Valve sparked controversy with the announcement that it would offer paid mods for games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. This raises the question of whether MMORPG players would also be willing to pay for mods.
Mods or modifications are typically developed by fans of the respective games in their free time and offered for free. This way, anyone can view and use the mod if they want to. Many mods also utilize other mods created by other players and build upon them. It’s a give-and-take situation, and everyone benefits. Valve now sees a lucrative business in these modifications. Currently, there are about 25,000 modifications for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Surely, money could be made from this. After all, it works for Valve’s own games DotA 2 and Team Fortress 2 as well. Here, gamers have been able to offer their self-created mods for money for some time now. Since the introduction of this feature in 2011, over 50 million dollars in revenue have been generated. There is surely more potential.
So Valve announced that it would also offer modifications for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim for payment. Other games are expected to be included in this program as well.
However, Valve did not anticipate the backlash that followed. Mod creators only receive 25 percent of the sale price of a mod. The remaining 75 percent is shared between Valve and the developer of the game on which the mods are based. The sole risk lies with the mod creators. And it is no small one. Copyright violations are not uncommon with modifications. And anyone who uses a song by a well-known artist in their mod and sells it can expect lawyers to come calling. Additionally, the community believes that the entire mod scene will be destroyed if money is introduced into it.
In the future, will players pay for mods in games like World of Warcraft?
Modifications are often used in MMORPGs as well. A very good example of this is World of Warcraft. There are countless addons and mods that introduce new features, change the user interface, and display additional information. Other MMOs can also be enhanced with addons and mods. So what if these were offered for payment? Would that work? Would MMO fans spend money on UI changes? The fact is that the number of offered mods would certainly increase immensely once creators could earn money from them. However, there would also be a lot of content that would be quickly thrown together and would not have the quality and usefulness that players expect. It would be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Another point would be that not only would you be giving money to the creators of the mods, but also – taking Valve’s model as an example – to the developer. Especially with a subscription MMO, players might feel slightly cheated. Buy2Play and Free2Play MMORPGs already have a bad reputation for constantly taking money from players. So now they should pay for mods as well? The next step would probably be that developers would have gamers create mods that provide advantages in the game. Then it would no longer be the developers who are the villains responsible for “Pay2Win”, but the creators, and people would feel compelled to buy these “essential addons”. Paid mods for MMOs would thus be a delicate matter.
Andreas says: Offering mods for money is a double-edged sword. What initially sounds like a nice opportunity for mod creators to make some money turns out to be unfair upon closer inspection. Because the mod creators bear all the risk and receive only a fraction of the revenue for it. If something like this were being considered for the MMO sector, many players might feel cheated and take to the barricades – and they should.
