After some controversial days, some internet tantrums, and business soul searching it seems that Valve has listened to both the reasoned arguments and insane rants of the internet and reversed their paid mod support in Skyrim. In case you missed it, it was only last Thursday that Valve announced that modders could now charge money for their mods for the game Skyrim, one of Steam’s more actively modded games. The idea as a whole wasn’t a bad one, allowing hard working modders to charge for their work and hopefully make some money on the side. However the intial reaction didn’t allow for much reasoning of explanation on anyone’s part. Even Valve CEO Gabe Newell went onto Reddit in hopes of explaining their reasoning but his comments and answers were downvoted harshly.
That support is now gone however. In a Steam community post Alden Kroll, a designer at Valve, announced that the support for paid mods would be removed and any money spent on these mods would be refunded. He stated that Valve has, in the past, always tried to reward creators in the community and wanted to “allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to”. The good intentions of Valve’s attempt wasn’t seen in the same light as the community however and the growing talk about a potential donation button for mods may be a good alternative.
It’s a shame mod creators can’t directly charge for their content. This isn’t a simple idea to implement, but a fan of a game who puts hard work and dedication into something that improves a game deserves more than just recognition. A donation button won’t pay the bills and could still be rife for abuse. Not to mention will publishers and developers enjoy the idea of someone profiting, even through donations, from the games they build and create? Hopefully this all means a tweak to the current system to reward those content creators and not a dumping of the idea altogether.
