MOTHER ♥♥♥♥ HEARTS OF IRON 4
it's a paradox development studio grand strategy game about world war 2
you get to control an entire country, including diplomacy, war industry, espionage and research from 1936 to 1948
it's pretty much a world war two simulator
i've been playing the third game of the series every now and then but some aspects of it, which they're gonna improve in the fourth game, are really annoying at times
so i'm hyped as ♥♥♥♥ for hoi4, because they've been releasing these goddamn dev diaries for a year now where they're all "oh look at how stupidly good our game is so far don't you just want it"

Neeeeeeeeerd.

Goddamn, I got ninja'd on this :p

But yeah, I'm hyped for HoI4, too


I'm even more of a grand strategist than Natti. Get on our level :p

Just because he's a nerd doesn't mean you're not a nerd. You're both gigantic history nerds.

I never said I wasn't one. Hell, I spend most of my time on an alternate history forum and play historical games.

Though, considering you're an admin on a fairly obscure indie game forum and one of the few people to still browse the off topic area, I can only say that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones :p

I'm a nerd but I'm not a nerrrrrrrrddddd
I only play obscure citybuilding games from over 15 years ago (Pharaoh) and autism simulators (Minecraft).

So I just finished showering, grabbed my towel and something landed on my leg and then on to the floor.

Looked at it on the ground and went "Wow, that's a big hairball!"

Put on my glasses, blinked, "That is not a hairball!"

Wolf spider?

That thing is huge! Any idea if it's dangerous?

Took a close look at the eyes (bad picture here) (the pattern is two rows of eyes, both in a slight upward curving shape, all eyes round, same size for the most part except the leftmost and rightmost on the top row are a tad larger).

Using this handy dandy spider eye guide and some image searches, I'm pretty sure this is a nursery spider. They like wet/damp environments which explains why it was in the bathroom, and it turns out their bites aren't much of an issue.

So Steam just started selling mods.

Please, for the love of god, let this turn out to be a late April fools day joke, because this is just ♥♥♥♥ stupid.

No, I'll tell you what's stupid; the deal people are making out of it is stupid. The Mann Co. store has been selling curated contributions for years, and contributors have made tens of thousands each from their work. For ♥♥♥♥ electronic hats. Hats, for god's sakes!

The only difference here is that Valve (and Bethesda) are not curating the items, the content, or their prices.

If a mod is inappropriately priced, people will vote with their wallets and the mod will get no purchases. On the other hand if it's appropriately priced, the mod's developer gets some compensation for all the time and hard work they put into it. Could they simply ask for donations? Sure, but the vast majority of users will likely ignore those buttons. Others will likely stick to only asking for donations, especially if they feel the rate is bad or if it's not something that took vast amounts of time and energy.

The market will manage itself and stabilize after a while. Simple as that.

As for hype for future games, go look at MegaSphere.

There's a big gap between just selling hats and selling things like this, though.

A lot of the people who were making mods were doing it for fun, they enjoyed what they had made and they wanted to play what they had made. They were making the mods for themselves, too, and it thrived off of being shared freely amongst one another, with a free flow of help from one modder to the next.

But this is different...and much worse than selling innocent hats.

You see, there is no restriction over what can be sold. This is an uncurated market where Steam and Bethesda will not be regulating what goes on there. [1] This means that there is going to be absolutely no quality control, no insurance that the mods will be patched to keep up with a game's active development and absolutely nothing stopping the developer of the mod making a promising little start on their mod to rake in a ton of "early bird buys" and then going poof with all the money. [2] In addition, it also provides an incentive for modders to not help one another, as the best mods overall will naturally be worth more in that more people will be willing to buy them, and combined with this point is the simple fact that, now that any mod for the game can be placed there without curation, there is absolutely no reason not to upload the mod for money, as even a dozen sales that give a hundred pounds give more money than a hundred thousand downloads that give nothing.

I have made a mod for Crusader Kings 2 that adds a new religion to the game, called Gabenology, as a fun little joke. Let's say that I publish the mod and receive my twenty five percent cut - because the remaining seventy five percent is divided between Steam and Paradox Interactive in this case - and set the price range via pay what you want to start at £1.00 - which can be done - then let's just say the PCMR subreddit picks up on the mod, goes absolutely nuclear in support of it and two hundred thousand people end up buying it.

So that's .25 x two hundred thousand, resulting in fifty thousand pounds for me and a hell of a lot more for Steam and Paradox Interactive before the sales die down.

A few weeks later, PI releases a brand new patch for the game that breaks my mod's functions, resulting in a huge number of crashes. Why do I have to fix it? I've made my money, and can quite literally ignore the people complaining about my mod no longer working and how they paid for something that no longer works without fear of losing any money, since the refund period is only twenty four hours. [3] Or, if I released that mod for free before, I could simply stop supporting the original version after the patch comes out and move over to the Steam workshop and create an exclusively pay only version of the mod. [4]

Oh, and did I mention people are already pirating the mods, by buying them, downloading and backing up the files and then getting their refund?

I have absolutely no problem with modders getting paid for their hardwork, they deserve a way of being paid for their work, but this is absolutely the worst way they could go about doing it, at least in my honest opinion.

[1] Valve and Bethesda confirm that the market will lack any curation and be completely open, without regulation.
[2] The Art of the Catch mod says some things that should sound...familiar, to anyone burnt by an Early Access game. "Art of the Catch is early in development, however the fishing mechanic is fully functional. Because of this, it is currently being offered at an Early Bird Introductory Price. "
[3]Steam's refund policy states that a refund can only be obtained for twenty four hours, though I would personally estimate less considering how bad the response times of Steam's support is in most cases.
[4] The maker of the Wet and Cold mod has stated that support of all free versions of the mod has come to an end, though one might need to look around for the comment.

EDIT :Someone called Hoser1 on reddit makes a good argument in agreement with me.

Yeah, but giving mods out for free is Communism!