Valve introduced paid mods into the Steam Workshop today, and the move has already proved to be, unsurprisingly, rather divisive among developers and Steam Workshop users. And of course there’s been the usual melodrama and threatening behaviour, because this is the internet and it’s driven people mad.
Rust and Garry’s Mod designer Garry Newman reckons that it’s just capitalism in action.
@garrynewman And if you want to then welcome to capitalism.
— Garry Newman (@garrynewman) April 23, 2015
Obviously I am biased because my mod made me a millionaire thanks to Valve. And people said you shouldn't charge for mods back then too.
— Garry Newman (@garrynewman) April 23, 2015
While Simon Roth, creator of Maia, the offworld colony management game, is less impressed.
Steam workshop now lets you sell stuff for games? Hmm, kinda goes against what some of the modding community stands for in my view.
— Simon Roth (@SimoRoth) April 23, 2015
Mohawk Games’ Soren Johnson and Campo Santo’s Jake Rodkin are more interested in how much money Valve will be making out of this.
So now Valve doesn't have to buy up and hire the next Counter-Srike, Team Fortress, Portal, or Dota team. They'll just get a cut on the mod!
— Jake Rodkin (@ja2ke) April 23, 2015
Looks like Valve does give the devs a split of mod sales, BUT the mod creators get only 25%? Who wrote this policy, Schappert-era Microsoft?
— Soren Johnson (@SorenJohnson) April 23, 2015
And Notch thinks it’s “neato”.
Support for paid mods on steam? Neato!
— Markus Persson (@notch) April 23, 2015
Leaving Twitter behind, we head into the darkness, the now rage-infested warrens of the Steam Workshop comments section.
Commenters who are copying and pasting this make up most of the comments:
“The Steam Community is about sharing your work.
Have good ideas and help to improve each other.
That makes us diffrent of the gaming companies.
>>>> Post this on every and each paid mod you see in steam Because we don’t wan’t to let steam end up in a
greed for money- gaming platform
Make Valve add a “donate” option instead!”
I’m fairly appalled that not one single commenter took a moment to fix the typos. What a world!
There are some good points being made amid the copy and paste jobs and commenters flipping the bird at DLC, however.
One user in the Wet and Cold mod comments notes that it uses other mods, which is pretty common. Countless mods use, with permission, parts of other mods or user-created tools which are required to make them work. Will those modders be receiving a cut?
It’s worth noting, as well, that Steam Workshop is far from the only place where you can get mods for Steam games. Most Skyrim mods, for example, are featured on both Steam Workshop and Nexus Mods. Will the modders be removing the mods from the Skyrim Nexus? At the moment, they are still there, for free.
Others seem content with the changes, seeing it as paying a modder for their hard work.