Jump to content

Creation Club


Nico coiN

Recommended Posts

So Bethesda still wants to have paid mods on Bethesda.net or is this different.  Personally, I don't like it one bit and if the Creation Kit Club force people to have credits to download my Skyrim Map Markers mod then I'll pull down my mod on Bethesda.net.

 

Read the FAQ here (scroll down a little)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you read the FAQ? Your mod will be perfectly "safe".

 

Is Creation Club paid mods?

No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content. Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators. All the content is approved, curated, and taken through the full internal dev cycle; including localization, polishing, and testing. This also guarantees that all content works together. We’ve looked at many ways to do “paid mods”, and the problems outweigh the benefits. We’ve encountered many of those issues before. But, there’s a constant demand from our fans to add more official high quality content to our games, and while we are able to create a lot of it, we think many in our community have the talent to work directly with us and create some amazing new things.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've split these posts off from the old paid mods thread as this subject is for a different service that doesn't fit that model of doing things.

Please keep the discussion of this topic civil and make sure you've read the FAQ here: https://creationclub.bethesda.net/en

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The shape of this new 'thing' is (at least) completely blurred, and it will probably remain 'as is' until we have the final whole product.

Well, as Beth' has no plan for an upcoming Elder Scrolls chapter I'd say that the eventuality of seeing worthy official material (something of a DLC size, like Beyond Skyrim: Bruma) is a very good thing. Believe me when I say I'm not an 'easy' player at all : if (imo) it's worth being played, then it's worth being paid. I just hope they will reward their so-called 'partners' in a much better way than the silly low percentage that Steam 'offered' about 2 years ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Meh, I've always been a supporter of the idea behind paid mods, but i don't think either Bethesda's not Valve's approach are/were any good in total.

They both have their strengths and weaknesses of course.

What i really appreciated about Valve's way was their system to differ some of the money as a gift to the tool developers working for the modding community. That was an acknowledgement of the complex nature of creation engine modding by Valve and a take on nourishing that culture i see lacking in Creation Club (correct me if i'm wrong)

Bethesda's solution has a much higher chance to circumvent to massive problem of mod theft due to the lengthy and in-depth release process, so that is good. Also it cuts out one middle man, so that may mean more revenue for "outside developers". I think by offering their "quality control" and professional release management, they kind of try to also justify their own share of the money (something which, imho and quite legally, they already earned by owning the IP, providing the game and the toolset, but meh, some people like to complain).

 

But there lies the irony in this. Bethesda's big improvement in the new paid mods service is offering their professional quality control. I can't be the only one on this board who raised an eyebrow at that thought. Add to that, that they don't allow the entrance of existing mods (we have seen the outcry that happened overre-released improved mods in particular, so i at least can't blame then here), only allowing original content and wanting to profit off of a community, that had to provide their own tools and fix the underlying game itself to even start modding to the extend we see today.

 

The minimum they should do, imho, and this is my proposal, is acknowledge the massive work the community has done to make their games better. If they are accepting outside input and offering internal quality assurance, the least they should do is providing an official channel to submit bugfixes.

Send in a reproducible bug report and a fix. They test, go through their what-ever process and if accepted, pay 5$ for each texture, Script or mesh and lets say 1$ for each fixed form ID. If i just gave Sclerocephalus, Black Pete and Arthmoor a boner, you are welcome.

What i'm trying to say is: in the system they are setting up, they can no longer accept the community to fix their shit for free, but need to internalize the community patch efforts and reward them equally with the other modding efforts. Of course due to the obvious nature of not accepting already existing mods, this would be a system that would have to wait until the next game. As for the tool creators: I don't have an idea, yet, but why not just copy what Valve did.

So, that's my take on it. Let's hope it all works out better this time.

edit: oh yeah, i'm of course not buying into the "creation club is not paid mods" rhetoric.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Arthmoor said:

I've split these posts off from the old paid mods thread as this subject is for a different service that doesn't fit that model of doing things.

