Every game I know of has a eula that prevents users from selling the content they create i guess there must by some good legal reasons for this but I'm not sure what they are. Has any game ever tried allowing user sales before? I'm wondering if it were done how it would turn out. If users made mods that require the orignal game it should help sell the game. But if the developer is trying to sell his own content packs it might be unwanted competion. Theres also the risk that users selling overpriced poor content mods would lower other peoples opinion of your game. You could midigate these problems by running your store as the only place to sell the content, taking a cut for your self and inturn inforcing standards on the content (quailty, ect). Something akin to the iphone app store. But weither or not that would be more cost effective then an unregulated market I don't know. I think for a game like neverwinter nights 1 or 2 this could be significantly profitable. You already have people who make very high quality stuff for free. Some of these people probably prefer free because they see it just as a hobby and such. But I bet many would sell mods if given a chance to. If you sell the mods and the developer gets a cut the developer wins and the idea that you can make money off mods encourages more people to make mods and good ones which in the end means your average player has more content to play. This is all hypothetical but it might be something I'd like to try at some point. Any thoughts or theories?

Well, you can sell user-created things in Second Life. That what you're talking about?

I didn't think of second life. Although, I've never played it, from what I've read its less a game then a then a very big visual chat room.

But what I was thinking of is games like Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, Oblivion, Morrowind, Half Life series games where you can create entirely new adventures for.

Garry's Mod is a mod for Half-Life 2. That's selling for 10 dollars.
No reason something else good shouldn't be sold

Games like Half Life 2 and the various Unreals and Quakes have an EULA that prohibits the sale of mods because the developer is giving the user the engine/tools for free, while also selling commercial licenses to other developers. They include the free tools/engine because they want to encourage/empower the community to make content but at the same time they don't want that to impact on the revenue they can generate selling commercial licenses. If mod makers were allowed to sell their mods then the developers who pay a lot of money for a commercial license would less inclined to do so and some would simply use the free tools. Some of the EULA actually do allow commercialisation but require a large % of any revenue.

Quote: Original post by I Am Legend
Garry's Mod is a mod for Half-Life 2. That's selling for 10 dollars.
No reason something else good shouldn't be sold

It was free before Valve rolled out the red carpet and invited it onto Steam. It's now a 'product', not a community mod.

Garys mod is a good example of what I was thinking although it was bought I believe and not just sold by valve.

Quote: Original post by Obscure
Games like Half Life 2 and the various Unreals and Quakes have an EULA that prohibits the sale of mods because the developer is giving the user the engine/tools for free, while also selling commercial licenses to other developers. They include the free tools/engine because they want to encourage/empower the community to make content but at the same time they don't want that to impact on the revenue they can generate selling commercial licenses. If mod makers were allowed to sell their mods then the developers who pay a lot of money for a commercial license would less inclined to do so and some would simply use the free tools. Some of the EULA actually do allow commercialisation but require a large % of any revenue.

This is a good reason. I wonder how much revenue they make off licensing vs theoritical revenue from selling mods. Their not mutually exclusive mods would require you own the orignal game and sell it probably exclusivly through the developers store. Where a license for the engine would be a stand alone product sellable anywhere. But there would be some disincentive towards licenses. Wonder if I can find any of these numbers online.

> Where a license for the engine would be a stand
> alone product sellable anywhere.

The value in middleware is in the support. The free version comes with no support while professional studios are willing to spend big bucks to have the Unreal or Quake engineers answer their calls. And the free version runs on PCs only while the commercial license has optimized game console versions.

> I wonder how much revenue they make off licensing
> vs theoritical revenue from selling mods.
> {...}
> Wonder if I can find any of these numbers online.

It's two different business models, although engine companies need at least one solid AAA title that serves as a showcase for the tech.

Googleling gave me those snippets (CNNMoney 22AUG06): "The latest Unreal engine has been in development for four years and cost Epic, a growing force in the gaming world, more than $40 million. {...} Mark Rein, vice president of Epic, expects 300-400 games to use Unreal 3 by the time we begin to see the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 (or whatever Microsoft (Charts) and Sony (Charts) decide to call the machines)." But this is Mark Rein... |8-} Nonetheless, I don't know how to match such a revenue stream by selling mods.


-cb