Impact of for-pay mods to community

I sincerely want to hear all sides but I currently believe for-pay mods will have a negative impact on the community.

My concerns include but are not limited to online fragmentation (especially when content does not include an entire season), demotivation of modders who would otherwise make same content for free and dumbing down of content to satisfy the lowest common denominator in order to see the highest quantity sold which has already happened.

I currently believe the only thing worse than for-pay mods are modders who never finish their work only to start more work when other modders may have followed-thru but now we are left with nothing.

If NUMEROUS resources pulled together to QUICKLY deliver a FULL season that would not be as bad because full seasons may otherwise never occur or take years.

Unfortunately, however, this would still lock out drivers who don't pay for entire season from racing even a single track so that is bad too.

Lastly, if someone were to do a whole season I would expect TOTAL price to be in line with reasonable prices Simbin has charged for add-ins in the past.

Edit - I'll add that we need to wait to give a chance to Reiza, Some1, etc. type collaborations plus other things ISI is actively trying.

 

It's a tricky topic. I personally don't mind paying money for a good mod. It seems URD isn't having much trouble with sales. The league I race with has 238 drivers registered to race with the URD mod. All are paid and verified by our admin. When we switched to the URD mod I didn't see any complaining about needing to buy content. You refer to modders selling quantity over quality. Who are you referring too? I only know of one modder so far selling rF2 content and that is URD. I wouldn't say they have gone quantity over quality though. Sure his mod hasn't been completed, but the quality is there. You make it sound like modders are busting up mods into individual cars of low quality so they can sell them one by one and get more money. Maybe this has happened and I'm just out of the loop. I personally think individual cars at a reduced price may actually work well. In iRacing you can race in a full field of cars but you only need to buy the car you plan to actually drive. If ISI build some sort of framework we could do the same with rF2. If a single car could sell for $1.99 and that is the only one you need then what is the big deal? Although RaceRoom tried this and failed. I guess simracing is too small of a market.

Right now there is no way fro Ales to protect his work though which is probably why the complainers aren't complaining much. They are all just ripping him off probably. If ISI gave us a framework to protect content then people would probably bitch about being forced to spend some money. People bitch about having to pay the yearly fee to ISI. I'm sure those people would also complain about pay mods too.

I personally think that if there was an official framework with copy protection and a nice centralized place for selling content (think Apple AppStore or Google Play store), I think modders would actually be more motivated. This same marketplace could be used to advertise free content.

rF2 could benefit from some more organization of race server/races and content. RFC was a big help for rF1 and nothing has really replaced that for rF2.

 

This ^

 

I have no objection to payware mods as long it is an honest busisness.

You try a sample of the product before you buy and the rest of your purchase is of the same very high quality as the sample you tried, and later the bugs reported are solved.
That is so far my experience with URD and I am a very satisified customer of both mods for RF2, I am very happy of their success and I wish them the best. I long to buy more from them.

As many people here I really need to be paid for my job, so I think it is quite normal to pay for someone's else work.

I spent many hours painting skins for my own use (amateur level), and I choose to make them freely available to the community, again I see no problem, the community has been helpful to me when I had problems, I feel grateful to them.

I don't share the rant of many people against pay mods in name of elevated moral considerations, when most of them use without any problem, material ripped from someone's else work - I insist, don't see there any attack against TypicalAnalytical here-, most of the mods in RF1 were stolen (sorry converted sounds much better) from commercial products based on ISI motor.

I think URD has saved RF2 in a very difficult moment in it's life cycle.

Cheers and have fun everyone.

 

I personally think that is not a good way to offer pay tracks wich are very bad done and doesn`t looking better than some worse rF1 conversions...

 

There was f1 payware mod last year and now there is first payware track. I also see fragmendation as a problem. Otherwise payware could be good if it gives as quality content faster. But then again there is fear of dumping down stuff to sell more... dunno, it's a dilemma.

 

I think there should be some quality standard(at least rf2 quality standard) or mechanism for validating. If products meet quality standard then can sell. Otherwise can happen we will need pay every average mod in future. I think ISI also shoud show a little more authority here. ISI should make some sort of agreement with modders. Everyone who charge for own work, which is by the way perfectly legit, should be also "obligated" for example that for every 2-3 paymods do one for free of course equal quality not necessary quantity. Right now i can hardly accept payware mods(probably only URD for visual quality), mainly because they are not better quality in any way that some mods you can find for free.

