A dicussion on the merits of paying for mods, moved from another thread.

[sadina]

  On 1/28/2020 at 12:21 AM, Snark said:

I understand that it must be frustrating to have to wait a long time for such a beloved mod.

Please do try to remember, however, that modding is seriously time-consuming, thankless work that requires many, many hours of tedious work by modders, who are doing this as a labor of love in their scarce free time, unpaid, in order to give us all shiny toys for free. To have any mod at all, regardless of when it arrives, is a generous gift from them, and deserving of our gratitude. If it's taking a long time, that's simply because it's a hard and time-consuming job.

So please try to be mindful of that. I realize you're probably just trying to express how eagerly you're waiting for the generous gift of a free shiny toy... but it can come across as complaining about things taking so long, which would be an inappropriate way of thanking folks who owe you nothing but are nevertheless working hard on your behalf, for free, asking nothing in return.

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May be we do need to make some profit for mod makers, such as ah...making this into a official DLC and let players to buy it. After all, 20$ or even less is acceptable for this kind of important mods

[avalancha]

  On 1/28/2020 at 12:54 PM, sadina said:

May be we do need to make some profit for mod makers, such as ah...making this into a official DLC and let players to buy it. After all, 20$ or even less is acceptable for this kind of important mods

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I get that you're probably only half serious, but that is absolutely impossible, you would never be allowed (nor should you) to profit commercially from somebody else's intellectual property / copyrighted software like that

[Stone Blue]

 

  On 1/28/2020 at 2:03 PM, avalancha said:

  On 1/28/2020 at 12:54 PM, sadina said:

May be we do need to make some profit for mod makers, such as ah...making this into a official DLC and let players to buy it. After all, 20$ or even less is acceptable for this kind of important mods

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I get that you're probably only half serious, but that is absolutely impossible, you would never be allowed (nor should you) to profit commercially from somebody else's intellectual property / copyrighted software like that

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Sounds like sadina was suggesting that *Squad* buy this, or hire the Kop team, to somehow make it an official Squad-sanctioned DLC... not for the Kop Team to go start charging $$ for it themselves...
But yeah, profit-motivated mod content... not sure that would be a good idea... it hasnt proven successful in the past, *other* than when Squad seems to officially hire mod devs... vOv

AND A REMINDER, TO ANYONE THAT THINKS KOPERNICUS IS WORTH PAYING $$ FOR:

THERE IS A LINK TO GIVE DONATIONS, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OP.

(Disclaimer: dont expect faster, better, or even continued support, because you give a *donation*, tho...)

Edited January 28, 2020 by Stone Blue

[Sigma88]

  On 1/28/2020 at 2:36 PM, Stone Blue said:

(Disclaimer: dont expect faster, better, or even continued support, because you give a *donation*, tho...)

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and even if you were expecting your money to be converted in more work on kopernicus, 5$ of work wouldn't bring kopernicus much closer to release anyways

 

[Diddly Feelerino]

  On 1/28/2020 at 4:37 PM, Sigma88 said:

and even if you were expecting your money to be converted in more work on kopernicus, 5$ of work wouldn't bring kopernicus much closer to release anyways

 

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Instead of a carrot, what if we offer a stick instead?

[scottadges]

  On 1/28/2020 at 2:36 PM, Stone Blue said:

not for the Kop Team to go start charging $$ for it themselves...

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I'm sure it's been debated, and I'm sure the Kopernicus team folks have real jobs, but why NOT charge money for the mod since it's such an improvement?

That said, I'm sure there's probably a legal/licensing issue with charging money on top of stuff that belongs to Squad/Private Division. Or maybe there's some guidelines for modders that Squad provided, basically legalese saying "you can't charge for mods". Others would know better in both those instances.

But who wouldn't pay $10-$15 for something like Kopernicus. Several thousand people buying this (is the community that big?) and you have maybe a small annual salary, if not a nice incentive/justification to devote time to it.

