The Problem With Paid Mods 

A little disclaimer: The information about Quant V being cancelled due to Take 2's involvement is per Quant's own statement in his Discord server (here: i.imgur.com/ic5TuAc.png ) and his Patreon post. I actually never questioned the legitimacy of those statements, cause for me it was important that the mod is going away (which I believed was the right course of action after what happened). With that being said, I don't want to spread misinformation, so if someone has more knowledge on the matter, I'd love to hear it. P.S. Thanks to @Jet for the heads up!

The trend didn't start with Valve, The Sims community has been infested with paid mod sites since as early as 2002-ish. It was such a problem back in the day that it prompted one of the more prominent/controversial modders to create a site dedicated solely to sharing paid mods for free, called Pay Sites Must Be Destroyed. We need something like that now.

In my opinion all mods should be free, with the option to donate to the creator. Many bigger projects deserve money, but not all of us can afford them.

As the founder of the Pepega Mod project for the Need for Speed series - paywalling Mods does nothing but show someone's greedy intentions or pure obliviousness. Games cost money because the cost money to produce. Employees, offices, equipment, so much stuff which needs to be financed on a regular basis. No matter how much time you invest into a mod, at no point did (or should) it cost you any more than your free time. That is the key difference between Mods and Games. That being said, an optional donation page is perfectly fine. Everyone can still play the mod for free as it should be, but the people who enjoyed it can still leave a little 'thank you' if desired. Even in our case where we put up a custom website that hosts a variety of download links, all of which costs money to maintain - we would never paywall any of our work. Thankfully the amount of donations we receive can cover the website fees for several years. A good mod will get financial support regardless if you paywall it or not.

I've donated to many mod creators,but I would never use a mod that is hidden behind a pay wall. If a mod really changes how the game plays I don't have a problem throwing them a few bucks.

Finally someone talks about how stupid they have come to want to monopolize the mods of a 2013 game. Just take a look at those who make "EUP" mods, they put ridiculous prices for vests imported from another game and they take your IP if you use a leak from them

Mods like RoSA Project Evolved shouldn't be paid, but really DESERVE to be paid. It will be a waste in my opinion to lock such an awesome modification behind a paywall, but a mod like that definitely deserves every kind of support.

Paying for mods always seemed so cringe imo. I can definitely understand commission based mod authors, cause you are basically paying them to make an ENTIRE mod for you, but paying for a mod that is already done and completed? No thanks lol😅

tbh I always thought the mod creators that made total conversions like : Liberty City 4.0, LCS 5.0, Vice City Stories PC Edition, Frosted Winter, Shine O'Vice & Forelli Redemption deserved some kind of compensation or certain perks on Modding platforms but then now to see people selling for $5 - $20 something i could do on a whim breaks my heart.

I think the main reason why modding communities are so strong and passionate is *because* mods are free, there's no incentive to make money, so only the most passionate people actually commit to making mods, because the only thing they're getting from it is the joy of contributing to something they love, no matter how small. When money is involved in an accessible creative process, people will try to exploit it with the least effort possible, like Reshade presets for example, being put out just for the *prospect* of making money off it, being so low effort and easy to pump out. I wish mod sites had some kind of money sharing option, like maybe revenue from ads shown specifically on the mod page being partially given to the creator.

Shout out to that updates our scripthook for GTA V from Ukraine despite the war he still keeps it updated sometimes they deserve more than a clap

Regarding support mod creators financially, what I think should be done is to do it how Colossus Order did it with Cities:Skylines where they reached out to mod creators to ask if they want to create a content pack that will be sold as official DLCs with their name being center and forefront like “This community created content pack is created by: *insert name*”

I hate the idea of paying for mods, but I can understand why modders would want to get something back gorilla their time and hard work

I agree with this, first of all you got youtubers like INTER who pretty much asks for money for his reshade preset of GTA V. And I understand that he wasted big money into his PC, but that's his problem. Plus he started a dry trend with GTA V graphics, stuff like "GTA V - My RTX 3090 Ti Began to HEAT UP // 8K GRAPHICS GAMEPLAY 60FPS" It's hard to make a perfect preset, but don't ask for money, because someone took their time to code a mod that supports presets and let you modify it however you like.

