Nexus Mods, the home of many brilliant mods used for PC games, including the many Bethesda games such as Fallout 3,4, New Vegas and Skyrim, will now start the implementation to compensate modders. The structure was introduced late last year as a means to have hard working modders compensation for their work that’s distributed for free without charging for mods as well as having safeguards against folks who might game the system, which was seen in other implementations before this the past years back.
As explained in the announcement post at Nexus Mods, modders are rewarded in the form of Donation Points (DP), earned for each unique download per month. THow much DP is gained per download changes per month, depending on how much money is being put into the pool for modders to cash out as well as how many total unique downloads there is each month. DP earned by modders can be cashed out via Paypal (with 1000 DP worth $1 USD), donated to charity, converted into a premium subscription to the Nexus Mods site or even shared and donated to fellow modders. All of the systems are opt-in, modders need to explicitly declare which mods to be included in this system.
The system will take some time to roll out, the first payout will only happen three months after this, and Nexus Mods are upfronting $100,000 USD, to be distributed for the first year of operation. In the future, crowdfunding options where other users can donate into the monthly pool will be added.
The one drawback to this system is that all mod downloads require an account, where you can sign up for free. Nexus Mods allowed smaller mods to be downloaded without an account attached, but cited difficulties of tracking unique downloads from guest downloads (those that do no sign in) which may affect the DP distribution.
Let’s wait and see if this will be the solution to get modders paid for their work. Some can be just for funsies, but there are some fabulous work that has been done that should deserve some pay. Like Hothtrooper44’s Immersive Armours featured above.
Via PC Gamer