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Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

> Don't work on FOSS that supports a SaaS or proprietary product.

So true. I'd expand on that with a more specific example: game modders. When i look at all the energy spent on game mods which bring significant (gratis) value to commercial games, i can't help but wonder what the FOSS gamedev ecosystem would look like if all those dedicated people put their energy on free-software ecosystem.

Minecraft for example made a fortune on promises of later open-sourcing the game and deriving value from all the volunteers building mods.

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On the other hand, plenty of game modders have started a productive career from modding.

In an ideal world, I'd agree it would be better that that energy would go into free software. But in our current world, if there's a proprietary game someone is hooked on to the point they get excited about modding when they otherwise wouldn't and that modding leads to a career or even just skill development and perhaps connections with other modders, then overall it seems like it's still a productive use of time, if not entirely an equitable one from a monetary perspective.

There is a balance. I made some connections and learned skills after a few years of moderate to serious modding. With today's free or cheap tools though I'd encourage folks who find joy in modding to consider making their own modest IP. We used to mod because there was little hope of making your own 3D game without an existing engine. (When licensing costs were in the hundreds of thousands and we were poor school kids.)

Anecdote, but I started in modding and made some amazing friendships through it as well as honed my abstract reasoning I use for programming professionally now.

There definitely social benefits that can outweigh the more concrete software == value and time trade-off benefits, but I find communities that are "worth" it _much_ harder to find these days.

Please don't do this.

The premise sounds good but some of the best things in gaming were conceived as mods. Team fortress was a Quake mod. Now, I personally don't blike moba games but Dota also started as a mod. Not to mention Quake OSP/CPMA/Defrag, UTComp, HLDM, Black Mesa and countless others.

It's really unfortunate how unfriendly games are to modding both technically and legally today. We've certainly missed out on a lot of potential

In a previous life, I used to work for a game retailer. I couldn't believe EA was charging 20 euro for a handful of maps and that some people were willing to pay for their own community's destruction thanks to these map packs acting as gatekeepers.

Mods = love

While I agree with the broader point, I don't think Minecraft example is accurate. Historically, most MC mods were freeware closed-source, only few years back (around 1.10) lot of them became open-sourced. So I don't think open source was a big consideration for modders.

You are correct. I meant that Mojang was saying they would consider open sourcing Minecraft itself when it's ready and has raised sufficient funding (have we reached this point yet?). My point was that modders are providing significant value for free to private companies (and are happy to do that as lon as they're credited) and i wish such energy was directed towards a FOSS game ecosystem instead of continuing to enrich the same crooks who derive money off dark patterns (subscriptions, lootboxes) and exploited workers (gamedev industry is famously harsh).

Also, each software has its guidelines to build mods. I feel like if a game had modding guidelines suggesting to open source, modders would be more than happy to do so; if not, open-sourcing a single-person project can be considered more work (eg. setup git).

I believe the phrase was "Once sales start dying" though

Anyways, while there are some similarities shared between Open Source and video game modding scenes, they are substantially different. Instead of evidence to back up this claim, I implore you to imagine what it would be like if some wrote an article titled "Is It Even Worth Working on Videogame Mods Anymore?".

The example of game modding is more related to the corollary of the third point: work on FOSS for something you currently use (or in this case, play). Why not if it's something that brings you enjoyment?

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