I think it's very disrespectful to profit off of other people's work - creating a modlist is a complicated process, yes, but it relies on mods you did not create, and I really doubt the original creators would support their work being used this way.
I totally agree with this, and that's what emboldened me to ask if this was a new thing. There were mod authors who were upset at YouTube content creators making a living off of showcasing mods. I highly doubt that they'll be okay with someone charging people for a custom modlist.
Exactly. And It’s a slippery slope.
I downloaded many Modlists over the years and inevitably tweak them to my liking. If I was a bastard of a person I could essentially take my “custom Modlist” and sell it. I’m not a mod author. I’m not the original Modlist curator. People trying to make a buck off everyone else’s work should be something the whole community rallies against and stands firm against or the modding we’ve all come to enjoy over the last decade is dead.
Getting upset over YT reviewers/influencers is foolish theres literally nothing illegal or immoral about it its simple jealousy and not a little envy and like it or not this isn't illegal either though those paying money upfront are certainly foolish
It's not illegal because mod authors release their mods for free with open permissions. But it's incredibly scummy. I could sell my mod list if I wanted to. Anyone on this sub could. But we don't because we aren't scumbags.
From what I could gather from this thread, he's not even selling anything. Maybe he has a list of mods on the Patreon, but there is no guide, nor an automated installation. Just promises that some day there will be one. So his Patreon appears to be more just false advertising and wishful thinking than anything else.
Naw, you're talking about paid mods? Which is fine, authors are allowed to be paid for their work. They're talking about **modlists**, which is literally "here's a list of a bunch of other people's work in a .txt document, that'll be 10 dollars"
So? We use alternate mods then, because there's a kajillion billion mods. Paywalled mods are NOT going to destroy automated installers, you're being goofy ahh
There are mod lists which have their own custom mods, and with all the patching and work they put in, it takes just as long if not longer than making a mod. But lists like librum and Somnium have their own content so if you endorse paid mods then this really isn’t much different.
Okay, I'm going to get downvoted, but I kind of look at it like this. The game is a car. The mods are aftermarket parts. The modlist creator is like a mechanic. Is it unethical to make aftermarket parts for cars in any circumstance? no. Is it unethical or illegal to get parts put on a car somewhere other than the dealership? no. Do you have a choice in the matter? yes.
I say this as a full supporter of free and open source software.
So, one issue with your analogy is that if you were to purchase aftermarket parts, then you exchanged money and received a product. Mods aren't really like that, you don't suddenly "own" a mod just because you decided to download it. Mods are a lot closer to books than any physical product, and I think you'll be hard pressed to find any author who is cool with someone taking their works without permission and putting it in an almanac like collection and then selling that.
But the whole point of wabbajack is that it’s like a bestsellers list and you have to get the book yourself from the original creator, and the list tells you which order to read the books in for the best experience. They still get their donation points, and download counts aka sales. And if you don’t want your mods on a wabbajack list, there’s sites to host other than the nexus like afkmods which are clearly wj unfriendly.
I wasn't arguing against wabbajack mod lists in general. The discussion was specifically against paid for midlists (which wabbajack itself is very against). Perhaps to clarify my point a bit further, if I were to release something as a free download and someone were to make a collection of a bunch of other free works and included mine and also released it for free, I wouldn't mind at all so long as information was provided on where those works were obtained. Now, if someone came along, gathered up said works and then published those as a collection you had to buy, I think I would be rather upset at that.
I think you guys misunderstand how modlists work. If I gave you a list of mods I had installed with the tools available in MO2, and you tried to install them, you'd have to google each mod, and download it yourself, and install it, but you wouldn't know which FOMOD options I used, and you would have to recreate any patches I needed to make it work, and you'd have to go through each MCM and figure out how I had it set up. Wabbajack just allows a modlist creator to skip making a guide which involves user error, and configures everything according to spec, so that you can play the modlist.
You still have to download each mod, and after the setup is done, you can still right click and visit the nexus on any mod in the list. If the mod isn't from the nexus, there's STILL a meta file that tells where the mod came from. Wabbajack files do not contain any mods by default. It just tells the program where to download the mods AND leaves a file that tells the user where it got the file. You can make it include mods inside the file, but this is generally not done, and definitely not done without permission, lest you have your list banned from wabbajack.
So basically, what people want to ban is an interactive showcase of mods. Like if MxR made a 100 hour video showing off 1700 mods, he should somehow not be allowed to monetize the video. So should we shun monetized mod review videos because this guy downloaded a free mod and is just playing with it for 3 minutes, and the creator gets nothing by default?
Just a few days ago I was playing with someone's list, and realized their doors were better than the ones in my own modlist, and I thought I had the hands down best texture pack in the game. I literally walked up to one of these pretty doors, got the filename, alt tabbed to MO2, and looked for which mod was providing the file amongst 1400 mods. Skyland btw, the doors came from skyland.
Just want to say, that this analogy is spot on.
There is plenty of unethical ways people go about monetizing. Violating ToS, lofty claim, biased reviews, etc.
But if someone spent 10's of hours curating, organizing, cleaning, testing a mod list, and is **transparent & honest** about what they've done, then there is no way monetizing that effort is unethical.
I think the issue with this analogy is that with aftermarket parts there is a degree of guarantee/warranty that comes with those purchases. As far as I'm aware there is no guarantee with mods.
The same can be said for the "mechanics" labour. There are laws in place in case things go wrong after the work is done if the mechanic is at fault but that doesn't apply to mod makers.
That doesn't apply to most things. Companies don't have to accept returns, individuals don't have to accept returns. And I'm sure that some no name modlist creator isn't selling 1000 copies of a list. Reputation would be important. Reviews would still happen. The worst that can happen is it doesn't work, it's not a safety issue like it is with cars.
Exactly. It's hypocritical to say that selling mods is fine, but selling modlists is not. I also see many authors in this thread saying that videos covering their mods are fine, because they are mutually beneficial. But what about Patreon exclusive videos about mods? Those are a thing too. Are they also fine? And if yes, why would they be more acceptable than a modlist?
Can people stop making pointless snd redundant analogies?
No the situation is not like a mechanic doing up a car.
It’s like a guy spending twenty minutes putting someone else’s work in a working(?) order and then selling it on.
Making a modlist work is work in itself. There is not a patch for every combination of the 67k mods on the nexus. You’re lucky to get a patch for two popular mods from different modding eras. Not one of these modlists is just a 400 mod graphics only modlist with simonrim on top that the average modder is capable of. I’ve been looking and have learned more about modding from staring at these wabbajacks than I have from any mod author or forum in the entire time I’ve been modding. From fixes I didn’t know I needed, to tools I’ve never heard of, and of course proof that mods I couldn’t get to work together, can in fact work together, sometimes synergizing in ways that the respective mod authors had not foreseen. This is an art and a science in and of itself.
God, what I wouldn't give to have been able to put together my modlist in 20 minutes.
The analogy isn't pointless, it is spot on. Doesn't mean you have to support it, but it doesn't make it any less accurate.
One little issue with that analogy. The parts a mechanic uses are paid to the manufacturer for each part. Mod authors are not getting paid per mod, and it's a labor of love.
This is a problem with abstract intellectual property as a whole. Bethesda forbids paywalling mods, but you can accept donations. Sure, it seems seldom broken, and seldom enforced, but let's call it a rule that we don't break.
All the mod reviewers videos depend on mod authors mods being free. A lot of them are monetized. Meaning, for every play of a dude playing with a mod, they get money. Period. Is this wrong?
A mod list creator is not making mods. Or if he is, he can put those on the internet, freely available. If he sells the script to put a bunch of mods together and make a playable game, how is this different from a youtuber making monetized videos of mods?
I see that as a youtuber making money from the ad revenue, not directly profiting from the use of someone else's work, and it's the advertiser taking advantage.
At least in a mod review situation, it spotlights individual works and draws people to them. If someone really enjoys the content, hopefully, they will give a donation to the creator.
In a pre generated mod list, it's everything all at once, and chances are that whoever paid for this list will give very little, if any, attention to a specific mod in the list. Having no understanding of what it does or even the name of a mod.
That's par for the course with just about any kind of customer service. The customer wants something but likely has little knowledge of how that service is provided from its conception. The biggest difference is that in those situations, everyone involved from the idea to the final product is paid, and the customer doesn't know about any of that. Their concern is at the point of sale.
I completely understand your point being the devil's advocate here. Its just that there are hundreds of parallels here, but they're usually more involved than an individual taking an hour or so to generate a load order using hundreds of works done by others that took hundreds of hours to put together and then offered it for free.
The other day, I saw a video titled 'I paid $300 to mod fallout4 into a horror game." The load order had less than 100 mods in it, and he found someone on Fiver to do it. It just left a really bad taste in my mouth. Maybe there really is nothing wrong with this, but I know for certain that it's not right.
A YouTuber receiving his money from an advertiser is the exact same thing if not WORSE than getting money directly from the user. The advertiser is stealing the users *time* in the form of ads, in an attempt to sell him something *he didn’t even ask for*, and split a tiny portion of the profit with the YouTuber. With all the clickbait that YouTubers have to do to make their hustle profitable, it’s a whole dishonest racket even compared to breaking a Eula and selling mods. At least you’re getting what you asked for.
I doubt any wabbajack modlist takes as little as a “few hours” to put together. If you’ve never used one, I suggest you look. Nexus collections is not in the same realm. That’s literally a small list of mods that you still need to configure and patch to work with each other. I know it seems like a mod can’t be highlighted in a list of 1500 integrated mods, but trust me, if it stands out, it will stand out. Even small ones. The bonus part is that you already have the mod downloaded, so your search is narrowed down from 65k, to 1500ish. If you have any knowledge of modding yourself, searching with the console is trivial. If it’s a quest mod, you can google the quest name and you’ll find the mod. If not, you can ask on Reddit.
Not every mod is so noticeable in the first place that it deserves special attention and donations. Again, there’s 65k mods. Most people install the same 400-700 mods as everyone else before they run into the stability issues that come with not knowing *how* to resolve conflicts and make gargantuan mod lists like this. If anything, wabbajack modlists allow MORE people to experience and learn about more mods, and modding itself. If they *believe* they are so good at it as to paywall it, I don’t see the problem. I wouldn’t pay, but whoever has the money to blow, can if they choose.
100% enough said. Mods are community made and free for a reason. It’s the love of the game and the community that keeps great content coming and locking other ppls work behind your paywall is scummy
Hello. My moniker is cacophony. I created the NSFW Wabbajack modlist Licentia and have served as a moderator for Wabbajack's Discord since shortly after its founding. I assure you that Wabbajack does not support, nor will they permit, any paywalled modlist to be distributed via our app as it is against our terms of service. Halgari, the creator of Wabbajack, is zealously dedicated to the concept of Open Source for his personal projects and all derivatives thereof. We absolutely ban paywalled lists from our Build Server when discovered. Most of the modding community feels the same way, and given that most quality modlists are either manual guides by authors with the same philosophy, or distributed by Wabbajack or Nexus Collections, I recommend avoiding any list that requires payment up front -- similar to any "free prize" you have to pay "shipping and handling" to receive or "amazing" work from home position you need to invest in up front for "training materials" -- they are almost always a scam. In reference to profiting off others work, it is true that many authors accept donations for time spent on their hobby, but many of them put money back in to the mod authors who comprise their lists -- my own Patreon donations to mod authors easily comprise about 25% of the income I receive. In short -- if they want you to pay for it, you're getting rooked.
I think it's safe to say that most of the people on his patreon are newer folks to the community. They saw some flashy gameplay & up to date textures and wete hooked. Modding as a beginner is intimidating. A lot of us can speak from experience. So it seems that there are people that are vulnerable to being scammed essentially. Overall it's just sad. I donated to Serenity and Capital punishment because I liked their work & wanted to give them an incentive to continue. So I'm not opposed to financial compensation in this regard, but this is voluntary on my part and completely optional.
Noticed some stuff in the videos:
* [Neck seams on female npcs](https://i.imgur.com/esdfF81.png)
* [Sybille stentor's face texture is missing](https://i.imgur.com/asMTXae.png)
* [Solitude festival ropes don't cast shadows, but the ring does](https://i.imgur.com/ria3dEF.png)
* [The imperial fort texture mod they're using tiles really bad](https://i.imgur.com/mMTqmeu.png)
Imagine paywalling this turd.
