A big issue would be the amount of mods submitted, and how throughly they would need to be vetted. In this case, there would need to be strict investigations to make sure no content was stolen, no issues with the mod and all that to a higher degree than the regular repo. This would backlog the system and making a 'verified creator' or ensuring that access is restricted to modders paying to upload their mods would remove much of the traffic that would otherwise be garbage
maybe make it so you need to apply to be a verified creator, and have proved yourself by releasing other high quality mods in the past and obviously have what it takes to make paid content
This just came up in a Discord I'm in and it's something that always comes to mind with this. I feel like there's a disconnect between creators and consumers with this, because while they understand "yes it's work", they haven't done the process and don't fully comprehend "wow, that's a lot of work" Digital goods are so often undervalued, people will see an indie game the creators put MONTHS of work into, released for $10, and think "Wow that's expensive, I'll pirate it instead". If you have a side hustle that involves IDK, knitting hats, people will tell you "OMG You should open a store for that", they don't tell you "WTF are you doing asking for money, get a job at a place that makes that". Besides, the reality with that is you'd get hired and not be allowed to make the product you love, just like in the digital world. I suppose it's all the same reason people will casually ask a "tech savvy" friend "hey can you make an app for me?" and get shocked at "yes, but pay me". But if you asked a carpenter to refurbish a room for you they'd think you're crazy for asking for free work. As someone who's skills are almost entirely in the digital world, I come across this often, and it's disappointing time and time again. Even relatives and friends will look at things and be like "ok cool" as if it's nothing, and so IRL I've stopped talking about any kind of work I do to people. I'm not here to say "all mods should be paid", but I am in favor of an officially endorsed store because I know the passion and work that goes into creators high quality mods.
I'm kind of half-hearted on this one. It would be a good idea to add an official system on repo but there must be a minimum of high quality content posted by that creator to be verified and actually mark it as paid. But what about the leakers? I'm no tech whizz so I don't even know what the actual f DRM is but some tech whizz should probably find a way to prevent copy and pasting files on webpages or some other places. And the state of the community? I'm going to be a bit biased on this one since I don't like paying online that much but we occasionally need at least 2 or 3 free high quality mods on repo because there are people out there such as kids who play this game and uses someone else's money. The modding scene will soon move away from free content and there will be nothing left.
Its just that when Steam tried this out for Dark Souls (I think it was Dark Souls) the project went horribly wrong and was cancelled, so I'm not sure if it would work well for Beam
I can relate to this, showing family members something I'm working on in blender and they barely take an interest. Yet when they saw me painting up an old Hornby model they stuck around for half an hour. Same thing happens with digital vs physical drawings I do. Although in regards to the Digital vs Physical trade, I believe the bias is somewhat understandable. With the trade and production of physical goods comes material costs, materials which are then in-turn sold onto the customer (though perhaps now in another form). They are tactile, you can actually see and feel the item which you have bought, they have physical substance. e.g; Buying a wooly hat usually covers the cost of the materials used to make said hat, plus labour costs for turning it from just some wool into a hat. With digital goods? You get some code and it takes up a little space on your hard drive. You can see it, but there is no substance - and more importantly, no 'material costs'. With digital goods, its literally just labour costs. People like to forget about labour costs - which leaves the physical goods with material costs, and digital goods with nothing.
BeamNG itself is DRM-free, if you put DRM-encumbered mods in a DRM-encumbered game, then OK, neutral BeamNG itself is DRM-free, why Beam devs chose not to implement DRM? And why should they make a DRM system just for you(and your supporters)? Making dev-quality mods does not justify the use of DRM in a DRM-free game. I don't think that an added DRM resulting overwhelmingly negative recent reviews is "somewhat effective" Here, are, some, examples. This already happened in VRChat. I agree with your opinion of the use of DRM-free mods, but IMHO, the use of word "restriction" in the place of "protection" would be better. And that's bad because
They probably don't know how... If i were a game dev and I saw a massive chunk of the community arguing over x then I would be very careful as to stay neutral and not piss off anyone.
12 pages late but There is a game called MX bikes on steam which uses a different zip file(.pkz) that the developer has made possible to lock to your GUID (Game ID) A third party made a website (MX bikes shop) Where you buy tracks and it locks to the GUID you have connected to your account on the website. It's definitely been a bit of a split in the community and the website kinda rubs me the wrong way when they take 50% of the profit and offer NO Refunds. But at the end of the day I am supporting the talented modders and there has definitely been an increase in the amount of tracks coming out for the game. (free and paid) A lot of people saying just put up donations. Well I don't know if the beamng donations are similar to what happens in MX bikes but donations are extremely rare and majority of the donations are from other modders. I don't believe donations could ever work because let's be real no one is going to donate unless there is an incentive. I'm guilty of just blasting past the donation link and hitting download. Also a lot of the time donations through PayPal etc get slammed with fees
real brands already aren't allowed on the repo. as for cars that simply copy a design? if rockstar is charging $20 of ingame currency for the "Karin 300R", a DLC car that looks exactly like a nissan 400Z, I don't think there's much cause for concern. As I see it, a .dae/.jbeam based model of a car (probably) legally falls under the same umbrella as a clay sculpture or painting of a car; it's an artistic rendition of it; it's not technically accurate to the real car, nor does it function as a real car. any revenue gained from "stealing the design" is the same revenue you could argue a painter is stealing when they paint a canvas of a Pagani Zonda. As for people getting grifted with meshslaps, which seems quite likely to happen if nothing's done, as they're already the largest market for paid mods; The inherent expectation of paid mods should be that they're reasonably high quality. That means that only a small amount should ever be uploaded, so the moderators can take their time judging and vetting the quality of the mods. -Perhaps there's a minimum quality bar for upload at all (no errors/conflicts, all assets need to be either scratch-made, reused from the game, or have permission in writing, etc. basically the current system with more dilligence) -Secondly, require that the uploader already has one roughly equivalent quality mod available for free (as is LJ's Claria or LBE's K-series). -Third, as lucas has suggested, some sort of "Verified creator" rank given to people deemed to make good enough quality mods. they could reasonably give this to quite a few people, but revoke it if anyone is using it dubiously (and ban people confirmed to be abusing, as they already do.) -Lastly, the moderators/devs/(verified modders?) get a separate star rating system, which will likely be more critical than the public one, perhaps even split into categories (quality, quantity of content, etc.) On the topic of DRM, I think there are too many hurdles (in both logistics and technical implementation) for now to warrant the devs working on it, even if they implement Official paid mod support now, they could always add DRM later. As I see it, having grounds to manually file a DMCA is enough to deter most mod reupload sites. (as a question to @LucasBE and @LJ74 , after requesting a takedown to a website, did any put the mod back up again later?)
If this gets approved, please make it possible to pay through steam, as it can makes things easier, for example for the people that don’t have a credit card yet, which could lead to more sales
Exactly why I’m saying this, atleast for me it’s way easier, and it brings more money, even if the prices are a bit higher I wouldn’t care, but I would finally buy them
Maybe in addition to the official pay repo it would be a so-called dlc version for steam users, this system uses omsi 2 too, becuse some users have no Creditcard and they can only pay per Vallet cards like the steam gift card ore an Other way they made an paysave card pay Option the paysavecard is an giftcard like card but the only two bad Things are the cards are only available in germany and Austria and if you will See your Rest money you need an my paysavecard account ore you calculate how mutch you have
Since I've thrown the idea about before, I obviously agree that this is necessary. Paid mods are already a thing either way, and having an official system for this would make things simpler to buy, create more exposure for the mods, and make sure certain standards are met. Steam naturally already supports this sort of stuff, does Humble?
