Ringwraith #5 said:
Disagree. When you have no option of selling your work, doing it just for the satisfaction and enjoyment of it is enough. But I guarantee you that once the option to get paid is there, doing it for free will no longer seem anywhere near as fulfilling as it used to.
I disagree with that since I have, in the past, modded (only Dominions 3, which isn't much of an accomplishment considering that it's ridiculously easy to mod), but solely for my own benefit. I didn't even publish them because the only reason I even made the mods was for my own enjoyment and to enhance my game. There's people who do that, with the exception that they publish their mods. Granted these aren't feature-spanning mega-mods that we're talking about here, but when it's something that maybe suits only your specific needs from the game, fulfillment is not something you'll be caring about when you're at the publishing stage, since you've presumably already accomplished that through the mod's creation.
TheFlyingFishy said:
@Hawk
They won't disappear over night, but they almost certainly will over time. Once people get used to it, why shouldn't people charge for a mod? And if you're going to charge for it, you're going to make it appeal to as many people as possible. And it isn't like Valve cares about their modders in the slightest conceivable way. They're taking some of the 75% and giving only 25% to the modders. And hardly any mod that goes over a dollar will get a second look. So they're getting 25 cents for their mods, in most cases, less if it was a multiple-person project. And I don't mean to sound like a ****, having never made a mod, but I feel like if making money directly from the mod, and not trying to get hired on by the company whose game you're modding is anywhere in your priority list, you should get a job in the industry and stop modding. Modding isn't and shouldn't be a career one expects money from. Having a donations page is just fine with me, though.
Niches don't disappear though. One guy, or even all the modders who cover a certain aspect or characteristic of a game "selling out" doesn't mean that people suddenly lose their desire for a product that fills that certain space. And no, charging for it does not necessarily mean appealing to as many people as possible. The modding environment is still the same - there's a plethora of diverse mods that cover any and all aspects of the game, and their very existence is predicated on this. To betray that means you'll directly lose revenue, and someone else will take your former place.
And as for the comment at the beginning, it's an entirely valid question, why shouldn't people charge for a mod? The only person who could possibly get hurt in some way by that is the consumer, in a small way, by having to pay for something which they were previously provided for free at the expense and generosity of the creator. Trying to hold people who have put labour in to something to standards of "artistic integrity" that largely only benefit the consumer is not going to do you any favours. I'll also reiterate that it's not Valve directly who takes the 75%, the majority of that likely goes to the publisher, whose licensed software is being used in the first place. Even 25% at a cut-rate price, I'd wager, is a lot more money for the average modder than they'd ever see in their modding careers otherwise, because relying on the potential generosity of strangers to maintain their projects just doesn't work in most cases for the average modder.
And as for the latter half of the post, this is just naïveté as to how the industry works. Making a mod for the express purpose of being hired by a company is by no means whatsoever a guarantee of ever getting a job there, let alone one that will fulfill whatever career aspirations you have there. Now I don't have firsthand experience there, but my understanding of the industry from various friends and information is that it's not a rosy business where you'll get hired into a position solely on your merit as a modder. My understanding is that getting a stable industry job from modding projects is like winning the lottery for modders. Not to mention that putting in ridiculous amounts of work and effort into merely getting an opportunity to actually make money doing that labour which one loves is an insane proposition itself, as I hope would be pretty self-evident. The people who make skinpacks and minor changes aren't going to get a job automatically if they suddenly feel that they need to make money off of something that they put their valuable time into. This, however, provides them for that opportunity. I'd amend your second-last statement to purely "modding hasn't been a career one expects money from". That doesn't mean that one can't, or shouldn't, or that for many it has grown to encompass a career in all but salary.
Moreover forcing modders to rely on a donations page to sustain projects which can require gigantic amounts of time and effort is entirely unsustainable. The internet is already littered with the corpses of abandoned mods, and there's a not-insignificant number of those which are either cancelled outright or indefinitely put on-hold because of the modders' monetary concerns. This makes it so that these projects at least have a chance of some success. People won't donate nearly enough to feasibly allow modders to work uninterrupted on their projects. It's like having a lawnmowing service where you get someone to mow your lawn and then have the opportunity to pay them afterwards depending on the work, with no legal repercussions if you don't. Obviously if they do a terrible job on your lawn you're not going to pay them, but if it's high-quality work, does that mean they have a guarantee of your money? Inevitably some people will reward them for their work, but will that be even 50% of the patrons served? I highly doubt that.