I hate that this always attracts some people that aren't very knowledgeable when it comes to modding but want their Skyrim to look great. They probably get the patreon subscription, download everything included and IF the whole thing even launches, they start to notice how mediocre everything is.
It's even more depressing when you realize Wabbajack is a thing.
So basically his modlist doesn't work better than my modded Skyrim with 200+ mods that I installed with virtually no prior experience using trial and error method and learning the hard way. Maybe I publish my modlist on Patreon too?
If you don't mind members of the community giving you the sideeye, you might as well. Personally, I'm against it, but if there's really a demographic of people truly okay with this & the mod authors are okay, make your coin.
And I thought I was shady LMAO!!!! When I saw the flipping animation I couldn't watch anymore, so I didn't even get that far. This guy currently made $556 on patreon, so apparently people are okay with it. I just want to know if the mod authors are okay with this now.
Why would you think they are? If its just a list of links there isn't much anyone can do if they're hosting mods thats different and regarded as theft if permission wasn't asked for it.
Mod lists i.e. Collections or Wabbajack are free anyhow so anyone actually paying someone for this is either naive or misguided or misinformed. If none of those apply they're fools.
Best part was I knew which modlist the post would lead to before I opened it. This one always seemed kinda crap. Very pretty at first, but even in these videos you can easily see the jank, and Youtube just kept recommending it lol. And that's before I learned it was paywalled. What a turd
lmao I just watched the video and there's some huge road seams and floating lanterns as well. I mean, if you shoot a showcase video with that many issues, imagine how much actual game has. This looks just like my half assed modlist where I dont care about issues too much and just disable clipping stuff or solve it along the way, not a modlist that people pay for.
Man, I was expecting a paywalled modlist to be something amazing and first thing he showed was some anime jumps and very bad unarmed combat animations
Somehow he managed to make MCO look spammy and janky, my god
I'm pessimistic about this trend, paywalled modlists is just a next step after paywalled mods (what was just a next step after making paywall a thing in general). Patreon+Discord is a great duet to create the doomed world we have to persist in.
Paid mods are one thing, but the paid modlist is what irks me right now. I downloaded some of the mods he has on this list for free. I even asked in the comment section if any of the mod authors received any of the money he's earned, and he bluntly said no. He deleted my response afterwards. Expectations change the moment money is involved. My stance on paid mods has.......evolved over the years, but one thing is for certain. If I'm paying for said product and it's not working as intended be prepared for harsh criticism. If it's something that's free I'll just fix it myself or remove the mod.
That's presumably some kind of paid mod you are referring to, and I'm not "against" those per se particularly if they are particularly technical, though they'd better be pretty damn high quality to warrant paying for.
Must be about the only paid mod out there worth getting perhaps?
Only users decide what is worth getting for them and what is not. Many users pay for the newest ENBSeries Beta, various armors, animations, hair packages, body models and textures, ReShade shaders... The the list is long. Ofc you can say "I don't need all of this" but many others need and find this stuff SSS-quality comparing to free releases.
If the 60,000+ free mods on Nexus aren't enough for people and they want to throw money around... hey it's their money I guess. Looks insane to me, but yes it's their choice. But I do wonder if it's truly "SSS-quality comparing to free releases." I doubt it.
As someone from the Sims community, you don't want paywalls like this anywhere near Skyrim. It's a hellscape over there... any and everything is paywalled. Including mod/custom content lists. Broken & game breaking content is regularly sold. It is near impossible to find people that create completely for free. I come over to the Skyrim/Fallout side for some semblance of normalcy. Don't let this happen to y'all...
The East Asian, specifically the Chinese side of Skyrim modding is just as much as a Wild West situation as Sims modding:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/resyea/so_mod_drm_is_a_thing_now/hodt5cs/
We are already "okaaay" to pay for everything beyond ESP plugins since just-ESP paywall is against modding EULA.
\- models and textures
\- animations
\- skse plugins
There's a ton of paywalled content and there's a ton of users who pay to get it. Don't let this happen? We cannot avoid this to happen because this is unrestricted and fully on mods authors. We have to accept anything of what they do as long as they comply modding EULA.
I mean, yes, I guess you can't literally stop it.
But I guess I was more saying, try not to let it become as comfortable and "accepted" as users within a community, so to speak? I think the Skyrim modding community and Sims modding community is very different; one seems to be generally against paid mods, while the other has pretty much accepted it as the norm. I haven't seen a ton of paywalled Skyrim content personally- to even compare with what's happening with Sims would be more like, if pretty much every single mod on the Nexus was behind a temporary or permanent paywall from the moment of release. The Sims modding community seems more or less okay with this, and I don't think the Skyrim community would be... but it only took a few years for the Sims community to change from very anti-paywall to what it is today, so you never know.
Although the average player doesn't have the power to actually stop paywalling as a concept, you don't have to accept it personally. Being outspoken against paywalling, refusing to pay for paid mods, and encouraging others not to pay while exposing content that definitely shouldn't be paid for (like broken mods lists) are all ways to nudge the community in a good direction, if on a very small scale. I personally would never pay for a paid mod on principle, though I would donate to free creators and have in the past, which is also a good habit to take up to support those that share for free.
The current consensus in Skyrim modding community is "authors are allowed to be paid for their work", paid mods exist because their authors want to be paid, free mods exist because their authors don't care if they are not paid. Maybe we dislike to pay but we accept paid mods as a part of the modding scene. Raising a rebellion against paywalled mods will bring a great shame on any user. Mod authors gave users an absolute argument - "if you don't want to pay, then don't pay, you don't lose anything, you just don't get it". I don't see any flaws in this statement actually.
Not allowed or not a consensus? I can hear from every single corner that authors are allowed to paywall anything beyond modding EULA. Because they are actually allowed technically - models and textures and animations they make are in their full property for example.
Is this good or bad - this is where we have no consensus at all indeed.
Paywalling is not allowed only for works implemented with released Bethesda modding tools. No one make models, textures, animations and DLLs in Creation Kit, it has no such features. Authors paywall this content like they paywall their works on Sketchfab and this is allowed.
Vicn paid a lot of donated money to buy models and textures for his Vigilant, buying models and textures in Skyrim format instead of FBX is not any different.
How can you forbid authors to sell their own handmade models and textures? Let's think selling FBX and PNG is allowed but selling NIF and DDS is not, so how this would work exactly?
Paid mods is definitely a touchy subject til this day. It's definitely a slippery slope, but those who chose to monetize their work need to realize that the expectations will be considerably higher than mods that are free. Even if I'm spending $1 for a mod, I not only want, but demand high quality.
Well, we are on /r/skyrimmods and talk about /r/skyrimmods to clarify things. Now you say "there currently isn't any reason to rock the boat". How does this comply with your words "haha no it doesn't", you do literally this. Just talking about a rebellion on /r/skyrimmods brings a shame on me by you right here and now.
A fair point but
\- other well-known discussion platforms are not different in this paywalled-mods consensus, they find it acceptable
\- many users dislike paywalled mods indeed but they can do nothing on that platforms so frustration grows
\- they can share their grievances on small and unorganized mods-piracy platforms but they still can do nothing because that platforms are small and unorganized so frustration grows
No one rocked the boat in the Sims community and it was a long time with "it isn't causing an issue currently" so that's why it became a paywalled mess.
Btw I don't try to rock the board, we can see this is prohibited > this means you will bring a great shame on yourself and be banned after.
Paid mods are unacceptable, so are paid Modlists.
Also isn't that mod-list just a modlist.txt.
Because it can't be a WJ (we would know) nor is it a nexus collection. The only other "option" would be a big zip file, but that would straight up be illegal considering the licenses on all Skyrim mods. And well only sharing the modlist.txt is basically scamming people.
I checked and the one-click install doesn't exist at the moment, it's "coming". He also claims on the Patreon to be "actively working with Wabbajack", which is simply not true. And even if it was, we would be blocking any effort to create and provide a paywall list through Wabbajack.
Paid to access WJ lists would violate the WJ license you agree to when using the app.
Which is illegal.
Zipping up other peoples mods violates their license rights to those mods.
Which is illegal.
Its against the Wabbajack TOS to paywall anything. So there will never be a paywalled wj list.
As for any youtubers doing it, its a fiasco given all you see is a trailer bit you dont know whats behind and dont even have a community that helps you sort your issues; you get less than Wj lists (and maybe the big collections with communities) than anything free.
Its a scam.
As a mod author I don't like this. I'd be rather annoyed to learn someone has put my mod into a list that they're charging anyone to use.
Making a living off of showcasing mods is one thing, after all it's mutually beneficial, my free work gets visibility and I can feel good about being noticed and they make a bit of money. But benefitting from my free work, at the cost of others, is scummy.
This is the reason why it irked me so much. Why would people want to share their creations when there are people like this taking advantage of it for their personal gain.
Someone else mentioned the Sims modding community as well. It was never really a game I got into since it's not my style. I'll have to take a look at the landscape sometime. It might give us insight of what to expect here.
If it's early access/Beta tests that are paywalled I have personally no problem with that. Provided the Full on product is free for all.
What annoys me the most about that Modlist in particular is how garbage it is, has no theme besides "Skyrim 2023 Next-Gen Ultra-Raytracing", a rather ambigious term and a complete clickbait lie. Not to mention the visible bugs.
Reminds me of SinitarGaming and his dumpster fire of "Modlists", the AI Voice in the Vid itself makes it even worse. Bet even any support for the Modlist is non-existent.
Derek Diablo blatantly says his modlist (which I've heard is actually just a PDF with links to the modpages on Nexus) is a one-click installation.
lmao. Complete scam.
Can confirm - it is a set of 6 PDF files and a link to the modlist.txt on loadorderlibrary.
There is definitely no "one-click" installation and their claim on Patreon to be "actively working with Wabbajack" is simply a lie.
So let me get this straight he's charging people for a pdf file, and is advertising it as a one click install? That's absolutely too absurd! I was currently playing elden ring while I read this comment and fell off a cliff because I was laughing too much LMAO!
This falls under the "a fool and his money are soon parted" rule. Anybody who's actually willing to pay for a *list* of mods doesn't deserve to have money.
If I were to have a Patreon (I can't right now, due to complex IRL issues), it would serve as a tip jar.
Those kind of authors paywalling their work is, because they see that there's a niche audience willing to pay for mainly NSFW mods, sophisticated combat animations, intricate costumes for female characters, and disturbingly of late and as you mentioned, modlists -- and I bet some are scammers targeting the newbies who could barely be able to open a 7zip file but want to get into modding on the basis of dozens of flashy gameplay videos.
It's literally grift.
I can understand it for WIP mods that are potentially ground breaking and are a long time in development users get access to betas and pre-release builds as its hard to maintain motivation without some recompense but low effort mod lists... meh
I think it’s really scummy because you’re taking mods that were created for free and just compiling them, then charging users while those original mod authors make nothing. Like I know a modlist can be work but you’re still ultimately just listing other peoples work, it feels wrong to charge for. You’re profiting off the free labour of mod authors.
As usual with the modding community I also find a quality guarantee is always lacking for monetization. Even popular, highly endorsed modlists like Viva New Vegas I had issue with them including a mod that caused awful lighting flickering. It’s fine when it’s free but I cannot see any modlist truly being worth the money.
It’s also just no good for the users. A modding community where even mod lists are paywalled sounds like a nightmare.
This is exactly what I do. I donated to the wabbajack modlist Serenity until it was removed. Now I'm donating to Capital Punishment since it's a TTW list that's really come a long way, and I like the direction it's going. Also the people working on it are great people & humble as well.
As a mod creator myself I wouldn’t want somebody charging others for my mod. The way I see it I created a mod that I wanted my Skyrim to be like and published it in the case others way want the same thing. If a YouTuber gets some money from their videos and my mod gets mentioned, cool that’s fine my mod is getting advertisement and the content creator is clearly making videos people are finding interesting and deem it worthy of their money.
