99 Cent Mods anyone?

[DeeplyLovesCoffee]

Ok, I'll admit it. I love mods. You guys creating these mods are great! I love building an ISS that looks like the ISS! I love having rovers with robot arms and robot cameras & robot things! But what I don't love is how all these fun mods make KSP crash every 20 min. I know the guys building KSP don't want to spend their time fixing all this free stuff. Well, then don't make it free.

What if the KPS development team had 1 guy who just took the most popular mods and made sure the worked perfectly with the rest of KSP and didn't cause it to crash. What if there was an iTunes like system of paying 99 cents for these perfect mods. I'd pay it! To know that all the mods I want would work together and not crash KSP. I to know that if these mods crashed KSP that I could complain and that someone would then have to fix them. ya sure I'd pay for that! No problem.

KSP development team, there could be a big enough market of people wanting stable working mods that it could pay for 1 full time developer. Not everyone wants vanilla KSP. But I think lots of most of us want our own perfect little space program, and probably enough are willing to pay for it.

I know I am.

[Tw1]

The first problem I see with this is younger players who don't have easy access to online money would be locked out of the world of mods.

Then, there's the issue of trying out mods before you keep them. A mod might not be what you wanted. Currently it's easy to undo the addition of a mod, and once it's done there are no issues.

Though the idea of a payed mod maintenance guy is interesting.

[FenrirWolf]

The KSP devs are responsible for maintaining and advancing KSP itself. Sometimes that has resulted in certain mods or add-on features becoming incorporated or duplicated by the main game. But it is not their responsibility to maintain mods that are created by other people, nor should it be.

[minerman30]

Yeah, no.

First of all, microtransactions are one of the things that, no matter how bad the game gets, will never be in it. Also, there will never be a market for those kind of people, as you are the second, maybe third, person I've seen that wants this.

Second, the only problem with the game is the 32-bit 3.5GB RAM limit. When KSP goes 64-bit, you'll be able to use a lot more mods, but only if you have more that 4GB of ram.

Third, if all that's wrong is game crashes, try this texture reduction mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59005-0-23-Release-2-15-Active-Texture-Management-Save-RAM-without-reduction-packs%21

[Guest]

I think this is a terrible idea, not only as a player but also as a mod author. Also, if your game os crashing every 20 minutes you should really check your game logs and figure out what's causing it.

[jwenting]

and every mod author would have to start keeping tax records for the $100 a year he gets in income from those mods, which would cost him more time and effort (and probably money) than he has to maintain those mods.

[Nuke]

i have been making mods for games since '96, and i have never asked for a single donation. ever. its a hobby not a job. im not about to make people pay money for my 3rd rate mods.

secondly i wont be downloading mods that cost money no matter how small the transaction is. the potential for being ripped off is too great and i really dont want to promote the free to play model (its just too good a way to make a bad game).

thirdly anyone who makes mods so good that people would buy them should probibly try to get a job at a game company. you will make more money.

Edited February 4, 2014 by Nuke

[Capt Snuggler]

and every mod author would have to start keeping tax records for the $100 a year he gets in income from those mods, which would cost him more time and effort (and probably money) than he has to maintain those mods.

not to mention mods are international, so could be subject to several different tax laws (maybe overlapping). Think this would do more harm than good I'm afraid.

If mods are getting you down, play stock.

[coolitic]

NO. Mods should remain free or else no one will ever use them.

Also, the reason your ksp crashes is most likely not the but is most likely an out-of-memory error. Mods use memory (certain use very little, others use tons), and since ksp is 32 bit, the amount of memory it can allocate is limited. 64 bit KSP will come once the makers of unity engine successfully make 64 bit unity for windows.

[kBob]

Count me in the keep 'em free category...once you start charging it brings up a whole host of issues. I've already got some ideas for mods myself, and once I get the in game experience I need I'll look into doing some of them, mostly for myself but once I get them to my liking I'll share them, since they are free people will be welcome to try them and use or discard as they see fit without my having to worry about "pleasing the customer" (of course I'm usually harder on myself anyway). Given the potential income I doubt there would be much profit in it (you'd have to sell tens of thousands of mods to make it worthwhile), for that I'll write my own game (I've been working on the design of the "ultimate" 4x space game...not a graphics oriented game...for some time that probably has more potential and probably won't ever get written especially considering the amount of my time going into KSP). Plus you end up having to pay you know like pay your yearly fee to Apple so you can be in the iTunes store, maybe not at first but it would come.

[Flymetothemun]

No. Mod Makers have the problem of tax laws and mod users have the problems of obtaining the money and/or getting mods that they don't want or can't use. Some player's tastes may change (Mine have gone full-circle a few times), and in one month they might be onto remote control or Apollo reproduction mods and in the next they might be onto nuclear rockets or fancy parachutes. Monetization would make them feel obligated to use the mod or not use it and potentially feel buyer's remorse. And, like Nuke said, if mod makers want to make some money they should apply at a game company

[Stargate525]

Sir, you have been bamboozled by the growing trend for companies to sell off their games part by part, and app stores squeezing you for money.

This is insane, especially during a pre-final game. EVERY update, all of these mods would have to be pulled, checked for compatability, cross-compatability, culled if they're now obsolete... In order for a dev member to make that a positive gain for the company, you'd have to charge a lot more than a dollar. Then there's the issue of setting up a mod store, setting some sort of criteria for making the store, setting up some sort of enforcement to prevent purchase and upload piracy...

[leax256]

Well I can't possibly see where this idea could ever have any problems working.

See what I did there? Scarcasam

[The Destroyer]

Mods deserve to be free. Of course, they also deserve a donate button, but never paid mods.

