Hey look, one of my predictions came true!

Valve and Bethesda announced today that they've updated the Skyrim Workshop to enable mod authors to upload mods to the site which can then be placed behind a paywall, requiring users to pay a set amount (or an author-set minimum, with the option to pay more if you so wish) before they can download the mod in question. I'm not sure there's been an official announcement about the revenue split, but as there's no new information at this time, I think it's safe to assume it's 25% to the mod author, 75% to Valve/Bethesda, of which I believe 5% can go to "Service Providers" out of Valve and/or Bethesda's cut. Once again, seems that information is missing from any FAQs or documents at this time. The old axiom goes, however, "it's better to have 25% of something, than 100% of nothing".

If you're interested in reading up about this then you can head over to the Workshop page which has more details. This won't be a long news post about my opinions on the topic as my fingers are still a little warm from the 3,000 odd words I wrote last month on this exact topic which predicted all this. My feelings haven't changed. It's too early for that.

On top of that Bethesda have also announced a free Skyrim weekend. Anyone who doesn't already have Skyrim will be able to play it, for free, this weekend (unlike some mods, ho ho ho. Sorry, too soon?). In light of that, and what it could mean for our servers here, I've decided to cancel a long-weekend holiday I've had booked for the past 4 months with 30 other people, a reunion type thing, in Spain. I can't be sunning up by the pool fixing/tweaking servers on an 11 inch laptop via SSH with slightly dodgy Spanish hotel internet (no offence, Spain!) while trying to keep you all informed as to what's happening. It might not happen in light of the extensive investment, both in time and money, we've put in to the servers over the past few years, but what with our past history and the fact there's even potential for it, it just wouldn't be right. Thanks for the heads up on that one Valve/Bethesda! Not.

What I will say, however, is that many mod authors have mods on the Nexus and on the Skyrim Workshop, some of whom already have paid mods on the Workshop. I've taken a quick look at the comments on those paid file pages and some of the things being said are horrific. While I'm sure no one is shocked by that, this is the internet after all, simply looking at it reminds me of one of the main reasons we do what we do here. We moderate. We try to fence off a little piece of the internet where your actions have consequences, and with that in mind, if we see anyone attacking or abusing mod authors here because they have paid mods up on the Workshop you'll be gone. Instantly. With no warning.

The Nexus is for everyone from every background, colour, creed, and political, religious or sexual persuasion. We strive to make this a community where anyone and everyone can enjoy something here away from hate. And that includes mod authors who want to make money. So if you break that peace and attack mod authors here for what they've chosen to do, you'll be gone. By all means debate, but when your debating becomes abusive, it's no longer debating.

Before I get in to the minor updates we've made to the site in light of the major news yesterday I will quickly address the matter of our forums being slow and/or down.

Obviously this news has been a huge deal, and probably exploded far more than Valve and Bethesda realised it would (and not particularly positively, lets face it!). Some of the spotlight has been shined on the Nexus as a result of that. Some people have expressed concern we'll go the same way (they obviously don't read the site news) or that it'll affect us negatively some how. Everything you see here is completely free, and it's definitely staying that way. About 40 mods have been hidden in the Skyrim Nexus section since this announcement, most of which are people afraid their mods are going to be stolen and uploaded to Steam for profit. Our forums have also been struggling to keep up with the increase in traffic that's come from the spotlight being placed on us and so they've either been crawling along at a snails pace or they've been taken down by us while we try and tweak things as much as possible.

The forums are the only element of the site infrastructure that we didn't update in our big 16 month, $250,000 infrastructure update we did over this and last year. We wanted to keep the forums running on a separate system to the sites so that if one went down, the other would still (hopefully) be up, and vice-versa. Hence why the Nexus sites themselves are working fine and the forums aren't. We're working to rectify that so if the forums go down, that's us working on it. We wanted a bit of a rest from infrastructure upgrades after the soul crushing experience we had last year, but we'll look in to sorting out the forums now.

Now, on to the changes we've made today.


