Problem with paid mods.

I don't think the artist is selling it because it's "worth that much", it's 100% greed.

 

I think for actually good paid mods they're priced within affordability to the buyer plus the resources and time the creator put into it

 

I think you need to check what the differences are between dictating something, and to share your opinions on something.

And the people are allowed to have and share their opinions. Like I said before, I dont agree with people dictating what I can and can't do with my art, and suggesting to impose rules on paid mods effectively is lobbying to dictate what people can do with the art they create. And that's what I disagree with.
But as far as I'm concerned you're free to criticize and redicule low effort cash grabs that are priced beyond what you are able to afford.

 

I remodeled the whole thing, also working on a completely custom vehicle at the moment. You are a very competent modder so I would expect better from you

 

Making people pay for an unofficial, fan made addon to a game that already has a 25$ price tag is simply immoral. Think about it. Let's say a mod is 5$ and adds a single vehicle. That's twenty percent of the game's total cost, for a fan made addon that thats one vehicle. Even if it has several diverse configs, that's insane. If you're going to charge even 10% of the game's whole cost for an unofficial addition, you better be adding an equivalent 10% of the whole game.

 

sorry to break it to you but my opinion is still correct on the matter.
its absurd supporting scams.
a banana taped to a wall scamming people, is no different than a scam mod, scamming people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
both are scams.
and ill rightfully call both out for being such.

 

If its high quality than its alright. Like the Barstow IV. Those are completely fair to be $4, if you cant pay for it don't. A skin on the other hand is a scam. Someone with no modding experience can use BeamNGs built in skin creator and make something better

 

A products price is dictated by Scale & Value. Value is subjective.
If you think a Rolex or Audemars Piguet is overpriced, get a Casio.
I too find it weird that an Akra Full System for a Panigale V4 costs as much as a Kawasaki Z900.
Beam has probably sold millions of copies.
A mods (Products) price is dictated by Cost ($/hr, Operating expenses, Profit, Value) / Expected Sales.
An artist who probably spent atleast 4 years of his life mastering the craft.
They can't compete with the scale and output of a whole studio to match a cars value to the price they'd break even at.
This is a flawed thought process.
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Imo, what we should focus on is community consensus on Quality Expectations and member rep.
Once that baseline expectation is set, I think integrating a Paid Mods Marketplace with in-game repository could be a great move.
Users are anyway buying mods, and such a setup would unify it all into the Beam ecosystem along with baseline QC + user reviews.
I think its also fair for the devs to be granted a share, for us building upon their foundations instead of giving a cut to 3rd parties.
This would also encourage more talented artists to think about spending their extra time into creating content for the game.
I think constructive criticisms on the Forum/Discord can influence the free market away from bad mods or cash grabs.
Just my $0.02

 

Yes, its undoubtedly high quality, but its still only one car that doesn't quite reach vanilla quality levels. 10% of the game's price for one car, even a very well made one, is still absurd.
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The point of modding in any community is to create free fan made content for others to enjoy. I'm not discrediting the fact that mods take time and effort and energy and creativity to make, but let's take a look at Minecraft or Garry's Mod or Cities:Skylines- their modding communities have mods that have taken similar lengths of time to make, with just as much effort poured into them, and yet, none of them require players to pay to use them. Why should BeamNG.Drive modders charge money?

 

Which International or National Law is that?
To be clear, I've been researching and setting up my pipeline for Mapmaking and I'll be releasing my mods for free and leave when I want because I dont want any support baggage and want my art to be enjoyed by all.
But it always sounds nonsensical and delusional to me when people throw the "The point of modding in any community is to create free fan made content". Thats Leecher/Freeloader mentality (not referring to you).
Maybe, if talented artists who would love to do what they love instead of being stuck in big studios, wake up and create art, while being able to put bread on the table .. we'd be seeing much much better mods? Maybe?
You ever thought of "Contributing" to your "Community" and start Making vs Consuming and Virtue Signalling?

 

It looks like a conflict is about to break out, guys, maybe we should finish this? It was just an idea, I didn't think there would be so many people here.

 

Okay, well as someone who does make mods (albeit more of the 'weird one-offs' variety), and who has supported the idea of paid mods since the idea was first floated here and has held that ground since, here's my hat in the ring: basic consumer protections are not an insult. The prevalence of scams should not be tolerated simply because of a strict notion of freedom; in a completely free market, nobody is truly free. So, yes, I think this is a discussion very much worth having. By all.

