"Opening up Arma 3 to paid user-made content" - How?

[fareast 20]

this aint good..people gonna steal free mods and makes money from it

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

this aint good..people gonna steal free mods and makes money from it

Not quite. Wouldn't pay a penny for a mod unless it was toppest of quality. Arma 3 Quality and then some. Only one mod i know of worth money, and even then, why purchase a mod when it's not going to be in the base game for everyone to access? If it were to be added to Vanilla content, then i'd consider it worth money, but, that's just my honest opinion.

[warden_1 1070]

I am personally very against this monetization thing BHI is heading towards. It is not what Arma is about and unless BHI personally reviews every monetized mod and it is extremely high quality there is no way it should ever cost someone something to use. I can see how this might inspire some people to create more high quality addons (like MANW), however did anyone notice how many of those people who entered MANW were only in it for the money and did not care at all about the game or even play it themselves....

[chortles 263]

On the other hand, notice how most of those didn't make it to the finals? Motives aside, it would seem that many that you were thinking of didn't bring quality to begin with...

[.kju 3245]

we will be eventually looking at how to extend the existing DLC strategy to monetized user content using the Steam Workshop

http://dev.arma3.com/post/oprep-content-licensing

Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/32p1cz/oprep_content_licensing/

[ProfTournesol 956]

I'm curious to know how it would be monetized. Does it mean sold to the players ?

[das attorney 858]

@PT - I think so, so you would pay some money through Steam for a Weapon Pack or something.

What struck me about their announcement is they said:

we will be eventually looking at how to extend the existing DLC strategy to monetized user content using the Steam Workshop

So is the strategy to put xxGb of pay-to-unlock mods on my Hard Drive? (so I can be on the same servers as those who do pay for extra guns, skins etc).

[I give up 152]

@PT - I think so, so you would pay some money through Steam for a Weapon Pack or something.

What struck me about their announcement is they said:

So is the strategy to put xxGb of pay-to-unlock mods on my Hard Drive? (so I can be on the same servers as those who do pay for extra guns, skins etc).

Nah, BIS wouldn't do this, we would be forced to download and store in our hard drive tons of GB with stuff that we will never use or buy.

Cant be true.. or it is?

[semiconductor 309]

The discussion in this topic revolves around supporting mod makers but I doubt that this is BI’s primary motivation.

Here is how I see it: BI have failed to make a playable game – in a sense that there is, like, 0 official servers or popular official gamemodes and the quality of the content varies from “could have been better†to “mediocreâ€. Judging from my server browser, majority of the players launch Arma to play community-made missions (and ironically the most popular of them isn’t even related to military) and BI is perfectly aware of that situation.

Now, along with attempts to improve quality of their own content they have decided to push players into exact copy of Team Fortress 2-style microtransactions: someone from community makes a weapon, community votes for it, Valve puts it into its store and keeps 30% fee from every purchase of that weapon (the rest goes to the author). Other weapons that haven’t been approved by Valve are available freely on third-party resources.

BI adopts similar approach and voila! – they have a relatively small but steady income and they don’t even have to actually do something apart from checking out “Most popular – this month†or Armaholic from time to time.

Who loses with that approach? The player, since he bought a game that is barely playable without [paid] community content or servers.

Who wins? While authors of some modifications have some benefits from this system, the ultimate winner is of course our beloved Bohemia Interactive. Everyone at BI can literally (ok, not literally) play Mineswepper all day and still have a small but constant income, just like Valve does. Capitalism, ho!

Edited April 16, 2015 by Semiconductor

[enex 11]

Overall it seem to work: Community votes on what would it pay for, author gets 70% cut.The other content is still free, and paid community

voted weapons can't be owned but you can play with people who has them on the server.

Who loses with that approach? The player, since he bought a game that is barely playable without [paid] community content or servers.

Hopefully you mean that game is barely playable for you because for myself and lot of other people is more then playable hence so many hours spent in game.

Who wins? While authors of some modifications have some benefits from this system

If I would have 70% cut of something popular I made with tears and sweat in comparison with zero founds before I would call that a solid benefit.

[Tonci87 163]

The discussion in this topic revolves around supporting mod makers but I doubt that this is BI’s primary motivation.

Here is how I see it: BI have failed to make a playable game – in a sense that there is, like, 0 official servers or popular official gamemodes and the quality of the content varies from “could have been better†to “mediocreâ€. Judging from my server browser, majority of the players launch Arma to play community-made missions (and ironically the most popular of them isn’t even related to military) and BI is perfectly aware of that situation.

