I can think of one prime example of why mods and money should never go hand in hand. Usually mods are made by very dedicated people who do not want anything from their mods except feedback from the gaming communities and some recognition for their hard work, this has made sure that mods have most often been made with a fantastic amount of detail for whatever these mods have been made for, and the other "bad" mods have most often been made for fun by someone trying to make a game a little bit more derpy than before (Yea I’m looking at you giant unicorn pegasus horse for Skyrim). When money is involved, the whole thing gets more serious than before, where before you had a group of guys helping each other out, called the modding community, all using time to create the mod, you will now have something of a modding industry rising, where some modders might want to be payed for the time they invest in a mod, because they can now, and I can foresee a "Workplace hierarchy" taking place. It’s not only the "We’re all helping out for free" idea that gets corrupt, but the prime motive for mod making will change, meaning more bad mods for a quick buck.
Example of money fucking up a modding team:
Brytenwalda was to many the best mod available for Mount & Blade: Warband. It was rich in detail and events, had more factions than the vanilla game could ever dream of (sure, vanilla lore comes into play as well), it had thousands of different weapons and equipment and the stuff you could do in that mod was more than I could ever finish, and I’ve played M&B a lot!
Some years later, the makers of M&B announce that a new DLC, Viking Conquest, would be released, made by the creators of Brytenwalda! The entire community was ecstatic. It was a DLC, sure not a mod, but it was to be an official release, so "mod" seems a little weird to be calling it, and the makers of a fantastic mod were involved. The release finally came after months of waiting and BAM! it was terrible. The DLC was riddled with bugs, game crashing ones and with entire textures missing. All the children running around the villages had shrunken full-grown man faces! You could clearly see that the product was thrown out of the nest before it had grown wings. The community was in shock that the creators of Brytenwalda couldn’t get this highly anticipated and funded DLC to work. It went as far as to the creators having to give an apology for their release, seeing how all the people who bought it got angry. The reason was simple: They were working for a publisher with money on his mind. The incentive of the DLC was not public feedback and recognition, it was profit (most likely extra funds for the development of M&B 2 (but that’s just my theory)), and with that incentive the quality crashed into the dust. They were under pressure because for every second they worked, someone was losing money. Every idea they wanted to implement cost extra money and the longer they worked on it, the more expensive these "small details" became.
IF they were working on this viking mod/overhaul themselves, yeah sure, it would’ve taken longer for them to complete it, but the progress would have been saved in a hard drive and whenever they felt up for it, they’d work on it a bit more and stop when they had enough, all the way till it was in a stable and enjoyable state, but the workplace environment forced them to ruin their good name all in the name of money!
Look at any other type of media, from music to books. Where there’s big money a lot of advertisement is used to convince the consumer that this product is better than it really is. Where there’s no money only the true motives are left and almost ALWAYS end up with a good quality product.
And that’s all I have to say about that!
