The creator of the Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod CD Projekt recently hit with a DMCA strike has paused his Patreon page and pulled access to all his mods after receiving another strike from a different publisher.
Looks like the Ghostrunner developers also have an issue with paid mods running off their IP.
The existence of modding communities is predicated in being communities first and foremost, not jobs or money making schemes. This behavior poisons the well, creating a toxic community that makes the mods inaccessible to those not willing to be nickel and dimed after already purchasing the game.
only because capitalism is toxic overall. But why apply this as a double standard for modders? Fan artists can do commissions. And communities which are not fandoms rarely have a stigma against money trading hands.
modders also often do commissions. that’s entirely fine, because in that case people pay for the devs time, not the mod, which is still freely available or entirely private, both of which are fair game.
but you can’t put a paywall in front of mods.
there’s many reasons for that, but most importantly for the community: it ruins the community.
dependencies are a common practice in modding. they allow for modularized packaging of software, making maintenance easier for devs, and content choices easier for users. win-win.
paid mods hinder this by incentivizing modders to put frameworks - which would be the most profitable - behind paywalls.
low effort slop:
see the horse armor bullshit, or any other time bethesda tried to introduce paid mods, including creation club (which is literally paid mods). every time this happened the “stores” got flooded with low effort, low quality, but super expensive bullshit.
this then buried high quality content under mountains of shit, made worse by rampant bot abuse and algorithm manipulation.
this is the obvious result of paywalls in modding: when it’s not about passion, it’s about money. and when it’s about money, there is no low that sellers won’t sink to.
incompatibilities:
with paywalls in place modders will actively seek to interfere and break other mods. this has already happened in free modding, also many times, but that were either instances of egotistical infighting between modders, or straight-up malware deployments.
what’s different when mods are paid, is that there is a financial incentive to build a walled garden. to build a system of software only compatible with your own creations, and nobody else’s, so users can’t mix and match and have no choice about where to buy from.
this alone would effectively end modding entirely.
cost:
paywalls would be stupidly expensive. again, the best (or rather worst) example of this is bethesda. CC content is stupidly overpriced, and at the same time lower quality than what is available for free. the cost alone is so absurd, that it would definitely destroy the entire community of any game that implemented paywalls, because, again, the incentives align to encourage high prices to target whales instead of normal users. this is the case for every single paywall in gaming, and it certainly applies to modding.
and more:
paywalls in modding are a legal nightmare. I’m not a fan of the current copyright system, but at least right now modders don’t have much incentive to enforce their IP with DRM tools. paywalls mean there would definitely be DRM tools in mods.
apart from that there’s also the issue of law itself. in the EU for example the return policy for digital goods would probably force some kind of compliance check into any software that tried to do paywalls for mods outside of the original companies stores; that’s why bethesda only sells on internal stores. that and vendor lock-in.
vendor lock-in itself would be catastrophic for many communities. this would basically mean that some company controls all aspects of modding, including what content you’re allowed to create. so say goodbye to anything credit card companies, i.e. the U.S., doesn’t like, because all of that is immediately forbidden.
remember the porn ban credit card companies tried to enforce on steam and itch.io a couple months back? that’s a guaranteed scenario for paywalled mods. someone has to handle the “pay” part of the paywall, and credit card companies will enforce their weird moral guidelines on everyone if paywalls become a thing.
any single one of these would ruin a community.
and you seriously couldn’t even come up with a single one?
The existence of modding communities is predicated in being communities first and foremost, not jobs or money making schemes. This behavior poisons the well, creating a toxic community that makes the mods inaccessible to those not willing to be nickel and dimed after already purchasing the game.
only because capitalism is toxic overall. But why apply this as a double standard for modders? Fan artists can do commissions. And communities which are not fandoms rarely have a stigma against money trading hands.
He was literally given the option to take donations or commissions instead.
So what? Why is the business model of charging for access specifically a problem only for modders? It’s such a double standard.
modders also often do commissions. that’s entirely fine, because in that case people pay for the devs time, not the mod, which is still freely available or entirely private, both of which are fair game.
but you can’t put a paywall in front of mods.
there’s many reasons for that, but most importantly for the community: it ruins the community.
How does that ruin the community?
are you serious?
fragmentation:
dependencies are a common practice in modding. they allow for modularized packaging of software, making maintenance easier for devs, and content choices easier for users. win-win.
paid mods hinder this by incentivizing modders to put frameworks - which would be the most profitable - behind paywalls.
low effort slop:
see the horse armor bullshit, or any other time bethesda tried to introduce paid mods, including creation club (which is literally paid mods). every time this happened the “stores” got flooded with low effort, low quality, but super expensive bullshit.
this then buried high quality content under mountains of shit, made worse by rampant bot abuse and algorithm manipulation.
this is the obvious result of paywalls in modding: when it’s not about passion, it’s about money. and when it’s about money, there is no low that sellers won’t sink to.
incompatibilities:
with paywalls in place modders will actively seek to interfere and break other mods. this has already happened in free modding, also many times, but that were either instances of egotistical infighting between modders, or straight-up malware deployments.
what’s different when mods are paid, is that there is a financial incentive to build a walled garden. to build a system of software only compatible with your own creations, and nobody else’s, so users can’t mix and match and have no choice about where to buy from.
this alone would effectively end modding entirely.
cost:
paywalls would be stupidly expensive. again, the best (or rather worst) example of this is bethesda. CC content is stupidly overpriced, and at the same time lower quality than what is available for free. the cost alone is so absurd, that it would definitely destroy the entire community of any game that implemented paywalls, because, again, the incentives align to encourage high prices to target whales instead of normal users. this is the case for every single paywall in gaming, and it certainly applies to modding.
and more:
paywalls in modding are a legal nightmare. I’m not a fan of the current copyright system, but at least right now modders don’t have much incentive to enforce their IP with DRM tools. paywalls mean there would definitely be DRM tools in mods.
apart from that there’s also the issue of law itself. in the EU for example the return policy for digital goods would probably force some kind of compliance check into any software that tried to do paywalls for mods outside of the original companies stores; that’s why bethesda only sells on internal stores. that and vendor lock-in.
vendor lock-in itself would be catastrophic for many communities. this would basically mean that some company controls all aspects of modding, including what content you’re allowed to create. so say goodbye to anything credit card companies, i.e. the U.S., doesn’t like, because all of that is immediately forbidden.
remember the porn ban credit card companies tried to enforce on steam and itch.io a couple months back? that’s a guaranteed scenario for paywalled mods. someone has to handle the “pay” part of the paywall, and credit card companies will enforce their weird moral guidelines on everyone if paywalls become a thing.
any single one of these would ruin a community.
and you seriously couldn’t even come up with a single one?
how high on corporate shoe leather are you?