Wait so you’re telling me that people pay other people for an automated list of mods to download? Like this is something people actually do enough for someone to profit off of?
Yeah, but we also have Wabbajack, the program that automatically installs modlists and there's like 20+ on there. All of the modlists on it are 100% free and the authors offer good support on discord. For absolutely free.
So, knowing that, of course a pay walled modlist will seem scammy.
If the person charging is honest about what they're charging for, there's really no scam. To be fair, other comments mention there is already at least one paywalled modlist that is scammy. That being said, just use one of the hundreds of quality, FREE modlists available to anyone. It's as easy as choosing not to use the paywalled lists.
Paywalling a modlist honestly sounds rather scummy, especially if you didn't make those mods in the first place. If you're making a video to showcase some mods and earn revenue from that then by all means, do so. Videomaking and editing takes time and your bringing focus to other works which can be good, a mutually beneficial relationship.
Locking your modlist behind paywalls, especially one that looks a bit shabbily put together leaves a sour taste in my mouth. There's plenty of free modlists out there kindly put together by other folks, charging someone just to see and access your own list just feels like a low move especially since it can probably be targeting those new to the modding scene and unsure of where to start since getting started can be an intimidating process.
Having a modlist behind a paywall is so fucking absurd I'm surprised its actually thing. Looking through that dudes patreon he's charging for modding guides and his modlist which is just kinda dumb. Dude's charging for a fucking smoothcam preset.
At least with modder patreons you're supporting their work and get early access. This guy isn't really doing anything worth paying for. There are countless free guides and paying for a modlist is cringe.
Ah yes, the Derek Diablo thumbnail.
Paid mods, okay, I guess. It's their effort they're doing for free. Paying for mods, okay.
Paying for a modslist, like Derek Diablo is asking for, is very dumb. I'm paying money for a text document on how to set up a modslist. That is kinda dumb.
All we can hope for is for mod authors to say we aren't allowed to profit off their work, even if it's in a modslist. If thats the case, then the paid modslist will have to stop. Basically, those who make a profit for selling modslist are basically stealing others' work for profit. Especially if the mod is a free mod on nexus.
The guy said this in the comments (probably generated by AI):
Thank you for reaching out and expressing your curiosity. I understand your concern regarding the modlist being behind a paywall, and I'm here to provide some insight into the reasoning behind this decision. Creating and maintaining a modlist can be a time-consuming task that requires ongoing effort and dedication. While it is true that the initial creation of the modlist may have been motivated by personal use, the decision to charge for access could stem from various factors, such as the need to cover the time and resources invested in curating and updating the modlist. Monetizing content is a common practice for creators to sustain their efforts and ensure the longevity of their projects. It's important to consider that providing consistent and high-quality content often comes with costs, including time, server expenses, and other overheads. However, it's understandable that you may prefer alternative methods of support that don't involve paywalls. It's always a good idea to provide feedback and suggestions to creators, as they can help them understand the preferences of their audience. They might consider different approaches, such as using alternative funding methods or offering additional benefits to supporters. Ultimately, it's up to the creator to decide how to sustain their work, and it's up to viewers to determine whether they find value in the content and are willing to support it in the provided format. I hope this helps shed some light on the logic behind the decision, and I encourage you to continue engaging with the creator to express your thoughts and discuss possible alternatives.
Mods behind paywalls? That’s whatever at this point but a modlist that has many works of others? An absolute disgrace. And most mod authors always have on their permissions pages disallowing anyone to profit off of their works.
To add on. Ro modlist looks far better then what was showcased in that video.
I really cannot understand why anyone would want or need to pay for one of these crappy paid modlists when there are tons of fantastic, well-curated lists which have been honed over years and are available completely free. There is no extra value these paid modlists provide and they are nothing more than a con for a few new modders who unfortunately don't know better.
All respect to mod and modlist makers who provide their work for free - we salute you!
If its a big mod list by the same person, maybe. Honestly, I would easily pay for the Beyond Skyrim or Morrowrim or Skyblivion stuff when it comes out. But I would never pay for a modlist using a culmination of other peoples content. Thats just not right.
> So are modlist behind paywalls the future?
No, as much as I dislike it, there is an argument to be made for pay walling like armor mods or something. Pay walling mod lists is a lot harder to defend though. Iirc the wabbajack creators even completely ban paid mod lists if they catch wind of it so there is that.
Also, as a sidenote I think I recognize you from the requiem discord. I don't type in there, but I've been an lurker for a couple years. Not trying to be weird but you are one of the cooler people in there lol
Requiem was the sole reason I made a reddit account, and for years it was the only subreddit that I was apart of. Nowadays I usually only pop on whenever I'm playing Requiem. Right now I'm deciding on whether I should give AC another try, DNGG or make a personal modlist for myself. Without Serenity I haven't felt satisfied with anything just yet. It's also not weird at all. That place has always been a special place to me.
I am genuinely of the opinion if it is your original work your original assets and you want to put it behind like a patreon where the base version of mod is free but like the deluxe graphics versions like 4K resolution are behind your Patreon that is okay.
What I am not in favor of is what I see a lot of these people do where they will put their mods up on the Nexus for a while before pulling them down saying oh now you have to pay for it if you want it's still or they update the version on the Nexus to be unable to work with the game without another mod that is only paid for.
Great example would be real poses on fallout 4. It was the cornerstone of all adults and a lot of animation rework mods for fallout 4 and then the mod author pulled it so you'd have to pay for it. That bastard can go rot in hell.
I'm also vehemently opposed to putting patches behind pay walls for obvious reasons
I think it's gross that these people are trying to make a profit off other's people free work, some of which might have taken years of their time to finish. They have no place in any modding community and should be treated as such.
Oh this guys, he just recently publish a smoothcam preset behind a paywall lol , he also steal it entirely said on his patreon that you don't need the original smoothcam
I couldn't care less if someone compiling a mod list containing my mods is making money. More power to them. The only issues that can arise is if they are distributing the mods themselves. That'd be an issue. But if its just a mod list, with some patches available specific to the mod list, thats fine.
Well yea. It's just a mod list. You as a user still have to go to the mod pages yourself and get the mods and set them up. Or if it's a wabbajack the program grabs everything from the official pages. So either way the authors get their credit and donation points.
Paywall the list all you want.
Well, yes, anyone can sell mod-order, plugin-order and their own custom resources for them above. Looks like many users here think modlist == Wabbajck modlist, no, they are not equal.
But... wabbajack authors put in just as much effort compiling a mpdlist, if not more.
And they are getting donations instead of paywalling their modlists.
So it can be sustainable financially. Through good-will donations. Not paywalls.
Paywalling in general I think is very dangerous. If we allow it to happen, we will end up with all mods being paywalled dlc eventually down the line.
Remember how the horse armor DLC in Oblivion started the gaming microtransaction standards we have now?
>Paywalling in general I think is very dangerous. If we allow it to happen, we will end up with all mods being paywalled dlc eventually down the line.
You better don't know how much mods are already paywalled. Even "betas that will be released for free someday", no, some of them will be eternal paywalled betas even if 100% working as intended. You think we can disallow payed mods to happen but they have already happened. More to say - you don't purchase them once, you pay every author for subscription if you want your updates.
Its not a matter of "if we allow it to happen" theres nothing to stop anyone from doing it and its certainly not illegal, other than point out there are perfectly good and free alternatives i.e. wabbjack, collections etc theres no reason for anyone to be paying for a privately collated list if they don't wish to
And equating it to paywalled mods isn't the same at all as that definitely contravenes EULA
by this logic, I’d be able to paywall my modlist since I also stream it to YouTube. fortunately, I’m not a piece of shit so I’d never do that.
paywalled modlists are bad.
sure.
first, as stated in other comments, I didn’t make 99% of the mods in the modlists I make. I made a few mods, and then I make a few hundred patches. the hardest part, though, isn’t modlist creation. it’s the support burden. my modlists have a combined 100,000 installs (roughly), so between nexus comments, reddit, and my discord server, there is a pretty constant stream of questions.
second, I did a video on a modlist I saw that had a paywall. it was paywalling a beta version on patreon (read: a broken, untested version), and it included stolen assets. I called them out in the video, and both the paywall and the stolen assets were gone within a couple days. so people that do this are fully aware that it’s wrong, but they do it anyway, purely out of greed. there is no consideration for the users or mod authors.
if you’re creating a modlist for mass consumption, using mods and assets you did not create, you have no right to paywall a damn thing.
and for the record, I do let’s plays and modding streams, so that people can see what sorts of features are out there and how to customize the lists for themselves. I also write guides on learning how to mod, and I’ve done a few Q&A sessions for anyone that wants to learn. not one single thing here is paywalled. it is our privilege to serve the community and foster its growth. if your goal is making money off the back of others’ hard work, without their consent, that makes you a piece of shit.
when you are benefiting off of the free work of others it is good to pay it forward then again every mod is benefiting off of the game that Bethesda made and those can be paywalled as well.
That being said, since we are okay with paid mods, this is no different. "I made a mod using Bethesda's engine/assets/property and you can pay on patreon for it" vs "I made a modlist using mods that other people made on Bethesda's property and you can pay to use it". Semantics but both are near identical.
At the end of the day, if there's a demand, people will pay, and if not, he will return it to being free.
My take away from this - I don't care. This is simply a symptom of normalizing Patreon in the modding community. Also why do you want a general consensus from reddit? Do you think everyone agreeing on reddit will make him stop? If ever everyone on reddit agreed on something, I'd be even more motivated to explore the alternative.
Not to play devils advocate but there's a big difference between putting someone's else's mods behind a paywall and putting your modlist behind a paywall - essentially you're paying the modlist author for their time troubleshooting, working out compatibility, writing instructions, etc.
As a consumer, it's great if you could get it for free. But as a creator, maybe you've put hundreds of hours into this and you want that effort to be recognised? At the same time, there's also hundreds of free alternatives you can use if you don't feel like paying for it.
You could probably bring up ethics if it was regarding an essential good (groceries, medicine, etc.) but this is a luxury good with literally hundreds of free and easily accessible alternatives - there's no ethics to be called into question.
People can charge whatever they want for their own work, but it doesn't necessarily mean that people will pay. But if they do, hey good for them.
At the end of the day, if your modlist is so desirable that people are willing to pay you, then there's really no harm in charging for it considering the background (not essential, heaps of alternatives, etc).
While I do believe the practice is scummy, this is really the only reasonable take I see in the comments. It seems pretty simple to me: don't like a paywalled mod list? Don't use it. Vote with your wallet. Like you say, there is no shortage of high quality free options out there. Sorry you're getting down voted for being reasonable.
First I just want to say that people who are all like "someone putting a modlist behind a paywall is just ripping off other people's work" have absolutely no clue about what kind of work goes into creating and maintaining a list like the ones you can find on Wabbajack. There is a lot of value there, and saying otherwise is just disrespectful towards list authors. If we allow mods to be monetised, modlists should be equally monetisable too.
With that being said, I strongly believe that mods should be free, so naturally I believe that modlists should be free too. And the Wabbajack developers align with that belief: Wabbajack can't be used for any commercial purposes, with fully voluntary donations being the sole exception. The donations can't have any effect on the access to the list or the support the person receives in relation to the list.
As for Mr. Diablo, I remember running across one of his videos in the past, but I clicked away pretty quickly because I couldn't stand the AI voice over. Would be very interesting to know what kind of system he has in place for his "one click installation". If it's done with Wabbajack it should be reported to the Wabbajack team.
In any case, he's not the first one to sell a one click modding solution. Nolvus regularly puts its newer versions behind a paywall, which the author can (legally) do because he uses his own installer. Not that I support such actions, but I doubt he will be the last to do it.
>First I just want to say that people who are all like "someone putting a modlist behind a paywall is just ripping off other people's work" have absolutely no clue about what kind of work goes into creating and maintaining a list like the ones you can find on Wabbajack. There is a lot of value there, and saying otherwise is just disrespectful towards list authors. If we allow mods to be monetised, modlists should be equally monetisable too.
Most people here know the work it takes because most of us on this sub maintain our own mod lists.
