Beamn.com is the only website most people trust. I did mention quality checks to make sure the price isn't sky high for a lazy effort mod.
Yeah. Quality check and price limit would be really great for this feature. But, I think that using gumroad or patreon is more easier since that the beamng team does not need to code this feature.
This is objectively a good idea, if someone wants money for their hard work then they should be allowed to charge people, idk why some people disagree with this, probably most mods would still be free
I do understand, but gumroad only has 1 beamng mod currently by LBE. Patreon beamng mods are usually more configurations for a free mod(aka an extension)
Why we are discussing about this? Modders can get this problem out like @SergentFido , I know there are some kind people that can donate for modders. Correct me if I wrong --- Post updated --- In American Fullsize series thread
I'm quoting you (hi Agent, how are you?), but I want to talk about it more generally, why actually objectively this can be very problematic. 1. Technical problems: When a mod is free, there's no "give and take" relationship between the modder and the player. Apart from not having a virus, nothing is expected from the mod. It's broken? Well, that sucks, but you the player lost nothing but a few minutes of your life. And the modder lost nothing but a few stars on his mod page (happened to the best of us). Now, what if a new version of the game breaks a paid mod? What if the author doesn't want to keep working on it, or can't because he's busy? I can't work on my mods anymore because I am busy IRL, I believe many of them are broken nowadays, but I can't do much about it. If it was paid, I'd basically be ripping people off with broken mods that they've paid for (and even if I remove them from the mod repository because I'm a moral person, people who brought them before would not be able to play them so they won't get what they paid for). Without discussing legal issues- which I'm sure there are plenty- it's problematic. 2. Quality: Who gets to decide what mods should be paid and what shouldn't? What dictates the price? I don't think Beamng forum staff would want anything to do with that, they have enough on their hands. How would this work? We've all encountered amazing mods, but also some really bad ones. How can you make sure people get their money's worth? But all of these problems only lead to the actual issue with these idea: 3. Hostility: A good lesson in life, not just in video games, is whenever money is involved, people stop being nice. Some people might exploit paid mods to make a quick buck. Sure, most modders will probably still be driven by love for the game, and money is just a nice way to know your work is appreciated, but some would probably... well... have other objectives, shall we say. Possible exploitation of this system can lead to misrepresentation, spamming, fake reviews, fake accounts, phishing attempts, and so on, and would turn forum moderation into a nightmare. And leaving borderline (or past that) illegal practices aside- People would generally be mean to each other for various reasons. Whether it's because someone feels like he payed more than what he got is worth, or because one modder took another modder's idea and executed it better (or worse) and thus getting the other modder's downloads (money), or a million other reasons. If we want to keep this community friendly, paid mods can't be here. (They can be somewhere else though- like someone's own webpage. I'm all in favor of modders getting something in return for their hard work). But that's just my opinion
Relying on donations is extremely risky, Being able to sell mods grants stability. And selling would be optional, so free mods would stay free. donations are based on whether the consumers are generous or not.
Na Mate, i was not talking about the world outside BeamNG. i was talking about how BeamNG Team will never have mods where you must yield your income/earnings since it will split up the players between who can get the mods and who cannot.
Good forseeing! here are my replies(please take kindly to these) 1. here's a Terms of service term that would solve it: for every dollar your content costs is 6 months of making sure your content is supported. If an update breaks any content you paid or are selling, please report it in the broken mod reporting thread. Failure to keep up support will result in all users getting a refund from your billing info provided. You also claim legal responsibility for any actions by submitting paid content to the website. 2. quality is based on the details, realism, uniqueness and additional features in vehicle mods. quality for maps is based on how big the map is and how good it looks. quality for scenarios is based on how entertaining it is. prop quality is by the functions and appearance. 3.You just explained amazon as a website, people angry about costs, fake reviews and unofficial sales. if paid mods can't be here, they'll probably be on mods.beamng.com or some alternate website. someone's webpage won't really get more than a thousand visits. Your opinion is fine, I just really thought of a way for modders to actually get money for their effort and get rewarded. --- Post updated --- mod full form: modification files for a video game, not staff moderators.
Good points but the solutions to them are simple. 1. Implement a system where paid mods can't be downloaded until manually checked by the devs if everything works as intended. 2. The mod author decides if it should be paid or not, and decides the price, and the devs have to review that to make sure it's worth its price. It would be a complex process, could lead to most people not bothering to make paid mods, but it's the only fair solution I can come up with. 3. With the strict moderation we have here, anyone who attempts anything illegal or dishonest with this sytem would definitely get instantly banned once it's discovered lol
You can express your opinion in a much less aggressive manner, people would respect you and your opinions more that way Iirc other sites have high cuts from the sites themselves since that's their main income source, but beam already makes money from people buying the game so they wouldn't need it as much. Plus, mods get a LOT more traffic from the official repo since this is the main go-to site for mods and the in-game repo
Just for it to break after 6 months because of an update? No thanks. --- Post updated --- Alot of people treat beamNG mods as a SIDE PROJECT, not a job, which is fine, but it means that they rarely get updated, because each time they break they need alot of work to get working again. It's not like modmakers like Felis for X-Plane 11, where when a bug comes along, him and his team can fix it and keep the mod alive for absolutely ages ,