Paid mods suck

[Andrew]

Saw it coming. Ah well.

[bongo88]

don't mind me.....

i'm just bored and wandering through....

just admiring my new signature.....

because i am ......

..... petty .....

haha.

for the record ---- paid mods suck ---- love the topic!

[Lagoa]

I've been making 100% FREE Mods in this community for over 15 years. I've never earned even $5 from it.

I'm a 44-year-old Brazilian, married, with an 11-year-old son. I spend a LOT OF TIME creating mods.

In the first month of NBA 2K25, I made my mods available for free, WRITING IN HUGE RED LETTERS THAT DONATIONS WOULD BE VERY IMPORTANT FOR ME TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE CREATING MODS.

My mods were downloaded over 3,000 times in that time, and I RECEIVED $12 dollars for that! THAT WAS UNACCEPTABLE TO ME!

The only way to keep making mods is to get paid for it, otherwise there would be no way. I think it's selfish for people to complain that they're not getting something for free. It's an abusive attitude! You pay $70/90 for the game but complain about paying $5 for a mod made by an artist who spent time on it to improve their game?

The world changes, the market changes, I sell my mods at a low price, some for free, in the future I will make packages with better prices.

For those who complain, stop thinking that the world was made to serve you, it doesn't work that way anymore. Nobody forces you to buy anything!

And a big, big thank you to all of you who have purchased one or more of my mods! Know that it is because of you that I will continue to produce and improve the game more!

[sticky-fingers]

So much condescension, PPP, while most of paid modders never gave a dollar to the NLSC, to the creators of the first mods they downloaded here, to the creator of free tools and/or tutorials they use to learn....
it's really hypocrisy

Because Modding is barely illegal, at best tolerated.
So paid mods are totally illegal.
And this is no fake moralist, this is just a fact.

Like Andrew said, you use and re sell 2K assets you dont own (read the licence, you even dont own the game...), you use gettyimage pictures to paint the face, you use players image rights.
OK you're making money, good for you .... until the day an entitled party puts an end to your illegal business.
And what if your paid mods were shared here for free ? you already complain about that... so other's copyrights dont matter, but yours...

About the OP, i think that frustation comes from the fact that many paid modders play around NLSC'rules by posting here free mods to indirectly promote their store, sometimes even just promoting their paid stuff on videos/screenshots.

[vetmin]

One might suggest that if the modder is that hard up for cash they're better off getting a second job than spending many hours of their day doing this work.

The issues with NBA 2K and VC is bad enough -- we don't need to be adding to that as a community ourselves.

The issue with this line of thinking is that if a talented creator is flipping burgers to make a few extra bucks, then you're also not getting their stuff for free because they're not making it in the first place... because they're at McDonald's flipping burgers instead of at their computers creating. It's of course not that cut and dried, but still, the reality is that most of the creators selling mods wouldn't be remotely as productive if they were only creating as a hobby. And actually, as I read further in this thread...

Had i not started to make a living off of modding i would've been in an office somewhere and i would've stopped modding long ago, so y'all wouldn't get shit from me free or paid.

There you go. There's no difference between not having something because you refuse to pay for it vs. not having something because it doesn't exist. Either way you don't have it. If it exists then at least it's there for the people for whom an improved version of that particular player, arena, etc. is important enough to pay for. And on that note...

I personally won’t buy any mods since it looks silly to have a modded version with updated textures next to some plain OOB player model. The contrast of this is worse than just not having mods at all.

The vast majority of gamers (including the vast majority of us here) don't have such an all-or-nothing attitude towards modded vs. vanilla game assets. Unevenness of quality (even among mods, not just between mods vs. default assets) is simply a fact of life when gaming with mods, and it has been forever. Bill Russell has gotten a few decent cyberfaces, but Bob Pettit never has (except for one or two fairly recent paid ones I'm aware of), so anyone who has enjoyed pitting Russell's Celtics against Pettit's Hawks in the past has enjoyed doing so despite the unevenness in quality between those two stars' appearances (not to mention the fact that it's slim pickings for cyberfaces of any of their teammates as well). Anyone who enjoyed playing as Jordan's Bulls in the good ol' free-mods-only days did so despite probably having a decent Jordan cyberface on the court alongside a straight-out-of-PS3 Will Perdue.

So I think you're in the minority there. The fact is that there are many gamers who may feel that it's worth it to pay $10 for an improved Anthony Edwards, for instance (given how abnormally bad his default likeness is), but roll with an otherwise default game. It's a silly line of thinking that treats a $10 price tag on one mod as an obligatory $10,000 price tag for the whole game. There's a lot of unevenness even among 2K's default assets, so for instance, default LeBron (i.e., 2K19-era likeness) looks awkward next to default Bronny, whereas a modded LeBron that brings him up to 2K's own current standards looks much more natural next to default Bronny. Just because you buy LeBron doesn't mean that you have to buy Bronny in order for your game to look coherent.

