I've been thinking about what our next steps are with this stuff. 

The item system we have right now is pretty robust, so as long as clothing is uploaded and has a workshop id, we should be good to go. Creators should be able to go into their workshop shit on Steam's website and set any splits with other Steam accounts that they want. Payouts would all be handled by Valve.

I believe we get to set our own cut. What does the community feel that should be? Valve would get 30%, then we'd get a cut, then the rest would go to the creator. What should our cut be?

Should community items be sold straight out, or part of crates? Crates suck right? So just sold outright?

Should they be on sale forever or for a short period?

I originally intended that these skins would be included with the game. I'm now thinking that might not be the best, idea long term.. and we should try to make it so they're downloaded on demand. This would mean we can ship new skins without updating the game.. but we'd have to be careful about file name collisions etc.

Could you give us an idea of what you think a reasonable cut for yourself would be? There's still unknown factors for the community that we will just simply never know (like how much has been spent on s&box development, costs of maintaining backend, etc.) and even bigger unknowns for both the community and Facepunch (like the eventual cost of s&box when it releases) which I think all need to be factored in. 

I don't think I could confidently give an answer without at least knowing what s&box might one day cost to access. If it's a $60 'game' then of course I'd expect a more substantial percentage go to creators, but if you're going to push it out the door for $4.99 then hey go ahead and take a bit more.

There's also the play fund to take into account now as well. If Facepunch is getting X of a cosmetic sale, is that X going into the play fund to be paid out to other creators? Or is the play fund going to get a portion of that X after development costs?

How set in stone is this cut? Can it be changed down the line once more is known? I'm honestly kind of shocked so much involving money is happening (game jams, the play fund, and now cosmetics) given there's still a lot of changes happening and so many unknowns.

I really don't think I have enough information to be able to make an educated decision (or in my case, just a decision).

Crates suck, yes. But if creators have the option to pick and choose limited time sales or forever sales, more control in their hands I think is always the best option. 

I'm indifferent about this, but would cosmetics exist solely on the Workshop, or would they also use the sbox back end? Would cosmetics be downloaded via Steam or in-game via the back end I mean. I feel like an org indent would be enough to work around any kind of file name conflicts you mention kind of like how games are already?

Cosmetics on the workshop don't ship any assets. It's simply there as a formality. It'll all be using sbox.game.

cut wise, obviously i would love to get more, i think anyone would,
but i understood if you took as much as valve or around that.

I prefer most clothing to be generic always available clothing you just buy, pretty cheap though, and not super special looking.
but limited clothing for events would be really cool, like getting community artists to make rust themed clothing on rusts birthday, or halloween costumes for halloween ect.
limited stuff that sells for more but once its gone its gone.
I dislike crates personally, but if you do go for them im also not too bothered it up to you guys, i just think crates will make it harder to pay out to each clothing's creator in said crate.

for the clothing itself.
i just think its best to download them on the fly from the cloud, im sure there is a nice solution to avoid naming collisions, be that putting it on the artists to follow a naming scheme to avoid it, or doing some technical magic to force change name of clothing assets.

The citizen and all its clothing already account for a big chunk of s&box's download size, I can imagine it getting out of hand in the future.

That's BS that Valve takes almost a third! oh well, it's their market, servers, platform.

I think it makes the most sense that the creator of the cosmetic itself gets a nice crisp 50%, if valve takes 30% that leaves 20% to Facepunch, which is still pretty respectable.

This thread got posted in an internal small fish channel which is why everyone is brigading... be careful... I wouldn't take any of their opinions seriously...

I'm sure others can touch on how much the artists should get cut-wise. I just wanted to mention that I don't like the FOMO model of selling cosmetics.

The examples being the santa costume and now the valentine's day bear. I'm not sure how frequent this is going to be, but, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth especially since the game isn't even out yet.

I think you guys should just copy what you are already doing with Rust, have a weekly, fortnightly or monthly rotation of cosmetics. Can be 100% community skins or a mix between fp made and community cosmetics. You can also have a selection I suppose of permanent always available cosmetics but I like the idea of "collecting" cosmetics.

This is a tricky situation to balance. You have 3 entities that all have contributed greatly to the conversion in the first place. While I don't know the cost that facepunch is incurring from labor and hosting, I think a 20%-30% would be fair for facepunch. As much as I'd like to argue that the artist gets 100% from all of the hard work they put in, facepunch has walked so the artist can run. 

On the topic of crates, I think crates are a sucky game mechanic and should be avoided. It encourages underage gambling and the end user has a chance of not even getting what they want and thus not getting their money's worth. 

For example, rainbow six siege has a pack system and when special events happen they release special packs for special limited cosmetics. These special packs are more expensive and harder to grind for (players should be rewarded for playing the game, not paying more for it). You could spend $10-$20 and not even get a skin you like which sucks and is a little shitty for end user satisfaction. 

