Jump to content

i have just read this on ksp wiki ...


woo_reentry_is_cool_dude

Recommended Posts

How do you draw the line between a mod and a payware flight sim add-on?  They're really the same thing, an extension to a game that was developed by someone other than the game developer.  There's also freely available add-ons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The wiki is horribly outdated, and squad will not make a dlc(probably) at least for 3-4 years since no plans exist. But I don't want this game to become "pay 50c or watch a video(they call it a video not an ad now) to revert or you can pay 200$ for unlimited use"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, razark said:

How do you draw the line between a mod and a payware flight sim add-on?  They're really the same thing, an extension to a game that was developed by someone other than the game developer.  There's also freely available add-ons.

When you say "flight simulator", I think of software whose primary purpose is commercial or educational use as opposed to entertainment. It can be used for entertainment but that is not its primary purpose.

I draw the line between "mods" and add-ons/plugins mostly as follows:

  1. Mods are made for games.
  2. Add-ons and plugins do not significantly alter the base software like some mods [total conversion]. They add functionality or features not present in the base software [adblockers, support for additional file types for editing software, and similar]
  3. Mods typically do one or more of the following:
    1. Add content to the base game [parts, "skins", character models, etc.]
    2. Modify the base game in an aesthetic manner [revamp/retexture and similar]
    3. Significantly alter the base game [total conversions, adding new mechanics that significantly affect gameplay.

Some mods can be classified as plugins by this system. In addition, some plugins can be classified as mods [for example, mods that add information readouts and plugins that significantly change the way in which the user uses the program].

Why paid mods are a bad idea for KSP:

  • Paid software is held to higher, sometimes unreasonable, standards.
  • The modding community is already well-established, and many or most of the mods have licenses that would make monetization difficult, especially if the current author/maintainer(s) is not the original author(s).
  • Paid mods incentivize low-quality clickbait, so some form of content curation will be necessary.
  • The nature of KSP does not lend itself well to ensuring sure paid mods remain paid. It is highly impractical and in some cases impossible for mod authors to prevent piracy and rehosting.

Paid mods will not necessarily self-curate, either.

TL;DR: While paid mods sound like a good idea it's better just to donate to the authors of the mods you use.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

When you say "flight simulator", I think of software whose primary purpose is commercial or educational use as opposed to entertainment. It can be used for entertainment but that is not its primary purpose.

Would you like me to specify Microsoft Flight Simulator?

4 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

I draw the line between "mods" and add-ons/plugins mostly as follows:

  1. Mods are made for games.
  2. Add-ons and plugins do not significantly alter the base software like some mods [total conversion]. They add functionality or features not present in the base software [adblockers, support for additional file types for editing software, and similar]
  3. Mods typically do one or more of the following:
    1. Add content to the base game [parts, "skins", character models, etc.]
    2. Modify the base game in an aesthetic manner [revamp/retexture and similar]
    3. Significantly alter the base game [total conversions, adding new mechanics that significantly affect gameplay.

I disagree with making a distinction as you do in 2.

If you go to https://www.a2asimulations.com/store/, you'll find a site for mods as you describe in 3, made for a game.

 

9 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

Paid software is held to higher, sometimes unreasonable, standards.

Yes.  If I pay for a mod, I expect it to be worth the money.  That's not an argument against.

10 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

The modding community is already well-established, and many or most of the mods have licenses that would make monetization difficult, especially if the current author/maintainer(s) is not the original author(s).

That doesn't affect new mods, or block the entry of new modders.

10 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

Paid mods incentivize low-quality clickbait, so some form of content curation will be necessary.

Don't pay for low quality mods and vote with you wallet.

11 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

The nature of KSP does not lend itself well to ensuring sure paid mods remain paid. It is highly impractical and in some cases impossible for mod authors to prevent piracy and rehosting.

Those are problems all software makers deal with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, razark said:

Would you like me to specify Microsoft Flight Simulator?