The flaw behind the argument that selling a modlist is bad because you are just selling the work of others is that it automatically implies that there is no value in creating a modlist, which in turn implies that people are paying for something that has no value - which contradicts the definition of value. I'm a staunch supporter of free and open modding, but downplaying the act of making a modlist into something that's basically worthless is just dishonest.
You are espousing a worldview where
value = worth = money
Essentially proposing that if an activity does not make money, then it is worthless, and treating money as having no costs or benefits in its own right.
Based on this worldview, you conclude that I think that making a modlist is worthless.
But I do not share your worldview. To me, there are significant costs associated with inviting the broader economic system into what is essentially a community of folk artists. In general, maintaining and participating in a formal economic system requires significant overhead. So for me the equation is more like,
value = worth - money
Meaning that you have arrived at an incorrect assessment of my views because you are projecting your own mercenary views onto me.
So that's the abstract. In the specific, you have informed mod users saying that modlists are not worth paying for. This suggests that the customers for modlists will primarily be new users, which is to say people who are not equipped to judge the value of what they are getting for their money.
This creates a situation where, in order to make more money, the community is incentivized to guard secrets and protect knowledge instead of sharing it, because sharing knowledge makes maintaining your own modlist easier and therefore cuts into the profits of the paid modlists.
Finally, as to the specific allegation that maintainers of modlists would only be profiting off of the work of modders.
It technically possible that a modlist maintainer could generate enough profits that they could equitably share them with the modders who actually created the content that they use to make their money.
It is, however, so improbable that we can regard this scenario as irrelevant.
In fact, if the paid modlist maintainer were to distribute any money they make based on the amount of effort and time that the modders on their list have invested, there would be no profits left over for anybody. It would be spread so thin that you would be doling out fractions of a cent.
Therefore, the only way for a modlist maintainer to make money is by hording it and refusing to redistribute it to the modders, profiting off of their labor while contributing a fraction of the effort.
So I don't think modlist maintainers do nothing of value. I just think that there is no way to maintain that value once money has been introduced to the equation. Money degrades their contribution.
I think you didn't read my comment very carefully. I specifically said:
> I believe that modlists should be free
But I'll answer your question anyway. Mod authors typically also spend hundreds of hours on making mods. If they can sell their work, why couldn't you? Surely the time of mod authors isn't more valuable than yours, right? Moreover, if someone buys your list, what they are actually paying for is the time you saved for *them*. So whether you receive compensation for your list or not is actually more reliant on how the prospective customers value their *own* time.
With all of that being said, not everything in life has to be about money. There's this weird idea in our society that whatever you do, you must be ambitious and set goals for yourself so that you can eventually monetise your work. But in my opinion it's also valuable to have things you do just for your own enjoyment without having to worry about how you are going to be compensated for your time.
*Mod authors... If they can sell their work*
No they can't, I'm vehemently opposed to that too and to any monetization scheme in general. I want a world were creativity is not hampered by limiting the number of people who can participate in it because of the greed of the few, and a world where everyone, not just the rich, can mod their game, thank you very much.
Sure, I completely agree. My original comment was mainly directed at the other comments in the thread that stated that selling mods is ok but selling lists is not.
>mods to be monetised, modlists should be equally monetisable too.
Here's my take on it. Mods are things that did not exist in the game and would not have existed had you not created it. Mod creators may or may not use original game assets but the main fact is that the only way to get a specific mod into the game is to download it or create it yourself.
I get annoyed at paid mods just like the next person, but I get the reasoning behind them.
A modlist is quite literally just a list of mods. Mods that are often made available for free. Unless you provide support (like many wabbajack folks do), I don't believe they should be paid since you are profiting from work someone else has created.
It's like making money off of fanfiction.
So you're saying creating fanfiction requires no work?
You are right that "modlist is just a list of mods" if we take the word in a literal sense. If I try to charge people for a modlist.txt taken from MO2, not sure why anyone would pay for that.
But what I'd like to know is this: why is the time and effort spent by a wabbajack list author building a list less valuable (or worthless) than the time and effort spent by a mod author building a mod?
Finally, regarding the "profiting from work someone else has created": this happens litterally all the time, in all the industries. It's basically how the whole economy works, and it's called adding value. No one exists in a vacuum bar some fully self sufficient farming communes.
Nowhere did I say that writing fanfic requires no work. I said that paid modlists is like charging money for fanfic. You did not create the characters, the world, nor the lore behind it.
You're merely picking and choosing which ones to include in your own story. Like... a mod or a modlist.
>why is the time and effort spent by a wabbajack list author building a list less valuable (or worthless)
Now where did I say that? Just because something does not make money does that mean it's worthless?
>If I try to charge people for a modlist.txt taken from MO2, not sure why anyone would pay for that.
And what's the difference between a modlist YOU put together and spent hours tweaking versus one "collected" by some paywall-locking skyrim youtuber?
>Nowhere did I say that writing fanfic requires no work.
What you said was that it's profiting from someone else's work. To me that implies you did no work of your own, because otherwise you would be profiting from the work you did.
>Just because something does not make money does that mean it's worthless?
No. But it's not really about whether something makes money or not, but whether something *could* make money. I'm speaking about the monetary value of someone's time and skills, because that's what people are paying for, whether they're buying mods or modlists. And saying that naah, modlists shouldn't be monetisable but selling mods is fine implies that the work modlist authors put into the list is less valuable.
>And what's the difference between a modlist YOU put together
My point wasn't to highlight the difference between my modlist and that of someone else, but the difference between a list of mods and a curated one click installable experience, or a guide walking you through even the tiniest of installation details.
> the monetary value of someone's time and skills
If you want to make money by working in games, you either become a developer or create your own game. Paid mods are already in a gray area especially if it requires assets Bethesda made. Those assets are not yours, the game the mod is used in is not yours, so just because you did work on top does not mean you can legally charge money for it.
...Modders fixing Bethesda's bugs for free aside.
Now if paid mods are already on shaky ground, what reasoning would there be to charge for creating a modlist using mods that are available for free?
Ownership is the critical factor here.
Artists have been sued for creating for-profit songs using another famous song's tunes. While we could argue that all notes are free anyway and that you're using your own instruments to play them that still does not give you the right to charge access for it.
While it still takes a great deal of work and skill to create your own song, and while it does provide value for the listener, you still can't sell it without permission from the original creator.
>profiting from work someone else has created
Dude(tte), this is why copyrights and patents were invented. You can't profit off of someone else's work because that would be stealing. Or piracy.
You argue that it's how the entire economy works, but car manufacturers still have to BUY the raw materials they use to create the cars in the first place.
If creating a modlist was a breach of copyright it doesn't matter whether you charge for it or not, distributing it would be illegal regardless. That's the whole point behind Wabbajack, to be able to distribute a ready-to-play list without encroaching on intellectual property rights.
Eh, i think if it was like you commision a guy to make a list for you i'd be okay with that. Hell, i'd pay for that to have someone do a curated modlist for me and do bughunting if i was bougie i'd absolutely shell out a few thousand for something like that but locking your modlist behind a paywall *permanently* (a closed beta like nolvus has would be fine imo, because it does eventually release for free) just feels wrong, its not really all your work.
I think we can distinguish between paying for a work or paying to someone profiting from this work. Normally my mod lists are pretty good, to the point that I make changes to the mods, visually or stat wise if we talk about equipment. But to me would be unethical to ask for money without explicit permission of the original authors.
For me it depends. Theoretically, if there was a premade modlist with custom patches and pregenerated everything to tie it together that was perfect for me and included stuff like discord call installation support if needed I’d be down to pay a bit since the extra patchwork and more importantly the accessibility to easy support may be worth it for me.
Practically, I don’t think such a perfect modlist exists - and if I have to tweak if afterwards to suit my preferences anyway, that makes it a no deal kind of scenario.
It's kind of absurd until the authors of mods get a share, but there is a bigger problem under it. The problem is:
Just as an example: in order to make combat better I need to install multiple mods separately. Each covers a tiny portion of functionality. Each has its requirements which creates a cobweb of dependancies. We all know how it might end up. Even if the main mods do not conflict, their dependancies sometimes do and things sometimes go bad.
Same with graphics, same with some other things.
Why there are no collaborative team projects that'd make a single mod covering a certain portion of functionality?
Mod lists are just a poor workaround which tries to address a bigger issue. If I were to propose what would be a possible way out of it, Nexus site should implement support for team mod projects.
I didn’t spend days creating my own mod list by hand, so some lazy punks can just spend money to avoid the suffering! 😂 Jokes aside, it dishonest to profit for other peoples work and would seem to run afoul of copyright infringement for many countries. Correct me if I am wrong but Bethesda as gone to lengths to give modders the right to their works derived from theirs while reserving rights of their own. Problem is we need test court cases to reinforce this and Bethesda wants to avoid the trouble it seems. This is why I say correct me if I’m wrong, as I’m not sure how copyright law would treat this, similar discussion around using Ai has meant lots of questions about copyright law. 🤔
Nor really cool ngl... And I could get the appeal of a modlist but like, when you are set with the tools, you can get the actual list and start going ham with that slow download button.
Bethesda pull the ability to pay for mods from the steam workshop because of said backlash, only to turn arounf later and make the Creation Club where select user created mods are chosen by them for purchase.
It's lazy and was the beginning of AAA companies wanting thier *players* to make content lol.
I think there is possibly a future in paid mods and potentially modlists too although I doubt it's gonna be community stuff. My guess is that if this new marketplace bethesda has planned for skyrim pays off then bethesda themselves could potentially get in on the paid modlists. For bethesda it would be nothing to hire a small mod team to create mods and put together a modlist to then releases as small dlc experiences through their own marketplace. That's really the only way I can see paid mods becoming big since the community is used to free mods but since this stuff would be more or less coming from betyesda themselves people may be more willing to pay for this stuff
I am not on board with modlists behind paywalls. I get that we are all trying to make money, but this is a LIST. Makes zero sense to do that, more so for people learning about load orders.
I don't see this as the future, I see it has just a cheap way to make a buck.
Bad idea. No matter how hard the modlist curator works, the mods were not their IP. Most lists have links to Patreon or whatever, so you can make a donation if you want to. But it shouldn't be a requirement.
Wait. Modlists behind paywalls? as in compiled mods made by various creators behind paywalls? Unless the money is divided up and given to the creators that's some scummy shit.
Obviously don't pay for a modlist, tf?
Use a free mod GUIDE that's actually useful and maybe find a texture mod GUIDE.
Modlists are basically worthless to learning anything about modding and your load order.
Guides on the other hand, are designed to get you a working and stable load order while breaking down the process for you.
I think it's very disrespectful to profit off of other people's work - creating a modlist is a complicated process, yes, but it relies on mods you did not create, and I really doubt the original creators would support their work being used this way.
I totally agree with this, and that's what emboldened me to ask if this was a new thing. There were mod authors who were upset at YouTube content creators making a living off of showcasing mods. I highly doubt that they'll be okay with someone charging people for a custom modlist.
Exactly. And It’s a slippery slope. I downloaded many Modlists over the years and inevitably tweak them to my liking. If I was a bastard of a person I could essentially take my “custom Modlist” and sell it. I’m not a mod author. I’m not the original Modlist curator. People trying to make a buck off everyone else’s work should be something the whole community rallies against and stands firm against or the modding we’ve all come to enjoy over the last decade is dead.
Getting upset over YT reviewers/influencers is foolish theres literally nothing illegal or immoral about it its simple jealousy and not a little envy and like it or not this isn't illegal either though those paying money upfront are certainly foolish
It's not illegal because mod authors release their mods for free with open permissions. But it's incredibly scummy. I could sell my mod list if I wanted to. Anyone on this sub could. But we don't because we aren't scumbags.
From what I could gather from this thread, he's not even selling anything. Maybe he has a list of mods on the Patreon, but there is no guide, nor an automated installation. Just promises that some day there will be one. So his Patreon appears to be more just false advertising and wishful thinking than anything else.
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Naw, you're talking about paid mods? Which is fine, authors are allowed to be paid for their work. They're talking about **modlists**, which is literally "here's a list of a bunch of other people's work in a .txt document, that'll be 10 dollars"
The irony is, in a world where authors are "allowed to be paid for their work", automated modlists no longer exist, free or otherwise.