Donations

The donation system on the Nexus has been brought up and talked about a lot over the past few months in our private mod author forums (mod authors with 1,000 or more unique downloads gain access). Way before this announcement by Valve and Bethesda it was agreed that the donation system needed to be made more prominent because a lot of users still weren't aware the system even existed on the sites.

We are going to look in to loosening up our donation rules slightly. One of my main issues, to this day, with mod pages is how awful some file page descriptions are. Some mod descriptions are buried underneath change logs, latest news, FAQs, information about the author's dog in the vets and so on and so forth. Sometimes it can be a real struggle just to find the freaking description of what the mod actually does. I have not, and do not ever want a mod description tab to contain information about (or begging for) endorsements, votes or donations. However, something I will explore is adding a donation box below the main content area of a file page. So if you reach the bottom of the file description, there'll be a new box underneath that where an author can talk about donations with a donation link. A good use of that area might be to list and thank the people who've already donated and to explain what the donation money, if there is any, will go towards. That way, there's a specific place for authors to talk about donations that, most importantly for me, doesn't detract from the importance of talking about what the mod actually does. As I said, that's just something we're looking in to right now and, if feedback is positive on this idea, we could have something out next week. But until then our rules have not changed on specifically asking for donations in your file descriptions. It's still a big no-no.

On to updates we've actually made today: we were busy working on an update to the image uploading system to be far more efficient based on mod author feedback, but we've sidelined that in the mean-time to focus on these quick updates before the weekend hits.

We've made a quick, preliminary update to the sites that allows mod authors to show a donation information box before a user downloads their file. The box looks and acts the same way as the "required files" box before downloads. If you've used the site enough you'll have come across mods that require other mods in order to work. Some mod authors have turned on the functionality that will inform users who go to download their files of these required files. Now, as a mod author, you can turn on a donation box which uses the same system. When a user clicks to download one of your files an information box will come up explaining the donation system with a direct button link users can click to donate. If the user does not want to donate all they need to do is click the "Continue with my download button" and the download will begin as per before.

This adds another click to a user's downloading process but we think, in light of these major, sweeping changes we're seeing in our modding community, it's a very small price to pay to get the word out there a bit more about donations.

Many mod authors have expressed that they don't want to make a living from their modding hobby, but a free cup of coffee or pint of beer every now and again goes a long way to making them happy and content with the tens, hundreds and even thousands of hours they put into modding. And happy mod authors are often better mod authors in my book. Most of all, it doesn't hurt anyone. Unless one extra click hurts you (if so, you might want to see a doctor about that).

This new functionality is opt-in for all mod authors right now. In order to opt-in, you need to fill in your donation preferences on the site and turn on the options in all the files that you want to turn donations on for. If you'd previously turned on donations for all your files then all your files will continue to have donations on by default, but the donation box is not on by default. Which leads us to the next quick update.

Donations are no longer global across all your file pages. Originally, you either turned donations on for all your files or none of your files. This led to a few issues because many mod authors collaborate with other authors, which resulted in a donation button showing for one mod author but not another. Which is not ideal. So now you can cherry pick the exact files you want to show a donation button for and what files you don't. The option to turn on the pre-download donation box is another option on top of that which, once again, you can specify on a per-file basis.

We still have a glaring issue of how, or even if, we can split donations between mod teams. The problem is that I really, really, do not want to touch any donation money. I don't want to act as a middle-man between a user and a mod author when it comes to donations, I'd just rather a user donated to a mod author directly. The inherent problem with that is, because there's no way of knowing what file a donation was for, there's no way of being able to differentiate between a donation for a file that an author made on their own and a donation for a file an author made with a team. It's something we're going to have to think about, because the only way I can think of getting around that particular issue is having some sort of Steam Wallet style system in place on the Nexus that records all the donations sent for all files and mod authors. And I absolutely loathe that idea.


Permission changes regarding paid mods

The modding community, especially with Bethesda games, is built on mods that use assets from other mods. Many mods are stand-alone and use completely unique or vanilla assets, but many also use assets from other mods. On top of that, many modders release their mods as "modders resources", essentially saying to people "take whatever you want from my mod and use it in yours". The introduction of paid for mods changes that. Some mod authors have already taken their mods down because they're afraid their assets or even their entire mods will be stolen and added to the new Steam Workshop without their permission. Many more have said they are now unsure if they'll ever release another modder's resource again.

