A long time ago, when Nelson started to work on Modules in Unturned I was suuuuper hyped. It would allow for people to virtually make plugins for Vanilla Unturned, which would mean there wouldn’t be much of a need for Rocketmod once the same plugins from there were on the Steam Workshop - which, would mean, the plugins can’t be paid for.
Obviously this never happened. Which is sad to me, because these external third party non-official websites can put a price-tag on plugins. Sites such as ImperialPlugins and Rocketmod itself offer a plethora of plugins ranging from somewhat reasonable pricing (1$-5$) up to ridiculous amounts such as 35$, and higher on Rocketmod’s website
Which is sad to me as a server owner. I can see why plugin developers have the feeling to make their plugins paid for in order to make some kind of money, but this is really only fueling P2W servers that make money by providing an unfair experience, which those servers buy the plugins to appeal to more and more players. I looked into how many plugins I’d need to run, lets say, a decent RP server
($15) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=100
($25) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=1
($5) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=6
($10) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=5
($5) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=8
($15) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=12
($7) https://imperialplugins.com/Products/ProductDetails?ProductID=19
82$ total - and these are just some of the bare-bone essential mods for a good RP experience.
This seems pretty ridiculous imo. Unturned is a free game to enjoy, with free servers to play on, and has hundreds of amazing mods, maps and modpacks. And by steams standards mods (and plugins) shouldn’t be paid for. Do you think the people making mods expected a dime from their hard work? No. Some of them may accept donations for their work, but I’ve never seen anyone make a mod for the intention of making money off of it.
imo I think Nelson should definitely work on 4.0 modding support to the point where we won’t need a third-party plugin API like Rocketmod to enjoy plugins. I think it would be cool to see full steam-workshop integration so people may upload their plugins there. And by which, those plugins wouldn’t be paid for, since they’re on steam.