-----------------------------------------------

Anyway, the above are my responses to a couple posts from others, but I also wanted to add a quick comment about my own situation as a modder and mod consumer. I started modding when I switched to PC for 2K22, and after releasing a handful of 2K23 mods, 2K had almost all of my mod links taken down and I shifted my focus to a large-scale retro project that I'm still working on and intend to release only when it's finished. Point is, after a little ways into 2K23, I stopped releasing mods publicly. Also, around when 2K23 came out, I began purchasing mods, specifically cyberfaces. I've probably spent $200-300 on like 300-400 CFs since then (note that I spent like $7 on 2K24 itself; I basically skipped that game and only bought it on a super Steam sale so I could export stuff from it).

These past couple years I have not minded paying, because I recognized that I was shelling out for a luxury item that I didn't actually need, and it was for a game (2K23) that I still have the intention of playing as my primary basketball game for years to come, so it was worth the investment to me. I also appreciated that much of what I was paying for was stuff that the creators themselves had zero interest in making. For instance, I am sure that PPP had less than zero desire to create a Rick Barry cyberface (and that the other cyberface creators in his circle of top-end talent would have also had little desire), but because there was consumer demand, PPP made it and now I get to enjoy using a photorealistic Rick Barry cyberface that simply would not have been created if not for PPP's interest in serving his paying customers.

...however...

I have returned to releasing mods publicly again for 2K25 (all free, as in the past) and have decided that—as long as I myself am devoting my own time to improving this game—I'm not willing to essentially 'lose money' (i.e., to be $200-300 in the red, like I was on 2K23/24) on a game like 2K25 that I consider to be inferior. So for my future mods* I'll be switching to a paid early-access model. To me it feels like the best balance of contributing to a long-term library of free mods (which I feel is important for any heavily modded game) while bringing in a bit of cash that I can then use to purchase the mods I personally want from other creators. Otherwise I just don't have much interest in 2K25 as a game (and likely the next few 2Ks at the very least). Maybe I'll change my mind, but basically, the next time I share a mod, know this: If it's free right away, that means it's my last 2K25 (and likely beyond) mod and the game probably isn't even on my computer anymore; if it's paid early-access, I'll keep creating stuff for the new 2Ks too (in addition to my free-right-away stuff for 2K23).

*Not my big 2K23 retro mod; I'm talking 2K25, 2K26, etc.

[positive_comment_guy]

I said in my original post people are free to do what they want with their own time and effort.

Doesn’t mean I can’t say it sucks. The childish reaction to people not liking what you’re doing with paid mods is sad. Keep doing whatever you want. Sorry we hurt your feelings.

[vetmin]

I said in my original post people are free to do what they want with their own time and effort.

Doesn’t mean I can’t say it sucks. The childish reaction to people not liking what you’re doing with paid mods is sad. Keep doing whatever you want. Sorry we hurt your feelings.

Not sure who you're responding to, but at least in my case, I was mainly just pointing out that your statement "it looks silly to have a modded version with updated textures next to some plain OOB player model" is itself a bit silly considering that—completely unrelated to the topic of free vs. paid mods—unevenness of quality and style is a simple fact of life when playing a modded game, or even a vanilla 2K game (again, I gave the example of vanilla 2K25 containing 2K19-looking LeBron James with a modern 2K25-scanned Bronny). It's impossible to play a 2K game without that sort of heterogeneity, so it's a strange thing to bemoan and a strange thing to connect to the whole free vs. paid mods debate, to which it's totally irrelevant.

[Dee4Three]

I am locking this thread up for a few reasons.

1. It is taking away from the other threads in this section. Have this back and forth at the top of the modding section isn't fair to those creating, commenting, and sharing in other threads

2. I tried to keep it up as long as possible, but in many recent posts, it got pretty nasty. The language, the insults, the discourse. We need to be better than this.

3. For the majority, paid mods do indeed suck, and I will state again, if we allowed them on the NLSC, it would have destroyed the community, and more than likely the site would have been taken down.

4. Anybody who came into this thread beating down the door saying "leave me alone, it's my business and I will do what I want". You came onto a site that does not support paid mods (its against the rules), came into a thread called paid mods suck, and insulted not only much of the community, but people in general as well (rot in an office, etc). What did you expect to happen?

So yeah, this ends now. If you have specific complaints as it relates to paid mods that you see being advertised on this site, please use the report button.

Thank you,