Ok. That's a spectacular illustration of that whole "install it fully on your computer but play it only when we enable it" technology. For some reason, I prefer straightforward demo versions. Somewhat less creepy.

But it spared me one long and tedious download, thanks.

Yeah, it'd be better if they used that technology to do what Origin does and basically give you X time to play it, whenever you get around to it, and then shut it down after that.

I'm going to grab the example of my wife again: Painting is her hobby. She would be doing it in her free time anyway, regardless of whether or not she gets paid. She enjoys doing it regardless of what she paints - so she decided to sell the paintings she's been sitting on for too long, or occassionally to take commissions. Toying with words nonwithstanding, does she not deserve to be paid for doing what she enjoys, regardless of her calling it a job or calling it a hobby? My hobby is programming and programming is also my job. If, in my spare time, I create a game or other piece of software because I enjoy doing it, I am somehow tied to releasing it for free because I enjoyed creating it in my free time?

You can't create paid work collaboratively? You can't take pleasure in what you take money for? You can't set up a payment system and sell mods by your own, without publisher? In the current professional creative communities, there is no cooperation, we work in a vacuum? And lastly, can I borrow your scrying ball?

I didn't take issue with horse armor. I didn't buy horse armor. Just as I don't take issue with DLC, and guess what, I only buy good DLC, destroying the industry by rewarding good work by my hard earned cash.

Let me end this with a little anecdote: When GOG started out in 2008, there was a good deal of discussion boards to which this brought very heated arguments - about what? About gaming not ever being the same, about these old games being abandonware, about no money going to the creatores and GOG being leeches for doing very little, yet selling those game. In short, the stuff you could get freely before was suddenly behind a pay wall. I can see some parallels.

Bethesda is dead for me.I'd rather get branded like a cow than be their cash cow.

Not Bethesda games, just the old Interplay titles they took away.

Well, I see it like this: good business is always good business.
For example, two years ago I would have voted for EA during the worst company of America poll, too, yet as long as they offer DRM-free games without any of the corporate bullshit that brought them to be so infamous I really see no reason not to buy. Never touched Origin or any DRM'd EA game in my life, yet I have almost all those offered here.
So yes, regardless of what they do on other stores, as long as we are not talking about corporations involved in criminal activities I think an objectively good offer (a.k.a. real ownwership of your copy) shouldn't be turned down on principle.

Edit: Obviously, I am talking about games fitting the current GOG standards. If they change, I may have a problem.

Principles still matter to me.Money is fine.'Owning' my games is fine.But there are companies that deserve no support.
Bethesda are worse than EA at this point.

Actually, I *always* thought this, and never avoided to say it loudly. Imo, Bethesda never deserved even a fraction of the astonishingly good reputation they had -until yesterday, at least.
I definitely understand your point of view, yet for me a boycott is needed only in case of monopoly (Valve) or involvement in criminal activities (another company I will not mention to avoid a potential slander lawsuit).
Also, if Bethesda accepted the standard policies here (pure fiction! :P) it would mean they are not so bad anymore.
Anyway, it is obvious they will never join, so it really makes no difference! :)

Garry's Mod creator on paid Steam mods: 'I'm all for it'

http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/25/8496469/garrys-mod-creator-on-paid-steam-mods-im-all-for-it


In other news, it looks like they pulled the banner from the store page. The mods are still there though, you just have to go to the workshop to find them.

I will agree that painting is a whole other story (if may I ask kindly to see our wife's work by the way), but there's one big difference, thanks to what my point still stands. A painter creates a product (that can be bought and owned, while mods are pieces of codes and textures you simply don't own - you share), 100% from his work and resources. There are different types of hobbies, I guess. But still - it's optional and doesn't affect the painting community destructively, since it's still a freelancer type of activity. There's no huge company with the control over the market of paintings that take a huge chunk of the profit. And guess what: that's how the modding scene worked for decades.
And guess what: that's how the modding scene worked for decades.
Nobody has a right to force anyone to buy your wife's painting. I hope your wife doesn't charge people for looking at her art in co-operation of some world-wide art distributing company.
Because that would be exactly what's happening to the modding hobby scene right now. Using a fallacy "modders deserve payment" they only want to turn modding scene into 3rd party developers on their shitty terms. Nobody at Valve or Bethesda thinks that modders deserve anything. They just want to charge for something they have no ethic rights to.
The fallacy that a hobby is a job and must be taken under the supervision of publishers and huge developer's companies challanges the principles of the hobby the modding is.
Also, with modding there's an issue, that modders create content mostly from share-ware assets (while painting is mostly 100% individual work, I imagine). It's not a matter of a simple collaboration of two, three or 10 people who sit althogether and create 100% original content. That's not how modding works, and will cause to the complete destruction of the modding scene for Skyrim (for now), because of the massive amount of ethical, economical problems and intelectuall property theft issues. Enebias put it out perfectly: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_workshop_now_allowing_to_sell_mods/post408
That is why paid mods won't work, if there will be still free mods for this game on the Internet. It's else a total control, or no control at all.