I disagree with making a distinction as you do in 2.

If you go to https://www.a2asimulations.com/store/, you'll find a site for mods as you describe in 3, made for a game.

Clearly I did a bad job defining this.

20 minutes ago, razark said:

That doesn't affect new mods, or block the entry of new modders.

So? You can't just wave away the existing modding community. I guarantee you that will not go over well. And modders will become really protective of their mods. Excessively so. For reasons I don't understand, the modded MC community is already like this in some areas. There have been several incidents with modders that caused large amounts of drama.

24 minutes ago, razark said:

Don't pay for low quality mods and vote with you wallet.

For reasons explained below, this doesn't work.

25 minutes ago, razark said:

Those are problems all software makers deal with.

Modders are hobbyists. They are not really software makers. And it takes a different skillset to manage legal issues and PR than it does to code.

 

------------------

Were you around for the hell that was raised when Steam did the whole "Paid mods for Skyrim" thing?

The first paid mod for Skyrim was taken down by the author, who subsequently received death threats and ended up deleting his social media accounts.

Why was it taken down?

  • It relied upon a free mod for some of its functionality.
    • This is far more common in MineCraft than in KSP, but there are still interdependencies.
    • Imagine if some mod like one of the fancy spaceplane mods with the custom RPM IVA's became paid, but RasterPropMonitor remained free. It could be argued that the author of the fancy spaceplane mods was exploiting the RPM devs and effectively stealing from them.
  • There was HUGE backlash against the author for this. He was essentially accused of whatever the software equivalent of plagarism was, even for another mod of his which was 100% his content.
  • Valve and Bestheda did not help with this, which was partially their fault.

Essentially, paid mods become user-created DLC. What do you expect of DLC?

  • Support.
  • To get your money's worth.

Mods are, almost by nature, unstable. They often break when the game updates.

 

Why "voting with your wallet" doesn't work:

With free mods, if you don't like the mod or the content is less than it was made out to be, you go on living. It's free, after all.

With paid mods, if you don't like the mod or the content is less than it was made out to be, you've already spent the money. It's too late. You can trash-talk the author all you want, but you aren't getting your money back unless the author makes the illogical decision to allow refunds.

And that's not even getting into the labyrinth of DRM, malware, copyright infringement and the DMCA, the online disinhibition effect [Wikipedia], transferring money over the internet, and what portion (if any) of the modder's income should go to the game devs.

TL;DR: It's been tried before. It failed horribly in a rather spectacular manner

EDIT: Elaboration.

Edited by DaMachinator
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

You can't just wave away the existing modding community.

Flight sims have quite a large library of free content, as well as paid content.  Some of the older paid content even gets released for free later in its life.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

And modders will become really protective of their mods. Excessively so.

Let them be.  They own their mods, let them do what they want with them, and set the conditions for people to obtain them.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

Modders are hobbyists. They are not really software makers.

If they start making money of their hobby, then... ok?  There are entire companies based off of doing this already.  It's a thing that exists.  If it works in one genre, it's possible for it to work in another.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

Were you around for the hell that was raised when Steam did the whole "Paid mods for Skyrim" thing?

Yeah.  And that has nothing to do with this.  That uproar was over Steam making money off of modders' work, from what I saw.  What's wrong with a modder deciding they want to make money off their own work?

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

The first paid mod for Skyrim was taken down by the author, who subsequently received death threats and ended up deleting his social media accounts.

That sounds more like a community problem than anything else.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

It relied upon a free mod for some of its functionality.

Yes, that would come down to the license of the other mod.  But it can be dealt with, especially if the content creator does not rely on someone else's work.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

Essentially, paid mods become user-created DLC. What do you expect of DLC?

  • Support.
  • To get your money's worth.