Also, yeah! The people who don't make their own mods are worried about getting suckered into paying a ridiculous price. That's to be expected, they're the ones who are compelled to pay the literal cost of these decisions. That's like complaining that most recovering gambling addicts, griping about the financial woes imposed on them by a greedy intersection of business and psychology, don't know what they're talking about, because they don't own a casino!

And yes, I know: if it's a bad deal, just don't take it. I know I wouldn't. But if the last 40 years of literature on marketing, spending habits, and consumer research is any indication, people can often be compelled against their own interests. Whole industries have built up around teaching businesses how. And yeah, even if you're never one of them, I think that should still make a difference to you. Universal Darwinism suggests that the products of any ecosystem will, if sufficiently successful and unchecked by any other power, eventually dominate. I'm worried a race to the bottom is starting. I'm worried our passion projects—all the cool shit you and I have created and will create—might get drowned in a sea of shovelware. Don't believe me? Check out this game's YouTube presence.

I respect you, man. But I disagree.

 

The point of modding in any community is to create free fan made content for others to enjoy. I'm not discrediting the fact that mods take time and effort and energy and creativity to make, but let's take a look at Minecraft or Garry's Mod or Cities:Skylines- their modding communities have mods that have taken similar lengths of time to make, with just as much effort poured into them, and yet, none of them require players to pay to use the,

Just because I have not made any fan made content, does not somehow discredit me from having a negative opinion on paid mods. One can look upon something and say "That doesn't seem right.", without being wrong about that thing, even if they have little experience with the thing itself. Yes, I am consuming. Am I also seeing how paid mods negatively effect the modding environment? Also yes.

 

As much as I feel that even the higher quality paid mod creators should work on their professionalism (No, I'm not trying to start more drama here, don't ask) and the extortionate prices of simple mods like others have pointed out, rules on paid mods won't work and won't happen.

You know how we can solve this problem? Put your money where your mouth is. Support high quality mods and don't buy the egregiously priced slop. That way the egregiously-priced-slop makers will find out that nobody is buying their mods and eventually just stop making paid mods, while the modders making high quality mods will continue to put out higher and higher quality mods.

 

Nobody is obligated to buy the mods. It is completely optional. This is just a dumb argument; plus the paid mods debate has been going on forever we don't need even more threads on this

 

I agree, support the creators you like.

That, however, I disagree with. It sounds good on paper, but there's a vast gulf between nobody [literal] buying the mods, and 'nobody' [figurative] buying them. If you're making $20-30 a purchase on twenty minutes of work, it doesn't matter if only four of the 8000 people who view the mod page buy it. Even in the developed world, that's more than enough to turn a serious profit. And if you get genAI involved, you could be cranking these babies out every 5 minutes!

I agree. Better, then, that we keep this discussion going here, rather than creating new threads on the topic.

 

Boy do I wish. Judging by the past few threads of this nature, this thread is likely going to boil over, more people are going to start flaming each other, somebody's going to report somebody, and the entire thing is going to get deleted.

Or maybe not considering nowadays this forum has a regular userbase that rivals a grocery store parking lot.

 

Maybe it's 20% but you've got to consider it's 100% of their own free-time voluntarily given to develop a project. You're comparing a game developed by a team of developers to something made by an individual, even if by no means is the BeamNG dev team massive.

You may notice that hand-crafted items on sites such as Etsy or even commissioning artists is relatively costly, that's because they put their time into it and you're paying for their own time used to develop it.

It's a very similar scenario whenever someone spends months 3D modeling something, more months texturing it, and even more jbeaming the thing after extensive mechanical research. It's a combination of not just artistic ability but coding and engineering knowledge to be able to leverage the game engine's N/B structure capability.

It's an oddly common theme of the arguments against paid mods, you voluntarily pay for it. In no way do you need an optional addon for a game- it's a want not a necessity.

No one is obligated to give people what they spent their personal time doing, again it's not a necessity- there are so many amazing free mods out there anyway.
People absolutely have the right to charge for what they've made.

While in my opinion this is pretty bad, it's up to the creator to list the price
It's up to the individual to decide if it's worth it and as I imagine most people would decide otherwise here. If they do then that's on them.

 

This has happened before in a paid mod thread (if yk yk).

 

I can take a wild guess and say literally any mod thread.