The Day of Love is almost here. People are rushing to find quirky gifts to give to their beloved, making reservations at fancy restaurants, or just trying to ignore all of those other people while they go about their lives. None of this has to do with video games, so let’s jump right into another installment of In Case You Missed It!
In Case You Missed Valve’s Paid Mod Fiasco…
Get ready for round two. Back in 2015, Valve attempted to allow mod makers to charge for their mods, making them much like paid DLC in that regard. While there are many games on Steam that have community-run paid content generation, Valve tried to pop this change onto the modding community’s darling: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This backfired horrendously, as modders made their prices astronomically high in protest, created numerous joke mods, and used each other’s assets in their mods. This last bit is probably the most important one, as modders frequently borrow assets from older, abandoned mods and from their modding buddies in order to improve their own. Armor compilations, texture redesigns, and animations are just a few of these, and it makes sense that these mod authors should get some recognition for their work. Valve thought so too, but it quickly realized that implementing paid mods years after Skyrim‘s community had gotten used to a culture of free mods wasn’t going to work. After four days, the paid mod program was retracted.
Hope you didn’t mind the backstory, because it might happen again. Valve has once again stated that they want paid mods to be a thing. It isn’t hard to understand why Gabe Newell wants to do this. In an interview with PC Gamer, Newell stated, “[Modders] create a lot of value, and we think that … absolutely they need to be compensated, they’re creating value and the degree to which they’re not being accurately compensated is a bug in the system, right? It’s just inserting noise into it.” At the moment, most mod creators get their revenue from donations or a Patreon, but these don’t really bring in that much cash. To a business minded individual, it makes sense to charge for mods so that these creators can keep creating valuable content. Unfortunately, the best opportunity to do this is at the beginning of a game’s life, not after the game has been out for years and already has a fervent modding community that builds upon itself for the sake of art and fun.
In Case You Wanted Twitch to Be More Like YouTube…
Twitch recently launched the open beta of “Communities.” One of the biggest issues Twitch had was a massive amount of choice and little guidance. The new feature hopes to have players self-curate streamers through genre and type rather than just what game they are currently playing. Some of these communities include Speedrunners, Pokemon fans, and music oriented streams.
In Case You Loved Crashing Hot Wheels Cars as a Kid…
Rocket League has heard your cries. In a delightfully fun ad posted last Thursday on YouTube, Psyonix announced that two of the most popular Hot Wheels cars–the Bone Shaker and the Twin Mill III–will be coming to Rocket League as paid DLC. In addition, a bunch of free Hot Wheels loot will be dropping into the game as well. Now if they would just add loop-de-loops…
In Case You Were Wondering Where the Oculus Trial at Best Buy Went…
It probably went up in smoke. Facebook officially closed down 200 of its 500 demo stations at Best Buys across the US. The reason? One worker stated that “There’d be some days where I wouldn’t give a demo at all because people didn’t want to.” Perhaps it was a case of the hype train derailing, or maybe it has something to do with that nasty lawsuit a while back. Regardless, the VR headset is still being sold in the stores that used to demo them, so it isn’t that much of a change.
In Case You Wanted More Castlevania…
How about a Netflix original series? Sometime later this year, an animated Castlevania outing will be released onto Netflix, and a second season has already been planned for 2018. The producer is Adi Shankar, who worked on The Grey and that delightfully dark Power Rangers fan movie. Other details are still coming out, so the series will probably be out in the Fall of this year.
That’s all for this week’s In Case You Missed It! Be sure to come back next week for more weird gaming news that you have probably already heard before. If you were surprised by anything, let me know in the comments below!
