Nexus Mods will start paying creators using a Donation Points (DP) system from the first quarter of 2018.
The news comes via a lengthy statement by site owner Robin Scott posted on Monday outlining the scheme.
Paying mod creators has long been a contentious issue, with Valve and Bethesda co-launching a unsuccessful paid-mods system in 2015, before Bethesda launched the Creation Club in 2017, which has also proven controversial. Much of the criticism in those instances however, was based on the fact that those companies were taking the majority of the revenue from mod purchases – whereas here, Nexus Mods are donating the cash.
Each month, Nexus Mods will add an amount of money – expected to be between $5000 and $10,000 – to a central pool, which will then be divided between mod creators based on how many unique downloads they’ve accumulated across that time.
At the end of a month, the whole pool will be converted into its DP equivalent. 1,000 DP will be equal to $1, so if that month’s pool is $10,000, then there’ll be 10 million DP to distribute.
There are also plans to eventually allow community members to contribute to the pool.
“Let me cut to the chase and clarify right now that this system definitely isn’t going to let any mod author quit their day job,” Scott said.
“However, it should fulfill that original wish many mod authors have expressed for years now of wanting at least a little something tangible back from their modding hobby, even if it’s just some recognition and a couple of free coffees/beers each month to keep them topped up while they’re working on their mods.
“On a personal level, I’ve been wanting to find a way to personally donate to mod authors past the occasional donation I throw out to mod authors whose mods I use, from Nexus Mods to you, for a long time now, and this seems like the best way of going about doing that in as fair a way as possible.”
The DP redemption store will have the option to receive a direct payout via PayPal, as well as things like Amazon gift cards. However, Nexus Mods also want to fill their storefront with items and software more directly connected to modding.
“The plan is to offer popular games from storefronts like Steam, Humble Bundle or GOG, subscriptions and software licenses for popular software that modders use for their modding or would like to use but can’t afford and even PC hardware, for example, video cards, motherboards, memory and so on and so forth,” Scott said.
“I know some mod authors are running very old or budget systems. If we could help them improve their systems it could provide tangible benefits to the community as a whole.
“Looking into the future, there’s also the potential for the redemption store to be sponsored from month to month. For example, we might invite big names in the industry to donate some items to our storefront like Corsair donating some PC peripherals or Nvidia providing us with some video cards, which we’d likely discount in the redemption store for the mod authors.”
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