Patreon, Paid mods & BeamNG.drive

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you realise that the final product will be free. it's only the early access stuff that'll be paid.

 

I'll be the devils advocate in this situation.
If you feel you deserve payment for your content, that's fair. Once you require payment for your mods though, you've created a competitive market. Just like in any market, the cheaper option is likely going to sell more. Just seems to me success would be hard to come by if money is your only concern when creating content.
It's also worth considering that most mod users and more vocal mod supporters are clearly underage and likely don't have the money to purchase content. You have every right as a content creator to request payment for your work, but the consumer has every right not to purchase your work. I'd imagine the notoriety of paid content would be far less than that of free content. If a few bucks if your only concern, then that probably doesn't matter to you anyhow.
I likely would not pay for mods. I seldom even download free mods unless they're of the highest workmanship.
I'd consider purchasing a mod if it happens to be something I specifically wanted or of the upmost quality, though legitimate high-quality content is hard to come by on these forums. I'd purchase content made per my request if the service was offered by a proven content creator as well.

I can appreciate the work content creators put in, but this community isn't the right one for paid mods. More than anything though, I think it boils down to a logistics issue for the author to consider.
My $0.02

 

Paid mods have been discussed here on the forums quite a bit; we have a couple of threads discussing that topic. One of the more controversial highlights regarding paid BeamNG mods in recent times was when aljowen made the Raven R20 mod available in two different versions: free and paid. The latter is described as the Supporter Tier edition and comes with a couple of extra bells and whistles if you support aljowen's works, but that explanation wasn't enough to prevent some backlash from happening. Seeing that other games such as Grand Theft Auto V, Assetto Corsa, and rFactor have offered both free and paid mods with little to no issues, shouldn't the modders have the right to do the same for BeamNG? After all, making quality content requires time and dedication.

Funny thing is, if you were to disguise them as early-access content on platforms such as Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee, then people are generally less likely to criticize them. (The human nature sure is weird and complicated, but it is what it is.) Supporting your favorite content creators is optional, and you do get a few extra perks (like gaining the right to receive early-access content) as a special thanks if you choose to do so. In addition, staff members like Nadeox1 are okay with content creators charging extra, as long as you discuss this with them first.

Theoretically, paid mods could prevent unwanted leaks onto third-party websites as you would have to issue some form of payment to gain access to the exclusive content. That being said, it could also become a double-edge sword as some notorious individuals would want to make them public anyway. In the case of the Raven R20, so far I haven't seen the Supporter Tier version leaked onto third-party websites, but that's probably because of how aljowen enforced leaks (if one were to leak the paid version then that person would be barred from receiving future updates).

In general, I don't mind paid mods for BeamNG if other game communities allow them. Especially if seen as a privilege for supporting a modder on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee, it serves as a win for the content creator as his/her works are appreciated by a group of people, which will add more motivation to create quality content, and ultimately lead to more well-made, high-quality mods for the whole community to enjoy.

 

In my opinion, it’s up to the creator to do what he wants with his stuff. If he wants to charge money, you pay. Within reason, of course.

 

So its kinda like youtube

 

How exactly do you think the resources to make content is acquired?..

Let's consider how much it costs BeamNG GMBH to make something like an official car or map.. Of course comparing the company itself to an individual community member isn't a direct comparison, but if you want dev quality mods then you ought to understand the scale of the recourses required for the real stuff.

I don't know what Fischer pays his employees nor what fair pay would be for a German company with employees worldwide, but I do work in engineering management in the US and 75k/year is considered average for a mechanical engineers first year out of college with average prior experience. Obviously not everyone in the team is in their first year out of college but let's just call it 75k/year/person for this conversation (in other words, underestimating the number). IIRC the FCV took 9 months to build, so let's call it 56k per employee per car. The vehicle team is somewhere around 15 people, so let's say 10 of them are dedicated to the newest car. 10 vehicle artists at 56k each isn't exactly a negligible number even using starting salary as the average, and I haven't even mentioned the cost of anything other than base salary (Overhead is a thing too). Now consider how much longer it takes the team to make a map than it does a vehicle...

If someone expects fair compensation for their work then what is the problem? Sure it's great if they want to donate their time, but it isn't fair to expect them to do so.

 

paywalls keep moron children away from pointless "bug" reports
sure why not

 

I looked at the previous responses, I was amazed how much people would be willing to pay for high quality mods. (And how quickly an unmoderated text entry gets offensive responses.)

 

you are poor lole

 

so, every time you eat in a restaurant, having to pay for your food is greedy?
I think paid content can be fine,i f you are paying for a high quality piece of work from someone who has proved themself to be a good modder.
paid mods for other games have worked well.
id say, if you dont have the time, skills or resources to do/make something then it is worth paying for

 

I've said this before in another thread, but even people who give things away for free are benefitting in some way, either financially via other means or through experience/exposure.

 

i think that we should just not lol
look at how bethesda went with it, hot garbage

 

Just because you and your buddies can't make anything worth paying for in beam doesn't mean anyone else can't atleast try

 

I think I’d be behind it. I probably wouldn’t buy them, but I think it’s totally fair. I assume free mods would probably start fading away if people were willing to pay, so that’d be a shame, but it could be where one person pays for it to be publicly released.

 

Donations often don't amount to all that much and paying people in "exposure" is another way of saying they aren't getting fairly compensated.

Bethesda rarely gets anything right when it comes to community relations. That doesn't mean community relations is impossible to do well, just that this particular company is incompetent at it (more like they did a cost analysis and realized it's cheaper to not care about the playerbase).

 

I don't mean that in the sense that consumers are justified in considering exposure as compensation, I don't believe that's their decision to make, but if a creator decides that this is satisfactory then that's their prerogative. People do have their passion projects, but there's always something to be gained from sharing it with the world.

 

you were right the forum members are freaking out

 

adblockers