Starfield is Going to be “a Modder’s Paradise” – Todd Howard
Starfield is Going to be “a Modder’s Paradise” – Todd Howard
Howard says Bethesda Game Studios is looking to keep expanding its support for the modding community with the upcoming space-faring RPG.
Howard says Bethesda Game Studios is looking to keep expanding its support for the modding community with the upcoming space-faring RPG.
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“One of the things that I’ll call out is, it’s important for us not just to enable that, but to participate,” he said. “To make is easy for them, to make this where they can make it not just a hobby, but a career."
What they really want: a sanitized official mod store that dominates over the Nexus and Loverslab. I'm not sure how they're going to pull that off, but I fully expect them to try.
In theory, modders asking to be compensated for their work is not that outlandish of an idea, however in practice there are a ton of problems that need to be solved when going down this rabbit hole:
- IP and ownership: Is the mod really 100% originally created by the seller?
- Compatibility: The game is going to be recieving big updates, is there a garantuee that the mod will remain compatible, or be updated as well?
- Dependencies: Does the mod require other mods? Are the creators of that mod OK with their work being used to make money by others? What if the required mod breaks or becomes unavailable?
- Load order: Anyone who's modded Skyrim or Fallout before knows how fickle mods can be, often requiring specific configs and tweaks to the load order. Is Bethesda going to offer tools for that alongside their store?
- Quality Assurance: Am I even getting my money's worth? Is there a refund policy?
All of these proved to be major issues when they tried a paid mod store for Skyrim. Stolen mods, a fishing mod that required an animation framework mod who's creater demanded the fishing mod be taken down, mods that had major incompatibilities with other popular mods, and bought mods just inserting themselves wherever they felt like in the load order.
If Bethesda wanted to create an official mod store, it would need to be carefully curated, with contracts with the modders requiring them to keep their mods updated, and seriously upgraded tools for configuring purchased mods. Honestly, I just don't quite see it happening.
also users cant exactly build huge mod lists if many mods are paid
I think that maybe it would be better if there was something like an effort to set up paid third-party large DLC. Bethesda doesn't really sell small things, on the order of what a lot of mod authors provide (well, they tried to sell individual models and skins in Fallout 76 , which I don't think has been fantastically successful). They've never had an industry where one could a la carte buy individual game mechanics from them. What they're known for is making full-on expansions and selling those. I can imagine an industry where third parties can sell those maybe working out better.
Classic Todd bs on the level of "it just works"
tell me lies tell me sweet little lies
Todd....
not just a hobby, but a career
They're definitely planning on making a mod store.
Modders should be compensated. I'm not too convinced Microsoft's cut won't be too big to make the whole thing worth charging for. It's a big ask to sell mods since that's not the norm. Patreon or something might be more viable way for modders.
They will probably just try to pay modders more for their mods on the official store than what Nexus is paying them, by charging users a microtransaction to download each mod. Modders probably will make so much more money for their mods, that they won't want to upload to Nexus or anywhere else. Also, there's no way that Bethesda is going to allow nsfw mods on their official store, so I guess we'll see what happens.
I'm hopeful that the approach will be closer to how Minecraft works, now that they're under the same umbrella. But it seems more likely they'll just monetize things heavily and push creators to monetize. (e.g., mods over a certain size require a minimum payment amount to 'recoup bandwidth costs')
100% it's this. Their dream is to convince the wider playerbase that mods are something that should be purchased, it's creators making money from it, Bethesda retaining all ownership and rights in perpetuity of any/all mods uploaded.
The way everything has to be monetized these days is to me pretty disheartening. This idea that a thing isn't worth doing if you're not making money from it. Fortunately right now mod communities are alive and well and free to all.
As if they'd allow any of the dirty adult content that you'd find on LL. They would also just look for more ways to monetize mod content.
I mean, there are vendors of adult content in the world. I could hypothetically imagine that as long as Microsoft can create arms-length distance for their brand and not be directly-tied to it from a business standpoint -- like, maybe they license to another vendor who deals with that -- that they'd be okay with it.
I discovered that there are sort of "tiers" that wound up getting created around mods in the game, where you have sites that object to content and then the crowd that wants that going off and creating a group somewhere else, and people on one site refer to the site that they object to with euphemisms and the like
Fallout has historically dealt with some topics that some consumers are not going to be happy with. Drug and alcohol use, slavery, violence, killing, dismemberment, torture, prostitution, suicide, rape, and cannibalism. It's had ESRB ratings itself to facilitate blocking access to it for people who object to that, and Steam will throw up a pro forma "are you 18" message before showing their Fallout 4 page to a viewer.
Bethesda has historically not wanted to associate with some of the content that goes on Nexusmods, stuff that has characters running around in sexualized outfits or being fully-nude.
Nexusmods, in turn, has not wanted to associate with some thing that go on on LoversLab, like animated sex scenes, sexual slavery, forced gender changing, player participant in rape, bestiality, tentacle rape, BDSM, probably more that I'm unaware of.
The LoversLab crowd draws the line at sexualized depiction of adolescents, which group apparently jumped over to Schaken-Mods.
The Schaken-Mods crowd considers sexualized depiction of preadolescents to be objectionable, and those people apparently jumped over to another site whose name I cannot for the life of me recall, or I'd link to it, but IIRC has "pure" in the name, and there they've got work on scenarios with child molestation and suchlike.
googles
No, not "pure", All The Fallen.
I'm pretty sure that the all of the above object to copyright-infringing content, stuff ripped from other mods or video games, or mods that the mod author wanted taken down, and I think I've seen links before to some site that archives some of those.
My guess is that there are probably other niche sites that I'm unaware of that smack into one community's social norms and relocated as well. And I'm sure that there could be more. If LoversLab weren't fine with furry or LGBT content, I'd bet that those would have their own sites.
Those communities, while often objecting very much to each other's social norms, seem to more-or-less leave each other alone, as they've drawn up their lines and seem to stay on their own sides of them. And they do have some level of mutual symbiosis, as they build up on content on the other sites. Sometimes a mod author will object to a site for one reason or another -- the Nexusmods site had a major uproar when they stopped letting mod authors take their mods down, for example, and some authors moved even non-erotic mods to LoversLab, and Schaken-Mods has hosted at least a few mods whose authors objected to some sort of policy on LoversLab, like the mod whose name I don't recall that remodels the male body face. Bethesda knows perfectly well that sexualized content on Nexusmods exists and is fine with sales that are driven by the context there, but don't want their brand associated with it.