Hello. It's
Monday and that means a new issue of Eccentric Spheres.
The
hottest controversy on the gaming scene at the moment has to be the
paid mod scheme for Skyrim cooked up by Valve and Bethesda. As a
disclaimer I should point put that I have never used mods for Skyrim,
and I certainly have no knowledge of how to even begin making one.
That
said, I found it hugely entertaining as well as interesting to follow
the debate on this subject. I first became aware of the issue when I
woke up, went on Reddit and saw the site on fire from this subject.
But I'm not going to go into it in great detail for two reasons.
One,
I couldn't do much more than parrot what others have said, and I'll
link a couple of really interesting videos below if you want to learn
more.
Two,
I have a case of the Mondays, and I'm feeling lazy.
But
in a nutshell, the idea that came out of nowhere to smack gamers in
the face, was that Steam would be hosting mods that you had to pay to
download. Valve would then take their share as the host, Bethesda
would take a cut as the IP owners, and the modder who did all the
work would get the pittance that's left over. A lot can and have been
said about that alone.
The
biggest fury though seems to have come from the very idea that you
would have to pay for mods at all, since they have always been free.
And they pretty much have to be. Otherwise the modder would be making
money from a company's intellectual property without permission, and
that's illegal.
Anyway,
Both Valve and Bethesda braved the storm of discontent and defended
the system, only to then promptly scrap the whole idea. This whole
kerfuffle (I love that word) came and went so fast that you missed it
if you blinked. But the idea is now out there, and had it been
handled right, it could have been good, but for the moment it's
pretty toxic.
Some
have speculated that Bethesda is gearing up to release Fallout 4 this
summer and that the Skyrim project would have been the test pilot.
Now
keep in mind that there is no evidence
of Fallout 4 so don't get all excited. It has always been Bethesdas
policy to announce a game only when it is done. Not like so many
other companies that announce as soon as they come up with the idea
of a game, only to scrap the whole thing two years later. But they
have stated that they have a big announcement at E3 this year, which
is something they apparently never do. And keep in mind that The
Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series have been very closely
linked game-engine wise so there is hope. But no
evidence.
Remember that.
In
other “news” most game stores
have sales on Star Wars games today, since it is May 4th,
so you might want to check that out.
Here
are the links I mentioned:
That's
it for me this week so until we meet again, May the Fourth be with
you!
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