Gabe Newell reaches out to community after Paid Mods debacle.
reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_...
reddit.comPosted Apr 25, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC
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reddit.comFor those who don't want to sift through all the comments:
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Gabe claimed he was flying back from somewhere Thursday. Friday, he was visiting an eye surgeon. Then he realized he had over 3,000 emails (I honestly thought it would have been more) and figured he pissed off the Internet. He could just be playing dumb, but who the hell knows? He's a busy man.
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He keeps throwing around that they're "data driven" and will respond accordingly; his AMA is a part of analyzing the data. He's more or less said that the "data" in this case is how consumers vote with their wallet.
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He believes that incentivizing modders will make better products: "Working at Waffle House does not help you make a better game."
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Whenever he was asked about a donate button, he didn't give a direct answer. The most he commented on was that they're adding a "pay what you want button" which starts at zero, and is set by modders.
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He'll look into the banning of accounts; he believes it's stupid and doesn't solve anything. He even went as far as to look into someone's account ban personally.
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The game publisher sets the share taken. So if Bethesda/Zenimax wants 45%, Valve gets their standard 30%, and leaves the mod creator with 25%.
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He was asked about forcing mod creators to use Steam (or making it so they would only want to). He said that they have never, and don't plan on having any way of forcing developers to use Steam. He said they don't have a problem telling them that they're being stupid if they are. Whatever gets someone the most exposure is fine with him.
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Any other comments are basically a variation of one of the above.
What we can take away is that he's very adamant on Valve remaining laissez-faire in this situation. They provide tools to shape the experience, nothing else. They aren't forcing anyone to sell their mod. It's simply an alternate form of modding that they see potential bennefits for the moders (and obviously Valve) in. The capitalist/wannabe businessman in me agrees with him. No one is forcing anyone to do anything. It's up to the consumer to decide what is worth paying for. Yes, it's very shitty that tons of mods have decided to cash out, but the only thing objectively that's changed is the amount of control mod authors have. The ones that have abused said control are indeed paying for it with the backlash. I think he's a man who wants his business to make money and for his collaborators to make money.
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I'm curious how they figure that the "You must make $100 profit before you see any of it" rule is fair to the vast majority of modders. That's an aspect that gets overlooked. Market dilution alone makes that a tough hurdle to overcome for small mods, which means that the majority of the money will go straight to Valve/Bethesda, not to the modders they claim they are supporting.
I get the rationale that bank fees and such, not to mention taxes, make the process unfeasible at lower dollar amounts, but people conduct smaller transactions on eBay all the time. A minimum $100 of personal profit seems quite high to me when you consider that Valve and Bethesda's cut is enormous. If you charged $1 for your item, you'd need to sell it to 400 users before you saw any profit from it. That means Valve and Bethesda get to split $300 before sharing any of it with you, which is far more than the cost of their individual games in the first place.
To be clear, this is not entirely Valve's fault. As I understand it, Valve's 30% share isn't unusual for them. Valve is bearing the brunt of a storm that's made worse by Bethesda being quite greedy. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how other publishers respond. Hopefully, we'll find that Bethesda is an outlier.
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You must make $100 profit before you see any of it
I think it stops people from making a few shit mods that take like half an hour in the hope that a few people will buy because of a low price. It kind of means that people will have to put time into their mods so that they don't get stuck in the sub $100 zone.
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I think Google's ad sharing revenue operates similarly, you need to hit a certain amount before you get your cut.
Smaller traders on eBay accept these charges because liquidity is a big issue to them and turning a profit quickly can make or break them, but for a big business like Valve and Google liquidity really isn't the issue.
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Some of his comments are getting downvoted to hell. History is being made.
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Whatever may end up happening with the mod issue, I'm glad to see him face his critics and speak to them honestly. I can't imagine other gaming companies sending even some PR lackey to face that sort of heat, let alone the CEO. He is a big reason for me having faith that this will be set right.
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It's nice to see him show up, but he's barely responding to critics. The bigger questions seem to be going unanswered, but I'm still holding out on a more in depth response.
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I've seen him hit most of the big points in one way or another. He isn't trying to sugarcoat anything, which I honestly think is better.
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It will not be set right. You can just tell from his answers they're not going to remove the paid mods. He's just doing a PR move to calm everyone down and make him seem like a god again.
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It's been 3 days. I prefer not to go into Headless Chicken Mode until we see what happens next.
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Damn, that comment is currently sitting at 2001 downvotes. Is that a reddit record?
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[Actually this is the most downvoted comment of all time] (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s5guk/iam_bad_luck_brian_ama/c4b8m3u), but I think his is the most downvoted post this year.
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Another burn by Fake2556: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/33uplp/mods_and_steam/cqokdtp
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He isn't reaching out - his clearly on damage control and PR. Dodges all but the kindest questions and refuses to acknowledge the legendary fuckup that Valve has made... they've permanently tarnished both their credibility and the modding community's integrity.
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He doesn't give a Shit about what happened let us get that straight.
Valve has steam, steam is the entire words best community for gaming, valve becomes an asshole, steam gets fucking pricy because of Bethesda.
We can't get away from steam because steam is the best and the others are bigger assholes.
Valve controls us, they know they won't lose us
Edit: this was written. Yesterday night, I really can't remember what I mean by pricy??
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Piracy ?
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I think he meant to say pricey
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I was reffering to piracy as an Alternative to steam.
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My faith is being tested...
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My faith is already shaken, no doubt. Even if things all work out the way the community wants it to, there will be a lot less 'fanboys/blindly trusing gamers' (I was as well) for Valve.
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So ... Damage Control or is there still hope that they're not moneycows and still make games ?
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They've always been money cows. They're a business. But even then, their games are some of the best I've ever played — even the ones that exist to make money.
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Doesn't every game exist to make money?
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I mean the ones that are designed to do so for the long term. There's a difference between how Portal 2 and DoTA 2 make their revenue.
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Games I don't know about but he did say they'd stop censoring people.
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Honestly, Gabe had this reaction coming. All he seemed to do was divert attention, damage control. He didn't really answer or address a lot of issues people had.
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After the debacle? It's still going on right?
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Right, so after the start of the debacle. He can't really be expected to talk about it before that.
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Yes he can. Public service announcements for major changes are a thing, you know.
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Good thing the community got Gabe's attention. One thing I couldn't stop noticing was the amount of reddit gold they were throwing at Gabe and Robin. Seriously...
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Most people would agree that Gabe Newell is fairly relevant to the Half-Life franchise. We rarely get word from him at all and hints at Valve's current policies are the only piece of "Half-Life" news we've had in the last few years.
So I'd say this is business as usual.
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BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T HAD A GAME IN SEVEN YEARS AND THE ONLY THING THIS SUB IS GOOD FOR ANYMORE IS KEEPING UP WITH VALVE DRAMA AND ASKING THE SAME QUESTIONS OVER AND OVER, ALRIGHT?
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why are you here if you have to ask this?
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At least he isn't waiting for this to all blow over
ya nice to know he was just bleeding from the eyes.
I was just looking at all the hate he was getting and wondering when he'd show up without a clue about what's going on