I like the idea of regular cosmetics and the odd limited edition / collaboration between community artists or other entity - once it's gone it's gone every so often can't hurt. 

Crates i'd avoid as it's heading down gambling route and also as mentioned by someone on the discord about fair distrubtion of monies between creators + Valve + FP. 

Those who enjoy the gambling from crates will probably integrate it into their own games anyways... 

 I think a time-limited system done right would help avoid oversaturation and encourage sales, though it's a fine balance. Perhaps two drops a month, with a one month buying period? Community favourites could be brought back on occasion, offering a second chance to the people who missed an item the first time around. The most popular items could go into a "Greatest Hits" catalogue, making them available perpetually.

 Loot crates are predatory at worst and unfair at best. They should be avoided. 

On profit splitting, I'd be cool with Facepunch taking a 10-20% cut. But really, I trust that it will be a fair and reasonable percentage, whatever the actual number ends up being.

Overall, it sounds about in line with what I'd expect. Looking forward to selling some cool stuff!

Theres many factors to consider that is not known, but I say depending on the situation of s&box, you should raise the cut if the play fund is low, or if server upkeep costs are way too high.

Best case scenario is the cut stays under 30%. The lower the better, specially if your trying to compete with other platforms.

Crates suck, you should avoid them at all costs, I don't want to gamble just to try and get a certain cosmetic I like (and it also encourages underage gambling). 

Maybe have community cosmetics be in a monthly store rotation? That will encourage people to buy cosmetics.
Or you can just leave it up to the creator to decide if their cosmetic is limited or not.

Would the skin creators cut include Steam marketplace sales that happen after the item is unavailable or just a cut from the official ingame sales?

Is Facepunch's intention that all revenue generated by s&box will go directly back in to s&box? 

In a system such as that, it's tempting to think that Facepunch's cut may be derived algorithmically. You could periodically ask: given the size of the player base and the money spent by the average player, what size of cut would be necessary to support s&box?

But supporting s&box means adding cash to the play fund. This means that money taken from cosmetic makers as part of Facepunch's cut would enrich game developers on the platform. So, any discussion of the size of Facepunch's cut requires balancing the needs of cosmetic makers and game makers.

Of course, the reason most people would play s&box is because it has games - not because it allows you to play dress-up with cosmetics. On the one hand, you can't have cosmetics without games. But on the other, game makers can't get paid without cosmetics feeding money in to the system.

Assuming that good games motivate players to buy cosmetics, what do cosmetic makers owe game makers for this service?

Assuming that good cosmetics are the only way that money enters the system, how much should game makers give up to motivate the continued support of cosmetic makers?

Facepunch's cut of cosmetic revenue should be flexible, changing by small amounts periodically to achieve a balance where good games and good cosmetics are rewarded in proportion to the effort required to make them. Facepunch should be transparent about the process by which they determined what percentage cut they should take. If any amount of the cut is kept by Facepunch without justification (i.e. it is profit), this should be made clear.

As an aside, I strongly disagree with any implementation of loot boxes in s&box. The thought of making money from other people's gambling habits repels me. The last thing I want is for games to pay out based on the exploitation of player compulsions.

Dont do crates 

why not

So, to answer some questions:

I dislike crates too, but there is something interesting there, economy-wise. Like in Rust, being able to take cheap items, turn them into scrap, spend the scrap on a crate for a chance to get a skin that you want. That's good for the economy because it destroys items.

Not all revenue will be put back into s&box. We need to pay wages and cloud services etc. After that's all accounted for, we can certainly put profit into the pool. This is something that interests me a lot.. being able to sell an item or whatever, which raises the pool dynamically, and having that pool figure made public.

Cut-wise - I wouldn't feel right taking more than 30%. That'd put the user on 40%. I think that's probably a fair amount, considering we'd be putting our cut into the play pool, costs etc.

The game won't cost $60. It's likely going to be a similar price to GMod when we release.

The Skin Creators don't get a cut of the marketplace sales (the cuts here are quite minimal fwiw).

I also imagine cosmetics are going to go beyond clothing. We'll have things like physgun and toolgun cosmetics in the sandbox gamemode, and aspire to let other games do similar things specific to them.

s&gamble

As someone who invests into skins and has already put £1000s into sbox skins I think loot crates are a good idea if they're implemented in the right way. 

1: old items such as "chef apron" or cosmetics that have already been stated to only be available on the SCM should not be added into loot crates because it hurts investors/collectors who bulk buy limited items thus less sales long term if investors are screwed over. If you plan to carry on this method while adding loot crates please state in the description of a new item "loot crate drop".

2: What I dislike about the rust economy is old items still being a "loot crate drop" since it makes old items have little to no value. to combat this limited crates would be something interesting to look at. Having loot crates with a limited period before they get removed should increase investment and stability in the economy. you could implement a system where items from loot crate "A" could be broken down into scraps for that crate only thus slowly eating up the supply of less desirable items from that time point without impacting desirable items from that "loot crate". maybe the loot crate rotates every year or for different events. 