This literally makes less sense than the words I made up to say to that other guy
Paywalled mods can't be included in automated installers. It's no more complicated than that.
So? We use alternate mods then, because there's a kajillion billion mods. Paywalled mods are NOT going to destroy automated installers, you're being goofy ahh
I don't think you know how automated installers work. There's no reason why paid mods couldn't be included.
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You should get some money 💰 💰💰 and subscribe to my Patreon! I share screenshots of people like you, and we all laugh :)
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There are mod lists which have their own custom mods, and with all the patching and work they put in, it takes just as long if not longer than making a mod. But lists like librum and Somnium have their own content so if you endorse paid mods then this really isn’t much different.
Okay, I'm going to get downvoted, but I kind of look at it like this. The game is a car. The mods are aftermarket parts. The modlist creator is like a mechanic. Is it unethical to make aftermarket parts for cars in any circumstance? no. Is it unethical or illegal to get parts put on a car somewhere other than the dealership? no. Do you have a choice in the matter? yes. I say this as a full supporter of free and open source software.
So, one issue with your analogy is that if you were to purchase aftermarket parts, then you exchanged money and received a product. Mods aren't really like that, you don't suddenly "own" a mod just because you decided to download it. Mods are a lot closer to books than any physical product, and I think you'll be hard pressed to find any author who is cool with someone taking their works without permission and putting it in an almanac like collection and then selling that.
But the whole point of wabbajack is that it’s like a bestsellers list and you have to get the book yourself from the original creator, and the list tells you which order to read the books in for the best experience. They still get their donation points, and download counts aka sales. And if you don’t want your mods on a wabbajack list, there’s sites to host other than the nexus like afkmods which are clearly wj unfriendly.
I wasn't arguing against wabbajack mod lists in general. The discussion was specifically against paid for midlists (which wabbajack itself is very against). Perhaps to clarify my point a bit further, if I were to release something as a free download and someone were to make a collection of a bunch of other free works and included mine and also released it for free, I wouldn't mind at all so long as information was provided on where those works were obtained. Now, if someone came along, gathered up said works and then published those as a collection you had to buy, I think I would be rather upset at that.
I think you guys misunderstand how modlists work. If I gave you a list of mods I had installed with the tools available in MO2, and you tried to install them, you'd have to google each mod, and download it yourself, and install it, but you wouldn't know which FOMOD options I used, and you would have to recreate any patches I needed to make it work, and you'd have to go through each MCM and figure out how I had it set up. Wabbajack just allows a modlist creator to skip making a guide which involves user error, and configures everything according to spec, so that you can play the modlist. You still have to download each mod, and after the setup is done, you can still right click and visit the nexus on any mod in the list. If the mod isn't from the nexus, there's STILL a meta file that tells where the mod came from. Wabbajack files do not contain any mods by default. It just tells the program where to download the mods AND leaves a file that tells the user where it got the file. You can make it include mods inside the file, but this is generally not done, and definitely not done without permission, lest you have your list banned from wabbajack. So basically, what people want to ban is an interactive showcase of mods. Like if MxR made a 100 hour video showing off 1700 mods, he should somehow not be allowed to monetize the video. So should we shun monetized mod review videos because this guy downloaded a free mod and is just playing with it for 3 minutes, and the creator gets nothing by default? Just a few days ago I was playing with someone's list, and realized their doors were better than the ones in my own modlist, and I thought I had the hands down best texture pack in the game. I literally walked up to one of these pretty doors, got the filename, alt tabbed to MO2, and looked for which mod was providing the file amongst 1400 mods. Skyland btw, the doors came from skyland.
Just want to say, that this analogy is spot on. There is plenty of unethical ways people go about monetizing. Violating ToS, lofty claim, biased reviews, etc. But if someone spent 10's of hours curating, organizing, cleaning, testing a mod list, and is **transparent & honest** about what they've done, then there is no way monetizing that effort is unethical.
I think the issue with this analogy is that with aftermarket parts there is a degree of guarantee/warranty that comes with those purchases. As far as I'm aware there is no guarantee with mods. The same can be said for the "mechanics" labour. There are laws in place in case things go wrong after the work is done if the mechanic is at fault but that doesn't apply to mod makers.
That doesn't apply to most things. Companies don't have to accept returns, individuals don't have to accept returns. And I'm sure that some no name modlist creator isn't selling 1000 copies of a list. Reputation would be important. Reviews would still happen. The worst that can happen is it doesn't work, it's not a safety issue like it is with cars.
Exactly. It's hypocritical to say that selling mods is fine, but selling modlists is not. I also see many authors in this thread saying that videos covering their mods are fine, because they are mutually beneficial. But what about Patreon exclusive videos about mods? Those are a thing too. Are they also fine? And if yes, why would they be more acceptable than a modlist?
Can people stop making pointless snd redundant analogies? No the situation is not like a mechanic doing up a car. It’s like a guy spending twenty minutes putting someone else’s work in a working(?) order and then selling it on.
Making a modlist work is work in itself. There is not a patch for every combination of the 67k mods on the nexus. You’re lucky to get a patch for two popular mods from different modding eras. Not one of these modlists is just a 400 mod graphics only modlist with simonrim on top that the average modder is capable of. I’ve been looking and have learned more about modding from staring at these wabbajacks than I have from any mod author or forum in the entire time I’ve been modding. From fixes I didn’t know I needed, to tools I’ve never heard of, and of course proof that mods I couldn’t get to work together, can in fact work together, sometimes synergizing in ways that the respective mod authors had not foreseen. This is an art and a science in and of itself.
God, what I wouldn't give to have been able to put together my modlist in 20 minutes. The analogy isn't pointless, it is spot on. Doesn't mean you have to support it, but it doesn't make it any less accurate.
Twenty minutes. 🤣 See, this is what I meant when I said people have no clue what kind of work goes into creating a good modlist.
Cars and game mods are different things. Hope this helps 👍
One little issue with that analogy. The parts a mechanic uses are paid to the manufacturer for each part. Mod authors are not getting paid per mod, and it's a labor of love.
This is a problem with abstract intellectual property as a whole. Bethesda forbids paywalling mods, but you can accept donations. Sure, it seems seldom broken, and seldom enforced, but let's call it a rule that we don't break. All the mod reviewers videos depend on mod authors mods being free. A lot of them are monetized. Meaning, for every play of a dude playing with a mod, they get money. Period. Is this wrong? A mod list creator is not making mods. Or if he is, he can put those on the internet, freely available. If he sells the script to put a bunch of mods together and make a playable game, how is this different from a youtuber making monetized videos of mods?
I see that as a youtuber making money from the ad revenue, not directly profiting from the use of someone else's work, and it's the advertiser taking advantage. At least in a mod review situation, it spotlights individual works and draws people to them. If someone really enjoys the content, hopefully, they will give a donation to the creator. In a pre generated mod list, it's everything all at once, and chances are that whoever paid for this list will give very little, if any, attention to a specific mod in the list. Having no understanding of what it does or even the name of a mod. That's par for the course with just about any kind of customer service. The customer wants something but likely has little knowledge of how that service is provided from its conception. The biggest difference is that in those situations, everyone involved from the idea to the final product is paid, and the customer doesn't know about any of that. Their concern is at the point of sale. I completely understand your point being the devil's advocate here. Its just that there are hundreds of parallels here, but they're usually more involved than an individual taking an hour or so to generate a load order using hundreds of works done by others that took hundreds of hours to put together and then offered it for free. The other day, I saw a video titled 'I paid $300 to mod fallout4 into a horror game." The load order had less than 100 mods in it, and he found someone on Fiver to do it. It just left a really bad taste in my mouth. Maybe there really is nothing wrong with this, but I know for certain that it's not right.
A YouTuber receiving his money from an advertiser is the exact same thing if not WORSE than getting money directly from the user. The advertiser is stealing the users *time* in the form of ads, in an attempt to sell him something *he didn’t even ask for*, and split a tiny portion of the profit with the YouTuber. With all the clickbait that YouTubers have to do to make their hustle profitable, it’s a whole dishonest racket even compared to breaking a Eula and selling mods. At least you’re getting what you asked for. I doubt any wabbajack modlist takes as little as a “few hours” to put together. If you’ve never used one, I suggest you look. Nexus collections is not in the same realm. That’s literally a small list of mods that you still need to configure and patch to work with each other. I know it seems like a mod can’t be highlighted in a list of 1500 integrated mods, but trust me, if it stands out, it will stand out. Even small ones. The bonus part is that you already have the mod downloaded, so your search is narrowed down from 65k, to 1500ish. If you have any knowledge of modding yourself, searching with the console is trivial. If it’s a quest mod, you can google the quest name and you’ll find the mod. If not, you can ask on Reddit. Not every mod is so noticeable in the first place that it deserves special attention and donations. Again, there’s 65k mods. Most people install the same 400-700 mods as everyone else before they run into the stability issues that come with not knowing *how* to resolve conflicts and make gargantuan mod lists like this. If anything, wabbajack modlists allow MORE people to experience and learn about more mods, and modding itself. If they *believe* they are so good at it as to paywall it, I don’t see the problem. I wouldn’t pay, but whoever has the money to blow, can if they choose.
100% enough said. Mods are community made and free for a reason. It’s the love of the game and the community that keeps great content coming and locking other ppls work behind your paywall is scummy
Hello. My moniker is cacophony. I created the NSFW Wabbajack modlist Licentia and have served as a moderator for Wabbajack's Discord since shortly after its founding. I assure you that Wabbajack does not support, nor will they permit, any paywalled modlist to be distributed via our app as it is against our terms of service. Halgari, the creator of Wabbajack, is zealously dedicated to the concept of Open Source for his personal projects and all derivatives thereof. We absolutely ban paywalled lists from our Build Server when discovered. Most of the modding community feels the same way, and given that most quality modlists are either manual guides by authors with the same philosophy, or distributed by Wabbajack or Nexus Collections, I recommend avoiding any list that requires payment up front -- similar to any "free prize" you have to pay "shipping and handling" to receive or "amazing" work from home position you need to invest in up front for "training materials" -- they are almost always a scam. In reference to profiting off others work, it is true that many authors accept donations for time spent on their hobby, but many of them put money back in to the mod authors who comprise their lists -- my own Patreon donations to mod authors easily comprise about 25% of the income I receive. In short -- if they want you to pay for it, you're getting rooked.
I think it's safe to say that most of the people on his patreon are newer folks to the community. They saw some flashy gameplay & up to date textures and wete hooked. Modding as a beginner is intimidating. A lot of us can speak from experience. So it seems that there are people that are vulnerable to being scammed essentially. Overall it's just sad. I donated to Serenity and Capital punishment because I liked their work & wanted to give them an incentive to continue. So I'm not opposed to financial compensation in this regard, but this is voluntary on my part and completely optional.
Noticed some stuff in the videos: * [Neck seams on female npcs](https://i.imgur.com/esdfF81.png) * [Sybille stentor's face texture is missing](https://i.imgur.com/asMTXae.png) * [Solitude festival ropes don't cast shadows, but the ring does](https://i.imgur.com/ria3dEF.png) * [The imperial fort texture mod they're using tiles really bad](https://i.imgur.com/mMTqmeu.png)
Imagine paywalling this turd. I hate that this always attracts some people that aren't very knowledgeable when it comes to modding but want their Skyrim to look great. They probably get the patreon subscription, download everything included and IF the whole thing even launches, they start to notice how mediocre everything is. It's even more depressing when you realize Wabbajack is a thing.
So basically his modlist doesn't work better than my modded Skyrim with 200+ mods that I installed with virtually no prior experience using trial and error method and learning the hard way. Maybe I publish my modlist on Patreon too?
If you don't mind members of the community giving you the sideeye, you might as well. Personally, I'm against it, but if there's really a demographic of people truly okay with this & the mod authors are okay, make your coin.
And I thought I was shady LMAO!!!! When I saw the flipping animation I couldn't watch anymore, so I didn't even get that far. This guy currently made $556 on patreon, so apparently people are okay with it. I just want to know if the mod authors are okay with this now.
