Not too long ago I wrote a little piece about my opinion on mods; that practise wherein extra game content is made and played by members of the community without the involvement of the developers. In my years of active modding, I have found the experience to be involving and rewarding in providing scenarios that I could never have expected out of my favourite go-tos. Some games build entire communities around modding and others are maintained exclusively through the hard work of modders. All this perpetuates the spirit of sharing that dominated the philosophy behind, and the early life, of the Internet; wide spread sharing.
But it was not so long ago that the balance between creator and player was put in peril through the implementation of 'paid mods'. It has been a great many years since this incident and it feels as though the community's scars have mostly healed, the idea still lives on through a highly-curated storefront and most everyone has moved on. But as someone with far too much time on their hands, I find myself coming back to this time, now and again, tossing over this debate in my head. On one hand, some of these creators put in considerable amount of personal effort into creating fantastic content that sometimes surpasses the original creators; whilst on the other hand, the relationship fundamentally changes once money is involved. I find myself torn to this day. But let's ensure everyone is up to speed.
When I use the term 'Paid mods', I am specifically referring to the short-lived feature on Steam's personal mod hoster; Steam workshop. Valve wanted to try their hands at evolving this part of their service by including a paid mod feature, for which the platform would earn commission. In order to launch this in the strongest possible manner, Valve partnered with Bethesda in order to beta test this idea on, perhaps the single most modded game of all time, Skyrim. People have bought everything imaginable to Skyrim including, and I swear I'm making none of these up; Skyships, working wings, magic carpets, walking talking mushrooms, guns, a Super Mario land and a working train system. If any game was going to provide the perfect petridish of consumers to try out paid mods, it was going to be Skyrim.
Upon the first announcement, the reaction from the community was the very soul of conflicted. People spent their time discussing much of the same issues that I raised earlier; Some mods are so good that they deserve money but others simply don't. A lot of mod authors work on mods out of the love of the act, throwing money in there muddies the equation. And then there is the plain fact that when you try to throw a price tag on something that has always been free you'll get a lot of proud 'freeloaders' who don't want to hear about it. Few topics have wrought me to such a point where I find it impossible to pick a side, even just for myself. Valve and Bethesda watched all this discourse and then made the decision to go with it anyway. Afterall, this was a beta test, what was the worst that could happen?
In 2015, from April 25th to April 27th, (Right through my Birthday. Yay!) the paid mod service was up and running through Steam before being unceremoniously shut down. During that time, only 19 mods were made available to the public, with two being removed early due to copyright complaints, until the entire system was scrapped due to insurmountable backlash. We can still look back at the range of content available in order to get an idea for what we could have expected if they stuck with it. Chesko's Arissa was one the mods that I have actually played (when it was free.) Arissa is a well made, if short, companion mod that never got ported to Special Edition for some reason. Then there are some weapon mods, a few based of Valve properties (Dota 2 and Half life), a new location mod, a location redesign mod and a fishing overhaul.
As you can see there was nothing truly earth shattering in this initial rollout and as such we saw base prices fluctuate from $0.25 (For a sword) to $4.99 (For the companion). But the base price wasn't the be-all-end-all, because Valve introduced a pay-what-want system in order to allow purchasers to tip handsomely if they felt the content demanded it. This led to a slew misinformation campaigns, wherein people attempted to buy the fishing overhaul for $199, and then posted a screenshot of that price, pretending that is was the base. Efforts like this caused strain between the community and mod developers as unscrupulous elements tried to drum up false outrage. Valve and Bethesda likely saw the seeds of this behaviour and decided to pull out of the race quickly, in order to avoid causing lasting damage.
That doesn't mean that the practise went away, merely that they changed direction. (Here is were I start to get iffy about the whole scene.) Bethesda, independent of Valve, decided that they still wanted to try their hands at monetising mods, under creative supervision and protected through their storefront. In August, 2017, Bethesda introduced the 'Creation Club' into Fallout 4; a platform wherein minute pieces of content would be developed my Bethesda and certain partnered modders and then be sold for a small fixed fee. (Hello microtransactions.) The system was also included in their re-release of Skyrim; Skyrim: Special edition, at launch. At the time Bethesda sold this as a way to 'prepetuate your favourite games' but the general consensus is that this is an attempt to monetise an 8 year old game.
The Creation Club was created in order to ensure that all the content included in this new 'paid mod' initiative was entirely original and not pulled from being previously free. (Like a few of the original 19 were) This hasn't stopped accusations of plagiarism, like when they released 'Chinese stealth armour' and 'Enclave Hellfire Armour' for Fallout 4, not too long after an independent mod author had done so for free, but given that the assets do belong to Bethesda that argument didn't really hold much water. Since then the Creation Club has expanded on it's own to offer mods ranging from something as small as a collection of new alchemical ingredients, to something as elaborate as an indepth survival mode for Skyrim (That was a whole lot more fun than Fallout 4's free survival mode.) and a high-quality dungeon mod headed by some of the most imaginative minds in modding.
As you have likely picked up, I find myself at odds with myself over the Creation Club. On one hand it seems like a great way to prolong the life of these games with little pieces on inexpensive content that even supports modders. (Not directly, they are hired on commission.) On the otherhand, this may set a precedent for future Bethesda titles. I think part of the reason that the Creation Club's backlash has been fairly muted is because it was applied to titles that had already been released and came out in an acceptable fashion. What happens when new Bethesda games lack several small mainstays (Like the famous Daedric Artifacts) in order to hawk them to us down the line? You may think that it would be insanely incendiary for Bethesda to do that, (not to mention short-sighted) but Bethesda have been on a roll of making bad decisions lately, what if that starts to seep into the main game's development?
I will always be on two minds about the topic of paid mods. I love the idea of being able to support modders and would appreciate it if more tools were implemented that made it easier to do so; but make it an obligation and things become questionable. Part of the fun of modding is scouring the web, looking for things you never though possible and then trying them out for yourself. It's an exploratory process with absolutely no strings attached. The Creation Clubs seems to be purpose-built not to challenge that, for the time being, but I find myself worried about how the future might manifest. But then, I am a habitual worrier, so I may being seeing smoke where there is none.
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