3:  cs2 has a trade up system which gives value to skins no one wants. E.G "Negev Anodized Navy" which was once worth £1 is worth £250 due to skins being desired above it. 

I hope this helps lol

Edit: be clear on the % chance of items when opening a crate too

yeah i blew my grandpa's inheritance on cs2 slop and now my grandma has cancer so id like to do the same with sbox skins

1k on items? What the hell????

10 dollars for a whole engine is not bad though I'd like to see a free and paid version of it just like how unity has it. 

So I've had a few days to think about it and here's my thoughts:

I'll start with the easy bit: Facepunch's cut. 30% sounds totally reasonable, especially if we're talking a $10 - $15 game/platform access, I'm more than happy with the sound of that.

On to crates. I'll start by mentioning I'm not entirely sure how Rust handles community cosmetics in crates, etc. so there might be things I'm missing. While I understand they can be very good for keeping a sort of economy flowing, I feel like that alone comes with a lot of variables that might be different from how Rust's economy works.

How would crates be priced, and how would cosmetics be priced? Do creators have a say in what price they (the cosmetic) sells for, or is there going to be some tier based system based on the complexity or maybe on assumed popularity based on how unique the piece is? How will crates be priced relative to the items inside them? Do crate prices fluctuate in that case? Are crates able to be earned in-game in any way or only purchased?

Are crates going to be generic or tiered/themed, based on the cost of items that can be received in them? Do individual creators earn money when a crate generates their item, or do all creators that had a chance item in the crate get a share of said crates value, based on the item inside? How are the odds of crate cosmetics calculated/set?

Will items made exclusive to crates be able to later go to the open market? If creators aren't able to get a cut of marketplace sales, I don't think there's an incentive as a creator to make something exclusive at all. Even if there's high initial sales, you're locking yourself out to any future sales. If I'm planning on making cosmetics now and into the future, I'd be doing so with the expectation that the s&box community will grow and become stable, so making anything exclusive now just seems like a poor financial choice. If Gmod player charts are anything to go by, a non-exclusive cosmetic could be a small source of perpetual income for the next 10 years.

I'm really not sure I like the ideas of crates and am having a really hard time trying to figure out how they would work so that it feels fair for creators and works with players. And that's on top of the already bad vibes from just gambling/crateconomy in general.

economy is a nice way to say child gambling and predatory FOMO.

this will go nicely with the ugly sausage skins, to dissuade anyone serious who wants to make games on platform.

i agree on child gambling, but predatory FOMO does not match up with cosmetics really 

I don't think that making s&box paid is the best idea, it's gonna reduce the potential audience.

So just moderate these games? Don't allow monetization or penalize them in the algorithm.

Whenever developers getting compensated is brought up, there's always someone mentioning bad practices and dark patterns, saying that NOBODY should get monetized because SOME will abuse it.

Facepunch already stated they will penalize slop and award good games, like placing them in the Featured list.
A game is grindy, farms playtime, has repetitive content? Downvote and leave a negative review, do your part instead of bringing others down.

that's how I know not to take you seriously anymore

sure moderate games, don't allow gambling just as there isnt porn because its degenerate and kids shouldnt be blowing mom's credit card on some bullshit scam that masquerades as an economy and your purchases as investments.

just as there should not be crappy cosmetics that cost $100 or $1000 dollars because thats a joke. and using predatory FOMO to try and hike up prices is just that. its called MICRO transactions not crippling poverty inducing transactions.

gmod 2 is for producing games not NFT cosmetics that sit in your virtual inventory so that you can have dick measuring contest based on how much money you spent on worthless pixels.

if your an artist and you say you cant figure how to make money from your art except by milking virtual gambling addicts, you aren't thinking very hard.

edited:

tldr pursuing a skin "economy" of FOMO gambling will make sbox dead on arrival

FOMO is gambling even if you don't have rng, you are gambling when you buy limited edition items expecting their value to rise in the future.

stop the cope!

Speculating on cosmetics is a practice driven by FOMO, especially right now. People are already hoarding clothing to resell for profit.

Stocking up on clothing directly from the in-game shop is like betting on whether a stock will go up. On the other hand, buying discontinued clothing from others pumps up a speculative bubble, so it's more like buying an NFT. I'm unhappy with this outcome, but maybe it's inherent to any market of second-hand collectables.

Loot boxes would be a full-blown casino game. You buy a key, open a box, and get a reward of random monetary value. It's "not gambling" in the sense that Japanese pachinko parlors are "not gambling" because instead of winning money directly, you win a toy that you exchange for money.

Wikipedia describes this practice as a legal loophole.

By the letter of the law, it isn't gambling. But it's obviously gambling.

I can't stomach the thought of taking money from a casino patronized by children.

slop

keep the slop to rust garry, nobody plays rust anyway, gmod 2 doesnt want or need $2000 micro transactions