As Lydia would say: "Oh, look, a distribution scheme, I wonder what is in it", and later on, "I have a bad feeling about this..."

Having worked for several years in a top-tier business strategy consultancy, I can see many possible profit-oriented intentions behind this move, which might impact negatively the freedom of the current modding community, indirectly if not directly. Also, the naivety of many commentators regarding matters that ultimately deal with structuring business to maximize profits, never ceases to amaze me.

On the other hand, if this encourages many creative modders to rather continue working with Oblivion, I will only be happy. Skyrim is certainly impressive, but in my mind also a bit grim and depressing. To quote an in-game farmer: "There has not been a merry man in Skyrim for 200 years". I do feel that Oblivion has a more intimate, friendly and enjoyable atmosphere, and I look forward to enjoying Oblivion mods long after I have played through Skyrim.

+1

Once again, I wish to emphasis the importance of Valve's relationship with the modding community.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/17500/

Here is one of the many mods hosted on Steam's servers that you can directly download from them. Can you tell me how any profit is being made from this?

Alright. First of all, don't call people stupid and ignorant when you're in fact wrong.

1. The Nexus site looses traffic.
2. There doesn't need to be a 2... the Nexus site getting unpopular makes it all that bad.
3. They're delaying the CK because of this.
4. Waste of time.
5. Useless.
6. There's already a site for mods.
7. The Steam Workshop has terrible organization (imagine 250,000 mods, only organized through "most downloaded").
8. Most people don't like the idea.
9. Waste of money.
10. Think... what GOOD comes out of this? I don't see how this can be a good thing at all.

I'm not sure where the thought of Bethesda/Valve putting mods on Steamworks without the authors consent came from but I think that is very, very unlikely. Mod uploads will be with consent from the author, but I assume they'll be integrating an upload system in to the CK to make it as simple as possible to do.

As for charging for mods, according to the http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement this does not seem to be consensual and they will be allowed to do this with any mod uploaded to Steamworks, but they will offer to share 25% of the profits with you if they do charge for your mod. From the terms:


So they can pick and choose which mods are mods you have to pay for, and they choose the amount users have to pay for the mod, not you. You can be paid but it's not consentual. And the last bit basically says they can make mods "that are similar to Your Contribution" and that you will only get paid for your mod, and not mods they make that are basically the same as yours. So yep, they can host your mod, charge for it, and if it makes enough money get a developer to make a copy of your mod (not an actual copy, but something that does the same thing), stop charging for your mod and start charging for theirs. Would they do that? Unlikely. Can they do that. Yup!

This is a whole new world of stuff that has the potential to complicate things horribly for the community. Still, as I said, we have so little information so you have to go off what is currently available. Those are the terms for uploading your content to Steamworks.

That is completely different.

lolwut

Their original statement* in like, May was that it should ship with the game. T.T

I'd imagine it'd happen the same way some mods get posted to various other sites without the authors consent.

Someone else claims to be the author and uploads it.

I know, entirely different because you said so!


1. With the inevitability of the steam workshop rejecting all of the nvde and six mods, the nexus will always have these available, and these mods unfortunately seem to be among the most popular in the Nexus already.
2. So Steam taking a load of the Nexus server and providing us with two fast mod download services is a bad thing? I can't possibly imagine how this is going to make the nexus unpopular, as like I said they both appeal to different audiences.
3. Nice source bro.
4. Cool opinion bro.
5. Cool opinion bro.
6. Which buckles under heavy traffic and has tons of ads.
7. You have absolutely no idea how it will look when the Skyrim creation kit is released. The current layout is designed to accompany TF2 items.
8. Out of ignorance maybe. Speaking of ignorance, where was I wrong at all in this post? Because you subjectively disagree with me?
9. Not even going to bother with this one.
10. Let's see, along with a high speed download service for mods, an easy install service, more mod publicity, less strain on the nexus among other things, I'd say a pretty whole lot.


I download up to 4 mb/s off of steam servers. At the most on the nexus I get 500 kb/s

random musing...
Might not be possible when your CK is linked to your steam account, you are effectively marked as the author on the official distribution network. theft of esps can be made more difficult at least, it could require some extra steps to decompile and to get your stolen esp into your CK and resave it, essentially no one would want to do that as their steam account will get locked if they are caught out.

