I get it. It sets a precedent that mods shouldn’t eventually be a capital environment. Mods have always been passion projects and have always been paid for with donations.
If there were a hypothetically good balance, it’d be that the developer gets their initial income for the game, worthy of support for continued good quality games from them. Then, rather then releasing shitty DLC for gamers to waste money on, redirect that towards modders with promotions, reminding the audience that they deserve donations. Leading fundraaising events like “modder packs” that’s nothing but a $5, $10, $15 things to pay for with not content attached, for the audience to buy, where the total kitty is distributed to the modding community for their part of carrying the game on.
The last thing I’d like to see is mod slop because once the precedent is set, given a few years later it’s the norm to only get mods after paying for them. This would ruin modding communities and the longevity of games long after they’re developed.
I don’t know where are you getting the “have always been … and have always been paid for with donations” thing from.
IMHO, its a “recent” thing, folks were doing mods/indie games without getting paid before Patreon/ko-fi/etc. existed. I remember the times when ModDB and IndieDB were popular and so many games in there were completely free. Then Steam Greenlight happened and now everything is early access paid game. Also game demos died.
About the mod slop, its already happening for example in the Minecraft modding, they’re filled (mod listing pages and even some mods themselves) with ads, paid access or forcing you to join the discord.
I get it. It sets a precedent that mods shouldn’t eventually be a capital environment. Mods have always been passion projects and have always been paid for with donations.
If there were a hypothetically good balance, it’d be that the developer gets their initial income for the game, worthy of support for continued good quality games from them. Then, rather then releasing shitty DLC for gamers to waste money on, redirect that towards modders with promotions, reminding the audience that they deserve donations. Leading fundraaising events like “modder packs” that’s nothing but a $5, $10, $15 things to pay for with not content attached, for the audience to buy, where the total kitty is distributed to the modding community for their part of carrying the game on.
The last thing I’d like to see is mod slop because once the precedent is set, given a few years later it’s the norm to only get mods after paying for them. This would ruin modding communities and the longevity of games long after they’re developed.
I don’t know where are you getting the “have always been … and have always been paid for with donations” thing from.
IMHO, its a “recent” thing, folks were doing mods/indie games without getting paid before Patreon/ko-fi/etc. existed. I remember the times when ModDB and IndieDB were popular and so many games in there were completely free. Then Steam Greenlight happened and now everything is early access paid game. Also game demos died.
About the mod slop, its already happening for example in the Minecraft modding, they’re filled (mod listing pages and even some mods themselves) with ads, paid access or forcing you to join the discord.
Donations are donations, though.
If you’re coming across mods locked behind donations, they’re not donations. Perhaps this is your confusion.
If you want to reference the old days, you should no doubt remember old PayPal buttons in kod descs.
Content locked behind Patreon is not accessed with donation. It’s literal purchase.
A small check for moral consistency: what about Loseless Scaling and 3DSen?