Now, along with attempts to improve quality of their own content they have decided to push players into exact copy of Team Fortress 2-style microtransactions: someone from community makes a weapon, community votes for it, Valve puts it into its store and keeps 30% fee from every purchase of that weapon (the rest goes to the author). Other weapons that haven’t been approved by Valve are available freely on third-party resources.

BI adopts similar approach and voila! – they have a relatively small but steady income and they don’t even have to actually do something apart from checking out “Most popular – this month†or Armaholic from time to time.

Who loses with that approach? The player, since he bought a game that is barely playable without [paid] community content or servers.

Who wins? While authors of some modifications have some benefits from this system, the ultimate winner is of course our beloved Bohemia Interactive. Everyone at BI can literally (ok, not literally) play Mineswepper all day and still have a small but constant income, just like Valve does. Capitalism, ho!

Exactly!

BIS wouldn´t do this for the players (they don´t benefit at all, no matter what some people try to tell you), or for the modders (the gains for most mod authors would be minimal). They would be doing this for BIS. And in the long term it would be madness!

What has made OFP awesome? Mods

What saved the trainwreck Arma 1 from ruining the company? Mods

What saved the broken mess Arma 2 from failing? Mods

What made Arma 2 CO sell a shitload of copies? A Mod

What comforted the people who thought that Arma 3s base content at release is pretty lackluster/not to their taste? Mods!

Why did Iron front fail massively? No Mods.

Why did carrier command fail? No good Mods.

Why is cities skylines selling like hot cake right now? Because of Mods.

What is gonna save the next failed Arma (and there will be one, of that I´m sure, they´ll have to change their engine sometime in the future and that will bring a shitload of problems) if mods are restricted and no longer free?

And that is just one of the many problems with that idea.

Donations: YES, Paid for Mods: NO

[Chairborne 2594]

Modders lose too.

People who know their business around the engine and have a profit from it will refuse to share what they know with the rest of the community if they are smart about it.

Anyway it's hard to predict what is going to happen right now, maybe BI should elaborate more on how they plan to do this.

As for payable mods and contents... i know plenty of people who systematically waste their money in greenlight games or the huge scam valve likes to call market.

Look at how many items like csgo weapon crates or tf2 items are sold everyday, i think there would be lots of people who wouldn't mind wasting some more money on A3 mods.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Chairborne

[Jackal326 1181]

Donations: YES, Paid for Mods: NO

I've voiced my opinion earlier in the thread and in other similar threads/discussions on the subject - I won't bore anyone with the rants I went on again, everyone else has pretty much said what I have been thinking. I'll just quote this to accurately summarise things.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Well if some of you are afraid of content stealing and getting money with that in Steam Workshop, that's unlikely to happen. I guess there's BIS (and community) and Steam to deal with first before anyne can monetize through Steam.

[PuFu 4600]

@tonci in particular, and in general to everyone who is against it.

you all need to understand that making mods takes time, and time is money. Everyone has to earn something out of it (community, game developers even server owners), minus de addon makers themselves. We can all agree that donation doesn't work, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Surely Tonci makes has a point into all of this - this game's is supported by addon makers, mission makers etc. The community around it, with some support from BI (more so recently). So, where is the problem with this sort of people getting a fraction of the pie.

Some voices on this very forums said that MANW will kill the cooperation between members, that things will most likely get shut down, etc. From where i am standing, it wasn't the case, not even close.

Besides, i bet no one would force you to pay for anything. On the other hand, with paid mod there comes more responsibility about the support and quality one brings to the table. It is this sort of things that would make a sell.

A note here - it is usually the same group of people that are against it, or more vocal anyways. Mostly, the ones that haven't done much to support this francise along the lines tonci described, as in creating stuff for RV. There is a huge difference in terms of mindset between users and creators. I really haven't seen that pile of addon makers against it as it has been said here so many times. Similar mindset to the "but this DLC is too expensive, is not worth the money". Well, most other games out there do NOT allow you to play 3000Hours without repetition. On the other hand, the same "too expensive" bunch are the first to request new features, new content, all of it, of course, for free, because game development is really cheap, and because it effectively requires almost no skill whatsoever....

So, what are you lads really afraid of? Do you really consider that the current form is the normal "status quo", and everything else is wrong? How many donations, and to what amount did you ever made? I am pretty sure that in the vast majority, very little. Most have no ideas that (and i'll target just the part i know of) content creation is, in EU and US commissioned at around 30-40EUs/h. Do the math, especially for the content that is on par or above BI, how much that is worth in real money.

