I love getting up in arms about any old thing in the world just as much as the next guy, but monetizing custom content and mods is not a scandal. Turns out making custom content and mods (yes, even for an indie game) takes time and effort LABOR, and labor is something that can and should be compensated. If you don’t want to monetize your labor then that’s fine. If you do want to monetize your labor then that’s also fine.
The real scandal is the entitlement that some people have to the products of other people’s labor. You want a CC hair for your para that’s behind an early access paywall? Pay for it or wait. You want a script mod for your sims that’s behind a permanent paywall? Pay for it or pirate it—people have absolutely put it on a public database or will very shortly. Whining about these things just shows that you think the labor behind these creations isn’t worth anything to you, monetarily or socially. We don’t have this attitude when it comes to a meal in a restaurant or a shirt in a store. Just because there is no physical product doesn’t mean it arrived on your screen out of the ether and that you are now entitled to it because you saw it and decided you wanted it. It’s not a monstrous act to charge for mods. It’s not a monstrous act to OVERcharge for mods either because they’re not essential to anyone’s continued ability to live—as much as the uproar may seem to contradict that.
Instead of getting up in arms about this—fighting each other about the ethics of charging for a pixel hat or a kissing animation—why don’t we criticize the system that demands we must monetize our every action our every leisure our every moment in order to eat and pay rent? You think it’s fucked up everyone’s “selling out” and charging for their art? Start directing that anger upward and joining hands with your fellows and build a world where every moment doesn’t require commodification in order to get your next meal or pay for your doctor’s appointment. Or if you’d rather stay in the status quo, learn Blender and do it yourself if you’re so upset ffs
like I don’t think there’s a moral imperative to pay for mods, if you decide 3D models and some coding aren’t worth the cash then don’t pay for it or pirate it—we’re in a recession I’m not advocating for bankrupting yourself over this stuff but c’mon. we’re all in this recession together. if charging for making mods is helping make ends meet then go for it. it just so happens that it’s much easier to shoplift 1’s and 0’s than a wig or a tshirt. it’s just not worth whinging about as if we’re talking about food being dangled over our starving heads. we’re not losing out on any tangible quality of life because we have to jump through a couple hoops to download a pixel couch without paying for it.