Yes, and if I were to pay for a mod, I would expect both.  If I buy an add-on aircraft for FSX, I would expect the same.  If I buy anything I expect it to be worth the money, and for it to either work as advertised, or the seller to make the situation right.  Buyers can hold modders to that standard.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

With paid mods, if you don't like the mod or the content is less than it was made out to be, you've already spent the money. It's too late. You can trash-talk the author all you want, but you aren't getting your money back unless the author makes the illogical decision to allow refunds.

Which is the same with purchasing any product.  The market will take time to settle, but eventually, you'll end up like every other market.  Known good and bad sellers, and word-of-mouth reviews will quickly become normal.

1 hour ago, DaMachinator said:

TL;DR: It's been tried before. It failed horribly in a rather spectacular manner

And yet, it's an established, working, expected thing among flight-simmers.

 

I still don't know what's wrong with a creator releasing their work for a fee, if they desire to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, razark said:

And yet, it's an established, working, expected thing among flight-simmers.
 

It is, and has been for many years.

I'm using both paid and free crafts in both FSX and X-Plane.

The creators behind those stretch all the way from happy hobbyists to serious commercial studios. There's even aircraft design companies selling (or giving away as promotion) simulation versions of their own designs.

My expectations on them does of course stretch just as wide.

But there is huge difference between KSP and sims like FSX/X-Plane. The latter are focussed on the actual simulation and only provides almost 'sample' aircraft to show what could be done. Leaving the field wide open for a well established scene of both free and commercial downloads. Actually so old and established that some companies sold hard copies (on diskettes!) in the pre-Internet era.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paid 'commumity made' mods?  No!  As has been said above this would probably be unworkable anyway for loads of reasons already mentioned. 

Now, if Squad at some point release paid for 'official' add-ons/mods (content packs etc) which they then sell though their usual channels, then I can see that working as an idea.  Whether or not it works commercially depends on the quality and value of the packs themselves. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

I'm not overly familiar with the flight sim community, how do paid mods work there? Do you pay the modder or the publisher of the core game? The former I can see working just fine, the latter is where things get tangly, IMO.

You pay the modder, or rather the of publisher said mod since it's often mid/medium sized publishers who sort out marketing, delivery and support.

The publisher of the game doesn't get paid directly, but the value and replayability of the core game increases with more (high quality) mods (ie mainly aircraft or scenarios in the flight sim world).

Edited by Curveball Anders
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eh, this kinda sounds like DLC-phobia. DLC isn't a bad thing, as long it's done right - in the best case, it's aking to the old, true to the name addons, just bought online (which they sadly almost never are). We bought the game one time and can't necessarily expect Squad to develope KSP for all eternity.

There are great examples of DLC: 'Old World Blues' for fallout new vegas comes to mind. Yeah, it was a bit overpriced in relation to the main game, the integration into the world stupid, but it was still 14 hours of high level entertainment, including some near brillant writing. Or Bioshock 2's Minervas Den, often regarded better than the main game, and Bioshock Infinites great 'Burial at Sea' episodes.

 

DLC is often really bad or unreasonably expensive, but a responsible dev can do good work with it. In games like Assetto Corsa, which also has a very passionate community, many players even take it as a way to support the continued development of the driving sim, as much as it's a way of getting new cars and tracks (game also reguarly releases lots of free content and notable updates).

While I of course prefer the current working as well, and KSP sold very well, that development still costs money. So I would not be surprised to see DLC one day.

Edited by Temeter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have nothing against authors getting paid for their content. I think it's a great idea. The problem lies in implementing it and the side effects of doing so.

11 hours ago, razark said:

Flight sims have quite a large library of free content, as well as paid content.  Some of the older paid content even gets released for free later in its life.

You're missing the point here.

The established modders may want to make their mods paid, but cannot do so practically because their mods are licensed in such a way that enforcing payment becomes impossible. And they will in all likelihood raise hell over it in one way or another, either because they personally dislike paid mods or because they feel left out.

Especially all those mods licensed under Creative Commons and GPL licenses, which promote copying. Once paid mods become a thing, modders have a vested interest in keeping other people from copying their work and redistributing it.