 

Marketplace will pay for good content. Bad content will not sell and word-of-mouth will steamroller it into oblivion.

 

I personally think people paying for bad quality deserve to pay for bad quality.
If badly done tracks makes me money I will become a 'modder' tomorrow


Of course good content can be ripped, changed and sold, and that could be even worse then modders seeing their content being converted and offered for free without their permission, which hurts the community as it does now (modders pulling out/changing platform/etc) but that is something that will happen regardless, it seems to come with the territory and imo debatable where as this should stop anyone pushing the envelope.
Mind you, i'm not a modder so its easy for me to speak that way

 

I have zero objections to payware. Legal, scratch made and top quality, that is.

I hate to throw this out there..... but it hardly hinders iRacing and its membership.....

Also, the amount of time these modders put in to these things...... I'm glad to pay. Give me good content, I'll give you money.

 

I have no objections to pay ware but if prices start getting close to iRacing, it will be time to hang up the race gloves.

 

I think part of the beauty here is choice. Where as iRacing is all pay-for.....here, there is and always will be free content.

Having just bought it, being £2.85 I am not complaining in the slightest. I think having an understanding of how long these things take to create (I know you do, Steve) helps some people justify a cost.

If I can buy the chap a cup of coffee for the hard work, why not

 

Yeah I bought it myself and tbh I think the average donation to a modder is probably a fiver so the track is priced very very nicely. I worry though as when I was at iracing if I wanted to race the most popular content I had to dig deep in my pockets. I don't want to see the online lobby filled with pay mods and excluding sim racers who are less likely to be able to afford to race. I left iracing because I simply couldn't afford it.

 

I see where you're coming from, I 100% do. I think people will vote with their wallets. If a cowboy comes a long trying to charge for sub-par content, this community will tear them a new ass. Hell, they tear people a part who are just trying to learn and share their stuff (if I remember correctly even you have fallen victim to this).

I think if a trend on payware mods continues, some responsibility could be taken by league admins. Maybe in a 10-race season have 2 pay mods or something so as not to alienate people who don't have much money.

 

This.

If payware would rise up to its promise we could see quality content used by more and more drivers. maybe even an increase in new users because things got just that little bit more interesting.

Imo its not like we have the luxury to rule anything out with the low online attendance in general.

And if it works for the better part we might also see payware packages for leagues, lower prices for groups, discounts, etc. that would be awesome and very helpfull for communities, whom in return would be pushing a mod/track/group's existence by using their content an-mass.
But that would only happen if we as a community would allow and support such a system to develop and mature.


Imo it has potential and its not like we can afford to rule out options on forehand (talking MP)
Rich is right, it works for iracing, and that is even forced. in rf2 it would remain an option and imo it would perfectly suit the ISI philosophy of anything-can-happen-do-what-you-want.

Plus an healthy exchange would potentially push modders to keep at it and create more quality stuff. and beginner/inexperienced modders to push harder. and hey, maybe even modders becoming groups and join forces. one can only dream.
But it could certainly have a good effect, it happens everywhere, why not here?

 

So it is a tricky topic because someone that makes unlicensed addons can have them stolen ?


lol ....it's a lil' bit ironic .......don't ya think.

 

They certainly aren't becoming rich off the profits.

 

Once again a post from you that makes absolutely no sense.

I didn't say it was tricky because there is no content protection. I was just saying its a tricky topic with lots of opinions. This topic has been debated to death and people who are pro-paymods have some very good points as well as those that are anti-paymods.

I don't really understand where your going with the irony comment. But I rarely understand where any of your comments are going.

 

So what has happened with the concept of "freedom of choice". It's totally legal (at least it used to be) for everyone to have an opinion of how things should be done.
What makes no sense is, if one or two opinions dictate what others freedom of choice can be.

It's very advantageous if the dictated choice is yours, but if your choice is outside of dictated choice, then it's not so good for you.

Age old problem...always someone who wants to dictate what that freedom of choice is.

 

I didn't see anyone in this thread dictating or did I miss something.