a big question what is the reason for paid mods?

[gray man]

okay so this kinda started in my head a few weeks ago but really amazing mods i hear about like the formula hybrid 2020 and 2021 mods and the formula junior cars from 1960 but they are paid mods and now I'm trying too fugue out the reason of it. why put a price tag some have even moved from free to paid just a curious person help me understand better

 

[Stereo]

Because the person who made them wants to make money.

 

[gray man]

true but some people put donations on the free ones just keep it that way and i guess the reason why i asked was because I don't feel comfortable putting info into a web site credit card info that is.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Fair enough - just don't buy any of them.

 

[gray man]

yeah that's about the answer i expected lol

 

[LilSki]

You don't make anything with donations so lets get that out of the way real quick.

For studios such as RSS to be able to build cars in a reasonable amount of time, that requires money to compensate for the time required to build the content. People who build stuff for free often only work on it when they want with no real deadlines, so it can take a long time to finish a project if it ever gets finished at all.

 

[gray man]

finally someone with a good answer. well yeah it's very comparable too a dlc in that sense it's just i have never and i think you miss read what i meant about the donations not making the actual mod with them just asking for them on the page. but anyway i got confused about it because there are really high quality mods for free and i just thought about this. if paid mods and free mods are mentioned in the same list of some of all time best mods why put a tag on it if you have other people making free mods of the same quality as yours. and yeah i get the deadline thing too just a bit of a problem aka a big problem

 

[demetri]

true but some people put donations on the free ones just keep it that way and i guess the reason why i asked was because I don't feel comfortable putting info into a web site credit card info that is.

If they accept Paypal you can use that and they won't get your CC info. If they don't, some banks offer one-time-use virtual credit card numbers you can use to buy stuff on web-sites you don't fully trust. Also, I don't know what country you live in, but here in the states you're protected from fraudlent online purchases pretty good. Even if someone steals your CC info and uses it you can easily dispute the charge which will get reverted (and you will get a new credit card number).

 

[LilSki]

Payware vs freeware has never been a mark of quality to me. Just because it costs money doesn't automatically make it good or better than a comparable freeware. Anybody can ask money for something whether it's junk or not.

In the end it just comes down to personal preference of whoever is building the content. If they feel their time is worth compensation then they can charge for it. If they feel generous and want to share it for free they can do that too.

Me personally don't like my content behind a paywall so anything I release is usually free. However I do make some money on side projects that are not for the public. So that limits my ability to release free public content.

 

[gray man]

thanks lilski you have helped me out so much

 

[Deleted member 197115]

You cannot complain about quality of free stuff.
But seriously, some free mods here and on the net are better than payware.

 

[Stereo]

To give an idea how well donation works, I released a car 2 years ago, it has 19000 downloads and 110 reviews. 19 people donated, total $125.

 

[Lafrente]

Making a mod from scratch requires incredible amount of skill, knowledge, experience and time. This is not your "modified physics" where people change few lines and claim that they made a car.

Whenever someone makes a mod and releases it, I just sit silently and marvel at how amazing they are. We literally have stuff like rain, day-night transition, content manager, countless tracks and cars. None in vanilla AC. And average mod hoarder has no idea how much work has been put into them. AC is/will be relevant for many more years thanks to the modders.

If someone makes a good mod and wants to charge money for it, that's all their right to do. Try making the simplest car or track ever, and you'll understand why.

 

[Please Stop This]

To mention bad examples, so you can avoid: simdream - rips from other games or even stolen from other modders, dont buy from them!

 

[Interslice]

To give an idea how well donation works, I released a car 2 years ago, it has 19000 downloads and 110 reviews. 19 people donated, total $125.

Can you add a suggested donation button to a mod page? If it was 50c you might have 500 donations on that by now...or maybe not. Can it be added to another page such as an league forum thread as a sort of convenient tip the modder suggestion?

It's a format i've seen work well on free podcasts. You might not want to pay for something but instead occasionally buy the creator a cup of coffee or a beer.

 

[AccAkut]

Can you add a suggested donation button to a mod page? If it was 50c you might have 500 donations on that by now...or maybe not. Can it be added to another page such as an league forum thread as a sort of convenient tip the modder suggestion?

It's a format i've seen work well on free podcasts. You might not want to pay for something but instead occasionally buy the creator a cup of coffee or a beer.

He already has one, i think us content creators all have one. I got the suggested "by me a beer" too, but got maybe 100€ out of it, for all my stuff combined. As it went on my Paypal it directly financed me my Spotify for a year I guess, lol

 

[Stereo]

Can you add a suggested donation button to a mod page? If it was 50c you might have 500 donations on that by now...or maybe not. Can it be added to another page such as an league forum thread as a sort of convenient tip the modder suggestion?

It's a format i've seen work well on free podcasts. You might not want to pay for something but instead occasionally buy the creator a cup of coffee or a beer.

50c is not really worthwhile, paypal fees would be at least 31 cents. (possibly as much as $4 depending on which countries)

 

[LilSki]

The most donations I've made was around $300 for Watkins. Road America was around that same figure. All in with 6 track releases I think I probably made $1000-$1500 in donations. While that is a nice amount of pocket change over the course of 6 or so years it doesn't equate anything compared to the time involved to build them. For me it's fine as I'm not trying to make a living on them. I'm just being transparent to show that donations don't make you much of anything compared to time invested. So if you are looking to actually make money you have to go the payware route. Which in itself isn't always super profitable.

 

[Interslice]

The most donations I've made was around $300 for Watkins. Road America was around that same figure. All in with 6 track releases I think I probably made $1000-$1500 in donations. While that is a nice amount of pocket change over the course of 6 or so years it doesn't equate anything compared to the time involved to build them. For me it's fine as I'm not trying to make a living on them. I'm just being transparent to show that donations don't make you much of anything compared to time invested. So if you are looking to actually make money you have to go the payware route. Which in itself isn't always super profitable.

I tried riverside the other day. Didn't know where it was in the US. I was instantly transported to a road trip down through california a few year ago. This time in a better car in VR! We came into LA from joshua tree, 29 palms direction. Drove through sky valley. Cool part of the world out that way. Don't know if you have ever been.

Must try to get thay LA canyons working, for more sim road trips. I would never be able to afford to go a race a car abroad. Just rent a car and spin about. Have an event organisied there now in the 1973 911 rsr's. Pretty cool that they actually raced them there back in the day.

That's one of the coolest things about these really high detail tracks and all the work outside of the track itself. Alot of time as you say. I was listening to the guy who made sveg the other day on @Chris Haye 's podcast. Gave a great insight into it for a non modder like myself.

 

[Johnr777]

Yeah, I’m in that ballpark of donations as well... definitely not doing this for the money, lol

Someone has to feed rich sim racing streamers something to play with