But they can't, because of the license on it. It may be possible, if the mod is 100% their content, to relicense it. If it isn't, things become complicated.

11 hours ago, razark said:

Let them be.  They own their mods, let them do what they want with them, and set the conditions for people to obtain them.

This is not beneficial for the community and not beneficial for the modders. If you don't know what I mean, look around at the modded MC community. Modders there have made a huge deal over losing tiny amounts of ad revenue. This isn't so common any more, but it certainly used to be...

11 hours ago, razark said:

That sounds more like a community problem than anything else.

Actually, that's the Internet, where a normal person, protected by (sometimes percieved) anonymity [this is not required, it just helps], knowing that they in all likelihood will never see the other person in the real world, and provided with an audience, will act like a narcissistic psychopath.

11 hours ago, razark said:

Yes, and if I were to pay for a mod, I would expect both.  If I buy an add-on aircraft for FSX, I would expect the same.  If I buy anything I expect it to be worth the money, and for it to either work as advertised, or the seller to make the situation right.  Buyers can hold modders to that standard.

In this case, modding ceases to be a hobby and becomes a business. It takes an entirely different set of skills to manage a business and perform the various support jobs therein than it does to be a free content creator.

It also takes much, much more time, and I guarantee you that most modders will not be making enough off of their mods to make even minimum wage, unless they live somewhere where the minimum wage is very low. Even if the game developers take nothing and they self-publish.

Minimum wage where I live in the US is insufficient to cover housing unless you are willing to find a roommate - and you still earn over $10000 a year at minimum wage here.

And yet, modders still are expected not to do things that software companies do to protect their intellectual property and thus their income, like DRM (usually in the form of user authentication, license keys, product activation, etc. DRM does not have to be "you must have an internet connection so we can re-authenticate you every 5 minutes. It means anything used to check that the user is using a legally purchased copy of the product, and, in some cases, that they are allowed to use it.)

11 hours ago, razark said:

And yet, it's an established, working, expected thing among flight-simmers.

I'm glad to hear that someone managed to get the whole "actually pay content creators" thing worked out.

Presumably, this community and the modders therein are professional, mature, and in general far more reasonable than every other modding community ever. I wonder if they had this set up from the beginning; that is, the company behind the base software never disallowed paid mods in the first place or even actively encouraged them from the very beginning.

11 hours ago, razark said:

I still don't know what's wrong with a creator releasing their work for a fee, if they desire to.

In and of itself, nothing. It's the effects of doing this in a well-established modding community that is a bad idea. Not even wrong, per se, just a really really bad idea.

Edited by DaMachinator
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

The established modders may want to make their mods paid, but cannot do so practically because their mods are licensed in such a way that enforcing payment becomes impossible. And they will in all likelihood raise hell over it in one way or another, either because they personally dislike paid mods or because they feel left out.

I'll admit that I am not too familiar with the finer nuances of these licenses, but I did nit realize that they prevent you from making new content under proprietary licences? So one you've created something under CC, anything new you create is automatically under CC, whether you like it or not? That's scary.

Or could it just be that a mod maker could release a new mod as a commercial product, while leaving his current mods in a freer domain? Because in that case I fail to see what the problem is.

11 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

In and of itself, nothing. It's the effects of doing this in a well-established modding community that is a bad idea. Not even wrong, per se, just a really really bad idea.

But your not outlining why. Making money is not a bad thing. You seem to be hellbent on the thought that modders should be monetizing existing mods, which is bizar; those mods were never published to make money for starters.

Looking at the flight sim community, it is not uncommon to find modders starting out with public domain content, and then moving on to selling commercial products once they have improved their skills. Usually releasing older stuff for free anyway.

Most FS mods have a DRM at installation, after that, no "phone home" checks are made. So it can be done. Is it hard? Maybe, but someone can make a business out of that. Or Squad can provide some in-game mechanics and make a buck or two on selling commercial keys, or something like that.

