Sleeper Service wrote:Interesting developments. This will most likely never matter for FTL though, as there are no plans for full moding support or even a steam workshop. And I sad it before: CE will always be free to use, so even if there would be a workshop I wouldn't put CE behind a paywall. If anyone absolutely wants to reward my contributions to the mod, then you can already do so through my
patreon.
I agree that there are potentially a lot of issues connected to payed workshop content. Whatever one thinks about TB, I'd say he made some good points in a
vid on the topic. What I find especially disgusting is that people already start to upload other peoples mods under their own name on the workshop for profit, basically stealing and exploring other peoples work.
I also agree that valve appears a little greedy in this whole endeavor. Then again we don't know what kind of deal they made with Bethesda, maybe Valve just takes it's usual 30%-40% cut and Bethesda gets the rest, who knows?
A point that hasn't been discussed a lot yet is weather modding is really considered "work" by the author or user. I think many people initially mod for fun and I believe the most successful modding project originate from a situation where people where just totally enthralled by extending a game they truly love. Then again, that does not mean that modding could not be monetized. I love patreon for this purpose, because its based on voluntary decisions and trust. It would be sweet to be able to live from creating game content, but I'd stick with allowing people to voluntarily donate for my "work" any time.
But in the end we don't really have a say in this. There might be a strong backlash and steam might pull back, or it might not. I guess users who think this pay-wall system is dumb can boycott it, youtube celebs can speak out against it, but steam effectively holds a monopoly and they could go through with this if they want.
But hey wane get full out sociological on this? Heres the catch: what we see here isn't even that new. This is a phenomenon that already affects society as a whole - peoples live as a whole being more and more governed by principles of profit maximization. The lines between work and freetime becoming burred. This doesn't just means working more overtime, answering company mails on holiday or having a corporate culture that makes you office look like your living room. It also includes the monetization of hobbies. For gaming, payed steam workshop content what
dawanda is for handycraft. When I was 16 I made campaigns for warcraft 3 for fun. But when my kid makes campaigns for warcraft 4 it might consider getting payed for them? One can find this amazing, weird or scarry, but this seems to be the way the world is going.