Please keep the discussion of this topic civil and make sure you've read the FAQ here: https://creationclub.bethesda.net/en

I assume the Creation Kit Club are exclusive for SSE and FO4 only, so this thread belongs here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, Gruftlord said:

[snip] in the system they are setting up, they can no longer accept the community to fix their shit for free [snip]

They are unable to acknowledge their 'shit', as you call it. 'You're doing something wrong with your mods' they say. 'The game is perfectly playable in its regular release state', they say, and so on... The truth is that their QA department is (at best) awfully managed (intentional or neglected, who knows ?), or (at worse) non-existent. But we're here totally out of the tracks of the main topic...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, no we are not. Bethesda made QA a central piece of their offering in Creation Club. Read their faq, it's in there in capital letters. I'm still laughing each time i think about it ? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Gruftlord said:

[snip] Bethesda made QA a central piece of their offering in Creation Club. [snip]

Gruftlord, you're being sarcastic :rolleyes:. Quite funny, I acknowledge. If it's true then I doubt it would be retroactive with all what's been done until now. FWIW, let's just wait and see... :whistle:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The fact that they mentioned QA in no way means they now have to be sure their games are 100% bug free. This is impossible. A standard we've held modders to FOR FREE that can't even be met. There's no way something the size and scope of one of their games can ever hope to reach a level that close. So just accept it for what it says rather than inventing silly conspiracy-like responses to it. Mod submitted via the program will go through internal development and QA processes, just as they say on the FAQ. That means human beings will be reviewing the work, and as we are not perfect beings, mistakes will be made and issues will get past people.

As far as "it's not paid mods" - it isn't. Mods are user generated content that doesn't go through any sort of formal QA process by the developer. What CC is is more along the lines of what Valve is doing with Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2, only a step further in that they're specifically setting it up as contract work on a per-item basis. It should be pretty obvious to anyone reading that FAQ that this is an "independent contractor" agreement, which is a common thing in the gaming industry and Bethesda is merely blurring the lines a bit more than Indie gaming already has. You're getting the officially supported smaller DLC the community has been clamoring for for 20 years in the only way that was ever going to be feasible - contracting the jobs out to select people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From the way the FAQ reads, I'd say it occupies a space somewhere between making hats for TF2 and indie game development, with it being a bit closer to indie gaming than the hats.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is sad to see that the steam last effort was a better deal for modders since they got at least a little 25% meaning that if they made a very successful mod sold for 1$ and bought by 2 millions people then the modder get a hit.

Now modders will probably get paid the lowest entry rate from bethesda and even if their mods sold 5 millions copy they will gain nothing from it and Bethesda will get the lion share.

Not to forget that modders will sell their rights for their custom assets meaning they wont be able to sell them elsewhere to gain a litte extra.

So now it's more like bethesda 95% and modders 5%.

Professional developers can make 5 times the amount of money via freelance work so they wont jump in this boat.

It's ironic when you consider selling beds for second life can get you 3000$ weekly!

You can have an idea about what they will pay you here since the entry rate fort bethesda is 33,790 meaning you will get very little for a lot of work.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Bethesda_Softworks/Salary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Bethesda literally handed me a check for $30K to write a mod, I'd jump on that in nothing flat. I don't know of any modder who wouldn't either. At least not one who isn't a liar :P

You are aware this is precisely how contract work in game development works though, right? This isn't something Bethesda cooked up on their own. They're just applying it in a different manner than usual.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Arthmoor said:

If Bethesda literally handed me a check for $30K to write a mod, I'd jump on that in nothing flat. I don't know of any modder who wouldn't either. At least not one who isn't a liar :P

You are aware this is precisely how contract work in game development works though, right? This isn't something Bethesda cooked up on their own. They're just applying it in a different manner than usual.

Don't get me wrong the 33,790 is yearly wage so let's say you made a new weapon in let's say one day they will pay you around 80$ for it and they wont be able to curate the whole process like they mention since the amount of applications will stacked pretty fast and the cost of it in term of employees will skyrocket very fast.

The only winner here will be Bethesda and the modders will get even less than the steam attempt!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wait, have they even announced anything about the way the creators will be paid? i must have missed that.

 

My temperamental ramblings above aside, could we agree, that it would be dope if bethesda managed to apply their newly developed 'submit creations and have them reviewed and published' system to a community sourced bug fix application thingy?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, dovapix said:

You can have an idea about what they will pay you here since the entry rate fort bethesda is 33,790 meaning you will get very little for a lot of work.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Bethesda_Softworks/Salary

That's not right. Here's a Gamasutra salary survey from 2014. (PDF)

The base salary range for AAA game designers is $50-90K. That's not overall compensation; that's just base salary.

Nobody with 1-3 years of AAA experience (entry level) would relocate to Maryland, where Bethesda is headquartered and which is not an industry hub state, for $33K.