Surely, the simple fact that are less and less modders around theses days, simply because it gets harder and harder (BI is to blame here only partially due to their shitty tools) to create high quality content is something to expect. But without a real incentive, this number is only gonna go down, not up. Do you happen to have a better solution to this incentive? Or do you really think that this would simply solve itself on the long run?

btw - the above is my own personal opinion on the matter, and does not reflect RHS position. When RHS will have one (most likely after BI sorts this out), will be communicated via official channels.

[Chairborne 2594]

Some voices on this very forums said that MANW will kill the cooperation between members, that things will most likely get shut down, etc. From where i am standing, it wasn't the case, not even close.

Everybody wants to be on the winner's chariot. ;)

[[BWC] Westen 10]

I never want to see mods become paid content. The MANW contest already did bad things in terms of eliminating a lot of collaboration between modders and we saw that as soon as it ended, great things like ACE3 began to appear from different mod-makers cooperating. Making mods purchasable will only further fracture the community and make it even more difficult for new players to get into ArmA3 milsim.

[PuFu 4600]

Everybody wants to be on the winner's chariot. ;)

Not after MANW was finished, after it was announced, way before RHS said to take part.

but yeah, i guess with people like yourself, i am simply wasting my time here.

[Jackal326 1181]

@tonci in particular, and in general to everyone who is against it.

you all need to understand that making mods takes time, and time is money. Everyone has to earn something out of it (community, game developers even server owners), minus de addon makers themselves. We can all agree that donation doesn't work, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Surely Tonci makes has a point into all of this - this game's is supported by addon makers, mission makers etc. The community around it, with some support from BI (more so recently). So, where is the problem with this sort of people getting a fraction of the pie.

Some voices on this very forums said that MANW will kill the cooperation between members, that things will most likely get shut down, etc. From where i am standing, it wasn't the case, not even close.

Besides, i bet no one would force you to pay for anything. On the other hand, with paid mod there comes more responsibility about the support and quality one brings to the table. It is this sort of things that would make a sell.

A note here - it is usually the same group of people that are against it, or more vocal anyways. Mostly, the ones that haven't done much to support this francise along the lines tonci described, as in creating stuff for RV. There is a huge difference in terms of mindset between users and creators. I really haven't seen that pile of addon makers against it as it has been said here so many times. Similar mindset to the "but this DLC is too expensive, is not worth the money". Well, most other games out there do NOT allow you to play 3000Hours without repetition. On the other hand, the same "too expensive" bunch are the first to request new features, new content, all of it, of course, for free, because game development is really cheap, and because it effectively requires almost no skill whatsoever....

So, what are you lads really afraid of? Do you really consider that the current form is the normal "status quo", and everything else is wrong? How many donations, and to what amount did you ever made? I am pretty sure that in the vast majority, very little. Most have no ideas that (and i'll target just the part i know of) content creation is, in EU and US commissioned at around 30-40EUs/h. Do the math, especially for the content that is on par or above BI, how much that is worth in real money.

Surely, the simple fact that are less and less modders around theses days, simply because it gets harder and harder (BI is to blame here only partially due to their shitty tools) to create high quality content is something to expect. But without a real incentive, this number is only gonna go down, not up. Do you happen to have a better solution to this incentive? Or do you really think that this would simply solve itself on the long run?

btw - the above is my own personal opinion on the matter, and does not reflect RHS position. When RHS will have one (most likely after BI sorts this out), will be communicated via official channels.

I fully understand where you're coming from PuFu. I've been around this game series since the early OFP days and back in the day I did release a fair few projects over the years. I still to this day work on small private projects for the enjoyment of the group I am a part of. I can't claim to speak with any experience of being part of a large mod team such as RHS - I mainly work on things alone or within the small group pooling our resources and knowledge. However as to the time and effort involved, I do understand and appreciate that "time is money", yet this hasn't stopped addon makers, RHS being a prime example, from standing the tests of time. Many addon makers have moved on to other games or moved on with their lives to other pursuits. That happens in every walk of life. Are we to assume that if OFP had supported "payware" addons, that popular mod teams from back then such as BAS or UKF would still be creating content?