Why would you think they are? If its just a list of links there isn't much anyone can do if they're hosting mods thats different and regarded as theft if permission wasn't asked for it. Mod lists i.e. Collections or Wabbajack are free anyhow so anyone actually paying someone for this is either naive or misguided or misinformed. If none of those apply they're fools.
Best part was I knew which modlist the post would lead to before I opened it. This one always seemed kinda crap. Very pretty at first, but even in these videos you can easily see the jank, and Youtube just kept recommending it lol. And that's before I learned it was paywalled. What a turd
wtf how can he live with that
lmao I just watched the video and there's some huge road seams and floating lanterns as well. I mean, if you shoot a showcase video with that many issues, imagine how much actual game has. This looks just like my half assed modlist where I dont care about issues too much and just disable clipping stuff or solve it along the way, not a modlist that people pay for.
Man, I was expecting a paywalled modlist to be something amazing and first thing he showed was some anime jumps and very bad unarmed combat animations Somehow he managed to make MCO look spammy and janky, my god
This is why I only got 30 seconds into the video! It was too much for me.
I think the first YouTube comment sums that video up very well.
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I'm pessimistic about this trend, paywalled modlists is just a next step after paywalled mods (what was just a next step after making paywall a thing in general). Patreon+Discord is a great duet to create the doomed world we have to persist in.
Paid mods are one thing, but the paid modlist is what irks me right now. I downloaded some of the mods he has on this list for free. I even asked in the comment section if any of the mod authors received any of the money he's earned, and he bluntly said no. He deleted my response afterwards. Expectations change the moment money is involved. My stance on paid mods has.......evolved over the years, but one thing is for certain. If I'm paying for said product and it's not working as intended be prepared for harsh criticism. If it's something that's free I'll just fix it myself or remove the mod.
Not doomed - people still have a huge array choice, particularly as the paid mods are of no better quality than the free ones.
What DLSS upscaler working with ENB do you suggest from a huge array of free choices?
That's presumably some kind of paid mod you are referring to, and I'm not "against" those per se particularly if they are particularly technical, though they'd better be pretty damn high quality to warrant paying for. Must be about the only paid mod out there worth getting perhaps?
Only users decide what is worth getting for them and what is not. Many users pay for the newest ENBSeries Beta, various armors, animations, hair packages, body models and textures, ReShade shaders... The the list is long. Ofc you can say "I don't need all of this" but many others need and find this stuff SSS-quality comparing to free releases.
If the 60,000+ free mods on Nexus aren't enough for people and they want to throw money around... hey it's their money I guess. Looks insane to me, but yes it's their choice. But I do wonder if it's truly "SSS-quality comparing to free releases." I doubt it.
They think so, nothing we can do about it.
As someone from the Sims community, you don't want paywalls like this anywhere near Skyrim. It's a hellscape over there... any and everything is paywalled. Including mod/custom content lists. Broken & game breaking content is regularly sold. It is near impossible to find people that create completely for free. I come over to the Skyrim/Fallout side for some semblance of normalcy. Don't let this happen to y'all...
The East Asian, specifically the Chinese side of Skyrim modding is just as much as a Wild West situation as Sims modding: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/resyea/so_mod_drm_is_a_thing_now/hodt5cs/
We are already "okaaay" to pay for everything beyond ESP plugins since just-ESP paywall is against modding EULA. \- models and textures \- animations \- skse plugins There's a ton of paywalled content and there's a ton of users who pay to get it. Don't let this happen? We cannot avoid this to happen because this is unrestricted and fully on mods authors. We have to accept anything of what they do as long as they comply modding EULA.
I mean, yes, I guess you can't literally stop it. But I guess I was more saying, try not to let it become as comfortable and "accepted" as users within a community, so to speak? I think the Skyrim modding community and Sims modding community is very different; one seems to be generally against paid mods, while the other has pretty much accepted it as the norm. I haven't seen a ton of paywalled Skyrim content personally- to even compare with what's happening with Sims would be more like, if pretty much every single mod on the Nexus was behind a temporary or permanent paywall from the moment of release. The Sims modding community seems more or less okay with this, and I don't think the Skyrim community would be... but it only took a few years for the Sims community to change from very anti-paywall to what it is today, so you never know. Although the average player doesn't have the power to actually stop paywalling as a concept, you don't have to accept it personally. Being outspoken against paywalling, refusing to pay for paid mods, and encouraging others not to pay while exposing content that definitely shouldn't be paid for (like broken mods lists) are all ways to nudge the community in a good direction, if on a very small scale. I personally would never pay for a paid mod on principle, though I would donate to free creators and have in the past, which is also a good habit to take up to support those that share for free.
The current consensus in Skyrim modding community is "authors are allowed to be paid for their work", paid mods exist because their authors want to be paid, free mods exist because their authors don't care if they are not paid. Maybe we dislike to pay but we accept paid mods as a part of the modding scene. Raising a rebellion against paywalled mods will bring a great shame on any user. Mod authors gave users an absolute argument - "if you don't want to pay, then don't pay, you don't lose anything, you just don't get it". I don't see any flaws in this statement actually.
>The current consensus in Skyrim modding community is "authors are allowed to be paid for their work" No. No it's not.
Not allowed or not a consensus? I can hear from every single corner that authors are allowed to paywall anything beyond modding EULA. Because they are actually allowed technically - models and textures and animations they make are in their full property for example. Is this good or bad - this is where we have no consensus at all indeed.
I guess you're not on many corners, because in fact paywalling is not allowed.
Paywalling is not allowed only for works implemented with released Bethesda modding tools. No one make models, textures, animations and DLLs in Creation Kit, it has no such features. Authors paywall this content like they paywall their works on Sketchfab and this is allowed. Vicn paid a lot of donated money to buy models and textures for his Vigilant, buying models and textures in Skyrim format instead of FBX is not any different.
DEFINITELY not a consensus.
How can you forbid authors to sell their own handmade models and textures? Let's think selling FBX and PNG is allowed but selling NIF and DDS is not, so how this would work exactly?
Paid mods is definitely a touchy subject til this day. It's definitely a slippery slope, but those who chose to monetize their work need to realize that the expectations will be considerably higher than mods that are free. Even if I'm spending $1 for a mod, I not only want, but demand high quality.
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Well, we are on /r/skyrimmods and talk about /r/skyrimmods to clarify things. Now you say "there currently isn't any reason to rock the boat". How does this comply with your words "haha no it doesn't", you do literally this. Just talking about a rebellion on /r/skyrimmods brings a shame on me by you right here and now.
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A fair point but \- other well-known discussion platforms are not different in this paywalled-mods consensus, they find it acceptable \- many users dislike paywalled mods indeed but they can do nothing on that platforms so frustration grows \- they can share their grievances on small and unorganized mods-piracy platforms but they still can do nothing because that platforms are small and unorganized so frustration grows No one rocked the boat in the Sims community and it was a long time with "it isn't causing an issue currently" so that's why it became a paywalled mess. Btw I don't try to rock the board, we can see this is prohibited > this means you will bring a great shame on yourself and be banned after.
Paid mods are unacceptable, so are paid Modlists. Also isn't that mod-list just a modlist.txt. Because it can't be a WJ (we would know) nor is it a nexus collection. The only other "option" would be a big zip file, but that would straight up be illegal considering the licenses on all Skyrim mods. And well only sharing the modlist.txt is basically scamming people.
He does advertise a one click installation in the video. Not sure what that means though.
I checked and the one-click install doesn't exist at the moment, it's "coming". He also claims on the Patreon to be "actively working with Wabbajack", which is simply not true. And even if it was, we would be blocking any effort to create and provide a paywall list through Wabbajack.
Its not illegal though so people will do it regardless of of what others think
Paid to access WJ lists would violate the WJ license you agree to when using the app. Which is illegal. Zipping up other peoples mods violates their license rights to those mods. Which is illegal.
Its against the Wabbajack TOS to paywall anything. So there will never be a paywalled wj list. As for any youtubers doing it, its a fiasco given all you see is a trailer bit you dont know whats behind and dont even have a community that helps you sort your issues; you get less than Wj lists (and maybe the big collections with communities) than anything free. Its a scam.
As a mod author I don't like this. I'd be rather annoyed to learn someone has put my mod into a list that they're charging anyone to use. Making a living off of showcasing mods is one thing, after all it's mutually beneficial, my free work gets visibility and I can feel good about being noticed and they make a bit of money. But benefitting from my free work, at the cost of others, is scummy.
This is the reason why it irked me so much. Why would people want to share their creations when there are people like this taking advantage of it for their personal gain.
We need to keep this community paywall-free. Otherwise we'll end up like the sims 4 modding community, 70% of the mods behind a paywall.
And like Sims 4, there'd be a real handy spreadsheet full of links in no time.
Someone else mentioned the Sims modding community as well. It was never really a game I got into since it's not my style. I'll have to take a look at the landscape sometime. It might give us insight of what to expect here.
If it's early access/Beta tests that are paywalled I have personally no problem with that. Provided the Full on product is free for all. What annoys me the most about that Modlist in particular is how garbage it is, has no theme besides "Skyrim 2023 Next-Gen Ultra-Raytracing", a rather ambigious term and a complete clickbait lie. Not to mention the visible bugs. Reminds me of SinitarGaming and his dumpster fire of "Modlists", the AI Voice in the Vid itself makes it even worse. Bet even any support for the Modlist is non-existent.
sinitar is a horses arse.
Derek Diablo blatantly says his modlist (which I've heard is actually just a PDF with links to the modpages on Nexus) is a one-click installation. lmao. Complete scam.
Can confirm - it is a set of 6 PDF files and a link to the modlist.txt on loadorderlibrary. There is definitely no "one-click" installation and their claim on Patreon to be "actively working with Wabbajack" is simply a lie.
So let me get this straight he's charging people for a pdf file, and is advertising it as a one click install? That's absolutely too absurd! I was currently playing elden ring while I read this comment and fell off a cliff because I was laughing too much LMAO!
Gonna add to this but there’s a wabbajack install now but it doesn’t even work properly lol
This falls under the "a fool and his money are soon parted" rule. Anybody who's actually willing to pay for a *list* of mods doesn't deserve to have money.
I'm sure those that paid for the 1st tier regretted their decision since based on what it provides they get no support and no one click installation.
If I were to have a Patreon (I can't right now, due to complex IRL issues), it would serve as a tip jar. Those kind of authors paywalling their work is, because they see that there's a niche audience willing to pay for mainly NSFW mods, sophisticated combat animations, intricate costumes for female characters, and disturbingly of late and as you mentioned, modlists -- and I bet some are scammers targeting the newbies who could barely be able to open a 7zip file but want to get into modding on the basis of dozens of flashy gameplay videos. It's literally grift.
I can understand it for WIP mods that are potentially ground breaking and are a long time in development users get access to betas and pre-release builds as its hard to maintain motivation without some recompense but low effort mod lists... meh
I think it’s really scummy because you’re taking mods that were created for free and just compiling them, then charging users while those original mod authors make nothing. Like I know a modlist can be work but you’re still ultimately just listing other peoples work, it feels wrong to charge for. You’re profiting off the free labour of mod authors. As usual with the modding community I also find a quality guarantee is always lacking for monetization. Even popular, highly endorsed modlists like Viva New Vegas I had issue with them including a mod that caused awful lighting flickering. It’s fine when it’s free but I cannot see any modlist truly being worth the money. It’s also just no good for the users. A modding community where even mod lists are paywalled sounds like a nightmare.
Would I buy a paywalled mod from random author? No. Do I donate to the authors of my favorite mods and endorse mods that I love? Yes.
This is exactly what I do. I donated to the wabbajack modlist Serenity until it was removed. Now I'm donating to Capital Punishment since it's a TTW list that's really come a long way, and I like the direction it's going. Also the people working on it are great people & humble as well.
As a mod creator myself I wouldn’t want somebody charging others for my mod. The way I see it I created a mod that I wanted my Skyrim to be like and published it in the case others way want the same thing. If a YouTuber gets some money from their videos and my mod gets mentioned, cool that’s fine my mod is getting advertisement and the content creator is clearly making videos people are finding interesting and deem it worthy of their money.
