Regarding mods: At the request of an SKSE dev, I was told to spread this information around

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Greetings everyone - it has been a long while since I have been on the forums. However it seems like a good day to make an appearance. Everyone is asking for some "official word" from the SKSE team regarding paid mods which use SKSE. We've gotten a ton of email asking for everything from a clarification on the use of SKSE in paid mods to making a change in our license to ban any monetization of mods using SKSE. Lots of folks are angry. Lots of folks are concerned. Everyone feels that this will be a big change in the modding community.

So where do things stand with SKSE? I am going to divide this into two sections: the official stance of the Script Extender team, and then some of my own thoughts.

Officially

SKSE (and all of our other Script Extenders) will remain FREE to use for everyone. We will not charge anyone for it. Ever. Creators of mods which depend upon SKSE must make their own choices regarding whether to ask for payment for their mods. We will not receive any partial payment from those sales. Reasons for #2 and #3: See #1.

This is an important point for us. We built the Script Extenders to allow modders to do things that couldn't otherwise be done. We want more mods to do more cool things. We want individuals and groups to be able to build on our functionality. Folks are free to use SKSE to build their mods. What they do with those mods and how they distribute them is up to them. The mod creators will need to deal with the fallout (good and/or bad) from those decisions.

We are working with Valve to get a version of SKSE into the workshop. However it will always be available at our site: http://skse.silverlock.org. We think that by providing SKSE through the workshop we may be able to ease some concerns people have about the software (which has always been an issue) and we can provide an easy way for mods in the Workshop to list us as a dependency. It is early in the process to make this happen, and it may not work, but we are going to give it a try.

Personal Thoughts

I've been part of the Bethesda Modding community since I helped ianpatt kick off the Obilivion Script Extender about nine years ago. I've put thousands of hours into OBSE, FOSE, NVSE and SKSE. ianpatt, scruggsywuggsytheferret and many others have put in thousands of hours more. We've never sought any sort of compensation for that work. Our "payback" was in seeing the fabulous mods that people built on top of our extensions and knowing that we've helped make the modding community even better.

I've never asked for donations to help pay for the servers which host silverlock.org - even from the other team members. They serve a tremendous amount of traffic (SKSE alone averages nearly 6GB of downloads daily) but my hosting service doesn't charge me any extra for it. I would be paying for the sites whether the Script Extenders existed or not, so I never saw the point of asking for donations.

Ian and I also work for software firms with connections to the gaming industry (his much more directly than mine). We simply can't take any money for the Script Extenders, even if we wanted to. Which we don't.

But I understand others wanting some sort of compensation for their involvement making mods. There are expenses and time is always a factor. It is not unreasonable. Back when this all started there was no option - mods were forbidden to make any money. It was only a couple of years ago that folks were even allowed to start taking donations. Today all of that changed again. I am not sure what this will do to our community, frankly. I sincerely hope that everyone will continue to contribute to the community and will continue to support the game - and future games in the series.

My personal preference is that all the mods remain free for everyone to use. Folks who want to contribute to a modder can donate or purchase a mod through the Workshop. I would hate to have all of the great mods go behind a paywall. Some mods themselves are probably worth some money. The large quests and major overhauls over the years have brought so much to the game that giving back to their creators would be a good thing. But I would prefer it wasn't forced on anyone.

Final Thoughts

I know this is not the "valiant stand" that some folks have been clamoring for us to take. They want us to forbid the use of SKSE in any paid mods in the hopes that none of the great mods would ever make it to the paid Workshop. Honestly even if we were inclined to take that approach, I don't think it would work. The Script Extenders themselves are on a fairly wobbly legal footing given what we have to do to make things work. Bethesda has always "looked the other way" as far as that is concerned. Trying to prevent paid mods from happening would be more likely to get the Script Extenders banned than successfully preventing paid mods.

I think that the modding community can continue to be a vibrant place. I expect many of the old guard of modders to continue working (as much as they are) and to provide their mods for free as they have always done. And perhaps - just perhaps, the prospect of some reward for their hard work will allow some new amazing mods to be created for this or future games.

In any case, we're going to continue doing what we do and enable modders to do more. I expect that when the next game comes along (whether TES VI or Fallout 4) we'll be back trying to extend the scripting functionality for modders.

/r/Games Thread Link - forums.bethsoft.com