There are no winners here but the company that wants to expand its control.

The only way to actually support modding is to leave the modding as it was working for decades now. As a hobby. People do donate. But they don't donate for a product, they donate to a person, 100% of amount. If modders really wanted to make for living, to sell their work, that would happen years ago. Oh wait, it happened and people who want to make on living by making video games, decided to become developers and work full-time.
Now a huge company marches right into the modding land and says "this land is mine now, try to oppose me".

This is not the first time mods have been put up for sale. Nobody batted an eye when Valve annouced that Chivalry and Dungeon Defenders had a curated workshop where mods could be purchased back in January. I also think if this was a brand new game without an established community, nobody would care.

She doesn't have an online library - she's learning web design to make one, until then, feel free to come over, there's tea and cake in it for you ;-)

All right, your post got a bit messy there so I won't divide it into smaller bits, but I'll try to respond to the best of my ability. First of all, I'm not arguing for the way Valve is doing things. While I think both Valve and Bethesda deserve a cut, it should be nowhere as big as it is right now, 75% is just ridiculous. I'm arguing for the option of modders to sell their creations. Second, you're talking about lines of coude, models and textures here. Now there's more a bit finer points to this.

You can actually create textures and models which are 100% yours, in which case, the issue is very clearly cut - you made it, you can sell. It doesn't matter that it's just digital data, we're talking on discussion boards belonging to a website focused on selling digital data.
Then there are paid mods which use assets from freely availible ones - personally, I don't see an issue with this behaviour, as long as the paid mod builds on top of free assets from other mods and doesn't just resell them. Creator of the free mod has put his content out there for free, and while it's common courtesy to ask him whether you can use his stuff, it's always been like that.
But then there's the third possibility - use of paid content in your paid/free mod. Now I suspect things get a bit more complicated here, just as they do for the same thing in any other branch of software development. As far as I'm concerned, it's still down to common human interaction - just ask if you can do it, and if you're not allowed, you can actually get hit by copyright suit.
Now, for the most part, I can't see an issue with any of this - after all, it is how software development has worked globally for years and I only see it rapidly evolving and improving, not the other way around. I can't see why it should be any different for mods.

And that brings me to the collaborative part, to how modders share what they have made amongst themselves. It all comes down to how modders themselves handle this. From developing software on daily basis, I can see that even tho there's tons of software which requires payment before you can get it, programmers understand that collaborating and sharing their work is essential to further develop their jobs globally. Some of the biggest advancements in software industry came from need to further commercial usage and options. After all of this mess stabilizes, I can't see why mods could not end up the same way.

Oh, and as for my wife having 100% original work - no, she does not. She stands on shoulders of generations and generations of artists who were here before her and developed techniques, styles and various approaches. It's not just development of software, every human endavour gets furthered by sharing and cooperation - and while copyright laws don't exactly help, we move forward step by step every day anyhow.

At the end of the day tho, this is an innovation. Regardless of motivation behind it, it's a neutral change and I'm not smart enough to see where it'll lead. Perhaps you're correct and it'll ruin modding, or perhaps it'll lead to second gold age of it. Time will tell, but it's too soon to judge yet.

As for me, I will be cautious, wait to see how the situation unfolds, and then base my decisions on that.

Yeah, but that's not really modding anymore, it's 3rd party DLC developing. Nobody cared, because said games didn't really have a real modding scene. Same situation with new games - there wouldn't be a modding scene, just small 3rd party developing on pretty shitty terms.
The problem is, they want to monetize an established modding community and profit from volounteer work of people who want to make the game better for themselves and others in their free time.

You're correct, but other than Skyrim, what other mod communities are as big and established? Half Life?