We obviously do not want that to happen, and the fact it has happened already leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The taste of one side of what money is bringing to modding. We've even had our first mod taken down from the paywall section of Skyrim Workshop related to this issue, less than 24 hours in. And these were the mods vetted by Valve and Bethesda themselves! Gooooood start. Big sarcastic thumbs up.

While I'm talking about this fear of mods or assets being stolen, I feel I need to point out a massive, glaring issue with this new Workshop implementation, because right now people are focusing on "Oh my god, you mean I might need to pay for some mods?" while I think an even more horrific thing is "Oh my god, you mean I will have to pay to check and make sure if someone has stolen my work!?". Let me explain. The new implementation is set up so that there's a 7-day grace period after an author uploads a file with a pricetag. During these 7 days users can view the file page, look at the pictures and read the description, but they cannot download the file. The idea of this grace period is to get the community to police new uploads before they're added to make sure that nothing bad is added to the paid section of the site. Seems like a good idea. Except if a mod author is using stolen assets from other people's mods.

Unless the thief is pants on head stupid they're not going to talk about stealing assets from other mods or put up pictures that would suggest assets have been stolen. The only way the authors of the assets that have been stolen will know it's happened is if someone buys the mod and then tells the author. At which point the author is either going to have to engage in the new world of mod piracy (which began yesterday in earnest) or they're going to have to buy the mod for themselves. So you want to say, "But Dark0ne, the author can buy the mod, investigate, then ask for a refund, as there's a refund system!". Yes, there's a refund system. A refund system that refunds you in Steam Wallet money that you can never take out of Steam. So once you've bought that mod, that money will always be Valve's from that point on. Refund or not. That, I'm sorry to say, is flying rodent gak. Freaking. Crazy. Add to that the fact that the mod may have made substantial sums of money before it's spotted, some of which may have already been paid to the thief, or alternatively has been removed from the thief's account before they could get the payout and, guess where the money goes then? That's right. Valve's coffers.

So if you're wondering why some mod authors have pulled their mods already, if you think it's silly or a daft knee-jerk reaction, you might want to rethink your position. I'm most definitely not trying to encourage more mod authors to do that, but I won't begrudge them doing it, and I'm also not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend like it isn't happening just so some mod authors don't find out the ugly truth and stick around. I think everyone should know everything there is to know about this. What I'd rather people did was put some pressure on Valve to find a way around this awful idea of profiting off stolen mods. Even if it's a way of refunding money properly instead of it being Steam Wallet money, that'd be a good start. My other idea would be for Valve to offer to donate any money that came from proven stolen mods that have been taken down to charity. That would be an awesome gesture.

In light of this issue, and because I know a lot of mod authors have either come out on one side or the other on the issue, we've added a new permissions check box to file page settings (found under "Edit Attributes", towards the bottom). The setting reads "Users can not use my assets in any mods/files that are being sold, for money, on Steam Workshop or other platforms". You can either tick it or untick it, and that information will be displayed under the Permissions and Credits link as per usual.

It's important that's there to ensure that users can still provide a blanket "Yes, you can use my work in your mods" statement while also clarifying "except if you're going to charge for it", or "even if you charge for it", depending on where you stand. This box is ticked by default. You will need to untick it if you want to allow mod authors to profit off your work.

Time will only tell how well Valve and Bethesda are going to handle these issues, and I'd say stolen assets being used in paid mods is one of, if not the biggest issue right now. Some of the rumours going around are not nice to hear, but we've got to let the dust settle and see what comes of all of this. It's too early to tell. I appreciate it's ironic to say that after I just had a little rant, but my god, it's already freaking happened, less than a day in, and I've smashed my head in to my desk on more than one occasion today in disbelief because of it. So not a great start from Valve and Bethesda, but yes, it's still to early to tell.