripoffs need to be addressed) it boiled down to “rah, I don’t want to pay for things I didn’t used to, rah. Real modders give me stuff for free.”

      I think we’re missing out by not having this as an option. Modding can provide a good stepping stone into full game development, and if people can earn money for their work, they can justify spending more time on it or potentially even doing it full time.

      • I think we’re missing out by not having this as an option. Modding can provide a good stepping stone into full game development, and if people can earn money for their work, they can justify spending more time on it or potentially even doing it full time.

        Yes. Those who don’t want to monetize their work (which is actually respectable) would standout even more. In example there could be two versions, one free version and one paid version with a few little extras to support the developers. This is a way to handle paid software even in Open Source, in example on Android where such a payment system is integrated.

        There is no need to have an account on a different platform, so I can support the developer, and another account for another platform that wants my bank accounts. I speak about patreon and and the likes. It’s all here, with my Steam account and money from Steam.