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by scottadges

[Sigma88]

  On 1/28/2020 at 9:52 PM, scottadges said:

But who wouldn't pay $10-$15 for something like Kopernicus.

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according to somsubhra the latest kopernicus has had 30k+ downloads, 10-15$ per download would be several years of salary

Edited January 28, 2020 by Sigma88

[Galileo]

  On 1/28/2020 at 10:04 PM, Sigma88 said:

according to somsubhra the latest kopernicus has had 30k+ downloads, 10-15$ per download would be several years of salary

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That’s impressive, but is that unique downloads? Just think about if I had charged for SVE.. even just $2 lol I would have retired by now... well not really. It may have 665k+ downloads, I can assure you they aren’t all unique, and I wouldn’t charge for updates, so I’d still be broke. 
 

Well, that tune changed quickly  

Edited January 29, 2020 by Galileo

[Sigma88]

  On 1/29/2020 at 12:34 AM, Galileo said:

That’s impressive, but is that unique downloads? Just think about if I had charged for SVE.. even just $2 lol I would have retired by now... well not really. It may have 665k+ downloads, I can assure you they aren’t all unique, and I wouldn’t charge for updates, so I’d still be broke. 

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they are definitely not unique, but if you see most of the last major updates of kopernicus always get consistently 25 to 30 k download

even if you remove all the duplicate ones, and all the downloads you would lose if you put the mod behind a paywall I would bet you would still be over 15k

and even 1$ for 15k downloads it's a pretty nice amount of money. even if you charged only once for lifetime access to the mod

 

now, I am not doing this for the money, so I never really considered it. but if you look at patreon, people are definitely willing to support mod makers there.

[OhioBob]

  On 1/28/2020 at 9:52 PM, scottadges said:

But who wouldn't pay $10-$15 for something like Kopernicus.

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Don't forget that without the planet packs, your $10-$15 bought something that just sits in your GamaData folder doing nothing.

[Sigma88]

  On 1/29/2020 at 1:01 AM, OhioBob said:

Don't forget that without the planet packs, your $10-$15 bought something that just sits in your GamaData folder doing nothing.

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you could say the same about planet packs without kopernicus

 

EDIT: not to imply that I think a paywall of 10-15 $ on kopernicus would be a reasonable thing

Edited January 29, 2020 by Sigma88

[mcwaffles2003]

  On 1/28/2020 at 10:04 PM, Sigma88 said:

according to somsubhra the latest kopernicus has had 30k+ downloads, 10-15$ per download would be several years of salary

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even if you guys charge 2.99 thatd be almost 100k

and very worth it....

[plausse]

  On 1/29/2020 at 1:50 AM, mcwaffles2003 said:

even if you guys charge 2.99 thatd be almost 100k

and very worth it....

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Provided the number of downloads remained constant. What people feel is reasonable and what they actually do is often not the same. Historically, I think there was a very successful ksp mod that tried a premium model, with no success. Also looking at Skyrim, when people have attempted monetising, it has brought up all sorts of expected and unexpected issues making it not only not worth the effort, but often killing the joy of the creator and maybe the whole mod.

I wonder if some kind of (dreaded) freemium model is a tenable answer, like patreon but maybe a little more in your face than most ksp modders use it. Maybe setting donation goals and explaining how the money is contributing to allowing the mod to continue. I think there was a GoT inspired mod for Mount and Blade which tried something similar. 

I'm aware this may be OT but thought I'd the team is feeling lethargic, overworked and underappreciated, it could be worth looking into. Personally I feel more implied to pay/donate to the more backend kind of mods, like this or projects to save orphan mods etc. 

[Beetlecat]

  On 1/29/2020 at 12:34 AM, Galileo said:

That’s impressive, but is that unique downloads? Just think about if I had charged for SVE.. even just $2 lol I would have retired by now... well not really. It may have 665k+ downloads, I can assure you they aren’t all unique, and I wouldn’t charge for updates, so I’d still be broke. 
 

