Modders: We need to talk

The thing is for example what about people who have no money. I live with my parents and I'm in high school (second year) don't have much money and my job goes to money to buy a suv and my car payment. I.need to save money. I'm now driving my moms car because my crown Vic is totaled. Long story short paying for mods is a bad idea

 

no, if there were paid mods MORE people would use the russian site.

 

Exactly.

 

Russia as a whole really screws up a lot of nice things. Sorry @NotLikeThis, they are a dishonest crude and ugly people. But yeah this will all get worked out I'm sure. Donation is a good concept. I'd donate money for good mods and I'd buy the game again once it's no longer in beta. At this point in my life I don't play other games really. Beamng

 

Donations does sound better than paid mods, and I think having paid mods will force alot of people to start looking at Russian free sites unfortunately. A donation based system would work, there are plenty of people that would donate, when I bought the game and played for about 10min I donated a good amount.

 

Well, that's just incredibly rude and untrue.

It's not the price, but it's the fact that the user has to pay. If you're willing to set up payment on BeamNG and pay $0.10, might as well pay $0.99.

Just like Veritasium's video about YouTube Red, they went with monthly payments instead of pay-per-view, even if it's just one cent, because it's enough of an inconvenience to make the user look elsewhere.

 

This is wrong. Why should we loyal Beamng people like Ybr and me and everybody else have to pay for mods because of the damn Russian idiots. I donated 50$ when I bought the game

 

See the thing is regarding money, thats on you.

 

I haven't ever made a mod, but I think donations is the way to go. I'm agaisnt paid mods, because I have a bad computer and can't run most things. Like I buy a mod that looks good, but it runs on 12 fps on me and I can't really play and there is nothing I can do.

 

I empathize with the broke and young guys here. It wasn't long ago I was at the mercy of my parents. Never again.

 

tdev, you're going to spend half your development time dealing with angry people who can't get a mod to work, complaining about updates breaking their paid content, being ripped off, etc. Plus pirating mods would become absolutely rampant, those third party Russian websites that everyone complains about would have a surge in traffic, and good paid mods would be uploaded there, where there's very little you can do to stop it unfortunately.

I wholeheartedly do NOT support paid mods. Donations would be a better idea.

Otherwise, the other propositions seems fine with me at least.

 

That's the problem, though. some people can't pay extra for quality mods or just don't want to. I completely agree with paying modders, but for a game surrounded around community creations you shouldn't have to pay for each one individually. It should be on a ratio of how many people download it or the ratings. Not for each individually.

 

Ok, that changes a lot, and could have been more clear. I thought you would get the paid mods in the beta/alpha stages, but it seems you are planning for post release, after we already have a campaign and other stuff.

 

So much stereotypes against Russia. ._.
Grow a brain you people.

 

I know, right. Just call those websites "third-party", it's accurate to what they are without generalization a nation of people.

 

I'm not entirely against paid mods, the idea needs to be discussed and adjusted, but if implemented and managed properly, it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

I don't fully agree with the argument "mods are only done for fun, thus they shouldn't be paid."
They are done for fun, of course, but that is definitely not incompatible with the author being compensated a small bit for his hard work, and all of the hours spent. Because yes, money can be a motivation for a mod maker, if anything, it could motivate modders into creating more high quality content. Therefore, the community would benefit by having more high quality mods, (maybe it's an utopian speculation, I don't know ). Of course, money should never be the one and only motivation for a modder, if that's the case, bad things happen .

And regarding "russian" websites etc. (yeah, I also don't like calling them "russian"), one of the things these websites tell you if you contact them in order to try to get your mod removed is: "oh, but you posted it for free on the internet, it's free, we can use it and post it in our website if we want", and in that situation, there's really not much you can do.
Now, I don't know much about laws etc, but, with paid content, I think they could get more into trouble for sharing paid content for free, and there would be a valid justification to get it taken down.
That said, it's obvious that piracy is impossible to stop, so there's that, but meh.

And also, saying that "paid unofficial content has never worked and never will, because is just not profitable" is false. An example of that is the flight sim community (fsx, p3d, x-plane etc), where paid "mods" are normal, and I'm not talking about 1$ "mods", I'm talking about 20$ "mods", 70$ "mods", or even more. And those exist, and people buy them, because they are worth what they cost, without a doubt. Because there are dedicated teams who work creating these super realistically accurate and state of the art add-ons, (I'm talking of hours and hours and hours of combined work from multiple people). And if those weren't paid content, they would simply not exist. In the flight sim community, free mods are normally way, way far back from the paid ones in terms of quality imo, most of the time it's not comparable. Because there's only a limited amount of work someone can afford to do for free. (again, I'm not saying that money should be the only motivation).

But, what I'm trying to say is, stop seeing paid mods only as a bad thing, they can bring a huge increase in quality.

Hey, but remember, free releases by the author are still an option. I have always released free mods, and I will keep releasing free mods as long as I can, modding is fun .

(off-topic: I think using the word "mod" in here is wrong , "modding" is when most of the effort by the author is put into modifying a game. But with all the facilities we have in BeamNG to create new content, we hardly spend time "modifying" the game, but rather we spend most of the time creating. Creating a new level or a new vehicle is Not "modding", it's creating additional content, or add-ons, or something. Now, the release of an "upgrade" or "change" to an official vehicle, that's what would fit in my definition of a mod ).

 

Wait for the black market of original mods if this is put in place, going to be interesting watching how it goes.

I'm not going to pick a side yet in this debate, there are still many unknowns at this point.