Jun
1st
2023
Know what I can't stand? · 1:22am Jun 1st, 2023
Strangers on social media who think they know everything.
The developers of Valheim have put out a statement of their stance against paid mods.
I've been catching shit for two days for supporting that stance.
"wHy ShOuLdN't MoDdErS gEt PaId???"
Allow me to explain why supporters of paid mods are goddamn fucking morons.
Paid mods will cripple modding scenes everywhere.
Game modding has flourished for the same reason that people have been able to write fanfiction since the internet was created:
Fan authors don't profit when we don't own the IP.
You throw money into the equation, and you'll see a lot more fan works get cease-and-desisted.
Period.
*Drops mic.*
And this is why Twitter is absolute ass garbage and deserves to be thrown into the fire.
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At least Reddit has downvoting, but I'm hearing today that third party apps might have their days numbered, and there are so many people that won't use the main app, myself included.
Not disagreeing with you on this but..
You did say one thing that is not 100% truth. Fanfic writers do get paid for commissions to write stories for others. So by the strictest of definitions some do get paid for writing horse words with horse characters both canon and OC.
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For as long as I've been doing this, I've never considered creating a Patreon for my work, because I've always believed it's a very dangerous gray area. Fanfiction is already a gray area as it is.
Hmm...
I won't say that there's anything inherently wrong with fans trying to make money off their work, because a). like it or not, that's just the world we live in, and b). sometimes money can actually be beneficial to the works themselves.
I'd say the real problem is when outsiders try to corporatize fandoms so they can profit, like when not that long-ago people tried making NFTs of fan art, for example.
Paid mods, absolutely not.
Supported mods, like, hey, throw a couple bucks my way if you like what they're doing, sure. Some mods get pretty complex and then working on them becomes a pretty time consuming affair. Some mods have whole teams of people doing this.
Adding monetization to a hobby is like throwing blood soaked chum into shark infested waters.
It opens the hobby to all sorts of predatory elements that would seek to control and exploit it.
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What happened to Elon Musk nuking Twitter?
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The 'inherently wrong' part is fans do not own the IP. So if they profit, the rightful owners can come in and shut it down, ruining it for everyone.
I get the "donate to help us keep us fed and keep the lights on", but that's a little different than "pay to download this".
But even donations towards specific projects is sketchy; a highly-anticipated Resident Evil 1 fan remake got nuked by Capcom because those idiots were taking money.
Yeah, I can see that. Fair use has always been kind of a push and pull. Fanfiction and fan art are one thing, but Patreons have always been a gray area, and I can imagine a harsh crackdown on paid mods. Hell, just think back to the days of abridged series and how they were constantly under fire, and I don't think any of them directly made money off of their parody content.
On the other hand, IPs also benefit from fan creativity. Hell, I think the Sonic franchise might've ended up in the dumpster for good if it wasn't for fan creativity. But, you know, how many of them were actually dumb enough to cash in on their fan work in an unofficial capacity?
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Musk made the platform worse, but Twitter was always kind of a cesspool.
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Fandoms have absolutely thrived under fan creativity.
I remember watching full episodes of Season 1 on YouTube. Hasbro finally acknowledged us in Season 2.
You're absolutely right with the push and pull, and when money gets involved, the pushing and pulling gets more violent.
I get what what your saying about payed mods and intellectual property, but I feel that the comparison to fan fiction is flawed because they aren't competing for the same market in the same way. Payed mods of a game are essentially selling a modified game's code and firmly falls within the rights of the company. A mod is directly using not just the IP of the producer, but the actual product (the code) itself, competing with the actual developers of the game with essentially another game. Where as fan fiction, while using the IP and deriving from the narrative of the show (or game, etc) the works aren't literally derived from the scripts of the show and are mostly the labor of the artist. MLP Fan Works specifically in general aren't competing with the show with another show, nor are they competing with their mass produced toylines and merch. Hasbro doesn't care about the plushie artist selling customs, but the Chinese factory pumping out mass produced knock offs of their own products. Hasbro has historically only ever gone after animations and games (especially if they use the show style) because they can argue genuine brand confusion and the use of their art style. Fan works are always in a legal gray zone, but they've existed in that legal gray zone with money as always part of that equation. Payed mods are firmly in the black.
I though everyone already figured this out when Skyrim tried it and it was a spectacular failure. So why are we talking about it again?
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Because history often rhymes.
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Because these corporations won't give up so easy.
Paid mods kind of need to be on a level of the morrowblivion, skywind or skyblivion level to justify been paid.
Ok not quite that, but when a mod borders into the range of a legitimate DLC then I'd understand.
Paying money for some cosmetics, fishing or horse armor, no that's not paid material.
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And those would often fall under Total Conversions.
Those almost never come up with enough frequency that paid mods should be a conversation.
Exactly, it would be nice If a company allowed people to get paid for hard work of modding but like it's up to the owner of the IP and depending on how the game works, paid mods might actually hurt the games markets. Modding is good but you have to know your messing with someone elses game and you can't get paid for that.
an oft overlooked aspect to modding is that mods get abandoned or not updated. so, if an update breaks a mod you paid for, or if a mod is still being sold that doesn't work with the current version, then i don't think its right. paid mods would have to be held to a higher standards than free ones.
also, mods that require other mods or use material not from the ip would cause other problems. not too mention a glute of mods too make quick profit (think steam's greenlight early access program).
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very good point