I've noticed this a lot recently. I'm usually fine with donating a bit to creators who put in a lot of work into their projects, but selling re-shades and clothing a lot of which are stolen from other FREE projects is ridiculous. I'm glad you made a video about this.

Gesha these videos getting are better and better 🔥🔥🔥

Enjoyed this a lot, you should do more videos in this format

As a Modder of GTA games and more recently Paradox games (mainly Victoria II which appears 1:29 lol) I would like some monetary benefit for my effort. However, I am also a consumer of mods, and paying for minor mods can be quite a pain, especially when it is a more obscure game with a smaller community that doesn't have many alternatives. So I do feel like the best solution to the extent of having mods remain free but have a donation page. Which prevents stuff like skins or more minor mods from being locked off since they have a paywall, but also allows bigger mods to have money to continue smooth development. Even for minor mods, some sites provide ad revenue for modders who want it. 1000 people giving you 5 cents from ads probably be more ($50) than 5 people paying 5 dollars for your mod ($25).

I know these kind of videos take more effort and time to make, but man I'll definitely subscribe because of this video and your previous ones about remastering/ lore friendly mods. Keep it up! 🤩👍

I've been modding since 1998 and I've always been under the impression that it's supposed to be a hobby, or at most, a passion project that accepts donations as a thanks from those who can afford to support the mod. As a poor kid that was lucky enough to get a cousin's old computer, I downloaded tons of doom wads, and as I got older and started downloading more mods, I learned how to make them as a way to give back to the community in the only way that I could. Because thats what it was about - the game and the community. These people that are locking the mod behind a link that only becomes available after giving a "donation" as quite simply selling the mod, not simply taking donations - which is making that word "donation" do some heavy lifting to keep the law from clamping down lol. The fact that mods have been free has been the defense we take up every time a company cries foul over our mods as if we are taking their money. I understand having some type of incentive for people to send to your patreon account, but putting your premiere mod(s) behind a paywall actually does more harm for a modding community than good. Modding communities work best when working together. When we give people credit where credit is deserved and allow our mods to be expanded or modified to fit with other mods when possible. Stalker is the best case for a modding community that has been expanding on the mods they've made for years now, evolving the trilogy into something that I consider my favorite FPS of all time - and none of it is paywalled content. Something like Stalker: Anomaly's G.A.M.M.A. mod is the result so many years of modders improving the work f those who made mods before, untill all three Stalker games maps and mechanics were combined into one game, given a new story that acts as a fan made sequel of sorts, and has so many mods, tweaks, and improvements that have been made by countless community members. Most of those people have Patreon accounts and the get compensation without paywalls, and that has allowed the community and its mods to grow in such an amazing way. I could go on and on why we shouldn't charge for our mods, but instead should simply be grateful and happy that people want to give us money simply for doing something we enjoy doing in our free time. If you want programming and making a game to be your job - then you can always make a game or apply for positions lol. But if it's not your game, dont charge for the content. Not to mention, with how widespread gaming is, there are countless poor kids that rely on mods to pad out the very few games they own - I know I did as a kid.

I'm glad someone is talking about this kind of stuff. I'm tired of so many mod authors expecting people to pay 5+ dollars a month just for their basic cosmetic mods, and to have to maintain that subscription for future updates. I can't do that for every single mod I have an interest in. It makes modding the game feel more restrictive, when modding should be open ended and free. I understand a lot of work goes into modding, and there's a level of skill that goes into making something worthwhile, but most mods are model swaps, texture swaps, stolen assets, or stuff that already has better free alternatives. Just because you put time into something, doesn't automatically mean the result is worth paying for. If you want your time and effort to be compensated, put that effort into making something like a game, or making original assets to sell individually; people will spend decent money for high quality assets. Not to mention how petty some of these paid mods are with their anti-piracy methods. Leaking IPs or wiping hard drives is extreme, and is unacceptable behavior from anyone who expects to sell a product.

