Well, it has been a chaotic four days for anyone staying current with Valve and Steam news.
For anyone who doesn't frequent the internet, on April 23rd, Alden Kroll, a member of the Valve staff team, posted this to the Steam Forums. In short, it was a declaration that content-creators (or modders as the community calls them) would now be able to sell their created content on the Steam Workshop, and that they were starting with the ever popular, mod-happy, Skyrim. Content Designers could now be paid for work they originally did for free, and received little recognition for. In theory, many people, Valve included, thought this would be a fantastic implementation of a free-market into the modder community.
And on April 27th, Alden Kroll, a member of the Valve staff team, posted this to the Steam Forums.
You're reading that right, in merely four days, the community revolted completely against Valve, Steam, and even the ever-loved, god-personified, Gabe Newell. Steam is pulling its Skyrim Workshop for paid mods.
So what happened? Why did the masses who, on every other occasion have defended Steam and Valve to the last, turn on this loved company?
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| This was a pretty common reaction to the Skyrim Workshop |
This is what Valve thinks was the issue:
Alden states in his retraction that "We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating."
I really do understand WHY Valve wanted to start with Skyrim, but their timing was way off. Skyrim was released nearly four years ago, which has given modders years upon years to build mods for the game. Yes, you absolutely picked the wrong game to start monetizing mods, however, that is only a symptom of the larger disease. I think that this would have failed regardless of what game you chose to begin this process with.
This is what I think was the issue:
Take a page from the community's outcries against EA. Everyone hates micro-transactions. And you made this pretty much as micro as it gets.
In the old days, We went out and spent 30-50 bucks on a new game, plopped down on the couch and played it. When we completed that game, that was the end of it. No extra content, maybe a New Game +, but that was it. If you wanted more content you bought the sequel - if they made one. Nowadays, we get 'complete' games, with multiple patch fixes, expansions and DLC (which in essence are just smaller expansions). But with this new system of creation, it never truly feels like we get the truly 'complete' feeling from games anymore. It always feels like a good majority of content is left out, either due to time constraints, budget, or wanting the player to pay for more content on purpose. Take Bungie's "Destiny" for example. As fun and beautiful that that game was, all I heard about after its release, was the feeling of incompleteness upon beating it.
Micro-transactions are the worst of the bunch, take EA's Dungeon Keeper (iOS) for a prime example. This game was so riddle with "pay-walls" and micro transactions that Eurogamer and The Metro gave it a 1/10 and 0/10 rating respectively, just due to the inability to have any fun with these pay-to-win strategies, even going as far as to calling Dungeon Keeper an "anti-game".
Ironically, Skyrim had pretty much been the complete OPPOSITE of these types of games. Skyrim was as fully realized a game that I have seen in quite some time. It had a few small content patches, but you could easily play the game, no mods or additions, and the game was fun, engaging and would leave you with a sense of complete-ness at its end.
Mods were merely added as ways to push the engine. How ridiculous could you make the game be? how GOOD could you make the engine look? How awesome would it be to command and ride a dragon into battle? They were just little knick knacks that the community played with to re-engage themselves with the Skyrim universe, because Skyrim was such a good game, that the replayability with funny little mods made it just as engaging as the regular version of the game.
But now, we are paying for small little pieces of the whole. Quests, items, npcs, even abilities are priced out, separated and demarcated. It has a disingenuous and metallic taste to it all. It took away the organic way a game played, and instead inserted tiny little minutiae that really don't add much to the completeness of the game.
And it's not like we haven't seen this model before. iOS and Android "Free-to-Play" games are ridden with pay walls and microtransactions (like the aforementioned Dungeon Keeper). It was a trend popularized with Clash of Clans, and has plagued "Free to Play" games ever since. But Skryim is a fully realized game, that has been infected with microtransactions, just to make more money. If it was JUST the developers getting money for the mods, maybe it would have gone better, but developers get a MEASLY 25% of the cost of the mod, comparatively to Apple Apps, in which the developer gets 75%. But again, I think the split of money is just another symptom of the disease.
That's not to say we shouldn't contribute to designers and artists, there are many systems in which we could make this work. Neverwinter has a great tipping system which exchange in-game currency (that can be used in the auction house and the 'real money' store) for creation of content. There are ways around what they are doing, and hopefully they realize this before they cause any more damage to their community.
Hopefully, Valve and Steam will learn from their mistakes, and if they are implement a different version of this in the future, let's hope they truly understand their customer before making such broad strokes.
Over and out,
Adam
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