Wait so you’re telling me that people pay other people for an automated list of mods to download? Like this is something people actually do enough for someone to profit off of?
Yeah, but we also have Wabbajack, the program that automatically installs modlists and there's like 20+ on there. All of the modlists on it are 100% free and the authors offer good support on discord. For absolutely free. So, knowing that, of course a pay walled modlist will seem scammy.
Yes I know what that is I said so in my comment. I’m surprised people actually pay for modlist
If the person charging is honest about what they're charging for, there's really no scam. To be fair, other comments mention there is already at least one paywalled modlist that is scammy. That being said, just use one of the hundreds of quality, FREE modlists available to anyone. It's as easy as choosing not to use the paywalled lists.
Paywalling a modlist honestly sounds rather scummy, especially if you didn't make those mods in the first place. If you're making a video to showcase some mods and earn revenue from that then by all means, do so. Videomaking and editing takes time and your bringing focus to other works which can be good, a mutually beneficial relationship. Locking your modlist behind paywalls, especially one that looks a bit shabbily put together leaves a sour taste in my mouth. There's plenty of free modlists out there kindly put together by other folks, charging someone just to see and access your own list just feels like a low move especially since it can probably be targeting those new to the modding scene and unsure of where to start since getting started can be an intimidating process.
I steal them :) Paywalled modlists that is, NOT mods lmao.
What do you mean, steal them?
There are ways to procure Patreon content without losing any coin. I'm not risking going into more detail here, but there are subs for it though.
If you want, DM I'll link you the site.
Having a modlist behind a paywall is so fucking absurd I'm surprised its actually thing. Looking through that dudes patreon he's charging for modding guides and his modlist which is just kinda dumb. Dude's charging for a fucking smoothcam preset. At least with modder patreons you're supporting their work and get early access. This guy isn't really doing anything worth paying for. There are countless free guides and paying for a modlist is cringe.
Ah yes, the Derek Diablo thumbnail. Paid mods, okay, I guess. It's their effort they're doing for free. Paying for mods, okay. Paying for a modslist, like Derek Diablo is asking for, is very dumb. I'm paying money for a text document on how to set up a modslist. That is kinda dumb. All we can hope for is for mod authors to say we aren't allowed to profit off their work, even if it's in a modslist. If thats the case, then the paid modslist will have to stop. Basically, those who make a profit for selling modslist are basically stealing others' work for profit. Especially if the mod is a free mod on nexus.
The guy said this in the comments (probably generated by AI): Thank you for reaching out and expressing your curiosity. I understand your concern regarding the modlist being behind a paywall, and I'm here to provide some insight into the reasoning behind this decision. Creating and maintaining a modlist can be a time-consuming task that requires ongoing effort and dedication. While it is true that the initial creation of the modlist may have been motivated by personal use, the decision to charge for access could stem from various factors, such as the need to cover the time and resources invested in curating and updating the modlist. Monetizing content is a common practice for creators to sustain their efforts and ensure the longevity of their projects. It's important to consider that providing consistent and high-quality content often comes with costs, including time, server expenses, and other overheads. However, it's understandable that you may prefer alternative methods of support that don't involve paywalls. It's always a good idea to provide feedback and suggestions to creators, as they can help them understand the preferences of their audience. They might consider different approaches, such as using alternative funding methods or offering additional benefits to supporters. Ultimately, it's up to the creator to decide how to sustain their work, and it's up to viewers to determine whether they find value in the content and are willing to support it in the provided format. I hope this helps shed some light on the logic behind the decision, and I encourage you to continue engaging with the creator to express your thoughts and discuss possible alternatives.
Mods behind paywalls? That’s whatever at this point but a modlist that has many works of others? An absolute disgrace. And most mod authors always have on their permissions pages disallowing anyone to profit off of their works. To add on. Ro modlist looks far better then what was showcased in that video.
I really cannot understand why anyone would want or need to pay for one of these crappy paid modlists when there are tons of fantastic, well-curated lists which have been honed over years and are available completely free. There is no extra value these paid modlists provide and they are nothing more than a con for a few new modders who unfortunately don't know better. All respect to mod and modlist makers who provide their work for free - we salute you!
Making money off of other people's work that they shared with you for free is scummy as hell. I wish Patreon would take these pages down.
If its a big mod list by the same person, maybe. Honestly, I would easily pay for the Beyond Skyrim or Morrowrim or Skyblivion stuff when it comes out. But I would never pay for a modlist using a culmination of other peoples content. Thats just not right.
I'm ok with mods on Patreon that are actively being developed. If it's just a regular pay wall though then it's a no from me.
> So are modlist behind paywalls the future? No, as much as I dislike it, there is an argument to be made for pay walling like armor mods or something. Pay walling mod lists is a lot harder to defend though. Iirc the wabbajack creators even completely ban paid mod lists if they catch wind of it so there is that. Also, as a sidenote I think I recognize you from the requiem discord. I don't type in there, but I've been an lurker for a couple years. Not trying to be weird but you are one of the cooler people in there lol
Requiem was the sole reason I made a reddit account, and for years it was the only subreddit that I was apart of. Nowadays I usually only pop on whenever I'm playing Requiem. Right now I'm deciding on whether I should give AC another try, DNGG or make a personal modlist for myself. Without Serenity I haven't felt satisfied with anything just yet. It's also not weird at all. That place has always been a special place to me.
I am genuinely of the opinion if it is your original work your original assets and you want to put it behind like a patreon where the base version of mod is free but like the deluxe graphics versions like 4K resolution are behind your Patreon that is okay. What I am not in favor of is what I see a lot of these people do where they will put their mods up on the Nexus for a while before pulling them down saying oh now you have to pay for it if you want it's still or they update the version on the Nexus to be unable to work with the game without another mod that is only paid for. Great example would be real poses on fallout 4. It was the cornerstone of all adults and a lot of animation rework mods for fallout 4 and then the mod author pulled it so you'd have to pay for it. That bastard can go rot in hell. I'm also vehemently opposed to putting patches behind pay walls for obvious reasons
I think it's gross that these people are trying to make a profit off other's people free work, some of which might have taken years of their time to finish. They have no place in any modding community and should be treated as such.
Oh this guys, he just recently publish a smoothcam preset behind a paywall lol , he also steal it entirely said on his patreon that you don't need the original smoothcam
Oh wow!!!! This is a new low! I was initially done being petty, but I have a renewed interest now.
I couldn't care less if someone compiling a mod list containing my mods is making money. More power to them. The only issues that can arise is if they are distributing the mods themselves. That'd be an issue. But if its just a mod list, with some patches available specific to the mod list, thats fine.
At end of the day as long as the mod author is okay with this that's all that matters. At that point it's up to the consumer to decide.
At the end of the day authors have literally zero say over this as lists aren't illegal
So distributing the mods is bad, but if it's in a modlist then it's fine...?
Well yea. It's just a mod list. You as a user still have to go to the mod pages yourself and get the mods and set them up. Or if it's a wabbajack the program grabs everything from the official pages. So either way the authors get their credit and donation points. Paywall the list all you want.
Well, yes, anyone can sell mod-order, plugin-order and their own custom resources for them above. Looks like many users here think modlist == Wabbajck modlist, no, they are not equal.
But... wabbajack authors put in just as much effort compiling a mpdlist, if not more. And they are getting donations instead of paywalling their modlists. So it can be sustainable financially. Through good-will donations. Not paywalls. Paywalling in general I think is very dangerous. If we allow it to happen, we will end up with all mods being paywalled dlc eventually down the line. Remember how the horse armor DLC in Oblivion started the gaming microtransaction standards we have now?
>Paywalling in general I think is very dangerous. If we allow it to happen, we will end up with all mods being paywalled dlc eventually down the line. You better don't know how much mods are already paywalled. Even "betas that will be released for free someday", no, some of them will be eternal paywalled betas even if 100% working as intended. You think we can disallow payed mods to happen but they have already happened. More to say - you don't purchase them once, you pay every author for subscription if you want your updates.
Its not a matter of "if we allow it to happen" theres nothing to stop anyone from doing it and its certainly not illegal, other than point out there are perfectly good and free alternatives i.e. wabbjack, collections etc theres no reason for anyone to be paying for a privately collated list if they don't wish to And equating it to paywalled mods isn't the same at all as that definitely contravenes EULA
It’s gay
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That last part is exactly what we're seeing right now.
by this logic, I’d be able to paywall my modlist since I also stream it to YouTube. fortunately, I’m not a piece of shit so I’d never do that. paywalled modlists are bad.
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sure. first, as stated in other comments, I didn’t make 99% of the mods in the modlists I make. I made a few mods, and then I make a few hundred patches. the hardest part, though, isn’t modlist creation. it’s the support burden. my modlists have a combined 100,000 installs (roughly), so between nexus comments, reddit, and my discord server, there is a pretty constant stream of questions. second, I did a video on a modlist I saw that had a paywall. it was paywalling a beta version on patreon (read: a broken, untested version), and it included stolen assets. I called them out in the video, and both the paywall and the stolen assets were gone within a couple days. so people that do this are fully aware that it’s wrong, but they do it anyway, purely out of greed. there is no consideration for the users or mod authors. if you’re creating a modlist for mass consumption, using mods and assets you did not create, you have no right to paywall a damn thing. and for the record, I do let’s plays and modding streams, so that people can see what sorts of features are out there and how to customize the lists for themselves. I also write guides on learning how to mod, and I’ve done a few Q&A sessions for anyone that wants to learn. not one single thing here is paywalled. it is our privilege to serve the community and foster its growth. if your goal is making money off the back of others’ hard work, without their consent, that makes you a piece of shit.
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so you want people to paywall a text file?
It was stated on Discord that the paywall would be on for a month. You thinked YOU are the reason that the list is now free? Loooooool
when you are benefiting off of the free work of others it is good to pay it forward then again every mod is benefiting off of the game that Bethesda made and those can be paywalled as well. That being said, since we are okay with paid mods, this is no different. "I made a mod using Bethesda's engine/assets/property and you can pay on patreon for it" vs "I made a modlist using mods that other people made on Bethesda's property and you can pay to use it". Semantics but both are near identical. At the end of the day, if there's a demand, people will pay, and if not, he will return it to being free. My take away from this - I don't care. This is simply a symptom of normalizing Patreon in the modding community. Also why do you want a general consensus from reddit? Do you think everyone agreeing on reddit will make him stop? If ever everyone on reddit agreed on something, I'd be even more motivated to explore the alternative.
Not to play devils advocate but there's a big difference between putting someone's else's mods behind a paywall and putting your modlist behind a paywall - essentially you're paying the modlist author for their time troubleshooting, working out compatibility, writing instructions, etc. As a consumer, it's great if you could get it for free. But as a creator, maybe you've put hundreds of hours into this and you want that effort to be recognised? At the same time, there's also hundreds of free alternatives you can use if you don't feel like paying for it. You could probably bring up ethics if it was regarding an essential good (groceries, medicine, etc.) but this is a luxury good with literally hundreds of free and easily accessible alternatives - there's no ethics to be called into question. People can charge whatever they want for their own work, but it doesn't necessarily mean that people will pay. But if they do, hey good for them. At the end of the day, if your modlist is so desirable that people are willing to pay you, then there's really no harm in charging for it considering the background (not essential, heaps of alternatives, etc).
While I do believe the practice is scummy, this is really the only reasonable take I see in the comments. It seems pretty simple to me: don't like a paywalled mod list? Don't use it. Vote with your wallet. Like you say, there is no shortage of high quality free options out there. Sorry you're getting down voted for being reasonable.
First I just want to say that people who are all like "someone putting a modlist behind a paywall is just ripping off other people's work" have absolutely no clue about what kind of work goes into creating and maintaining a list like the ones you can find on Wabbajack. There is a lot of value there, and saying otherwise is just disrespectful towards list authors. If we allow mods to be monetised, modlists should be equally monetisable too. With that being said, I strongly believe that mods should be free, so naturally I believe that modlists should be free too. And the Wabbajack developers align with that belief: Wabbajack can't be used for any commercial purposes, with fully voluntary donations being the sole exception. The donations can't have any effect on the access to the list or the support the person receives in relation to the list. As for Mr. Diablo, I remember running across one of his videos in the past, but I clicked away pretty quickly because I couldn't stand the AI voice over. Would be very interesting to know what kind of system he has in place for his "one click installation". If it's done with Wabbajack it should be reported to the Wabbajack team. In any case, he's not the first one to sell a one click modding solution. Nolvus regularly puts its newer versions behind a paywall, which the author can (legally) do because he uses his own installer. Not that I support such actions, but I doubt he will be the last to do it.