TESNexus will never become unpopular. If anything, the additional mirror will take pressure off DarkOne's server's, which will make Nexus more profitable/less cost intensive to run, will give us better download speeds, etc.

If "there is already a site for mods" was an excuse for not making a site, TESN probably wouldn't be around today.

Most people are fine or apathetic about the idea. The forums are a small, but vocal minority, and even of those not all are vehemently opposed to the idea.

Good? Mods reach more people. More mirrors, less chance to loose a mod, better download speeds. More options for hosting. Easier install for those who want it. More exposure for artists.

No, it's really not.

The thing you linked is completely different, and not just because I said so. The mod is a stand-alone mod. No requirements whatsoever. It does not require Half-Life 2. Mods for Skyrim will require Skyrim, except for the total conversions, such as Nehrim for Oblivion (and even that required you to own Oblivion). So, once again, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

That is very benign, I am sure. However, always keep in mind, that one of the oldest tricks in the book is "bait and switch". One has to be far sighted enough to foresee how things may develop overtime. Perhaps not this year or the next, but once a free structure gets centralized, there may appear a further move to benefit from that centralization. But to be honest, there is little point in even arguing about that, because although this move creates various possibilities, it really boils down to what the actual intention is, and that we do not know.

Isn't that more commonly called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#As_a_fallacy, with regards to the 'bait and switch' and far sight aspect.

I believe this is all in reference to TF2 items, Dark0ne, which the contribution site started off for in the first place.

By the way, thank you for your amazing contributions to the modding community. You are a fantastic human being.

wat. No seriously, what.

And one of the newest tricks in the book is customer relations. Be good to your community and they'll come back for more later. Valve does it, and Bethesda is attempting to right now, unless the fear-mongers here have anything to say about it.

Is your download location set correctly?


"This game requires that you own a Source engine game such as Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2, or Day of Defeat: Source. Click here for a full list of games that meet this requirement. Please note that Portal: First Slice and the bundled Half-Life 2: Deathmatch do not fulfill this requirement."

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK_Installation

The Source SDK is freely available to all Steam users.

You can't be serious? Oh he gets less traffic that's a good thing! No, that's a bad thing. Sure it becomes less expensive to run, but it also equates to less money coming in (less visitors less money, that applies to almost everything). Your example is like saying, man I hope they open a Walmart (official) across from a Mom+Pop store (unofficial). That way more business leaves the Mom+Pop store meaning I can get in and out faster! That would also put the Mom+Pop store out of business...Now that might not be 100% accurate because we don't know if mods will cost money on Steamworks yet, but it is close enough. TESN came around as a better alternative and look what it did to the other site. It didn't pop up out of the kindness of the guys heart so the other website would get less traffic. Its called fragmentation and people will gravitate to the best version. If anything, this could be bad for the Nexus.

Possible Scenario:

So they'll just dangle the dollar carrot in front of every decent mod creator,
who will in most cases go for it (hard to blame them for that), and bye bye
free mods and great community and hello micro transaction hell pay Beth
for the content others make (and would of made for free).

Will they only do this for the best/most popular mods, or will they do this
on an increasing scale so in the end we will have to pay for most of them?

If you can submit your mod and have a chance to get paid, you will. That
mod will never see the light of day over at the increasingly shrinking and
into Oblivion sinking (how poetic and fitting), Nexus site.

Maybe it will all be good, but for the third time tonight...they are not doing
this out of the goodness of their hearts. There will be money to be paid,
paid by us.

You are wrong they don't attempt it. They did for a long time pretty well but they are now on the way to change the conditions and not for the better as it seems.

Nope, no paid requirements whatsoever, http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/id0jc/free_to_play_tf2_free_source_mods/

I routinely hit 5.5mb/s on Steam, make sure your DL location is properly set. (Also not set to an overloaded server)

I'm curious as to why you people are even trying to shoehorn a F2P multi-player game's Workshop model into a pay-once single-player game's Workshop model. Where is the reasoning?