One of the most interesting technology trends of the past couple of years has been within the mobile and electronic gaming space. As publishers and developers continue to send content out in what is now the biggest entertainment industry in the U.S., there have been many experiments in pricing and costs. Most people are probably familiar with the rise of “freemium” mobile apps that allow you to play a free version, but pay to use a version without advertisements. But, there have been many other experiments besides that. Microtransactions, for example, allow businesses to sell in-game items to players at the cost of real-world dollars. However, not all experiments in this space have yielded positive results.
“Consumers hate to feel like they are losing something they already had.'”
Valve Entertainment, operators of the incredibly popular Steam gaming marketplace, and Bethesda, publishers of the Elder Scrolls series, decided to attempt a new type of paid content: user-created mods. PC games typically allow for a degree of customizability. A modder might, for example, create a 3D model of a sword and build the code for it to be used as an in-game object. Steam’s interface already allows users to download and install mods for their games fairly easily. A character could use a mod, for example, that made their character look just like Walter White from Breaking Bad. Then he could walk around a fantasy world and hit things with a sword.
An explosion in the laboratory
Bethesda and Valve attempted to create a “mod marketplace” through Bethesda’s critically acclaimed “Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.” Under the terms set by them, a modder could set a price, or allow people to pay what they wanted with a minimum of fifty cents, in order to download their mod. Seventy-five percent of the revenue was to go toward Bethesda and Valve, split between them, and the remaining 25 percent would go to the artist who created the mod.
Internet commentators began fighting the new service immediately
The response to this was less than ideal. After four days, Valve and Bethesda ended the experiment, due to massive user outcry, according to PC Gamer. “We received enough email to eat up $1 million worth employee hours” said Valve CEO Gabe Newell. He acknowledged that he had “pissed off the Internet.”
What does this mean for businesses attempting new payment models? The system itself was salvageable, according to Forbes contributor Paul Tassi. The issues in the implementation of it were that payment split between the modder and publishers as skewed too heavily in the publishers’ favor, a lack of public explanation of the service and a sense of taking away a free thing from the community.
Perhaps the most useful lesson here is that consumers hate to feel like they are losing something they already had. Most people who play electronic entertainment systems don’t use mods in the first place, but didn’t want to feel like they would have to pay for something that would have been free. There wasn’t enough value added by Valve to justify the additional expense.