EA had already made an amzing way of making money from mods with the C&C ip, as all mods can have a donation button as long as it dose not lock anything behind the paywall from early betas to ingame stuff.

I completely fell in love with this video, it's so well researched and put together, I'm not going to lie my only disappointment is the length, eight minutes is a crime, I was SO invested, I wish it was a little longer but I had a lot of fun, thank you for this. It's a simple subject and yet surprisingly interesting, can't wait to see more from ya!

lmao i love your intro description in the first few seconds.

Woah a mod like Anderius is free that is unbelievable.

The modders that do stuff for free are doing it out of passion, but in doing so they are also devaluing a craft and contributing to a deep sense of entitlement on part of consumers. As an artist I've lost count over the number of times I've spent days creating elaborate artwork at the request of various people to zero compensation. Even if you're my closest friend you buying me dinner once just doesn't pay for 96 hours of my time. Nobody walks up to a friend who works in any other field and request their work to be carried out for free but artists are frequently treated this way. If you're an artist giving away work for free you're contributing towards people feeling entitled to your effort, personally I've stopped handing out any more freebies as it became increasingly clear to me how doing so constitutes harm as to how people view and value our entire craft. Sad thing about human psychology is how even the people close to me respect me a whole lot more since I told them to go F themselves and hire an artist than they did when I would care for them and put in the effort to please them with my work.

the Assetto Corsa (simracing game with a huge modding community) community is full of people like the ones that profit off of selling reshade presets in the GTA V community, but instead of reshade presets, its car model rips from other games such as Forza, GT and etc with shitty physics added ontop to save time while the guy selling them claims them as their own and sells them for 25 bucks each or more. Its frustrating as hell. Examples of them could be RTM, Simdream, Jaskier and many more, but sadly there isn't much we can do about it. there's also a lot of gatekeepers with private mods, such as Trawa and his Ascend Service Garage circlejerk full of people with egos the size of a bus. but at the same time.. there's also groups like Race Sim Studio or Virtual Racing Cars that can be compared to the group of guys who made Alien City back in 2009... and those deserve the support they get. fooling around with VRC's Formula '22 is one of the best experiences i've had with a racing game in a long while. I think modding should be free though, and i wish the scummier paid mods can start to dissappear sometime in the near future, while the big well made ones can stay afloat through donations. rant over, good video as always Gesha.

Hey man. Thanks for that simplistic setup idea

This reminds me of Assetto Corsa's modding community. There's literally a war between people selling cars and pirates trying to rip them. Some payware mods are very good and might even be worth the price, but others are just lazy Forza ports that don't represent their real life counterparts at all.

U always bring videos that are very useful

Nice video man!💯

My opinion is pretty straight forward here. Some products are covered by EULAs and some are not and we have to respect that. For GTA 3D era mods, people are in the right to create whatever they please, because at the time the game was released, there was no EULA in place. They were as you said, passion projects, and the vast majority remain classified as that to this day. Also they don't cause any harm. However, Rockstar/T2 remain in the right to deny these being used for commercial purposes, because it involves their work as well. For products that are NOT covered by such agreements, I don't think it's our place to decide if they deserve to be monetized or not. If the mpd has a price tag, the right question is whether the price is worth it or not. Everyone decides that for themselves. If you want it you buy it, and that's it. If the mod doesn't have a price tag, yet you feel morally obligated to give something in return, I don't see that being an issue with the opposite side. So yeah, the phrase "it depends" is here to stay.

