Mercer

Another update today as Konami removes itself from the NYSE and SEC Source

Depending on what system you use, it's pretty darn easy to do. I used to do it with my magic character in City of Heroes. The simpler the system the better, make sure it's straightforward and easy to describe.

Considering that it seems like they are liquidating their gaming division this will be the last Metal Gear. Period. Hell, I forgot DDR. DDR defined my life through college. Every weekend, tens of dollar dumped into that stupid, wonderful arcade cabinet.

Over the last month, Konami has exploded. Kojima (Metal Gear series) and his team have been moved from full time status to contract workers, Konami going as far as to remove Kojima's name and his team from the latest Metal Gear promotional items. They were recently added back in, but things continue to devolve. Last week it was announced that P.T., the playable trailer for the new Silent Hills team lead by Kojima and Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labrynth, Pacific Rim) would be taken down from the Playstation Store. Today, it was officially announced that the new Silent Hills project has been cancelled. Rumors of the destruction of Konami's gaming division have erupted in the last few hours. Few American or European gamers know that Konami makes most of their profit from pachinko machines and gambling. They entered the gaming market during the Nintendo and Sega boom, but like many companies in the last five years have seen their profit margins plummet with the exponential increase in game development cost. Let's take a moment and recognize one of the old great Japanese game companies before it's inevitable collapse. I'll always remember Castlevania as being one of the defining games of my childhood and although Metal Gear never really clicked for me, I have been a passionate fan of Silent Hill since my teens.

Those Au Ra screen shots are just too good!

Because all Dragoons get their powers from Dragons, it's a double edged sword.

And the paid mods are back up again, looks like it was just database work. The main problem I have with how Valve has handled this transition is the sudden change (Though mod makers were notified before hand, fyi), the horrible pricing structure and the legal implications of using others work. Mod work, especially Skyrim's mod community. The vast majority is built on the work of others with the Expanded Scripts team being the cornerstone of the community. Restricting some of it to a paywall restricts other mods from working or the authors steal the parts they need for their own mod. If the Expanded Scripts team decided to go behind a paywall they would single handedly bring the Skyrim modding community to it's knees. The legal implications stem from the wide use of using other author's works as well as the heavy use of copyright images. It stumbles into a very murky area of fair use law as the likeness of one product is used in another. For example, using Final Fantasy armor, characters or weapons in Skyrim. The implementation is a mess, mod authors are getting screwed pretty hard by the sudden change in standards that they have to conform with. The reach of such a change is larger than just Steam, as was evidenced by the DDOS attack on Nexus earlier today.

If the unofficial Skyrim patches do monetize that exactly what is happening.

And now we'll know it's by design, to make an even bigger profit.

That's... hard to justify. We already know the Extended Scripts team don't support it, but other top mods have already converted over. From a financial point of view, it's stupid not too. From a moral view, it's stupid to join it. Let's use a real example. The Shadow Scale set was introduced after the new pay for mod standards went up. It has 653 subscriptions (Which in this case are sales) in the last day. It sells for $1.99 for a subscription. This tells us that there has been $1,299.47 in sales. The modder for this single piece of armor has made $324.87 in one day sales while the Valve/Bethesda team has made $974.60. That's massive, especially for a small armor set. If any of the larger mod teams decided to sell their mod for as little as $.99 they would be making massive profit, even if it's the short term.

Ahhh, DLC Mods have become the new Horse Armor. Let's hope the community votes the same way they did ten years ago.

The update sites only go by Square's Character Restriction post, which updates every 5 hours. Servers open and close outside of that 5 hour post. You're best bet is anywhere from 5am EST to 9am EST every weekday morning. Weekends are the worst time to try and get a character created as in most instances the server won't open at all.

Correct. It's a blatant developer/distributor scheme. Let's please let's leave the platform conflicts at the door on the this one. There's already a bunch of controversy on the main topic already.

There's more to it on the policy handling side of it. It's up to mod creators to police their own products. If a mod is created on say "The Nexus" and the mod creator doesn't want to go to Steam a third party can copy the mod and put it on Steam. Copy the username and all that since usernames are easy to change on Steam. It's up to the original author to then come to Valve and complain their mod has been coppied. If they don't, the copy cat is able to earn money off the original mod without recourse. Effectively this gives two options to modders. You either join steam to protect your work where you might as well monetize to earn some cash or put in extra time in addition to your modding to police the mod section. While earning no money. When it comes down to more work for no pay or joining the new movement for pay (even if valve takes a huge cut) which would you do?

That's correct, it is a 75/25 split for Valve. There are a few more rules to consider though: Modders are only paid when they hit $100 earned per month. You don't hit $100 you get nothing. This is compounded by the 75/25 split, meaning that to get paid there actually needs to be $300/$100 earned. $100 for the modder, $300 for Valve. If the grand total of sales for the month is less than $400 modders gets nothing. It gets better. You must have $100 in your steam wallet to be able to cash out to a bank account. You can only cash out on their bank roll, which is the 30th at midnight of every month. If you do not cash out on that date, you don't get paid for the month. If there is an error in the transaction, you don't get paid for the month.

So something relative to the main topic: So a few of the high profile mods have been going pay to play, we know this. Evidence has come out that if a mod developer would prefer donations and pay what you want for their mod that Steam will remove all donation links from their page. Steam supports a pay what you want model, but it requires a form of minimum payment, not free. This move really just feels greedy and a cash grab now they are removing options from it's mod authors.

And it's closed at 9:30 EST

Thanks for the warm returns everyone!

Hello RPers! Coming back into FFXIV after a long, long break. I've played a lot of alts over the years but this is my first time sticking through to the end game. Now that I've made it to max level I really want to explore what the RP community has to offer. I'm a long time RPer but I've been out of the loop for several years now, ever since City of Heroes closed. I'm really interested in meeting new characters and players as well as finding a new free company to call home. I look forward to talking to everyone more!