[Monetization] Mods & Communities

BeamNG.drive players are spending $$$ on mods and races outside Beamng on Discord and Patreon. A dedicated in-game marketplace would benefit everyone:

For Players:

• Easy access to paid content & direct support for creators
• Discovery and access to mods, communities & races
• Pay-per-event races

For Creators:

• DRM protection for mods (this popular modder stopped due to piracy quixoticms com/beamngmods )
• Fair revenue sharing
• Increased visibility
• Tools for managing content

For BeamNG Developers:

• Increased revenue
• Stronger player base
• Empowered creators
• Improved player experience

Let's build a vibrant BeamNG community with a dedicated marketplace!

P.S.

I am a senior platform product manager for developer created content so I have experience building healthy ecosystems.

 

Agree

 

These two contradict each other

Minecraft is an iconic example where Java edition there are tons of mods with a vibrant community, where Bedrock edition(F*** Microsoft) has virtually zero free mods and the majority of marketplace fueled by microtransaction are low-effort content.

Please, do not introduce late stage capitalism here

 

It's not too late to edit all that out

 

Listen, no one would pay for a vehicle/map mod that costs as much as the game itself.

 

Some people straight up won't pay for mods at all, I'm one of them. As soon as I see [PAID] I just straight-up ignore it

 

I believe the developers already working on something like this or at least conceptualizing it.

The last game conference they went to. I remember they specifically made a post asking to meet anyone who has experience in building user generated content marketplaces.


i’ve always had the argument that BeamNG probably should invest in making someway to allow creators to get money because the current system is really not safe, not transparent and and has no consumer protections as I’m sure there’s a lot of paid mods that just stopped getting updated.
I’m sure there’s some people who take money for mods and just never fix them or they are trash to begin with but they can’t charge back because they normally “donated” the money and got a link.

If BeamNG owned the marketplace, this would allow them to enforce some quality control and a minimum amount of updates a mod must have if you would also like to charge money for it.

I think a lot of players get angry about paying for mods, but they think of it as black-and-white, either paid and not paid. I believe there’s a grey area of free, but you can donate to the creator.
Again, in a safe way that would also benefit BeamNG since they can get some of the revenue to help support the games development because without the game that would be no mods.

 

In Fortnite, creators earn money for the maps they create!​

 

"Highest quality vehicles from scratch" is where noone has an issue. The problems arise when people want to capitalise off of peoples naivity and generosity. People will throw a Forza model onto a Sunburst JBeam file and sell it for £25 labelling it as a "quality mod". Thats what people disagree with.
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But to add to that, with a dedicated marketplace, alot of the scam mods would be straight up denied, so it may be beneficial to that extent. The other end of the spectrum is that it will normalise paid mods and we will no longer get free ones.

 

It's already bad enough we are starting to get 20$ part packs *Cough subwoofers pack Cough*. Don't give that a place to thrive!!!

 

Same here.