I love to see notifications from this channel

People who lock reshade presets behind a paywall have been real quiet since this video dropped.

i’m glad somebody is finally saying about the reshade presets

omg the mention of anderius took me back T_T childhood was fun, also, you were involved in myriad islands?? wtf i had no clue

Paid mods should be burned to the ground. A donation option if you want to support the creator is okay, but a paywall is unacceptable.

bro, I think your videos had to have subtitles in Portuguese because it's very difficult for me to understand your videos but I still watch them

I feel like mods that have a lot of effort put into them, is up to the creator for how they want to release their modification, active support and spending loads of time on something is fun, but being able to be paid from doing the hard work with all the hours you've put into projects will motivate some people even more. On the other hand, I don't think asking for 30 dollars for packs of clothes, etc with designs that aren't owned by the OP is rightful, it's a mix of eh, I feel that there shouldn't be much talk about them anyway... No one is forcing anyone to buy them, it's a mod at the end of the day that you may want, if you "want" it, pay for it, if you don't want to pay for it, find an alternative, there are loads.

One of the mods that you showed (Black Messa) not only is a paid mod but is still a community developed project.

I am not a fan of paid mods, I don't agree with hiding mods behind a paywall but I do agree with supporting mod creators because they do work hard and a lot of them work for free. I'm sure many people wouldn't mind giving 3-5$ to support them on Patreon, the community would support mod creators but demanding money is not the way to go, you'll just end up not being liked by the community, great video man🔥

I always assumed putting mods behind paywalls was against most games tos. I'm surprised companies like EA don't crack down on modding communities like the Sims.

If you're modifying a game that already exists, it should be outright illegal to sell those mods. That would be exactly the same as someone remixing a bunch of songs and selling a mixtape, it doesn't matter how much effort you put into it, if it's not your property you can't profit off of it. If they want to be paid for their work, they should begin by doing mods (free modifications to existing games) and then move onto developing an actual game once they've got that experience and exposure. If someone has that shady of a moral compass that they're going to charge me for their mods, that's the same type of person that's going to make a Pay 2 win game, or something with tons of microtransactions. These are the types of people that suck the integrity out of the gaming industry

This makes me think of the Assetto Corsa modding scene. Sure, there are some massive mods, but so many of them are stuck behind unreasonable pay walls...

This video reminds me of some of the things happening within the Indonesian UK Truck Simulator/Euro Truck Simulator/18 Wheels of Steel Haulin community. Basically they turned these truck simulation games into bus simulation games and they even replaced the vehicles, maps, and game mechanics to digitally replicate the Indonesian intercity bus network through mods. Some of these mods are free but because people kept disrespecting the authors by spreading these mods around without giving the authors proper credit, a number of the better mods were locked behind a paywall and you need to pay a certain amount to download them

I like how one of the biggest graphics mods for GTA 5 [NVE] is making you pay for the early access, but gives it out eventually for free later on if the mod is fully released. This is how the big mods should be like.

Worst example I know of is Beatrun, a insanely popular GMod parkour addon for 10 bucks, started being pirated by russians due to no Patreon in the country, blocks the entirety of Eastern Europe, makes it "free" and installing it leads to your personal info getting leaked online.

Some modder for a wrestling game "WWE here comes the pain" is selling there mod for like 100$ or something crazy like that

I think it's best when it's optional or provides ease of access on other platforms. On my case, all my mods are completely free (Super Mario world ROM hack, Minecraft texture pack, etc). You don't have to pay for these. However my Minecraft texture is available on the bedrock store to be purchased but it allows you to play it on consoles (which would be silly to mod just for a texture pack). Even still I asked my publisher to keep the price low for ease of purchase (with seasonal discounts whenever available). I think finding ways for creators to monetize their content is a must. Maybe you don't want to pay directly for a mod but alternative revenue streams are to be used (RU-vid adsense money, donations, console publishing, etc).

1:53 You really are the best youtuber. You make all of our days better

I would've liked the approach the bandcamp has for music, where music (most of the time) essentially free with an option to pay some minimum amount for the track/album adding a convenience feature of saving it in your library and allowing to use bandcamp app to play it from cloud. Like imagine nexusmods where you can download mods for free (if you choose so), but if you want the vortex to setup them for you - you need to pay at least a minimum amount for the mod, which adds it to the vortex library, and auto updates it. Yes, vortex works for free right now, but it's just an idea of implementation.