Also, the "No crashes" problem is interesting, but generally mod makers sort them out themselves, and if it crashes it's either KSPs fault or your fault.

[Runboy]

Honestly,I think that these "Single player Micro-transactions" only work towards making the game worse,because first of all,younger players do not have access to any online money,which would turn them away from the modding community.Second of all,micro-transactions make the developers look like people who want nothing more than to put money into their pockets,which does not bode well with the 99% of gaming communities.

Alternative

You could have an option of paying $0.99 to the mod creators,as well as an option of getting the mod for free.There could be rewards for paying,but not rewards that change the actual downloaded mod.What I mean by this is that if you choose to pay 99c+,your name will be included on the "Mod Supporters" page of the mod forum/wiki,for example.

[Tery215]

I do strongly disagree with making mods a pay-to-have thing, and I don't have much to say that's already said.

If the modding community is so strong then Squad could pay the lead mod developers?

[Dooz]

Nope nope no no no paying for my delta v calculations no!

Edited February 5, 2014 by Dooz

[Red Iron Crown]

There is also the fact that people feel more entitled to bugfixes/ongoing support once they've put money into something (KSP is a good example of this). I think most mod makers are hobbyists, modding for the love of the game. If it became a job, with deadlines and quality expectations, I think you'd see far fewer mods.

[technicalfool]

I dunno about the 99p mods. Part of the reason I bought KSP (as well as it being an awesome game) is none of the genuine-customer-punishing DRM that makes me want the entire AAA videogames industry to die in a fire. A paid mod store would mean pressure from mod developers to stick horrible "you must be on the Internet to activate this installation/play the game/do anything at all" stuff into the game.

On the other hand, I think once the game is complete, Squad would be nuts NOT to license their engine out to people wanting to make their own game around it. You know that Bioshock is basically a re-engineered Unreal Tournament, for instance? Someone making a full Elite Frontier-style game out of the KSP engine could be worth buying as a standalone product in and of itself.

[Red Iron Crown]

^^ You realize that Squad didn't write an engine, they licensed Unity and built KSP on top of it.

[Stargate525]

On the other hand, I think once the game is complete, Squad would be nuts NOT to license their engine out to people wanting to make their own game around it. You know that Bioshock is basically a re-engineered Unreal Tournament, for instance? Someone making a full Elite Frontier-style game out of the KSP engine could be worth buying as a standalone product in and of itself.

Unity is a licensed engine already. It would be like Bioshock licensing their engine.

[technicalfool]

^^ You realize that Squad didn't write an engine, they licensed Unity and built KSP on top of it.

And created their own game engine out of it. Unless you're suggesting that you can re-engineer a few text files like you can with KSP, and boom, rocket simulator with your own customisations?

Squad have a lot of their own tech in this project. It's not like they just loaded a couple of meshes and textures into Unity3D and hit the "compile" button. Why shouldn't they then license KSP out to 3rd parties who want to make their own spacecraft-based games?

[technicalfool]

Unity is a licensed engine already. It would be like Bioshock licensing their engine.

Unity is more of a general framework. It isn't an engine for any specific type of game. It provides functions for doing common game-based stuff like loading and rendering models, processing input, or calculating physics. As far as I'm aware, you still need to do a lot of work before you can make anything like a fully-featured game.

Unlike for instance the Unreal Engine, where you can pretty much whip up an arena in an afternoon using UnrealEd. At the same time, you won't be creating KSP out of the Unreal Engine, because it's pretty much designed around Arena-based shooters.

Unless some clause in Unity3D's license prevents you from licensing your own derived game engine out to 3rd parties (which is not the same as giving them a copy of Unity3D), why shouldn't it be done?

[Deadweasel]

The logic with this suggestion is essentially flawed.

Just because something becomes paid, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work perfectly every time. Look at all the Apple and Google Play store apps that crash often, even though the apps cost $2.99 (or sometimes more!) Shoot, look at the operating systems themselves! People complaining all the time that all of the major OSes are crap because they crash for them a lot. Usually it's just a case of a user who doesn't know what the heck they're doing, but that's beside the point. >_>

Money is not the great motivator to make something work, and it's still not a guarantee that something will for for you. At the end of the day, the modder who feels passionately about their project will step up to the plate to fix a bug in their code all by themselves, but you have to realize that even that won't be enough to overcome issues that you might be actually causing for yourself.

Take a look at why the game is crashing. Is it really because of a bug in one of the mods, or is it possible that you're running TOO MANY mods at once? Have you tried running one of the memory reduction mods that exist for this game? They really do work, IF your problem is based on running out of memory.

Is it a bug in the mod itself? Do your logs point to a major error the game is throwing when it dies?

Bottom line is that if you're going to make changes to the game on your own by installing mods, then you need to acknowledge the fact that you're responsible for tracking down where things went wrong. SQUAD have developed a game that works, and works well. They charge money for it, and as such work hard to listen to the players and address bugs that might exist in their code. However, they are a full-fledged company, already set up and configured to deal with the myriad legal aspects that earning an income from their work will create.

Modders are doing what they do because they love the game, and want to see their own idea work with it. SQUAD doesn't pay them to do this, and modders can't really ask for money for their work themselves anyway, as they'd be profiting from work that is based on somebody else's intellectual property. You see, there's this little thing called "copyright" that keeps that from happening.

[technicalfool]

You see, there's this little thing called "copyright" that keeps that from happening.

If somebody wanted to distribute and charge for a mod for KSP, I don't think that they would be breaking any laws by doing so, as long as they didn't include a copy of KSP along with it.

Copyright does not give you god-like powers over what people do with THEIR copy of the product that you SOLD to them.