 

8 hours ago, Gruftlord said:

Wait, have they even announced anything about the way the creators will be paid? i must have missed that.

The FAQs states: "Creators are paid for their work and start receiving payment as soon as their proposal is accepted and through development milestones."

This sounds like how an advance deal works but without a % of net unit sales (royalties). You get paid upfront and you get milestone payments, but you make nothing on the back end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is one thing they've been very smart about this time, they announced it beforehand. The hate have been spreading post-E3, and is already slowing. When this will actually kick in, only people actually concerned will still rant about it, but it won't have the extremely broad coverage original paid mods had through press and all this, as those already happended after this announcement.

 

Putting in spoiler my answer to a guy on reddit who asked for potential benefits for modders (like CK update):

Spoiler

 

There is things they're intending to enforce that cannot be done through the current official tools:

A proper QA process imply to get Version Control back in the creation kit (in short, and in this context: Create an esm for your core mod, then develop features / patches / bugfixes in dependant .esp, and merge them back into the .esm to deploy a "working version" when the esp have been tested and approved).

Localization cannot be done (need xEdit workaround).
Some other stuffs are janky and might require improvements for a proper dev flow (.seq file generation, heightmap import, ...)

Nif generation (and eventually, animations and behaviors, if those do fall in the scope of CC mods) also require community-made tools. We've seen that there is new weapons/armors in the advertised mods, so there will at least be a Skyrim .nif export tools for club members (unless you provide Bethesda with models, and they take care fof the export). Note that the exporter is already available to everyone for the FO4 version.

There is a small chance that minor but really problematic CK bugs will be reported by Club members and get fixed (for instance in the SSE CK, the dialogueviews on reproductible situations, even with the proper external .dll registration, and activation text override perk entry is truncated to the first letter).

 

The big question is wether or not those tools and fixes will be accessible for non-CC authors. There is no telling. We could get some CK updates backported (version control, localization) if they don't imply external library that they aren't allowed to distribute for licensing reasons. I have my doubts about third-party tools, but that's speculation, there is obviously nothing to backup this claim as of now.

 

 

All in all, I'm more curious / in the expectative than anything else. We still have no official statements on the scope of mods they intend to publish through it, the amount of support they'll provide, nor the targetted "creators" as they call them. And nothing about the actual pricing either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks promising. Seems like it could generate higher quality content, especially in the long run. It could lure back some old timers and maybe even some new blood. But I think this is mostly groundwork for the future, for ES VI and Fallout 5 and games we don't know about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, fireundubh said:

That's not right. Here's a Gamasutra salary survey from 2014. (PDF)

The base salary range for AAA game designers is $50-90K. That's not overall compensation; that's just base salary.

Nobody with 1-3 years of AAA experience (entry level) would relocate to Maryland, where Bethesda is headquartered and which is not an industry hub state, for $33K.

I think that's accurate consider to the fact that your link is about how it was 3 years ago and lot of things have changed since then.

Also, in keep in mind that Bethesda opened a studio in Montreal, Canada, which could explain why the salaries in 2014 was a bit lower than wages is today and a $30K difference in a period of time of 3 years seems accurate to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Leonardo said:

I think that's accurate consider to the fact that your link is about how it was 3 years ago and lot of things have changed since then.

Also, in keep in mind that Bethesda opened a studio in Montreal, Canada, which could explain why the salaries in 2014 was a bit lower than wages is today and a $30K difference in a period of time of 3 years seems accurate to me.

I know since Montreal is consider to be the cheap labor capital of video games! At least other developers are doing it the right way like Everquest who share the sale profit with content creators.

https://www.everquest2.com/player-studio

There is also one developer in Montreal that will allowed paid mods for their upcoming medieval fantasy sand box and they said they will use the same model as the unity asset store who take a 30% cut and leave 70% to the content creators and i found this a fair deal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would they fix their games more often if we have this CC program? That would be nice. doubt it though :(

Also in my personal opinion, a mod shouldnt cost money unless it is of high quality. (and meaty in content)

Im going to stay with free mods, but if there is a paid mod that is worth it, i "might" consider getting it.

But if i make mods myself im just going to have them all be free.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, fireundubh said:

Nobody with 1-3 years of AAA experience (entry level) would relocate to Maryland, where Bethesda is headquartered and which is not an industry hub state, for $33K.

 

 

I would, but that's only because it would beat the hell out of staying in California where it's too expensive to survive on $33K :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...