I actually enjoy what Origin/EA did for the Sims 4. You can have a 2 week period where your mod is paid only, but after that time is over it MUST be made free, otherwise you'll face consequences ( Account banned, no longer allowed to acess online portions of the game ect ). The Sims 4 modding scene used to be rampant with mods locked behind patreon, and there was a pretty publicised scandal where top paid mod creators where doxxing & threatening people that they accused of stealing & redistributing files from their patreon... revealing home addresses, phone numbers and sensitive information of family members. EA, to their credit, shut that shit down HARD. I still don't like them but it needed to be done.

Would be good if you continued Ep.1 Broke and Lost.

I'm paying julionib's patreon to get the superman mod... the reason I'm doing it is because I'm a huge superman fan and believe it or not this is the closest thing to a superman game

I’m interested about your opinion on mods like Asseto Corsas Content Manager. It basically creates a whole new launch menu, massively helps with installing mods, automatically detects outdated mods and offers new versions and adds a huge amount of new settings as well as a graphics overhaul. The thing is, there is a free version and a paid version. The free version gives you access to all the basic tools for modding and a lot of the settings, but doesn’t include the graphics overhaul for example.

I don't mind paying for mods, as long as the authors act in a professional manner, delivering quality and stability with their work. When I'm paying for something, I'm paying for convenience most of the time, especially considering how time-consuming it can be to mod a game, so I'm okay paying for a "plug and play" all-in-one solution that adds good content quickly and cleanly.

You are right!

I believe smaller mods like car mods skins guns should be free but full on conversion mods like whole city or physics should be paid depending on the hardwork

I've been developing mods for 15 years, and even being a developer and having created mods that took up to 3 months of work, working 16 hours a day, every day, I believe they should be free. The problem is that there is not a BROAD Good Samaritan culture. In an ideal world, mods would all be free, and people who like what they saw would look for a way to contribute financially, such as a donation via paypal. There are people who cannot afford to contribute financially due to being poor, and I am one of them. I am the perfect example of how important it is for people to be aware and make a donation, because I had to stop developing because my video card died, and I don't have the money to buy another one (I live in Brazil, my currency is worth 5x less than the dollar, video cards around here are really expensive). I'm currently limited to developing things like mods for Fallout 3, which is capable of running on my Intel HD 610. I think we should "teach" people, that mods are like those old ms-dos shareware, or like winrar, it's totally full and free, but if you really like it, you should donate to help the developer keep creating cool stuff .

think it should be a mixed bag. Theres a good mix between the types.

fr, it's crazy that even my friends are selling GTA V car mods, like $3-5 for each car and wondered why people keep sharing their mods behind their back 💀 and like i understand it took countless time to learn on how to 3d modelling and everything, but you just have to realize that even the prices are too high for some simple mods like ENB/Reshade graphics mods & GTA vehicles. i would donate but not paying for the mod itself, unless it's a really a big projects like FIFA's FIFER Realism Mod, GTA V's NVE, GTA IV Snow Mod (it's free, but i would totally buy it), total conversion etc.

Depends on the quality of the mod and the time that went into it For example : Mods like graphic mods (although some are good) they still aren't even comparable to alien city so they should not be locked behind a paywall (and any mod really , you mod because you like the game not because you want to make a profit) Mods like alien city should at least have a donation button but should be free to play still (Thanks for putting me in the vid)

Heroes of Might and Magic III had two community made mods/expansion packs: In The Wake of Gods and Horn of the Abyss. The former I think had a mixed reception to this day but I remember the praise that users could create more RPG-styled custom maps/campaigns, and their own artifacts with special attributes, since it came with its own event editor. The latter-- as far as I know-- has a positive reception because of how much it reworked gameplay balance for those who like to play it competitively, as well as adding a whole new faction, campaign, terrain, everything pretty much. Both of which are released to the public for free, and have the option of donation to help support.* Paywalls for a mod that's just a weapon, clothing, character, or texture reskin just seems really off to me. However, mods that are entirely new content alongside or based off the original (GTA Alien City, the HoMM3 mods I mentioned), or mods that are developed with the intent of optimization and Quality of Life changes (e.g., OpenRCT for RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2) and have a donation option available, I think deserve the support. * = I know Horn of the Abyss has an option for donations as I believe the same devs made the HD mod for the vanilla game, I'm not sure if WoG still does.

