That didn’t last very long. Valve has pulled paid mods from Steam after an outcry from the public, admitting that they ”didn’t understand exactly what (they) were doing” when they initiated the concept.
”We’ve been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards,” the firm writes, ”and in the past, they’ve been received well. It’s obvious now that this case is different.”
Valve says its aims were to make full-time modding a viable path for content creators, and to encourage developers to improve access to modding tools. The end result, it was hoped, was that there would be more success stories like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor.
Which is understandable, but as Valve admits, leaping into a well-established community to set up such radical changes probably wasn’t the best idea. It says that feedback received has been taken on board, though still maintains that there’s ”a useful feature” in there somewhere.
Bethesda, whose fantasy RPG Skyrim was the first game to try out paid mods, also released a brief statement: ”After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop. Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want. Your support means everything to us, and we hear you.”
While I don’t think anyone would begrudge content creators more money, the truth is I don’t think Valve would have had the manpower or ability to properly vet the huge amount of paid-for content that would have sprung up on Steam Workshop, or deal with the inevitable avalanche of plagiarism claims. This decision is probably for the best, though I fully understand why hard-working modders might feel otherwise.