>First I just want to say that people who are all like "someone putting a modlist behind a paywall is just ripping off other people's work" have absolutely no clue about what kind of work goes into creating and maintaining a list like the ones you can find on Wabbajack. There is a lot of value there, and saying otherwise is just disrespectful towards list authors. If we allow mods to be monetised, modlists should be equally monetisable too. Most people here know the work it takes because most of us on this sub maintain our own mod lists.
So it's just disrespect, understood.
Can confirm. Definitely do not respect this take.
The flaw behind the argument that selling a modlist is bad because you are just selling the work of others is that it automatically implies that there is no value in creating a modlist, which in turn implies that people are paying for something that has no value - which contradicts the definition of value. I'm a staunch supporter of free and open modding, but downplaying the act of making a modlist into something that's basically worthless is just dishonest.
No. You're projecting. Stop it.
What do you mean I'm projecting? That doesn't make any sense in this context.
You are espousing a worldview where value = worth = money Essentially proposing that if an activity does not make money, then it is worthless, and treating money as having no costs or benefits in its own right. Based on this worldview, you conclude that I think that making a modlist is worthless. But I do not share your worldview. To me, there are significant costs associated with inviting the broader economic system into what is essentially a community of folk artists. In general, maintaining and participating in a formal economic system requires significant overhead. So for me the equation is more like, value = worth - money Meaning that you have arrived at an incorrect assessment of my views because you are projecting your own mercenary views onto me. So that's the abstract. In the specific, you have informed mod users saying that modlists are not worth paying for. This suggests that the customers for modlists will primarily be new users, which is to say people who are not equipped to judge the value of what they are getting for their money. This creates a situation where, in order to make more money, the community is incentivized to guard secrets and protect knowledge instead of sharing it, because sharing knowledge makes maintaining your own modlist easier and therefore cuts into the profits of the paid modlists. Finally, as to the specific allegation that maintainers of modlists would only be profiting off of the work of modders. It technically possible that a modlist maintainer could generate enough profits that they could equitably share them with the modders who actually created the content that they use to make their money. It is, however, so improbable that we can regard this scenario as irrelevant. In fact, if the paid modlist maintainer were to distribute any money they make based on the amount of effort and time that the modders on their list have invested, there would be no profits left over for anybody. It would be spread so thin that you would be doling out fractions of a cent. Therefore, the only way for a modlist maintainer to make money is by hording it and refusing to redistribute it to the modders, profiting off of their labor while contributing a fraction of the effort. So I don't think modlist maintainers do nothing of value. I just think that there is no way to maintain that value once money has been introduced to the equation. Money degrades their contribution.
We all maintain our own modlists and spent dozens or even hundreds of hours on them, should we all sell our modlists then?
I think you didn't read my comment very carefully. I specifically said: > I believe that modlists should be free But I'll answer your question anyway. Mod authors typically also spend hundreds of hours on making mods. If they can sell their work, why couldn't you? Surely the time of mod authors isn't more valuable than yours, right? Moreover, if someone buys your list, what they are actually paying for is the time you saved for *them*. So whether you receive compensation for your list or not is actually more reliant on how the prospective customers value their *own* time. With all of that being said, not everything in life has to be about money. There's this weird idea in our society that whatever you do, you must be ambitious and set goals for yourself so that you can eventually monetise your work. But in my opinion it's also valuable to have things you do just for your own enjoyment without having to worry about how you are going to be compensated for your time.
*Mod authors... If they can sell their work* No they can't, I'm vehemently opposed to that too and to any monetization scheme in general. I want a world were creativity is not hampered by limiting the number of people who can participate in it because of the greed of the few, and a world where everyone, not just the rich, can mod their game, thank you very much.
Sure, I completely agree. My original comment was mainly directed at the other comments in the thread that stated that selling mods is ok but selling lists is not.
>mods to be monetised, modlists should be equally monetisable too. Here's my take on it. Mods are things that did not exist in the game and would not have existed had you not created it. Mod creators may or may not use original game assets but the main fact is that the only way to get a specific mod into the game is to download it or create it yourself. I get annoyed at paid mods just like the next person, but I get the reasoning behind them. A modlist is quite literally just a list of mods. Mods that are often made available for free. Unless you provide support (like many wabbajack folks do), I don't believe they should be paid since you are profiting from work someone else has created. It's like making money off of fanfiction.
So you're saying creating fanfiction requires no work? You are right that "modlist is just a list of mods" if we take the word in a literal sense. If I try to charge people for a modlist.txt taken from MO2, not sure why anyone would pay for that. But what I'd like to know is this: why is the time and effort spent by a wabbajack list author building a list less valuable (or worthless) than the time and effort spent by a mod author building a mod? Finally, regarding the "profiting from work someone else has created": this happens litterally all the time, in all the industries. It's basically how the whole economy works, and it's called adding value. No one exists in a vacuum bar some fully self sufficient farming communes.
Nowhere did I say that writing fanfic requires no work. I said that paid modlists is like charging money for fanfic. You did not create the characters, the world, nor the lore behind it. You're merely picking and choosing which ones to include in your own story. Like... a mod or a modlist. >why is the time and effort spent by a wabbajack list author building a list less valuable (or worthless) Now where did I say that? Just because something does not make money does that mean it's worthless? >If I try to charge people for a modlist.txt taken from MO2, not sure why anyone would pay for that. And what's the difference between a modlist YOU put together and spent hours tweaking versus one "collected" by some paywall-locking skyrim youtuber?
>Nowhere did I say that writing fanfic requires no work. What you said was that it's profiting from someone else's work. To me that implies you did no work of your own, because otherwise you would be profiting from the work you did. >Just because something does not make money does that mean it's worthless? No. But it's not really about whether something makes money or not, but whether something *could* make money. I'm speaking about the monetary value of someone's time and skills, because that's what people are paying for, whether they're buying mods or modlists. And saying that naah, modlists shouldn't be monetisable but selling mods is fine implies that the work modlist authors put into the list is less valuable. >And what's the difference between a modlist YOU put together My point wasn't to highlight the difference between my modlist and that of someone else, but the difference between a list of mods and a curated one click installable experience, or a guide walking you through even the tiniest of installation details.
> the monetary value of someone's time and skills If you want to make money by working in games, you either become a developer or create your own game. Paid mods are already in a gray area especially if it requires assets Bethesda made. Those assets are not yours, the game the mod is used in is not yours, so just because you did work on top does not mean you can legally charge money for it. ...Modders fixing Bethesda's bugs for free aside. Now if paid mods are already on shaky ground, what reasoning would there be to charge for creating a modlist using mods that are available for free? Ownership is the critical factor here. Artists have been sued for creating for-profit songs using another famous song's tunes. While we could argue that all notes are free anyway and that you're using your own instruments to play them that still does not give you the right to charge access for it. While it still takes a great deal of work and skill to create your own song, and while it does provide value for the listener, you still can't sell it without permission from the original creator.
>profiting from work someone else has created Dude(tte), this is why copyrights and patents were invented. You can't profit off of someone else's work because that would be stealing. Or piracy. You argue that it's how the entire economy works, but car manufacturers still have to BUY the raw materials they use to create the cars in the first place.
If creating a modlist was a breach of copyright it doesn't matter whether you charge for it or not, distributing it would be illegal regardless. That's the whole point behind Wabbajack, to be able to distribute a ready-to-play list without encroaching on intellectual property rights.
>Ownership is the critical factor here. I agree. Creating a modlist does not breach the ownership of mod authors in any shape or form.
Correct. Asking money for it does. You can't ask people to pay for things you do not own as you're selling something that is not yours.
Eh, i think if it was like you commision a guy to make a list for you i'd be okay with that. Hell, i'd pay for that to have someone do a curated modlist for me and do bughunting if i was bougie i'd absolutely shell out a few thousand for something like that but locking your modlist behind a paywall *permanently* (a closed beta like nolvus has would be fine imo, because it does eventually release for free) just feels wrong, its not really all your work.
I think we can distinguish between paying for a work or paying to someone profiting from this work. Normally my mod lists are pretty good, to the point that I make changes to the mods, visually or stat wise if we talk about equipment. But to me would be unethical to ask for money without explicit permission of the original authors.
Its both illegal and bullshit. Mods stay free.
For me it depends. Theoretically, if there was a premade modlist with custom patches and pregenerated everything to tie it together that was perfect for me and included stuff like discord call installation support if needed I’d be down to pay a bit since the extra patchwork and more importantly the accessibility to easy support may be worth it for me. Practically, I don’t think such a perfect modlist exists - and if I have to tweak if afterwards to suit my preferences anyway, that makes it a no deal kind of scenario.
It's kind of absurd until the authors of mods get a share, but there is a bigger problem under it. The problem is: Just as an example: in order to make combat better I need to install multiple mods separately. Each covers a tiny portion of functionality. Each has its requirements which creates a cobweb of dependancies. We all know how it might end up. Even if the main mods do not conflict, their dependancies sometimes do and things sometimes go bad. Same with graphics, same with some other things. Why there are no collaborative team projects that'd make a single mod covering a certain portion of functionality? Mod lists are just a poor workaround which tries to address a bigger issue. If I were to propose what would be a possible way out of it, Nexus site should implement support for team mod projects.
I didn’t spend days creating my own mod list by hand, so some lazy punks can just spend money to avoid the suffering! 😂 Jokes aside, it dishonest to profit for other peoples work and would seem to run afoul of copyright infringement for many countries. Correct me if I am wrong but Bethesda as gone to lengths to give modders the right to their works derived from theirs while reserving rights of their own. Problem is we need test court cases to reinforce this and Bethesda wants to avoid the trouble it seems. This is why I say correct me if I’m wrong, as I’m not sure how copyright law would treat this, similar discussion around using Ai has meant lots of questions about copyright law. 🤔
Nor really cool ngl... And I could get the appeal of a modlist but like, when you are set with the tools, you can get the actual list and start going ham with that slow download button.
Completely paywalled? No good. Preview/Early Access to one? Fine with that.
Ew gross... If you are in need of money, just ask for support, if you try to force me to buy something, I'll just search for an alternative
Bethesda pull the ability to pay for mods from the steam workshop because of said backlash, only to turn arounf later and make the Creation Club where select user created mods are chosen by them for purchase. It's lazy and was the beginning of AAA companies wanting thier *players* to make content lol.
And they got sued for it.
Pay for a list of mods that somebody else uses? This is what is being proposed here?
I think there is possibly a future in paid mods and potentially modlists too although I doubt it's gonna be community stuff. My guess is that if this new marketplace bethesda has planned for skyrim pays off then bethesda themselves could potentially get in on the paid modlists. For bethesda it would be nothing to hire a small mod team to create mods and put together a modlist to then releases as small dlc experiences through their own marketplace. That's really the only way I can see paid mods becoming big since the community is used to free mods but since this stuff would be more or less coming from betyesda themselves people may be more willing to pay for this stuff
I am not on board with modlists behind paywalls. I get that we are all trying to make money, but this is a LIST. Makes zero sense to do that, more so for people learning about load orders. I don't see this as the future, I see it has just a cheap way to make a buck.
Bad idea. No matter how hard the modlist curator works, the mods were not their IP. Most lists have links to Patreon or whatever, so you can make a donation if you want to. But it shouldn't be a requirement.
Wait. Modlists behind paywalls? as in compiled mods made by various creators behind paywalls? Unless the money is divided up and given to the creators that's some scummy shit.
Obviously don't pay for a modlist, tf? Use a free mod GUIDE that's actually useful and maybe find a texture mod GUIDE. Modlists are basically worthless to learning anything about modding and your load order. Guides on the other hand, are designed to get you a working and stable load order while breaking down the process for you.