There are mods that change the game that really deserve a fair price for them, but there are some that are absurd

I run a private FiveM freeroam server with my friends and it's incredibly difficult to find decent server plugins that aren't paywalled. I have no interest in learning LUA at this time so I couldn't do much on my own. I find it especially annoying how tons of different copyrighted assets are thrown into these paid mods, including Rockstar things as well. I've found a site with tons of FiveM resource leaks, and it has the tagline: "Making FiveM free since 2020". I only went there to find a working port of Liberty City, since honestly, I'm not paying $300 to run ROCKSTAR'S OWN MAP on my server, which came from a now $20 game from 2008. The founder himself said he paid $100 for this one Liberty City resource, then leaked it to his own site. Now here's the irony: he put that stolen mod of a stolen asset behind ANOTHER paywall, on a site that claims to make FiveM free. Yes, this site which is built around stealing each other's already stolen assets and code, lets you relist anything with your own price if you so pleased. So the tagline doesn't make sense. I swear, the greed in this community has made people braindead and fixated purely on hustle and dollar signs. My resentment has peaked.

nice one

When i was looking for player models for GTA V, so many times i saw a character i wanted to add into the game be shown to be hosted by GTA5MODAZ which put them behind a paywall

for me it's 5 things 1- Quality 2- Size 3- How long will I use it 4- Long term support 5- Fairly priced I play a lot of American Truck Simulator, I really like the Peterbilt 389, I had two options: go with a mod which is rarely updated because the mod author shows lack of interest in keeping it up to date, or fork over $25 and have a mod that's of much higher quality, has long term support and has more customization options. I chose the paid mod, because I see myself driving that truck for well over 25h, currently I have 100k miles so for me it was well worth the price. Tthere's another guy selling the same truck (not the same mod) for $99, it has more customizations but the quality is a lot lower, there are graphical glitches, clipping etc. This kind of mod I have a problem with. How are you charging 100 burger credits for a half baked mod you didn't even bother to fix clipping issues. Even worse this author gets away with it because there are people out there who buy his mods. Another mod I bought was a CAT 3406E engine sound mod, For this mod I had planty of free alternatives I even tried some, but they didn't quite scratch the itch. Then I found this creator, he has professional equipment and rents trucks specifically to record the engine sounds. It's not just some sounds he found on youtube, therefore the quality is vastly superior to anything the free options offer. All this for $4,99. To conclude, in my opinion if the mods meet the 5 requirements mentioned above, I think it's fine for them to be paid.

Your a great RU-vidr and you’ll grow big I promise you this please remember me

The Skyrim scene usually do pay for early access and honestly I don’t mind it since it will eventually come out

I remember the days where mods were purely made just because u had passion and love for the game.

There's literally a solution called "opcional donations" right here

Among sim communities (specially racing and vehicle sims), paid mods are common. But they usually are content made from scratch. There was a paid mod for ETS2 which re-recorded in-game sounds And there's plenty of paid mods for assetto corsa, usually made by entire teams.

There's an epidemic of Xenoverse 2 modders that lock stuff behind patreon paywalls, most of them are broken or stolen from other games, they give big youtubers acces to them for free to make scummy gameplay showcases (that drag on for far too long I might add), it's not a huge community, but it certainly is annoying

I also agree with some mods that have 90% of content free, and then great features when you buy the mod. For example, in Assetto Corsa, most mods are free. However, if you buy a track, you will get files that you can use to run AI on the server, other traffic cars controlled by your machine. If you join a server with AI and you haven't paid the mod, you can still play, and you will see the traffic cars, but if you wanna create the server yourself then you need to pay. Also, there''s a mod called content manager, it's basically a launcher, 90% of features are there and you don't need anything else to play singleplayer, online, etc. But some features, like a tool for creating a server, are paid features.