Free sounds fantastic and egilatarian, but a bit of money can do amazing things when it comes to enhancing creativity and quality in the modding ecosphere.

Don't think the entire KSP community floats on volunteering where money is Evil. People make a living streaming KSP on Twitch. So why would it be a bad idea to do so selling mods?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

I'll admit that I am not too familiar with the finer nuances of these licenses, but I did nit realize that they prevent you from making new content under proprietary licences? So one you've created something under CC, anything new you create is automatically under CC, whether you like it or not? That's scary.

Not exactly. If you are the sole author you can choose a different license for subsequent releases, though you can't retroactively change the license for stuff already released. It gets tangly when you have multiple contributors, *all* of them must agree to the relicensing, which gets complicated if there have been a lot of contributors (MechJeb and FAR fall into this category, it would be very tricky to change licenses on them).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DaMachinator said:

In this case, modding ceases to be a hobby and becomes a business.

Exactly!  Now you're getting it!

Paid mods would be a business.  That's why I gave a link to a company that sells mods for FSX. 

I'm only saying that the knee-jerk reaction of recoiling from "paid mods" like a vampire from a garlic crucifix is silly. 

 

And before you miss the entire point, there are still hobbyist modders that release free stuff.  Some of it of quite high quality.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, razark said:

Paid mods would be a business.

Btw, picking this here out...

We can see countless inexperienced - and sometimes ignorant - developers just fail to deliver on steam, especially by greenlight. How great do you think will mods for 3rd Party software work?

 

I won't blame anyone who makes his mods private and asks for money, that is totally fine and nobody is entitled to someone elses work for no reason. But setting up an official shop, making paid mods a big thing? That will very fast take out any fun there is in modding. Bethesda tried it out for the shortest amount of time and even that threw up countless problems, a billion questions, and no true solutions.

Not to mention that for KSP almost all mods are based on cooperation, stuff like module manager sarbian ( <3 ) offers to the community is an absolute mainstay, mods constantly change ownership over the years and the realism total conversion wouldn't be possible at all if people cared too much about ownership.

Heck, I'm not a modder at all, yet I've still written some configs for realism overhaul to add to the support of a 3rd party mod. Try to entangle that mess of license and ownership!

 

I hope you can see now why some people get super concerned whenever paid mods come up. :wink:

Edited by Temeter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Temeter said:

How great do you think will mods for 3rd Party software work?

About as well as the mods work now.  I'm sure there are some great free mods, and some less than great free mods already.  The thing is, if the mods were paid, there would be an incentive to purchase the good ones, and not the bad ones.  Those inexperienced/ignorant developers would not see enough profit to continue.  (But hey, maybe their stuff is good enough for the free mods.)

 

5 minutes ago, Temeter said:

I hope you can see now why some people get super concerned whenever paid mods come up.

I think it's because everyone takes it as a paywall being slapped on top of the modding community as it exists now, rather than considering that a parallel payware mods community would be created alongside the existing one.  The second one could work, and you could see some really awesome stuff.  The first one?  That would be a huge mess that wouldn't be worth thinking about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, razark said:

About as well as the mods work now.  I'm sure there are some great free mods, and some less than great free mods already.  The thing is, if the mods were paid, there would be an incentive to purchase the good ones, and not the bad ones.  Those inexperienced/ignorant developers would not see enough profit to continue.  (But hey, maybe their stuff is good enough for the free mods.)

I vehemently disagree, video game developers are more likely to be professional than modders.

And that's in light of the fact that digital homicide sued people for bad steam reviews.

Quote

I think it's because everyone takes it as a paywall being slapped on top of the modding community as it exists now, rather than considering that a parallel payware mods community would be created alongside the existing one.  The second one could work, and you could see some really awesome stuff.  The first one?  That would be a huge mess that wouldn't be worth thinking about.