Well, that tune changed quickly  

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I can assure you that at least 15 of those have been me over many reinstalls

[HebaruSan]

Imagine how much more people would complain if they were paying for a release they felt was delayed too long.

[mcwaffles2003]

  On 1/29/2020 at 5:43 AM, HebaruSan said:

Imagine how much more people would complain if they were paying for a release they felt was delayed too long.

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If the modders making it were getting paid theyd probably be working on it more as well

[eberkain]

I would be happty

  On 1/29/2020 at 12:44 AM, Sigma88 said:

now, I am not doing this for the money, so I never really considered it. but if you look at patreon, people are definitely willing to support mod makers there.

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I was actually looking for your patreon to and another $1-2 to my monthly. 

[eberkain]

  On 1/29/2020 at 1:54 PM, Sigma88 said:

Thank you for the thought, however I don't have a patreon.

I am not comfortable getting monthly donations.

Donations should be considered "thank-you"s for stuff you aready received from me rather than support for my current or future modding endeavours.

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For me, I don't mind spending $10 a month to help keep a bunch of my favorite modders motivated on their respective projects.   I don't like the idea of paying for a specific mod or to get access to a download, especially for something like Kopernicus where there is a team of legacy members that all put in a lot of work to get where we are.  

[Sigma88]

  On 1/29/2020 at 9:58 PM, eberkain said:

I don't like the idea of paying for a specific mod or to get access to a download

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don't take what I was saying too seriously haha

I never really even remotely considered the idea of putting any of my mods behind a pay wall. that's just not the reason why I make mods.

 

[dave1904]

  On 1/29/2020 at 9:58 PM, eberkain said:

For me, I don't mind spending $10 a month to help keep a bunch of my favorite modders motivated on their respective projects.   I don't like the idea of paying for a specific mod or to get access to a download, especially for something like Kopernicus where there is a team of legacy members that all put in a lot of work to get where we are.  

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I do not like mods being a "subscription". I'd rather do a one time payment of what I believe its worth and get it over with. I've no idea how much to give either. Sometimes I feel like it's only peanuts. 

[KerikBalm]

Well, there are no paid mods for KSP, isn't this rather off topic? The mod maker hasn't proposed this, and says he doesn't want it, why is it still being discussed?

[DeadJohn]

  On 1/28/2020 at 2:03 PM, avalancha said:

I get that you're probably only half serious, but that is absolutely impossible, you would never be allowed (nor should you) to profit commercially from somebody else's intellectual property / copyrighted software like that

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Not impossible. I'm not quite sure which intellectual property you are referring to, though:

• Mod-maker IP: I don't think the OP was proposing personally taking money for someone else's mods. I can see several models it might follow. It might be an official KSP app store. It might be independent, like spacedock or github, but with a subscription or pay-per-download. Mod makers would give permission before their mods would be added.
• Squad IP: Details are probably buried somewhere in licensing documents as to whether you can sell mods, but the concept of selling software (mod) that runs under a larger software environment (KSP) is commonplace. KSP is indirectly profiting from Microsoft Windows.

Paying would fundamentally change the nature of mods. The great tradition of abandoned mods being taken over by others would be weakened. Support would change; today, one mod maker will help with another mod's technical support, but they may be less willing to do so if they are doing the work while someone else gets the money.

 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Or; those with the technical skill would make free replacements for these "Premium" mods. This is what happened when TESV and FO4; either better free replacements existed or were made very shortly after.

For "Paid mods" to work fully; you have to meet 2 major criteria.

#1- There CANNOT be a free/accessible way to MAKE mods.

#2- The systems to obtain mods CANNOT be outside the platform they're intended for.

Now in the case of TESV and FO4 they're still making a killing on "Paid mods" even though these aren't met, so perhaps they could pull it off in spite of this.

But i don't think it would be healthy for the community, or mods.