So im back and forth on this , some talented people put way more time into a mod then humanly possible especially if that person were to have a 9-5 , sometimes they are paying to host dedicated servers for that mod. these are cases where i understand even a dollar goes a long way for these creators . It really does depend . my favorite mod payment model is the freemium where the mod is available for free - you just don't get the newest content right away and maybe not access to as many possible multiplayer servers but eventually they do give access. but really its kinda entitled of us to just believe we should access to somebodies hundreds of hours of free work without so much as a shout out

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modders casually making mods that are 10 times better than games released today for free

We must talk about how ridiculous the creators of EUP are, they literally start crying and ask that the leak pages stop publishing their mods, which have very ridiculous prices to be imported from other games like COD Yeah, im talkin about COZ and his circlejerk

Imo there should be developer choice to decide what mods are that good quality to pay for, like valve do in CSGO, when droping community music kits or skins from thounsnds.

mods conflict with the strict way stuff is defined. or something just like how in law there are gray areas

Paid mods only exist because of youtubers buying and promoting them. The fact some of these "modders" throw together multiple mods made by other people into a mod pack and lock it behind a paywall is scummy.

The whole point of us hating the paid mods idea is when we see someone making a mod and putting it behind a paywall only for it to stay and the author getting away with making it their source of income, it encourages many other modders to do the same since it's a no brainer for everyone, hence we see lots of high quality mods on nexus with a requirement that takes us to a Patreon page, making a mod paywalled. It's just the beginning, more and more creators will take this approach and what's next, will we see a new platform which contains a hub of paid mods for everyone to buy, it's just like paid skins, it will get popular, people will make money out of the modifications but over time their quality of mods will become lower as their ambition for money making gets the better at them. Greed prevails if we let it. But here's where the grey area comes in, if you buy a modification, you can never know what you're buying, if it's gonna work at all and if there's a threat of being scammed. Of course there are some that don't do scams and sell high quality mods for games, yet think about this getting out of control, we might be seeing an another modpocalypse coming, quality being separated between number of paid tiers, it's happening on Patreon, people see it, yet they don't vote with their wallets and call it out, because apparently they support the creator to continue the work, well here's the thing: mods are a hobby, not a full time job, get a life! I do not support any paid mods in any shape or form, mods are supposed to be free, which we can enjoy a much better experience for free. If we let mods become paid, then we will see all that dedication and passion slowly go down as it happened with the current game's industry, do not let it become that people!

Minecraft bedrock is doing this. But what is the real kicker is that when you get the mod, it only works for that specific world save file. You can't use it on a regular world save file unless it's a resource pack. You can't even add two mods you paid for together.

mods are a luxury, don't complain abt authors who want payment for their work.

I know mods require a lot of work, but no mod is worth paying for. Not now, not ever. I've seen a guy charge 45 (yes forty five) euros for a SINGLE car (Lan Evo 10) In Skyrim thankfully the mods are always free and you can donate if you want and can

Whats then with mods that are Patreon for WIP stage of a project, but after mod/project is ready, it getting released for free? That's something I do.

thank you finally someone bringing to light the problem with paid mods.

remember the rdr2 vr mod that was so good it got instantly scouted and taken down

While we can certainly talk about the prices or the quality of items compared to free alternatives, I think Bethesda's Creation Club is actually a pretty decent way to do it. The modders are basically employed like freelancers directly by the publisher/developer for a time to create something, which goes through quality control and is guaranteed to function with everything else on Creation Club and guaranteed to continue to function after a game update. That way you aren't paying for something that might potentially be outdated in two weeks time and never updated, or just straight up doesn't work in the first place. And because the CC content is "official" it's easy/easier for other mod developers to ensure that their mods will work if you have any CC installed. It's not a thousand random mods spread over 5 different sites, it's a clearly catalogued list, so you can avoid using the same spot to place your armor set if an armor set on the Creation Club is already using it or something like that.