There isn't really a difference. Some modders are just goint to slap a price tag onto their mods. And Skyrim did have a huge amount of mods just made for payware. Those were actually the worst.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once or twice a year there's a little brouhaha on the forum about how horrible it would be for Squad to put out DLCs. The odd thing is, Squad has NEVER proposed making DLCs, and when asked, have said over and over again that they have no plans to do so. But once or twice a year, the forum membership gets together anyway, to repeat to each other how horrible it would be if they did. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Once or twice a year there's a little brouhaha on the forum about how horrible it would be for Squad to put out DLCs. The odd thing is, Squad has NEVER proposed making DLCs, and when asked, have said over and over again that they have no plans to do so. But once or twice a year, the forum membership gets together anyway, to repeat to each other how horrible it would be if they did.

It's tradition, Vanamonde. Kinda like when we get together over the camp fire once or twice a year and tell each other silly horror stories. Please leave us our traditions. :sticktongue:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, DaMachinator said:

Clearly I did a bad job defining this.

So? You can't just wave away the existing modding community. I guarantee you that will not go over well. And modders will become really protective of their mods. Excessively so. For reasons I don't understand, the modded MC community is already like this in some areas. There have been several incidents with modders that caused large amounts of drama.

For reasons explained below, this doesn't work.

Modders are hobbyists. They are not really software makers. And it takes a different skillset to manage legal issues and PR than it does to code.

------------------

Were you around for the hell that was raised when Steam did the whole "Paid mods for Skyrim" thing?

The first paid mod for Skyrim was taken down by the author, who subsequently received death threats and ended up deleting his social media accounts.

Why was it taken down?

  • It relied upon a free mod for some of its functionality.
    • This is far more common in MineCraft than in KSP, but there are still interdependencies.
    • Imagine if some mod like one of the fancy spaceplane mods with the custom RPM IVA's became paid, but RasterPropMonitor remained free. It could be argued that the author of the fancy spaceplane mods was exploiting the RPM devs and effectively stealing from them.
  • There was HUGE backlash against the author for this. He was essentially accused of whatever the software equivalent of plagarism was, even for another mod of his which was 100% his content.
  • Valve and Bestheda did not help with this, which was partially their fault.

Essentially, paid mods become user-created DLC. What do you expect of DLC?

  • Support.
  • To get your money's worth.

Mods are, almost by nature, unstable. They often break when the game updates.

 

Why "voting with your wallet" doesn't work:

With free mods, if you don't like the mod or the content is less than it was made out to be, you go on living. It's free, after all.

With paid mods, if you don't like the mod or the content is less than it was made out to be, you've already spent the money. It's too late. You can trash-talk the author all you want, but you aren't getting your money back unless the author makes the illogical decision to allow refunds.

And that's not even getting into the labyrinth of DRM, malware, copyright infringement and the DMCA, the online disinhibition effect [Wikipedia], transferring money over the internet, and what portion (if any) of the modder's income should go to the game devs.

TL;DR: It's been tried before. It failed horribly in a rather spectacular manner

EDIT: Elaboration.

Yes, most mods are made to add or fix stuff in the game they are playing.

It was so much wrong with the Skyrim paid mods function, first as you say, many mods required the script extender to work. Many other mod had used content from other mods. 
Its common that free stuff like free textures or 3d models are free for non commercial use. If you earn money on them the creator want an kickback. 
As it was no paid mod then Skyim was released it was either free to use part or not, many copied stuff anyway.
So you had an major issue with ownership and licences. Valve mostly ignored this unless it was too gross, like uploading and ask for payment for others mods.

Skyrim was probably the best game they could test this on as it was pretty old and have lots of mods already, this forced the paid mods to have some quality.
Now imaging an new game, you would got loads of fast made overpriced cheat mods. 

For KSP the main issue is that game is under development and updates tend to break mods. This also breaks saves.

Now that valve should have done had been to made it more like an 3rd part DLC, not open for anybody and with quality demands. 
Main focus would be to get more of the high end stuff 



  
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...