After a bit of soul searching, Valve’s come to the conclusion that, perhaps, paid mods on the Steam Workshop weren’t such a brilliant idea. The experiment’s only been going for a few days, but tonight Valve and Bethesda have agreed to put an end to it.
The payment feature on the Steam Workshop has been removed.
“We’ve done this because it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing,” reads the announcement. “We’ve been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they’ve been received well. It’s obvious now that this case is different.”
Although it’s been put in the ground, Valve still attempts to explain why they wanted to experiment with premium mods.
“To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.”
Well, that was short-lived.