Funny how they turn it into an actual business inspite it's clearly illegal and goes against the EULA contract that you accept before playing the game. Then people complain that Rockstar remove every mod possible from their games

minecraft seems to have a paid mod issue too like some of their shaders are locked behind a paywall on patreon

As someone who plays insanely moddable games such as Euro Truck Simulator 2 American Truck Simulator and assetto corsa its sad to see a lot of amazing trucks/trailers/cars and graphics mods 1 behind a paywall but 2 being stupidly priced when they are mods such as sound mods that cost under 10 dollars and most are under 5 but then you get a truck for 35 dollars and graphic mods that have a lot of addons that can run over 100 thats insanity in my opinion

One of my biggest gripes with paid mods is the RainFX for Assetto Corsa. Sure, it adds proper rain and rain physics to the game and all, but I don't think a quote on quote "small" mod like a Rain Mod should be blocked behind a paywall. Sure, it is just a dolar and all, but I don't think it is worth for me to put my personal informations on Patreon just to get rain on a car game, even more when it doesn't work too well with the AI of the game. If it was optional, I wouldn't mind at all, and probably would be tempted to help with it, for doing what the devs SHOULD'VE already put in the game. But not being able to experience it before having to pay for it really makes me not want to pay for it, even more when we have some mods that are WAY MORE exciting to have, and are free... Imagine if mods were paid on Minecraft, for example. That's exactly how I feel for mods in Assetto Corsa, because I often say that AC is Minecraft but with cars, and some mods are essential to have, even if they are as simple as just a reshade mod, or just having the Content Manager or stuff like that, just like Optifine or Sodium are pretty much essential for Minecraft...

Some of the most crucial mods for LSPDFR are now locked behind the creator's Patreon, and from what I last checked, the last public release barely works on new versions. Traditionally, most LSPDFR modders have Patreons where you can pay to access early versions-but this dev decided you had to pay for a *crucial mod*, and... yeah. It's odd. I would've totally paid for that mod, if it was optional. But now that I'd *have to* pay for it, that drive is gone.

Glad somebody brought up Skyrim. They've been releasing more breaking updates lately that contain next to nothing, mostly as a way to force on creation club content (paid mods). While at one point they were all for modding, nowadays they support it as long as you paid for theirs

Here’s my take on which mods should be paid or not. I’m going to be referencing mainly GTA V. Mods that simply take assets from one game, a car model from Forza or some other game, with nothing but the bare minimum in terms of features, should not be locked behind paywalls. Mods that do the same thing as above but go the extra mile to include customization that is amalgamated from different games deserve kudos. The work that goes into curating these assets from different games together yields some fair work. And then, there are the mods built from the ground up, the lore-friendly vehicle mods that create the majority of assets from scratch. Seriously, the work that groups such as Y-Drop, Vanillaworks and other lore-friendly GTA V modders do embarrasses Rockstar sometimes. These mods I’d be totally cool with supporting/paying for.

For some reason I thought this video was about paid moderators though I still liked it.

To be fair, as a developer we don't have to make mods or anything for that matter. If people feel like they should be paid x amount for the amount of work they put in, that's their right. You as a consumer can decide if you think that price if fair or not.

Hey man I love your work and I've been here since like 500 subs. It's crazy to see how far you made it! Congrats. There has a video I would LOVE seeing on your channel. I'm extremely impatient for gta 6 as we have all been waiting for quite a long time. I was wondering if you could somehow make a video about turning gta 5 into gta 6. You could use information from the leaks and add details that would most likely be in grand theft auto 6 such as more realism, but not too much as that would just be turning it into real life simulator. I hope you see this comment and make something that rockstar probably won't release until 2025. I'm also asking YOU instead of anyone else because I know how good you are at completely transforming grand theft auto 5 into something completely different. Thank you and goodbye!

Bro so happy to see your face 😊 it's kinda weird though 😂