Whilst there may be fewer "mainstream" modders around these days, I don't think the decline in numbers is so steep as to imply that the modding scene is dying. Infact it seems there are more and more people getting interested in creating content for the game. The recent influx of new-blood, whilst sometimes infuriating because they (sometimes) can't post in the correct thread or section when they ask questions, still shows an eagerness to learn and a drive to create new content rather than waiting around for someone (or likely no-one) to do it for them. As to the quality of the content, that falls on both the rest of the community to give constructive feedback as well as BI (as you touched upon) to continue to improve their tools and supporting documentation and such.

The modifiability of this game series (be it my own work or downloading and playing with the works of others) is what has kept this game series alive and is the ONLY reason I still have any interest in this series. While I can appreciate a financial incentive would continue to support content creators, past events have shown (will name no names) that holding the community over a barrel with a "support my mod/mission/whatever or I wont update it anymore" stance, may do more harm than good. Monetizing user-created content isn't a far cry (lol, game references) from this slippery slope. Its not a stretch to envision content-creators from giving up on projects if they don't sell a certain number, or achieve possible sales-goals set by BI/Steam (an idea I seem to remember being bounced around as a possibility though purely speculation).

Like you, I eagerly await further clarification from BI on the subject, as right now this entire discussion is based on a great many if's, but's and maybe's. I guess only time will tell.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Jackal326

[badluckburt 78]

Donations: YES, Paid for Mods: NO

This sums it all up for me. I'm probably too old-school but no way I'm going to pay for a mod, might as well make it myself then if I want it that bad.

[chrisb 196]

BI may be thinking straight for a change. Just get all parties together and get it done. ;)

[Macser 776]

Modding community is here to make free, enjoyable addons that will be avaible for everyone and I strongly disagree with bringing money in.

That does seem to be quite a popularly held belief.But it's not one I share.There's no requirement on anyone here to provide free toys and tools.I have used what people offer and say thank you.At the most I'll offer some constructive criticism.But that's it.

Assuming the standard is good,if modders wish to sell what they've done and can legally do so,I have no right to block that.Nor would I want to.The workflow for A3 or any other modern engine is nothing like it is in a diffuse only title.Although it's not simple doing that either.The creation of assets alone (models/textures) is far more complex and time consuming than it was in OFP.And that's without configuration and scripting.

If some are happy to give their work out for free then that's their choice.And it always will be.But I don't understand why there's an expectation for this to apply to everyone.Or why people who seek money for their work,are viewed by some as greedy or offensive in some way.And that they should seek work in the gaming industry if they want to make money.Perhaps they have a job already.Maybe it doesn't pay that well.Perhaps modding is a small luxury they can afford.If they can make a little extra cash from it,why shouldn't they?It's hardly megalomania.

Neither do I think it has to be triple A standard.I'm sure the end user can determine if the price fits the product,as you do everyday when making any purchase.If it doesn't,then don't buy it.

There's nothing wrong with donations either.It's just that when given the option people will choose not to give one.That's a choice too.And it should be.But you can't make much out of it.

Some of you say this will divide the community.This community has divisions already.People disagree on a wide range of subjects.So what?There has never been universal peace,harmony and respect.If there was there wouldn't be much to talk about. :)

[vegeta897 13]

Its not a stretch to envision content-creators from giving up on projects if they don't sell a certain number, or achieve possible sales-goals set by BI/Steam

But how is this worse than the current state of affairs? You are making the assumption that these hypothetical content creators you speak of would be working on their projects for free if they couldn't monetize. That's not very likely, if they'd stop working on a project due to lack of sales.

That's really the flaw I see in this talk of modding dying out because of monetization. It makes a giant assumption that people who are already doing stuff for free are going to suddenly require money to keep doing it, only because they now have the option. I think a far more reasonable prediction is that the modders who monetize are ones who wouldn't have been able to justify creating something for free, and now have an incentive to. In other words, we end up with more mods than we did before. Of course there will be some small overlap, where some people suddenly decide the work they've been doing for free needs some compensation, but as I said in my earlier post, are these the kind of people we should be focusing on? Are they important to this modding community? Really? Aren't the most important people the ones who make the choice to keep providing their service for free, despite the ability to monetize?

[x3kj 1247]

There are many Pro's and Con's

One thing people like to forget ... Pro: Incentive for non-arma modders to get into arma modding -> more chance of seeing great content. Con: it will cost you something

The biggest Con i'm afraid of is the attraction of scumbags who steal stuff from people and try to sell it (unaltered or just slightly altered), or people who flood the workshop with absolute junk, in the hopes to fool player into buying something that isn't what they where hoping fore. There are plenty of those around...

[kklownboy 43]

encrypted PBOs